'Completely unacceptable': Ontario NDP demands changes to hospital funding

The Ontario NDP is demanding urgent changes to hospital funding after the Investigative Journalism Bureau reported hospital operating budgets were in deficit to the tune of more than half a billion dollars in the last fiscal year.

“When our hospitals cannot make payroll and have to go to the bank in order to be able to pay their employees, there’s something drastically wrong,” said France Gélinas, the NDP health critic, in a press conference Thursday. “The government knows this. The minister of health knows that. And yet, nothing is done. This is completely unacceptable.”

The comments come after the IJB divulged that some hospitals are relying on private bank loans to stay afloat. As of March 2025, hospitals owed more than $66 million to chartered banks and had paid at least $4 million on short-term borrowing in the fiscal year 2024-25.

“I knew that there were hospitals who had gone to the banks to get loans, but I had no idea how much interest they were paying,” Gélinas told the IJB, adding $66 million “makes no sense.”

Under Ontario law, hospitals are supposed to balance their budgets each year. In some cases, the government has provided waivers to allow them to run deficits; in other cases, hospitals have borrowed from private banks to balance the books.

President and CEO of the Ontario Hospital Association Anthony Dale said short-term operating borrowings are among the “standard financial tools” used by hospitals to manage cash flow and respond to changing conditions.

“Ontario hospitals are borrowing to deliver critical services — managing risk, investing prudently, and sustaining care in a volatile environment,” he said in a statement.

“The existing model cannot absorb today’s pressures — or meet future demand — without a fundamental shift in how care is funded and delivered,” Dale said.

This year, the annual funding increase for Ontario’s overall health sector was set at 0.7 per cent, compared to an average of five per cent over the past 34 years. A 2025 spending review from the province’s Fiscal Accountability Office concluded the government’s proposed hospital funding would not be sufficient to maintain the current level of hospital services without further investments or new efficiencies.

Health care is Ontario’s biggest cost item: about 40 per cent of the provincial operating budget, or approximately $90 billion. About one-third of that goes to hospitals.

The Progressive Conservative government has not responded to questions about hospital borrowing from the IJB.

Former CEO and president of West Haldimand General Hospital David Bird on Thursday described receiving cardiac care in a hospital hallway after waiting 28 hours in the emergency room. He said that for hospitals, relying on bank borrowing “is a very bad thing to do.”

“I don’t think you should be using public money to pay interest to banks. I think that there should be the appropriate funding,” Bird told the IJB.

The NDP wants changes to funding for the hospital sector, including addressing the effects of hospital deficits on staffing and patient care, and the need for longer-term planning.

The Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health is a collaborative investigative newsroom supported by Postmedia that partners with academics, researchers and journalists while training the next generation of investigative reporters.  

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