THUNDER BAY — Healthcare workers are taking to the streets to demand that the province increase funding to hospitals.
On Thursday afternoon, over 150 members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) rallied outside of MPP Kevin Holland’s office in protest.
“More than 70 per cent of Ontario’s hospitals are facing budget deficits as provincial funding fails to keep pace with population needs,” CUPE wrote in a press release.
“We’re having rallies outside of many constituencies of conservative members of provincial parliament to try to hold them to the promises they’ve made, like to end hallway medicine, to clear the surgical waitlists and to fund hospitals adequately,” said Michael Hurley, president of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU-CUPE) in an interview with Newswatch.
OCHU represents 5,000 hospital workers in Northwestern Ontario and 50,000 across the province.
Hurley said northern Ontario emergency rooms are routinely being closed in smaller communities and said that the reliance on nursing agencies to staff hospitals, such as in Kenora, is unhealthy.
The population in the Northwest is older than in the rest of the province, and there is a large Indigenous population without access to proper housing or clean water, Hurley said.
“Getting into hospital is challenging, or people are sent home when they’re still ill, or they can’t get their surgery done in a timely way, or they wait on a hallway stretcher for a bed,” Hurley said.
“(Thunder Bay) is a regional trauma centre and people feed into here for major surgeries and major treatments, cancer care, etc. from across the Northwest. These things apply pressure on your community.”
Jules Tupker, president of the Thunder Bay and District Health Coalition (formerly Thunder Bay Health Coalition) said that their organization has been expanding into the Northwest to spread the message and show healthcare workers that they’re not alone.
“There’s so many of us that think alike, and it’s just a matter of bringing everyone together to raise their voices” he said.
The public can see that there’s not enough healthcare funding when they go to the hospitals or into long-term care and find that there are not enough staff, he said.
“In Southern Ontario there are more and more private hospitals starting up and taking money away from public hospitals, public healthcare and providing money for private healthcare” he said.
If the government does not hear the people’s voices, the phenomenon will spread to the Northwest, Tupker said.
Holland was not in Thunder Bay, but responded to CUPE’s rally in an email, saying that last year the provincial government provided a four per cent increase in base hospital funding on top of existing funding and an additional $20 million in funding to support staff.
“It’s important to highlight that our government is increasing investments in health care, not cutting them. Across Thunder Bay–Atikokan and Thunder Bay–Superior North, I have worked with our government and local organizations to deliver a record $340 million in additional funding to support local healthcare operations and strengthen services,” he wrote.
