Protecting Public Healthcare in Waterloo Region
Public healthcare in Ontario is at a crossroads. As our hospitals, long-term care homes, and community health services face growing pressures, we’re here to ensure healthcare remains accessible, accountable, and there when you need it.
Your Voice for Local Healthcare
The Waterloo Region Health Coalition is a non-partisan, volunteer-led group of residents, healthcare professionals, and families across Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge. We provide the research and local coordination necessary to protect our public services from the threat of privatization.
We serve as a community resource to help you navigate how provincial policy changes affect your local care. Our goal is to ensure that healthcare delivery stays in public hands, based on patient need rather than private profit.
Healthcare Primer
Understanding Your Right to Public Healthcare
Healthcare in Canada was built on a simple promise: everyone gets care based on need, not ability to pay. But that foundation is shifting. Learn what’s at stake, how our system works, and why protecting public healthcare matters for you and your family.
Long Term Care
Ensuring Dignity for Our Seniors
Long-term care in Ontario is in crisis. Understaffing, inadequate funding, and the expansion of for-profit care are compromising the safety and dignity of our most vulnerable residents. Discover what’s happening in Waterloo Region and how we can demand better for our loved ones.
Home Care
Keeping Care in Our Communities
More seniors want to age at home, but home care services are being stretched thin and privatized. When care is driven by profit instead of patient need, our neighbors suffer. Find out how home care is changing and what it means for Waterloo Region families.
Pharmacare
Making Medications Accessible to All
Millions of Canadians can’t afford essential medications. A universal pharmacare program could fix that by ensuring everyone has access to the medicines they need, regardless of income or insurance. Learn how national pharmacare could close coverage gaps and save billions.
Privatization
When Profit Comes Before Patients
Across Ontario, pieces of our public healthcare system are being handed over to private, for-profit companies. From surgical clinics to diagnostic labs, this shift prioritizes shareholder returns over patient care. Understand what privatization really means and why it threatens equal access to healthcare.
Current Focus
What We’re Working On Now
Our coalition responds to emerging threats and opportunities as they arise. From Bill 60 to hospital restructuring to advocacy campaigns, this is where you’ll find our most urgent work and how you can help make a difference right now in Waterloo Region.
Latest News & Updates
Tracking the local impact of provincial policy changes and healthcare trends in our community.
Ontario spent $4.1B on private health facilities since 2017, report says
‘Sault Area Hospital is losing out on dollars that could be allocated to it, but instead they’re flowing increasingly to private for-profit facilities,’ said researcher Greg McGrath-Goudie Oct 4,…
Urgent: Canada’s Public Health Care is Under Attack!
To our members and supporters, The essential core of our public health care system is facing its most serious threat yet. Private, U.S. for-profit health insurance corporations and illegal…
Former deans of medicine call on Ottawa to intervene in Alberta’s dual-practice health care model
Four former deans of medicine in Alberta have joined a growing chorus of critics asking Ottawa to intervene in the province’s dual-practice health care model, which allows eligible doctors to…
How Ontario’s private clinics are draining taxpayer dollars and staff from public health care
“As the Ford government diverts funding to private facilities, Ontario’s public operating rooms are underutilized. Many sit dark on weekends; others become storage rooms, a monumental waste of an expensive…
Webinar: The Economic Benefits of Canada’s Public Health Care System
Health care is an investment that builds the economy, not just a line-item expense. More than 2.1 million people work in…
Not adding up: Surgical and diagnostic privatization in Ontario
The Ontario government favours for-profit delivery of surgeries and medical imaging, but the evidence shows this isn’t good health policy By Andrew Longhurst Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA)…
Help Us Keep Healthcare Public
Whether you want to stay informed or join a local task team, your involvement helps protect public healthcare for everyone in our community.