Ford appoints Tory ally as health care adviser with $348K pay packet

Premier Doug Ford has quietly appointed a key Progressive Conservative ally to a $348,000-ayear patronage job to oversee a new panel tackling hospital overcrowding.

Hours after been sworn in, Ford convened his first cabinet meeting where one of 37 orders of business was naming Dr. Rueben Devlin to lead the new “Premier’s council on improving health care and ending hallway medicine.”

“The chair shall be paid the sum of $348,000 per annum. The chair shall be eligible for reimbursement of expenses incurred in their work on the council,” said a cabinet order-in-council of the three-year post released Friday.

Devlin’s appointment was made at the same meeting where Ford parted ways with former TD Bank chair Ed Clark, who earned $1-a-year to be former premier Kathleen Wynne’s business adviser and privatization czar.

Children, Community and Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod defended the appointment.

“I don’t think it was a surprise to anyone in Ontario that Rueben Devlin was going to be appointed to that position,” said MacLeod, noting Devlin, a member of Ford’s inner circle, has been advising the new premier on health care for months.

“We were very clear on the campaign trail we wanted to draw from his expertise on the health-care field. We hired somebody who we campaigned on over a several month period,” MacLeod said. “That was a promise we made and a promise we kept.”

Devlin will earn more than Ford, who makes $208,974 as premier, and Health Minister Christine Elliott, who is paid $165,851.

“He is going to be worth every penny and we’re going to see that in the results,” said MacLeod.

Indeed, Ford promised in the campaign he would cut healthcare wait times and end the practice of “hallway medicine” where patients are left in corridors because of staffing shortages.