ONTARIO

Health Coalition fighting privatization plans for health care

Story by The Canadian Press • Yesterday 

Ontario’s Conservative government is “pushing forward with plans to privatize the province’s public hospitals,” the Ontario Health Coalition said in a release, and the organization is fighting against that plan.

Tuesday, the local chapter of the Ontario Health Coalition hosts an information session in North Bay at the OPSEU hall 150 First Avenue, at 10 a.m.

“On January 16, the Ford government announced it is moving forward with plans to ‘substantially,’ in their own words, expand for-profit clinics and hospitals to take the surgeries and diagnostics out of our local public hospitals,” the coalition said.

“In response, thousands of Ontarians have taken to the streets of their communities to organize a mass citizen-run referendum.”

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The Ontario Health Coalition’s goal is to “improve our public health care system.” The coalition is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest activist coalition and network, as outlined in its mission and mandate statement.

Bill 60 – set to pass this week – will “have a detrimental effect,” on health services, said Henri Giroux, chair of the North Bay Health Coalition. The government has contracted the first three for-profit clinics in Windsor, Waterloo and Ottawa, “and is allowing for-profit corporations to run surgeries out of under-used public hospital operating rooms already,” the coalition detailed.

“The Health Coalition has vowed an unprecedented fightback to match the unprecedented privatization of Ontario’s core public health care services.”

David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of BayToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

David Briggs, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, BayToday.ca