Health Card, not credit card: keep Healthcare public

March saw protests at federal Liberal MP offices, including Mark Carney’s, over the feds’ failure to enforce the Canada Health Act against Alberta’s Bill 11, which threatens illegal full-scale private healthcare delivery.  Protestors demanded that provincial health transfers be clawed back for every dollar invested in private health clinics, up to and including full suspension of federal health transfers until Alberta complies with public healthcare law.

April saw rallies across Ontario against the privatization already under way in private for-profit clinics operating inside public hospitals. On April 25 dozens of cities and towns participated in a province-wide day of action, which came on the heels of Doug Ford’s private jet purchase. This was only the latest theft of public money by Ford: wealth continues to be funnelled out of public and into private healthcare to line the pockets of his corporate friends.    

The Greater Toronto Health Coalition has been organizing “kitchen table” meetings in Toronto libraries, community centers, and online, to break down the myths about privatized healthcare - which will not cut down on wait times or in any way add more “options” to the public system but will only bleed resources away from it.

 
Already, more and more patients and their families are being forced to pull out their credit card instead of their health card for services that should be public. Every province is trying to get in on the lucrative for-profit action in some way, and Carney is letting it happen.  

Racist divide and conquer
This spring Liberal MP offices were also the site of protest against cuts to the Interim Federal Health Program for refugees. That program served as a critical temporary safety net for refugees, asylum seekers, and others fleeing violence while they awaited provincial coverage. Many of these families are fleeing persecution and humanitarian disasters where health care is non-existent.

Thanks to the Carney Liberals, as of May 1 refugees and asylum seekers will now be forced to pay for healthcare that was previously covered, with co-payments for “supplemental” health care products and services. This means patients will have to cover a $4 co-payment for every prescription and 30% of the cost of supplemental services, including dental care, vision care, and mental health counseling. So now not only is healthcare being slashed for all, but the most vulnerable are being scapegoated for a crisis they did not create.

The Liberals have long made a project of scapegoating immigrants, refugees and migrants for the chronic underfunding of everything from public post-secondary education to affordable housing, deliberately fostering the growing anti-immigrant sentiment that serves to distract from those actually responsible.

It’s no secret that the federal Liberals prefer racist scapegoating to taking on premiers like Doug Ford and Danielle Smith in defence of healthcare. The not-so-hidden agenda is that the unprecedented increase in military spending promised by Carney can only be funded by diverting significant funds from social programs. And if they can do it while scapegoating refugees, even if it fuels Pierre Poilievre and the far right, so be it.

Defend healthcare jobs

The other target coming out of the corporatization of healthcare are frontline workers, who already bear the cruel impact of cuts that are out of their control. Every provincial system has stories of nurses and others on the frontline in tears at the end of shifts, unable to sleep over their inability to provide the care they know is needed.

May 5 saw a rally against the cutting of over 400 front-line jobs (3% of the workforce) at the Ottawa Hospital, mainly nurses and PSW’s. The union that represents the 4,300 workers there, CUPE 4000, was joined by the Ottawa Health Coalition and other community supporters united against targeting health care workers for a crisis caused by chronic underfunding – in a system already plagued by staff shortages and harrowing “hallway care.”

 
Already, 700 healthcare jobs have been cut across Ontario, 500 of them in Ottawa. CUPE members at the Bruyère Hospital have launched a 6-week protest campaign to save 70 frontline jobs. CUPE 942 workers at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre are holding ongoing demonstrations against planned layoffs of nurses and PSW’s at its long-term care facility.

 
Public healthcare is a union issue, and not only for those who work in it. Their jobs are essential to maintaining a viable public system, not “fat” to be cut while private clinics turn a profit.  

Stop the “train wreck” of private healthcare

The fight brewing right now in Ontario could make a difference in pushing back the whole privatization agenda across the country – and could bring together all the outrage in Ontario against the dismantling of public services while Doug cries over the loss of his private jet.

On May 28, there will be a convergence on Union Station in Toronto by train, Go-train, and other transport to “Stop Ford’s Privatization Train Wreck.” This promises to be the first mass protest to stop the privatization of hospitals, and it will march on the Ontario Legislature.

 

But the message it carries has to be to every provincial government, and to Carney’s Liberals: public healthcare in the Canadian state is a human right that was hard-won by ordinary people and won’t be lost without a fight.  

 

Join the fight!

EVENT: Get on Board May 28: Stop Ford’s Hospital Privatization Train Wreck giant protest