The Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU-CUPE) made a pit stop in Haliburton County last week armed with a 20-foot replica of the mythical Trojan Horse, which figurehead Michael Hurley said symbolizes the danger privatization poses to public healthcare.
Demonstrations were held in Minden and Haliburton Nov. 28, with Hurley, Ontario Health Coalition executive director Natalie Mehra, County-based activist Bonnie Roe, and NDP MPP from Spadina-Fort York Chris Glover each sending messages to the provincial government.
The voices were united – they want to see the Minden ER reopened.
“We’re so inspired by your fight in this community to keep services operating here. We’re all stricken by the Minden closure,” Hurley said. “This government, despite Ontario having an aging and growing population, refuses to invest in hospitals, long-term care, or home care.”
He said Minden was “ground zero” for hospital closures and service reductions provincially. A CBC report this week revealed at least 38 Ontario hospitals with emergency rooms or urgent care centres have experienced closures since 2021 – about one in five of 176 publicly-funded facilities.
The issue is most crippling in rural areas – the Clinton and Chesley hospitals have each been partially closed or seen reduced hours for 335 days this year, while the Durham hospital has been impacted 280 days.
Hurley said the Ontario government is starving the public health care system, spending $1.7 billion less than was budgeted last year.
In May 2023, the Ford government passed a bill allowing private clinics to conduct more surgeries – Hurley said he knows people who grew tired of waiting for surgery through OHIP so went private, which is often more than double the price.
He quoted recent statistics released by the Canadian Medical Association Journal, which said access to cataract surgery – the most common operation carried out in Ontario – had increased 22 per cent for the wealthy but declined 9 per cent for the middle class and those on low-income.
“That’s what happens when you introduce a private system – money walks to the head of the line,” Hurley said. “We want a system that treats people based on need, not income.”
Toronto-based Glover said he’s been advocating for the reopening of the Minden ER for more than a year.
“I’ve got many good friends who live in this community – in May 2023, one of them called to say he had just been in a head-on accident in Moore Falls and they had been rushed to the Minden ER. He said being so close to a hospital saved his wife’s life. Then in the next sentence he told me that hospital was being shut down,” said Glover. “I was absolutely shocked. It made no sense then and it still makes no sense now.”
He told about a man who passed away from cardiac arrest last year while en route to the Haliburton hospital, and a young girl who got a fishhook caught in her eye a stone’s throw from the old Minden facility, but had to endure a 25-minute trip to Haliburton before having it removed.
“There are tens of thousands of these stories across the province, of people suffering because of the privatization of our health care system,” Glover said. Hurley said the ‘Trojan Horse tour’ included 65 communities and is wrapping up this week. The horse was built 20 years ago when the union opposed cuts to public health, though Hurley believes the situation is more serious today.
“The horse represents a gift that you should be wary of because it’s a tainted gift, a poisoned apple,” Hurley said, referencing privatization. “It’s no solution to our problems. Costs will go up, it will divide access to care based on income, and it will draw staff away when we’re already struggling to staff our public system.
“Privatization is a cancer. It’s the death knell to public health,” Hurley added.
