Fixing our Health Care system
It’s getting harder and harder for Ontarians to get the health care they need. Too many Ontarians wait hours at the ER, wait weeks for a doctor’s appointment, or spend weeks or months waiting in pain and anxiety for a surgery.
The pandemic exposed just how broken our health care system is, with nurses, doctors and other health professionals chronically short-staffed and run off their feet, unable to give patients the time and attention they need.
For decades, Conservative and Liberal governments’ big cuts and bad choices have damaged Ontario’s health care system. Doug Ford was cutting critical health services before the pandemic – he slashed public health units from 35 to 10, and his low-wage policy, Bill 124, froze the wages of health care workers below the rate of inflation.
He refused to spend the money needed to shore up hospitals and health care during the pandemic. Disrespected, burnt out nurses and other health care workers are leaving the sector in droves.
Steven Del Duca and the Liberals created Ontario’s hallway medicine crisis. They froze hospital budgets and fired 1,600 nurses. They can’t be trusted to fix what they broke.
Together, we can fix this. The Ontario NDP has a practical, doable plan to rebuild and strengthen health care in Ontario. We’re committed to making investments in critical services. We’ll make sure health care workers get the pay they deserve and launch a campaign to recruit, retain and return nurses and other health care workers to our hospitals and public health units, including in underserved areas like rural and northern communities.
We’ll tackle the waitlist for surgeries and procedures so people can stop waiting and start healing.
TREAT MENTAL HEALTH CARE AS HEALTH CARE
When Ontarians reach out for help with their mental health, they need to know that the right supports will be available to them without delay.
But today, Ontario’s mental health services are failing too many people. Long wait times, high out-of-pocket costs, and shortages of health care professionals are making it too hard to get help when you need it. Doug Ford’s Conservatives cut more than $2 billion in planned mental health spending and allowed the wait list for child and youth mental health services to double.
An Ontario NDP government will fix this. Andrea Horwath released the NDP’s plan for universal mental health care in April.
Here are some key elements of that plan:
COMMITMENT
Universal, Publicly Funded Mental Health Care: We will expand access to counselling and therapy services across the province by bringing therapy services into OHIP.
COMMITMENT
Fixing the mental health system: We will create Mental Health Ontario, a new coordinating organization that will take the lead on identifying and publicly reporting on mental health needs, developing a comprehensive wait list for services, bringing in province-wide mental health standards, creating a basket of services, and making sure that mental health and addiction programs are delivered comprehensively across Ontario.
COMMITMENT
Reduce the waitlist for children’s mental health to 30 days: We will implement the Make Kids Count Action Plan as laid out by the Children’s Health Coalition. The plan calls for an investment of $130 million over the next three years to build intensive treatment and specialized consultation services, increase access to psychotherapy and counselling, family therapy and supports, and scale 24-hour crisis support services to ensure children and youth experiencing a crisis have an alternative to going to the emergency department.
COMMITMENT
Supportive Housing: The Mental Health and Addictions Leadership Advisory Council has recommended that 30,000 new supportive housing units be built over 10 years for people living with mental health and addiction challenges. In the NDP’s Homes You Can Afford housing plan, Andrea Horwath lays out her plan to deliver these new supportive homes.
COMMITMENT
Strengthening the sector: We will provide an immediate eight per cent funding boost for frontline mental health and addiction agencies and provide ongoing sustainable funding, and introduce targeted hospital funding to increase the number of Tier 5 treatment beds for people with complex needs.
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Improving Crisis Response: We will immediately invest $10 million more into mobile crisis services and $7 million more for safe bed programs to support mobile crisis teams. We will work towards establishing 24-hour civilian community mobile teams across the province to operate in partnership with Mobile Crisis Response Teams and respond to low-risk crisis situations.
OVERDOSE PREVENTION
COMMITMENT
Address the overdose crisis and other addictions: We’ll declare the opioid crisis a public health emergency, and invest in addiction rehabilitation, detox centres, and harm reduction strategies. We’ll remove the cap Doug Ford placed on supervised consumption sites, expedite approvals for supervised consumption sites in the north, and work to ensure safer alternatives to the current toxic and deadly supply of drugs available on the street. We will also work with the federal government to reduce the stigma of drug addiction and decriminalize personal drug use, so people can get the medical help they need. Chiefs of Police have joined the call for stronger action, including decriminalization.
