Health care fight heats up in Ontario

“Public healthcare is a hill to die on.”

 

This is how one of the thousands of healthcare workers, patients and others horrified by the dismantling of public healthcare captured the mood of anger and determination at Ford’s health care privatization.

 

An estimated 8,000 people joined the protest, dubbed “Stop Doug Ford’s privatization Train Wreck”. At Union Station, delegations from London, Barrie, Kingston, Ottawa, Windsor, the Niagara region, and more poured off the trains to join crowds gathered outside the station. The protest stopped at the Sheraton Hotel where over 1,000 members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees joined in, then marched to Queen’s Park.

 

The spirited march chanted “public healthcare: not for sale” and “hey hey, ho ho, corrupt Ford has got to go”. A new anthem written by Sarah Basciano for the rally had the crowd singing along to “people not profit”.

 

The rally targeted Ford’s deliberate underfunding of public hospitals. The majority of hospitals in Ontario are currently in deficit. As the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has shown, this is by design, as funding has not kept up with inflation and the growing needs of an aging population.

 

These deficits affect smaller and rural hospitals even more than the bigger hospitals in cities like Ottawa, Oshawa and Hamilton. But those bigger hospitals are now laying off hundreds of workers. The Ottawa Hospital announced in April it was cutting 3% of its workforce – 400 jobs – including front line nurses, PSWs and administrative staff.

 

In Oshawa, Lakefield Health told nurses to deliver meal trays to patients after three full-time dietary aide workers were among the 40 jobs cut in the past year. At St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, more than 60 PSWs, clerical and administrative positions are being eliminated, with some work transferred to nurses.

 

These cuts are costing lives, with longer wait times in emergency rooms, less time per patient, and patients being pushed out of hospital sicker and faster than they should because of the pressure inside the system.

 

Ontario funds hospitals at the lowest level of all provinces in Canada. Yet Ford spends millions in public funds on dismantling the Science Centre, buying a jet, taking workers to court over Bill 124, and creating ad campaigns trying to convince us that his government is spending a record amount on healthcare. In fact, Ford is shunting hundreds of millions (close to $300M in the last year alone) to for-profit private clinics to hollow out hospital services like surgeries and diagnostics.

 

But Ford is increasingly on the ropes. His recent move to exclude his communications and those of his cabinet from Freedom of Information requests is about covering up the stench of corruption that hangs over the Conservative government. It has exposed the levels his government is willing to go to push through their deeply unpopular agenda.

 

The mass protest forced minister of Health Sylvia Jones onto the defensive. Responding to questions after the rally, she attempted to frame the drive to a two-tier system as about “convenience” and not privatization for profit. Ford was also forced to respond to the rally, claiming that corporations are more efficient than the public system, and that individual health care “consumers” can “spend their money a lot wiser than the government”.

 

But if corporations are more “efficient”, why is the Ford government paying up to twice the amount of public funds for services in private clinics than in hospitals?

 

While the protest mainly targeted the Ontario government, this fight is also against a federal government that refuses to enforce the Canada Health Act to stop runaway privatization, and is choosing militarization over funding social programs. Rallies at Liberal MP offices and pressure on the federal government must continue to grow.

 

Now is the time to expand and deepen the fight to save public healthcare. The summer will be an important time to dig even deeper and sow the seeds of organizing far and wide.

 

Critically important is the growing mobilization of healthcare workers who are the greatest bulwark in the fight to stop privatization of hospital services. The Ontario Nurses Association is fighting in court for the right to strike. OPSEU workers are on the picket lines. CUPE workers are protesting at hospitals across the province. These workers have the power, alongside a mass movement, to both sound the alarm about the state of health care and force Ford to fund the system.

 

Join your local health coalition:

ontariohealthcoalition.ca