We have provided you with questions below for candidates who come to your door or for use in all candidates’ meetings (below and attached). These questions include background and extra information for your own knowledge. Often there are time limits for questions in all candidates’ meetings. Please feel free to use these questions as a guide and a resource: shorten them, make them your own with local examples, or edit as you need. If you need more information, sources or data, please go to www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca. The specific link for fact sheets on the topics covered here is this: https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/briefing-note-fact-sheets-health-care-privatization-fact-sheets-information/

Privatization

The ownership and control our public and non-profit health care services are being handed over to for-profit corporations. To understand what this means, we need only to look at the reprehensible behaviour of the for-profit long-term care industry that took millions of dollars each month in profits from our long-term care homes even while thousands of their residents died during COVID of disease and neglect. The Ford government is in the process of giving tens of thousands of new and redeveloped long-term care beds licensed to for-profits for the next 30 years — even those with terrible records of negligence and substandard care. In addition, we have seen unprecedented privatization of public health care services including vaccinations and COVID testing; privatization of the core services of our local public hospitals including surgeries and diagnostic testing; privatization of primary care by giving public funding to for-profit chains like Shoppers Drug Mart; privatization of mental health and addictions, and more.

Will you stop the for-profit privatization of our health care?

2. Services in Immediate Crisis

In those communities where your local hospital has had closures of vital services such as all inpatient beds (eg. Town of Durham, Thessalon) or closures of your local emergency department /hospital urgent care centre.

Will you commit to reopening (inpatient beds and/or emergency department) and providing the necessary resources to keep these services open?

3. Illegal Patient Charges in Private Clinics

In the private clinics, patients are now routinely being charged thousands of dollars for surgeries or hundreds of dollars for medically unnecessary add-ons that they are often manipulated into paying. To date, the Ford government has mostly expanded the privatization of cataract surgery however, plan is to expand privatization to diagnostics, hip and knee surgeries and others. Doug Ford promised that no one would ever pay with their credit card, “only their OHIP card”.  However, patients are being charged the highest costs we have ever seen – more than $10,000 — for their eye surgery in the private clinics. This is illegal under Ontario’s Commitment to the Future of Medicare Act. Anyone caught charging patients should be fined and face escalating penalties up to incarceration if they do not stop, yet nothing is happening to stop the private clinics.

Will you roll back the privatization of surgeries and diagnostics and provide those services in our public non-profit hospitals? Will you enforce Ontario’s medicare laws against the private clinics that are charging patients for needed surgeries and tests, and manipulating patients into paying for unneeded surgeries and tests?

4. Hospitals

Ontario funds its hospitals at the lowest rate in Canada, and as a consequence has the fewest hospital beds left per person of any province. (That means hospital beds staffed and in operation.) As a result, patients are left waiting on stretchers in hallways for beds because all the units inside the hospital are full. Heading into the pandemic, staffing shortages were becoming worse, leaving staff staggering under the weight of impossible workloads and limiting Ontarians’ access to care. Through the pandemic we have lost health professionals, nurses, physicians and staff in all kinds of other roles that matter greatly to patient care. Today, Ontario has the fewest nurses per patient of any province. Profiteering staffing agencies that are charging predatory rates to hospitals and long-term care homes are now taking more than a billion dollars per year.

What would you do to address the crisis in Ontario’s public hospitals? Will you commit to nurse-to-patient staffing ratios in hospitals to address the nurse staffing crisis? Will you stop the for-profit staffing agencies?

5. Small and rural hospitals

Before 2018 emergency department closures were almost non-existent. In 2023, the Ontario Health Coalition found that there were 1,199 closures of local emergency departments, birthing units and ICUs. By 2024, CBC reports that Ontario broke all records for emergency department closures. These service closures are mostly occurring in small and rural hospitals, though some larger hospitals have been impacted also.

What would you do to ensure that small, rural and local hospitals’ services are protected? For example, would you commit to a moratorium on the closures? Would you ensure that no more local hospital services are downsized, closed or otherwise shut down? Will you commit to reopening the closed services?

