Canadian hospitals are on the brink of collapse. Decades of underfunding at both provincial and federal levels have enfeebled hospital and community-based health resources, producing chronic staffing shortages that have only grown worse since the pandemic began. In Ontario, where I live and work in the health sector, hospitals have been operating at over 100 percent capacity for years, resulting in unsafe wait times, “hallway health care,” and an increasingly worn-down and exploited workforce. In recent months, understaffed emergency departments have been forced to limit services, and even close permanently, endangering isolated rural communities.

In the lingering wake of COVID’s impact, Canada’s already imperfect public health care system — Medicare — now faces an existential crisis as the country’s provincial governments seek to further privatize health care services as a panacea to multiplying problems born of their own choices.

In Ontario, undeniable issues — like the province’s dangerously long backlog of surgeries — are used to fuel conservative premier Doug Ford’s slash-and-burn attack on public care. While numerous hospital operating rooms sit idle on evenings and weekends, Ford’s plan to reduce wait times by increasing surgeries in for-profit clinics overlooks the simple solution of adequately staffing existing resources.