SWPH member beefs over board appointment process
David Warden, a longtime provincial appointee to the board of Southwestern Public Health, says the process for appointing new provincial members and for re-appointing existing ones should be the same but it isn’t.
At a meeting Thursday, June 27, board members approved a recommendation from their governance committee to endorse the re-appointment of Lee Rowden and Davin Shinedling to the board.
Both left the board room while this was being discussed, and didn’t participate in voting.
Mr. Warden said he and Mr. Rowden had gone through a similar process last year, and they too had to seek the board’s endorsement.
However, the provincial government appointed three new representatives to the board without consulting it at all.
“This isn’t a personal thing, by any means,” Mr. Warden told the newcomers. “We’re glad to have you here.”
However, the board hadn’t sought additional provincial representatives, and hadn’t been involved in their appointments.
“This policy needs to be looked at and addressed,” he argued, especially when the board had no power to remove a provincial appointee.
He knew longtime former Tillsonburg Mayor Stephen Molnar, originally a municipal representative on the board and now a provincial appointee, would argue the province has the right to appoint anyone they wanted to the board, “and that’s fine, if we’re all playing by the same rulebook.
“Things are unbalanced here,” Mr. Warden contended. “Let’s all play on the same playing field here.”
Mr. Molnar asked what process exacting Mr. Warden and Mr. Rowden had undergone to be reappointed.
Mr. Warden said they had to let the chairman of the board and SWPH’s Chief Administrative Officer Cynthia St. John know they were interested in staying on, “and we had to be approved by the board at that time.”
That approval was needed even though he personally had served as the board’s chairman for three years.
“That’s not what happened with the last three appointees,” he asserted.
Ms. St. John said currently, legislation allowed the provincial government to appoint as many representatives as it wanted, so long as the total number was one less that the number of municipal representatives on the board.
(Currently, the board is made up of two representatives from Elgin County council, two from St. Thomas council and four from Oxford council, which also includes Woodstock. Five other members of the board are provincial appointees.)
She said the province had the authority to appoint up to two more representatives to the board.
Recalling the days before Southwestern Public Health was formed by merging health units for St. Thomas-Elgin and Oxford, she said the St. Thomas-Elgin board had only one provincial appointee.
Just before the merger, Mr. Rowden was appointed as that one representative, when a former appointee’s term expired.
After the merger, the joint board decided they’d like a couple of provincial appointees, and Mr. Warden was added, but only after applications were sought by SWPH so that someone’s “skill sets” could be matched to what the board might lack.
Many applications were received, and interested individuals interviewed, including Mr. Warden.
The board, Ms. St. John said, submitted what it considered the two top applications to the Onterio government, which then appointed Mr. Warden.
However, the process followed by the board at that time didn’t prevent the government was appointing whoever it wanted as its representatives, she said.
“Bingo!” Mr. Warden replied. He supported both the proposed reappointments, but “somewhere this fell off the rails.”
Mr. Molnar noted he actually agreed with Mr. Warden’s observations, adding the same held true for appointees to municipal Police Services Boards.
Rob Perry, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Aylmer Express