6. Long-Term Care

There are more than 43,000 people on wait lists for long-term care. There is no question we need more long-term care, but the Ford government is in the process of giving the majority new 30-year contracts and expansions to for-profit LTC companies rather than building them as public and non-profit. The biggest winners of new beds and redevelopments are the same for-profit long-term care chain companies that were responsible for catastrophic death rates and inadequate care before and during the pandemic (and that continues). In addition, the comprehensive annual surprise inspections were cancelled in 2018 after Ford was elected, and they have never been brought back. By the last publicly reported numbers, less than 200 of more than 600 long-term care homes have had a comprehensive annual surprise inspection and many LTC homes with terrible records of inadequate care have never been held accountable.

Would you commit to ending for-profit long-term care and building the needed new capacity in public and non-profit homes? Would you restore annual comprehensive surprise inspections immediately, and follow up with real enforcement? What would you do to improve long-term care?

7. Home Care

The Ford government dismantled the entire governance of our home care system in Ontario and moved it under its Super Agency (Ontario Health). The restructuring is not over. Our concern is that care coordination and the other last public parts of home care may be privatized. Already, the majority of home care is privatized and it is rife with staffing shortages that mean people do not get care, even when they are assessed as being eligible for it. In our view, we need to rebuild a new public non-profit home care system.

What is your plan for home care in Ontario?

8. COVID and Public Health

As you know, COVID is not over. The evidence regarding the health care burden of long COVID across hospitals, long-term care, primary care and home care is mounting. Every month there is a new study tracking the increased health care use of people who have long COVID.  In some European and other jurisdictions, they have gone much further than us in preventive measures such as indoor air cleaning, public education, reporting, and infection prevention and control measures. Here, the Ford government is pushing forward with amalgamating Public Health Units even while we are in a health care crisis.

This question is about Public Health and COVID. Would you stop the mergers of Public Health Units? What would you do to reduce the spread of COVID?

9. Paramedics

Across the province, paramedics are deeply concerned about inadequate paramedic staffing. In a number of regions, the shortages lead to longer response times or closed bases. It imperils timely emergency care for patients. Other problems include offload delays – in which ambulances are lined up at the hospital emergency departments and paramedics get tied up waiting to transfer their patients to the triage nurses — and Code Zeros (when all ambulances are in use and unable to respond to new calls).

What will you to do address these issues?

10. Primary Care

Two-and-a-half million people in Ontario now cannot find access to primary health care – which is the front door of medicine. It includes family doctors, nurse practitioners, teams, and community health centres or aboriginal health centres. The non-profit, democratic, community-based model of primary care is community health centres. They employ teams of health professionals, nurse practitioners and doctors to provide care. A number of CHCs have had their core budgets frozen for years despite long wait lists and some communities have been waiting for years to get proposals for CHCs to be approved. We also have a model of publicly-funded nurse practitioner-led clinics in Ontario also, but they have not been expanded. Instead, Shoppers Drug Mart and Telus are privatizing both online primary care (virtual care) and opening new for-profit primary care clinics.

What would you do to stop the privatization of primary care and improve access to care? Would you support expanding non-profit Community Health Centres? Will you provide public funding for non-profit nurse practitioner clinics and stop for-profit ownership and user fees in those clinics?

11. Mental Health and Addictions

The inadequacy in mental health services in Ontario worsened significantly through the pandemic. Ontarians who require support and treatment face long waits for services, privatization, closures of safe consumption sites and stigma.

Will you commit to eliminating the wait lists for mental health and addictions treatment? Will you restore public non-profit safe consumption sites and stop the privatization of addictions treatment and increase capacity in public non-profit addictions treatment and harm reduction?

12. Social Determinants of Health

What will you do to address the social determinants of health, especially supportive housing and affordable housing, and increased ODSP?

