Ontario Health Coalition: Stratford Pre-Budget Hearings
Stratford – As the government travels to Stratford to hold Pre-Budget Hearings, concerned citizens from Stratford and area will gather to send a message to the Ford government regarding their underfunding and privatization of our public health care services.
Health care in Ontario is in the worst crisis we have ever seen with services from primary care to home care in total disarray. Millions of Ontarians have lost their family doctors. Hospitals are in deficit and now, even in the worst staffing crisis in our history, are actually cutting positions. Regionally, hospital staff were protesting cuts in Guelph just last week.
Local emergency departments had a record number of closures last year, worse even than 2023 and 2022 when the unprecedented closures began. These closures have had a significant negative impact in the region around Stratford, and to the west and north of the town.
Speakers will describe the unparalleled damage and disarray in our health care, and how the Ford government has chosen to redirect more than a billion dollars per year in public money to contracts with for-profit corporations to privatize our care and services while leaving our local hospitals with too few staff, insufficient beds and inadequate funding.
It is the old adage: “Create a crisis and privatize,” warn the Health Coalitions. It is destroying our public health care and it must be stopped.
When: Monday, December 16, 2024 at 10:30 a.m.
Where: In front of Best Western Plus, The Arden Park Hotel, 552 Ontario Street, Stratford.
Who: Concerned citizens from Stratford, St. Marys and surrounding communities will join allies from around the region who are fed up with the privatization and destruction of our public health care. (The government pre-budget hearings are regional and this is the only scheduled hearing in the region.)
The pre-budget hearings have been called with little notice and publicity. Concerned local residents only learned about them this week.
Feeling frustrated and shut out, citizens are organizing this event to give voice to public outrage about what Ford is doing to our precious public health care .
In recent years, input from public interest groups and concerned citizens has been ignored as the Ford government has met with for-profit lobbyists, including those with strong links to the Conservative Party, and has awarded private contracts to for-profit companies that are lobbying them to make profits from privatizing our public health care system. This has been happening while our local public and non-profit health care services have been damaged, dismantled and under-resourced.
