Health Minister Deborah Matthews
10th Floor, Hepburn Block
80 Grosvenor Street
Toronto, Ontario
M7A 2C4

December 3, 2009

Dear Minister Matthews:

The Ontario Public Service Employees Union represents more than 30,000 members in the province’s health care system, about two-thirds who work as professional and support staff in public hospitals.

In recent days we have heard the finance minister tell the Ontario Hospital Association trustees meeting that $11 billion in personal income tax cuts are coming in January, while the revenue minister told the CBC that the figure would be $15 billion. This is on top of the $5 billion in corporate tax cuts contained in the fall financial update.

With a huge commitment to tax cuts, it is therefore incomprehensible to think the same government would be telling hospitals to plan for a funding freeze in 2010/11.

Ontario has cut 45 per cent of its hospital beds since 1990, while the population has increased by 25 per cent.

The bureaucrats continue to argue that these services are being replaced in the community; however, the evidence would suggest this is mostly wishful thinking. In home care, for example, 100,000 fewer patients received care between 2005/06 and 2007/08.

We also learned this from the Deloitte report commissioned by your government, which indicated that the community mental health services intended to pick up divested individuals from the psychiatric hospitals were either non-existent or inadequate to meet their needs.

When the Harris government last froze funding for hospitals, reports emerged of ambulances shuttling between hospitals to find an open ER. Patients died.

In recent years underfunding has led to closure of ERs, reductions in pediatric and obstetric care in rural Ontario, closure of outpatient lab service at most hospitals, threats to mental health services and now removal of one of the last sources of publicly-funded physiotherapy in many regions.

Many hospitals are facing huge capital backlogs in replacing equipment.

Hospitals have been operating in deficit for so long that most capital budgets have been either eliminated or cut to the absolute minimum. Hospitals are now replacing equipment only when it totally ceases to function, and then by utilizing their contingency funds.

This year the LHINs reported that 38 per cent of hospitals finished last year in deficit despite the requirements to balance their budgets under the Local Health System Integration Act.

This year’s Hospital Annual Planning Submission Guide told hospitals to plan for the same funding they received this year – a freeze. The LHINs have at least asked for scenarios ranging from 0% to 2% -- the high end still being inadequate.

Our union has begun a campaign to urge our 130,000 members, their families, and the general public to stand up for our hospitals. You have likely already received postcards and e-mails related to this campaign.

Ontarians don’t want to give up their health care to add to the bottom line of our corporations or see a modest return on their personal income tax return.

In fact, if there is one consistent message we have been receiving – Ontarians are more than happy to pay for a health system that will be there for them and their families when they need it.

Ontario’s hospitals are already among the most efficient in Canada – they’ve had to be.

While the opponents of public health care try to portray costs as out of the control, the reality is health spending has held relatively steady as a percentage of our overall economy for the past twenty years. However, governments have dramatically shrunk relative to that economy. A fish looks bigger when placed in a smaller pond.

Recently we spoke to a doctor who works out a hospital in the Niagara Region. He complained that every year they had to decide how to implement the next round of cuts. “When do we get to ever discuss funding in the context of improving our services?” he asked.

This is a sentiment that is echoed by our members who serve on their hospital’s fiscal advisory committees.

We’ve had enough cuts to our public hospitals. Illness does not take a break during a recession, as we’ve seen with H1N1.

We would ask your government to do the right thing and reasonably fund our hospitals to help them meet the needs of their communities.

Sincerely,

Warren (Smokey) Thomas

President, Ontario Public Service Employees Union

cc. France Gelinas (NDP Health Critic), Christine Elliott (PC Health Critic)