Ontario Premier Doug Ford signed a deal with the federal government on Friday worth $3.1 billion in an effort to improve access to primary health care in the province and reduce wait times.
This builds on the health-care deal announced last February where Ottawa increased funding to provinces and territories by more than $190 billion over 10 years.
Ontario marks five provinces now who have officially signed on for the federal government’s health accord.
Previously, British Columbia, Alberta, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia also signed deals.
Ontario will receive $8.4 billion over a 10-year period with a focus on addressing four priorities, including family health services, healthcare worker shortages and backlogs, mental health and substance use, and modernizing health systems.
The new funding will also go towards adding hundreds of new family doctors and nurse practitioners as well as thousands of nurses and personal support workers, and modernizing how the province collects medical data.
While the deal is being welcomed by experts, medical associations and many other industry stakeholders, some say it’s still not enough to fix Ontario’s health care crisis.
Prime minister Justin Trudeau said, “A family health team is there to be your entry point into the health care system, so you don’t need to go to an emergency room.”
It’s billions of dollars to add family doctors and nurse practitioners, to staff an expanded primary care system – a plan these governments say will keep Ontarians from needing to endure long wait times, and surgical backlogs in overwhelmed hospitals.
Doug Ford said, “today’s agreement is so important to strengthening our health care system.”
But with the emergency wait times through the roof, critics are wondering why it took so long.
Ford said, “I’m gonna be zoned in on these emergency departments, and I’m gonna work with OMA.”
READ MORE: Newsmakers: What the Ontario Liberal leader would ask Doug Ford if she had a seat at Queen’s Park
Premiere Doug Ford referring to the Ontario Medical Association who represent the province’s doctors.
The OMA says the funding will address the most urgent needs, but a more robust long-term funding agreement is needed:
“Ontario’s doctors supported premier Doug Ford’s previous call for the federal government to increase the Canada health transfer from 22% to 35% of provincial territorial health-care spending. This agreement doesn’t reach that number.”
Dr. Fahad Razak from the University of Toronto says, “the critical idea here is that the health care crisis that we are experiencing right now, some of it undoubtedly is because of the pandemic effects, but these were a long time in the making.”
Doctor Fahad Razak from St. Michaels Hospital in Toronto agrees – a longer term funding solution is needed to address the persistent problem of hallway medicine
Doctor Razak says, “were talking about decades of decisions around investments, hospital capacity, training for primary care which led to a crisis situation which was of course worsened by the pandemic.”
He applauds the support for expanded primary care, and so does the Registered Nurses’ Association.
Doris Grinspun the CEO of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario says, “it’s music to our ears because any high functioning system has at its foundation primary care.”
Grinspun says the money must be rolled out quickly so more health care workers can be hired and retained immediately – likening the health care crisis to an illness, where the best outcomes result from quick treatment.
“Our system has a disease, and we diagnosed it already: human resources, human resources, human resources.” says Grinspun.
READ MORE: Hamilton nurses meet with local MPPs to discuss key issues in healthcare
The Ontario NDP welcomes the new funding, but questions why it took so long to sign, and are concerned the Ford government won’t spend it in ways that best serve Ontarians.
France Gelinas from the NDP health clinic questions “are we going to see most of that money go to rich investors through private clinics?”
Bonnie Crombie released a statement saying, “Doug Ford has repeatedly proven he cannot be trusted to support our universal, public health care system. during the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government provided billions of dollars for health care, but Doug Ford parked the funds in the government’s coffers.”
Crombie is referring to a September 15, 2021 report from the financial accountability office that found the Ford Government didn’t spend several hundred million dollars of its federal COVID funding during the third wave of the pandemic.
