The creation of Ontario's newest universities - NOSM and Hearst - is a done deal. The successful passing of the legislation creating the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) as a
stand-alone university is not a surprise given that there is a majority government. In addition, NOSM itself was
not opposed and is in agreement with the move.
Indeed, one always wonders where the idea came from and one cannot help thinking that it was at the quiet instigation of NOSM itself given the disruption caused by the financial crisis at Laurentian and any issues with NOSM funds there. All NOSM would have to do is bring up their concerns about access to their funds - assuming there were any - and let the government's imagination do the rest. One expects there will be new capital projects in the offing to provide ribbon cutting opportunities as well as a new name for rebranding purposes - The Northern Ontario Medical University (NOMU). All governments like the sense of achievement that comes with new things even if they are a reconstitution of other people's hard work.
NOSM was always a unique entity in that it was essentially independent
within the Laurentian-Lakehead operating framework. The two universities helped provide its start
with space and an administrative operating framework. It was never truly a faculty within a
university like all the other medical schools and that decision laid the
groundwork for the day when NOSM would seek its full independence. Just imagine the provincial government trying to sever the University of Toronto medical faculty from the university - not likely. But who knows, perhaps the provincial government will now feel inspired and free all the provincial medical schools from the tyranny of their own universities. Perhaps economics departments will be next. As an aside, I always thought that Lakehead's economics department as a stand alone entity - The Lakehead School of Economics (LSE) would be wonderful for marketing purposes.
The structure of the medical school was a political compromise twenty years ago so that both universities could have a medical school sparing the government of the day the political difficulty of picking one over the other. The current government has no such political qualms because they already know the extent of their support within both Sudbury and Thunder Bay given their voting patterns over the last few decades. There was no political cost to them.
In terms of the future, NOSM will not be leaving its main operations in Thunder Bay or Sudbury given they are the northern Ontario communities with the largest concentrations of population and physicians. However, that is not the same as not leaving the Lakehead and Laurentian campuses and setting up shop elsewhere in the cities. That is a distinct prospect in the longer term leaving both universities with the additional capital infrastructure and its associated costs. As for the additional costs to the provincial government, it has already demonstrated by its actions that it is not worried about those costs. NOSM's future as a stand alone entity is an undiscovered country and will be watched with interest by medical associations and medical faculties throughout North America. Such is the way of the world.
