The Ontario Council of Hospital Unions and the Canadian Union of Public Employees calls legislation introduced at Queen's Park today a serious threat to patient care.
The Groups represent over 80,000 health care workers and warn of escalating actions across the province to call on the government to reconsider radical plans to cut, close, restructure and privatize Ontario's health system.
CUPE will work with the Ontario Health Coalition, community groups and other labour unions to push back the government restructuring plan.
CUPE claims the Conservative government wants to make unprecedented changes to how the public health system operates and delivers patient care
The union warns of services moved from small towns to large urban centres, mega hospitals and another level of unnecessary bureaucracy.
The council claims the legislation will create a super agency with extraordinary power to privatize hospital services, or effectively close hospitals by eliminating services.
There are concerns the plan will create mega health care organizations that will effectively swallow up small and rural hospitals, community health care, and social services, with little consultation.
"They have personally soldiered on through decades of downsizing, underfunding, overwork and cuts to both patient care and staffing. Hallway medicine cannot be solved by reducing hospital capacity and privatizing services. Hospital workers will mobilize to protect the public's access to not-for-profit care, and we believe Ontarians will join us," says Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions.
"There is no time to waste. This dangerous Ford government reboot of our public health system must be stopped before patient care and safety fall victim to the gaps, holes and pitfalls this massive overhaul will create," says CUPE President Fred Hahn, who compares the scope of the potential upheaval to the last time a PC government closed hospitals and restructured the health system in the late 1990s.
"It was a failure then. A failure that cost $3.2 billion more to carry out than it saved. Mike Harris eventually had to dramatically increase health care funding and hospital capacity – the cuts were just too deep. After 15 years of real cuts to our health care services and failed experiments with privatization, we cannot allow more cuts and more privatization," says Hahn.
