Ninety-five thousand patients are without health care due to North York primary care strike
Ontario’s Ministry of Health says it’s not getting involved
Forty-four North York nurses and health care professionals, including pharmacists, dieticians, mental health care practitioners and social workers have been on strike for over a month, and a report from CTV News today reveals just how many patients are affected.
Over 95,000 people are without access to primary care provided by the North York Family Health Team (NYFHT), according to CTV’s story. And those striking workers have accused their employer of misspending provincial dollars from the Primary Care Action Plan that they say should have been allocated to wage increases and recruitment.
NYFHT said the funds were compliant and that they “remain committed to good-faith collective bargaining.”
The workers’ bargaining unit president, Rita Ha, told CTV News that the strike has lasted six weeks because they feel NYFHT has not shown accountability.
Related: Doug Ford told protesters to “go find a job”
“We’re telling the employer, ‘Okay, you say you’ve done what you need to do,’ and the government is saying, ‘We’re not getting involved,’” she said. “At the same time, what we’re trying to get the government to hear is, you’ve given our family health team taxpayers’ money—you’ve given them money to do whatever that announcement was for, recruitment, retention, expansion of primary care—but you’re not really looking at what’s happened to it.”
In a joint statement, NYFHT’s interim executive director and CEO Nureen Ladha and board chair Tim Li reiterated that they deny the allegations of misspent funds. “NYFHT’s financial management practices are regularly monitored, reported and audited in accordance with provincial requirements, and all expenditures align with these established guidelines,” they said in a statement.
Ontario’s Ministry of Health told CTV it is not getting involved.
In a news release published yesterday, Ontario Nurses’ Association provincial president Erin Ariss emphasized the suffering of patients caught in the middle. “Ontarians want to know that their hard-earned tax dollars are being spent properly. Health Minister Sylvia Jones needs to hold this employer accountable for their use of dedicated funding and keep vital services alive. It’s about fairness. If the board of directors is not fulfilling their responsibility to their staff and patients, then the Ministry of Health and Ontario Health should investigate where the funds have gone,” she said.
Related: The Ford government just introduced new rules that will make it even harder to find a family doctor
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
