Ontario’s hospital savings are a direct threat to your life

Emergency room wait-times surge as Ontario hospital funding crisis deepens

Ontario hospitals are facing a deepening funding crisis, and the result is longer wait times at emergency departments, fewer hospital staff members, and declining patient care. This is a funding problem the provincial government has caused and one it has the power to solve.

The majority of Ontario hospitals have run deficits since 2022. In the last fiscal year (2024–25), 55 per cent of public hospitals were in deficit. The year before that, it was 50 per cent, and the previous year, an even higher number of public hospitals—63 per cent—ran operating deficits.

While the hospital funding crisis affects all hospitals, it’s the smaller and rural hospitals that are the hardest hit by provincial funding austerity.

In 2024–25, smaller hospitals made up only 49 per cent of all Ontario hospitals but represented 61 per cent of the hospitals in deficit. The dire financial situation facing Ontario hospitals is unprecedented: More than 70 per cent of hospitals are forecast to end this fiscal year in deficit.

What’s driving these hospital budget deficits?

Provincial funding is not keeping up. Hospital costs are rising at about six per cent each year, but the Ontario government is only funding the hospital sector up to four per cent. This leaves a large funding gap, which translates into real spending cuts.

Since labour costs make up more than 70 per cent of total hospital expenses, hospitals are being put in the unenviable position of having to try to maintain services while cutting costs.

But it simply can’t be done.

Public hospitals are having to make the difficult decision to lay off staff and reduce services.

At Markham Stouffville, the hospital cut 65 jobs. In North Bay, the hospital has cut about 40 positions as well as cutting back hours for medical imaging, which is necessary for patient diagnosis and reducing wait times. In March, Toronto’s University Health Network laid off 28 registered nurses who provided specialized kidney care.

The result is sadly predictable: Staffing cuts due to provincial underfunding come at the expense of timely access to hospital care. In fact, over the last five years, emergency room wait times have increased by 67 per cent. And some communities are even worse off: In Perth and Smiths Falls, emergency room waits have increased by 91 per cent.

The significant increase in emergency room waiting times clearly shows a system under strain, unable to cope with the demand for hospital care. And the longer patients languish in the emergency room waiting to be admitted, the risks of deteriorating health status, poorer outcomes, and even death, increase.

There are multiple causes for the stunning growth in hospital admission wait times, but the provincial government’s funding austerity is the main one.

It is a vicious cycle that creates other negative outcomes: Deteriorating care conditions create worsening working conditions for health-care workers, which drives the health-care retention crisis.

As the gap grows between the level of care that health-care providers want to give and the actual level of care they can give, workers leave the profession. Between 2016 and 2024, hospital job vacancies per 100,000 people doubled.

The ball is in the provincial government’s court. It has the power to address the provincial funding crisis that’s undermining patient access to care.

The crisis rippling across Ontario shouldn’t sentence Ontarians to reduced access to medical care. Yet that is precisely how provincial funding austerity is playing out across the province.

Ontario is the province that spends the least on health care on a per-person basis. This has to change.

The provincial government has a responsibility to invest in Ontario’s public hospitals to ensure that Ontarians across the province can access health-care services in a timely manner.

Andrew Longhurst is a senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and author of the new research study Failure, By Design: Ontario’s deepening hospital funding crisis.