Equal health care for immigrants
Re Social justice begins now, Editorial July 12 The Star noted Kathleen Wynne “has styled herself the social justice premier . . . promising to bring forward a new poverty reduction strategy.” While I commend her for this, will she please finally include ending the dreadful “health poverty” created by her government’s three-month wait for OHIP that all new Ontario immigrants confront. The policy is a harsh and harmful relic from the bygone days of Bob Rae’s NDP government. Ontario should not continue to be a place where its immigrant children and youth new to Canada are denied health care when ill; where pregnant immigrant women cannot afford basic maternity and delivery care; and where families are bankrupted by massive medical bills for emergency care, and sometimes forced to return home. The federal courts recently struck down the federal Conservatives’ cuts to refugee care, calling them “cruel and unusual” measures. Premier Wynne rightly introduced the Ontario Temporary Health Plan to cover this shortfall so refugee women and children could access needed medical care. Ontario’s new Minister of Health, Dr. Eric Hoskins, said the federal government “abdicated its responsibility” when it cut care to refugee claimants, adding the federal cuts to refugee care “put our health care professionals in an untenable position, forcing them to choose who receives treatment.”
Arguably Ontario’s three-month wait does precisely the same. Under it, immigrant women lack maternity care. Under it, immigrant children delay seeking medical care when ill.
The wait produces just as cruel and unusual treatment for vulnerable immigrants new to Ontario as the federal cuts did for refugee claimants. Governments cannot talk out of both sides of their mouth.
Dr. Hoskins has worked hard to support immigrants and refugees abroad and in Canada. He and his wife Dr. Samantha Nutt founded the charity War Child Canada to “support motherhood and protect childhood.”
It is time to do the same for immigrant children and mothers new to Ontario. Dr. Paul Caulford, assistant professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto