Registered Nurses and Health-Care Professionals Rally at The Ottawa Hospital to Save Publicly Funded, Publicly Delivered Care

OTTAWA, ON, June 13, 2024 – Members of the Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) rallied in Ottawa today to fight for publicly funded and delivered health care in Ontario, against the Ford government that has underfunded and under resourced it.

Hundreds of registered nurses (RNs) and health-care professionals marched and rallied at The Ottawa Hospital – Civic Campus, advocating for safe, quality health care for Ontarians and an immediate end to private, for-profit care.

Calling The Ottawa Hospital “ground zero” for the encroachment of private interests and greedy corporations on health care, ONA President Erin Ariss, RN, notes that by every measure, for-profit care fails the very patients, residents and clients who already fund the system and need quality care the most.

“As those on the front lines of care, nurses and health-care professionals have seen exactly what funnelling of our public health-care dollars into the pockets of corporate interests means for us all,” she says.

“Evidence shows privatization makes things worse, not better. Expanding private care in Alberta lengthened wait times rather than shortening them, delivered lower-quality care and cost more. Why, exactly, would we want to repeat that failed experiment and further harm access to high-quality public health care?”

Ariss adds that ONA and its 68,000 members will not stop their fight to end for-profit, private health care in this province, and the politicians, employers and shareholders who are lining up to profit from it.

ONA is the union representing 68,000 registered nurses and health-care professionals, as well as 18,000 nursing student affiliates, providing care in hospitals, long-term care facilities, public health, the community, clinics and industry.

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To arrange an interview, contact:

ONA Media Relations, media@ona.org