WHEN PUBLIC CARE IS CUT
WOMEN PAY TWICE
Public services are how we share care — hospitals, schools, home care, and childcare. When those systems are underfunded or privatized, the cost does not vanish. It shifts onto workers (mostly women in feminized professions) and onto unpaid caregivers at home (also disproportionately women). This flyer summarizes the pattern with documented sources.
Bill 124 · feminized workforceAgency $ · wage capsUnpaid care at home
At work — feminized public-sector jobs
Source: Statistics Canada — gender and health care occupations; Ontario e-Laws — Bill 124 (2019).
- About nine in ten registered nurses in Canada are women (Statistics Canada, 2021).
- Personal support workers, early childhood educators, and many teachers in Ontario are also predominantly women.
- Bill 124 capped compensation increases for many broader-public-sector workers, including healthcare staff, while hospitals spent billions on private staffing agencies.
- Agency workers often cost far more per hour than equivalent public employees — public money flowing to intermediaries instead of stable public jobs.
- Underpaying and understaffing feminized care work is a policy choice, not an accident.
At home — when public care shrinks
Source: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives; Broadbent Institute — care economy research.
- Longer ER waits, home-care waitlists, and reduced school supports push care back onto families.
- Unpaid caregiving — for children, parents, and disabled family members — falls disproportionately on women.
- Single-parent and multigenerational households bear the heaviest load when public capacity is cut.
- Two-tier healthcare pressure hits women twice: longer waits for care, and more unpaid work filling the gap.
- Investing in public capacity is how we share care instead of privatizing it onto households.
In the movement — volunteer organizing
Grassroots opposition across Ontario relies on unpaid coordination — signs, events, mutual aid, and turnout.
- Much of Ford-era organizing is volunteer-heavy: local Facebook groups, school councils, health coalitions, and protest marshals.
- Women often coordinate this invisible work even when men are the public speakers.
- Credit union and paid staff organizers too — this is not "only women care," but the load is gendered.
- Public accountability needs both street presence and the behind-the-scenes labour that makes it possible.
- Join the network: protectont.ca/join · Find events: protectont.ca/protests
What to ask for
Use this flyer at doors, community boards, and MPP offices.
- Reinvest in public hospitals and reduce reliance on for-profit agencies.
- Repeal or fully remedy Bill 124's harm to health and education workers.
- Expand public home care, childcare, and school supports — not two-tier shortcuts.
- Ask your MPP: who benefits when public care is cut, and who pays the price at home?
- More: protectont.ca/healthcare#shared-care · protectont.ca/take-action