Healthcare cuts

Major healthcare cuts looming?

SEIU has warned Ontario not to swallow a toxic cocktail of recommendations mixed up by former Bay Street banker Don Drummond, who is urging the province to cut back funding for hospitals and schools while increasing the salaries of CEOs at Local Health Integration Networks.

SEIU will be meeting with government to make sure the voices of frontline healthcare workers are heard, and to urge government to only implement reforms that will put people first and help build healthy communities, and to reject advice that puts executives ahead of the other 99% of society.

A fresh report by the Chair of the Commission on the Reform of Public Services included a handful of positive recommendations that would strengthen care for seniors and increase investments in home care, while helping to streamline healthcare administration and reduce bureaucracy. The report also recommends using health professionals like registered Practical Nurses and Personal Support Workers to their full scope of practice.

But Drummond over-stepped his limits with calls to curb women’s access to caesarean sections, merge rural hospitals, and make radical changes in areas where the ex-banker has no expertise.

“Women don’t need a former banker telling them when or how to give birth, and frontline healthcare workers don’t need a member of the 1% telling them to do more with less while executives live it up,” said Sharleen Stewart, President of SEIU Local 1 Canada.

Frontline staff are already over-stretched, families are already under pressure, and they need urgent relief.

The recommendations in the 541-page Drummond report could also weaken the foundations of the province's economy, because they are based on an outlook that is so gloomy it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Taken together, the 362 recommendations in the report on streamlining public services add up to a prescription of radical austerity: permanent cutbacks to vital services that could weaken the province for a generation.

“Ontario needs to get back on its feet after emerging from a tough recession. The province is already bruised and bloodied, the last thing it needs is deep cuts and the amputation of critical services that could set Ontario back decades."

SEIU will be studying the full report and consulting frontline workers about the impacts the recommendations would have on patients and families, in order to develop a positive plan for change to present to government as it prepares an action plan on healthcare.

About the Commission on Quality Public Services and Tax Fairness
About the Public Services Foundation of Canada

Visit this page often for the latest developments.