The privatization of health care: If we don't fight back they will not stop.

By Natalie Mehra,

May 4th, 2026

BURLINGTON, ON

I’ve been thinking about our failure to stop the privatization of home & long-term care — a disaster that has contributed to death and suffering on a scale none of us ever imagined. We cannot let them do the same to our hospitals, nor our blood services, mental health & addictions, primary care, public health & the rest. We must find a way draw a line under this period of privatization and shift to rebuilding. And we must do it soon.

If we don’t fight back they will not stop. Quite the opposite. In fact, we are now facing an emboldened set of well-financed and politically connected interests. It can feel overwhelming but we have to remember our own power. We outnumber them, by far. We need to inspire that mass of people who believe and care, make it visible, impossible to ignore, and as powerful as we can possibly be.

We have done it before and we won! Let’s show them what we are capable of doing together.

It was almost thirty years ago when the Mike Harris government started privatizing long-term care and home care. The 1995 budgets (federal and provincial) were the most regressive in Canadian history to that time.

Truthfully, at the time, we really didn’t know much about the privatization of the delivery of health care services. But we were about to learn.

The balance of who owned long-term care and home care had fundamentally shifted.

By 2003, when the Ontario Liberals won the election and the Conservative Harris/Eves government left, the balance of who owned long-term care and home care had fundamentally shifted. What was once a majority public and non-profit care became a majority private and for-profit. Ever since, the consequences have been suffered by people needing care, their families and the staff working to care for them.

What started as private “mom-and-pop shops” were bought up or pushed out as the for-profit chains moved in. Today, our health care landscape is dominated by large chain for-profit long-term and home care companies. Profits came from de-unionizing the workforce in home care and reducing wages and working conditions in both sectors. Also — and this is critical for people using those services — from reducing the number of care workers and thus the amount of care.

A study done by the Ontario Auditor General of home care showed that by 2015, the billing rates to the public purse for home care companies were double what the actual nurses and PSWs were paid. They charged the province double what they paid. On top of that, they took an additional 18% in administration. For their part, in 2003, the federal government tried to reverse their cuts but privatization by the provinces had already taken hold and funding — more and more — was being shunted off to profits.

In Ontario’s profit-dominated home care system, less than half of Ontario’s public home care funding actually makes it to the front-lines of care — from nursing to physio, occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, social work, and personal support.

In home care the consequences are hidden in individual homes. Often, the stories are never made public of people waiting for home care that never shows up due to perilous staffing shortages, of elderly people who have been pushed off home care rolls in favour of post-surgical patients being moved out more quickly to facilitate the hospital cuts, of the impossible cost of paying for private home care, of workers living in poverty and more.

The home care clients, as they call them, and the families of long-term care are near to my heart and will forever haunt my conscience.

In long-term care, the pandemic laid bare what turning long-term care into a profit-seeking industry actually means for human beings. The for-profits had far higher infection and death rates compared to publicly owned and non-profit long-term care homes. Those owned by chains and private equity firms had the highest death rates.

That horrific, reprehensible, tragic record — which exploded into the public eye in the pandemic — was not new, though the pandemic brought everything to a scale never before seen.

The higher death rates were the case prior to the pandemic also. 

It is no wonder. While the for-profits have taken their profits literally every month of every year. Even as their residents died in droves in conditions that would result in jail time if it were done to a pet, they didn’t provide the care residents needed. Residents who are human beings deserving of compassion, love, and care in the last months of their lives, were deprived of it. In those homes that are chronically understaffed, staff describe having to choose who is going to get care and who isn’t.

Over the years, the industry has intertwined with government leading to many close connections and lobbying power. They systematically push for more funding and less regulation — including required nurse to patient ratios, staffing levels, inspections and enforcement. Despite a lot of PR promises getting actual improvements in care levels has been very difficult to achieve.

Natalie Mehra is the Executive Director of the Ontario Health Coalition.

The Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) is a non-profit, non-partisan, public-interest activist network of over 400 grassroots community organizations. It advocates for protecting and enhancing Ontario’s public healthcare system, strongly opposing the privatization of services and promoting the principles of the Canada Health Act, including universal and accessible care.   Burlington is one of the few communities that does not have an OHC community organization.