Timmins city council was busy this week

Timmins ponders incentives to attract doctors Officials in Timmins say a healthcare breakdown could hit the city in five years if nothing is done to replace dozens of retiring MDs

Timmins city council had a busy agenda this week, with topics ranging from homelessness to healthcare.

Council members are looking to prove that they are committed to making headway on the crises affecting the city.

Doctor shortage

One of the first items discussed was a sizable funding commitment to attract doctors to the area.

The Timmins and District Hospital (TADH) said the region is already short 40 doctors.

Hospital figures also show the city's doctor crisis could get worse with 44 of the current 88 local doctors setting out plans to retire which would leave more than 21,000 residents without primary care providers.

That’s in addition to the existing shortage of 40 doctors, meaning the city needs to recruit 84 doctors in the next five years and over the last five years a total of only 20 doctors was recruited to the city.

Members of council voted to commit to funding grants of $20,000 per new physician recruited to a maximum of $200,000 per year over the next three years with city council’s contribution to be matched by TADH and potentially additional funding from industry partners.

“We're all in overwhelming support of doing anything we can to maintain and enhance such an important need as health care,” said city councillor Lorne Feldman.

Action on the housing file

City council also acknowledged that to attract doctors and workers in every field they will need places to live.

To that end council agreed to develop a Housing Action Plan with firm housing targets.

The plan will also look for underused areas that can be targeted for development and way to streamline bylaws.

“We need to demonstrate what our municipality has done, in terms of assessing its need, in-terms of taking some leadership on its own,” said Dave Landers, chief administrative officer for the City of Timmins.

“Have a solid plan that we can put before government to say ‘investing in Timmins makes sense.’”

The action plan is being done in hopes of acquiring funding from senior levels of government to prepare infrastructure for developers or figuring out ways the municipality can make room in its own budget to alleviate some pressure on builders.

“I know it'll keep us on track and I'm absolutely in favor of a made-in-Timmins plan, with investment of funds,” said city councillor Andrew Marks.

“I'm all in favor of us developing some of the hundreds of acres of forest that we have into 100-lot subdivisions and spending the dollars that are required to do so,” added councillor Steve Black.

Community outreach

Council also agreed to continue to fund the Fire Keepers Street Outreach Pilot Program – however, many at the table were not impressed with the result of the security patrol pilot on crime prevention.

“They're not finding that it's making a difference one way or the other,” said Landers.

“What I have heard is … double down on the outreach and you can let this one go.”

The city also committed to pushing the province for help with attracting more mental health staff to the region.

“We are short a lot of workers,” said city councillor Cory Robin.

“But we are especially short mental health and addiction support workers. So this is a good resolution.”

Addictions and harm reduction

The council meeting also saw some discussion and confusion over guidelines for the distribution of needles and other harm-reduction supplies in the city with Mayor Michelle Boileau clarifying that the province is currently reviewing health guidelines for screen clients and the amount of supplies agencies should be providing to clients.