Health Care

TORONTO- Infrastructure, industry and health care investments are welcome in the Ontario budget, but government needs to take the next step and translate spending into good jobs and a stronger public health care system, including workforce development strategies.

"The Ontario government has put much needed money on the table - now they have to finish the job by ensuring that the work is done here in Ontario by Ontario workers. If we are going to build the transit of the future, let’s build it in Ontario,” said Lana Payne, Unifor National President.

Health care workers at peopleCare long term care home in Tavistock, Ont. have voted to join Unifor.

“Health care workers across the country are demanding more for themselves and those that they care for,” said Lana Payne, Unifor National President. “Joining a union is the first step in improving the working and living conditions in long-term care homes. I welcome our newest members at peopleCare and look forward to bargaining a first collective agreement that respects, protects and adequately pays our members.”

Workers rallied on Parliament Hill while Premiers and Prime Minister Trudeau negotiated a new health care funding deal for provinces and territories.

Ahead of the February 7th action, Unifor launched a petition to send a message to provincial and federal decision-makers to protect the future of public health care in the deal.

The event brought together union workers and health care advocates from across the country to demand that people are put ahead of profits.

The Right Honourable Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
The Honourable Chrystia Freeland
House of Commons, Canada

OPEN LETTER RE: Ontario’s Health System at Risk

Dear Prime Minister Trudeau and Deputy Prime Minister Freeland,

As Ontario’s largest health care unions, CUPE, SEIU Healthcare, OPSEU/SEFPO, ONA, and Unifor, we write on behalf of 295,000 workers concerned that Premier Ford’s privatization plan is putting our members and the people they care for at risk.

OTTAWA – As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet gather in Hamilton for a three-day retreat, a broad coalition of unions and progressive groups says that implementing a comprehensive pharmacare program must be a top priority for the Liberal government. The cost-of-living crisis has significantly increased cost-related obstacles to Canadians’ access to prescription drugs, while high drug prices are draining billions of dollars from hospitals’ budgets.

An elderly man in Fredericton, N.B. died alone in a wheelchair. Another patient died while waiting for care after hours in a hospital emergency waiting room. A 76-year-old man suffered a heart attack waiting in the ER waiting room. An 88-year-old woman, who is blind, is put into a bed in a storage closet.

Then, an ambulance was called to a residence in Greater Moncton which was dispatched from Saint John, 1.5 hours away. The child’s lungs collapsed and had to be rushed to the nearest children’s hospital, the IWK in Halifax, N.S.

TORONTO- Unifor will continue to fight for public health care in the face of Ontario PC government’s latest steps into privatization.

“This is far from the first step of Ontario’s path toward private healthcare, but this must be where it ends,” said Lana Payne, Unifor National President. “Public health care in Ontario is too important and we will not allow this government to bring us closer to an American-style for-profit system of health.”

TORONTO—The Ontario Minister of Health was briefed on Bill 124’s ill effects rippling across Ontario’s health care system, newly obtained ministerial briefing documents have revealed.

Ontario health care worker representatives joined with union leaders from Unifor, CUPE, SEIU Healthcare, ONA and OPSEU/ SEFPO to deliver an 'all we want for Christmas' holiday card that called on Premier Doug Ford to repeal Bill 124.