[KWPeace-groups] Fwd: Doug Ford's threat to public health care

Wed Sep 12 13:56:42 EDT 2018

The message below from Natalie Mehta of the Ontario Health Coalition is an
eye-opener!

*Please read and forward widely.*

There will be a mass demonstration at Queen's Park on Tues Oct 23 against
Ford's cuts to public services. I'll be on the bus that's being organized
from Kitchener. Let's fill 2 buses!

Tell everybody 🙋🙋🙋
Eleanor Grant

Here's Natalie:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "K-W CoC" <kw.cofc at gmail.com>
Date: 12 Sep 2018 12:03
Subject: Fwd: RE: [OHC] Doug Ford, the people behind him & saving health
care - from Natalie pls read & pass on
To:
Cc:

Because the chapter is cooperating with the newly formed KW Ontario Health
Coalition group I am passing this on. Apologies for any duplication.
*Please note the major rally planned for 23 October in Toronto.* OHC will
be organizing at least one bus from here if you would like to go. Please
contact OHC directly for that.

David

-------- Forwarded Message --------

*Subject: *

[OHC] Doug Ford, the people behind him & saving health care - from Natalie
pls read & pass on

*Date: *

Wed, 12 Sep 2018 10:28:20 -0400

*From: *

Ontario Health Coalition via OntarioHealthCoalition
<ontariohealthcoalition at list.web.net> <ontariohealthcoalition at list.web.net>

*Reply-To: *

Ontario Health Coalition <ohc at sympatico.ca> <ohc at sympatico.ca>

*To: *

ontariohealthcoalition at list.web.net

Briefing Note

Saving Public Health Care & Public Services Under the Doug Ford Government
         September 11, 2017

*By Natalie Mehra, Executive Director, Ontario Health Coalition*

Since Doug Ford’s election there has been a lot of glib talk about Ford as
a buffoon, a Trump-north, an almost contemptible figure. But this ignores
the fact that the brain trust behind Ford is not ridiculous at all. They
are clever – diabolical even-- and they are deeply ideological. These
people have collectively spent decades working against our social safety
net and public programs, public health care included. They are
sophisticated and experienced in government
<https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-harper-era-mps-staffers-pop-up-in-doug-fords-pc-government/>.
And they have a clear mission. A raft of Harper strategists and staffers
<https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/07/04/doug-ford-steals-a-page-from-stephen-harper-on-control.html>
populated both Ford’s nomination campaign and his election team
<https://ipolitics.ca/2018/06/11/ex-harper-mps-and-staffers-win-big-in-ontario-election/>
(more info here
<https://www.hilltimes.com/2018/04/16/pc-leader-fords-tight-knit-campaign-team-stacked-federal-provincial-experience/140492>).
 Now, in government, Harper’s former chief of staff has been appointed as
Ford’s principle secretary.

Doug Ford did not reveal an election platform but there is definitely a
clear plan that is being rolled out day after day across Ontario.

In fact, Gordon Campbell, arch-privateer, former B.C. premier, and a really
bad man in my personal opinion, has been appointed to do a review of
Ontario’s finances. Ironic, since Campbell as B.C. premier ran his
province from
a surplus into a deficit
<https://thetyee.ca/Views/2005/04/20/CampbellMisledPublic/> and
<https://www.straight.com/article-199550/bc-premier-gordon-campbell-change-nodeficit-law-budget>
increased
the debt
<https://www.straight.com/article-470026/vancouver/gabriel-yiu-gordon-campbells-100billion-legacy>
substantially. But this doesn’t matter for the anti-government ideologues.
What matters is that Campbell accomplished the deepest cuts of any premier,
perhaps in Canada’s history. (He’s in a dead heat with Mike Harris for this
dubious distinction). Campbell cut every government ministry; gutting
environmental programs, closing rural schools and hospitals, chopping
social assistance and arts, closing women’s services. He fired hospital
support staff en masse and privatized their services forcing them to
re-apply for their old jobs in private companies at minimum wage or
drastically cut rates, rolling back fifty years of hard-won labour
improvements for those workers and their families. He laid off 11,700 civil
servants in one day and called it “thoughtful” and “innovative”.  He cut
public hospital and health services and then contracted private for-profit
clinics. Then he turned a blind eye as those clinics started to charge user
fees for surgeries and diagnostic tests in the thousands of dollars to
patients, in violation of the Canada Health Act. This summer, he agreed to
testify for the private clinics in their court challenge in B.C. as they
try to wipe out the laws that protect single tier public medicare in
Canada. (You see what I mean? Evil.)  Oh—and he overstated the fiscal
“crisis” in B.C. (in fact there was a surplus) in order to soften up the
public for his “innovative” cuts.

