Members of CUPE have released a new report claiming that the province’s plan for two per cent annual funding increases over the next three years is not enough, leading to a shortfall in staffing and capacity.
A report titled “Driven To The Brink: Projected Cuts To Intensify Hospital Crisis” was presented to media in a press conference at Belleville Public Library on Wednesday afternoon.
The numbers collected and presented are based on estimates from a report from the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario (FAFO) regarding health sector spending in the 2025 provincial budget.
FAFO estimates a reduction of 9,000 health care staff and 4.6 per cent of beds across the province.
“The financial accountability office, which is a government-funded, but independent organization that reviews the books, says if this funding doesn’t change, then we are worse,” senior researcher with CUPE Doug Allan said during a press conference.
“We’re stuck with the likelihood that we’ll lose beds and we will lose health care staff. So that is what we need.”
Allan, along with the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE President Michael Hurley, are presenting the findings, as well as the respective local impact, to different municipalities across Ontario including stops in Kingston and Cornwall.
The union does not represent Quinte Health workers.
From the Quinte angle, Allan gave numbers for what would be affected at Quinte hospital sites using the FAFO methodology and based on the assumption that all hospitals would be affected equally.
“We need to grow by 2027/2028, 15 extra hospital beds. The plan is to reduce it by 23 hospital beds, and the number of publicly-funded nurses and PSWs that provide the care would go down by 85. There would also be losses of other staff as well,” Allan said.
In its recommendations, the CUPE report calls for an increase of core provincial hospital funding by $3.2 billion starting with an initial top-up for this fiscal year before it ends in March.
It also calls for the hiring of 48,000 full-time staff across the province to reach the national per-capita average.
“What we’re really focused on, in a way, is actually changing, not next year’s budget, because that’ll probably be also a kind of an imaginary budget, but actually trying to get the funding that is needed for this year so the hospitals don’t end up in huge deficits and have that incredible pressure to continue to lay off and cut staff and cut positions,” Allan explained during the press conference.
For two straight fiscal years, Quinte Health has been operating under a deficit.
Last year, the board of directors heard that the deficit would be around $9 million, up from $6.6 million in 2023/2024.
In a statement to The Intelligencer newspaper, a spokesperson for Health Minister Sylvia Jones called the union’s claims misguided while also touting provincial investments into the healthcare system.
