Ontario Premier Doug Ford has billions for private contractors, but not for community service workers.
For four weeks, thousands of Ontario community and social service workers have been on strike demanding better wages, improved working conditions, and adequate funding for the essential services they provide.
The workers, represented by OPSEU/SEFPO, support some of the most vulnerable people in the province. They work in development services, mental health and addictions treatment programs, women’s shelters, family support services, community living agencies, and a range of other frontline programs that have been chronically underfunded for years. Nearly 4,000 workers at more than 20 agencies are currently on strike or locked out as part of the union’s co-ordinated “Worth Fighting For” campaign.
The strike has exposed the hypocrisy at the heart of the Ford government’s public service austerity. While workers demanding decent pay and properly funded services are told the cupboard is bare, a new report from OPSEU shows the province has funneled more than $1 billion through three private corporations administering public programs. There’s no money to address poverty-level wages, staffing shortages and deteriorating services, but there’s plenty of cash for well-connected corporations.
The report, Open the Books. Fund Our Services, argues that Ontario’s social service system is increasingly being routed through private intermediaries that receive large amounts of public money while operating with limited transparency. At the same time, spending on many frontline programs has failed to keep pace with growing need.
The findings raise a fundamental question: If the Ford government can spend more than $1 billion on private contractors, why can’t it properly pay the workers who actually deliver essential services to Ontarians?
Striking For Funding And Respect
The ongoing strike is about much more than wages.
For years, community and social service workers have struggled with chronic understaffing, excessive workloads, and wages that lag behind comparable public sector jobs. Many of the workers involved in the strike provide essential services to people with disabilities, children and youth in crisis, people experiencing homelessness, women fleeing violence, and individuals with mental health and addiction challenges.
OPSEU’s co-ordinated fightback is attempting to confront the outcomes of these years of underfunding in the sector, such as understaffing and recruitment and retention problems. Due to low pay, workers frequently leave for better-paying positions in hospitals, schools and other public services.
The union has also highlighted the continuing impact of the Ford government’s unconstitutional wage restraint law, Bill 124. While many other public sector workers have since received compensation for wages lost when the legislation was in effect, community and social service workers on strike have yet to receive any meaningful remedy.
The consequences are increasingly being felt by families who rely on the services provided by OPSEU members. Workers and clients alike have emphasized that the strike is ultimately about protecting and preserving services that many communities depend on.
Yet while employers continue to claim they lack sufficient funding to address workers’ concerns, OPSEU’s new report shows substantial public resources are being directed elsewhere.
Open The Books, Follow The Money
The centrepiece of OPSEU’s report is a detailed examination of private companies administering government-funded programs.
According to the report, payments flowing through the three largest for-profit administrators of social service programs reached more than $1 billion in 2024-25. These companies are involved in administering programs including Employment Ontario, Ontario Works, the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) and the Ontario Autism Program.
The largest recipient identified in the report is Accerta, a private company that administers a growing range of government-funded benefit and service programs.
OPSEU found that payments to Accerta increased from approximately $202.5 million in 2018-19 to $672 million in 2023-24, an increase of 232 per cent during Ford’s time in office. The company now plays a significant role in administering benefits connected to Ontario Workers, ODSP and autism services.
The report also highlights WCG, a private employment services administrator owned by an Australian company backed by U.S. private equity interests. According to OPSEU, payments to WCG increased from roughly $36 million in 2021 to $225 million in 2025, a jump of 525 per cent. WCG is heavily involved in Ontario’s restructured Employment Ontario system.
A third major administrator identified in the report is Serco and its affiliated operations, which also receive substantial public funding for administering government programs. Together, OPSEU reports that these companies have become central players in the delivery of Ontario’s social programs while remaining largely shielded from public scrutiny.
An OPSEU news release stated, “We don’t know how much money stays with these companies. But we do know that workers are struggling, services are stretched to the breaking point and not nearly enough trickles down to the front lines.”
OPSEU President JP Hornick also highlighted what the report’s findings imply for public transparency, telling CTV News, “That is a waste of money. [...] This is an example of how the Ford government has taken public money and put it into black boxes so it’s impossible to trace.”
Starving Public Services To Feed Private Administrators
A central finding of OPSEU’s report is the way the growth of private administration has coincided with declining investment in frontline services.
According to the union, overall spending on social services has fallen relative to need under the Ford government, even as funding flowing through private intermediaries has exploded. The union points to Financial Accountability Office (FAO) findings showing a significant funding shortfall in the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services. The FAO estimated a gap of approximately $1.5 billion between projected spending and what would be required to maintain services and meet growing demand.
OPSEU also notes that provincial social service spending has declined in real terms, failing to keep pace with inflation, population growth and rising service demands. According to research from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, funding for the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services has dropped by 2.4 per cent since last year. The result has been longer waitlists, staffing shortages and worsening access to community support services.
While big money has flowed into private hands, service users suffer. More than 69,100 children are on a waitlist for core clinical services delivered through the Ontario Autism Program, with most waiting more than five years for services. Meanwhile, 52,000 people with developmental disabilities are waiting for support services, with more people on the waitlist than currently receiving services. As of 2025, an estimated 28,000 were also waiting for supportive living units.
Workers are effectively being told funds are inadequate to raise their pay to decent and competitive levels at the same time that private corporations are handling billions in public funds through arrangements that remain largely opaque to the public.
This stealth privatization makes it harder to track the allocation of public money. In addition, recent legislative changes under Bill 97 have further reduced public access to government information, making scrutiny of public-private arrangements that much more difficult to review. As OPSEU’s report makes clear, private power grows at the expense of public transparency.
The impasse between the Ford government and OPSEU workers is not a question of affordability. That much is clear. As the union’s report shows, Ontario’s funding problems are not the result of fiscal constraints: they are the predictable result of political choices.
Governments choose what they fund. They decide whether public money is directed toward frontline services and the workers who staff them, or handed out to private, for-profit, and unaccountable contractors. The Ford government has been choosing the latter.
The OPSEU workers still on strike are demanding investments that would help stabilize services, improve retention and ensure vulnerable Ontarians receive the support they need. The government’s response has been to insist resources are limited.
As the strike continues, OPSEU’s message is straightforward: if there is money for private middlemen, there is money for the workers who actually deliver services.
The question is not whether Ontario can afford to fund community and social services. The question is why the Ford government continues to prioritize private corporations while workers holding the system together are forced onto picket lines to demand what should already be theirs.
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