Windsor-Essex residents concerned about the extent of privatized healthcare in Ontario will rally on Saturday.
The Ontario Health Coalition is holding a protest outside the constituency office of Windsor-Tecumseh MPP Andrew Dowie.
The Health Coalition, which has held similar rallies across the province, has asked Queen's Park to focus on funding public hospitals rather than private clinics.
"The privatization [Premier Doug] Ford is undertaking is unprecedented," read a release from the coalition. "Since the inception of public hospitals and the 1973 ban on private hospitals, no government has expanded private clinics like this. The majority of the new licenses are for private for-profit facilities, and a number of them are owned by for-profit chain corporations."
The provincial government has defended its expansion of private clinics for procedures such as cataract surgery and orthopedic treatment, saying that by diverting these procedures away from hospitals, patients don't have to wait as long to get any needed treatment.
The Coalition, though, isn't buying it.
"If we don’t stop them, their own projected goal is to redirect 50 per cent of the surgeries from public hospitals to private [for-profit] facilities," read the release. "The scale and scope of hospital privatization planned by Ford will undermine, perhaps fatally, our public hospital system."
The rally begins Saturday at 1 p.m.
