Lawyers search for forgotten ‘brickers’ who built Group Health Centre

Not so long ago, Sault Ste. Marie's Group Health Centre was widely considered a model for the future of Canadian health care.

Group Health Centre "has won national best-practice awards, was featured in Maclean’s magazine as one of Canada’s top 10 models of health care, and was once referred to as 'Canada’s best-kept health care secret' by Commissioner for the Future of Health Care in Canada, Roy Romanow," declares the GHC website.

But there were signs, even 20 years ago, that the thousands of local Steelworkers who'd each paid $135 to kick-start the innovative membership-based health organization in 1962, were being forgotten as they aged.

On May 29, 2004, when Prime Minister Paul Martin visited the main GHC building at McNabb and Willow, his security detail ordered a group representing Steelworkers Local 2251, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and other organized labour groups, to clear out of the centre's parking lot.

Some in the group protested that they were GHC members whose donations had built the renowned institution.

But plainclothes RCMP officers insisted the demonstrators were on private property and the event was only for invited guests.

GHC president Dave Murray immediately recognized the insult and rushed out to stand with some of the demonstrators as SooToday photographed them.

Murray insisted the decision was entirely out of his hands.

The day before, he said, the RCMP had required him to sign a document effectively turning over control of the centre to them for the following day.

The purpose of the document, Murray told SooToday, was to give police sole discretion over who was allowed on the property and who was trespassing. 

The police action also stunned Tony Martin, who was running for the local New Democrats in that year's federal election.

"The prime minister had an opportunity to hear directly from founding members of the most innovative health care delivery in Canada, yet chose to push them off the property for his own photo op," Martin said.

"The prime minister claimed that the Group Health Centre helps ease the doctor shortage, yet neither he nor his Liberal candidate seem to be aware of the doctor shortage the Sault area is currently experiencing," he added.

Fast-forward to 2024.

Sault Ste. Marie still has a physician shortage, except it's now so severe that GHC announced in January that it would de-roster 10,000 of its 60,000 patients effective May 31.

Those 10,000 patients include many 'brickers' – members of the Steelworkers who had built the place.

After being promised pre-paid health care for life, they were now losing access to their primary care providers and GHC's same-day clinic service.

Adding insult to injury, the brickers were being left to fend for themselves in their advanced senior years, when medical care is often needed more than ever.

Last week, the membership of Steelworkers Local 2251, representing 2,184 hourly-rated workers at Algoma Steel, voted to authorize a lawsuit and court injunction to halt the de-rostering of its members.

And now, a legal team preparing for those court actions is scrambling to locate retirees who were original supporters of the Group Health Centre, who signed up starting in 1959, as well as their surviving spouses.

The lawyers want to talk to the original 'brickers' about what they were promised for signing up as GHC members, and to add their names as plaintiffs in the upcoming lawsuit.

"They're all entitled to health care for life from that original bargain," Local 2251 president Mike Da Prat tells SooToday.

In addition to their $135 sign-up fee, the Local 2251 brickers also directed their company benefits to GHC, he says.

"The way it was supposed to work, you continued to pay the cost of your benefits as operating funds. And then when you retired, there weren't any more. It was going to be free and the people coming in would provide the revenue to keep the place going and basically pay for your retirement." 

Until governance changes that happened in 2012, GHC patients were never tied for life to a particular physician.

"Up until then, if your doctor retired or quit, you got to use the same-day clinic and locums or whatever, until they found you a new doctor.

"This time around we got a letter that said, so sad, too bad, you're gone.

"That's what the lawsuit is about. It's about getting the governance back the way it was. And to stop this de-rostering until we get this thing figured out," Da Prat says.

"What we will do is when we get a list of names, we will hold a virtual meeting with our lawyers.

"They will simply explain what they want, maybe a paragraph or two about the facts on them. They will simply be part of the history and the file of the lawsuit."

If you were an original GHC supporter or know someone who was, you're asked to call the Local 2251 office at 705-942-3900.