London Protest ‘Against the Threat of U.S. Private Healthcare’

About 45 people joined the Ontario Health Coalition protest outside of MP Arielle Kayabaga’s office on Monday, March 16.

“We are calling for action from the federal government. Right now, they are sitting on their hands,” said Peter Bergmanis, co-chair of the London Health Coalition.

The rally was part of a nationwide day of action calling on the federal government to enforce the Canada Health Act, legislation that ensures access to universal publicly funded healthcare. Provinces and territories must adhere to the criteria of administration, comprehensiveness, universality, portability and accessibility to receive federal funds.

Alberta’s Danielle Smith United Conservative Party government passed Bill 11 in December 2025, which created the first two-tier system in the country. “Dual practice” physicians can now work concurrently in the publicly funded system and the private-pay market. Under the new legislation, doctors also now have the power to decide whether patients need to pay out of pocket for services on a case-by-case basis.

Hospitals, which can now be for-profit corporations under the provincial changes, can also bill for both “non-insured” and “enhanced” services. These cost increases are coupled with encouraging larger private health insurance plans, including from U.S. companies.

Private payments for faster services are likely to increase public wait times for people who cannot afford to pay extra in the private system.

“Selling queue-jumping for those who have thousands of dollars available to pay contravenes the requirement that all Canadians have access to healthcare based on medical need not wealth,” said Bergmanis.

In addition to reducing public system efficiencies in an already burgeoning system, the changes open the door for more for-profit insurance companies to benefit from privatization.

“Right now, we all risk losing public health care to U.S. for-profit insurance corporations if Alberta persists.  Enormous transnational private health conglomerates, like notorious U.S. based UnitedHealthcare, are already advertising in Canada,” said Bergmanis.

The Ontario Ford government is also taking unprecedented privatization measures. Private hospitals were banned in 1973, but the province is seeing massive expansion of private for-profit facilities.

“Ontario patients are unlawfully being charged more than $4,000 per eye in the private cataract surgery clinics that the Ford government has privileged. Not one extra dime has been offered to cash strapped St. Joseph’s public Ivey Eye Institute,” said Bergmanis.

St. Joseph’s Ivey Eye Institute is the main referral centre for eye disease in Western Ontario and relies on public funding and private donations for operations. St. Joseph’s is facing a $21 million deficit, alongside the $150 million deficit for London Health Sciences Centre. While public health care facilities face massive budget shortfalls, the Ontario Ford government is diverting more money into private for-profit providers.

“I’ve worked all my life and paid into the system. I can’t afford to pay more and again,” said June Weiss, a member of the Sarnia Health Coalition. Weiss retired last month after working 32 years in healthcare, mostly at a local hospital in Sarnia.

“To the healthcare workers out there, we stand with you,” said Patti Dalton, President of the London and District Labour Council. “The Prime Minister needs to answer the question of why this is allowed to happen.”

Bergmanis called Bill 11 and the Ontario Ford government’s privatization measures an “outright war on healthcare” that will lead to unethical user fees, double billing, patient rights violations and privatization that threatens the fabric of the Canadian system to usher in U.S. multi-tiered healthcare.