The majority of Ontario’s 136 hospitals have carried operational deficits since 2022, and this puts an already precarious public system at risk, says new analysis from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
In Failure, By Design: Ontario’s deepening hospital funding crisis, CCPA Senior Researcher Andrew Longhurst finds that rising hospital costs of six percent annually and government underfunding are creating a toxic situation that undermines the goal of offering timely access to care for patients.
“Over the last three years, our research shows that predictable increases in Ontario hospital costs are being met with consistent underfunding from the provincial government,” says Longhurst. “When hospital funding increases fall below the required six percent, the health care needs of the population go unmet. It’s a preventable crisis, and it is only deepening.”
Among the findings of Failure, By Design:
● Smaller and rural hospitals are the hardest hit:
- Hospitals with operating revenues under $100 million had disproportionately more deficits in 2024-25
- These smaller hospitals made up 61 per cent of the hospitals in deficit but comprised only 49 per cent of all Ontario hospitals
● Hospital funding austerity harms patient care, which is visible in elevated wait times for 90 per cent of patients:
- Wait times for emergency department assessment increased by 67 per cent between 2020 and 2025.
- Over the same period, the number of hours that emergency department patients spent waiting for admission into hospital increased by 52 per cent.
● The Ontario government has made misleading claims about health care spending:
- The Ontario government has called health care spending unsustainable, yet total Ontario health care spending rose from 7.4 per cent of GDP in 2014 to only 7.6 per cent by 2023. Even still, Ontario ranked last in per-capita hospital and total health care spending in Canada in 2023.
- The Ontario government also suggests that the care economy is not the ‘real’ economy, yet in 2024, one in five jobs in Ontario—1.4 million jobs—were in the care economy.
“The Ontario government’s funding austerity, and the attitudes that deride health care workers, are harmful to the workers as well as to the patients and communities who depend on their skills and commitment,” warns Longhurst. “And this all contributes to deteriorating working conditions, rising vacancies among hospital staff, and now, job cuts.
“We strongly recommend that the provincial government implement an aggressive plan to address the hospital funding and capacity crisis—rather than laying off staff. Hospitals need certainty in funding levels, which should increase by six per cent annually. Without this, the consequences are disastrous for patients.”
Michael Hurley, president of Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, the hospital division of CUPE, points out that the sharp increase in wait-times occurred before the latest round of hospital job cuts beginning at the end of last year.
“By any metric, our hospitals require a substantial increase in staffing and capacity to improve wait-times, reduce hallway medicine, and enhance the quality of patient care,” he says. “However, the government’s stubborn refusal to meet rising hospital costs is taking us backwards whereby jobs are being eliminated every day even as staffing shortages suffocate the system. The political choice to starve our public hospitals is a failure by design.”
