Ford Cuts Ontario Nurses, But Backs Ukraine Cash?
Ford government underfunds hospitals then writes a $1 million cheque abroad.
Ontario hospitals are axing registered nurse jobs by the hundreds while Premier Doug Ford finds cash to send overseas. That is the blunt reality in the fall of 2026.
The Ontario Nurses Association has documented more than 215 RN positions cut across the province in just the past couple of months. Sunnybrook alone dropped about 100. Hamilton Health Sciences is looking at 143 nursing spots among 413 total positions on the chopping block. London, Ottawa, Mount Sinai, and a long list of other hospitals have made similar moves. Unions say employers are replacing experienced RNs with cheaper staff or simply leaving roles vacant to balance books. The result is fewer skilled hands at the bedside in a province that already ranks near the bottom for nurses per capita.
Those staffing cuts show up fast in the emergency department. Live wait times at major Ontario hospitals routinely stretch to five, six, or seven hours. Some Toronto and London ERs have posted double-digit waits on busy days. Patients sit in crowded waiting rooms or even on the floor while staff scramble with fewer registered nurses. Overcrowding is so common that admitted patients often spend half a day or more stuck in the ER waiting for an inpatient bed. Ford once promised to end hallway medicine. The numbers say the problem has not gone away and in many places has gotten worse.
The Ford government insists it has hired tens of thousands of nurses since 2018 and is pouring money into hospitals. Critics point out that a lot of that cash goes to new buildings and capital projects while day-to-day operating budgets stay tight. Inflation eats the rest. Hospitals then cut front-line care to avoid deficits. Patients wait longer. Nurses burn out. Wait times in emergency rooms stay ugly. None of this is abstract. It is happening in operating rooms, dialysis units, postpartum wards, and mental health units right now.
At the same time, Ford announced a $1 million donation to the Ukraine Energy Support Fund in late September. That money is meant “to help” repair power grids damaged by Russian attacks. Ontario previously sent nearly $5 million worth of transformers and generators. The premier framed it as standing with people “defending freedom and democracy”.
But the optics are terrible. Ontarians are watching hospital after hospital eliminate nursing positions while the province cuts a cheque for foreign energy infrastructure. A million dollars will not fix Ukraine’s grid on its own, and it will not hire a single extra nurse in Toronto or Hamilton either. The contrast still stings. When local emergency departments are short-staffed and hallway medicine is still a thing, many people reasonably ask why any provincial money is leaving the country at all.
Provincial governments do not usually run foreign aid programs. That is mostly Ottawa’s job, and the federal government has already committed billions to Ukraine. Ford’s decision to add provincial cash feels more like political signaling than necessity. Meanwhile the same government faces repeated accusations of deliberately underfunding public health care to open the door wider for private clinics and for-profit care. Whether that is the grand plan or just the messy outcome of tight budgets, the effect is the same: fewer RNs on the floor.
Nurses and their unions are not subtle about it. They call the cuts dangerous and demand a moratorium. They warn that replacing RNs with less trained staff puts patients at real risk when things go sideways. The government responds with talking points about historic investments and new training seats. Both sides can wave numbers. Patients stuck in waiting rooms care more about whether a nurse is actually available when they need one.
This is classic Ford-era politics. Talk tough about getting things done, celebrate selective spending that looks good in a press release, and let the quieter cuts happen inside hospitals. Supporting Ukraine is popular and low-risk for the premier. Funding enough nurses to keep safe staffing ratios is expensive and complicated. Guess which one gets the photo opportunity.
Ontario’s health system was already strained. Adding more RN cuts while shipping money abroad does not look like competent prioritization. It looks like a government that has lost the plot on what people pay taxes for. Fix the staffing crisis at home first. The power grid in another country can wait until the emergency departments here are not running on fumes.
