As rumors swirl about an early provincial election, it’s time for all Ontarians to reflect on their priorities for their communities and for this province.
As detailed in a recent news story, our provincial government has made what appears to be a behind-the-scenes deal to gain the advantages of a primary provider of personal physical care, at the expense of citizens. City of Ottawa land for use in non-profit public physical care is being sold for $1 to a major corporation to expand its for-profit retirement home and long-term care empire.
The company will build a for-profit retirement network for seniors that will include a 256-bed long-term care facility and an attached 15-story retirement center on land near the Ottawa Hospital’s Riverside site, as well as a long-term care home with 320 new beds. The existing site of its Civic Hospital Campus.
The company, Schlegel Villages, is facing a $110 million lawsuit for gross negligence towards citizens receiving long-term care during the pandemic. The company is also a generous donor to Prime Minister Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Party.
Not only is this a behind-the-scenes deal between Ford and Schlegel Villages, known for its poor care for residents, but it also worried Ottawa Hospital CEO Cameron Love.
This settlement is just the newest in a long line of fitness care adjustments made under Ford’s rule. In this case, the CEO of a publicly funded hospital is working hand in hand with the government and for-profit corporations to move forward. privatization together. We will have to hold everyone accountable.
Ontario nurses have witnessed an alarming rise in the stealthy privatization of physical care in Ottawa. Public sector nurses have consistently sounded the alarm about a public hospital (the Riverside Hospital campus) that is used for private, for-profit surgeries performed on weekends.
While we’d all like hospital CEOs who are paid with our taxpayer dollars to focus on how to provide the public with quality patient care, it turns out that Love has directed his efforts to enrich greedy for-profit businesses.
“It seems that Love has focused his efforts on enriching greedy and lucrative companies. “
Frontline nurses and physical care professionals continue to see more examples of this same situation every day. The prime minister reappears on the scene with others in positions of power, adding his wealthy donors, to undermine public resources, adding the formula of physical care. that Ontarians created, funded, and depend on.
But is this what the public wants? It turns out that Ford decided to prevent the other Ottawans (and all Ontarians) from seeing the deals he is making that are costing our public formula dearly.
Those in positions of strength, elected or unelected, borrow our public money and use it to gain advantages from corporations like Schlegel Villages, at the expense of all of us. Companies like Schlegel have no other purpose than to make money. -For-profit healthcare providers prioritize cash over quality and protection, as was strikingly demonstrated at the height of the pandemic.
Canadians were given the right thing when we created the Medicare formula: with equitable access to high-quality care for all. Research shows that personal and public attention are not equal. There is a measurable difference in the results of the patient’s fitness in those formulas. The adivinaste. it: Public and nonprofit physical care trumps self-care in both ways. Private care costs more, offers less care, and in many cases, wait times are longer.
The rest of the people of Ottawa and all of Ontario deserve public physical attention. They did not vote on or approve the transfer of public assets or taxpayer money to subsidize for-profit physical care run through personal corporations.
As nurses, we know that our patients are not cash cows, perhaps in the eyes of Ford, his donors, and the CEO of the Ottawa Hospital. But Ford and his wealthy friends will continue to do whatever we let them do.
As citizens, voters and neighbors, we all pay close attention to it and ask for responsibility and transparency from those who are in force. We will have to ask for answers, settle for nothing less than transparency, and hold those in place accountable.
It is his government. It’s your care. It’s your future.
If we want to make sure Ontario is fair, we need a government that recognizes the contributions of the many runners who provide physical care to the other people who live and work here.
The provincial government’s moves make it clear that it is moving towards the privatization of health care. Are Ontarians suffering from a weariness of outrage at the government’s destruction of this sector?
One of the words of Ontario Premier Doug Ford is “I’m in charge. “But because of his inaction, he has blamed me and my colleagues in the Greater Toronto Area.
Donor
Erin Ariss is a registered nurse and provincial president of the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA).
Republish this article under the Creative Commons license.
Donor
Erin Ariss is a registered nurse and provincial president of the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA).
Republish this article under the Creative Commons license.
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