Defend Public Healthcare

Ontario inflation is beginning to heat up.  As recently as May, the year over year increase in the Consumer Price Index was a mere 0.49% . Today's data for July indicates that Ontario  prices have gone up 1.65% since last year .  While this is partly due to a dip in prices in  June and July of 2012, prices also went up significantly in June and July of 2013.   Since May 2013, the CPI has increased from 123.0 to 123.4.  On an annualized basis, that would imply an annual inflation increase of 1.91% by May 2014. Gasoline prices led the way with an annual increase of 5.5% in Ontario (6.1% across Canada). Hourly wages and inflation Average hourly wages in Ontario for July  were up 1.5%  compared to a year earlier.  In other words, wages are falling slightly behind inflation.   This too is a bit of a change since May. Although hourly average wages were up a bit less in May -- 1.15% over the year -- that hourly wage increase was still significantly ahead of the 0.49% annual

Hospitals are "full to bursting" and bed occupancy is reaching such "dangerous" levels that staff are struggling to maintain the safety and quality of patients' care, an authoritative study concludes. Alas and alack, this report is from the Guardian and refers to a new English study. But how much more apropos if the reference was to Ontario. While the English report flows from bed occupancy beginning to pass 85%, bed occupancy in Ontario is closer to 98%.  English ministers (at least until now) have liked to claim that hospitals maintain 85% bed occupancy.  In contrast, Ontario health minister Deb Matthews defends even more bed cuts . English Bed Occupancy Concerns Deepen English doctors warn that the bed occupancy findings reflect their increasingly frantic efforts to find beds and that patients – especially the elderly – are being scattered across hospitals. "A lack of beds in specialist wards results in patients being sent to wards where

With the release of the 2013-14 first quarter finances report, Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa has announced the start of his own consultations on the economy. The focus (allegedly) is on "jobs and growth" . The formal pre-budget consultations with a committee of the legislature usually start in the late fall or winter. So Sousa's consultations (which have already begun) are getting the jump. If words mean much, the emphasis is quite different than under Dwight Duncan. Sousa's release headlines “The Path to Jobs and Growth”. Duncan's release of last year's first quarter finances sounded more like his imitation of the grim reaper, focusing exclusively on the deficit and the "strong action" he was taking to deal with it (“ First Quarter Finances Show Strong Action Plan Working -- McGuinty Government On Track to Eliminate Deficit ”). Duncan, if you recall, was just launching his attack on public sector collective bargaining.

Much was  made by the  media  and others in the  chattering classes of the "record" drop in public sector employment reported in the July Labour Force survey by Statistics Canada last week. So, are public sector workers facing a fall? For Ontario, the figures show a drop of 23,600 in  public sector employment.  That's a drop of  1.7% compared to the previous month, certainly a significant one-month drop (although slightly less than the Canada-wide decline of 2%). But shake a few grains of salt on this monthly data.  Over the last three years, the trend is no growth rather than decline.  Since August 2010, Ontario public sector employment has stayed flat, hovering around 1.34 million, sometimes up a percent or two, sometimes down. The Labour Force figures can move about significantly on a month by month basis, even while the trend is flat.  In July 2011, public sector employment fell 22,800 over the previous month  but this did not signal a trend -- public

The provincial Ombudsman has followed up on his damning report on the privatized, non-ambulance patient transfer industry.   The Mike Harris Progressive Conservative government privatized the patient transfer industry at the turn of the century, moving the work over from Emergency Medical Services (ambulance services).    Two years ago, however, the Ombudsman and the CBC reported major problems in this newly privatized industry, including threats to patient safety and working conditions.   Ontario residents would be better off taking a taxi to a hospital than one of the privately owned vehicles used to transfer hundreds of thousands of non-critical patients each year, provincial Ombudsman Andre Marin   concluded . On July 16, 2013, the Ombudsman followed up on his earlier report,  stating  that “ Two years after promising to regulate the non-emergency medical transfer industry to protect the hundreds of thousands of patients transported annually in thes

As feared yesterday -- the premiers rolled. Their  media release on health care  that came out as their meeting in Niagara-on-the-Lake ended  didn't even dare to beg for better federal health care funding.  It  didn't even utter the word "federal".  Despite the hole the new federal funding policy will leave in provincial coffers, despite the protestors who told the premiers yesterday that federal funding was THE issue, restoring federal health care funding was a complete non-issue for the premiers. In another release on fiscal arrangements they did recall  that last year the  Premiers' Fiscal Arrangements Working Group   had reported  " federal health care funding would be reduced by almost $36 billion over the 10-year period from 2014/15 to 2023/24 compared to the arrangements currently in place".   But instead of demanding the cut be reversed, they  asked  only that the federal government "avoid further unilateral changes to programs&

At this week's meeting of the provincial premiers there were some sharp complaints about the federal government. But missing -- so far -- is any significant complaint about the one issue likely closest to the hearts of Canadians -- public health care.    Yet the federal government plans to kill its longstanding commitment to increase health care funding 6% per year, replacing it with as little as half of that.   As CUPE research materials indicate , that means losing an awful lot of cash for public health care -- many billions. The premiers lack of action on this comes despite a large demonstration in front of their meeting today.  The protestors demanded the premiers stand up to the Stephen Harper government on federal health care funding. All we got publicly from Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne was a thank you for helping the government focus. That's not going to get her government any more federal funding.  Not even a nickel. Tomorrow, the premiers w