Ottawa Board of Health: Meeting Highlights - December 11, 2017

Posted Tuesday December 12, 2017

Posted By: Christine Taylor

Category: General

The Ottawa Board of Health held its last meeting of the year on December 11, 2017

The meeting began with four (4) ceremonies, as described below:

• Recognition of contribution to the World Economic Forum report entitled “Migration and Its Impact on Cities” – Certificates were presented to employees who helped develop Ottawa’s submission: Eric Leclair, Inge Roosendaal, Marcella Tapia. Dr Carolyn Pim and Kim Trotter were also recognized in absentia.
• Recognition of Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) Difference Maker Award – A certificate was presented to Ben Leikin, recipient of this prestigious award.
• Recognition of Ottawa Public Health’s Nomination for the 2017 Ottawa/Rideau River Spring Floods Response and Recovery – Michael Ferguson accepted a certificate on behalf of all those who contributed to the response and recovery effort.
• Recognition of Dr. Levy’s last Board of Health meeting – A certificate was presented to Dr. Levy in appreciation of his years of service and leadership.

These ceremonial activities were followed by verbal updates from Chair Qadri and Dr's Levy and Etches.

Chair Qadri’s comments highlighted the pre-screening of the movie Wonder, held on November 15^th at Lansdowne Theater and the November 24^th launch of the Albion-Heatherington Recreation Centre kitchen, which included a Community Kitchen Cook-off. Chair Qadri then took the opportunity to welcome Dr. Vera Etches to her new role and to thank Dr. Levy for his service to Ottawa Public Health (OPH).

Dr. Levy provided a brief overview of the Information Previously Distributed (IPD) memo listed on the agenda with respect to the new Ontario Public Health Standards. He noted that staff would continue to monitor Ontario’s health system transformation agenda and to apprise the Board on that file. Dr. Levy then took the opportunity to thank the Board of Health and the residents of this community for the honour of serving as their Medical Officer of Health and to express confidence in Dr. Etches’ leadership going forward.

For her part, Dr. Etches discussed a recent federal government announcement of a $36.4M investment for cannabis education and awareness and the potential impact of Bill 174 – Proposed Ontario Cannabis Legislation. She also touched on the two inquiry responses listed on the current agenda, noting that more detailed information will be provided as part of the anticipated Supervised Injection Service (SIS) follow-up report in February 2018. She also talked about the Champlain Local Health Integration Network’s recent announcement of a $1.7M investment to increase treatment services to meet the growing needs of people with addictions to opioids.

The Board of Health approved the OPH Draft 2018 Operating Budget , which will rise to Council for final ratification on Wednesday, December 13^th, 2017. In presenting the budget, Lou Flaborea, Manager of Performance and Corporate Services, talked about the Provincial funding letter, received on November 15^th, the impact of which is a net decrease of $765K to the overall OPH Budget. He explained that the reduction would be accommodated by reduced staffing levels (to be accomplished through attrition) and a small increase in gapping. As a result of these changes, a REVISED budget document was circulated to Board Members and the Board approved the Draft 2018 Operating Budget “as amended” by the revised pages.

The Board also approved a report titled “Update on Dental Health Services in Ottawa” and received two Information Previously Distributed (IPD) memos titled “Update on Ottawa Public Health’s Food Safety Program: “Ottawa Safe” TRIAL PROJECT” and “New Ontario Public Health Standards Overview”.

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