Hamilton Centre MPP Andrea Horwath has called on the McGuinty government to end its “cutthroat” bidding process to enable two respected, non-profit home care agencies to continue providing service in the Hamilton-Niagara Region.

In a letter to Premier Dalton McGuinty and his health minister George Smitherman, Horwath served notice that Ontario’s NDP will fight the Liberals’ expansion of for-profit health care services every step of the way.

Horwath will be speaking at tonight’s massive 7 p.m. rally at Michelangelo Banquet Hall in support of the two agencies, VON and St. Joseph’s Health Care, and opposing the McGuinty government’s move to hand over home care to for-profit corporations, mainly multinationals, using a bidding process she describes as “a page right out of Mike Harris’s playbook.”

“The blame rests with you for failing to keep our community nursing sector strong and viable by ending cutthroat bidding in the home care sector,” Horwath’s letter said. “What the public expects is real action from your government, namely, a permanent end to cutthroat bidding and a stop to
further privatization of our healthcare system.”

New Democrats believe in publicly funded and publicly delivered health care services where public dollars go to patient care, not private profits.

“Non-profits are the most cost-effective deliverers of home care. Unlike commercial home care corporations, the non-profits don’t skim from government funding to find profits for their corporate investors and shareholders.”

Horwath challenged the Liberals to take action and quit hiding behind the new Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) or the Community Care Access Centre (CCAC), which is obliged to follow the flawed bidding process that drives non-profits out of home care altogether.

“You sailed into Hamilton making sweeping promises about preserving quality healthcare services for patients in this region leading up to the last election. I urge you to live up to your word for a change,” Horwath wrote.

The MPP has been inundated with expressions of concern about the loss of non-profit community nurses and the erosion of the quality and continuity of home care that clients receive.

“The erosion may have begun here, but it will be happening everywhere else across the province. Hamilton has a unique role in being the first to say loud and clear to your government, ‘We don’t want this.’ “