Future of healthcare in Ontario looks even worse, according to new report 

Ontario’s health care is in crisis.  

There are thousands of unplanned closures of hospital emergency departments, unprecedented levels of inpatients being treated in hallways, long waits for surgeries, drastic understaffing  and funding levels among the lowest in Canada. 

Even with these dangerous realities, the crisis is only going to get worse.  

Under the Doug Ford PC government, hospital capacity has fallen far behind the aging and growth of our population and for the next several years that decline will accelerate.  

Those are some of the conclusions of a report released by the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (OCHU/CUPE) recently. CUPE’s Michael Hurley, and researcher Doug Allan were in Niagara Falls last week to release the report and to address specifics for Niagara Region residents.  

CUPE’s Michael Hurley, right, and researcher Doug Allan were in Niagara last week to present the bleak healthcare findings of a recent report.

(The Pointer)

The seventeen-page report paints a dire future for Ontario’s healthcare system, detailing how, based on the government's plans, by 2032 the province will have a shortfall of 13,800 beds and more than 80,000 staff. According to Ontario Health data the number of patients receiving treatment in hallways and storage closets has grown by 25 percent since June of 2018 and the number of staffed beds in the province has dropped to 2.23 per 1,000 people, a steady decline. The report also highlights average wait times for hospital admission of 19 hours, more than twice the target and a 6.8 percent increase in a single year. Many of the numbers represent historic declines in service.

According to Hurley, despite recent investments in the Niagara Health System, the Region will not be spared. He noted the underfunding that is driving the shortfalls needs to be corrected just to maintain the current level of service and for Niagara that means $48 million this year alone in additional funding.  

Allan said conservative estimates show Niagara will need an extra 50 beds and 250 additional staff per year for the next ten years.  He detailed how a 12 percent population growth, coupled with the rapidly rising number of aging baby boomers, will put a strain on our system that the province is not prepared to handle.

The pair did not mince words about where the blame falls for the deepening crisis: “there is a massive gap between what Ontarians need and what this government plans to do”, Hurley said. “People are already paying the consequences for the Ontario PC policy of scarcity and it’s only going to get worse: we’ll see longer wait times, more patients on stretchers in hallways and fewer staff to provide care.” 

In remarks to the Pointer, Allan shared the sense of frustration as hospital systems rely in part on using guilt with the largely female workforce. “Hospitals aren't factories and patients are widgets. They (patients) are suffering and often helpless human beings. When funding and staffing levels are cut, hospital workers are put on the spot—sacrifice or see patients suffer.” 

Hannah Jensen is a spokesperson for the Minister of Health and had this to say in response to the report:

“Our government is taking bold, innovative action to connect you to the care you need when you need it.” She said spending on hospitals increased by 4 percent “two years in a row” and the PCs “are getting shovels in the ground for over 50 hospital development projects across the province, building on the over 3,500 hospital beds we have added since 2020, that is double the beds the Liberals built in 14 years.” 

She said the PCs had registered 32,000 new nurses in the last two years and there are another 30,000 people in post-secondary nursing programs. 

Niagara West PC MPP Sam Oosterhof added that, “In Niagara, our government is getting shovels in the ground for two new hospitals, including the redevelopment of West Lincoln Memorial Hospital in Grimsby, adding sixty-one beds to the region, and construction of the Niagara South Hospital in Niagara Falls, adding 500 new beds.  Upon completion, both transformative projects will add 561 beds to Niagara, adding critical capacity and improving access to services like diagnostic testing across the region.”

Hurley pushed back on government numbers noting that a leaked government document from May showed a coming shortage of more than 80,000 nurses and personal support workers by 2032, and the lack of a plan to recruit and retain professionals. 

He said the “government is cherry-picking data” and releasing “misinformation”. The PC's statement that it added 32,000 nurses in the past two years only includes new registrants and does not account for the vast numbers who have left the field, he said.

He cites August data from the College of Nurses of Ontario that show the number of new nurses is not keeping up with demand or population growth. 

July Data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) revealed “worsening nursing workforce trends in Ontario. The province now needs 26,000 additional registered nurses (RN) just to catch up to the RN-to-population ratio in the rest of Canada – a profound gap that has widened by three per cent since 2022,” according to The Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO), which stressed that “urgent action is required to retain and recruit more RNs and keep people living in Ontario healthier.”

Hurley said it is critical for Ontarians to understand that adding hospital beds to the system is useless without the nursing and other staff to support the patient who would occupy the bed. It’s the “number of staffed beds” that matters.  

He referred to the reported number of 2.23 staffed beds per 1,000 people in Ontario, stressing that this is the worst ratio in Canada and among the worst in the developed world.  

The new report notes that just to achieve parity with the rest of the country Ontario would need to hire approximately 34,000 more hospital workers.

It calls for the government to act decisively and provide a 7 percent funding increase as a minimum, a total of $2 billion dollars, to maintain the current level of service and highlights that a decision to increase hospital capacity would require significantly more funding.

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