13. Budget Policy

For decades, the advocates of downsizing and privatization have tried to claim that health spending is out of control. In fact, Ontario ranks consistently dead last among provinces in funding for public health care overall and in funding for public hospitals. As a percent of our provincial economy – that is as a percent of provincial GDP – we are well below of the average of the other provinces.  There is a long way to go, even to get to the average of the other provinces. We need that funding to improve public non-profit health care across the continuum of care from hospitals to home care, from long-term care to primary care. This question is critical to all of that because without the resources – funding and staff – we cannot have enough care for Ontarians’ needs.

Will you commit to improving funding for public health care and do you have concrete plans for how you would do this?

14. Democracy, Improving Public Health Care under the principles of Compassion & Equity

The trend of eradicating elected public boards that are responsive to local communities started with the Harris government and has become much worse since. Today, Ontarians do not have elected public hospital boards. There are no elected regional health planning agencies. As more services become privatized, there is no democracy, public access to information and accountability. Today, there is no accountability to the public and the centralization of services, removal of local care, failure to plan to meet communities’ needs goes against what the vast majority of Ontarians want. Even in community care, for-profit ownership has grown and democracy in governance has decreased. In addition, health legislation is being passed without public hearings — or with very few public hearings — and all amendments proposed by public interest groups are ignored. The current “Ontario Health Teams” are unelected, completely unaccountable groups of health care provider companies – for-profit and non-profit. They do not have public meetings. There is no accountable board of directors. Non one is elected. Plans are not available for public scrutiny. There is no public input. For 50 years, until now, Ontario has had one form or another of regional health planning bodies.   This is the most undemocratic it has been in the last half century, at least.

Have you given any thought to restoring democracy in our health care? Will you commit to restoring democratically elected local public hospital boards? Will you commit to creating public non-profit regional health planning agencies that are open and accountable to the public?

15. Overall Vision

What is your vision for improving public health care under the principles of compassion and equity upon which our Canadian system of public health care for all was founded?

The post Ontario Health Coalition: Questions For Candidates appeared first on London and District Labour Council.

Please send your written input by June 20 or attend the hearings in the next two weeks.
Please share widely. Everyone’s input is welcome and wanted.

Public Consultation on Protecting & Improving Our Local Public Hospitals

In response to unprecedented closures of emergency departments and other local hospital services, the Ontario Health Coalition is holding public hearings across Ontario to develop recommendations for the future of our local hospitals, including a focus on small and rural hospitals. We have asked people to come and give your input verbally at the hearings or send in written input.

Most communities have not had any real say in what is happening to our local public hospitals, though we fund, volunteer, support and need them. These public hearings will be just like government public hearings, inviting everyone who is interested to bring a submission, written or verbal, and give their ideas and input. They will be on the record – video and written notes – and our expert panel will review the submissions and write a report with concrete recommendations to protect and improve our local hospitals.

The hearings will be an opportunity for municipal leaders, community service agencies, patient advocacy groups, concerned citizens, health care professionals and workers, clinicians and others to give your input.

The hearings are open to all Ontario residents. They will be held in person and there will also be a “virtual” (online) option by Zoom for people to participate. The updated list of hearings is below.

If you would like to make a written submission, please email it to the Ontario Health Coalition at info@ontariohc.ca by June 20 at 5 p.m. Please include your name, email, phone and address with your submission so we can confirm with you the receipt of your submission and send you the final report and recommendations.

UPDATED! List of Hearings

You can attend any one you like. You will see some areas overlap and you may want to attend more than one. You do not need to be from that community to attend a hearing there.

Note: due to staffing issues we will  not hold hearings in Mindemoya, Blind River, Perth and Campbellford that were previously scheduled in this two-week slate. We have contacted everyone who booked a presentation and have moved them to another hearing. Those who did not register but wish to give verbal presentations and input to the panel can join any of the other hearings by Zoom (or in person). The OHC may restore or add hearings at a later date, based on community demand for them.

Already done — Saturday June 8

Welland & Niagara: 
9:30 am – 11:30 am, Welland Civic Square Community Room, 145 Lincoln St. Welland.

St. Marys, Clinton, Seaforth, Stratford & region: 
3 pm – 4:30 pm, Royal Canadian Legion Branch 236, 66 Church St N, St. St. Marys.

