There’s no polite way to put this: charging people to park at hospitals is a disgraceful tax on suffering. It’s wrong. It’s cruel. And it needs to end.
We hear a lot of talk from the Ford government about affordability — but what could be more unfair than asking a patient, a family member, or a nurse to pay $19 just to park at a Niagara hospital during an emergency?
People in Niagara are already stretched thin. We’re dealing with skyrocketing rents, a trade war we didn’t ask for, and wages that haven’t kept up. And now we’re nickel-and-diming seniors and working families just for the “privilege” of visiting a hospital that we already paid for with our taxes.
Let me say that again: These are public hospitals. We fund them already with our tax dollars. And yet, when your child breaks a bone, or your partner needs urgent cancer treatment, you still get slapped with a $19-a-day parking fee — often by a private company making millions off the backs of regular people.
Meanwhile, the government hands out free parking to politicians at Queen’s Park.
Let that sink in.
I’ve heard story after story from families across Niagara: people who skip visits to their loved ones in the hospital because they can’t afford the parking. Nurses paying $70 a month just to go save lives. Seniors getting ticketed in nearly empty hospital lots while loading wheelchairs into their cars. Families like Niagara resident Debbie McGregor’s, who spent over $7,000 just to be with her dying mother during a seven-year cancer battle.
This is not what a public health care system should look like. But this is the reality under the Ford Conservatives.
And let’s bust a myth right now: Hospital parking fees don’t all “go back into the system.” They add to the hospitals budget line, sure, but they also prop up privatized contracts and let the government off the hook for underfunding health care in the first place. Ontario is one of the richest provinces in Canada — but we spend the least per person on health care.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Nova Scotia made parking free at every hospital. Ontario can too — if the Ford government decided to fund healthcare properly.
Last month, the NDP put forward a simple, common-sense motion at Queen’s Park: eliminate hospital parking fees across Ontario – supported by the Canadian Cancer Society and Ontario Nurses’ Association. Ontario’s PC Party was the only party to vote against it. The Ford government refused to even consider it. They called it “simplistic.”
You know what’s simplistic? Pretending that underfunding healthcare hasn’t led to hospitals increasing parking revenue by charging patients and health care workers that are forced to show up.
Let’s make it easier, not harder, for people to get care. Let’s stop making nurses pay to save lives. Let’s stop squeezing working-class people for a few extra bucks at their worst moments.
If you agree that hospital parking should be free in Ontario, I’m asking you to speak up. Call your MPP. Sign my petition. Share your story.
Because the next time you’re in that hospital lot — heart pounding, hands shaking, sick loved one in tow — the last thing you should have to worry about is finding $20 just to leave.
Let’s end this tax on our public hospitals — once and for all.
