Ontario paid for-profit surgical and diagnostic facilities $4.1 billion between 2017 and 2025 while hospital wait times got longer, not shorter, according to a report released Tuesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The report, "Not adding up: Surgical and diagnostic privatization in Ontario" by senior researcher Andrew Longhurst, directly challenges the government's claim that private clinics shorten waits.
The numbers are stark. Surgeries at private clinics grew 117 per cent from 2017 to 2025, compared with just 10 per cent in public hospitals. Provincial payments rose from $457 million in 2018 to $674 million in 2025 — a 48 per cent jump — with annual growth of 22.8 per cent for surgical procedures and 10.7 per cent for imaging from 2022 to 2025, against just 4.9 per cent for hospitals.
Median wait times increased for 8 of 12 priority procedures over the same period, including MRI scans, cataract surgeries and all cancer surgeries. The report also found public accounts under-reported payments to private clinics by 778 per cent in 2024–25 — $84.7 million reported versus $659 million in FOI-obtained expenditure figures — and that 46 of 147 unlawful extra-billing contraventions recorded from 2023 to 2025 involved cataract and eye procedures.
The report lands with a sharp Ottawa angle: MRI machines and operating rooms at Ottawa public hospitals sit under-utilized — one Queensway Carleton MRI machine closed after 3 p.m. and on weekends, most Ottawa Hospital operating rooms closed after 5 p.m. — even as the province funds new private clinics. CUPE/OCHU president Michael Hurley is calling for the private-clinic funding to be cancelled.