Upcoming:

Tuesday June 11

Bracebridge & South Muskoka:
9 am – 11 am, Royal Canadian Legion Branch 161, 168 Muskoka Rd. Bracebridge.

Barrie & Simcoe County:
1:30 pm – 3:30 pm, Barrie Public Library, Angus Ross Room, 60 Worsley St. Barrie.

Thursday June 13

Almonte, Arnprior, Mississippi Mills, Renfrew County & region: 
12 pm – 2 pm, Almonte Civitan Club, 500 Almonte St. Almonte.

Friday June 14

Haliburton, Minden & region:
4 pm – 6 pm, Royal Canadian Legion Branch 129, 719 Mountain St. Haliburton.

Monday June 17

Thunder Bay & the Northwest:
12:30 pm – 2 pm, Mary J L Black Library, Community Program Room, 901 Edward St S. Thunder Bay.

Tuesday June 18

Chesley, Walkerton, Hanover, Town of Durham & region:
10:30 am – 12:30 pm, Chesley Community Centre Community Hall, 129 4th Ave SE. Chesley.

Wingham & area:
2 pm – 3 pm, North Huron Wescast Community Complex, Hot Stove Lounge Meeting Room, 99 Kerr Dr. Wingham.

Mount Forest, Palmerston, Listowel, Town of Durham & region: 
4:30 pm – 5:30 pm, Royal Canadian Legion Branch 134, 140 King St W. Mount Forest.

Expert panel:

The expert panel that will receive all written and verbal submissions is non-partisan and will include:

• Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition
• Brenda Scott, Chair of the OHC’s Save Our Hospitals Committee and the Chesley Hospital Community Support
• France Gelinas, NDP Health Critic (which means she is the Member of Provincial Parliament responsible for the Health Care portfolio for the NDP)
• Adil Shamji, Liberal Health Critic (which means he is the Member of Provincial Parliament responsible for the Health Care portfolio for the Liberal Party of Ontario)
• Graham Webb, lawyer and executive director of the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly
• Several doctors, nurses and health professionals (more information TBA)

_______________________________________________

Below is a short briefing note about the background and context for the public hearings followed by a consultation guide to help you write your submissions. 

Backgrounder on Unprecedented Closures of Local Hospital Services

In Ontario, vital hospital services, such as emergency departments, maternity and obstetrics, outpatient laboratories and intensive care units, have been subject to repeated closures in the last three years. These closures are unprecedented and they are worsening. The duration of closures is getting longer. Multiple towns across regions are closing vital services at the same time. Public notice is often last minute. Remote communities in the north are experiencing long term closures of vital services such as labour and delivery and outpatient laboratories, and repeated emergency department closures or threats of closures. Rural communities across mid-Ontario and the south are particularly hard hit, but we are also seeing closures of vital services in the largest cities of the province.  Emergency departments in particular are being repeatedly closed down in the daytime, overnight, on weekends, or for days to weeks.

The Ontario Health Coalition released a report tracking closures at the beginning of December 2023.

The rates of closure are staggering. From January 1 to November 24, 2023, there had been at least:

• 868 emergency department closures;
• 316 urgent care centre closures;
• two outpatient laboratory closures;
• eleven obstetrics unit closures;
• one ICU closure, and;
• one labour and delivery unit closure (long-term).

In total, there were 1,199 closures of vital health care services from January 1 to November 24. In other words, these services in Ontario have either temporarily or permanently closed in 1,199 instances this year so far. Consequently, 30,155 hours of care (equivalent to 3.44 years) have been lost to local communities this year so far.

A growing number of local hospitals are at risk of permanently losing services. As a result, the Ontario Health Coalition is working with local communities and coalitions across the province to conduct public hearings on saving local hospitals. The goal is to come out with a report and recommendations to save our local hospitals and their services at minimum, and also to restore stability, revitalize them, improve access, quality, equity and responsiveness of hospital care in our communities. We will then work our hardest to get the recommendations adopted and implemented to save and revitalize our local hospitals.