So, it seems predictable.…seems the plan is for Gordon Campbell’s financial
review to paint a picture of fiscal crisis in Ontario. The report has
already been received by the Ford government and is secret for now. Then,on
September 21 the other major report -- a service review being done by Ernst
and Young  will be received by Ford. (This is a tactic used by the
pro-privatization forced in municipalities over the last decade to bring in
consulting firms to look at all services and recommend to councils program
cuts and privatization.) So over the next few weeks we will see Phase II of
the attack on social and environmental gains. They will roll out a set of
media messaging that will be echoed up and down the country about the dire
financial situation. They will use this  -- instead of raising the revenue
through fair taxes and the like – to justify draconian cuts to public
services and programs. And they will, at the same time, implement their own
tax cuts that benefit, primarily, the wealthiest among us.

In fact, economist Mike Moffatt from Western University tallied up the
total cost of the cuts to provincial revenues
<https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/doug-ford-s-plan-is-furthest-away-from-balanced-budget-economist-says-1.3952848>
planned by Doug Ford and announced during the election. These are the
monies used to fund health care and all our public services and programs.
His calculations are public and no one seriously disputes them. The total
is a hair-raising $22 billion. (Here’s the link. To see this go to the
third tab on the bottom of the screen “Tory promises” scroll to revenues
and add them up.)
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CbTJB5qqSigxvzeTMEEQ4C_j8siw5aH6bCgUm5gkRX4/edit#gid=599623450>
That is the bottom line:  $22 billion to be cut from funding for public
services and programs over the next 3 – 4 years. In context, Mike Harris
cut $15 billion over his first 4 years.  Doug Ford’s planned cuts are even
more radical than Harris’ which led to massive hospital restructuring,
closures, amalgamations, home care privatization, evisceration of all
social programs, attacks on employment protections and privatization.

So, the evidence is piling up. Phase II, it seems, is on its way.

Phase I already happened.

Before Doug Ford was even sworn into office at the end of June, he imposed
a hiring freeze on the Ontario public service. In real terms, that’s a cut
because each day civil servants retire or move on and they aren’t replaced.
So it has real impacts on services that we rely on. This, after the public
service in Ontario has already been downsized for decades.

Then, starting one day after he was sworn in, Ford announced his first
formal cut – to OHIP+
<http://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/release-doug-fords-first-cut-will-hurt-families-with-the-sickest-children-the-most/>*
-- the program that was going to be the great leap forward, expanding
publicly funded drug coverage to all Ontarians under 25 years old. Ford’s
cut means that families with drug plans through their workplaces would no
longer be able to access the publicly-funded program. Instead they will be
faced with whatever co-payments and deductibles come with their work plan.
For families with kids with cancer, for example, these costs can amount to
hundreds per month. They’ll also have to try to get their private coverage
first, then if that fails, try to get public coverage, delaying their
repayment for drug costs for months. Companies will continue to pay higher
premiums than they otherwise would have for drug plans for their employees.
This was Ford’s first cut and it was to a program for sick children. And it
was a harbinger of what was to come and what is coming up.

A few weeks later, Ford cut more than $300 million from the planned funding
for mental health
<https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/07/26/tories-blasted-for-335m-cut-in-planned-spending-on-mental-health.html>.
There is an almost total consensus that mental health funding is far too
low to meet the pressing needs of our communities. People who need help
have been left suffering as a result.

