Premier Doug Ford has quietly appointed a key Progressive Conservative ally to a $348,000-a-year patronage job overseeing a new panel tackling hospital overcrowding.

Hours after been sworn in June 29, Ford convened his first cabinet meeting where one of 37 orders of business was naming Dr. Rueben Devlin to lead the new “premier’s council on improving health care and ending hallway medicine.”

“The chair shall be paid the sum of $348,000 per annum. The chair shall be eligible for reimbursement of expenses incurred in their work on the council,” said a cabinet order-in-council of the three-year post made public on Friday, one week after it was made.

Devlin’s appointment was confirmed at the same meeting where Ford parted ways with former TD Bank chair Ed Clark, who earned $1-a-year to be former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne’s business adviser and privatization czar.

Children, Community and Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod defended the move.

“I don’t think it was a surprise to anyone in Ontario that Rueben Devlin was going to be appointed to that position,” said MacLeod, noting Devlin, a member of Ford’s inner circle, has been advising the new premier on health care for months.

“We were very clear on the campaign trail we wanted to draw from his expertise on the health-care field. We hired somebody who we campaigned on over a several-month period,” the minister said.

“That was a promise we made and a promise we kept.”

Devlin will be paid more than Ford, who makes $208,974 as premier, and Health Minister Christine Elliott, who earns $165,851.

“He is going to be worth every penny and we’re going to see that in the results,” said MacLeod.

Indeed, Ford promised in the campaign that he would cut health-care wait times and end the practice of “hallway medicine” where patients are left in corridors because of staffing shortages.

He also repeatedly said that the widely respected Devlin would be his main adviser on addressing the problem.

“We have the greatest health-care team we’ve ever put together, headed up by Dr. Reuben Devlin, the former CEO of Humber River Hospital,” Ford said at the May 27 leaders’ debate.

For 17 years, until the end of 2016, he was president of Humber River Hospital and oversaw its development into one of the most high-tech, health-care facilities in North America,

Devlin, an orthopedic surgeon and former president of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, was not available Friday, but he told the Star’s Theresa Boyle last month that he is eager to introduce more innovation into the system.

“There is a concept that demand for health care is infinite. That’s not true. It’s not infinite. It’s just that we are so far behind it looks infinite,” he said in June.

He was a member of Ford’s transition team and was at his side at the March 10 PC leadership race.

Along with their political ties, Devlin is personally close to the premier.

When Ford’s brother, the late Toronto mayor Rob Ford, fell ill with cancer, he helped the family through their ordeal.

Well-regarded by reporters for his candour and good nature, Devlin was the person who revealed to the media that Rob Ford had a tumour.

The premier has frequently referred to him as one of the smartest health-policy people anywhere.

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But because Ford campaigned on “stopping the gravy train” and has boasted that “the party with the taxpayers’ money is over,” the size of Devlin’s compensation package could be politically problematic.

In the run-up to the June 7 election, the Tory chief promised to cut 4 per cent of government spending — or $6 billion annually — and complained about the bloated Ministry of Health bureaucracy.

“If your kid has a fever or your mom has a fall, you don’t go down to the Ministry of Health to have it looked at, instead you go to your local doctors and nurses,” Ford said in April.

“If Kathleen Wynne had invested in doctors and nurses and patients the same way she has invested in new senior health-care bureaucrats, then every town would have a doctor, wait times would be a thing of the past and patients wouldn’t be stuck on stretchers in our hospital hallways.”

Ford elevated Devlin the same day he dispatched Liberal appointees Clark, who remains chair of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, Allan O’Dette, Ontario’s chief investment officer, and chief scientist Molly Shoichet, a prominent University of Toronto professor.

O’Dette will receive a full year’s salary of $340,000 in severance. He was hired in March 2017.

Shoichet, given her post last November by Wynne, was to have been paid as much as $310,145 annually. She will receive $50,000 in severance.

Critics expressed concern about Ford placing Devlin in such an influential role.

“The theme of Ford’s early days in office has been backroom deals to benefit his wealthy friends, and nothing to actually fix health care,” said NDP MPP France Gélinas (Nickel Belt).

“We have a hallway medicine crisis in Ontario,” said Gélinas. “But the solution to that crisis is more front-line staff like nurses, and more hospital beds — not handing over hundreds of thousands of dollars to a partisan ally.”

Ontario Health Coalition executive director Natalie Mehra worried Ford was signalling a push toward privatization and consolidation of hospitals to save money.

“Ontarians don’t want to be greeted by a robot at the one privatized regional hospital left after all their local hospitals have been shut down,” said Mehra.

“The discussion now has to be about rebuilding capacity — reopening beds and ORs, restoring funding — not centralizing, cutting, closing and privatization our local hospitals.”

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