_______________________________________________

Consultation Document

The following consultation document is a guide to help in drafting submissions for the hearings. It is not meant to be limiting – please include any and all information and recommendations you would like to submit. You are also welcome to bring an informal submission – your story about your family’s access to hospital care in your area, a letter, or point form notes. You do not need to answer all questions – this is just a guide to help guide the types of issues we are hoping to hear about.

Access to care

Provincial government decisions to cut or curtail public hospital funding have contributed to the crisis. Long term policies of underfunding hospitals in order to downsize them meant that Ontario had no surge capacity left by the beginning of the pandemic. Ontario has the fewest hospital beds per person left of any province in Canada and funds hospitals at the lowest rate in the country. Despite promises to end hallway medicine and not to cut public services, when the current government was elected it imposed a new round of austerity and real-dollar cuts to public hospitals. While the government provided extra funding during the early years of the pandemic, it cancelled COVID funding in the 2023 budget, imposing austerity again. In 2023, global budgets for hospitals in Ontario is increasing by only 0.5%[1] while health care inflation increased by a range of 5.65%[2] to 3.5% a real-dollar cut, pushing hospitals into deficits, forcing hospitals to downsize their services and continuing downward pressure on wages for staff that are already in crisis-levels of short supply. This policy choice is about cutting and constraining public health care funding, yes, but it is also about closing down public non-profit capacity and privatizing it. At the same time as public hospitals are facing real dollar cuts, the provincial government has vastly increased funding for for-profit clinics[3] and hospitals, and for for-profit staffing agencies.

Staffing

The immediate cause of local hospital services closures is most often cited as staff shortages including nurse, health professional and physician shortages. Staffing shortages that were emerging prior to the pandemic have grown over the last three years into the worst crisis anyone has seen. The staffing crisis has been compounded by public policy choices that have actively undermined staffing efforts, including wage suppression legislation (Bill 124), privatization of staffing through for-profit staffing agencies, the government’s decision to end emergency COVID funding for locums and other funding, and extremely short-term funding arrangements announced after short staffing has become critical.

The Role of the Local Hospital

For more than a hundred years, communities across Ontario have fundraised, advocated, and built their local hospitals in an effort to establish needed services close to home. Hospitals have other local benefits also. In his autobiography, Paul Martin Sr., Minister of National Health and Welfare, who saw this program as the essential foundation for the eventual introduction of a public health insurance system in Canada, described his commitment to the creation of a National Health Grants program (1948-1971) to build community hospitals as follows:

“The grants would correct the unequal distribution of beds across the country, and particularly the dearth of hospitals in rural areas.  Because poor facilities discouraged medical personnel from moving willingly to more remote parts, new, strategically placed and up-to-date hospitals would induce practitioners to go where they were needed most.”  (Paul Martin Sr., A Very Public Life Vol.II, 1985)

For many communities, hospitals are central to the economic life of the community and have advanced equity in access to care.

Local Hospital Governance

Hospitals across Ontario have not only been subjected to the most radical downsizing of any province in Canada, they have also experienced very significant loss of local decision-making and control. In a number of communities, hospitals have been amalgamated into larger hospital corporations and local boards have been decommissioned or reduced. The rationale for amalgamation was to find administrative savings but amalgamation has had a huge impact on local services also. In more recent rounds of hospital cuts and restructuring, local hospitals have lost an array of services, and now are facing the loss of core services that define them as hospitals. Some are being closed down entirely.

Provincial Leadership and Standards

In each round of hospital cuts and restructuring, the provincial government has set processes and at least some standards for how hospitals are to make decisions regarding local services. They have been far from adequate, but they did exist. On multiple occasions, the Minister of Health intervened to stop the closure of local services, and certainly at no time has a provincial government indicated that it is not responsible for planning service levels and resourcing Ontario’s hospitals. In today’s unprecedented situation of hospital service closures, there has been a major difference. In response to the permanent closure of the Minden hospital emergency department, in existence since 1956, the Minister said it is a local decision. The failure of the provincial government to take responsibility for planning, recruiting and retaining needed health care staff, dealing with crises and setting standards for access to the most urgent of health care services is at odds with the approach of Ontario’s governments dating back at least forty years.

