Experts Warn Cornwall Crowd: Ontario’s Health System Is Quietly Being Hollowed Out

Today, the Cornwall chapter of the Ontario Health Coalition hosted an event at the Cornwall Public Library. For the occasion, they brought in three heavy hitters: Natalie Mehra, Executive Director of the OHC, Dr. Allyson Pollock, a leading expert on health policy, and Michael Hurley, long-time advocate for public healthcare. These are not alarmists. These are people who have tracked privatization across countries and decades, and they are warning that Ontario is repeating the worst mistakes seen elsewhere.

“What they want to do is take out the profitable parts of hospital services,” Mehra told the crowd. “The fast-track, easy elective surgeries that the private sector wants because they are high-volume and make a lot of money.”

This includes cataracts, hips, knees, and potentially MRIs, endoscopies, and other procedures that private investors see as high-profit opportunities.

What England Already Lived Through and Why It Matters Here

Dr. Pollock drew on twenty years of research into England’s shift toward private clinics. The results were not encouraging. When England began diverting public funds into private surgical centres, the promise was shorter wait times and more capacity. What actually happened was the opposite.

• Wait times increased
• Public hospitals lost trained staff
• Poorer and sicker patients were pushed to the back of the line
• Wealthier patients quietly moved ahead of others inside a publicly funded system

Pollock delivered it plainly.

“Public provision has fallen. Poorer patients are waiting longer in the public sector while the rich are getting into private clinics first,” she said.

When complications happened, private clinics transferred patients back to public hospitals, which pushed everyone else further down the list.

Ontario Is Doing the Same Thing and It Is Moving Faster

Mehra outlined how quickly Ontario is following the same track. Under the Ford government:

• Funding for private clinics has surged by more than 30 percent
• Public hospitals have received increases that do not keep up with inflation
• Fifty-seven new private clinics were announced this summer
• Private clinics receive higher payments per surgery while taking only the easiest, lowest-risk patients

Complex patients remain in the public system, but the public system no longer has the capacity it once had. This is not an expansion of healthcare. It is a removal of resources from hospitals that communities spent decades building.

Cornwall Is Already Feeling the Impact

One of the most striking moments came when Mehra described a phone audit conducted at Cornwall’s only private eye clinic.

When callers asked about cataract surgery, the clinic reportedly quoted prices ranging from $2,000 to $12,000 per eye, even though cataract surgery is fully covered under OHIP.

“This is expressly against our public Medicare laws,” Mehra explained. “You cannot require payment for medically unnecessary services in order to access medically necessary surgery.”

The clinic also told callers that private-pay patients could receive surgery within one or two weeks, while those who used the hospital would wait much longer.

However, when the Coalition checked the official provincial wait-time database, Cornwall’s hospital wait was significantly shorter than what the clinic claimed. Several residents in the room said they had been given similar information.

A System That Is Making People Desperate

Audience members shared concerns that reflected a system no longer functioning as it should. One resident described a friend with recurring cancer who has been waiting months for a PET scan and still does not have a clear timeline or update.

Another resident questioned whether Ontario has any mechanism to help regular people navigate waitlists, advocate for themselves, or get answers without being left on their own.

Elaine MacDonald, co-chair of the local coalition, expressed the frustration many were feeling.

“It is a real catch-22. A person is offering the only service in town and they get away with this behaviour,” she said.

The comment resonated with the room.

Why This Should Worry Every Ontario Resident

Once you create a system where wealth determines access, that system does not return to equality. Other provinces have tried partial privatization. England tried it. Each time the outcome was predictable: a declining public system, rising private fees, and longer waits for those who cannot afford to pay.

Mehra was blunt.

“This is an existential threat to single-tier public Medicare. It costs more, it removes resources, and it causes suffering and inequities.”

Ontario hospitals, including Cornwall’s, risk becoming buildings with closed operating rooms, staffing shortages, and procedures moved into private clinics that charge extra and handle only the simplest cases.

This is not modernization. It is erosion.

Where Cornwall Residents Go From Here

The Ontario Health Coalition urges residents to report illegal charges, question misinformation, and demand that existing laws be enforced. People can also use the Ontario Wait Times website to check real wait times rather than relying on what a private clinic claims.

Because the truth is simple. Ontario’s healthcare system is not failing because it is public. It is failing because it is being deliberately starved and redirected into private hands.

Unless we push back, this decline will not be subtle. It will be fast and irreversible.