Letter to the Editor
I would like to start off by making a few things crystal clear.
I have never met Dr. Arra and I have never paid much attention to his office, or the public health unit board. Until now.
To the matter at hand;
When I read about an egregious amount of pay to one person in Grey-Bruce that dwarfed the pay of his colleagues, his superiors, and pretty much every person in the province that is paid with taxpayer dollars, I couldn't help but ask why. There lies the issue. The why is shrouded in secrecy and screams from a few of "how do you dare doubt the good doctor". How can anyone take a step back from this and say the Grey Bruce doctor deserves twice as much as anyone else, more than the Premier of Ontario, more than the Prime Minister of Canada, more than his own boss, the Chief Medical officer of Ontario and say, yep, that makes sense?
If anyone cares to read the letter that has started this whole argument, it very clearly states my support of the health unit. The team at the Grey Bruce Health Unit has done an exceedingly great job in the past 15 months, handling this pandemic. But it takes an entire staff, not just one person. Also, our residents deserve a ton of credit as well. In my day-to-day job, I deal with many people from different regions, and they are all blown away by how responsible our citizens are with social distancing, wearing masks and being courteous about it. That credit goes to the messaging by the health unit here, and the people for listening to that messaging. There is no I in team, but Ian starts with one.
When I read and signed my name to the letter that questions the salary of Dr. Arra, it was to ask for answers. Why is it double the contracted pay? Why is he the only top doctor that has that amount of pay? If it's all overtime and was agreed on, where is the record of it? I have said all along that although he is a salaried employee, and therefore should be obligated to work for the pay he agreed to, it's also been a crazy year that nobody could have predicted, and I'm certain he put in way more time than anyone expected. Some overtime bonus would not be an issue at all. But to double your pay? How did that get signed off on by the board? Was the board chair not paying attention when signing his pay? How does that not get questioned at all until his pay is published on the sunshine list?
While watching the totally bizarre Owen Sound city council meeting on March 27th, so many things raised red flags.
How does the top doctor, who works with numbers every day, not realize until getting his T4 that he made twice the pay he was expected to? It's pretty easy to say "we were going to donate that money, but now we can't because it looks staged"; that's like a child being caught stealing a chocolate bar and saying "I was going to pay for it, promise"
How does someone in that level of office, with so much public engagement make comments about someone coming out of the grave with a flamethrower? Especially while delivering a delegation at a council meeting? That was ridiculous and absurd.
Lastly, to make comments about our hard-working physicians everywhere, that are dealing with real people every day, and assert none of them work after 4 pm, they charge ridiculous overtime, and doctors in long term care homes make $800,000 a year is borderline criminal. Every word of that was incorrect, or a lie. Doctors have reached out to us in anger from the backlash of those comments.
What I didn't expect was to open a can of worms about the workplace environment at the public health unit. There has been an outpouring of support from retired, former, and current staff that are elated we have started this discussion. The people that have reached out are hopeful for some digging into the structure of that organization and some answers to how it's in such disarray.
I would estimate that I have received 50 or so comments in regards to this issue. 2 have been negative, chastising us for raising doubt in the public health unit. The rest have been in support.
The initial issue was money. It was too much money. But that issue has grown substantially. There is something wrong in the workplace at the PHU. To be perfectly honest, this whole thing has grown way larger than I ever expected. But after hearing some of the things former and current staff members have told me, in confidence and condition of anonymity, I feel obligated to see this through.
There are so many holes in the answers to these questions; it has led to more questions, and no answers. All we really wanted to know is how this happened, and why it happened. All public bodies, and all tax payer funded services need to have transparency. Every level of government runs on budgets and public documents, this should be no different.
The four people that signed the letter have also asked to attend the May public health board meeting. So far, we have not gotten a response. This week they let a few supporters attend the meeting, so in the interest of fairness and transparency, I would believe they should let us attend the next meeting.
A long time ago someone told me there are always three sides to every story. Side A, side B and somewhere in the middle lies the truth. We just want to find the middle.
Ryan Greig, Taxpaying resident of Arran-Elderslie
