ADAMS: What Jamil Jivani’s Healthcare Roundtable Got Right
Political roundtables are often designed to look productive rather than be productive. That's what made Jamil Jivani's healthcare roundtable in North Oshawa in late January noteworthy: for long stretches, it actually was productive.
The format was simple. Jivani offered some high-level observations from Ottawa, particularly around federal transfers, regulatory frameworks, and the limits of federal jurisdiction, and then largely got out of the way. What followed was a long, sometimes uncomfortable, but mostly honest discussion driven by nurses, retirees, caregivers, and ordinary residents who have lived with the consequences of Ontario's healthcare deterioration.
Frontline workers described overcrowded hospital floors, patients placed in hallways, staff stretched past safe limits, and a system that has quietly normalized crisis conditions. Others spoke about administrative bloat, procurement failures, incompatible computer systems, and the maddening reality that hospitals often cannot share records with one another.
The picture that emerged was not of a system starved of money alone, but one riddled with inefficiency, misaligned incentives, and weak accountability. This is where the conversation was at its strongest: not ideological, not abstract, but rooted in experience.
