TORONTO - The Ontario government is sitting on a 10-year strategic plan for health care that it promised to make public two years ago, Progressive Conservative Elizabeth Witmer charged Tuesday.

The plan, which the government promised to release in 2007, is supposed to outline how the province will sustain its public health-care system over the long-term.

The Opposition asked for the plan under freedom of information laws, and a 71-page document was found, Witmer said. But access to the record was denied because it's a submission to cabinet, which is kept secret.

With no release date in sight, Witmer is calling on Health Minister David Caplan to come clean about his long-term plans for health care and prove it doesn't include cuts to services.

"Let's see how they're going to address the shortage of health professionals and meet the needs of the aging population," she said.

"Let's be honest and accountable with the public, so that everybody knows where we're going and how we're going to go there in order that they have confidence that the system will be there to meet their needs."

The 10-year plan is still a work in progress, and there's no date yet for its release, Caplan said.

But there are no plans to make cuts or delist services, he added.

"I always take the approach that I want to get it right," he said when asked about the two-year delay.

"We're going to take the steps to be able to engage, to hear feedback and to put together something that is going to stand the test of time over an extended period of time."

Caplan said he's still working with other ministries and stakeholders on the plan, but it hasn't yet reached cabinet for approval.

The 71-page document described by the Opposition isn't the 10-year plan itself, but a draft document that "reflects ministry advice" to Caplan, who asked for more work and discussion on it, said spokesman Steve Erwin.

The 10-year plan won't contain any specific budgetary measures, but will spell out a "broad vision" for health care and the government's priorities, he added.

Having that document would make it easier for hospitals and local health agencies to plan ahead, said Tom Closson, president and CEO of the Ontario Hospital Association.

"It would help in providing clarity around the government's vision, the performance indicators it wants to measure itself on and the targets that it wants to achieve," he said.

The province has set performance targets in some areas, such as wait times in emergency rooms, which hospitals and local health agencies are working to meet, he said.

But that's a small part of the entire health system, Closson added.

"We want to look at things like efficiency and quality and outcomes as well as access to care," he said. "So it would be very helpful to have such a plan out there."

A long-term plan would be helpful, but what really matters is that the government backs up its plans with real action, said Doris Grinspun, executive director of the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario.

"The gap to me is between what government says and what government acts on. That's a very serious gap," she said.

"We need to move away from the rhetoric of improving access and decreasing wait times to real actions that will demonstrate that that's the real priority for the government and that the public will benefit from it."

Caplan needs to make the plan public as soon as possible, because health-care providers like the Local Health Integration Networks (LHIN) are operating without a clear sense of direction from the government, Witmer said.

"When we see the LHINs now making these isolated decisions about eliminating emergency rooms, closing down parts of hospitals, eliminating outpatient services, forcing hospitals to balance their budget and as a result, fire nurses, it makes you wonder if that's part of the plan that the government doesn't want the public to know about," she said.

Plans to downgrade an emergency room and close operating rooms at a Fort Erie hospital have raised the ire of some local residents, who held a vigil May 15 to protest the changes.

Three people were arrested during the protest, including the hospital's 64-year-old chief of family medicine, David Henry.