(Toronto) Ontario’s health minister isn’t ruling out some form of privatization in the system as her government desperately searches for ways to address a major labor shortage.
Posted at 5:04 p.m.
Sylvia Jones said Wednesday in the House that her government is toying with many ideas in an effort to prevent temporary emergency room closures, as we have seen almost everywhere this summer.
When asked if greater privatization of the health care system was among the scenarios being considered, Ms.me Jones said “all options were on the table.”
“I’m saying there are new ideas and possibilities here in Ontario, and we’re going to explore them,” she told the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday.
Emergency departments at several Ontario hospitals have had to shut down for hours or even days at a time this summer. Some small hospitals in the regions have been harder hit than hospitals in large urban centres. Local officials attribute the temporary closures to a labor shortage in the system.
Minister Jones said she was in talks with hospital associations and that her government was considering changes to the healthcare system – but did not specify what those changes would be. “We have always had a public system in Ontario and we will continue to do so,” she said.
“Are we looking at other options? Absolutely ! Elsewhere in Canada, around the world, there are other possibilities, which we will examine, and all of these suggestions are being studied. »
Interim New Democratic Party Leader Peter Tabuns said any privatization in the health care system “would be a disaster for Ontario.”
Supporters of the public system have urged Premier Doug Ford to repeal the 2019 law that caps public sector employee salaries at 1% per year for three years. They claim that this law undermines efforts to recruit and retain nurses.
A crisis ” ?
Premier Ford and Minister Jones were bombarded with questions Wednesday about the situation in hospitals during the first-ever Question Period in the Legislative Assembly since the Progressive Conservatives were re-elected in June.
Neither wanted to call the situation a “crisis,” saying the government was already investing extra money in the health care system. “If there were 5,000 nurses falling from the sky, we would hire them tomorrow morning,” Mr. Ford told the opposition.
Minister Jones said she was considering “adjustments” to the health care system and had met with hospital administrators and nurses’ unions to get more ideas. But she explained that one had to be careful in the solutions, to avoid affecting other sectors of the health system, such as community care services, attendants or long-term care.
Minister Jones sent directives last week to the College of Nurses and the College of Physicians urging them to do everything to accredit foreign-trained professionals as quickly as possible.
The issue of the privatization of health care has recently made headlines elsewhere in the country. The British Columbia Court of Appeal has upheld the lower court’s dismissal of a Vancouver surgeon’s challenge to provincial health insurance legislation. The courts found that the province’s ban on extra billing and private health insurance did not violate individual charter rights.
These decisions confirm that access to medical care in the public system, as provided by law, is based on the needs of citizens and not on their ability to pay.