The United Conservative Party’s knee-jerk vow to opt out of the national pharmacare program agreed to by the Liberal and NDP caucuses in Parliament last week is encountering stiff headwinds from an unexpected point of the political compass. Calgary Chamber of Commerce President Deborah Yedlin (Photo: Calgary Chamber of Commerce).
Continue readingTag: hospitals
Defend Public Healthcare: The hospital crisis: No capacity, no plan, no end
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
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: 33,000 missing Ontario hospital jobs and the hospital capacity crisis
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
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Compensation for hospital workers has declined for years. But Ford still wants more
Despite the urgent attempts of the Ford government to decrease the real wages of hospital workers (via Bill 124 and their plan to appeal the courts declaring that legislation unconstitutional), the truth is that spending on compensation by hospitals has become a smaller and smaller part of hospital budgets for
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Huge cuts in public sector wages predicted
The Ontario Financial Accountability Office (FAO) expects average 1.7% wage “increases” in the public sector and 4.6% annual inflation over 2021/22 – 2023/24. As a result, it concludes real wages will decline 11.3% over this three year period. This would radically deepen the trend towards lower wages during the last ten
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Declining hospital bed capacity continues under Ford government
The massive decline in hospital beds in Ontario since the early 1990s is, by now, well known. Less well known is that hospital beds per capita have continued to decline since, at least, 2010. This chart excludes Neonatal ICU beds and bassinets. CIHI does not report data, in this case, for
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Doug Ford and the PCs plan another decade of austerity — except even harsher this time
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
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Doing without the politicians.
This Ontario resident missed Treasurer Charles Sousa’s budget yesterday. Not that we shunned his budget. The day involved 12 hours at the local hospital. Given a choice we would have preferred to be strapped down and forced to listen to Charles’ budget. Do not get all excited out there: it
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: Tory health platform review: Direct promise to scrap LHINs, CCACs missing
Curiously after months of saying they’ll do away with both the Local Health Integration Networks and the Community Care Access Centres, both direct promises are conspicuously absent from the formal Tory election platform. That doesn’t mean they will stay in … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: The best of Diablogue in 2012
It’s time for us to take our seasonal break and wish the best of the season to all our readers and posters. Next year will be challenging for health care activists as hospitals continue to shed services to balance their … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: Who is that guy?
Hey – who is that guy on the Diablogue flag? His name is Harjinder Sangha, more familiarly known to us as Harry. He works as a OR Assistant at Mackenzie Health (formerly York Central Hospital). Sangha is also on the executive … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: Thunder Bay lags behind other hospitals in fulfilling freedom of information request
Evidently some hospitals have kinks to work out in their processing of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. In mid-February we sent out requests – along with an initial $5 fee – to 20 hospitals to look at how the ratio of … Continue reading →
Continue readingcmkl: Dirty hospitals: horror shows about cleaning, cutbacks and privatization
CBC Marketplace has a really compelling exposé of the effects of cutbacks to and privatization of hospital cleaning. Astounding. Cleaners who used to have responsibility for one floor now cleaning three. People given 15 minutes to clean a room that normally takes an hour.
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