Former PC Party president handed cushy six-figure role in Ford backroom deal

TORONTO – Former Ontario PC Party president Rueben Devlin has been given a patronage appointment as a special advisor role by Doug Ford, where Devlin will take a $348,000 salary, plus expenses.

“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-elect France Gélinas.

Devlin's partisan background and mixed history as CEO of Humber River Hospital only adds to the health care worries many families are feeling. Ford has promised to cut over $6 billion from provincial spending. In the health care sector, those cuts could mean firing thousands of nurses and closing dozens of hospitals, just like the last Conservative government did in Ontario.

“We have a hallway medicine crisis in Ontario,” said Gélinas. “Patients experience painfully long waits in the ER, and too often end up on a stretcher in a hallway instead of in a properly-equipped hospital room.

“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.”