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Around 100 Windsor-Essex residents joined thousands across the province in community protests on the weekend targeting the provincial government’s privatization of some health-care services and other recent decisions.
Windsor protest targets Ford government health privatization, freedom of information limits
Posted: April 29, 2026
(April 28, 2026) By: Pascal Hogue, Windsor Star
‘When it came to the Green Belt scandal, that was uncovered because of freedom of information,’ Windsor MPP says at protest.
Local protesters also expressed their opposition to the Ford government’s recent cuts to post-secondary student (OSAP) funding and changes to the province’s freedom-of-information laws at a gathering in front of the office of MPP Andrew Dowie (PC — Windsor-Tecumseh) on Saturday.
“The privatization is killing a health-care system that has slowly been cut for the last 10, 20 years,” Patrick Hannon, co-chair of the Windsor-Essex Health Coalition, told the Star.
Hannon said the province has spent $950 million in the past year on for-profit agencies to address hospital staffing shortages which he said have been the result of chronic underfunding to the public health care system.
Staffing agencies “cost up to three times as much as if we would just pay a decent wage to the staff in the hospitals,” Hannon said.
In response to emailed questions, Dowie told the Star that the province is facing “significant health human resources pressures, particularly in rural and northern communities and our focus is on ensuring availability of care while building a stable, permanent workforce so hospitals rely less on agency staffing over time.
“Locally, hospitals have told me directly that they are not using agency nurses,” Dowie wrote. “The Ontario government supports strong guardrails and transparency for agencies, including reporting on fees, billing and pay practices.”
Protesters voiced opposition to the province’s announcements of nearly $300 million for private health-care clinics to address surgery backlogs.
In June 2025, the province announced it was spending $155 million on 57 new private health-care clinics which it said would connect more than 1.2 million people to specialized MRI scans, CT scans and gastrointestinal endoscopy services.
In December, the Ford government announced it was investing an additional $125 million over two years for four new private orthopedic surgery clinics to reduce knee and hip replacement surgery wait times.
“The problem with the private clinics is that anybody with complications, such as diabetes, or any other issues that would complicate their primary case, private clinics won’t take them, because they’re too risky,” Hannon said.
“So that leaves all of the risky patients to still stay in line at the public system, and the private system is draining staff from our public system, and so there are fewer people to actually perform the more difficult procedures and surgeries that are lined up.”
Hannon said residents were demonstrating to hold Ford and Dowie accountable for the government’s actions.
“People did not vote for them to go and harm health care, nor to privatize it,” Hannon said. “The Ford government has been making policy and legislation changes and not allowing the public to be able to review them.
“They’ve been bypassing committees and public scrutiny in order to just fast-track all of this legislation and the policies.”
In response to a question about community diagnostic and surgical centres, Dowie wrote: “Our objective is to reduce wait times while protecting publicly funded care – services are accessed with an OHIP card, not a credit card.”
Dowie pointed to Windsor Surgical Centre’s partnership with Windsor Regional Hospital and Windsor’s approval as one of four sites in the province to provide publicly funded hip and knee replacements as part of the $125-million, two-year expansion.
Windsor-Essex was one of seven communities holding protests led by the Ontario Health Coalition Saturday, organizers said.
The weekend demonstrators also expressed discontent with the Ford government’s amendments to the province’s freedom-of-information laws, which were included in Bill 97, Ontario’s 2026 budget, that was passed Thursday.
The changes exempt records held by the premier, cabinet ministers, and their staff from public disclosure and apply retroactively to 40 years of freedom-of-information requests.
“If they were proud of that legislation, they would have brought that forward separately, and we would have had debate, and we would have had a committee,” MPP Lisa Gretzky (NDP— Windsor West) told the crowd.
“They would have asked the public what they wanted. They didn’t. They rolled it into a budget bill. And then they called an emergency night sitting in the legislature to debate that legislation, that bill, in the dark, when they thought most people would not be looking.”
In response to a question about the freedom-of-information changes in Bill 97, Dowie told the Star the legislation “brings Ontario in line with federal and provincial approaches that protect Cabinet confidentiality, while continuing to ensure transparency, accountability, and oversight.”
“Courts have consistently recognized the importance of Cabinet confidentiality, including the Supreme Court of Canada. Freedom‑of‑information access to government operations, spending, and delivery continues to remain in place.”
Dowie added that Bill 97 “was vital to support as it delivered the first construction funding for the new Fancsy Family Hospital, allowing our project to move forward.”
But Gretzky told demonstrators Saturday that, “When it came to the Green Belt scandal, that was uncovered because of freedom of information. The court ordered the premier to release his cellphone records specifically for the Green Belt dealings.
“So when the premier tells you, the public … that he’s trying to protect your privacy, for anyone that’s called him or texted him, that’s bull—-,” she said.
“The only reason that this government is changing the freedom-of-information access laws is because they are trying to protect themselves.”