DENTAL CARE FOR EVERY ONTARIAN
Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has made a groundbreaking accomplishment by getting action from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to secure for Canadians the largest expansion to health care in a generation, including dental care. This will save families thousands of dollars a year.
COMMITMENT
Andrea Horwath and the Ontario NDP will lead the way on this program, working with the federal government to strengthen and accelerate the expansion of dental care.
CLEARING THE COVID-19 SURGICAL BACKLOG
COVID has created a backlog of nearly 20 million health care procedures in Ontario, including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgeries, colonoscopies, and mammograms.
Doug Ford’s Conservatives refuse to take action and make the necessary investments to address the backlog.
COMMITMENT
Invest to eliminate the backlog: We’ll identify and publicize the number of delayed procedures and publish regular progress reports. We’ll expand operating room hours over the evenings and weekends to increase hospital capacity, engage in a health care worker hiring blitz, and create a centralized referral system. We’ll make sure this gets done without privatizing our health care system.
RECRUITING, RETAINING, RETURNING AND SUPPORTING HEALTH CARE WORKERS
Our health care system is woefully understaffed. Health care workers like nurses and Personal Support Workers (PSWs) are underpaid and burnt out.
Ontario’s health care workers are heroes, stepping up every day of the pandemic to keep our communities healthy and safe while facing the threat of infection.
Years of Liberal neglect and underfunding left health care workers stretched thin. Instead of supporting health care workers, the Ford Conservatives cut health care funding and staff..
They left personal support workers without adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) at the height of the pandemic. Ford’s Bill 124 is a low-wage policy that has left health care workers feeling underpaid and underappreciated. He’s refused to hire the thousands more nurses and PSWs Ontario needs.
Meanwhile, thousands of internationally trained physicians and nurses face massive barriers to getting licensed in Ontario, and getting the local work experience they need to qualify and find employment in their field.
The Ontario NDP has a concrete plan to recruit, retain, and return thousands of nurses and PSWs province-wide, and remove employment barriers to internationally educated health care workers.
New Democrats believe that health care workers must be given the support and respect they need to deliver quality care and avoid burnout. We’ll work hand in hand with health care professionals to improve patient care, ensure fair wages, decent work conditions and safety on the job, including proper PPE and mental health supports. We’ll make sure PSWs can earn a decent, living wage and secure full-time jobs. A New Democrat government will put an end to any further cuts to nurses and health care workers. We will provide a comprehensive staffing and HR framework and work collaboratively with all health care professionals to help them practice to their full scope and serve Ontarians to the very best of their abilities. By freeing health care professionals to do their jobs, patients
and clients will experience better, faster and more convenient care.
COMMITMENT
Take immediate action to begin hiring 10,000 PSWs, the number experts estimate Ontario is short.
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Give PSWs a raise of at least $5 above pre-pandemic levels.
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Take immediate action to begin hiring 30,000 nurses: The number experts say Ontario is short.
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Expedite recognition of nursing credentials of 15,000 internationally trained nurses so they can get to work in their field faster.
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We’ll create new jobs for late-career and recently retired nurses to mentor and supervise.
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We’ll create a job-matching program to guarantee internationally trained physicians get local experience.
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Eliminate Bill 124 and increase health care workers’ wages: We’ll scrap Doug Ford’s unfair wage cap bill, which prevents nurses and other health care workers from negotiating a fair wage. We will commit to good faith bargaining with the public sector.
COMMITMENT
We’ll develop and implement a strategy to address violence against health care professionals.
BETTER ACCESS TO FAMILY DOCTORS AND PRIMARY CARE
Ontario’s northern, rural, and remote communities face barriers to accessing timely health care due to shortages of health care workers, including primary health care, mental health and addiction treatments.
COMMITMENT
Take immediate action to begin hiring 300 doctors in Northern Ontario including 100 specialists and 40 mental health practitioners. We will develop an incentive package to recruit doctors, and their families, to live and work in Northern Ontario, expand the number of seats and training opportunities at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine and introduce a scholarship program for students from rural and remote communities in Northern Ontario who want to practice medicine.
