Hoskins to OMA: If you want binding arbitration, do you want to unionize?

Ontario's health minister is asking the province's doctors if binding arbitration is so important that they are willing to form a public-sector union and disclose their salaries.

The Ontario Medical Association has asked for it as a condition of returning to negotiations on a new fee agreement for doctors.

Doctors voted down a tentative deal, which would have raised the physician services budget by 2.5 per cent a year, to $12.9-billion by 2020, following a concerted campaign from a group calling itself the Coalition of Ontario Doctors.

One of the group's concerns was that the deal didn't include binding arbitration, with the government and OMA instead agreeing to allow a court challenge on it to continue.

But with the OMA now saying it wants binding arbitration in place before talks resume, Health Minister Eric Hoskins has sent its president a letter asking if that means the OMA wants to formally become a union "and accept all the obligations that other public sector unions have adopted – including withdrawing objections to salary disclosure."

Hundreds of doctors bill OHIP more than $1-million per year, but other than doctors at hospitals, their salaries are not included in the annual list of public-sector workers making over $100,000.