Health workers are sounding the alarm of healthcare jobs being lost in Ottawa and across Ontario due to provincial underfunding. On Monday, members of the union representing 850 staff at Bruyere Health in Ottawa, held a press conference to push back against the planned cuts of more than 50 jobs.
“It’s mind-boggling to hear about frontline job cuts at our hospital when care is already at breaking point,” said Douglas Currier, president of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 4540, which represents workers at Bruyere Health. “I have worked as a nurse here for over 30 years and I have never seen this level of exhaustion among staff. The staffing shortage is already hurting our ability to provide quality care – more cuts will be devastating for our community.”
Currier said workers at the hospital are in need of higher staffing levels for relief. He said the current staff are stretched too thinly to be able to meet patient needs in a timely manner. A depleted workforce could lead to serious repercussions for patients, such as medical errors and increased hospital acquired infections. A survey done by CUPE already showed that 67 per cent of CUPE workers had worked through their scheduled breaks due to understaffing.
Michael Hurley, president of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, blamed the provincial government for cutting hospital funding at the expense of vulnerable patients and dedicated health care workers.
For health workers across Ontario, the situation at Bruyere is not unfamiliar. CUPE Ontario has called out the government’s failure to address the ongoing issues of low staffing of hallway health care. The union said the Ontario government’s fall economic statement shows a plan to cut funding in real terms by 10 per cent.
Analysis done in October by the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario found that planned funding for the health sector would not be sufficient to maintain current service levels and would lead to a decrease.
Doug Allan, a researcher with CUPE, said in an interview with rabble.ca that Ontario is quite behind the other provinces in terms of health care funding. He said the province should be ready to increase service levels, especially given the increase in people aged 65 or older.
“We have a similar situation as we had in the 50s and 60s, when we needed to expand our education to deal with the baby boomer bulge,” he said.”We’re now in a different situation where it’s not so much about education for that demographic, but about the healthcare situation.”
Allan said it is important for people to call out the underfunding of health care and push for a solution that works for everyone. As Ontario’s health system pushes on with low funding, decreasing staff levels and thinly spread resources, it will create demand for private health services among those who can afford it, Allan said.
“We can’t afford this quiet move to an American style privatized system,” he said. “That system is extraordinarily expensive and is not sustainable and leaves millions of people out in the cold.”
While CUPE is laying blame at the feet of the provincial government, they are also calling for the federal government to uphold the Canada Health Act.