COMMITMENT
More funding for nurse practitioner-led clinics, which play an important role in the delivery of primary care.
COMMITMENT
Expanding Community Health Centres: We will immediately begin work on a long overdue expansion of Ontario’s Community Health Centres, adding 20 new or satellite centres in communities where they are needed most. We will work with existing Centre leadership and health experts to identify communities with the highest needs. The priorities will include new centres to meet the unique needs of Indigenous, Francophone and underserviced Northern communities.
FIXING THE CRISIS IN NORTHERN EMERGENCY ROOMS
Hospitals across northwestern Ontario are at risk. Northern Ontarians are losing access to critical hospital services due to staffing shortages and temporary closures of hospital departments and emergency rooms. People often have to wait for hours for urgent care, or drive hundreds of kilometres, and frontline health care workers are run off their feet, working multiple 24-hour shifts week after week.
Northern health professionals have warned that hospitals across the region could see more emergency room closures as a result of physician shortages.
Years of Liberal and Conservative funding freezes and cuts have failed Northern hospitals. The Ontario Physician Locum Programs (OPLP) often only provide temporary positions, and issues like bad winter weather and high travel costs can result in communities having to go without access to a doctor.
The Ontario NDP will work with Northern communities and physicians to create a sustainable strategy to retain doctors and other health professionals already practicing in the North, and recruit new ones.
COMMITMENT
Fund travel accommodations for medical residents to take elective rotations in rural and Northern communities, so that residents no longer have to pay out of pocket to work in Northern communities.
COMMITMENT
Create more residency rotation positions to help retain doctors in the North.
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Foster strong relationships between practitioners and social service providers to create robust teams of care.
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Support nurse practitioner partnershipswith doctors and specialists to expand access to services and comprehensive care.
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Hire 300+ doctors and 100+ specialists in Northern Ontario and increase residency positions at NOSM University.
COMMITMENT
Urge the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario to expedite the process for international medical graduatesto obtain their licensure to work in Northern Ontario, understanding that more internationally trained health professionals will help alleviate the pressure on existing doctors and their practices. We’ll work with
the federal regulatory body to facilitate mentorship and supervisory roles for senior doctors.
COMMITMENT
Fund locumsto allow travelling doctors to bring a resident with them when they go to a Northern Ontario community to practice, offering the doctor travelling support and giving residents exposure to practice in the North.
COMMITMENT
Create a specific strategy to recruit and retain nurses in Northern
Ontario, including opportunities for mentorship to ensure that nurses who work or have worked in Northern communities can provide support and training to nurses newly arriving in Northern Ontario.
PHARMACARE
Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh successfully put a national pharmacare package back on the country’s agenda. He proved that New Democrats get things done when it comes to protecting what matters most to people, and are committed to saving lives and reducing families’ costs by thousands of dollars each year. But the federal government’s commitment to deliver a pharmacare plan in five years isn’t good enough.
Ontarians can’t afford to wait five years for this plan. More than two million Ontarians have no prescription drug coverage. Too many Ontarians must choose between filling their prescriptions or paying the bills. When people can’t afford to take their medications, it hurts people and strains our health care system. The Ontario NDP will act immediately to accelerate pharmacare, ensuring all Ontarians have prescription drug coverage faster. Andrea Horwath will lead the way, driving hard to achieve a national program.
COMMITMENT
We’ll begin working immediately on Universal Pharmacare for Ontarians. Pharmacare will complement Ontario’s existing public drug programs, so that no one loses their current coverage.
COMMITMENT
Lead creation of a national, universal pharmacare program: Andrea Horwath will be the premier who leads the way on a comprehensive national pharmacare plan. An NDP government will work with Ottawa to establish a national formulary and as premier, Andrea Horwath will use Ontario’s seat at the Council of the Federation to help build a national plan – not block it from happening.
ENDING CUTS, PRIVATIZATION AND USER FEES
You should be able to count on quality health care when you need it, without having to worry about your bank balance.
Under successive Liberal and Conservative governments, we have seen cuts in health care spending create creeping user fees and privatization. These cuts take public support away from our health care system, and force health care providers to make up the funding shortfalls through growing fees to their patients and clients.
