Grey Bruce’s Medical Officer of Health Dr. Ian Arra publicly addressed questions about his compensation and took issue with claims made in a letter signed by four municipal councillors in Grey and Bruce counties that has been circulating online.
Arra was at Owen Sound city council’s meeting on Monday and spoke after the chair of the Board of Health Sue Paterson acknowledged the recently published Sunshine List has raised questions.
The annual public sector salary disclosure showed Dr. Arra was paid over $631,000 last year, the highest amount of compensation any medical officer of health in Ontario received in 2020.
Paterson told councillors Dr. Arra is paid a salary and paid for overtime, the same rate as would be available to any unionized staff putting in those kinds of overtime hours.
She explained throughout all of 2020 and to date, Grey Bruce has not had an associate medical officer of health and there are certain legislated responsibilities and authority that can only be performed by an MOH or a designated associate appointed by the minister.
“These responsibilities cannot performed by a physician consultant. A physician consultant does not have the legislated authority to fulfill the medical officer of health on-call requirement, as each health unit must have a medical officer of health on-call, at all times, 24 hours a day,” Paterson explained. “As such, there is no one for whom Dr. Arra could pass over the legislated responsibilities.”
Paterson said from the beginning of the pandemic Dr. Arra took full responsibility and worked “literally every day.”
On his compensation, Arra said if he was after money he would have pursued a different specialty and noted any family physician working in long-term care will make over ($800,000) per year. He also said he was offered several career jobs since last April and always declined to even consider them due to professional and ethical obligations.
“Anybody who went into Public Health don’t know what money is, don’t care what money is,” Arra said. “If I was looking after money, I would have taken these offers.”
Arra also spoke about his personal sacrifice invested and said he would “pay out of his pocket $1-million bucks” to reverse 2020 and spend it with his family. He later shared a personal story about his daughter.
“After two months of the pandemic, my daughter, I realized over three days, stopped playing with me, stopped allowing me to read for her. I spent a whole long weekend after to work all night, so in the day I can play with her and that was corrected. Reading with me has not been corrected yet, and it’s a sacrifice I made, intentionally,” Arra paused, then added: “For a person to say I’m doing this for money.”
Arra also addressed a letter signed by four municipal councillors in the area — Owen Sound Coun. John Tamming, Georgian Bluffs Coun. Cathy Moore Coburn, Arran-Elderslie Coun. Melissa Kanmacher and Arran-Elderslie Coun. Ryan Greig — that was emailed to the Board of Health and to several media outlets.
The letter dated March 29 talks about Dr. Arra’s 2020 compensation, other “recent developments” at the health unit and poses a series of questions to the Board of Health.
Bayshore Broadcasting News has opted not to publish this letter due to unsubstantiated claims and insinuations it contains.
Dr. Arra raised issue with several statements in the subject letter at Monday’s meeting, calling them factual errors.
“Whatever the purpose is, if the result is the potential weakening of the response in Grey Bruce putting people’s life in danger,” Arra said. “It is inappropriate behaviour any day of the week on a normal year. In the middle of a pandemic, it’s reckless and dangerous.”
One of the signees on the letter, Coun. Tamming, made several comments directed at Dr. Arra during Monday’s meeting and expressed unhappiness with “the $300,000 overtime bill” before Coun. Richard Thomas called for a point of order, saying “I’m not going to sit here and listen to him lecture our guest”.
Coun. Thomas commented further later.
“Individual city councillors actually have no power at all to affect anything, and a councillor’s power is only derived from the support of fellow councillors when putting an issue forward. In this case what you have is a minority view, that is not the view of this council,” Thomas said. “I just want to be very clear on that.”
Coun. Marion Koepke apologized that Dr. Arra had to come and explain all these things and said “I’m embarrassed, frankly, that your salary was in question.”
Mayor Ian Boddy said he counted more than 620 emails he’s received from Dr. Arra since Covid started, and that “they’ve come seven days a week, on Christmas Day, at 1 o’clock in the morning, they’ve come at 6 o’clock in the morning, I’ve had phone calls with you on the Monday of a long weekend, on a Sunday, late in the evening. You’re always working.”
Boddy said they were dependent and Arra’s expertise and the information he was collecting to help them and staff make decisions after the emergency was declared. He thanked him for his leadership.
“We know the numbers have been great in Grey and Bruce,” Boddy said. “And I think we can credit that to you and that information you’ve been putting out.”
