Editor:
Re: “Favourite red herring,” Letters, Aug. 11.
As anyone who has followed Keith Maxwell’s campaign in support of the Trellis-VCH contract knows, attribution is not his strong suit. In letter after letter he has failed to offer evidence for his claims that for-profit care centres provide wages, benefits and staffing levels comparable to publicly owned facilities.
In his latest letter, Maxwell suggests that, “Information provided during the public consultation process clearly indicates that they will be paid similarly to the staff in public facilities.” That’s a remarkable claim for a couple of reasons. First, there has been no real public consultation process. Second, it’s untrue. Trellis has in fact proposed a compensation package that would significantly slash wages and benefits and offer no pension protection. That’s the norm at for-profit facilities throughout the province, and to suggest otherwise is disingenuous in the extreme.
The claim that “there is a strong commitment by VCH to maintain current staffing levels” is also misleading. The only “commitment” of significance is what the parties have agreed to in the Silverstone contract. That contract explicitly reduces patient-care hours from the current level of 3.16 to 3.05 – an annual reduction of approximately 5,000 hours of patient care.
Maxwell purports to advocate for a form of health care “where the private sector complements the public system,” but that’s not an accurate description of the Silverstone project. In striking its deal with Trellis, Vancouver Coastal Health has elected to remove the option of public care from the Sunshine Coast. The fact that over the past year Maxwell has been almost the only letter writer supporting that decision shows how deeply unpopular privatization is in our community.
Ian McLatchie, Protect Public Health Care-Sunshine Coast, Davis Bay
