Martel testifies before committee

Shelley Martel says she became increasingly upset with a Sudbury doctor in the weeks before she lied about his practice.

In her first day of testimony before the committee probing her conduct, Ontario’s minister of northern development and mines didn’t get a chance to explain why she lied at a Dec. 5 reception. At that event, Martel falsely said that she had seen Dr. Jean-Pierre Donahue’s medical files and that he would face criminal charges.

Martel’s testimony was a painstaking chronological reconstruction of the events leading up to that day. She described her mounting frustration with Donahue’s tactics in protesting the $400,000 ceiling placed last year on doctor’s billings.

Martel testified that she wrote to Health Minister Frances Lankin in late October at Donahue’s request to support his bid for an exemption from the agreement between the province and the Ontario Medical Association that reduces the fees paid to physicians once they bill $400,000. Donahue, who testified Monday, insisted in media interviews at the time that the agreement would force him to close his dermatology practice, laying off 14 staff and forcing Northern Ontario residents to travel to Toronto or Ottawa for specialized care.

He urged patients to call or write Sudbury-area MPPs such as Martel and Treasurer Floyd Laughren to protest.

Martel said her office was inundated with protests, but then she read an interview in which he said he intended to open an electrolysis clinic in Sudbury.

Martel also said she was turned off by the doctor’s behavior at a Nov. 15 meeting attended by her and Laughren, at which Donahue threw down a stack of cheques in front of the treasurer and said they represented his employees’ final pay.

The last straw was when Donahue told them he had exceeded the $400,000 ceiling within four months of the agreement’s April 1 effective date. She later estimated he could be earning as much as $2 million a year through the under-serviced area program which pays physicians grants of $40,000 annually for four years to set up practice in Northern Ontario and other communities where there are few doctors.

Martel told the committee she had “serious suspicions” when Donahue refused to open his books or attend a meeting with her staff and Health Ministry officials to discuss his problems.

She said she did not share the opinions of two of Laughren’s staff, who faxed her a memo Nov. 15 in which they said Donahue “wants taxpayers to support his entrepreneurial greed.”

— The Ottawa Citizen