Ontario’s hospital capacity crisis will get worse in the future as government funding will fall short of even maintaining current levels of service, according to a new research report produced by CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU/CUPE).
Doug Allan, a CUPE researcher unveiled some alarming local numbers during a media conference on Monday in North Bay.
The union says that based on the government’s own plans, there is a looming capacity shortfall of 13,800 hospital beds and more than 80,000 staff by 2032. In North Bay, an additional 600 staff and 80 new beds are required over the next 10 years.
"We estimate over the next 10 years that 80 new beds are needed which works out to an extra eight beds per year have to be added and for staffing in the first year 58 new extra staff - not hired staff but extra staff which would have to added to the complement of North Bay Regional Health Centre and that would have to happen every year going up slightly so roughly we are looking at about 600 extra staff added over the next 10 years," he said during a media conference at the CUPE office on Lakeshore Drive in North Bay.
"This is not going to solve the problem of capacity, it is not going to solve the workload problem, it is not going to end the violence in the hospitals that happens, it is just to maintain the inadequate current level of service and we are a long way short of doing that under the current plans."
On Monday, The Trillium, a Village Media sister site, stated that 2,000 people are receiving treatment in hallways, storage closets and other unconventional spaces in Ontario’s hospitals every day – a 100 per cent increase since 2018 when Doug Ford promised to eliminate the problem within a year.
"By the data that has been reported by the Trillium today, it looks like the number of people on stretchers in hallways in hospitals in Ontario has doubled from the point at which the Premier said he would end hallway medicine in the last provincial election," said Michael Hurley, president of OCHU/CUPE.
“It begs the question: has this government given up on the hospital crisis? What is their plan to address the suffering of people due to the state of our under-resourced hospitals?”
See related: Ontario's hallway health care problem worse than ever, hospital data shows
Ontario currently has 2.23 hospital beds per 1,000 people, which is marginally lower than the 2.25 beds it had just prior to COVID in 2019. “The hospital capacity crisis is also compounded by a lack of new long-term care beds,” notes the report, with a 20 per cent increase in the waitlist since the Ontario PCs came to power in 2018.
Hurley noted that an internal government document which he believes they tried to keep secret, from May this year showed a looming shortage of more than 80,000 nurses and personal support workers by 2032, with no plan to recruit or retain workers.
Hurley says that instead of taking requisite measures, the government has been “releasing misinformation” about adding staff.
Government officials have been saying the province has “added 30,000 nurses” in the past two years, but Hurley pointed out that figure simply looks at new registrants without accounting for nurses who have deregistered or have stopped practicing. Citing the latest College of Nurses data from August 2024, Hurley said the number of practicing nurses has only increased by 11,263 (63% less than the government’s claim).
“The government is cherry-picking data,” he said. “The most relevant metric here is the number of nurses practicing in the field, and that isn’t keeping pace with patient needs. The reality is the government is doing nothing to retain staff, who are increasingly demoralized in the face of ongoing cutbacks.”
Fedeli responds
Vic Fedeli, Nipissing MPP responded to the CUPE claims.
He believes the Ford government is taking bold, innovative action to connect Ontarians to the care they need when they need it.
"Under the leadership of Premier Ford, our government has made record investments in our healthcare system, investing over $85 billion this year alone, a 31 per cent increase from 2018," said Fedeli in an email to BayToday.
"We have increased our investment across the hospital sector by 4 per cent for a record two years in a row, we are getting shovels in the ground for over 50 hospital development projects across the province, building on the over 3,500 hospital beds we have added since 2020, that is double the beds the Liberals built in 14 years. Over the last two years, we have registered a record number of new nurses, adding 32,000 new nurses, with another 30,000 studying nursing at one of Ontario’s Colleges or Universities and since 2018, we have added over 12,500 new doctors to the healthcare workforce. But we are not stopping there.
"We have broken down barriers for internationally educated healthcare workers, while allowing healthcare workers registered in other provinces and territories to immediately start working in Ontario, removed financial barriers for nurses wanting to upskill, expanded the Learn and Stay grant to provide eligible students in nursing with funding for tuition, books and other costs. We have also made changes to expand RNs scope of practice so they can work to the full extent of their training while launching the largest expansion of medical school seats in the last 15 years. And through our minor ailment initiative along with expanding 9-1-1 models of care we are also ensuring patients can connect to the care they need while avoiding unnecessary trips to the emergency room."
Fedeli believes together these changes have allowed Ontario to achieve some of the lowest wait times across the country and the highest attachment rate to primary care.
