#ontario health coalition

[sambargestuff]

Doug Ford's Ontario:

Doug Ford, Ontario Premier, is riding a wave of good will because he just spent hundreds of millions of dollars to put beer in corner stores.

Of course, he's bankrupting the province and privatizing our healthcare but how about the beer?

This fucker formed a majority gov't with less than 25% of the available vote because NO ONE VOTED in 2022.

Now, the rumour is that Ford will call an election early, this fall, to secure another majority before next year's Federal election. So, if you didn't vote in 2022 and if you prefer public healthcare to beer in corner stores, fucking vote in the next provincial election. Vote NDP. Especially if you live in the 905. It's your Conservative neighbours that keep putting this fucker in office.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Mark Friday, May 26 and Saturday, May 27 on your calendars. Then, circle these dates, highlight them and put a star next to them. May 26 and 27, Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) will be holding a citizens’ referendum with more than a thousand voting stations across Ontario. Online voting with be available starting May 2 – and I encourage everyone reading this to vote online as soon as the site is activated.

The referendum is in response to the Ford government’s announcement that it’s moving ahead with Bill 60, Your Health Care Act,  which is expected to pass this week.

The legislation significantly expands privatization of surgeries and diagnostics as well as private for-profit hospitals and clinics – something the Ford government said they would never do during the lead-up to the election.

Once this legislation is passed the government will move with lightening speed to dismantle universal health care.

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[godbirdart]

june 21 is national indigenous peoples day up here in canada; a day focused on celebrating the arts and cultures of our indigenous neighbours and communities.

if you’re looking for ways to support, or generally further your education on indigenous history, here are a bunch of links to help you get started! please go further and look up events hosted by your local community specifically, as some may not be listed on the sites below.

remember that if you cannot attend events or monetarily support businesses - you can always boost indigenous artists and voices online too.

indigenous tourism; lists businesses, events, and other indigenous-owned / led programs for the respective province or territory

indigenous tourism canada [generalized resources, event listings etc]

yukon

northwest territories

nunavut

british columbia

alberta

saskatchewan

manitoba

ontario

quebec

newfoundland and labrador

new brunswick

nova scotia

prince edward island

art

bill reid gallery of the northwest coast

lattimer art gallery

native northwest [while NNW itself is not indigenous-owned, it is a good way to discover artists and purchase their work. some artists sell on other sites too, so look around]

strong nations [sells books by indigenous authors]

education and resources

two-spirited people of manitoba

alberta indigenous history timeline [pdf]

alberta indigenous history resources

british columba history timeline

list of first nations peoples [wikipedia; could be incomplete / inaccurate]

cbc indigenous [indigenous-focused news]

missing and murdered indigenous women and girls

national centre for truth and reconciliation

native land interactive map

orange shirt day

qikiqtani truth commission

lil’ red dress project

whose land interactive map

charities / support / donations

clan mothers healing billage & knowledge centre

first nations health authority

indian residential schools survivor society

indigenous peoples resilience fund

qajuqturvik food bank

niqinik nuatsivik nunavut food bank

nunavut food security coalition

reconciliation canada

urban native youth association

additional links are always appreciated

[eau-duresistance]

Hey I know I don’t have a big following but holy shit any Ontarians over 16 PLEASE PAY ATTENTION

So as most people in Ontario (Canada) may know, the current Conservative government under Doug Ford is currently gunning for privatizing healthcare, and people Are Not Happy. BUT I HAVE GOOD NEWS: The Ontario Public Health Coalition has put together an official referendum for any residents of Ontario over the age of 16 to vote whether they want healthcare to be privatized or not. All of the details and information about the privatization and the vote can be found here, but I’ll add a list down below of the most poignant bits, which can all be found in the article.

The Ford government specifically said that they wouldn’t do this when they ran for the previous election, only to immediately start pushing funding towards private clinics, so the public didn’t even have a say in the matter

The budgets for COVID relief and public healthcare are underspent by billions while more funds are put towards private clinics

Hip and knee surgeries are expected to be almost entirely privatized by 2024

This will remove many services that small and medium hospitals offer, continuing to gut the staff and services in the province with the smallest amount of public funding

Many operating rooms currently close on weekends and evenings because of a lack of staff and funding already

While Ford claims this would all be covered under OHIP, people who have gone to private clinics report extra prices NOT covered by OHIP that go directly against the Canada Health Act (the law in place that is meant to prevent extra charges for access to doctors, tests, surgeries, etc. as well as unnecessary charges)

Do not let this happen. We can have a say. Do not allow the Ford government to take allow our right to healthcare.

