The Ontario Health Coalition called on the provincial government to stop funding cuts to health-care and increasing health-care privatization at a protest on Queen’s Park on Friday.

Organized by the activist group, the rally saw hundreds of supporters gather on the lawn, demanding hospitals in smaller communities not be merged and hospital services not be contracted out to private clinics.

“For the first time ever, we’re raising the alarm," said Natalie Mehra, executive director of OHC, at Friday's protest. "We’re bringing a warning to Ontarians and to our political leaders that our community hospitals are being aggressively and systematically cut, dismantled and privatized."

Some of the day’s delegates likened Friday’s protest to the demonstrations a generation ago for medicare – the unofficial name for Canada’s publically funded healthcare system – as well as health-care protests that emerged in the late 1990s under the former Mike Harris government when several hundred nurses were laid off to cut costs.

“Premier Kathleen Wynne, our hospitals will not survive the cuts you are planning,” Mehra said.

NDP MPPs Jennifer French, Cindy Forster and Monique Taylor told the rally that health-care workers can depend on them in the house to stop cuts to health services and to protect Ontario’s public healthcare system.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath also issued a statement in solidarity with the Ontarians defending public healthcare. “The health of our families depends on access to high-quality public healthcare services in every community across Ontario,” she said. “That access is under direct threat because of Liberal cuts to frontline care, frozen hospital budgets, and the expansion of private clinics.”

Vicki McKenna, vice-president of the Ontario Nurses Association – which held its biennial convention in Toronto from Tuesday to Thursday this week – encouraged attendees to go home and tell one person about Ontario’s frozen hospital budgets and the fees being charged for private clinics.

“Tell them that we are losing our health-care system and we have to fight for it,” she said.

Health Minister Eric Hoskins issued a statement on Friday afternoon saying one of the ways the government is working to provide health-care closer to home is by shifting some "routine, low-risk procedures" from the hospital into the community through non-profit clinics. He said OHIP-insured services are being provided with no additional fees.

"As part of this transformation, we are working with LHINs and hospitals to ensure continuity and stability of services for patients," Hoskins said. "As a result, we are providing better value for Ontario taxpayers by allowing hospitals to focus on more complex procedures."

In addition to health-care workers and community advocates, several unions, including Unifor, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, Canadian Union of Public Employees as well as the Ontario Federation of Labour backed the cause.

Moving forward, OPSEU President Warren 'Smokey' Thomas called on all attendees to lobby all MPPs because of concerns about what next year’s budget could mean for health care. “This today must just be the start,” he said. “We’re going to have a budget next spring that’s going to make the last one look like a cakewalk.”

While the Liberal government earmarked more than $50 billion in the July budget for health care, it is holding increases in health spending to just over 2 per cent a year. It has also frozen hospital budgets for several years in an effort to eliminate the $12.5 billion deficit by 2017.

Last January, the Liberals announced a plan to close five smaller hospitals in Niagara Falls and replace them with a new big one. To help fund the bigger acute-care centre, the province is kicking in more than $26 million. The project will likely cost hundreds of millions to complete.

Hundreds protest health-care cuts and privatization

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