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Kingston Health Coalition rallies to prevent the privatization of health services
Posted: March 23, 2026
(March 23, 2026) By: Bill Hall, The Kingston Whig Standard
Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford is privatizing public hospitals and is allowing private clinics to charge patients thousands of dollars for essential care, claimed the coalition, and said this action is in direct violation of the Canadian Health Act.
A snowstorm didn’t stop the Kingston Health Coalition from demonstrating on the steps of Kingston and the Islands Liberal member of Parliament Mark Gerretsen’s office to demand a meeting to call for the federal government to enforce the Canada Health Act.
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The coalition partnered with the Kingston branch of Seniors Call for Action Now (SCAN), an environmental advocacy group, at the demonstration on Friday.
Ross Sutherland, chair of the Ontario Health Coalition and co-chair of the Kingston Health Coalition, said that both organizations have been trying to get a meeting with the MP since October, claiming they have sent multiple letters.
“We’ve received replies, notes acknowledging the letters, but we never got a meeting,” Sutherland said. “However, when we sent the press release out about today’s protest first thing Wednesday morning, by 4 o’clock in the afternoon I had a message from Gerretsen’s office saying, ‘We’d love to meet with you.’ So, I guess we will meet eventually, but there is no date set. He is on holidays right now.”
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The coalition wants Gerretsen to support the fight against health-care privatization and commit to bringing this issue back to his caucus in Ottawa.
In a press release on Wednesday, the Ontario Health Coalition stated that the threat to the future of public health care across the country “is at an all-time high.”
Sutherland said Canadians are facing “probably the biggest threats we’ve ever had” to the health-care system.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford is privatizing public hospitals and allowing private clinics to charge patients thousands of dollars for essential care, the coalition claimed, stating that this action directly violates the Canada Health Act.
According to the press release, the Ontario government’s own numbers indicate that its latest set of private clinics, some of which are essentially hospitals — and some chain-owned — aim to redirect 1.2 million patients away from public hospitals.
“They’re moving a lot of services out of hospitals. They’re paying these outside agencies and clinics more to provide the same services, essentially creating a two tier health-care system,” Sutherland said. “They’re breaking the system apart to include a community system and a hospital system, and the community system is going to cost a whole lot more because it’s run by for-profit companies.”
While the government is giving hundreds of millions of dollars more to private clinics, it has pushed the majority of public hospitals into deficits in a direct transfer of public resources, the release stated.
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 health care protection laws.
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Sutherland said it isn’t just Ontario’s health care that’s in trouble. He pointed to Alberta’s recent changes and said, “Ontario isn’t far behind.”
“They’ve just passed a law, which is going to allow private insurance companies to pay for essential health services, which is a clear violation of the Canada Health Act,” Sutherland said. “What that means is that if you go to your doctor in Alberta, the doctor can say to you, ‘Have you got money to pay for this, or have you got insurance?’ And if you refuse, they can say, ‘Well, we won’t see you. You’ll have to go somewhere else.’ ”
After passing legislation to privatize hospitals, the United Conservative Party — under the leadership of Premier Danielle Smith in Alberta — passed Bill 11 in December.
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The coalition claimed this new law creates the legal framework to privatize health care, ending single-tier health care as a national project, enabling doctors to charge patients directly for health care and bill the public health system at the same time.
Sutherland stated that Alberta’s motives reflect an admiration for the U.S. model of a “free market,” while Ontario’s motivation, he said, is a little more complicated.
“Ford does believe in a free market, but at the same time, I think he’s got pretty close ties to a lot of the doctors who are setting up these private clinics,” Sutherland said. “I think that there’s some of that going on in Ontario.”
Sutherland emphatically warned that this move to “gut the health-care system and privatize it” will spread unless the federal government does something about it.
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“We already have two provinces that are clearly violating the Canada Health Act,” Sutherland said. “This federal act should ensure that we all get the essential medical care we need, when we need it, without having to pay.”
Sutherland urged Canada to impose strict penalties on these provinces that are in violation of the act.
“They need to negotiate them back on board or issue stiff financial penalties, which do exist and are significant,” he said.
SCAN Kingston is still waiting for its meeting with Gerretsen as well.
SCAN Kingston’s Nancy Nicol, also on the national council for SCAN, said, “We are experiencing the impact of climate change now,” at the demonstration on Wednesday.
“Until we lower emissions, climate change will continue to get worse,” Nicol said. “Meanwhile, the federal government is doubling down on more fossil fuel development, more liquefied natural gas, and talk of more pipelines.”
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Nicol said another major concern is the government’s cutback on “green initiatives.”
“Under the former liberal government, under (Justin) Trudeau, there were greener home loans and green loan programs for municipalities like Kingston,” she said. “Individuals and cities need support to retrofit their homes or public buildings like hospitals, schools and so on to deal with climate change, but there is no support for this coming from the federal government anymore.”
The Canada Greener Homes Loan was a federal initiative providing interest-free financing to help homeowners improve energy efficiency.
The Green Municipal Fund provided loans and grants for sustainable municipal projects.
However, as of October 1, 2025, both programs were closed to new applications.
Gerretsen was unavailable for comment.
