Public health care in Ontario is moving in the wrong direction and people need to stand up and demand change.

So says the Executive Director of the Ontario Health Coalition Natalie Mehra, speaking at the monthly meeting of the Southport Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW) at the Bruce County Museum in Southampton on Wednesday, November 8th.

Mehra says from 1990 to 2014 the number of acute beds and continuing care beds in Ontario hospitals was cut in half.

She says “The cuts in Ontario have been extreme and they are resulting in a crisis in access to care.”

By the numbers, in 2013-14, Ontario was last in Canada, providing only 2.3-hospital beds per 1,000 population.

By comparison, Newfoundland/Labrador provides 4.6-hospital beds per 1,000 population.

In 2015, public hospital funding per person in Ontario was $1,419–second worst in all of Canada.

The average of the other provinces is $1,920.

Mehra told the CFUW members, public health is a program, “That everyone relies on from birth to death.  Increasingly people are seeing cuts and have less confidence that there’s going to be enough care when they need it.”

Mehra urged members to get the community to stand up for improved health care.

She says, “We just need to make it a key election issue.  We need to push for political leadership.”

Ontario’s provincial election is next June (2018).