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Health Workers Demonstrate Against the Privatization of the Heath Service We Now Have
Posted: March 19, 2026
(March 18, 2026) By: Gazette Staff, Burlington Gazette
The Ontario Hospital Coalition has been fighting the good fight to keep health care services public.
Hundreds came out to their call on the federal Liberal MPs to help stop Alberta & Ontario’s privatization,.
On Monday March 16, people across Canada rallied outside the offices of their local Liberal Members of Parliament in a nationwide Day of Action to warn that public health care for all in Canada is under unprecedented threat and to call on the federal government to enforce the Canada Health Act. The Ontario Health Coalition held seven events in Ontario in Ajax, Hamilton, London, Peterborough, Toronto and Waterloo — and one more is coming up in Kingston on Friday, March 20 at the Hon Mark Gerretsen’s office at 234 Concession St.
The Key Issues:
Alberta’s Danielle Smith government has launched an unprecedented frontal assault on the Canada Health Act to end single tier Public Medicare. The law brings in private for-profit health insurance like they have in the U.S., enables physicians to charge patients for care, brings in queue jumping for the wealthy pushing everyone else back in line, and more. It is not “like” U.S. style health care. It is U.S. private health care, and for-profit health care interests are lined up to cash in.
Closer to home, Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford is privatizing public hospitals and is allowing private clinics to charge patients thousands for needed care. By the government’s own numbers, their latest set of private clinics (some of which are essentially hospitals, a number of which are chain owned) aim to redirect 1.2 million patients away from public hospitals. While the government is giving hundreds of millions more to private clinics, it has pushed the majority of public hospitals into deficit in a direct transfer of public resources. Patients are already being charged more than $4,000 per eye in the private cataract surgery clinics that Ford brought in, in violation of our medicare protection laws.
