“Cold-blooded decision on hospital funding,” says CUPE in response to Ford government’s 2026 budget

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The real dollar hospital funding cut announced in the 2026 provincial budget will intensify the crisis in Ontario’s hospitals, which are already funded at the lowest rate in the country, says the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

“The government increased hospital funding by four per cent - a real cut of two per cent when measured against the six per cent increase in costs related to an ageing and growing population. This funding shortfall compounds a two per cent cut in the 2025 fiscal year,” said Michael Hurley, president of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, representing 45,000 staff.

Hurley said that the Ontario hospital system has not been meeting its own targets due to funding constraints: ER patients are currently waiting on average of 20 hours for admission, (well beyond the eight hour target time); surgical wait-times have increased 100 per cent since 2019; while hospital overcrowding has shot up by 57 per cent since the Ontario PCs came into power in 2018.

This additional funding cut announced in the budget would lead to more job losses and hospital bed closures when the system is already at a breaking point, said Hurley, noting that hundreds of jobs have already been eliminated over the past few months in hospitals across Ontario. But he said that hospital workers will fight back to preserve the public system.

“The staff of our public hospitals will mobilize our communities to fight the longer wait-times for patients, additional overcrowding in hallways, and poorer quality of care that this budget will bring,” Hurley said.

Sharon Richer, secretary treasurer of OCHU-CUPE questioned the government’s logic in implementing funding cuts to a hospital system with the fewest staff and beds in Canada.

“Insufficient staffing in hospitals is co-related with higher death rates, more hospital acquired infections, and higher readmission rates,” she said. “We are on track for eight per cent budget cuts to our hospitals in real terms over a three-year period and the people of Ontario will wait longer, be pushed out of hospitals sooner or be turned away. It is not acceptable.”

OCHU-CUPE recently released a report calling for a $3.2 billion increase in hospital funding to close the gap between Ontario and the rest of Canada, and thereafter a six per cent annual increase to keep pace with population growth and ageing.

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