A public interest group with chapters across Ontario is launching a province-wide public referendum on the government’s plans to move some surgeries to private, for-profit clinics.
The Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) announced on Tuesday that it will hold the mass referendum on May 26-27 to give everyone in the province the chance to vote on the “unprecedented privatization of Ontario’s core public health care services.”
“We want our community to fight with us to make sure that the government knows that we want public hospitals that are vibrant and full-service and great places to receive your medical care,” said Shirley Roebuck with the local chapter of the OHC. “We’re hoping to get in the neighbourhood of one million votes and surely the Tories can’t ignore that.”
On January 16, the Ford government announced plans to allow public health services such as surgeries and MRI and CT scans to be conducted at for-profit facilities. According to the province, the three-step plan will help alleviate the surgical backlog in Ontario that was worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, according to the OHC, the government’s legislation will be detrimental to public hospitals and the services they provide.
Roebuck said privatizing surgeries puts every hospital in the province at risk, including the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance. She suggested that providing more funding to hospitals is a better solution to addressing surgical backlogs across the province.
“If you take out the knee and hip replacement surgeries from the surgical program at Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, it’s going to significantly decrease the number of surgeries done in the hospital, which will mean a decrease in hospital funding. And most probably, it’s going to mean a loss of orthopedic surgeons and trained medical professionals,” she said. “That’s going to negatively affect Chatham-Kent.”
Voting locations for the public referendum will be announced in the coming weeks and Roebuck said the results of the OHC referendum will be delivered to Queen’s Park on May 30.
“We are advising the government that so many of us do not want private health care services,” she said. “We want people to come out and really support our public hospitals.”