[canadianabroadvery]

“...n 2020, the Ford PC government passed the Connecting People to Home and Community Care Act. It facilitates hospital privatization in two ways. First, it allows the expansion of the small number of for-profit hospitals in Ontario. Private, for-profit hospitals have been frozen for years—but this bill modifies the Private Hospital Act to allow them to expand “home and community care” beds. Apparently, “home and community care” can happen in for-profit institutional facilities nowadays.Similarly, the Act also adds unlicensed “residential congregate care settings” as a location for “home and community care services”—with no restrictions on for-profit operators. Instead of public hospitals, these unlicensed congregate care homes would provide rehabilitative, transitional, or other care.Under the previous Mike Harris PC government, home care was largely privatized. The result was chaotic service and very low wages. OCHU/CUPE had to have a pitched battle with University Health Network (UHN) when they contracted out reactivation services to a home care organization at their Hillcrest site. The PSWs operating the beds were paid $16.50 an hour. While OCHU/CUPE was ultimately able to force UHN to take the work back in-house, many more such projects are underway. Like so much of what Ford is up to, a key goal is to reduce the wages for the female hospital workforce....”

[motherearthday]

Multi-stakeholder Dialogue ''Towards a strong global treaty."

In preparation for the upcoming fourth round of negotiations of the Global Plastics Treaty in Ottawa, Ontario (INC-4), please join us for a multistakeholder dialogue at House of Sweden in Washington, DC. The goal of the event is to raise awareness about the environmental, climate and health impacts of plastics and plastic pollution and discuss the best practices and policy options for addressing these challenges.

TOWARDS A STRONG GLOBAL PLASTICS TREATY: A Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue April 8 @ 9:30 am – 12:00 pm. House of Sweden 2900 K street, NW Washington, DC 20007.

AGENDA 9:30 am Networking Coffee and Registration

10:00 am Welcome and Introduction · Urban Ahlin, Ambassador of Sweden to the United States · Jovita Neliupšienė, Ambassador of the European Union to the United States

10:15 am Perspectives from the Public Sector/Governments

· Kathleen Rogers, President, EARTHDAY.ORG (Moderator) · Manuel Carmona Yebra, Deputy Head of Section for Global Issues and Innovation, European Union Delegation to the United States · Oladipo Okusaga, Head of Energy, Climate & Programme Management, British Embassy · Rob Wing, Deputy Director, Office of Environmental Quality, U.S. Department of State · Global South Speaker (TBD)

Q&A

11:15 am Perspectives from Civil Society

· Aidan Charron, Director, End Plastic Initiatives, EARTHDAY.ORG (Moderator) · Julia Cohen, Managing Director, Plastic Pollution Coalition · Jo Banner, Co-Founder & Co-Director, The Descendants Project · Felipe Victoria, Senior Manager for International Plastics Policy, Ocean Conservancy · Rachel Radvany, Environmental Health Campaigner, CIEL

Q&A

House of Sweden

[plethoraworldatlas]

...

In recent decades the Inland Empire — comprised of San Bernardino and Riverside counties — has been the primary victim of America’s warehouse boom. As demand for online shopping has surged — e-commerce sales grew 50% to $870 billion during the pandemic alone — this region has served as a billionaire’s dumping ground. Those are the words of Tom Dolan, executive director of Inland Congregations United for Change. “Now it’s no longer just Warren Buffet, it’s Jeff Bezos and Amazon,” Dolan told The Guardian in 2021. “And we’re paying the cost of doing their business.”

That business is only made possible by taking out a nonconsensual loan from the residents of surrounding communities. It’s a coercive trade: the health and safety of citizens for the profits they’ll never share. And no worthwhile efforts have been made to pay off that debt.

In order to fulfill the glamorous promises of expedited, overnight and same-day deliveries, diesel trucks conduct over 600,000 daily trips through the Inland Empire alone, carrying roughly 40% of the nation’s goods. These vehicles emit 1,000 pounds of diesel particulate matter every day (alongside 100,000 pounds of nitric oxide and 50,000,000 pounds of carbon dioxide).

The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified diesel particulate matter as a Group 1 carcinogen — the most severe category — due to sufficient evidence linking diesel exposure to lung cancer. (Other studies have suggested a relationship to cancers of the bladder, larynx, esophagus, stomach, pancreas and blood, alongside asthma, other respiratory disease, heart attacks and premature mortality.) The region bordering the warehouse hub in one Inland Empire city, Ontario, ranks in the 95th percentile of cancer. A 2015 study estimated that 70% of the total cancer risk from air pollution in California is caused by diesel exhaust alone.

