Dear Editor:
Ontario’s healthcare system is being aggressively pushed to the brink; two million Ontarians don’t have access to a family doctor, patients are facing unimaginable waits for emergency care, routine surgeries, and diagnostics, and are being looked after by burnt-out staff who are incredibly demoralized.
I know this because I’ve been a registered nurse in Ontario for years, and am only one among thousands of RNs who have fled Ontario because of Ford’s Bill 124. After working short staffed for years, before and after COVID-19’s start, Ford’s appeal of Bill 124 – between Christmas and New Years – is beyond disrespectful.
The widening economic inequality, housing unaffordability, cost of living, and unmitigated climate crises all have worsened directly due to Ford’s corporate welfare, landlord -friendly, environmentally destructive policies.
Additional reasons for this include Ford’s failure to implement evidence-based social welfare improvement policies, choosing instead to defund human needs while enriching his already wealthy industry friends.
As a direct result of Ford’s disgraceful decisions, I have been unable to afford ongoing housing, transportation and food costs, and instead am only intermittently able to afford to live and work in Ontario. The other months of the year I spend outside of Ontario, for only a small fraction of the cost it would otherwise cost me to stay in Ontario to continue working my full-time RN job with my additional part-time RN jobs.
Ford’s Bill 124 undervalues public healthcare and those working in it. This is all being exacerbated by Ford systematically under-funding public care in attempts to sell privatization as a solution, which decades of evidence-based research conclusively demonstrates is false.
Invest public money building a robust, resilient healthcare system that works for all patients and healthcare workers, because we are all in this together.
Travis Frampton,
Elora