‘It’s important for me, for my health care, for seniors, for anybody, and for the generations that are coming up. It’s very important that we maintain our public funding for health care,’ says Innisfil nurse
Kevin Lamb
Village Report
May 28, 2026 8:34 PM
BARRIE – One of the GO trains that left the station in south-end Barrie this morning was packed with many more riders than usual as it chugged toward downtown Toronto for a protest under sunny skies.
Residents from as far north as Sudbury arrived in Barrie on Thursday morning in time to catch the South Barrie GO train to Toronto for a planned march to demand Premier Doug Ford stop his “unprecedented” privatization of public hospital services, organizers say.
With slogans such as “get on board” and “stop Ford’s privatization train wreck,” the Ontario Health Coalition says the play on words is referring to “entire train cars” that the coalition has reserved for people from locations across southern and central Ontario.
The coalition said protesters were heading into Toronto for a “giant” march and rallies calling on the Ford government to stop their “unprecedented privatization of Ontario’s core hospital services.”
“Make no mistake,” Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, said in a release. “The Ford government is trying to force a massive shift of our public tax dollars away from our local public hospitals to create an infrastructure of private for-profit clinics. His government is privatizing Ontario’s hospitals now, unless we stop them.”
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