Will the Ontario PC’s New Fiscal Budget Include Equal Funding for Take Home Cancer Treatments?
There was a big change in Ontario last June with the election of a new majority PC government and their promise to transform the way the province is run.
While many dramatic changes have been announced in education and environmental portfolios, and there have been a few rumours and media links about changes to health, we still don’t know exactly what the impact will be on cancer care. We believe official announcements affecting health care delivery in Ontario are imminent and that the upcoming budget announcement for the Government’s first full fiscal year will be extremely telling.
Last December, the government announced consultations to inform the 2019 Budget as they look for ways to “work smarter, spend smarter and reinvent the way we deliver government services.” These pre-budget consultations give organizations like ours the chance to write to the Minister of Finance and tell the government what matters to them most before next year’s budget.
Rethink is passionate about ensuring equal funding for take home cancer treatments. We cannot accept that many of our metastatic breast cancer patients, already dealing with so much, face delays to start their treatment and out-of-pocket costs to access an innovative cancer treatment that is fully approved, funded and listed in the province just because they are over 25 years of age and under 65 and the treatment they need only comes in a pill form. This is unfair. We made this an election issue last spring with our #BitterestPill campaign and 2,000 of you signed our petition and generated over 25,000 emails to election candidates. Rethink has continued important advocacy work on this issue with the new Government and we’ve been refining our strategy to keep old allies engaged and uncover new champions.
As one of the 33 cancer groups that is part of CanCertainty – a coalition working diligently on this issue – we are extremely supportive of the recent submission that CanCertainty made to Ontario’s Minister of Finance for the 2019 Budget Consultations. You can read the submission here.
We appreciate all the hard work of our Rethink advocates and metastatic allies and all the coalition member organizations. We’re leveraging the support you’ve shown on this issue in upcoming meetings with Government. We must make sure last June’s change in government means a positive change for cancer care this spring.
– MJ
Executive Director + Founder
Rethink Breast Cancer
