FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 8, 2025
QUEEN’S PARK — Lee Fairclough, Ontario Liberal critic for Hospitals and MPP for Etobicoke—Lakeshore is warning that Ontario’s hospitals may face the same playbook the Ford government used with schools: underfund, create a crisis, then shift the blame.
Ontario hospitals are facing a billion-dollar shortfall in 2025. As the lowest-funded province in Canada, they are being given the impossible task of producing a three-year plan with no additional funding, no service cuts, and rising costs. In addition, hospitals have been directed to submit detailed governance information — an unusual demand that raises questions about the government’s intent.
“We’ve seen this tactic from the Ford Government before with our school boards. They underfunded the education system, forced schools into large deficits, then blamed schools for financial mismanagement and took control,” said MPP Fairclough. “We don’t want to see what they’ve done to our schools and our kids done to our hospitals and your care.”
The Ford government can’t claim that they don’t have the resources to improve our public healthcare system. They’ve chosen to fund private clinics over our public system, costing the taxpayer three times as much for some surgeries compared to the cost of hospital care—that raises serious questions about their priorities.
“These deficits are a manifestation of the lack of leadership by this government on so many fronts,” said MPP Fairclough. “What comes to the emergency department is a symptom of what is happening in the community more broadly, and the Ford government has abdicated responsibility on so many fronts, from primary care, community care to housing.”