Union members supporting hospital workers rallied in front of St. Michael’s Hospital on Monday where they voiced anger over allegations the health-care centre plans to cut 750 jobs.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) claimed 750 jobs are on the brink of elimination at St. Michael’s Hospital due to provincial underfunding and the facility’s “huge deficit.”
Meanwhile, Unity Health Toronto, the network that oversees St. Michael’s and two other hospitals in the city, told TorontoToday the 750 figure is “grossly inaccurate.”
“Each fiscal year, we conduct a budgeting process which concludes on March 31,” a Unity Health spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “The goal is to strengthen our financial health while maintaining the high quality, compassionate care that our patients expect and deserve from Unity Health Toronto and its hospital sites.”
Unity Health Toronto did not specify how many jobs, if any, could be eliminated at St. Michael’s. The network also did not comment on any financial deficit at the hospital.
OCHU president Michael Hurley said Unity Health Toronto notified him of the alleged 750 employment cuts last year.
The rumoured job losses aren’t considered layoffs because they are vacant hospital positions that will be axed altogether, he said.
Toronto is in a health-care crisis, unions say
Hurley and other rallying union members placed blame for the alleged job cuts on the Doug Ford government’s handling of health care across the province.
CUPE said since taking office, the Ford government’s increases to hospital funding have not kept pace with inflation, population growth, aging or the rising cost of drugs and medical technologies.
The union argued the loss of 750 positions would only worsen issues like hallway medicine, long surgical wait times and staff burnout.
Hurley called any possible job reductions “ridiculous.”
“This is an emergency service. You can’t afford to cut any staff here” Hurley said. “This place is already running on skeleton staff.”
As a teaching and research hospital, St. Michael’s employs 7,500 staff members. The hospital’s emergency room can accommodate over 70,000 visits annually.
CUPE and OCHU jointly claimed more than 250,000 Ontarians are currently on a surgical wait list across all hospitals across the province.
“You’ve got, on any given day, 2,000 people on stretchers in hospitals like this one and waiting for a bed — up from 1,000 when the premier promised he would eliminate hallway medicine,” Hurley said. “[Patients] wait for their surgeries and treatments longer than they should and sometimes it endangers their lives, and that’s not right.”
Speaking to reporters on the campaign trail recently, Ford blamed emergency room overcrowding on patients showing up to the hospital unnecessarily.
"You got a little scrape on your knee or whatever, they should be at a clinic down the street," said Ford, claiming that an ER doctor told him 50 per cent of patients "shouldn't be there."
CUPE leaders said all of Ontario’s hospitals will garner a combined deficit of over $800 million this year and called for a $2-billion provincial investment to shore up their finances.
This would allow emergency rooms to relocate patients from stretchers and into hospital beds, and eliminate the long wait list for surgeries, Hurley argued.
In 2024, Ontario’s budget included $85 billion in health spending.
Some union members said the alleged 750 job cuts have only increased concern that the Ford government — which will face voters on Thursday — could push for the privatization of health care.
“Ford and his Minister of Health Sylvia Jones have opened the doors wide for privatization,” said Michelle Robidoux, a spokesperson with the Greater Toronto Health Coalition. The province began moving towards allowing private clinics to provide OHIP-covered MRI and CT scans, as well as hip and knee replacement surgeries, during its last term.
“They cannot drive through privatization without undermining one of the pillars of our public health-care system: public hospitals, which are in record deficit,” she said.
“We have a record number of emergency departments that are closed, a record number of patients waiting in hallways, chronic understaffing and patients forced to pay thousands of dollars in illegal fees at for-profit clinics for surgeries,” Robidoux alleged.
Monday’s rally outside St. Michael’s Hospital was noticeably lacking the presence of health-care workers.
According to Sharon Richer, the secretary treasurer of OCHU, there was a reason for that.
“The health-care workers from St. Mike’s wanted to be here, but with the proposed eliminations of positions and the understaffing that they’re facing, they’re not able to join us — even for ten minutes,” she said.
