![\"Ontario](\"https:\/\/dynamicmedia.zuza.com\/zz\/m\/original_\/f\/7\/f7e53881-1ceb-4891-8044-1599f035e246\/P1220661___Super_Portrait.jpg\")
<\/p>\nMar 14, 2019<\/p>\n
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Ontario Health Coalition’s Doug Allan urged about 60 people at a town hall meeting March 13 at the central library to attend an April 30 rally at Queen’s Park to stop the government’s proposed health care legislation. – Kevin Werner\/Metroland<\/em><\/p>\n Ontario\u2019s health care workers, unions, residents, and municipal politicians should be preparing for a fight against a plan by Premier Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservative government that will privatize health care and end local control, according to the Ontario Health Coalition.<\/p>\n Doug Allan, a board member of the Ontario Health Coalition, and a health care researcher for CUPE, told about 60 people during what was billed as a town hall meeting March 13 at the Hamilton Central Library, the PC restructuring plan does nothing to improve health care.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what they are going to do \u2013 privatization,\u201d said Allan. \u201cPatient safety and quality of care is secondary to their primary goal.\u201d<\/p>\n He said the Ford government is taking a page from the former Mike Harris PC government when it proposed \u201crestructuring\u201d health care that resulted in hospital closures, no long-term care beds and privatized home care.<\/p>\n Allan said that resulted in a 30,000-person wait list for long-term care facilities, and hallway medicine.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to build up all three aspects of health care (hospital, long-term care, home care),\u201d he said. \u201cThis is what they are refusing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Allan said the government is already rushing to create its \u201csuper agency\u201d by quickly eliminating the local health integration networks, creating one board at Bay and Wellesley streets in downtown Toronto to be held in secret.<\/p>\n \u201cWe get talk of efficiencies,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t get talk of care.\u201d<\/p>\n Health Minister Christine Elliot announced in February the health care transformation, calling for the elimination of \u201cduplicative\u201d management and administrative work. She did not say if jobs would be lost.<\/p>\n During a wide-ranging news conference March 13, Ford said the government will continue to consolidate 14 local health integration networks, and 20 provincial health agencies, including Cancer Care Ontario, eHealth and several other agencies into a new organization called Ontario Health. He said the people who will lose their jobs will be the people at the LHINs, and \u201cCEOs that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n During last year\u2019s election campaign, Ford promised many times not a single job would be lost.<\/p>\n The Ontario health super agency held its first meeting behind closed doors recently. In addition, more than 200 board members of the 20 smaller agencies that are being absorbed by Ontario Health have been let go.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n