Down in Massachusetts, where my family and I recently enjoyed another fine week, and where the spirits of Henry David Thoreau and other early champions for democracy still hold some sway, town hall meetings on everything from a proposal for a new road allowance to the town's budget remain the rule of the day.

One could easily imagine a subject so vital as hospital services taking up numerous evenings, until every member of the community with something of substance to say had the opportunity to air their views in a full and open forum.

Yet here in Ontario, when it comes to certain matters like hospitals and police boards, our provincial government continues to sanction the cloistered arrogance of an old British autocratic mindset hardly tolerated in Britain any more.

Here we've got surrogate agents the province has created to hide behind, working to foist on us a hospital restructuring plan that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars and mean significant changes in the way hospital services are delivered across our region for decades to come.

Two of these agents -- the Niagara Health System (NHS) and Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brandt Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) -- now seem bound, bent and determined to shove this plan down our throats without public meetings.

This in spite of the fact that a key piece of the plan involves the building of a new hospital, complete with first-of-a-kind cancer and cardiac treatment centres for Niagara in a far corner of west St. Catharines, rather than a location more central and accessible to all Niagarans.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine a plan with a new hospital complex the NHS describes on its own website as "currently one of the largest infrastructure projects in Ontario" being reviewed for approval with such little transparency and it should outrage us all, quite frankly.

Over the years, our regional government, to its credit, has held public meetings on everything from managing household wastes to proposed changes to its planning policies, and continues to do so. So why (by press time for the publication of this column) have the NHS and LHIN not yet scheduled public meetings across Niagara on something so important as the future of our hospital services?

Why do we have someone appointed by the LHIN to head up a review team -- Dr. Jack Kitts, a president and CEO for The Ottawa hospital system, just as Debbie Sevenpifer is the president and CEO for the NHS -- already telling reporters in a media briefing that the NHS plan, as released this July, can work and that he's "not here to start with a clean slate and rewrite the Niagara Health System's plan," even if a majority of Niagara residents (judging by the growing number of names on petitions, letters to the editor, etc.) feel the plan is a bad one?

Why is the NHS and Dr. Kitts and the LHIN sharing input they receive in the form of e-mails, letters and phone calls with each other, but not openly posting all of that input on their websites for us to see? Why are they being so selective about what groups they meet with to discuss the NHS's plans and not opening these meetings to the public at large?

Fortunately, there are at least a few political representatives in the region who have expressed their displeasure with this lack of transparency.

Earlier on, Conservative area MPP Tim Hudak openly called for town hall-style meetings on the NHS plan and, more recently, Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey refused to attend a meeting the NHS held on the plan with a group of Rotary Club members because it was not open to the general public.

"I would only expect to receive any (NHS) presentation in an open forum with all to hear, see and therefore understand," Badawey told Niagara This Week during a recent interview. "Anything less, in my opinion, is an attempt to manipulate the media and the public."

We need more Vance Badaweys among our municipal and provincial representatives standing up for fundamental democratic principles and demanding real transparency and accountability like that.

Anything less than full and open scrutiny makes the review of this plan look like a farce and is an affront to the more than 400,000 residents of Niagara who will have to live and pay for the consequences of any decisions on our hospital services for decades to come.

Doug Draper can be reached at drapers@vaxxine.com.