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Healthcare workers protest privatization in Kingston with “Trojan Horse”
Posted: November 10, 2024
(November 9, 2024) By: Owen Fullerton, YGK News
CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU-CUPE) and the Ontario Health Coalition brought their “Trojan Horse” tour to Kingston on Thursday.
The demonstration has been making stops throughout the province, likening the Ontario Conservative government’s plan of privatizing certain surgeries to the Trojan Horse story from Greek mythology.
“The Trojan Horse represents a gift, which, if accepted, threatens the recipient,” said Sharon Richer, secretary-treasurer of OCHU-CUPE in a news release.
“The false promise here is that privatizing surgeries is a solution to long waits. In fact, privatization redirects money and staff from public hospitals to private, for-profit clinics. As a result, wait-times in the public system get longer as staff shortages lead to service closures.”
Richer says Ford is presenting the idea as a gift in the sense that it will help alleviate long wait times for procedures, but if anything it will sap resources from the public system – of which Ontario provides the lowest per capita funding amongst provinces.
She says private clinics are poaching staff from public hospitals, creating longer wait times and instead making people pay higher costs for procedures out of desperation.
“Private clinics are actually poaching staff, so we’re going to see more short staff at these hospitals,” Richer said.
“They just don’t have enough staff to keep up with it while the private clinics are going to be operating and making profits for these people who own the private clinics.”
While the procedures being moved to private clinics are still being covered by OHIP, Richer says it comes at a much higher cost to the taxpayer.
She says it’s hard to see a place in Ontario’s healthcare system for these clinics to co-exist with the public system as we know it, and she says it’s a slippery slope towards having a totally privatized system.
“We used to be able to go to the hospital to receive physio that is completely now all contracted out,” Richer said.
“People used to go to and utilize the hospitals to utilize lab services now that is all contracted out to private corporations. So, you know, once it’s gone, it’s gone and it’ll be really hard for us to get it back.”
The Ford government maintains that it is investing in the public healthcare system, while also opening up access to alternative options for Ontarians.
In a statement from Ministry of Health spokesperson Hannah Jensen, the Director of Communications says Ontario has increased investment across the hospital sector by 4% for two consecutive years, and changes have led to 80 percent of people receiving surgeries they need within clinically recommended target times.
“Since 2018, we have increased the healthcare budget by over 31%, investing over $85 billion into the system this year alone,” Jensen’s statement reads.
“We are getting shovels in the ground for over 50 hospital development projects across the province and have added 49 new MRI machines and 50 CT machines at hospitals across the province. This is in addition to the nearly $1 billion to support the innovative ideas of hospitals to make it faster and easier to access surgeries and procedures.”
CUPE-OCHU are continuing the “Trojan Horse” tour through the end of November, trying to convey to the public that the privatization of healthcare should be the number one issue in what could be a springtime provincial election.
