Unless we fight, we lose
OHC Executive Director Natalie Mehra addresses the large crowd at Queen’s Park, which included dozens of ONA members and our allies, on the serious ramifications of the Ford’s government’s recent privatization announcements.
OHC Executive Director Natalie Mehra addresses the large crowd at Queen’s Park, which included dozens of ONA members and our allies, on the serious ramifications of the Ford’s government’s recent privatization announcements.
ONA members were among the thousands of people who marched to Queen’s Park in late May with an important message for Premier Doug Ford: stop privatizing our hospitals and public health-care system.
The rally was organized by the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) in response to the Ford government’s announcement that it spent $300 million to open 61 new private surgical and diagnostical clinics, the vast majority for-profit. By the government’s own estimate, this latest slew of new private clinics alone is intended to redirect more than 1.2 million patients, along with staffing and funding for them, away from public hospitals, which have been pushed into deficit.
This troubling announcement also comes on top of the government’s major privatization of tens of thousands of cataract surgeries over the past couple of years.
“A few months ago, my husband was led to believe that he had to have special laser tests performed before he could have cataract surgery,” said a concerned citizen, one of many speakers at the event that included NDP, Liberal and Green party leaders, union heads and community group representatives.
“The fee for these specialty tests was $1,200 in addition to OHIP. If he wanted the surgery, he had to sign up for the payments. In addition to paying the eye doctor for the specialty tests, he also had to pay the hospital $1,200 for the two lenses. We had no choice.”
The two-hour event, which started at Toronto’s transportation hub, Union Station – the OHC reserved VIA and GO Transit train seats for people to attend from towns and cities across south and central Ontario – made a stop at the Sheraton Centre hotel where the CUPE convention was taking place. It then headed uptown towards its final destination outside the Ontario Legislature, which was in session.
“These clinics are set up to be quasi-private hospitals, and they’ll take every service they can make a profit from if the government lets them,” OHC Executive Director Natalie Mehra told the roaring crowd that blanketed the entire front lawn of Queen’s Park, waving flags, including those hard-to-miss ONA ones, carrying signs and wearing stickers reading, “Doug Ford hates you.”
This government is privatizing our hospitals and unless we fight, we’ll lose.
“If we do one thing today, we need to teach the public and the media that this government is privatizing our hospitals and unless we fight, we’ll lose. If we want to win, Ontarians of every political stripe, age and ability in every part of this province need to email Doug Ford and copy their MPP and tell them to stop privatizing our hospitals and public health care. If everyone here does that and gets five other people to, we can get at least one million emails to them. Today we’re starting the major fight-back and we won’t stop until they can’t ignore us anymore. Let’s go!”
ONA Provincial President Erin Ariss, who later broke out into a rendition of “Save Medicare” to the tune of “Sweet Caroline” with several others on the main stage at Queen’s Park, assured the crowd that “nurses and health-care professionals will fight like hell to stop this trainwreck.
“We need a system that supports everyone, not just Ford and his buddies that want to turn a profit. We need more funding, safe staffing ratios and a responsible government that understands the value of its workers.”
Approximately 60 ONA members from across the province signed up for the event, and expressed similar reasons for doing so.
“I have a newborn at home and I want him to have public health care when he’s my age,” member Steven explained, while member Meaghan, who also took the opportunity to gather signatures for our petition demanding an end to privatization and the mandating of staffing ratios, emphasized that “I’m here to fight for everyone who doesn’t have a voice.”
Amy, who travelled 450 kilometres with her fellow members to participate said it was important to attend the rally because “I work at a hospital and we’re going through a lot of position eliminations right now related to funding cuts from the province. We know quality health care is critical and we can only achieve that across the province if we don’t treat health care like an assembly line. But that’s the direction we’re heading. We have hallway health care right now at my hospital and that’s not quality care. I don’t want that to become normalized.”
“I’m here because we need public health care,” summed up member Lindsay. “Privatization is NOT the way to go.”
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