The province will need $21 billion more to meet its promises to build more hospitals, long-term care facilities, and home care
The fiscal watchdog for Ontario says that in six years, the province will be short 33,000 nurses and personal support workers.
The Financial Accountability Office (FAO), an independent group that looks at Ontario’s finances, says in a special report on health care that the government will need an extra $21 billion to meet its promises to expand hospitals, long-term care, and home care.
The Doug Ford government has promised to make “significant” investments in these areas, but the FAO says that even if it did so, the demand for health services, especially as the population ages, would “more than offset” it.
In addition to a lack of nurses and personal support workers, the FAO says the province will be short 500 beds and will have fewer hospital beds, the same number of home-care beds, and fewer long-term care beds than it did in 2019-20.
Premier Ford said that the FAO report is just a “snapshot” in time, which is frustrating for his government because it doesn’t include health transfers or any new money going into the sector.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Ford said, “We’re throwing everything but the kitchen sink at health care.”
In recent years, the province’s health care system has broken down because of a lack of staff. This has led to temporary closures of emergency rooms, a huge backlog of surgeries, and patients who are sick of waiting.
The financial watchdog says that the province could make up the shortfall by spending a little more in each of the next few budgets and getting a boost from Ontario’s growing emergency fund.
A spokeswoman for Health Minister Sylvia Jones says the province is putting a lot of money into health care, has cut wait times for key surgeries, and “broke records” by registering more nurses in 2022.
Hannah Jensen says that the money from the upcoming deal with the federal government on health care will be used to hire more nurses and get more people set up with family doctors.
But the official opposition party in Ontario, the Ontario NDP, says the FAO report shows that Ford has “fundamentally failed Ontarians.”
France Gélinas, the NDP’s health critic, said, “Ford has refused year after year to pay for the health care services that all Ontarians deserve and to support the health care workers who care for us when we are sick.”
“If Ford doesn’t make a change right now, hospitals and long-term care facilities in Ontario will be smaller in 2028 than they were a decade ago.”