Now, Doug Ford is trying to use the health care crisis created by the Liberals and made worse by the Ford government and the pandemic, including the surgical and procedural backlogs, to speed up privatization.
New Democrats strongly oppose this – there is no place for profit when it comes to our health, or the health of our families. We believe strongly that care must be based on a person’s needs, not their ability to pay.
COMMITMENT
End user fees: We’ll start by working with health sector partners to eliminate unfair user fees on patients and their families in every part of the health care system.
PROPERLY FUNDING HOSPITALS
Hospitals have been underfunded for decades and stretched even thinner by COVID-19.
The Liberals froze hospital budgets and caused hallway medicine. The Ford Conservatives refused to shore up hospitals during the pandemic.
The Ontario NDP has a plan to strengthen hospitals. We’ll make the investments needed to fix the hallway medicine crisis and address longstanding capacity and staffing issues.
COMMITMENT
Raise hospital funding to exceed health sector inflation, population growth, expanded operating plans, and unique local needs such as aging populations.
COMMITMENT
Prioritize badly needed hospital projects: We will ensure needed hospital projects and expansions in Brampton, Niagara Falls, Windsor-Essex and Kitchener get shovels in the ground without sacrificing needed health services in surrounding communities. We will immediately begin work on new hospital projects in Brampton, Scarborough and Sioux Lookout.
BETTER CANCER CARE
A cancer diagnosis is a frightening prospect, one that more and more Ontario families are dealing with. Too many Ontarians are waiting for cancer surgery or forced to travel far from home to receive cancer treatment.
Doug Ford and the Conservatives have left Ontario with a preventable backlog for all kinds of surgeries, which means delays for cancer surgeries. Cancer patients are often left carrying significant costs – sometimes thousands of dollars - for take-home medication. The Canadian Cancer Society estimates there is a multi-million dollar funding gap in take-home cancer drug spending in Ontario – and too often patients are left to cover the gap on their own. This isn’t right. Under Andrea Horwath, an Ontario New Democrat government will rebuild Ontario cancer care for the better. We’ll tackle the backlog head- on, improve care in and out of hospital, improve screening with a special focus on hard-to-reach communities, and partner with world-class institutions to deliver care closer to home.
COMMITMENT
Immediately make take-home cancer drugs free: We will close the gaps that leave cancer patients paying out of pocket for take-home cancer drugs.
COMMITMENT
Provide cancer treatment closer to home: We’ll ensure communities have access to comprehensive cancer treatment close to where they live, so no one has to travel a long way to get essential care such as radiation treatment. For example, we’ll immediately fund the building of a dedicated cancer care centre in Brampton.
COMMITMENT
Ensure that the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test can be billed to the Ontario Health Insurance Plan.
GUARANTEE HEALTH EQUITY
Poverty, systemic racism, homophobia and transphobia, sexism, and ableism impact the quality of health care Ontarians receive.
COMMITMENT
Collect race-based data in all areas of health care to identify and fix the systemic inequities in health care.
COMMITMENT
Treat anti-Black racism as a public health crisis: We’ll establish a systematic review of the reality that Black Canadians are disproportionately impacted by HIV/AIDS, mental health issues, heart disease, hypertension, Sickle Cell, and stroke. We’ll pass the Ontario NDP’s Improve Access to Health Care Act to improve care for Sickle Cell patients in crisis.
COMMITMENT
Immediately begin work to improve access to gender-affirming procedures and surgeries and make transition drugs free: We’ll work to ensure full coverage of transition drugs and medications. We’ll pass the Ontario NDP’s Gender Affirming Health Care Advisory Committee Act, working with advocates and health care providers to reduce barriers to care for transition-related and gender-confirming surgeries. We’ll ensure health care decisions are in line with standards of care established by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).
COMMITMENT
Make PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) free: We’ll remove the cost of medications required to treat and prevent HIV.
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Make long-term care 2SLGBTQIA+ affirming so people can always live with Pride: Moving into long- term care should never mean having to move back into the closet.
