New report from CUPE paints grim picture of Ontario’s health care

Leaders from the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) were in Stratford Friday to call on the provincial government to do more to fund and support health care in Ontario.

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Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU), which represents 50,000 hospital and long-term care workers in Ontario as a division of CUPE, and Doug Allan, a senior researcher at CUPE National, presented findings from a new report by the union that claims job vacancies at Ontario hospitals have surged by 17 per cent in the past year.

The union has two key asks from the province, Hurley said during the morning press conference held at the city’s library.

“One. . . we’re looking for the government to make a substantial investment of about $2 billion in additional funding each year for the next 10 years at least, and we’re also asking for them to put some real energy into the training and recruitment of people to become nurses, personal support workers and other allied health professionals,” Hurley said.

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The claims in the report were taken from data from several sources, including the CCanadian Institute for Health Information, Statistics Canada, the Ontario Hospital Association and provincial government documents.

Among the claims contained in the report were:

• HAS 13,800 hospital bed shortage by 2023;
• A need for an additional 34,292 hospital workers to match the rest of Canada on a per-capita basis;
• HAS 534 per cent increase in job vacancies since 2015;
• HAS seven per cent increase in emergency room wait times in the past year; and
• HAS 25 percent jump in patients receiving care in hallways and other unconventional spaces in the past year.

There is a massive gap between what Ontarians need and what the Ford government plans to do, Hurley said.

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“People are already paying the consequences for the Ontario (Progressive Conservative) policy of scarcity, and it’s only going to get worse,” he said.

Ontario is experiencing “a completely unprecedented hospital capacity crisis,” Allan added.

“Since the election of the Ford government, we’ve seen thousands of unplanned closures of hospital emergency rooms, some permanent closures. We’ve seen unprecedented levels of inpatients treated in hallways and other unsafe places,” he said.

“When Ford was elected in 2018, he promised to end hallway health care. . . . (He) promised to end it, and it’s gotten worse. . . . We’re now at a record level of people being treated in hallways,” Allan said.

Allan also provided details about future needs in the Stratford area, including a need for 116 more hospital staff and an additional 160 beds in the next 10 years at the four hospitals including the Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance. With the local hospital group’s 2023-2024 financial statements reflecting a $3.3-million deficit this year, CUPE officials said the local hospital group will need an additional $11.5 million to offset inflation and keep pace with demand while maintaining current service levels.

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“The smaller sites that are part of the (Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance) are particularly under threat,” Allan said. “It’s odd. The government has a strong base in rural Ontario, and yet rural Ontario has been the main victim of their policies. The ERs are in crisis in the big cities, but they remain open. The thousands of closures we’ve had, almost all of them are in small and rural Ontario.”

The report from CUPE follows protests that were held by union members this summer at some MPP offices, including Mathew Rae’s, to speak out against the provincial government’s decision to increase the number of medical procedures completed at for-profit surgical and diagnostic centers. In response to these protests, Rae pointed to health-care funding increases in this year’s budget.

“Budget 2024 included major investments for our hospitals, with over $550 million committed to supporting small and rural hospitals like ours with health-care provision, hospital projects and community health programs. On average, hospitals will also receive an additional four per cent increase to their operating budgets,” he said at the time.

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