It's time to make lung health a priority.
The Lung Health Foundation and like-minded organizations urge you to vote for better breathing and better healthcare when Ontario goes to the polls on February 27, 2025.
As a non-partisan, non-profit entity, the Lung Health Foundation has created the tools below to help inform your decision and help you make the choice that’s right for you. No matter how you vote, breathing belongs on the ballot!
The Breathe Change Voter’s Pledge
Use our easy email pledge tool to let all of your local election candidates know that lung health is an urgent priority. Your story is powerful; you can customize your letter to include your personal connection to lung health, if you wish.
The Breathe Change Platform Guide
To help our community stay informed, we have been tracking and monitoring the election platform and promises made by the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, Ontario Liberal Party, New Democratic Party of Ontario, and Green Party of Ontario. This resource will be updated frequently as news develops. If there are any updates missing, please let our Public Affairs team know at rsanders@lunghealth.ca.
How to use this tool: We’ve split our analysis into three key categories – Primary Care, Hospitals, Healthcare Professionals and Community Care, and Social Assistance/Community Support. In each, we’ve captured the promises and commitments that each of Ontario’s four largest political parties have communicated. For a full picture of each party’s vision for Ontario, we encourage you to explore the party websites and research your local candidates, including those running as independents.
Updated February 27, 2025
Primary Care
$1.8 billion to connect every Ontarian to primary care within four years.
Create 305 additional family health teams
Create legislation outlining what people can expect from primary care.
Expand new medical school seats across the province and open Ontario’s first new medical school in decades.
Invest 88 million to expand the Learn and Stay Grant to cover more medical students.
$3.1 billion to ensure every Ontario resident has a family doctor within four years.
Attract, recruit, retain, and integrate 3,100 family doctors by 2029.
Create two new medical schools.
Expand capacity in existing medical schools, doubling number of medical school spots and residency positions.
Incentives for doctors to return to family medicine and for those near retirement to stay on.
Accelerate the integration of at least 1,200 internationally trained doctors over the next four years.
Deliver team-based care with evening and weekend appointments, integrated home care for seniors and accessible mental health services for children, youth and teenagers.
Eliminate fax machines, enhance virtual care, introduce centralized referral system with patient portals and interoperable electronic medical records.
$150,000 bonus to nurses and doctors who want to return to Canada from the U.S.
$4.05 billion over four years to ensure every Ontarian is connected with a family doctor.
Recruit and support 3,500 new doctors.
Hire 350 doctors for Northern Ontario, including 200 family doctors and 150 specialists.
Clear path for 13,000 internationally trained doctors to practice.
Increase residency spots province-wide.
‘Fast-track’ solution in first 100 days to include more family health teams, shorter specialist wait times, and flexible care options.
Establish a centralized and standardized referral system to streamline referral to specialists and reduce administrative burden.
Recruit 3,500 more doctors in Ontario through medical school positions and more residence opportunities for international graduates, hoping to get every Ontarian a primary care provider within three to four years. They also plan to increase fast-tracked credential approvals for international healthcare workers.
Reduce administrative burden on doctors and move to electronic prescriptions.
Hospitals, Healthcare Professionals and Community Care
Continue to invest $50 billion in more than 50 hospital construction or expansions projects.
Allow healthcare workers registered in other provinces and territories to provide care.
Continue to invest $743 million to address healthcare staffing needs.
Plan to build 58,000 new and upgraded long-term beds across Ontario by 2028.
$66 million for community surgical and diagnostic centres.
Accelerate the St. Mary’s and Grant River hospital redevelopment.
Pay all nurses and personal support workers (PSWs) a livable wage and provide additional training and professional development.
Standardize wages across the system regardless of medical facility.
Invest in hospital infrastructure.
Regulate temporary nursing agencies.
Bring Nurse Practitioners into the public system and ban private-pay Nurse Practitioner Clinics.
Guarantee needs-based home care through family health teams, boost annual home care funding by 25%.
Create a Senior’s Home Care Tax Credit, allowing for up to 25% of up to $10,000 in medical expenses per year.
Hire at least 15,000 nurses over three years at a cost of $1.5 billion. Promised to legislate nurse-to-patient ratios in hospitals and to take measures to reduce the use of private nursing agencies.
Commit to ensuring funding for the planned new regional hospital in Kitchener-Waterloo, expedite the Windsor-Essex Regional Hospital, restore emergency services to Welland Hospital, deliver a new hospital for Brantford, restore services to Fort Erie and Port Colborne Urgent Care. Reopen Minden hospital and preserve rural emergency departments. New hospital for Brampton with a Cancer Care Centre.
Increase funding to community mental health service providers.
Establish wage parity for healthcare workers in community settings to ensure primary care providers can also offer mental health support.
Eliminate parking fees at hospitals for staff, visitors and patients.
Introduce monthly Caregiver Benefits for Ontarians caring for a loved one at home.
Improve access to home care and provide a Seniors Home Safety Grant to help with renovations.
Attract new long-term care and home care workers to communities where they have shared culture and language skills.
Pay healthcare workers fairly by harmonizing wages across the system
Stop the charging of doctors and removal of patients from rosters if they visit a walk-in clinic.
Create a centralized intake and referral system in order to reduce backlog in surgeries, imaging, and diagnostic tests.
Partner with Ottawa to implement the universal pharmacare program.
Build 48,000 long-term care spaces by 2029 and phase out for-profit care.
Advocate for new hospitals in Huntsville and Bracebridge.
Expand public, 24/7 non-urgent clinics.
Provide funding for healthcare professionals to provide healthcare at home.
Increase nursing student enrolments by 10% for the next 5 years. Increase nurse practitioners by 2,500 by 2030.
Address retention and recruitment issues to bring in 6,800 new Personal Support Workers (PSWs) by 2028.
Expand and provide start up funding for family health teams with a wider variety of care. Better integrate long-term care, and caregiver services within family health teams.
Improve rural healthcare by creating a fill-in physician program to provide relief and prevent closures, creating a new and integrated framework to deploy healthcare providers more effectively in rural areas, pay healthcare workers fairly for their travel and expand scope of practice for community healthcare providers.
Cut local cost share for funding new hospitals by half and increase provincial funding for rural hospitals.
Social Assistance/Community Support
Committed to yearly increases to match inflation each July.
Double the ODSP and index future increases to inflation.
Double the ODSP and Ontario Works.
Double the ODSP and index future increases to inflation as a first step to implementing a basic income.
Other Healthcare announcements
$5 million for Clinical Trials Ontario’s QuickSTART Initiatives
$12 million investment in the Health Technology Accelerator Fund to support partnerships with local health-care service providers.
Speed up the “time-to-list” process for medication by at least six months, with cancer drugs being the first priority.
Support and promote healthy behaviors to prevent disease and reduce risk factors including smoking.
Improve environmental determinants of health by prioritizing clean air, clean water and healthy local food.
Mitigate the health risks to people from heat, wildfire smoke, flooding and drought.
Establish stricter monitoring and enforcements standards for air and water pollution.
Living with a lung condition can bring many challenges. For some in our community, that includes challenges with mobility.
If you’re concerned about your lung condition holding you back from the polls on February 27, you can breathe a sigh of relief. You have until 6:00 p.m. ET on Friday, February 21st to apply to vote by mail. Home and hospital visits are also an option in some cases. Visit www.elections.on.ca to learn more.
Breathing belongs on the ballot – and your vote matters.
Helpful Links
- Elections Ontario: Find your polling station, register to vote by mail, view a list of candidates, and make sure you’re ready for the polls
- Advocacy at LHF: Learn more about our specific advocacy goals, in Ontario and across Canada