Doctors warring with the Ontario Medical Association over the tentative contract with the government have a new weapon — a master list of email addresses for the province’s physicians.

One of the groups opposed to the physician services agreement is the radiologists’ section of the OMA. It has joined with a coalition of other OMA sections, as well as the Concerned Ontario Doctors and DoctorsOntario groups, to defeat the tentative agreement.

But the leadership of sections within the OMA have long complained they’re unable to communicate with their own members, without the messages going through the OMA, and being “vetted” by the OMA, according to the Concerned Ontario Doctors.

Those concerns are especially important now to the section heads who disagree with the OMA about the tentative agreement.

“The OMA has offered a one-sided view of the tentative PSA,” said one of the Concerned Ontario Doctors leaders, Nadia Alam. “A lot of physicians feel they haven’t received an informed analysis of the agreement.”

The radiologists went to court, the OMA was ordered to hand over the list of email addresses for all of the physicians in the province, Alam said. The coalition of doctor groups will use it to send out their perspective on the agreement. “This is about opening up communication, and freeing up communication,” she said.

Both sides are waging social media campaigns. The OMA has launched a website and promoted tweets campaign to support the agreement, and the Concerned Ontario Doctors has been rallying on Facebook and with the Twitter hashtag #carenotcuts to oppose it.

All OMA members will get a vote on the agreement at a general membership meeting. The OMA is expected to release details about that meeting on Sunday.

UPDATE: The OMA facilitates the distribution of both positive and negative comments about the tentative agreement to its members, OMA president Virginia Walley said in a statement. "The Ontario Medical Association facilitates communication between Section leadership and their members; we do fact check the material and any factual errors are brought to the attention of the Section leader submitting the communication with a request that it be changed. We do not edit for opinion and send out all (positive and negative) communications," said Walley.

Court orders OMA to give all physicians’ email addresses to dissident docs

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