*****PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW EMAIL ADDRESS – info@ontariohc.ca *****

We are proud of the difference we make and we hope you are too. This work is only made possible by people who care like you. Please do become a member or donate. It matters!

If you can, please CLICK HERE to donate or become a member.

Ontario Health Coalition
15 Gervais Drive, Suite 201
Toronto, ON M3C 1Y8
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/
info@ontariohc.ca
416-441-2502

The post OHC: Update on Hearings and Send Your Written Input to Save and Restore Local Hospitals appeared first on London and District Labour Council.

The post ONA and OPSEU/SEFPO joining for Toronto protest March 2 appeared first on London and District Labour Council.

Toronto – The Ford government’s plans to privatize our public hospitals’ vital services are a fatal threat to the core tenet of Canadian Public Medicare that extra user fees are forbidden and patients will not be faced with user charges in their time of need. Already existing private for-profit clinics routinely extra-bill patients thousands of dollars, often illegally, as well as charging patients hundreds or thousands of dollars for extra medically unnecessary add-ons. Moreover, private clinics take scarce staff out of public hospitals to serve lighter-care profitable patients, leaving those with more complex care needs to public hospitals with less funding and staffing to provide for them. This, in the context of an unprecedented staffing shortage is a reckless and damaging idea, warned the Coalition.

“What Ford announced today is a fatal threat to our public health care system,” said Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition which has for decades been on the front-lines of advocating to protect patients. “If they turn over a significant portion of our public hospitals’ surgeries to for-profits, we will not be able to protect patients against extra charges of thousands of dollars for needed care and from manipulative extra upselling. The fact is that no one has been able to control the private for-profit clinics where they have sprung up in Canada, and Ontario has done a particularly terrible job of controlling for-profit health care companies in long-term care and other sectors. Ford’s claims today are patently false.”

“Already, the existing for-profit clinics in Ontario are charging patients thousands of dollars for surgeries. They routinely upsell medically unneeded services to elderly patients. They pressure and manipulate patients into paying hundreds or thousands of dollars that they should never have to pay in our public health system,” Ms. Mehra noted. The Coalition has repeatedly called all the private for-profit clinics in Ontario and across Canada and caught the majority of them extra-billing patients. In the most recent study done by the Coalition published in a front-page series in the Globe and Mail, clinics were caught double-billing, charging patients thousands of dollars and charging the public health system at the same time for the same procedure. Patients are routinely charged ten times the public health system cost for private for-profit shoulder surgeries, four or five times the cost for private cataract surgeries, three times or more the cost for private MRIs.

“For-profit privatization of hospitals is a rip-off for patients and a threat to everything we hold dear,” said Ms. Mehra. She noted, “The Ford government has done nothing to stop the extra billing of patients in the existing private for-profit clinics in their four-and-a-half years in office. Frankly they have zero credibility on this. This is all about Ford handing over profits from our public health system to for-profit companies.”

The Coalition expressed anger that the Ford government has done shockingly little to resolve the staffing crisis in public hospitals, and after helping to create the crisis, is posing privatization as if it is a “solution”. Large public hospitals across Ontario have operating rooms that are underused – closed for weeks or months each year, or even permanently– due to lack of funding and staffing. Instead of using existing public capacity and supporting public hospitals, the Ford government underspent on health care by almost $1 billion last year, did very little to address the staffing crisis in our public hospitals, and has done nothing to open public hospital operating rooms to capacity. Ford also did nothing to address the public health crisis this fall and winter, eschewing even masking protections. The Coalition vowed to do everything in its power to stop the province from privatizing our public hospitals.

Ontario Health Coalition
15 Gervais Drive, Suite 201
Toronto, ON M3C 1Y8
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca

The post Calling Ford’s plans to privatize Ontario’s public hospital surgeries a “fatal threat” and a “terrible blow” to our public hospitals, health advocates vow major fightback appeared first on London and District Labour Council.