The merging of several public health units across the province has been announced.
The Bruce Grey Public Health Unit, the Huron County Health Unit, and the Perth District Health Unit will be merged into one entity by April 1, 2020.
The Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health Unit will merge with units in the regions of Halton, Waterloo and Peel.
The Bruce-Grey-Huron-Perth merger will be one of the province's three, under a million population, stand-alone regional public health entities, while the merger that Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph is a part of will become the largest health unit in the entire province.
WDGPH Communications Manager Chuck Ferguson said at this point, he doesn't know about the technical aspects of the merger. Ferguson said area residents likely won't see much of a change in the near future, noting "the delivery of frontline services is not changing".
Bruce County Public Health Board member Chris Peabody welcomed the change.
"It looked like the rural municipalities in Midwestern Ontario would be merged with some of the urban cities to the south of us, but with the new arrangement, the merger will contain a mix of Stratford and Owen Sound, as well as a large rural area," he said.
Huron County Acting Medical Officer of Health Dr. Maarten Bokhout said as far as the Huron and Perth merger is concerned, they've been told by the Ministry of Health to continue with that.
What is not clear is whether they'll merge with Perth first and later merge with Grey-Bruce. The Huron and Perth merger is to be finalized by January of 2020.
Dr. Bokhout said discussions will take place through the spring and summer.
The announcement follows documents in the provincial budget that stated the provincial government planned to "establish 10 regional public health entities, with 10 new regional boards of health and one common governance model by 2020-2021".
Prior to these mergers, there were 35 public health units across the province.