In June 2025, Premier Doug Ford’s government announced an expansion of publicly funded private surgical and diagnostic clinics, allowing taxpayer dollars to be used to pay for procedures delivered by for-profit providers.
These centres will provide MRI and CT scans as well as endoscopies. This expansion comes in addition to the province increasing the number of cataract and orthopedic surgeries permitted at private clinics.
The government’s stated intention behind these changes is to alleviate wait times and backlogs in Ontario’s healthcare system. The province states these clinics will serve over 800,000 patients.
The underfunding of public healthcare
However, a report published by the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) in January 2026 argues that chronic underfunding is the primary driver of Ontario’s health-care crisis, and that the expansion of for-profit clinics is worsening, rather than resolving, the problem.
The OCHU report states “The Ford government recently directed the hospitals to plan for a 2% annual increase in funding over the next three years, well short of the 6% average since 2020.”
It is argued this is well below cost pressure from inflation, population growth, and an aging population that is putting strain on the system.
An analysis by the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario showed that the reduction in healthcare funding would lead to the job losses of 9,000 nurses and personal support workers in Ontario’s healthcare system by 2028.
“The thought that we would lose such an enormous number is striking”, said Michael Hurley, the President of the OCHU.
“If we cut capacity now not only are we unable to clear the surgical waitlists and reduce the waits in emergency… we’re gonna see waits intensify and we’re gonna see the rationing of care. Doctors will have to make choices about who gets a bed, who gets cared for because there won’t be the resources… It’s outrageous in a wealthy province in one of the wealthiest countries in the world”, Hurley added.
As things currently stand, “Ontario has the fewest beds available to patients of any jurisdiction in Canada”, said Hurley.
Hurley added that approximately 73,000 patients are currently backlogged in surgical queues, waiting far longer than medically recommended timelines.
The impact of private clinics
According to Hurley, the issue with using for profit clinics to tackle the increasing burden Ontario’s healthcare system is faced with is that “there is a finite number of healthcare workers so if you create a parallel system and you offer to pay them more they move from the public system to the private system and then you intensify a staffing crisis in the public sector because these people are now not available to work… Staffing shortages are driving most of the problems we have to begin with.”
Hurley adds “private clinics take the easiest to do procedures for people who don’t have pre-existing conditions and give the more onerous complex cases to public health that require far more work… with fewer staff members. The people who are left in public health end up having a huge weight on their shoulders.”
Furthermore, OCHU members warn that the expansion of private health-care options risks deepening inequities in access to and quality of care between higher-income patients and those with median incomes.
“The Canadian Medical Association Journal looked at Ontario data after cataract surgeries were privatized and found that people in the wealthiest parts of the population had 22 per cent greater access to cataract surgeries. Access declined for everyone else and dropped the most for the most marginalized. You can deduce from that that if you’re wealthy, you’re simply not going to wait as long” regardless of how urgent your medical needs are, said Hurley.
These inequities are felt most acutely by seniors and people living in rural Ontario.
Despite the private clinics being publicly funded, patients have the ability to purchase “add-ons,”, like enhanced care fees, that critics say are used as tactics to move wealthier patients higher on waitlists to get their care faster despite not necessarily needing it more.
“Even though vulnerable people may be the most needy, they’re at the bottom of the heap, in terms of access in the new healthcare system that conservatives are constructing,” said Hurley.
Additionally, privately run clinics that receive public funding are often built in higher-income areas, effectively prioritizing access for wealthier communities.
OCHU’s recommendations
According to Hurley, the decreased funding in public healthcare despite the growing need for it from Ontario’s population is not merely a misguided decision but is deliberate.
“They’re setting up the public system to fail to encourage the growth of the private sector,” said Hurley.
The OCHU, in their report, recommends the provincial government add 6,200 staffed beds, 48,000 full-time staff to reach the national per-capita average, increase hospital funding by $3.2 billion to match the rest of Canada, and plan to fund at least five-to-six per cent annual growth to match cost pressures arising from inflation, population growth and population aging.
“The federal government has to step up in defence of Medicare as we know it which means taking on Doug Ford over private surgical centres,” Hurley said.
However, he added the federal Liberals have shown “no interest” in defending public healthcare from being eroded by the provinces.
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