By Dr. Nancy Olivieri, Michael Hurley and Natalie Mehra
Dr. Nancy Olivieri is a Hamilton-born physician and professor at the University of Toronto. Michael Hurley is president, Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, and a member of CUPE’s national executive board. Natalie Mehra is executive director, Ontario Health Coalition.
About 40 years ago, Tommy Douglas warned we must protect public health care from “subtle strangulation.”
In Doug Ford’s anything-but-subtle strangulation of Ontario’s health care, his government has openly “take a wrecking ball” to Hamilton’s.
Recently, the Canadian Union of Public Employees revealed Hamilton’s largest hospital network, Hamilton Health Sciences, is projecting a deficit of $112 million, with St. Joseph’s Healthcare projecting one of $24.3 million, for the fiscal year in which Ford hopes to seize another victory. While designating $3 billion for rebate cheques and tunnels, Ford has not addressed hospital deficits, instead playing “hide-and-seek with hospital funding.”
Ontario’s public hospital funding, as well as its overall health-care spending, are the lowest per capita of any province. As a result, Hamilton hospitals (and others) face these dramatic shortfalls in funding.
With 85 cents of every health-care dollar spent on staffing, Hamilton Health Sciences is eliminating staff positions and pulling job postings to attempt to reduce this enormous deficit, leaving critical front-line positions vacant. Nearly half of the remaining, exhausted staff are now considering quitting their jobs. Meanwhile, patients suffer on stretchers in hallways in Hamilton hospitals and wait, on average, 21 hours in Hamilton emergency rooms. Ford promised to fix this crisis in 2021, then allowed it to double in severity.
It’s not just Hamilton. Some 2.5 million people in this province have no family doctor. After Ford capped wages of nurses and health professionals, thousands left due to overwork and burnout. Ontario now has the fewest nurses per capita of any province.
Your father may be waiting, along with 2,000 others, on that hallway stretcher for days because Ontario has the fewest hospital beds in Canada. Your mother’s surgery may be delayed, along with 250,000 on wait lists, because provincial operating rooms are not adequately staffed and therefore under-used. Your grandparent may be one of Ontario’s palliative patients who die at home without painkillers.
The starvation of public health care by Ford, is not only widespread but deliberate. Ford has always been supportive of for-profit U.S.-style health care. While disabling the public system he has presented himself as Ontario’s rescuer, offering so-called “alternatives” in privatized clinics (carefully described as “independent health facilities”), repeating the fiction that private health care reduces wait times and that will help clear the backlogs he created.
Ford knows this isn’t true, which is why he’s been so coy. Before the 2022 election, Ford assured voters he would not expand private hospitals. Immediately following that election, he announced the expansion of privatized surgeries and diagnostics. As he publicly promised “Ontarians will always access health care with their OHIP card,” patients were extra-billed thousands for privatized surgeries, and hundreds for medically unnecessary tests.
Instead of halting these illegal practices, as promised, Ford increased funding to private clinics by more than 200 per cent. The result has been gross wastage of public dollars (your taxes). Much more is spent for every surgery in privatized clinics, compared to those in public hospitals. Public hospitals have been forced to hire high-cost nursing staff from private agencies for which spending has increased sixfold since 2020.
While positioning himself as a defender of Canada’s values, Ford — in the shadow of the 2026 trade negotiations in which the defence of Medicare will be central — is planning more for-profit wasteful health care.
Hamilton hospitals have always punched above their weight in the delivery of superlative health care. Ford has been a disaster for that proud legacy. On Feb. 27, Hamiltonians must heed the warning of Tommy Douglas, and vote as if our lives depend on it.
Dr. Nancy Olivieri is a Hamilton-born physician and professor at the University of Toronto. Michael Hurley is president, Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, and a member of CUPE’s national executive board. Natalie Mehra is executive director, Ontario Health Coalition.
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