This morning, a giant Trojan horse was parked across the street from Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli's constituency office in downtown North Bay.
Members of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions and union partners brought the giant 15-foot horse to symbolize what they believe is the duplicity of the Ontario PCs hospital services’ privatization plan.
"The Trojan horse is a symbol of a gift, a tainted gift the Greeks gave to the Trojans," explained Michael Hurley, president of OCHU-CUPE.
"The Trojans thought they were all leaving, and that the war was over. They celebrated and when they passed out the Greeks emerged and slaughtered them. They should have been wary of it. And what we're seeing is this privatization of hospital surgeries is a gift, the Ontario people should be very wary of."
Sharon Richer, a representative with the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, says this is one of 61 stops they will be making in the next six weeks.
"They are saying that private clinics are going to reduce wait times, they're going to alleviate the crisis that we're seeing in our hospitals, and they're going to provide the care that Ontarians desperately need, but really, nothing could be further from the truth," she said.
"Their plan is really deceptive, and it is dangerous for our public hospitals. Last year, the Ford government passed legislation expanding private for-profit clinics, and we were out there loudly campaigning against it."
The protesters claim this fall, the government will be issuing new licenses to private clinics and providing them funding to perform 100,000 MRIs and CT scans.
“Private for-profit clinics and hospitals are up to two to three times more expensive than public hospitals. The Ford government is taking our public tax funding for health care away from our local hospitals to give it to more costly for-profit clinics,” said Natalie Mehra, the executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition in a news release.
Henri Giroux, co-chair of the North Bay Health Coalition, believes the horse paints a grim picture for the future of public health care in Ontario.
"We need to stop this government," Giroux stated passionately during the small rally Wednesday morning.
"I don't care who it is in power. All I know is that this is not acceptable. Our health care is our health care. We have a card that was given to us when we were born to say that everything is going to be free."
Fedeli responds
Fedeli, responded bluntly to the protest.
"Facts matter and while the Ontario Health Coalition, an out-of-touch, NDP-backed special interest group has spent the last decade accomplishing nothing while standing ideologically opposed to innovation taking place in the healthcare system, our government is taking bold action to connect more people to the care they need, when they need it," he said in an email to BayToday.
Fedeli says Ontario is proud to have one of the largest publicly funded healthcare systems in the world.
"Under the leadership of Premier Ford, our government has made record investments in our publicly funded healthcare system to connect more people to the care they need when they need it," he said.
Fedeli notes that since 2018 his government has increased the healthcare budget by over 31 per cent, investing over $85 billion into the system this year alone.
"We have increased our investment across the hospital sector by four 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 and have added 49 new MRI machines and 50 CT machines at hospitals across the province," said Fedeli.
"This is in addition to the nearly $1 billion to support the innovative ideas of hospitals to make it faster and easier to access surgeries and procedures. Together, the actions our government is taking have led Ontario to achieve some of the shortest wait times in Canada, with nearly 80 per cent of people receiving their procedure within clinically recommended target times."
