Provincial budget
Read how the OMA is advocating for doctors and patients with the Ontario government
2023 budget
On Thursday, March 23, 2022, Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy laid out the government’s budget for the fiscal year 2023-24, or until March 31, 2024.
The budget, Building A Strong Ontario, is focused on strengthening the economy by attracting investment, building infrastructure, lowering costs and delivering better services.
The government is projecting a deficit of $1.3 billion in 2023–24 and is on track to post a surplus of $0.2 billion in 2024–25, three years earlier than forecasted in the 2022 budget. The government is also projecting a surplus of $4.4 billion in 2025–26.
Provisions in the provincial budget align with all five pillars in the OMA’s roadmap for the future, Prescription for Ontario: Doctors’ 5-Point Plan for Better Health Care.
Economic measures
Real GDP growth
Ontario’s real GDP growth is expected to be 0.2 per cent in 2023-24, 1.3 per cent in 2024-25 and 2.5 per cent in 2025-26.Employment growth
Ontario’s employment growth is expected to be be 0.5 per cent in 2023-24, one per cent in 2024-25 and 1.7 per cent in 2025-26.CPI inflation growth
Ontario’s CPI inflation growth is expected to be 3.6 per cent in 2023/24, 2.1 per cent in 2024-25 and two per cent in 2025-26.
2023 pre-budget submission
The COVID-19 pandemic tested Ontario’s health-care system in unprecedented ways, highlighting the cracks that existed before the virus arrived in the province in early 2020. As we emerge from the acute or crisis phase of the pandemic, Ontario’s health-care system is in dire need of immediate solutions to improve patient access to care and increase capacity.
The Ontario Medical Association’s Prescription for Ontario is a roadmap for the future, containing 87 recommendations in five priority areas, including 12 recommendations addressing the unique needs and challenges in northern Ontario:
- Reduce wait times and the backlog of services
- Expand mental health and addiction services in the community
- Improve and expand home care and other community care
- Strengthen public health and pandemic preparedness
- Give every patient a team of health-care providers and link them digitally
The Prescription for Ontario sets out what the government, together with health-care stakeholders, can do in the next few years to strengthen our system. The plan is meant to be implemented in an integrated fashion, starting in the short term and completed over the longer term.
But there are three things we can do now that will make a difference to patients:
- Help retain doctors by reducing the administrative burden
- Increase system capacity and improve patient access to care by creating a centralized wait list and referral system for surgeries so that patients with the greatest need go to the front of the wait list
- Move more palliative patients out of hospitals into the community, embed care co-ordinators in primary care and equip all long-term care homes with IV and diagnostic equipment to reduce transfers to hospitals
On Feb. 14, the OMA submitted its 2023 pre-budget recommendations and urged the Ontario government to include our solutions in its 2023-24 budget.
The solutions would cost about $320 million for 2023-24.
In Prescription for Ontario, the OMA acknowledged Ontario’s annual health-care spending has not kept up with year-over-year demand for the past 30 years. Ontario would need an investment of about $5 billion dollars to reach the average of provincial per capita spending.
The OMA has supported the province’s call to increase the Canada Health Transfer payment to 35 per cent from 22 per cent of total health-care spending. Ontario said it would accept the new federal funding offer, including an immediate top-up to the transfer payment, even though the amount was lower than what was requested.
This new funding, together with the provincial budget surplus, should more than cover the cost of our immediate solutions, and serve as a down payment to implement all 87 recommendations contained in our Prescription.
The solutions
2023 northern Ontario pre-budget submission
The OMA’s northern district chairs, Dr. Stephen Cooper and Dr. Stephen Viherjoki, contributed to the province’s pre-budget consultation process. On Tuesday, Jan. 31, both chairs appeared before Ontario’s legislative Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs to present the top priorities of doctors in northern Ontario and to take questions from elected officials. The district chairs spoke about the need to address critical northern health-care issues, including the shortage of doctors, long wait times and pressures on hospitals. Dr. Cooper and Dr. Viherjoki also voiced that timing is critical, and that immediate action must be taken.