A perception of pressure over doctor’s status
In the absence of clarity, we should be clear. Dr. Brooks Fallis is not saying Doug Ford had him fired. This is already a Keystone Kops situation, but that would rise to a level of blunt goonery rarely seen in Ontario politics. Not never, but rarely.
No, what Fallis told Kelly Grant of the Globe and Mail was an expansion of what he said last week: that the critical care doctor was told he was being stripped of his leadership position at William Osler Health System, one of the hardest-hit hospitals for COVID-19 in the country, because the government had expressed unhappiness with Fallis’s outspoken criticism of the province’s pandemic efforts. That is what is being alleged.
It is explosive nonetheless. Last week, Fallis said he was told “the hospital was under pressure from the provincial government, leading to concern about the possible loss of funding for the hospital.” As Fallis told Grant, in his postfiring meeting, Fallis was specifically told by Osler vicepresident Dr. Rardi Van Heest, who was there with chief of staff Dr. Frank Martino, that “some of your remarks have been misconstrued as being harmful to the government so our funding can be put at risk.” Again, Fallis says he took notes.
Fallis further alleged that after he expressed strong criticism of the province’s misbegotten framework in November — a framework that deserved even more criticism than the considerable amount it received before being grudgingly changed — Fallis was told by Martino that the premier had called Osler CEO Naveed Mohammad to complain about Fallis’s comments.
Fallis also said that in an earlier meeting, Mohammad had mentioned three capital projects in particular that the hospital worried about: A tower at the Etobicoke hospital, a cancer centre, and a Peel Phase 2 expansion. And again, Fallis says he took notes. Now for the denials.
“100 per cent totally false,” said Ford, asked at a news conference Tuesday about calling and interfering in Fallis’s case. “I have never directed a CEO to promote or fire someone. It just never happened.”
“These allegations are categorically false. Neither the Premier nor anyone else in the government has ever threatened funding cuts or to withhold funding, nor have we given direction of any kind to punish staff because of criticism of the government’s pandemic response,” Ivana Yelich, a spokesperson for Ford’s office, wrote in an email Tuesday in response to questions from the Star. Yelich denied the phone call occurred at all.
And Osler walked a balance beam defence: a spokesperson wrote to the Star on Tuesday, “it is important to clarify that at no time has anyone from the provincial government had a conversation with anyone from Osler regarding HR matters at the organization.” A followup request for clarity on whether a call happened at all was not answered.
Some housekeeping: Complaining about a doctor’s advocacy is not, by itself, an HR matter. Again, nobody said Ford told the hospital to punish Fallis, or fire Fallis. The premier couldn’t cut a hospital’s base funding if he wanted to, and that was not what was alleged: it was alleged hospital leadership was worried about future capital investments, which are definitely the purview of the province. As one highly placed medical source puts it, “hospital capital projects are notoriously political,” and that goes for all parties in power.
“There are a lot of ways to exert pressure,” said the source.
So, whom to believe? Well, Fallis made notes, and as the Star reported last week, he told Osler colleagues about the firing meeting at the time. The quotes and examples are specific, and the potential backlash immense. There is no obvious reason to doubt them.
Also, last week Dr. Michael Warner, the head of critical care at Michael Garron Hospital in East York and another outspoken critic of the government’s response, told the Star that government representatives had complained to the hospital about his advocacy.
“I haven’t received a complaint directly from the province,” says Warner. “However, I have been informed by the leadership of my hospital that representatives of the government have complained to the hospital about my patient advocacy activities in the media. But my hospital has never attempted to silence me.”
What might be less crazy is the idea that a premier who was known as a bully at city hall, who called a voter back in 2019 to warn him about accusations of corruption, who once told the father of an autistic child to go to hell, who refused to apologize after his brother lied about the actions of then-Star reporter Daniel Dale, might angrily lash out at a critic? Ford played against type early in the pandemic, adopting a more reasonable, softer image. But it has been a long pandemic, too.
Let’s say the province and the premier are telling the truth, and that there wasn’t even a perception of pressure. That would mean Osler Health Systems not only fired a medical director so respected that 23 of the 24 ICU doctors signed a letter strongly protesting the decision, but then lied to him about the reasoning in a way that would have serious political implications if they came to light. This would be crazy, since they could have told him anything.
What’s clear is there was, at a minimum, a perception of pressure. And really, how plausible is the idea that Doug Ford fired off an angry phone call after a doctor said Ford’s decisions would mean people would die; that the hospital had to do damage control, and perhaps not for the only time; and that sometime between being offered a contract extension in December and being fired in January, the perception of pressure increased to the point where Fallis was stripped of the job, and told why.
There is no solid proof of all of that, of course.
Still, some things take a doctor to diagnose. Some things, you may be able to decide on your own.