COMMITMENT
Grow Francophone health care:We’ll prioritize health care as an essential sector in Francophone communities, ensuring the Ministry of Health makes French language access a key part of its planning. We’ll expand the number of community health centres and long-term care homes by and for Francophones and aim to serve all designated areas offering mental health and addiction support services in French.
COMMITMENT
Expand Indigenous health: We’ll work with Indigenous primary health care organizations to expand services to more communities, ensure health care delivery is culturally sensitive and that Indigenous health professionals are recruited and properly compensated.
PROTECT AND STRENGTHEN MATERNAL HEALTH
The birth of a new child is a transformational moment in the lives of many families. Ontarians deserve the very best care and support at this time. Midwifery care is a proven model that can help babies get the very best start in life.
Under the Liberals and Conservatives, too many expecting parents have struggled to find the care they need. Midwives have faced unequal pay for decades, limiting the profession and access to care in Ontario, especially in Francophone, rural, and Indigenous communities. Doug Ford has made it harder for people in the North to get midwifery care by refusing to stop the closure of the midwifery program at Laurentian University.
Andrea Horwath and the New Democrats have a strong plan to expand access to midwifery care across the province. We recognize that the birth of a child can be a vulnerable time in people’s lives, and we’ll ensure that mental health care includes a full perinatal mental health strategy to support new families in this important transition.
COMMITMENT
Stop fighting midwives in court: Doug Ford, just like the Liberals before him, has wasted precious public dollars fighting midwives in court, attempting to overturn a decision to grant them pay equity. We’ll ensure the work of midwives is valued and fairly compensated.
COMMITMENT
Expand access to midwifery care:Including in Francophone, rural and Indigenous communities.
COMMITMENT
We’ll ensure mental health care includes a full perinatal mental health strategy.
COMMITMENT
We will protect maternal health and obstetrics services in rural hospitals and expand options for like midwife-run birth centres for families.
COMMITMENT
Return a midwifery program to Sudbury to support Indigenous and Francophone midwives and families.
BETTER END-OF-LIFE CARE
Everyone deserves comfort and dignity at the end of their life.
Years of Liberal and Conservative cuts have meant too many Ontarians cannot access affordable, dignified end-of-life home or hospice care.
New Democrats believe all Ontarians have the right to comfort and dignity throughout their medical care. We’ll give more people the choice to die in the comfort of their own home by fixing our broken home and community care system. We’ll make sure every Ontarian has access to compassionate, dignified, and quality end-of-life care.
COMMITMENT
We’ll expand Ontario’s network of hospices and work with community care providers to establish the compassionate and accessible palliative care system Ontario urgently needs.
COMMITMENT
Ensure that every Ontarian who seeks access to medical assistance in dying receives it.
COMMITMENT
Ensure that terminally ill children and their families are provided with accessible and supportive end-of-life care by passing NDP MPP Sandy Shaw’s bill to develop and implement a pediatric hospice palliative care strategy for Ontario.
PUBLIC HEALTH
The COVID-19 pandemic made it clear just how important our public health care is. Unfortunately, just before the pandemic Ontario’s public health system came under attack from the Ford government’s cuts. In the months leading up to the COVID-19 outbreak, Doug Ford announced plans to slash public health units from 35 to 10, and download funding responsibility onto municipalities. This can’t happen again.
COMMITMENT
Cancel Doug Ford’s plans for forced mergers of public health units and restore the province’s traditional share of funding. Then we will work with the public health units and the health care sector to review the lessons from the pandemic and ensure public health units have the tools they need for the next pandemic.
COMMITMENT
We will pass a Public Health Accountability Act to ensure that the Chief Medical Officer of Health is free to act in the public interest.
Our plan
Making Life More Affordable
Fixing our Health Care system
Fixing home care and long-term care, and helping Ontarians age in place
Good jobs that pay the bills
Fixing Education and Schools
Climate, Jobs, Justice: The Green New Democratic Deal
Honouring the Inherent Rights, Treaties, and Ways of Life of Indigenous Peoples
Equity
Fixing Ontario's social safety net, and ensuring people with disabilities live a great life
Quality public services you can count on
Strengthening our Democracy
Fiscal approach
Recovering From COVID-19
Northern Ontario Platform
