Protests planned over Ford’s push to privatize Ontario hospital services

Posted: December 15, 2025

(December 12, 2025) By: ElliotLakeToday Staff, ElliotLakeToday.com

The Ontario Health Coalition has condemned what it calls a ‘gross misuse’ of taxpayer dollars after the province announced a major shift toward privatizing core hospital services

Ontario’s public hospitals have been pushed into deficit and ordered to find cuts while the Ford government shunts hundreds of millions of public dollars away from them to for-profit clinics, the Ontario Health Coalition warned today on the heels of the province’s announcement of plans to privatize thousands of orthopedic surgeries.

“We have existing operating rooms sitting unused in our local public hospitals because the Ford government refuses to fund them,” said Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition. “In fact, the Ford government is threatening local public hospitals and demanding cuts. Yet, at the same time, the sky is the limit when it comes to private clinics.”

The coalition notes that the Ford government has been paying 20 per cent more for each surgery in private cataract clinics and more than 200 per cent more per surgery to the private hospital for which their former health minister became a lobbyist. The coalition is planning province wide protests to demand the Ford government restore our public funding to our public hospitals and stop their privatization scheme.

Mehra noted that the provincial government delayed increasing surgeries in public hospitals where there is all kinds of existing under-used OR time, instead opting to slow everything down by holding an entire bidding process to invite private corporations to privatize surgeries. Patients have had to wait while the bidding process was done, proposals reviewed, corporations chosen, and now while they set up the capacity to do the operations. All this is unnecessary but for the choice of the Ford government to privatize.

“Let’s get this absolutely clear. The Ford government’s hospital privatization plan is not about wait times, it is about giving public money to private and for-profit corporations to privatize our health care,” Mehra warned. “With this announcement, the Ford government is shifting more than a hundred million dollars in public money away from our public hospitals’ underused operating rooms. It is a gross misuse of public funds. This government has no mandate whatsoever to dismantle and privatize the core services of our public hospitals.”

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