Then, for weeks throughout the summer, the Ford government made at least
two announcements a day, cutting social assistance in real dollar terms,
rolling back the minimum wage increase, cancelling the basic income pilot
project  and so on – many of the cuts targeting programs and initiatives
that create equity and alleviate poverty.  Click for link to list of cuts
here
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1se6oFRngG4oKYWfjrLLSbsJDJ5DS3tb6eI6YzsxzpEk/edit#gid=64298737>
.

This summer Doug Ford’s hidden agenda was laid bare. Huge policy changes
were announced that were never once mentioned in the election campaign. But
it was done in the steamy days of summer when many Ontarians were relaxing
over backyard barbeques or at the lake. So Phase I was accomplished, and
with the exception of the attempt to wipe out half of Toronto City Council,
much of it was done without most Ontarians even knowing about it.

So Phase I is done and now Phase II is coming. This is where we come in.

The ultimate plan is to shrink the size of “government” – in reality, the
public services and programs that we all rely upon to lift our standard of
living and protect against the vagaries of the market. Many will not
immediately understand that this is not about finding efficiencies. It is
about killing off programs run as public interest and non-profit services
so that private for-profit businesses can move in and take them over. It is
about removing protections so that the workforce is more flexible and
compliant. It is about power, and fundamentally it will mean greater
inequality and more hardship for many. They have done it in the Harris
government of the 1990s and in the Harper government more recently.

The lessons from those eras is that when we have stood up and fought back
we have pushed them back. The public does not support the agenda of cuts,
lower standards and privatization, by and large, and public health care is
one of the most cherished programs in the country. The last thing we should
do is let the cuts go by invisibly, waiting until people need the service
only to find it is gone. What we need to do now is make the hidden agenda
visible; to illuminate the cuts for all to see and to expose what they mean
for all of us, for our communities. At the same time, importantly, we need
to show people a way to stand up.

In the Ontario Health Coalition we have a start. We are organizing a
massive rally at Queen’s Park at noon on Tuesday October 23. We know that
there are thousands coming. Let’s make it many many thousands. Let’s make
it big enough that the forces that would like to see our public health care
dismantled, cut and privatized, know that it will be politically impossible
to do so.

Doug Ford’s biggest weakness is this: he has no mandate. His agenda was
shielded from public scrutiny through the election. The people of Ontario
believed him when he said he would “solve hallway medicine” which, to most
of us, means reopening closed and privatized services and restoring cut
beds. His party said they would support improved care standards in
long-term care. Our local coalitions even taped Ford at a rural donut shop
promising them that he wouldn’t privatize.

So let’s hold him to that. Let’s organize in a way that cannot be ignored.
Let’s be fully aware of what is happening behind the scenes, but let’s
never drop the call for what we really need: a reopening of public hospital
beds and services; improved access to long-term care and a real improvement
in the levels of care in the homes for seniors; and a public home care
system for all of us.

Years ago, former Alberta Premier Ralph Klein called public health care the
“electric third rail” of Canadian Politics. He was referring to the ground
rail on a railway or subway that carries the power. If you touch it, you
get electrocuted. I like that. I see our job as to electrify that third
rail. Let’s make them afraid to touch public health care with their plan of
dismantling, cuts and privatization, so that we can protect it for all
Ontarians for generations to come.

*In addition to the link provided above, information on the OHIP+ cut is
here: http://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/release-fords-cut-
to-ohip-clarifying-what-it-means-for-patients-businesses-and-employees/

-- 

*~ Protecting Public Medicare for All ~*

Ontario Health Coalition
15 Gervais Drive, Suite 201
<https://maps.google.com/?q=15+Gervais+Drive,+Suite+201+%0D%0A++++++++++++++++++++++++++Toronto,+ON+M3C+1Y8&entry=gmail&source=g>
Toronto, ON M3C 1Y8
ohc at sympatico.ca

www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca
416-441-2502

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