Toronto’s 50 Most Influential: #22, Eric Hoskins

Toronto’s 50 Most Influential: #22, Eric Hoskins

Eric Hoskins Photograph by Erin Leydon

Eric Hoskins

Minister of Health and Long-term Care

22Hoskins holds the purse strings to Ontario’s $52-billion health budget, and has the ultimate say on just about every important aspect of how Ontarians receive health care. This year, his protracted dispute with the province’s physicians got nasty. He revealed that 506 doctors billed the province more than $1 million last year, with one ophthalmologist billing an eye-popping $6.6 million. It was a gambit designed to help him curry public favour in the battle to claw back earnings and cap OHIP billings. Now he has given the Ontario Medical Association an ultimatum: he’ll agree to their request to resolve the issue through binding arbitration and recognize the OMA as a union if doctors agree to salary disclosure.

Friends in high places:

Rapper K’Naan, ’90s hitmakers Raine Maida and Chantal Kreviazuk.

Toronto's Most Influential People of 2016