Ontario Health Coalition
May 26, 2026
Someone asked us if protests — like the giant protest Thursday May 28 to stop Ford’s privatization of our hospitals & health care — ever accomplished anything.
We thought it was a fair question.
The answer is YES — and we put together the list for you!
While it is rare that any one single event wins completely — though some of our events have alone won major policy change — more often each event piles on the pressure that makes change. Our experience is, every piece of mass education, like the leaflets, every bit of community organizing — like the trains and the public forums and the protest — and each time we build visible resistance, we build real political pressure. If that fightback is huge, it has more of a chance of success. And if people can see that there is a big visible fight back then they join. In fact, we can’t even get in the door to lobby without being able to move tens of thousands of people. And if we wait for the next election, it will be too late.
We don’t brag about it too often, but just so you know, we’ve won a LOT together (list is below).
What we’ve won — with all of you!
- We have won amendments in the public interest to every major piece of health care legislation for the last 25 years up until the Ford government took office. (The Ford government has voted down every amendment to health care legislation from any party except themselves for their entire term in office – it is unprecedented.)
- In 2019 after the Ford government was elected, we were instrumental, along with municipalities, in stopping the Ford government’s cuts to long-term care and Public Health Units.
- We helped to delay the Public Health restructuring and EMS restructuring and privatization. (Ultimately both were stopped altogether by the pandemic. They are starting again on Public Health Restructuring.) The polls show that the support for public health care and opposition to privatization of health care is significantly higher in Ontario than in other provinces. That is because of us! Our mass leafletting and repeated media stories, the education we have done among health professionals and media and leaders of all sorts. Without hubris, we can take the lion’s share of credit for that.
- We stopped home care competitive bidding twice.
- We stopped the privatization of hospital surgeries and diagnostics when the Liberals tried to do it.
- We stopped a law that would have allowed the expansion of for-profit hospitals under the Liberals and got them to amend their own omnibus bill to remove it.
- We stopped the creation of a Ministry of Privatization that had been sneaked into a Provincial Budget omnibus bill under the Liberals and got them to amend their own budget act to remove it.
- We stopped the for-profit privatization of cancer treatment under the Harris/Eves government.
- We stopped the Harris/Eves government from opening a slew of private diagnostic clinics and got them to increase funding to public hospitals.
- We repeatedly won reinstatement of inspections in long-term care (and repeatedly the for-profit industry got it removed). At the moment we have won it again at least in rhetoric (although it has only been partially implemented.)
- We also won increased enforcement in long-term care legislation (not in practice. We still need to make them actually enforce it.)
- We have saved dozens of local hospitals from closure, stopped the closure of emergency departments, birthing units, cancer treatment, operating rooms, surgeries beds and other services in communities across Ontario.
There is more! We can’t fit it all here. Just please know, it really does matter.
