Unions say Ford government should focus on retaining hospital staff
Five of the province's health care unions are calling on the Ford government to scrap it's plans to expand procedures performed at private clinics.
Yesterday, Premier Doug Ford announced the province will fund procedures like cataract surgeries and hip and knee replacements at independent clinics.
Critics, including the Ontario Nurses' Association, CUPE/OCHU, OPSEU/SEFPO, SEIU Healthcare and Unifor, say the move will reduce access to publicly provided healthcare.
However, Niagara West MPP Sam Oosterhoff says that is not the case.
"This is really about using existing community surgical and diagnostic centres and their state of the art facilities to speed up how quickly people are able to get surgeries. This will always be people who are able to use their health card, never their credit card, to be able to access care."
Ford says the plan will help tackle the surgical backlog, but the unions are encouraging the province to focus more on hospital staffing.
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