When it comes to gutting state capacity and services, the Right never misses the opportunity to exploit a crisis — or to engineer one. It’s a reliable strategy from an old playbook. First, ensure a disaster in state services by starving it of funds. Afterward, complain about the inefficiency of state provision and clamor for a system overhaul in the name of free-market orthodoxy. This play allows the Right to turn a public good into a source of private profit that will serve the few at the cost of the well-being of the many. So it was a note-perfect farce when, during Ontario premier Doug Ford’s recent outdoor press conference — while responding to a question about the health care crisis — he swallowed a bee. Luckily for him, he didn’t need medical attention. Of course, if he had, he could afford it. Most can’t.

In Ontario, Ford’s Progressive Conservative government is using the pandemic as a chance to further privatize health care in the province — and he’s pushing other premiers to do the same. The plan, which was scandalously underdiscussed in the recent provincial election, is cast as a response to an unsustainable and broken system. It is true that the Ontario health system was in trouble long before the pandemic — after suffering decades of neglect and insufficient funding, it was poorly primed to deal with COVID-19. It does not follow, however, that this means that it should receive more cuts. It takes a special sort of worldview to answer the problem of insufficient funding with a call for further retrenchment.

Ontario health minister Sylvia Jones is treating the issue as one would expect and attempting to frame the government plan in anodyne euphemism. “After decades of inaction, we can no longer stand by and support a status quo that cannot respond to the current challenges the sector is facing,” Jones announced at the conference for the Association of Municipalities in Ontario. Consequently, it’s time for “innovative solutions” and “all options are on the table.”