Ontario's Health Minister Dr. Eric Hoskins at Queen’s Park in Toronto on March 5, 2015.Chris Young/The Globe and Mail
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.