Sault Area Hospital should ‘speak out’ against parking fee hike: Ontario Health Coalition

Posted: December 10, 2025

(December 9, 2025) By: Jeffrey Ougler, The Sault Star

But public health-care lobby group acknowledges rates part of provincial directive

Sault Area Hospital is not necessarily to blame for its upcoming parking rate hike, Ontario Health Coalition contends.

Afterall, the Ontario government requires hospitals to collect such fees as revenue.

“I with (SAH) would choose otherwise,” Al Dupuis, Ontario Health Coalition’s Algoma District representative, told The Sault Star. “But because of what the provincial government demands of them in terms of acquiring some of their revenue in order to cover their costs, I guess we can’t directly blame the hospital for making that choice.”

But silence is not always golden, Dupuis said.

“Perhaps (SAH) might want to speak out more strongly against the practice,” he added.

Late last week, the region’s principal health-care facility announced it was, early in the new year, ushering in its first parking rate hike in a decade.

Effective Dec. 31, the per exit fee will increase from $6 to $7.50 for patients, visitors and the public. On Jan. 1, parking rates will also increase for staff and physicians.

SAH said Ontario hospitals rely on parking fees as a revenue source to supplement government funding, and parking revenues are used both to offset maintenance costs and to generate revenue, supporting “vital” community patient care programs.

As SAH anticipates an overall deficit for a second consecutive year, with a “significant” shortfall projected for fiscal 2025/26, all “efficiency measures and revenue-generating opportunities” are being “actively” evaluated.

This parking rate increase was contemplated for several years but was deferred due to the COVID-19 pandemic and inflationary economic pressures, SAH director of communications and public affairs Brandy Sharp Young told the Sault Star last week.

The Ontario Hospital Parking Directive requires hospitals to apply a standardized calculation to determine the parking rate they are allowed to charge. For SAH, this calculation results in a rate that could be as high as $13 per exit. This amount varies for other hospitals depending on their parking options. SAH said it is implementing an increase that reflects cumulative inflation over the past decade, during which Ono rate adjustments were made. Although the upcoming increase is 25 per cent, it remains below both the maximum rate permitted by the directive and the cumulative inflation over the past 10-year period.

“Ontario hospitals rely on parking fees as a revenue source to supplement government funding,” said Sharp Young, adding parking revenues are used both to offset maintenance costs and to generate revenue, supporting vital community patient care programs.

OHC, which advocates for publicly funded health care while representing more than 500 member organizations and individuals, disagrees. It totally opposes parking costs as such, contending all medical services ought to be provided without user fees.

“The major problems with hospital funding remain, unfortunately in spite of this government’s protestations to the contrary about spending record amounts, they fail to mention always that their record amounts, even now, still don’t keep with the inflation rate,” Dupuis said.

“So, our hospitals are still continuing to face real dollar funding cuts.”

OHC argues 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, the province is shifting hundreds of millions of public dollars into expanding private for-profit health care.

The province disputes this and has told The Sault Star that Ontario leads the country with the highest number of people attached to a primary care provider, the largest physician workforce, and the highest compensation rates.

“The facts speak for themselves,” Ministry of Health spokesperson Hannah Jensen told The Sault Star earlier. “Ontario is proud to have one of the largest publicly funded health-care systems in the world.

Ontario hospitals must publicly post parking revenue. Parking revenue for the fiscal year is posted on SAH’s website. Assuming maintenance costs and parking volumes remain stable, the proposed rates will increase net annual parking revenue by $480,000. Parking revenue is split almost evenly between staff and the public.

Staff and physicians pay the same amount for parking. The staff monthly rate is posted on the hospital’s website, and it is the same as a monthly public pass. The current staff rate is $66.67, and the new rate will be $83.33 monthly. The new rate for physicians will be $1,000 yearly.

A charity that assists SAH cancer patients with parking was “taken back pretty good” when SAH informed it last week of the rate increase.

“It’s not a good news story for us at all,” said Dennis Dinelle, whose late wife, Tracy, adopted an activist role following her 2012 cancer diagnosis, being instrumental in the launch of Tracy’s Dream.

The charity has received some 800 calls so far this year for assistance, marking an ever-increasing demand.

“We’ll have to step up fundraising a little bit to try to get through this,” Dinelle told The Sault Star.

“It’s putting a lot on this charity that so many in the community utilize,” Dinelle added.

The last SAH parking increase was 10 years ago, in January 2016, and the per-exit rate has since remained at $6. The maximum permissible increase under provincial government legislation is $13 per exit.

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