Unifor Ontario Regional Director Samia Hashi has been appointed to the board of the Ontario Health Coalition, strengthening the union’s role in the fight to defend and expand public health care in the province.
Hashi’s appointment comes at a critical time for Ontario’s health care system, as the Ford government continues its push to privatize services like surgeries and diagnostics. Public hospitals are stretched beyond capacity, staffing shortages are worsening, and patients are paying the price—sometimes literally—as for-profit clinics expand.
“To save public health care, we need unions, community organizations, health workers, and everyday people fighting side by side. That’s what this moment demands,” said Unifor Ontario Regional Director Samia Hashi.
The Ontario Health Coalition is the province’s leading public health care advocacy group, with a long history of grassroots mobilization to protect and improve the public system. Its mandate includes resisting privatization, demanding adequate funding, and ensuring that health care remains universal, accessible, and not-for-profit.
In 2023, Unifor’s Ontario Regional Council launched a province-wide campaign titled Save Ontario Health Care, which mobilized thousands of members and allies in communities across Ontario. The campaign exposed how privatization has drained resources from public hospitals, increased wait times, and created dangerous inequities in access to care.
The campaign included town halls, workplace actions, and political advocacy—engaging members not only as workers in the health system, but as patients, caregivers, and voters.
Unifor has recently kicked off a National Health Care and Social Services Tour, where Hashi is among the Unifor leaders, including Health Care Director Kellee Janzen, and Assistant to the National Officers Kelly-Anne Orr, who are hitting the road to meet directly with frontline workers in hospitals, long-term care homes, and social service agencies.
The tour has been met with urgency and passion from Unifor members who are witnessing the collapse of critical services firsthand. Many are seeing patients turned away, staff pushed past the brink of burnout, and corporate staffing agencies profiting off a system in crisis.
“Health care should never be a source of profit,” said Hashi. “Every dollar siphoned into private pockets is a dollar not spent on care.”
The coalition includes more than 400 member organizations representing seniors, workers, patients, and community leaders. Together, they are demanding immediate action from all levels of government to end privatization and reinvest in a robust public system of care.
For more information on the Ontario Health Coalition, visit: www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca.