For the better part of a decade, the Village of Burk’s Falls has assumed financial responsibility for maintaining and preserving the 75-year-old buildings and grounds at the Almaguin Highlands Health Centre, routinely incurring a budget deficit.
Currently, the deficit for 2023, $53,400.00, is split among ten surrounding municipalities. Those payments are voluntary.
Mayor Chris Hope of Burk’s Falls said that any proposals to resolve the shortfall are inadequate without the direct involvement of the local MPP and the Ontario Ministry of Health.
“There has not been a formal agreement with the province, and we, as individual municipalities, haven’t received any sort of regular support for the buildings themselves. The cost of running them and maintenance falls to the principal municipalities… and any agreement they have with neighbouring municipalities,” said Hope.
Rod Ward, Mayor of the Township of Armour and chairperson of the Algonquin Highlands Health Council (AHHC), said the funding model is likely not be the best on a long-term basis “because some of the municipalities are quite a bit smaller, and others have a better ability to pay. But up to this point, basically, it’s been a voluntary kind of payment. And for the most part, we’ve been able to offset those losses on a yearly basis. The challenge for the other nine municipalities outside of Burk’s Falls is that we usually get this bill a year late, so we don’t have any kind of upfront heads up as to what might be coming.”
Both mayors agree that all services offered by the health centre are important to the region. The Centre provides a variety of services including a Family Health Team, Pharmacy, X-Ray, Specimen Collection/ECG, Diabetes Education Program as well as a food bank and much more.
Ward, as chairperson of the AHHC, noted, “We’d like to build a new health and wellness facility, and we’re trying to tie that into the redevelopment project at the hospital (Huntsville/Bracebridge) because we know that the hospital wants to push as many services out to the communities they can. So, we want to tie into that project at the same time.” Ward said the AHHC wants to be ready to have facilities available, approved and planned for.
But Mayor Hope said, “None of that has been confirmed as far as I know. All I can say is we haven’t seen anything; we certainly haven’t seen any figures. We haven’t seen any studies. We haven’t seen anything like that. Now, as far as I know, it is a privately owned development.” Hope also underscored that the Village owns fully serviced land that would effectively support any future plans to rebuild the existing health centre.
Ward emphasised that the Almaguin Highlands Family Health Team (AHFHT) is not at risk of closing or being jeopardized by the building maintenance deficits incurred by the Village of Burks Falls. He also noted that both the AHFHT and the Sundridge and District medical team received additional annual funding of about $600,000 for services, including the hiring of a nurse practitioner which has already alleviated wait times for residents seeking health services.
Ward points out that most of the funding used to cover the deficit comes from the local share of the new hospital builds. “As we’re asking the municipalities, what we’re saying is, set aside this much money per year, 80% of that will go towards the local share, 20% we’re going to keep in the Almaguin Highlands, and that’s our way of basically trying to create a reserve fund so that we can improve healthcare and support healthcare in the region.”
For Mayor Hope, the concerns focus directly with and on the Ministry of Health. “It’s that relationship with the province directly, the Ministry of Health, that we need to re-establish. I think we need our own conversation on what we want. I don’t know that that’s entirely clear. That’s why debates about this health centre— they’re a symptom of that. So how could the Village of Burk’s Falls reestablish that connection with the Minister of Health? How would you do it? Keep asking, keep asking, keep asking, have other municipalities ask the same. We are always talking about this issue. And we should have a proper health summit here.”
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