Toronto Public Health says a reduction in provincial funding to public health units across the province will amount to more than $1 billion over 10 years in the city alone.

On Thursday afternoon, ahead of a long weekend, the province invited public health officials from across the province to conference call to detail the cuts, which have not been publicly announced.

The province plans to decrease the number of units from 35 units to 10 and reduce the province’s share in funding to units across the province, with a proportionally bigger cut to Toronto Public Health, according to a financial analysis from Toronto Public Health and Councillor Joe Cressy, who chairs Toronto’s board of health and who was on the call.

Mayor John Tory called the $1-billion cut a “targeted attack on the health of our entire city, and, in particular the health of Toronto’s most vulnerable people” and noted the change was “hidden in the provincial budget without any consultation whatsoever.”

“This is an incredibly serious funding change which puts our city’s health at risk and will put lives at risk here in Toronto and across the province,” he said.

Cressy and the mayor noted essential programs would be at risk.

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“Affected programs will include disease prevention, water quality testing, immunization monitoring and surveillance, prenatal support, overdose prevention, food safety regulation, infectious disease control, student nutrition, and more,” Cressy said in a news release.

“This announcement was made despite an indisputable body of evidence suggesting that the best way to prevent hallway health care and improve the health of Ontarians is to invest more, not less, in public health.”

In a statement, the city’s medical officer of health, Dr. Eileen de Villa, also said the change would have “significant negative impacts on the health of Toronto residents” and that they were “extremely disappointed to hear this news.”

“Whether it is providing school immunization programs, protecting people from measles, influenza, the next SARS and other outbreaks, helping keep our water safe to drink, inspecting our restaurants, pools and beaches, investments in public health keep our city and residents safe, healthy and strong,” she said.

On Thursday, the province refused to confirm the new funding formula or the impact on Toronto Public Health’s budget. In an email, a spokesperson for Health Minister Christine Elliott said Cressy was “fundamentally misrepresenting the facts” but at the same time confirmed they would be downloading some funding responsibility to municipalities.

“We are working directly with our municipal partners as we slowly shift the cost-sharing funding model over the next three years to reflect municipalities’ stronger role,” wrote Elliott’s press secretary Hayley Chazan.

The province currently funds 100 per cent of some programs, including infectious disease control, and 75 per cent of other programs.

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Under the new funding formula, the province’s share of program costs in Toronto would be reduced to 60 per cent starting this year and further cut to 50 per cent starting in 2021, according to a financial analysis from Toronto Public Health.

That analysis, provided by Cressy’s office, tallied the impact of reductions over the three years compared to 2018 allocations and concluded the total cut over 10 years would total $1.033 billion.

In the rest of the province, the funding was expected to drop to a 70 per cent share of program starting this year and be further cut to 60 per cent starting in 2021 for all units serving populations over 1 million people, Cressy told the Star.

He said the province confirmed on the conference call that Toronto would remain a stand-alone unit, but did not share the boundaries of the other units or how they would be amalgamated. Therefore, calculating cuts across the rest of the province is not possible right now, Cressy said.

The provincial budget, released last week, claimed the annual savings across the province by 2021 would be $200 million.

The news followed a request from city council earlier this week to the province to maintain the current funding formula.

At Queen’s Park, NDP MPP Marit Stiles (Davenport) said the cut in provincial funding to public health was “incredibly irresponsible and cruel.”

“A lot of us are shocked right now. These are exactly the kind of services that prevent outbreaks of infectious diseases,” said Stiles, noting public health officials are also responsible for vaccination rates, opioid control, water safety, nutrition programs, among other things.

“We need to know that our vaccinations are happening, that our public health services are in place.”

Dr. David Fisman, an expert in infectious diseases and head of the epidemiology division at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, said the consequences of cuts to public health are “pretty predictable.”

“Public health is all about nothing ... That’s the fundamental output of public health, is the non-occurrence of events,” he said. “Which for folks who have no sense of history and no knowledge about what happens if you stop preventing disease, then it looks like you’re wasting your money because you’re spending all this money on public health and nothing’s happening. In fact, that is our deliverable — is not having epidemics in the city and not having people disabled by preventable health conditions so that you lose economically that way.”

With files from Robert Benzie

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