September 25 Rallies — Health Care Is a Right!
No! to Ontario Government’s Privatization
of Public Hospitals!
Join the Ontario Health Coalition, CUPE-Ontario Council of Hospital Unions and other unions representing health care workers, workers in other sectors and allies on Monday, September 25, 2023 for a noon-hour rally to stop the Ford government’s privatization of public hospitals. The measures allowing further privatization were introduced in Bill 60, the Your Health Act, which received Royal Assent in May disregarding vigorous opposition by health care workers and many other Ontarians.
The action takes place on the day the fall session of the Ontario legislature opens to set the tone for the session — that Ontarians and frontline hospital workers say a resounding No! to the Ford government’s plans to privatize public hospitals.
The organizers state:
“We are unalterably opposed to the privatization of our public hospitals.
“We paid for them. We built them. They do not belong to the Ford government to run them into crisis, gut their core services and privatize them.
“We demand that the Ford government:
“Stop the privatization of our public hospitals
Stop creating a crisis in our public hospitals by underfunding them, cutting and closing services, and trying to roll back wages of nurses, health professionals and support staff,
Expand the use of existing ORs in our public hospitals, and
Expand capacity in our public hospitals & restore closed services.”
Health Care workers warn that funneling public tax dollars from the underfunded public health system into private, for-profit clinics — where surgeries and diagnostic services cost significantly more — will further weaken Ontario’s public system, making health care less accessible, wait times longer, and staffing shortages even more severe.
The deliberate wrecking of the public system is taking place, leaving health care professionals without resources while, according to the provincial Financial Accountability Office, $1.7 billion in the provincial health care budget for 2022-2023 went unspent. In addition public funds are directed towards privatized nursing and hospital services.
The unions representing health care workers have all launched campaigns at community hospitals to call for investments in the public system toward higher staffing levels and a meaningful recruitment and retention strategy, in order to improve patient care, wait times and surgical backlogs.
As part of the mobilization against the Ford government’s privatization plans the Ontario Health Coalition recently held a citizen-run referendum on health care in which more than 400,000 people – one in 30 residents – voted, with 99 per cent voting against the privatization of public hospitals’ core services.
“As the Ontario Legislature re-opens in the fall, let’s make [this opposition] visible and powerful. Let us build on our extraordinary achievements and make it impossible for the Ford government to carry on unchallenged.” organizers say. “Let us make that happen sooner than later,” organizers state, “because every service we lose is extremely hard to get back.”
Toronto
12:00 noon
Queen’s Park, north lawn
Facebook
Thunder Bay
11:30 am
Mini-Queen’s Park, South James St.
Dryden
11:30 am
Outside MPP Greg Rickford’s Office, 439 Government St.
Algoma
12:00 noon
Sault Area Hospital, 750 Great Northern Rd, Sault Ste. Marie
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