BLOG: A personal note on the political context: Ford, privatization & an appeal

Posted: October 22, 2025

(October 22, 2025)

As you know, the Ford government has been extremely tough to move, particularly given the political context. While Donald Trump is attacking Canada, people (rightfully) want our governments to do well. Doug Ford has been able to campaign against Trump, ignoring his opposition in Ontario and eclipsing other issues. While people are concerned about health care, they don’t necessarily see it is under immediate threat (even though it is) and they do see that our jobs and economy is under imminent threat. Ford, and other political leaders have cast the private sector as the economy, even though a huge portion of our jobs and economic activity rely on the public sector also. Traditional media lead with Ford’s headlines, even when they are not the truth. It is a very tough state of affairs in which to try to make health care issues rise to the top of the agenda and to stop a majority government that is deeply committed to privatization, however disingenuous their public statements.

I want you to know that even in this difficult context we have succeeded in advancing key issues to the top of the political agenda and slowing down privatization very significantly. You will recall that Ford has announced his hospital privatization plans over and over again. (He doesn’t say it that way but that is exactly what his government is doing.) Even so, they have moved forward much more slowly than they planned. Despite their attempts to shift funding from public/non-profit to private/for-profit services, in fact, we have forced a rollback on the use of for-profit agency staffing and they have not been able to spend the allocated funding that they wanted to spend on privatizing hospitals. It is not a victory. Not at all. We are, however, slowing them down, and in some ways pushing them back.

With this letter I wanted to share with you a little bit of an update about what we have accomplished and to make an urgent appeal. We are behind in our memberships and donations to this point this year. We are doing everything we can, and we hate to ask. I only send out email appeals a few times a year, and as infrequently as possible. If you cannot donate, please don’t worry. If you can, please consider it.

Regardless, I wanted to share with you what is happening (below).

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In May, we held a “Day of Action” at the Legislature for those communities with hospitals at risk of closure. We filled the Public Galleries and an overflow room with several hundred people, held a press conference with people from towns where emergency departments or all inpatient beds are closed, or where hospitals are completely overwhelmed with patients and do not have the resources to provide for them. We have repeatedly made this a media issue and our database of closures is used by parliamentarians and media across Ontario.

In June, we were featured prominently on a major front-page story in the Business Section of the Toronto Star with patients who have been illegally extra-billed in private clinics. We submitted formal complaints to the federal and provincial governments to get them to enforce the Canada Health Act in Ontario and reimburse patients who were charged for medically necessary services. The Minister of Health was forced on the record in Question Period as she was peppered with question after question about their private clinics.

In July, we held a large shadow summit and car cavalcade during the meeting of the Council of the Federation. Almost two hundred people made the trek to Huntsville where the Premiers and Prime Minister were meeting for a day-long Shadow Summit. It was excellent. We had speakers and attendees from community groups, local coalitions, labour, First Nations and Indigenous peoples, academics, doctors and health professionals’ organizations. The quality of the speakers and the content was very high. A couple of hundred people came out to the protests outside the Council of the Federation the next day. Health care was not on the agenda at the beginning but we got it onto the agenda before the end of the Premiers’ and Prime Minister’s meeting.

In September, we held a weekend educational, with courses on community organizing; Public Medicare and privatization; public services, taxation and equity; public speaking; and a train-the-trainer course. It was our inaugural weekend educational and virtually everyone who came loved it. We will be doing it every year going forward.

Next week we are planning a Day of Action at the Legislature in which we plan to fill the Public Galleries again, pressure the Premier and Health Minister during Question Period and hold a press conference with the patients who made formal complaints about private clinics extra-billing and charging patients thousands of dollars for surgeries in violation of the Canada Health Act and Ontario’s medicare laws. We plan to pour on the pressure and we will not relent until the Ford government stops their privatization push.

We also have a mass petition underway and are planning another major outreach initiative to reach every health care worker (health professional, nurse, doctor, support staff) with leaflets about why privatization is devastating our health care and impacting their work. We will also have a major campaign to reach the general public.

If you are able to help this work, the most useful thing is to donate monthly. I give monthly (my mother does too!) and so do many of my friends. Some groups donate a monthly membership for their members. We appreciate the monthly donations because they mean stable, reliable cashflow. In addition, any memberships and donations — one time, annual — all of them make a big difference. They mean that we can say we represent a meaningful number of people and I think you can see how much we do with the funds we are able to raise.

Can you give $5 or $15 or $50 or more per month? Or can you become a member or give a donation? We really appreciate it, and please, no pressure if you cannot.

The primary weakness of the Ford government is that the public in Ontario overwhelmingly oppose health care privatization. They also believe the Ford government is doing a poor or very poor job on public health care. Our strength is that we have an enormous Health Coalition – the largest in the country – with a deep commitment to building a fightback that cannot be ignored. The polls show our impact. Nowhere in Canada is the support for public health care and opposition to its privatization as strong as in our province. That is our work, achieved with you through mass public outreach and education, visible events and community organizing. It really matters.

Please know how profoundly grateful we are for your support and active engagement in the Health Coalition. We hope you are proud of the work we do. We are certainly proud to do it with you. Thank you.