On May 28, the Board of the Grey Bruce Health Unit met to discuss the $631,000 compensation that Medical officer of Health, Dr. Ian Arra, received in 2020. The Board circulated a 12-page document in response to the many questions posed by Owen Sound and Grey Bruce councillors and others. To put it mildly, the Board has offered up a series of rationalization and irrelevancies to justify their approval of Dr. Arra’s cash grab. Here is my analysis of their behaviour.

To: Ms. Sue Paterson and Members of the Board of the Grey Bruce Health Health

RE: The 2020 compensation of Dr. Ian Arra

FR: Michael Craig, Owen Sound resident

I have read with interest your 'Response to Delegation Questions' posed by Ms. Kanmacher, Ms. Moore Coburn, Mr. Greig, and Mr. Tamming. I appreciate the effort that went into your detailed answers to all the questions.

However, in my opinion your answers are quite inadequate because they fail to address the central question: how is it that Dr. Ian Arra, MOH for Grey Bruce, was allowed to work the system such that his compensation for 2020 was approximately $300,000. more than the average of MOH colleagues across Ontario?

It appears to me that the vast majority of MOHs requested very little extra compensation as a result of the many extra hours that most worked during the pandemic year. I expect that most of them considered that the CEO of a government-funded organization should accept the generous compensation that is offered by Ontario; they didn’t use the pandemic as an excuse to vastly increase their income. It would appear, on the other hand, that Dr. Arra was extremely greedy, and your political and bureaucratic rationalizations have endorsed his greed. As stewards of the public purse, you should be ashamed!

You assert that "the GBHU has a high-functioning, resilient team that has worked together on a public health COVID-19 response that has contained both cases and deaths to an extremely limited number relative to other jurisdictions.” I don’t deny this because I am not in a position to conduct a full analysis of the Grey Bruce pandemic response. This is, however, beside the point. I still want to know how you morally and politically make sense of Dr. Arra receiving twice as much as most of his MOH colleagues. Yes, you created the overtime pay scale; and, yes, you failed to put the brakes on when he utilized it to extraordinary financial advantage.

Now you have created a 12-page document that is a marvel of rationalizations; so much so that it should be on the curriculum of governmental administration courses as an example of how to wiggle away from legitimate public criticism.

I do not expect a fulsome response to my criticism, any more than you and the Board took your political colleagues' critique seriously. In the final analysis the voters will decide, presumably in 2022. Because my letter to you which was published in The Hub was not included in the Board package prior to the May 28 meeting, I am linking to it here.

Sincerely in maximum frustration,

Michael Craig
Owen Sound