Public Money, Private Profit: Ontario Health Coalition to release report on privatization of LTC beds

Sudbury media conference set for Dec. 3

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Ontario Health Coalition members will join health coalition representatives and families from Sudbury, North Bay and Blind River for a Zoom media conference on Dec. 3 to present a new report taking the provincial Progressive Conservative government to task over the privatization of long-term care.

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“Over the past year, the Ford government has been moving forward with a plan to award tens of thousands of long-term care beds to for-profit operators, among them those with the most horrific records during the pandemic,” the OHC said in a media advisory. “Rather than hold for-profit operators accountable for the horrors that we continue to see in long-term care, they are being awarded new 30-year licences and bed expansions paid by public funds.”

Scheduled to start at 10 a.m., the Sudbury event is part of a series of regional media conferences marking the release of Public Money Private Profit: The Ford Government and the Privatization of the Next Generation of Ontario’s Long-Term Care, to be held across the province from Nov. 29 to Dec. 3.

Each regional media conference is to feature regional and local information about the thousands of new and redeveloped long-term care beds being awarded to for-profit companies in their area, the OHC said, as well as family members of residents who have died or are currently living in for-profit long-term care, and the record of those operators in the region.

More information on speakers attending the Sudbury event is to be released in the coming days, the health coalition said.

The OHC advocates for publicly funded health care. It authors and releases research reports related to health care provision issues and opposing privatization of health care. The organization is made up of an advocacy network of more than 400 community organizations representing most parts of the province.