TORONTO - Highlighting issues from jammed emergency rooms to discriminatory travel grants to the staffing crisis in homecare, Ontario activists are gearing up for province-wide health demonstrations and events on October 28th. The activities, planned by local groups in 14 centres, are part of the Ontario Health Coalition's campaign to highlight the impact of the Harris and Chretien records on health care. "Scandalous underfunding, senseless privatization and declining quality of care are hallmarks of an ideologically-driven health policy that has been foisted on the people of Ontario against our will," said Daniel Benedict, coalition co-chair. "We are seizing this opportunity to hold our elected representatives accountable - at all levels of government - for the erosion of public medicare."

From Thunder Bay to Toronto and from Windsor to Cornwall, local groups are holding events to protest the high cost of tax cuts and rebates, rationed homecare, long waits for cancer treatments, bed shortages, and the surreptitious private-sector take-over of our public health system. "Ontarians know the destruction that Alliance and Conservative health privatization means. And the Liberals know that we are strong supporters of National Standards that they reneged on. During this campaign, they will have to answer for causing irreparable harm to so many people in the province," stated Irene Harris, co-chair.

The following centres are participating in the October 28 events: Belleville, Burlington, Cornwall, Durham, Goderich, Hamilton, Kingston, Ottawa, Rexdale, Renfrew, Toronto, Thunder Bay, Windsor, York Region. A full list of events, including contact names and numbers, is available.