Ontario Computer cabinet minister Merrilee Fullerton resigns

Merrilee Fullerton, a longtime cabinet minister in Doug Ford’s govt, unexpectedly resigned Friday, forcing the premier to name a new minister to the youngsters, neighborhood and social services submit.

Fullerton, who shuffled by way of three cupboard posts and was in charge when hundreds died of COVID-19 in Ontario nursing homes, explained she was stepping down quickly as minister and member of provincial parliament for the Ottawa-place using of Kanata-Carleton.

She did not detail why she was leaving.

Ford announced Friday night that Michael Parsa would transfer from his part as affiliate minister of housing to just take more than as minister of children, neighborhood and social solutions.

The new affiliate minister of housing will be Nina Tangri, who served as an associate minister in Ford’s first government but stayed out of cabinet contention just after the 2022 election to make an in the end unsuccessful bid for the task of Speaker.

Fullerton, a family medical doctor, remaining medicine for politics in the guide-up to the 2018 election when she received her seat and won again, handily, in 2022.

“A sturdy sense of duty brought me to politics after decades as a relatives medical doctor serving my community, to go on my work towards remedies that would tackle the shortcomings of our health and fitness-treatment method and enhance overall health providers for persons,” she wrote in her resignation letter to Ford.

“To serve the people today of this province has been a profound honour.”

Fullerton’s to start with job in cupboard was as minister of schools, teaching and universities, a put up she held for one particular yr.

In June 2019, she was named minister of long-time period care, a file she held as a result of the early days of the pandemic.

She was seriously criticized for the havoc COVID-19 wrought on very long-expression care — 3,794 nursing home residents experienced died from the virus by the time she was shuffled out of the role in June 2021, and hundreds a lot more were infected. Five nursing homes had been hit so poor that the province known as the army in to assist.

A scathing report later discovered the neglected lengthy-phrase care sector was unprepared for a pandemic.

In the 2021 cupboard shuffle, Fullerton was named minister of kids, neighborhood and social solutions, a function that comes with stickhandling really sensitive documents which includes autism expert services for young children and the Ontario Disability Aid System.

Fullerton drew the ire of family members of small children with autism as the rollout of a new software that started below the preceding minister was slow and opaque.

Ontario was not able to reach its goal of furnishing funding for core autism therapies to 8,000 family members by the stop of drop 2022, however it wouldn’t say by how much.

Considering that then, the government taken out updates from its web site on the quantity of children registered in the Ontario Autism Method and how quite a few had been given interim funding, and refused to publicly divulge the number of kids getting government-funded remedy in reaction to media requests.

In the meantime, the Ontario Autism Coalition complained that Fullerton had not meaningfully satisfied with them due to the fact taking above the ministry and did not maintain a one press conference to publicly talk about or update the system.

This report by The Canadian Press was initially released March 24, 2023.