Ontario doctors plan to launch a charter challenge against the provincial government, which has twice this year unilaterally cut their pay.

Dr. Mike Toth, president of the 28,000-member Ontario Medical Association, announced the plans Thursday, explaining that the organization has been left with little choice since the government refuses to treat the profession fairly.

“The idea that the government can just continue cutting as they see fit, we see that as a very significant power imbalance,” he said in an interview.

The province unilaterally cut fees across the board for all doctors by 2.65 per cent in February and 1.3 per cent in October.

As well, some medical specialties have been hit with targeted fee reductions and, in total, the cuts amount to 6.9 per cent, according to the OMA.

The province has rebuffed the doctors’ request for a binding dispute resolution process, most recently on Tuesday when the OMA leadership met with Health Minister Eric Hoskins.

In charter challenge, which the OMA plans to file next week, it will ask the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to strike down the health ministry’s unilateral fee cuts and find that future bargaining impasses must be resolved through a binding dispute resolution process.

Labour lawyer and constitutional expert Steven Barrett said a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision bodes well for the doctors.

In January, the country’s highest court granted an appeal by the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour, ruling that “essential” public sector workers who cannot strike have the right to independent arbitration.

While doctors are not technically essential public sector employees, they are restricted in what kind of job action they can take through regulation.

“They have a respectable legal argument,” Barrett said, noting that eight other provinces and territories have binding, independent arbitration processes with their respective medical associations.

But he went on to say that it could take years for the case to wend its way through the courts.

The government cut fees because it is trying to cap the annual physician services budget at $11.6 billion. It wants to divert savings into home care.

Hoskins said that Ontario doctors are the best-paid in Canada, earning an average of $368,000 annually before expenses.

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Meanwhile, Toth said the OMA will participate with government in a task force on the sustainability of the province’s health system. Recommended by the province’s former chief justice Warren Winkler, who served as conciliator during negotiations between the two parties, the task force would have a mandate to make recommendations on changes to the delivery and funding of physician services.

When Hoskins met with the doctors on Tuesday, he told them he would like to see the task force get off the ground.