March 18th, 2021

Horwath lays out NDP budget priorities to offer help and hope

SCARBOROUGH — People need next week’s provincial budget to help them get through the pandemic and finally deliver some hope, says Official Opposition leader Andrea Horwath.

Horwath was in Scarborough Thursday to lay out the NDP’s top budget priorities — investments she said are must-haves to help long-term care, hospitals, schools and job creation.

“People have been doing their part. But we need Doug Ford to do his part in order to stop this cycle of outbreaks and lockdowns,” said Horwath. “Cuts and underfunding COVID-fighting efforts now would only drag us backwards.

“I believe it’s time to invest in people. If I were the premier today, I’d be using this budget to give people the help they need to make it to the other side of this pandemic. I’d write this budget through a an equity lens — helping hard-hit communities, and building a she-covery. I’d give them hope that we can end this, and start our recovery.”

The NDP’s top budget priorities include:

Long-term care

Achieve four hours of daily hands-on care for every long-term care resident urgently by hiring 10,000 full-time PSWs in long-term care, and giving them higher wages and paid training

Immediately reinstate comprehensive Resident Quality Inspections in long-term care

Hospitals

Shore up the hospital sector with increases to base funding and eliminating all hospital deficits

Give hospitals funding to eliminate the backlog of surgeries and cancer screenings. A minimum of 227,500 patients are waiting in pain for surgeries that were delayed

Provide funding to get shovels in the ground on hospital construction and expansion urgently, including new hospital beds in Scarborough, and a new full hospital in Brampton

Students and schools

Help students recover pandemic learning loss by hiring additional teachers and education workers, guaranteeing smaller class sizes and no layoffs

Help students overcome the difficult pandemic year with new mental health supports in every school

Jobs

Fund 14 paid sick days and guarantee paid time off to get a vaccine

Provide small businesses with expanded rent and payroll supports until businesses are back on their feet

Ford’s pre-pandemic budget made deep, painful cuts including cutting as many as 10,000 teachers and education workers, taking away supports for children with autism, and slashing public health units. A March memo from the Ministry of Education indicated that the Ford government is planning to cut a whopping $1.6 billion from education.

Background

Long-term care

Re-instate annual comprehensive Resident Quality Inspections and enforcement.The government’s own long-term care commission made a series of recommendations for the government related to inspections and enforcement including:

Reintroduce annual Resident Quality Inspections (RQIs) for all long-term care homes and require all reactive inspections occurring during the pandemic to include an infection prevention and control program review.

Funding items in the upcoming 2021 provincial budget would include funding to hire and train additional inspectors to implement the RQIs on every LTC home in the system, at a minimum on an annual basis.

A plan for recruitment and retention of personal support workers in long-term care homes.

The NDP is calling for a pay raise for PSWs, as well as permanent full-time jobs, rather than temp gigs. The temporary pay boost announced in October will expire on March 31. It raised wages between $2 and $3 an hour for PSWs in hospitals, home care, long-term care and social services. The six-month initiative cost $461 million.

The NDP is calling for its Time to Care Act, which staffs up to a level that gives all long-term care residents a minimum of 4.1 hours of hands-on care and attention daily, to be passed and fully realized urgently.

At the beginning of June 2020, Quebec’s government launched a recruitment drive to hire 10,000 PSW-equivalent workers. They paid them $21 per hour for training, increased wages to $26 an hour when they were hired, and Quebec has retained nearly all those workers, who protected seniors in care homes during the second wave.

Hospitals

Shore up the hospital sector with increases to base funding and eliminating deficits.

  • The Ontario Hospital Association laid out this need in their pre-budget submission. OHA estimates $860 million is required for increases to base funding, and deficits are in excess of $525 million.

Eliminate the backlog of surgeries and cancer screening.

  • The OHA has called for funding to help manage the provincial backlog of surgeries.
  • Ontario claimed they have provided $741 million to help clear the backlog of surgeries, but only $283.7 million supports additional priority surgeries including cancer, cardiac, cataract, and orthopaedic procedures. To arrive at their larger number the government includes a different $457 million funding figure, which is actually designated for home and community care.
  • There are currently no targets for eliminating the backlog.
  • The current backlog of surgeries is 227,500, and that does not include patients who need surgery but are earlier in the process. It also does not include non-surgical necessary procedures, like diagnostics. On top of that, about one million cancer screenings did not happen as a result of COVID.
  • A CMAJ study estimated that between March 15 and June 13, 2020, the estimated backlog in Ontario was 148,364 surgeries. Estimated backlog clearance time for that number was 84 weeks requiring 719 operating room hours, 265 ward beds and nine ICU bed per week.
  • British Columbia has had success with an aggressive plan to eliminate that province’s surgery backlog. In May of 2020, B.C. committed $250 million a year to tackle their backlog. New funding was used to hire 755 new staff, including surgeons, nurses, physiotherapists, diagnostic imaging technicians and post-anesthesia care aides, among others. The province bought additional MRI machines and started running them 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Health Minister Adrian Dix said that over Christmas 2020 there were 250 more surgeries performed than over the same period in 2019.
  • Given Ontario’s relative size and budget, a similar commitment would require a $725 million investment.

Students and schools

Help students recover pandemic learning loss by hiring additional teachers and education workers, guaranteeing smaller class sizes and no layoffs.

  • In a recent memo to School Boards, Deputy Minister Nancy Naylor warned that the government would soon be cutting the more than $1.6 billion. “Staffing assumptions should be based on the COVID-19 funding supports being one-time in nature while we continue to monitor and work with health experts to assess what supports are needed,” read the memo.

Help students overcome the difficult pandemic year with new mental health supports in every school.

  • Experts have raised alarm bells about youth mental health during the pandemic.
  • Joanne Lowe, vice-president of mental health and addictions at CHEO, said sustained and long-term provincial investments will be required to address the mental health fallout of COVID-19 on children and youth — which includes self-harm, depression, struggles to learn and more.

Jobs

Fund 14 paid sick days and guarantee paid time off to get a vaccine, in addition to regular permanent paid sick days.

  • The NDP has repeatedly put its Stay Home If You Are Sick Act to a vote. The Ford PCs have opposed that bill, to date.

Provide small businesses with expanded rent and payroll supports until businesses are back on their feet.

  • The NDP has proposed a Save Main Street plan that includes a ban on all commercial evictions, a utility payment freeze for small and medium-sized businesses, and stand-alone 75 per cent commercial rent subsidy option, up to $10,000 per month.