Conservative MPP Donna Skelly says the city can find savings to make up for a $9-million budget shortfall created by controversial provincial cost-sharing changes.

"I was on city hall and I can tell you, I can assure you, that there are efficiencies to be found within municipalities and Hamilton is one of them," said the MPP for Flamborough-Glanbrook and the former Ward 7 councillor.

Skelly was at Juravinski Hospital and Cancer Centre on Friday to hand out $25 million to expand the stem cell transplant unit that is already under construction and expected to be completed within a year.

"I had no idea that Hamilton was such a leader in terms of the delivery of health care," she said to reporters after the announcement.

She says the money for Juravinski could only be found by cutting costs such as saving $200 million a year by amalgamating many local boards of health and changing the cost-sharing formula for public health services.

"This is an example of why we needed to address inefficiencies in our budget," said Skelly. "Had we not gone through our budget line by line — we're expecting municipalities to do the same and boards of health as well — we can't find $25 million to put toward stem cell treatment."

Hamilton city councillors argue the Progressive Conservative government downloaded provincial costs to local taxpayers instead of finding inefficiencies.

"These comments have been applied whenever they try to solve their problems on the backs of municipalities," said Ward 5 councillor Chad Collins. "It's really just passing the problem onto someone else."

He said "it baffles the mind" for Skelly to suggest cities like Hamilton have fat to trim.

"It would have been great if she'd left that playbook behind," he said. "I didn't hear any motions when she was here as it relates to efficiencies."

Skelly said no front-line services should be lost during the restructuring if public health properly manages the budget.

"I can assure you that if boards of health do their job, they will go through it as we had to, line by line, and make sure when they get their millions of dollars within their budget that they direct it to what is important to prioritize to protect what Hamiltonians and Ontarians want," said Skelly.

But city councillors point out that almost all public health services are mandated by the province, leaving little room to manoeuvre.

"Our biggest challenge in Hamilton is dealing with the provincial government and its lack of funding for mandated programs," said Ward 4 councillor Sam Merulla. "We are paying not only our bills but the bills of the province ... which is unsustainable. They are setting us up for failure."

He says her statement about municipalities having costs to cut is more in line with partisan politics than her experience at city hall.

"You can't govern like a business and when I hear that it disturbs me a great deal," said Merulla. "You're going to have people falling through the cracks. You're impacting the most marginalized. It's a false narrative."

Ward 15 councillor Judi Partridge, who ran against Skelly for the Liberals in the 2018 provincial election, is planning to bring forward a motion Wednesday that would see the mayor ask the Minister of Health to postpone restructuring of public health until at least 2020.

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Some of her reasons include: "The lack of communication which seems to go hand in hand with this government. The lack of consultation ... They seem to be doing, 'let's take action first and then we'll figure it out as we go along.'"

jfrketich@thespec.com

905-526-3349 | @Jfrketich