QUEEN’S PARK, Thursday, Feb 5 – Ontario’s NDP party is demanding urgent changes to hospital funding based on new data published by the Investigative Journalism Bureau.
“When our hospitals cannot make payroll and have to go to the bank in order to be able to pay their employees, there’s something drastically wrong,” said France Gélinas, the NDP health critic and shadow minister of health in a press conference Thursday. “The government knows this. The Minister of Health knows that. And yet, nothing is done. This is completely unacceptable.”
The comments come following the release of an IJB investigation into widespread hospital deficits across Ontario, which revealed some hospitals are relying on bank borrowings to stay afloat. As of March 2025, hospitals owed more than $66 million to chartered banks and had paid at least $4 million on their short term borrowings in the fiscal year 2024/25, according to the IJB’s findings.
“I knew that there were hospitals who had gone to the banks to get loans, but I had no idea how much interest they were paying,” Gélinas told the IJB earlier this week. “Sixty-six million (worth of) loans makes no sense.”
Former CEO and president of West Haldimand General Hospital David Bird on Thursday described receiving his own cardiac care in a hospital hallway after waiting 28 hours in the emergency room. He said that for hospitals, relying on bank borrowings “is a very bad thing to do.”
“I don’t think you should be using public money to pay interest to banks. I think that there should be the appropriate funding,” Bird previously said in an interview with the IJB.
A day after the IJB investigation ran, Gélinas and Dr. Robin Lennox, Ontario’s shadow minister for primary care, had released a joint statement citing the IJB’s research and taking issue with the provincial government’s handling of the healthcare system.
“Hospitals are being pushed into debt, while patients are treated in hallways, nurses are burned out, and care is being cut,” the statement read.
The Progressive Conservatives did not respond to the NDP’s statement or to questions on hospital borrowing sent by the IJB.
On Thursday, the NDP called for changes to funding for the hospital sector, including addressing the effects of hospital deficits on staffing and patient care, and the need for longer-term planning.
This year, the annual funding increase for Ontario’s health sector was 0.7 per cent, compared to an average of five per cent over the past 34 years. A 2025 spending review conducted by the Fiscal Accountability Office of Ontario, a government body, concluded these funds would not be sufficient to maintain the same level of hospital services without further investments or new efficiencies.
“We really need to address this with a matter of urgency… Our hospitals have never been put under this level of strain,” the NDP’s Dr. Lennox previously said in an interview with the IJB.
“If we are making cuts to our hospitals while they’re already drowning, that’s where we’re going to see wait times in the emergency department go up. We’re going to see more and more people in the hallways,” she added.
President and CEO of the Ontario Hospital Association Anthony Dale said short-term operating borrowings are among the “standard financial tools” used by hospitals to manage cash flow and respond to changing conditions.
“Ontario hospitals are borrowing to deliver critical services — managing risk, investing prudently, and sustaining care in a volatile environment,” he said in a statement to the IJB.
“The existing model cannot absorb today’s pressures — or meet future demand — without a fundamental shift in how care is funded and delivered.”
- IJB Gets Action: Ontario NDP demands changes to hospital funding model after IJB investigation - 5 February 2026
- Why Ontario hospitals are turning to bank loans to stay afloat - 29 January 2026
- ‘The justice institution has failed us’: The numbers behind the Indigenous femicide crisis in Canada - 23 January 2026