In 2016, before the Ford government was elected 1.3 million Ontarians did not have a family doctor, according to data from Statistics Canada. By July 2024, there were 2.5 million Ontarians without a family doctor, according to the Ontario College of Family Physicians and the numbers are projected to get worse unless the provincial government actually takes action.

Before 2018 when the Ford government was elected, local emergency department closures were so rare as to be almost unheard of. By 2023, the Ontario Health Coalition tracked 1,199 closures of vital local hospital services like emergency departments, birthing units, ICUs and urgent care centres. By 2024, one in five local emergency departments have experienced closures. CBC reports that by the beginning of December the number of emergency department closures had broken all records.

By September 2024, the highest number ever – 2,000 patients on average each day -- were waiting on stretchers in hospital hallways, according to data obtained from the provincial government by Trillium media outlet . This is more than double the number in 2018 when the Ford government took power.

In 2018-19 when the Ford government got elected, 35,000 Ontarians were waiting for long-term care according to the Ontario Legislature's Financial Accountability Office. By November 2023, that number had ballooned to 43,000 waiting for long-term care according to the government's own numbers. That is the highest number ever recorded.

Even while they are in the worst staffing crisis, the worst crisis of overcrowding, the worst crisis of emergency department closures ever, the Ford government set hospital funding at less than the rate of inflation in the most recent budget year (2023 – 24) forcing the majority of Ontario hospitals into deficit.

For the details and source links regarding the Ford government funding hospitals at less than the rate of inflation in the most recent fiscal (financial) year, click on this link and scroll down to Appendix II: https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/quick-facts-analysis-fact-checker-ford-governments-health-care-funding/

The Ford government’s former Health Minister became a lobbyist for a corporation that owns a for-profit hospital after she left office. The Ford government increased funding to that hospital by 278% and is funding them more than double the cost per surgery than our local public hospitals – paid by our taxes.

The for-profit cataract clinics are being funded a facility fee rate of $605 per surgery. In comparison, public hospitals are funded $500 per cataract surgery, up to 21% less than the private clinics get for each surgery.

The waste of public resources is significant. For example, Herzig Eye Institute, a for-profit chain, announced it was given a license to provide 5,000 cataract surgeries per year in Ottawa, yielding more than $3 million in facility fees and $2 million in surgeons’ billings. That contract alone is giving the for-profit company at least $500,000 more per year than a public hospital would receive. That is the just the tip of the iceberg. Some contracts with for-profit clinics are even richer for them, at the expense of the public.  Source: Daly, Tamara Ontario’s private surgical clinics: Cheques but no balances when providing health care The Conversation, February 15, 2023.

The vast majority of our local public hospitals have operating rooms that are sitting unused in evenings and on weekends. Our communities already paid for these ORs and they could be open for use if they had the funding to hire staff and run them. Instead, the Ford government increased funding to private for-profit clinics and hospitals by up to and over 300% while forcing the public hospitals into deficit in order to privatize their services.

The contrast could not be more stark. While public hospitals received real dollar cuts in the most recent financial year, the private clinics (euphemistically called Independent Health Facilities) have been given more than 212% increase since last year, from $38,693,100 in 2022- 23 to $120,693,100 in 2023-24. Their funding more than tripled in one year.

Private for-profit hospitals are outlawed in Ontario. They have been banned since 1971, when the existing private hospitals were grandfathered in, all new ones forbidden, and expansion of the existing ones barred. There are only two remaining private for-profit hospitals in Ontario that do surgeries: Clearpoint (aka the Don Mills Surgical Centre) and the Shouldice Hospital. According to government records, despite the prohibition on expanding for-profit hospitals, during the tenure of the Ford government from fiscal years 2017/18 – 2021/22 the Don Mills Surgical Centre received a 278.2% increase funding and the Shouldice Hospital received a 19% increase in funding. The Clearpoint (Don Mills Surgical), for which Ford’s former Health Minister registered as a lobbyist after leaving her position as Minister, has received the most.

Our Public Medicare laws prohibit extra user fees for patients. OHIP covers all medically needed tests and surgeries and in 2010 the provincial government passed a law to enable fines and even jail time for private clinics and practitioners that repeatedly charge patients illegally for surgeries and diagnostic tests. But elderly patients are being charged record-breaking out-of-pocket fees in private clinics for surgeries and the Ford government is not enforcing the law to stop them. 

