Hi everyone,
It’s exciting to be speaking with teams about their current advocacy and the work being planned for the coming two months as we head towards the June 2 provincial election! The election is expected to start on May 4. As you all know, though, parties are in full election mode now.
To help make sure parties understand the importance of team-based primary care and how to address the crisis facing the healthcare sector, candidates need to hear about it – and solutions on how to fix it – from local stakeholders and voters. As healthcare leaders and providers, you are in an excellent position to do this and to encourage friends, family, and patients do as well.
AFHTO held an advocacy webinar with our government relations firm, Enterprise Canada, last week to discuss advocacy and the tools we’ve developed to support you. The deck and recording are posted on our advocacy page.
You’ll see the link to this at the top of the page. Underneath the webinar link, you’ll see links to the tools. They’ll be helpful in your work over the next two months.
The following are posted:
- Advocacy toolkit, which includes key messages, template letters, and FAQs
- Toolkit on how to organise a townhall
- One-pager to leave behind at meetings – or to mail or email to candidates
- There is a standard version or a fillable version, where you can make edits to what team-based primary care is an investment in
- Animations to use on social media
- Social media graphics
- Voter card with top questions to give to family, friends, team members, and patients to use either reactively when campaigns reach out, or proactively
- Patient story map to support any patient who might join a meeting
- Our 2022 pre-budget submission that speaks to key areas that need to be addressed
We encourage candidate meetings by the end of April, if possible, before the election officially kicks off. It’s important that candidates know what team-based primary care is as they head into the election — and getting their time will be a bit more feasible now.
You can find your candidates and how to reach them here:
PC candidates
Liberal candidates
NDP candidates
If no one is listed for your riding, the candidate is not yet nominated. Please keep checking these links for updates.
Your voices are critical. And powerful. Let’s speak to our solutions together, and ensure they are heard. Elections are a great opportunity for influence and health care is a top priority for all parties, so don’t forget the influence you have.
Please reach out to advocacy@afhto.ca if you have any questions.
52 days to go!
Yours in good health
The AFHTO Team