An Undue Burden

The people who suffer the consequences of our online shopping are not typically over-consumers themselves. The South Coast Air Quality Management District found that the 2.4 million people living within half a mile of a warehouse are also disproportionately Black and Latino communities below the poverty line. In 2012 San Bernardino ranked as the second poorest city in America with over 34.6% of people living in poverty. And of all the residents living within a mile of the average Amazon warehouse, 80% are people of color.

In January a coalition of over 60 environmental groups (including the Center for Biological Diversity, publisher of The Revelator) wrote to Gov. Gavin Newsom and asked him to declare a public health state of emergency in the Inland Empire. The request included testimony from residents on their firsthand experiences dealing with the everyday reality of increased asthma attacks, nose bleeds, hospitalizations, and coronary episodes. Given “nowhere else to turn,” they’re demanding government intervention, alongside a moratorium on new warehouse construction until the health consequences can be better understood.

[4stary]

For any and all Ontarians!

[college-girl199328]

Fullerton, who shuffled through three cabinet posts and was in charge when thousands died of COVID-19 in Ontario nursing homes, said Friday that she was stepping down immediately. She did not detail why she was leaving.

The family physician left medicine for politics in the lead-up to the 2018 election when she won her Ottawa-area riding of Kanata-Carleton. She won that seat again, handily, in 2022. "A strong sense of duty brought me to politics after decades as a family physician serving my community, to continue my work toward solutions that would address the shortcomings of our healthcare system and improve health services for individuals," she wrote in her resignation letter to Ford.

"To serve has been a profound honor." Fullerton's first role in the cabinet was as minister of colleges, training, and universities, a post she held for one year.

In June 2019, she was named minister of long-term care, a file she held through the early days of the pandemic.

She was heavily criticized for the havoc COVID-19 wrought on long-term care – 3,794 nursing home residents had died from the virus by the time she was shuffled out of the role in June 2021, and thousands more were infected. Five nursing homes were hit so bad that the province called the army to help.

A scathing report later found the neglected long-term care sector was unprepared for a pandemic. In the 2021 cabinet shuffle, Fullerton was named minister of children, community, and social services, autism services for children, and the Ontario Disability Support Program.

Fullerton drew the ire of families of children with autism as the rollout of a new program that began under the previous minister was slow and opaque. Ontario to 8,000 families by the end of fall 2022, though it wouldn't say by how much.

Since then, the government removed updates from its website on the number of children registered in the Ontario Autism Program and how many had received interim funding and refused to publicly divulge the number of children receiving government-funded therapy in response to media requests. Meanwhile, the Ontario Autism Coalition complained that Fullerton had not meaningfully met with them since taking over the ministry and did not hold a press conference to publicly discuss or update the program.

[atlanticcanada]

Calls grow for Ottawa to set conditions against funding private health care in negotiations with provinces, territories

As momentum and negotiations build toward a long awaited deal on federal health care funding, calls are also growing for specific conditions on how any transfer money should be spent.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has scheduled a Feb. 7 meeting with Canada’s premiers to reach a new funding agreement.

Bernadette Landry, co-chair of the New Brunswick Health Coalition, said federal funding parameters should be imperative to any pending agreement.

“You don’t give millions and millions of dollars without making sure those dollars aren’t spent appropriately,” said Landry. “It’s just common sense."

Landry said the federal government should ban any transfer funds from being spent on private clinics delivering public health care.

"Those private clinics (are) stealing nurses and other health care professionals from the public system; people we need so badly in the public health care system," said Landry.

On Friday, federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May and New Brunswick Green Party leader David Coon said federal funding should come with a clause of it not being spent on private delivery model of care.

Private surgical centres are already operating with public money in the Atlantic region.

Ontario recently announced a plan to increase use of private surgical and diagnostic centres around the province.

This past summer, the three Maritime Progressive Conservative premiers met with Ontario PC Premier Doug Ford to discuss health care. The meeting happened shortly after Ford announced initial plans to increase the use of private clinics for public health care.

None of the Maritime premier would reject the possibility of additional privatization in their own jurisdiction, at joint news conference.

“Yes things are going to change, and yes that could be in a different form and I don’t know what that’s going to look like,” said New Brunswick Premier Higgs, on Aug. 22, 2022.

On the Jan. 21 edition of CTV’s Question Period, Higgs said the premiers and prime minister were close to reaching a long-term funding deal, with conditions tied to health care outcomes. Higgs said the metrics for success could vary by area.

Higgs also said he didn’t have the sense the federal government would increase funds from 22 per cent to 35 per cent of health-care costs (about an additional $28 billion a year) as requested by the premiers.

“But between where we are and where we've asked, there's a number in there somewhere,” said Higgs.