Patients have been charged anywhere from $2,000 - $8,000 or more for cataract surgeries - that they should be getting with no charges whatsoever; $2,000 for MRIs; hundreds of dollars for eye measurement tests that are medically unnecessary and many other charges. We have made repeated complaints and documented the proof but the Ford government has done nothing to stop these unlawful and unethical charges imposed on patients by Ford's private clinics. 

For-profit long-term care corporations have benefitted from billions of dollars in contracts with the Ford government to build new and expand their existing long-term care homes rather than using our money to build those homes under public and non-profit ownership and control. Among the biggest winners of government contracts for new beds and redevelopments are the chain corporations with the worst records for death and negligence. The for-profit long-term care industry has many close connections within the Ford government. 

Under the Ford government there has been unprecedented lobbying from for-profit corporations to get laws that benefit themselves, shield themselves from accountability for poor care and get billions in public money to build long-term care homes that they will run for their own profit under new 30-year licenses from the Ford government. 

From Devastating to watch’: Private long-term-care homes have seen some of Ontario’s worst death rates – but Doug Ford’s new funding set them up for decades of profits in the Toronto Star:

"Southbridge alone brought in three [lobbyists] from Earnscliffe Strategy Group, including Alanna Clark, who joined the firm directly from Caroline Mulroney’s office, Rob Leone, a former PC MPP, and Stella Ambler, who is running for a PC nomination in the next election. (Neither Leone nor Clark responded to request for comment. Ambler replied only to say she left Earnscliffe, and lobbying, late last year.)

Arch Capital Corporation, a private equity outfit that has been scooping up long-term-care homes in Ontario for the past four years, hired Carly Luis, a long-time PC staffer...After Luis left to become Health Minister Christine Elliott’s director of communications, Arch replaced her, in April 2021, with Kailey Vokes, Doug Ford’s former director of policy for major projects.

There are more. Omni Health Care, which is owned by private equity heavyweights Hillcore Group, retained, among others, Fraser Macdonald, who played a crucial role in Rob Ford’s mayoral campaign in 2010. Caressant Care hired Patrick Lavelle-Tuns, Ford’s deputy campaign manager in the 2018 leadership run. Amir Remtulla, who is close to both Ford and his chief adviser, is still lobbying for Revera, one of Canada’s largest long-term-care operators. Melissa Lantsman, who ran Ford’s war room in 2018, lobbied for Extendicare.

Even the Ontario Long-Term Care Association (OLTCA) got in the act, hiring Luis, and later, a team of conservative lobbyists from Crestview Strategy, including Andrew Brander, a former Ford government staffer, and Ginny Movat, a longtime federal and provincial conservative activist, and occasional columnist at the National Post."

There are multiple media reports about the connections between Ford's people and these for-profit corporations. For evidence, see the following:

• https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/health-coalition-requests-integrity-commissioner-investigate-political-donations-high-level-personnel-links-between-for-profit-ltc-industry-and-ford-government-prior-to-passage-of-legal-liability-bi/ 
• https://www.thestar.com/news/lobbying/ 
• https://pressprogress.ca/here-are-all-the-corporations-lobbying-doug-ford-to-privatize-and-outsource-parts-of-ontarios-health-care-system/
• https://pressprogress.ca/doug-fords-director-of-pandemic-response-was-a-private-health-lobbyist-for-shoppers-drug-mart/
• https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/ontario-nursing-home-lobbyists-pc-party-donations_ca_5fc53f95c5b63d1b770e8a4d
• https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/more-ford-staffers-private-nursing-home-companies_ca_5edab7c6c5b61875909f5a50
• https://www.readthemaple.com/the-catastrophe-ontario-could-have-avoided/
• The Ford government’s former Health Minister became a lobbyist for a corporation that owns a for-profit hospital after she left office. The Ford government increased funding to that hospital by 278% and is funding them more than double the cost per surgery than our local public hospitals – paid by our taxes.
• https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/release-ford-government-expanded-for-profit-hospital-in-violation-of-the-law-and-while-lying-to-the-public-health-coalition-and-democracy-watch-call-for-concrete-measures-to-protect-the-public-inter/

Ontario has the fewest hospital beds per person of any province in the country. Our province has downsized our hospitals beyond anywhere else, leaving patients on stretchers in hallways and creating enormous pressure to move patients out when they are too frail and unstable to make room for new patients coming in.   

Ontario funds our hospitals at the lowest rate per person in the country.

Ontario funds our public health care at the lowest rate per person of any province in the country.