12/20/2025
People over profit!
Ontario’s mental-health system is being quietly pushed toward privatization, and that should worry all of us.
Under Doug Ford, more publicly funded mental-health services are being delivered through private, for-profit providers instead of strengthening the public system we already have.
This is often sold as “increasing access” or “reducing wait times,” but that’s not what’s happening on the ground.
When services are privatized, workers don’t magically appear — they’re pulled out of hospitals, community mental-health programs, and crisis services. That leaves public programs more understaffed than they already are.
Private models also tend to focus on short-term, quick-turnover care. That might work for mild or situational issues, but it fails people living with complex trauma, serious mental illness, or long-term needs who require consistent, relationship-based support.
It also creates a two-tier system. People who can pay out of pocket get faster or more complete care. Everyone else waits — or falls through the cracks. Mental-health care should be based on need, not income.
There’s also far less transparency. Public mental-health services are accountable to communities and the public. Private providers answer to contracts, metrics, and profit margins.
And when people don’t get proper mental-health support early, the costs don’t disappear — they show up later in emergency rooms, hospitals, policing, child welfare, and the justice system. That’s worse for people and more expensive for taxpayers.
You don’t fix a mental-health crisis by turning care into a business.
The answer is properly funding public mental-health services, keeping skilled workers in the system, and providing long-term, consistent care — not outsourcing it.
Mental-health care is health care. It shouldn’t depend on your ability to pay.
If this concerns you, don’t ignore it. Talk about it. Share this. Ask questions. Reach out to your MPP and let them know that publicly funded mental-health care matters to you. Listen to frontline workers and people with lived experience, and support public services in your community. These decisions change when people pay attention — silence is how this happens quietly. Mental-health care works best when it’s public, accountable, and built around people, not profit.
OPSEU SEFPO Mental Health & Addictions Division
