DNA SOUGHT IN RAPE SCANDAL BAIL HEARING TODAY FOR IMF HEAD {page 9}
A ROCK BALDWIN FINDS HIMSELF AT A CROSSROADS
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LONDON
Thursday, May 19, 2011 www.metronews.ca News worth sharing.
eHealth bonuses an ‘abuse’: Opposition Grits under attack for merit pay, bonuses given to bureaucrats Charge comes after the agency spent $1B trying to develop electronic health records but had little to show for it The Liberal government should rescind bonuses and merit pay given to hundreds of bureaucrats at scandal-plagued eHealth Ontario, the province’s opposition parties demanded yesterday. The electronic-health-records agency is giving staff 1.9 per cent merit raises and bonuses of 7.8 per cent, despite the government’s twoyear wage freeze for about one million public-sector workers. “How can Premier (Dalton)
Review Health Minister Deb Matthews said she was “disappointed” to hear eHealth was giving out bonuses.
McGuinty justify handing out merit pay and bonuses of up to 10 per cent to the bureaucrats who brought us the billion-dollar eHealth boondoggle?” said Con-
“I spoke to the chair and the CEO of eHealth Ontario this morning and I asked them to review the decision in the context of our legislation and get back to me as quickly as possible,” Matthews said.
servative Leader Tim Hudak. Allowing eHealth to give out bonuses is just wrong, said Hudak. “What planet do you call home now, that you think this makes any
kind of sense whatsoever,” he asked. “This is an extraordinary abuse of tax dollars.” The New Democrats also lashed out at the Liberals for freezing the wages of front-line health-care workers, like nurses, while giving eHealth bureaucrats big raises. “I guess the idea is everybody’s supposed to be frozen, just some people are more frozen than others in this scheme,” said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath. THE CANADIAN PRESS
Broadcast. Yourself
Central Secondary School students, from left, Jillian Lapadat, 17, Melissa Hughes, 17, Gaby Marchese, 17, Sophia Liu, 18, Heather Roberts, 17, Doug Leighton, 17, and Thiago Prado, 18, gave their thoughts about Afghanistan, and a new school to be built there as part of the Rotary Club of Canada’s Centennial Afghanistan challenge, for a video shown on a nationwide tour.
Brainstorming Afghanistan
KYLE REA/METRO
A 20-minute video tells of the benefits of a new $600,000 school built in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, for 4,000 students and how teens can get involved to do good in other countries. Story, page 3.
HOMICIDE
Woman found dead in south-end townhouse London police are investigating their second homicide of the year after the body of a female was removed from a southeast London townhome yesterday. Police received a 911 call to 64 Adwoods Rd. around noon to assist an ambulance, which had been called to the residence. Inside, they discovered the deceased body of a female. “Inside, we found a deceased female, and there was also a male in the residence at the same time,” London police Const. Dennis Rivest told AM980. “That male has been arrested for murder.” Names of the victim and the accused have not been released, but police say they were known to each other. Residents say a husband, wife and three children lived at the townhouse unit. A heavy police presence was on scene with around a dozen police cruisers, along with the mobile command unit and a forensics van. London’s first homicide of 2011 occurred in late April when Constance Fuhrmann, 43, was found dead in her apartment on Kipps Lane. Her estranged husband, Kenneth Fuhrmann, 47, was found on the grass outside the building, suffering from life-threatening injuries. He was later pronounced dead. AM980/AM980.CA