Financial watchdog report shows decline in healthcare quality benchmarks, social assistance
There’s a new financial watchdog report on the Ontario government’s spending trends over the past 30 years.
The report from the Financial Accountability Office shines a spotlight on what the Conservatives are doing with our money.
Never have we seen a government spend so much and get so little done for Ontarians.
Here’s what is important for you to know about the report.
1. Health care spending has gone up, but health care quality is not getting better.
While heath care spending has gone up by about 2% a year, healthcare benchmarks are not improving.
The number of physicians operating in Ontario is going down, the number of hospital beds available to Ontarians is doing down, and the number of long-term care beds available to seniors is also going down. That’s what the report shows.
We also know that emergency rooms in towns and cities are being forced to temporarily close at alarming rates, and Ontarians are waiting too long for surgery or to see a specialist.
Why is our health care system struggling so much? That’s a question for the government.
The first thing we should do is investigate the impact of for-profit care on health care spending and health care quality.
The government has opened the floodgates to for-profit care in Ontario. We’ve now got for-profit surgery clinics, for profit medical testing and bloodwork clinics, for-profit hospital staffing agencies, and for-profit companies delivering home care.
For-profit care costs more, and we get less for it. The United States’ failed experiment with private healthcare has taught us this harsh lesson. We don’t need to repeat the same mistakes up North.
2. Funding to social assistance recipients has gone down.
Social assistance rates are lower today than they were 20 years ago, when adjusted for inflation.
A government has a duty to provide care to people in need. We should be lifting people up, not sending them deeper into poverty, especially at a time when Ontario is experiencing a housing affordability and cost-of-living crisis.
3. Elementary and secondary schools are having to do more with less.
While funding to the education sector has increased, that increase is largely due to the rollout of the affordable childcare program, where the government is subsidizing childcare, so parents pay lower childcare fees.
Since the Conservatives came into power, large class sizes have grown slightly larger, from 15 to 16 kids a class.
School boards are setting their budgets for 2025-2026, and it’s already clear that school boards are facing large funding shortfalls.
The government is not providing school boards with the funding they need to meet their responsibilities, from having funding available to pay teachers their negotiated salary and benefits to keeping most class sizes below the maximum number of kids allowed in class.
4. Federal funding to the province is going up faster than provincial spending.
What this means is the province is holding onto some of the funding the federal government is giving them for specific programs, like health care, instead of spending it.
Ontarians expect that all federal money for health care would flow through the province to health care, but we’ve known for a long time that’s not happening.
This provincial money hoarding is taking place at a time when we’re seeing significant issues with our public health care system, issues that could be alleviated with increased investment.
That federal money is for health care, it should be spent on health care, and now is the time to invest.
You can find out more about the FAO’s report right here.