Defend Public Healthcare

While Canada has achieved universal public healthcare coverage, that does not mean conservative forces have given up trying to erode that coverage and expand corporate care where it does not currently exist. The battle has become particularly intense in Ontario under the Ford Progressive Conservative government, which is implementing serious cuts to the level of care and moving to bring in for-profit mini-hospitals. Inadequate Staffing.   Less and less of hospital spending is on staff.   Employee compensation as a share of hospital expenditures has consistently shrunk in Ontario. This is not some immutable law of hospital development.  It is in stark contrast with the rest of Canada, where compensation has become a larger share and now accounts for 67.1%. Hospitals in provinces other than Ontario now have 18 percent more staff per capita than hospitals in Ontario. Overall, if Ontario had the same staffing capacity as the other provinces and territories, there would be another 33,778 full t

Hospitals in provinces other than Ontario have 18% more staff than hospitals in Ontario.  Much, but not all of this is due to low levels of inpatient staffing in Ontario.  In that area, hospitals outside of Ontario have 38.7% more staff.   Understaffing : Ontario hospital full time equivalent (FTE) jobs are reported at 189,519 in 2020/21. With a population of 14,740,102 at the end of 2020 this means there are 1.286 FTE hospital jobs per 100 population. Across the other provinces and territories (absent CIHI data for Quebec and Nunavut) the ratio is 221,917 FTEs for a population of 14,648,959, or 1.514 FTEs per 100 population.  In other words, there is 18% more hospital staff capacity in the other provinces and territories than in Ontario.  Put another way, if Ontario had the same staffing capacity as the other provinces and territories,  we would have another 33,778   full time positions  working in Ontario hospitals.   This low level of staffing is notable because  it has

The Ford government suggests it must reduce the real wages of hospital workers via Bill 124, and now even proposes to appeal the court decision that found the legislation unconstitutional.  However, no such need exists - quite the opposite. Spending on compensation has been shrinking as a portion of hospital budgets for many years.  The result of this shrinkage? The short staffing, workplace violence, staff burn-out, and falling real wages that are currently hobbling hospitals. Spending on compensation has consistently declined as a percentage of total hospital spending in Ontario:  Data source: CIHI,  Provincial/territorial hospital spending by type of expense, province/territory and Canada (excluding Quebec and Nunavut) ,  The decline in compensation is not something intrinsic to modern hospitals.  The experience in Ontario is in stark contrast with the experience in  the rest of Canada. For provinces and territories other than Ontario, compensation is increasing as a share of total

The Ontario Financial Accountability Office (FAO)   says  that, with inflation, real wages in the public sector will decline 11.3% over the three year period  2021/2 - 2023/4 .  This would radically deepen the trend towards lower wages during the last ten years.   The FAO reports that since 2011, the average annual salary for the Ontario public sector employees (defined here as employees of schools, colleges, provincial government, provincial agencies, and hospitals) has increased by $10,385   -- or 1.6 per cent on average annually.  This is the lowest increase of all the sectors and lower than inflation, which averaged 1.8 per cent per year. Over the ten years that would be about a 2% pay cut.   The FAO reports that wage settlements were the lowest in the provincial public sector over the last decade:   Hospital Wages Especially Challenged: The FAO predicts hospital wages will increase even less than in the public sector  -- just 1.2% annually over the five year period 2021-22 t

The massive cut in the number of hospital beds in Ontario in the 1990s is, by now, well known. Community and labour movement campaigns over the last fifteen years stopped the decline in the  number of beds, but the push for cuts is relentless.  Hospital beds per capita have continued to decline right up until the most recent data reported. Moreover, Ontario remains a low capacity outlier -- with far fewer beds per capita than other provinces.   This chart excludes Neonatal ICU beds and bassinets.  CIHI does not report data, in this case, for Quebec. This Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) chart (above) shows a 6.9% decline in hospital beds per capita from 2009/10 to 2018/19 .   Ontario had fewer beds than any other province reported per capita.  The next lowest (Alberta) had 12.2% more beds in 2018-19 . There was even a decline in the absolute number of Ontario ICU, Obstetric, Pediatric, and Complex Continuing Care ("LTC") beds, with the latter category seeing

Ontario's Financial Accountability Office (FAO) reports that the nominal health care funding increases planned by the Ford PC goverment between 2019/20 to 2029-30 fall well short of the nominal increases over the previous nine years (2010/11-2019/20, the period of public sector austerity that followed the last recession). Indeed, as the increase planned on a go-forward basis (between this year, 2021-22, and 2029/30) amounts to only 2% annually , we are looking at significantly harsher austerity than the 2010/11-2019/20 period , where funding increased 3.2% annually. As the FAO notes, the health care austerity imposed over 2010-20 "included a number of significant spending restraint measures, including: freezing base operating funding for hospitals from 2012-13 to 2015-16; reducing physician payment rates in 2013 and 2015; and limiting investments in new long-term care beds, with only 611 new beds created between 2011 and 2018."   This time around the plan is to impose h