In this edition:    May 10 Caravan    budget response   events across Ontario   toolkits for women    closure of for-profit cancer clinic   take the pledge

Caravan of Protest: Saturday May 10

On Saturday May 10, thousands of Ontarians will take to the streets to stop the province’s planned for-profit MRI/CT clinics and hospitals.  Cavalcades of cars, vans and buses, decorated with Medicare ribbons and signs,  will travel from across the province getting bigger and bigger as they approach Toronto.  After caravans travel through the city, a march and mass event will start in Toronto’s financial district. Caravanees will disembark from their vehicles and will join a mass march passing pavilions set up outside the headquarters of Borealis and the Bank of Montreal, two financial corporations that are bidding on the planned for-profit hospitals.  The march will culminate at Nathan Phillips Square.

(note, the caravan was originally scheduled for April 5th but has been moved to May 10th because of the SARS outbreak)

*  Where & When?   Gather in Toronto at Front & Bay Streets at 2:30 pm.

*  What? Thousands of pro-Public Medicare marchers will join together to protest the planned for-profit MRI/CT clinics and hospitals.

*  Outside Toronto - Join your local cavalcade.  See list of locations and times by clicking here.

Congratulations to all who sent in letters, protested and spread the word about the costly for-profit cancer treatment centre at Sunnybrook Hospital.  Recently Cancer Care Ontario announced that the clinic will be closed this fall and replaced with a non-profit public clinic.  Bolstered by a Provincial Auditor’s report showing higher costs in the for-profit clinics, the pressure exerted by the coalitions and supporters forced Cancer Care Ontario to think twice about privatizing cancer treatment, despite reported objections by Health Minister Tony Clement.  A special thank you goes out to the Toronto Health Coalition for their relentless work on this issue.

Take the Pledge!

The Ontario Health Coalition will kick off a mass pledge campaign next week.  Local coalitions will ask community networks to circulate and post window signs and pledges as we head into the provincial election.  Pledges will be used to ensure that political parties in Ontario support a vision of Public Medicare that is strengthened through progressive reform and that stops the encroachment of for-profit corporations.

Pledge forms and window signs are available starting this week.  Contact your local health coalition or the Ontario Health Coalition at 416-441-2502, ohc@sympatico.ca. To take the pledge online click here

On the Move!

Kenora - the new Kenora Health Coalition held a lively protest at MP Doug Nault’s office last week.  Great media coverage accompanied the coalition’s message against for-profit healthcare.

St. Catharines - kicked off their pledge campaign with a media event featuring local politicians signing the pledge and a huge banner that will hang across a main street.  Mall displays and mass distribution of pledges are in the works.

Timmins - held two events for the Tour Against For-Profit Healthcare this week. The coalition has organized fabulous media coverage to let their community know about this significant threat to Medicare.

Windsor - a huge demonstration and march last Saturday kicked off Windsor’s campaign against for-profit healthcare.

Brampton - a well-attended public forum on the for-profit (P3) hospital this week featured new information on the experience of for-profit hospitals in Britain. The coalition is planning a Queen’s Park media conference.

Where’s it going?

The Ontario Health Coalition responded to the provincial made-for-television budget released by the Ontario Conservatives today by questioning where the funding for healthcare is going.

"After the deep cuts and damaging restructuring by this government, the re-funding of healthcare shouldn’t just increase profits and pay public relations consultants," stated Irene Harris, coalition co chair.  "But, given this government’s penchant for spending hundreds of millions on advertising, consultants, grants to corporations, profiteering and shutting down hospitals, we demand that they come clean about where this money is going."

The coalition notes that waiting lists are up, hospital beds are down, and access to healthcare continues to be a problem.

"It is odd to boast about  spending more money when you deliver less service. How much funding has been spent on government self-promotion, on laying off staff and cutting services?  How much is being spent on new profit-taking?  How much out-of-pocket spending replaces tax cuts?  The story of this budget is the story of a government that leaves behind a legacy of mismanagement and misinformation." concluded Ms. Harris.

Budget Reality Check:

• Hospital budgets are increasing, but since 1995, over 5,900 hospital beds have been closed. The costs of closing hospital beds and laying off staff are included in government budgets.

• The Conservative government is funding - for the first time - for-profit corporations to build long term care facilities that the corporations will own and operate on a profit-seeking basis. While government and out-of-pocket spending is on the increase, staffing and care levels are among the lowest in the country and new funding has disappeared into a black hole of unaccountability. Recently, there have even been lay offs in some homes.

• By forcing the privatization of homecare, the Conservative government has created multiple sets of administration – one to oversee the privatization and the granting of contracts -- and multiple administrations in all of the corporations that are now selling homecare for profit.  Our estimate is that $ 1/4 billion could be saved – and redirected to patient care – by eliminating the duplication, advertising, excess administration and profit-taking that the Conservatives have introduced from homecare.  The coalition questions how much was spent firing CEOs, replacing community Boards of Directors and wiping out community memberships of homecare governing Community Care Access Centres under the Conservatives sweeping new legislation meant to silence the CCACs’ complaints about cutting seniors’ home support services.

• The provincial government proudly announced that it has spent the increased federal transfers on healthcare but fails to note the 2000 equipment fund debacle in which federal funding meant for MRIs and CT scanners, among other technology, was spent on grants to for-profit nursing homes and on offsetting previous spending.

• Health Minister Tony Clement has spent millions on unprecedented advertising and PR stunts such as his fill-in-the-bubble questionnaire that asked practically nothing substantive and yielded nothing substantive.

• As of October, a record 900,000 Ontarians have no family doctor, budgets for Community Health Centres have been frozen for over 1Ú2 decade, primary care reform remains a distant dream, and $100 million in OHIP services have been delisted. Ontario has the second to lowest patient to physician ratio in Canada.

• Drug costs have increased by a whopping 130 % since 1995/96 and while pharmaceutical corporations top the Fortune 500 list in profits advocating for controls on drug pricing is not on this government’s agenda.

• Ontarians now pay the most out-of-pocket for healthcare of anyone in the country – an average of $ 1,072 per person each year.  This wipes out a substantial amount of any "tax cuts" the province has announced.

Call us for copies of the OHC analysis of the federal-provincial "Health Accord"

Upcoming: political party platform review. Look for in the next "Pulse" newsletter

Posters and toolkits are available. Toolkits include fact sheets, stories and a report from focus groups held with women across central Ontario. New information on women’s access to healthcare and the impacts of health reform on women is featured.

Get involved!  A lobby - specifically on health restructuring and its impacts on women - is in the works.  Women are encouraged to use materials created through this project to talk to our MP & MPPs.

The Listen Up! project aims to involve women in the debate about the future of Medicare – an issue so important in many women’s lives.  For kits and information call Nicole, Project Coordinator at 416-441-3013.

Ontario Health Coalition
15 Gervais Drive, Suite 305
Toronto, Ontario  M3C 1Y8
tel: 416-441-2502
fax: 416-441-4073
email: ohc@sympatico.ca