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A provincewide protest will be held this weekend - including one in Windsor.

The Ontario Health Coalition is hosting the protests in a range of cities against the privatization of hospitals and healthcare.

The Coalition says local volunteers will be mobilizing approximately 10,000 people to demand the Doug Ford government stop privatizing hospitals and clinics.

According to CUPE's Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, in 2020 the Ford government enhanced funding for private clinics to perform cataract surgeries, before passing legislation in 2023 to further facilitate the transfer of diagnostic tests and surgeries from public hospitals to private, for-profit clinics.

The government had made the argument that private clinics would help reduce wait-times, but data from the Canadian Institute of Health Information shows that in 2024 only 66 per cent of cataract surgeries in Ontario were performed on time, down from 72 per cent in 2020.

From a private spa contract at Ontario Place, millions for a private jet, subsidizing corner store booze and so on, the Coalition is warning that the Ford government is pouring taxpayer money into private contracts while depriving the public of needed care.

Natalie Mehra, Executive Director of the Ontario Health Coalition, says this is a chance for the community to make their voices heard.

"If we don't rise up, if they don't hear from people in the same way that they did about the private jet, you know, just call the MPPs, flood them with emails, and phone calls, and so on, and demand that they stop privatizing our public hospitals... if we don't do that, we're going to lose them."

She says this won't be the last protest.

"We're going to be doing a whole bunch of them this year, and we may come back again to the ones that we're doing this weekend, but the goal is to get 10,000 people out to demand that the Ford government stops the privatization."

Mehra says the response has been great so far.

"There's no one to stop it but us, collectively, all of us, and that it really matter that people who care about this stand up. So, good response, but we need people to make that overwhelming support for public healthcare and opposition to privatization visible."

The protest in Windsor will be held on Saturday, April 25 at 11 a.m. outside of MPP Andrew Dowie's office at 5452 Tecumseh Road East.

Additional protests will be happening across the province, including in Ottawa, St. Catharines, Kitchener-Waterloo, and others.