“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 resource,” writes Iris Gorfinkel.
Oct. 1, 2026
By Iris Gorfinkel Contributor
Iris Gorfinkel is a family physician and clinical researcher in Toronto
Toronto Star
Half of Ontario’s family physicians plan to retire or exit practice within five years. This mass retirement is expected to add another 1.74 million to the 2.5 million Ontarians already lacking a family doctor. It could leave 1-in-4 people in this province with minimal preventive medicine, unmanaged chronic conditions and nowhere to turn but emergency rooms.
In response, the Ontario government allocated $2.1 billion to build interprofessional health teams. Yet the Ford government is undermining its own strategy: Teams are forced to offer salaries far below those of public hospitals to the essential staff required to run them. Worse, the province is funding private clinics that compete for this already scarce workforce. The Ford government is sabotaging its own plans.
One consequence of this underfunding is the fast growth of “concierge” medicine. Private corporations exploit the scarcity of primary care physicians and nurse practitioners by recruiting them away from the public system.
Read more at the Toronto Star (pay wall)
