Major protests on Ontario Legislature's opening: Thousands to oppose Ford's hospital privatization

TORONTO, Ontario and ALGOMA, Ontario and DRYDEN, Ontario and THUNDER BAY, Ontario, Sept. 21, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The people of Ontario have built up our local public hospitals and their services over 100 years. For more than 50 years, for-profit hospitals have been banned in our province. Now, the Ford government is dismantling our local public hospitals in a concerted effort to privatize them, warns the Ontario Health Coalition which is planning a major protest on Monday, the day the Legislature opens. There will be a second protest Tuesday for Jewish communities as the Ford government set the Legislature's opening day on Yom Kippur.

When & Where: Monday September 25 at 12 pm on the lawn at Queen's Park outside the Ontario Legislature
Algoma: Outside the Sault Area Hospital at Lukenda Dr. at 12 Noon
Dryden: Outside MPP Greg Rickford's office, 439 Government St. at 11:30 a.m. CST (Dryden time)
Thunder Bay: Mini Queen's Park at 435 South James St. at 12 pm

Yom Kippur alternate: Tuesday September 26 at 12 pm on the lawn at Queen's Park outside the Ontario Legislature

SIZE OF THE CROWD:
The Health Coalition has approximately 70 buses converging on Queen's Park at noon on Monday and more being added daily. Those thousands of people will be joined by thousands more from Toronto. In addition, there are the events across the North.

BACKGROUND:
In January, Ford announced his plans to privatize the core services from Ontario's public hospitals. Tens of thousands of surgeries and diagnostics are slated to be moved to for-profit day hospitals and clinics if the public does not stop Ford's plan. They are also proceeding with widescale privatization across health care. While local public hospitals in Ontario are in crisis, the Ford government is repeatedly underspending the health care budget, worsening the staffing crisis, and forcing unprecedented emergency and other critical hospital service closures across Ontario. At the same time, they are shifting hundreds of millions of public dollars into expanding private for-profit health care.

It is, warns the Health Coalition, the most aggressive push to for-profit privatization of our health care and two-tier medicare ever. Currently, the Ford government is:

• Privatizing public hospitals' core services including surgeries and diagnostics
• permanently closing essential public hospital services like emergency departments and urgent care centres,
• privatizing our nurses and health professionals,
• privatizing primary care to chain for-profit corporations,
• allowing online doctors to charge patients for access to their services, and
• privatizing long-term care for the next 30-years.

Thousands of Ontarians are heading to Queen's Park to set the tone on opening day of the Legislature. The Coalition has vowed to use every tool available to the public to stop Ford's health privatization schemes.

For more information: Natalie Mehra, executive director, 416-230-6402 (cell).