On Sunday’s edition of CTV’s Question Period, federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said the federal government would avoid “micromanaging” how provinces and territories delivered health care.

“We are also going to work flexibly with provinces and territories because they are not at the same place,” said Duclos. “There are some provinces in Canada, where access to a family health team is almost 90 per cent, other provinces is below 80 per cent, and that's something we should recognize and should work with provinces and territories to address.”

Duclos said certain conditions and metrics would be attached to any transfer funding, including reductions in surgery and diagnostic backlogs, retention and recruitment of health care professionals, along with set mental health benchmarks.

Lori Turnbull, a political scientist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said the federal government’s tone on the private delivery of public health care had softened as of late.

“They have called what Doug Ford is going to do in Ontario as being innovative,” said Turnbull, in an interview with CTV News Channel.

“That’s a significant departure. We can think back over the past number of years, when people talked of increased privatization in health care, (there was) a lot of resistance to that from the public. But now we’re seeing a different thing, where there’s been a bit more acceptance, I think, because people know that the system is on the brink of collapse in a way it hasn’t been before. There’s a different conversation around what’s possible.”

With files from Hina Alam of the Canadian Press, Akshay Tandon of CTV News Channel, and CTV’s Question Period with Vassy Kapelos.

from CTV News - Atlantic https://ift.tt/wWcRGET

[allthecanadianpolitics]

What do you think about bill 7? I've only just become familiar with it and it worries me

I just heard about it too:

[benoitmorinphsa]

Benoit Morin’s Spending During Covid-19 For Better Health Care

Benoit Morin PHSA, a healthcare leader, has been pushing for better healthcare for Canadians, which means better coverage and lower costs. He is the President and CEO of Covid-19, a coalition of Ontario businesses working together for better health care. They believe that the proposed changes by the provincial government will, in the long run, lead to increased costs for Ontarians and harm our health care system. Curious to know more about it visit https://foxnewstips.com/benoit-morins-spending-during-covid-19-for-better-health-care/

[lakannada]

Ontario Health Coalition releases new report on the spread of COVID, LTC outbreaks, hospitalizations & deaths that raises red flags despite the Ford government's suppression of COVID Data - GlobeNewswire

Ontario Health Coalition releases new report on the spread of COVID, LTC outbreaks, hospitalizations & deaths that raises red flags despite the Ford government's suppression of COVID Data – GlobeNewswire

October 21, 2022 08:00 ET | Source: Ontario Health Coalition Ontario Health Coalition Toronto, Ontario, CANADA TORONTO, Oct. 21, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — According to The Ontario Health Coalition, the Ford government has ceased regular reporting on the spread of COVID-19. Public Health no longer publishes daily and weekly epidemiologic reports and it has become steadily more difficult to get…

[bluepointcoin]

'Beyond emergency': Protesters in Toronto accuse Ford government of 'inaction' amid hospital crisis

‘Beyond emergency’: Protesters in Toronto accuse Ford government of ‘inaction’ amid hospital crisis

Dozens of protesters carrying signs with words like, “overworked, underpaid, overwhelmed, underfunded” gathered in front of a downtown Toronto hospital Monday — to speak out against what they say is “inaction” by the Ford government amid overcrowded children’s hospitals across the province. The Ontario Health Coalition (OHC), which represents more than 500 organizations, staged the demonstration…

[isfeed]

Ontario Health Coalition holding marches Monday outside three major Ontario hospitals

Ontario Health Coalition holding marches Monday outside three major Ontario hospitals

A province-wide organization that advocates for publicly funded health care is holding marches across Ontario today to protest the Ford government’s handling of the hospital crisis. Source: CP24 Ontario Health Coalition holding marches Monday outside three major Ontario hospitals

[trans-axolotl]

Do you have any ideas for someone in Canada

who is looking for alternatives to mental health hospitals?

So I’m currently institutionalized right now and can’t do a lot of research, but I’m going to link some orgs and also ask any Canadian followers to please add on if you know of any resources. I also can’t vouch for any of these orgs because I don’t organize with anyone from any of these orgs, and don’t know firsthand how good they are.

Coalition against Psychiatric Assault

Ontario Peer Development Institute

Madness Canada

Mad Society of Canada

Psychiatric Survivors of Ottawa.

Here’s a few places that look like they might be sort of similar to peer respite, but I can’t vouch for them and would recommend doing more research:

Crisis stabilization Space

Crisis Stabilization Unit

It looks like CMHA has a lot of things like mobile crisis response teams as alternatives to police, maybe some housing options, and other community based care.

Seespring is trying to get funding for a peer respite house but I’m not sure if it’s operational yet.

Here’s another possible peer respite.

Anyway, Canadian followers please add on!