(April 28, 2026) By: Pascal Hogue, Windsor Star<\/p>\n
‘When it came to the Green Belt scandal, that was uncovered because of freedom of information,’ Windsor MPP says at protest.<\/em><\/p>\n Around 100 Windsor-Essex residents joined thousands across the province in community protests on the weekend targeting the provincial government\u2019s privatization of some health-care services and other recent decisions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n Local protesters also expressed their opposition to the Ford government\u2019s recent cuts to post-secondary student (OSAP) funding and changes to the province\u2019s freedom-of-information laws at a gathering in front of the office of MPP Andrew Dowie (PC \u2014 Windsor-Tecumseh) on Saturday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n \u201cThe privatization is killing a health-care system that has slowly been cut for the last 10, 20 years,\u201d Patrick Hannon, co-chair of the Windsor-Essex Health Coalition, told the Star.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n Staffing agencies \u201ccost up to three times as much as if we would just pay a decent wage to the staff in the hospitals,\u201d Hannon said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n In response to emailed questions, Dowie told the Star that the province is facing \u201csignificant 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n \u201cLocally, hospitals have told me directly that they are not using agency nurses,\u201d Dowie wrote. \u201cThe Ontario government supports strong guardrails and transparency for agencies, including reporting on fees, billing and pay practices.\u201d<\/p>\n Protesters voiced opposition to the province\u2019s announcements of nearly $300 million for private health-care clinics to address surgery backlogs.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n \u201cThe 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\u2019t take them, because they\u2019re too risky,\u201d Hannon said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n \u201cSo 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Hannon said residents were demonstrating to hold Ford and Dowie accountable for the government\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople did not vote for them to go and harm health care, nor to privatize it,\u201d Hannon said. \u201cThe Ford government has been making policy and legislation changes and not allowing the public to be able to review them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve been bypassing committees and public scrutiny in order to just fast-track all of this legislation and the policies.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n In response to a question about community diagnostic and surgical centres, Dowie wrote: \u201cOur objective is to reduce wait times while protecting publicly funded care \u2013 services are accessed with an OHIP card, not a credit card.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n Dowie pointed to Windsor Surgical Centre\u2019s partnership with Windsor Regional Hospital and Windsor\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n Windsor-Essex was one of seven communities holding protests led by the Ontario Health Coalition Saturday, organizers said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n The weekend demonstrators also expressed discontent with the Ford government\u2019s amendments to the province\u2019s freedom-of-information laws, which were included in Bill 97, Ontario\u2019s 2026 budget, that was passed Thursday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n \u201cIf 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,\u201d MPP Lisa Gretzky (NDP\u2014 Windsor West) told the crowd.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n \u201cThey would have asked the public what they wanted. They didn\u2019t. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n