Mayors from northern Ontario’s major hubs joined one another at city hall in Sault Ste. Marie this afternoon to discuss the biggest issues impacting the region.
The Northern Ontario Large Urban Mayors (NOLUM) meeting saw top officials from the Sault, North Bay, Sudbury, Thunder Bay (virtually) and Timmins discuss strategies in accessing critical funding from the federal and provincial levels of government across a number of areas.
Funding for housing developments through the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund and Northern Ontario Resource Development Support Fund, as well as addressing challenges around mental health and addictions, are key areas in which the mayors are seeking increased support.
But perhaps of greatest importance right now, at least for Sault mayor Matthew Shoemaker, is addressing the doctor shortage.
“Physician recruitment I would say is at the top of the list in terms of the impact it could have on our community from a social aspect and an economic development aspect,” he told SooToday.
“If you look at the economic development goals of the province — better our infrastructure, clean our grid, ensure the jobs of the future are here in Ontario — we can contribute significantly to all of that by focusing on healthcare generally, but more specifically physician recruitment.”
“Focusing on physician recruitment will have the spinoff effects of helping with homeless populations and folks who have addiction issues,” he added.
Last week, SooToday first reported that two doctors from the Group Health Centre were going to take 3,000 of the originally announced 10,000 de-rostered patients with them to a brand new family clinic on Second Line East.
Set to open June 4, Great Lakes Clinic promises to provide a wide variety of services, including general family medicine practice, as well as a walk-in clinic for any residents who have a health card — regardless of whether they have a family doctor or not.
A pilot program called Practice-Ready Assessment is expected to bring several internationally trained family physicians from southern Ontario to the new clinic for 12 weeks of supervised training.
Doctors Kiran Waqas and Manjeet Singh are hoping to impress these physicians with their clinic and convince them to practice in the Sault.
While Shoemaker notes the model of healthcare delivery is not within the city’s purview, he feels hopeful that a clinic like this one could mean good news on the recruitment front.
“What matters to me, as mayor, is that people in the Sault have access to a family doctor,” he said. “Whether they’re going to the Group Health Centre or a clinic that’s run by doctors but still funded through OHIP, I think it’s a win no matter how you look at it.”
“Hopefully, other physicians who decided to leave the Group Health Centre, for whatever their own reasons, will consider this as a model to continue serving their patients,” he added.
North Bay’s mayor Peter Chirico told SooToday his city is no stranger to the physician shortage as new doctors just simply aren’t seeing as many patients as the ones retiring.
“We’re having doctors that were rostering 3,000 patients that are retiring, and the younger doctors coming in want to have a work-life balance, so they take on 500 or 600 patients,” he explained.
“It’s a shift in the medical community and it’s impacting many of our residents. It’s going to take decades to correct it. The province is enacting and providing funding in various routes, but you can’t throw enough money at it, unfortunately.”
On the subject of housing, all five communities represented at Monday’s NOLUM meeting have exceeded their most recent building targets.
The Sault broke ground on 213 new housing units in 2023, which earned the city $600,000 in provincial funding through the Building Faster Fund.
But the mayors in attendance at city hall today are yet to receive housing affordability funding from the federal government despite making requests for it.
“We’ve done a successful job over the last two years; all of our communities that have targets have exceeded them,” Shoemaker said. “But we think we can contribute even more to the issues that Ontario is facing. We’re eager to do that and participate in that.”
According to recent census data, the population in the Sault has increased to 78,574 — nearly 4,000 more than in 2021 and the highest recorded since 1996.
“Our communities are growing — all five us in northern Ontario,” Shoemaker said. “We need to ensure that we have the housing available to house the folks who come to our community to fill jobs that are otherwise going unfilled.”
“If our tax base grows, we’re better able to serve the residents who are here,” he added.
On the mental health and addictions front, mayors were asked about the status of supervised consumption sites in their respective cities.
Sudbury mayor Paul Lefebvre said his city was unfairly forced to close their site earlier this year due to a lack of provincial funding.
“We’re concerned,” he said. “The fact this is a health service and it’s health equity. [The provincial government] is funding these sites down south, and we had to pay for it ourselves – that’s not fair. That’s why we’re advocating to the province so that they need to step in and do it.”
Who should foot the bill on these sites was discussed on an episode of Village Media's Inside the Village podcast last September.
For Timmins mayor Michelle Boileau, she fears their supervised consumption site, located by city hall, could be next on the chopping block.
“A new partner came to the table to continue operations past March 31, but they only have the federal exemption until the end of June,” she explained. “If we don’t get a response before the end of June, there’s an impending closure, which will definitely affect our community.”
“We know that the site is working and saving lives,” she added. “It’s also providing access to referrals into withdrawal management and treatment programs. The stats are positive. I see the traffic going through that door, and I have to wonder what door are all these people going to go through if it’s closed by the end of June.”
Like the Sault, North Bay currently does not have a site, but mayor Chirico noted they’re open to advocating for one, especially if the results are positive in other likeminded communities up north.
Shoemaker is still fighting for a site, but he mentioned a moratorium remains on new approvals locally.
“We’re stuck in this middle space of planning for it while not being certain what the criteria will be,” he said. “We were told in January the process would reopen within a couple months, which would have been March. We’re now almost in June, still no word on when the process will reopen.”
The mayors intend to reconvene at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario this summer, and they even suggested planning a day to meet at Queen’s Park to sit down with provincial cabinet ministers and lobby them on collective issues.
NOLUM will meet again in North Bay this fall.