FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

23 September 2026

QUEEN’S PARK, ON. – Today, MPP Dr. Adil Shamji, Ontario Liberal Critic for Primary Care, Urgent Care, and Public Health, issued the following statement regarding the report by the Financial Accountability Office on the Government’s Health Sector Spending Plans:

Today’s report confirms that the wait times, layoffs and deficits Ontarians have witnessed in healthcare over the last eight years under the Ford government were just a preview, and that service cuts are projected to dramatically worsen by 2028. Ford’s mismanagement of healthcare may have reached a new low, but the report paints an even more terrifying picture of cuts to come, including fewer nurses with less resources forced to keep hospitals afloat.

Ontarians have been forced to endure substandard performance and a healthcare system that isn’t consistently there for them when they need it. Addressing these issues would require increasing healthcare investments at a rate greater than 4.4%, which is the minimum just to maintain current level of service. Instead, it will fall to 3.2%, marking the lowest rate of healthcare funding in over a decade. 

Consequently, it is projected that an additional 2,522 nursing positions will be cut over the next three years, while the per-person number of hospital beds and long-term care beds will plummet as well. Ontario will remain in last place for hospital funding, second-last place for overall healthcare spending, and second-last place for number of hospital beds. 

All of this continues a theme of coming last in everything across Canada, including with Doug Ford’s popularity. And because of his choices, families will wait longer in emergency rooms, seniors will be displaced into long-term cares homes far from family, and patients will not have hospital beds available when they need one. 

With hospitals reporting deficits province-wide and terminations of frontline healthcare workers becoming commonplace, this report shows that Doug Ford is moving Ontario in the wrong direction. His decision to ignore the Ontario Liberal call for $1 billion in hospital stabilization funding is compromising quality of care, and the planned underfunding and projected service cuts will only make it more precarious. 

Doug Ford has a choice – to waste taxpayer dollars on pet projects like relocating the Science Centre and luxury private jets, or to fund the essential services that Ontarians need. Time and time again, he chooses himself and the things Ontarians never asked for. It’s time to put Ontario’s health first and his ego last.