Owen Sound rally held to keep focus on health-care privatization

Posted: September 29, 2025

(September 28, 2025) By: Rob Gowan, The Sun Times

A small group gathered on the steps of Owen Sound city hall on Saturday to rally against privatization of health-care in Ontario.

About 25 people took part in the Grey Bruce Health Coalition event, some holding signs in support of public healthcare and against privatization of services. Speakers shared details about their own experiences with the health-care system and information on the state of health care nationally, provincially and locally.

The rally was one of two held by the local affiliate of the Ontario Health Coalition, with another rally taking place in Kincardine. Similar rallies were planned for other communities across the province.

Brenda Scott, who started the Grey Bruce Health Coalition along with Norah Beatty almost four years ago, said that it is important to continue to spread their message.

“We have to keep hammering away and keep trying to get people involved in this issue, because it is not only health care for us, but it is health care for our grandchildren and our communities,” said Scott, who chairs the coalition. “We really have to keep on it.”

Scott said the issue isn’t always top of mind of people because privatization is slowly creeping into the system.

“I noticed it during the pandemic there were these little changes that were made, and we all thought, there is this big crisis and this might help,” said Scott. “But then you realize if we keep going in that direction, this is where we are moving to and it is destroying our public health-care system.”

Scott said she thinks they are making a difference each time they raise the issues and bring them to the attention of others.

“Every time we get somebody who steps forward and joins us or sends us a letter it matters,” she said. “Every contact matters.”

She said they need to do more to reach out to younger Canadians and make them aware of the issue.

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“I remember when I was in my 20s and I thought I was going to live forever. We didn’t sit around and talk about hospitals and such, we were busy,” she said. “But the health-care system is there for their children as well and they will eventually need the health-care system.”

Grey Bruce Health Coalition chair Brenda Scott looks on as Norah Beatty, a past co-chair of the group, speaks during a rally at Owen Sound city hall on Saturday, September 27, 2025. (Rob Gowan The Sun Times) Photo by Rob Gowan The Sun Times /Postmedia Network

Much of the coalition’s concern has been centred on health-care changes made by Doug Ford’s Ontario Conservative government beginning in 2023.

That year, Ontario passed a health-care reform bill to allow more private clinics to offer certain publicly funded surgeries and procedures to clear long wait lists.

The number of cataract surgeries at private clinics has increased, and has expanded into routine hip and knee replacements.

In early July, the province announced it was investing $125 million to add up to 20,000 orthopedic surgeries at community surgical centres across the province over two years.

A week prior, the government announced $155 million to add 57 community surgical and diagnostic centres that it said would connect over 1.2 million people to MRI and CT scans and GI endoscopy services.

The government said the moves would reduce wait times.

“While Ontario has the shortest surgical wait times of any province in Canada, we’re working to deliver even more connected and convenient care for people, when and where they need it,” Deputy Premier and Minister of Health Sylvia Jones said in a statement at the time. “That’s why our government is taking bold action to protect Ontario and boost access to publicly funded surgeries and diagnostic imaging so families can conveniently access the care they need sooner and closer to home.”

Locally, the coalition has been also on the erosion of the health-care system, particularly the reduction of emergency room hours at the hospitals in Chesley and Durham, and the relocation of the inpatient beds from the hospital in Durham last year. The Chesley ED operates weekdays from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., while the Durham ED is open seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Scott said Saturday it is not only the provincial government they need to keep the pressure on.

The group had a petition available to sign calling on the Government of Canada to uphold and enforce the Canada Health Act.

The coalition says that Ontario’s Conservative government is violating the act through its actions of redirecting surgeries from public hospitals to private, for-profit clinics. It says that is leading to patients being extra billed, charged user fees and being manipulated into paying more at private MRI/CT and cataract surgery clinics.

The Canada Health Act bans user fees and extra billing of patients and requires that medical care be funded by taxes and provided without financial barriers.

“We realize now we have to put the focus on the federal government as well,” said Scott. “We went to Huntsville when all the premiers met in July and we had a chance to meet others from every province and a couple of territories, and it is the same all over the stories we heard.

“Especially the discounting of rural communities. There are rural communities across the country that are suffering with these health-care issues.”

Scott said there are cases of Ontarians who are accumulating significant medical debt by spending thousands of dollars on procedures like cataract surgeries, which should have been paid by OHIP.

“Medical debt was something we thought of as an American phenomenon,” Scott said. “But it isn’t. Not anymore.”

Karen Gventer, a former NDP candidate and social activist, spoke about her own recent experience with overcrowding at a Niagara Falls hospital, where her husband spent more than 48 hours in the ER because there were no ward beds available.

She said hallways were full of patients, and staff had to move patients on stretchers out of the way when taking them for tests.

“To be fair, they are opening another larger hospital in a couple of years, but in the meantime Niagara Falls is dealing with this overcrowding,” Gventer said, noting that her husband is doing OK and was able to attend Saturday’s rally.

Gventer took aim at the provincial government, citing a recent report on Ontario’s hospitals called Hollowed Out by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Gventer said the report states that the use of private clinics is shifting the most simplest and profitable procedures out of hospitals into private investor-owned facilities.

“As hospital workloads increase because for-profit facilities serve the least complex patients, hospital financial and staffing challenges are likely to intensify,” Gventer said.

The report is also critical of the province’s use of for-profit staffing agencies, providing a detailed accounting of provincial and regional hospital spending on such agencies relative to hospital employee staff.

“The impact of the hospital funding and staffing crisis and the hollowing out of the public sector workforce by private agencies is that Ontario has one of the most under-capacity hospital systems in the industrialized world,” she said.

Norah Beatty, former coalition co-chair, urged everyone to stay informed about the issues in the health-care system and talk to others about them.

“We have to look past the government spin, we have to find the crack in the wall where we can get in with the realities about what is really happening. We have to use collective pressure so they do not ignore us,” Beatty said.

“This is an issue that will affect you and your families for the rest of your lives, because once public health care is gone and we lose it — and we are losing more and more every time — we won’t get it back.”

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