CUPE Local 5666 to Hold Rally Against Health Care Cuts Outside Steve Clark’s Brockville Office on Wednesday

Brockville – Our public hospitals are at risk. Once again, the Ford government has made the political decision to prioritize cuts over care.

More than 9,000 nurses and PSWs are expected to lose their jobs by 2027-28. More than 2,450 hospital beds are projected to close by then due to insufficient funding.

We have not witnessed such drastic cuts since the days of Mike Harris. This will hurt our public hospitals. It will hurt patient care, and the predominantly female (many racialized) workforce responsible for its delivery.

This will endanger patient lives: it will lengthen wait-lists, increase hospital overcrowding, and undermine infection control; it will worsen working conditions, exacerbate staff exhaustion & burnout; it will increase tensions between patients/families and staff, and lead to more violent incidents – including sexual and racial abuse; it will cause longer wait-times for emergency rooms, and potentially lead to closures; by every indicator our system will get worse with more funding cuts.

Meanwhile, the government has been pouring more into private clinics every year, chipping away at our public system.

On Wednesday, February 25th, at 10:00 am join us outside Steve Clark’s office in Brockville, to demand better for our public hospitals. Let’s channel our anger and send this government a strong message: we care about our public health care system. And we will continue to defend it.