Sylvia Jones

Sylvia Jones serves as Ontario's Minister of Health and Deputy Premier under Doug Ford. She took over the health portfolio in 2022 from Christine Elliott and has held it through one of the most difficult periods in Ontario's healthcare history: emergency department closures in rural hospitals, pediatric ICU overcrowding, the worst family doctor shortage in decades, and nursing burnout and exodus at a scale that no ministry announcement has meaningfully addressed. Under Jones, the Ontario government pursued a strategy of healthcare restructuring built on three pillars: expanding the role of private clinics to perform publicly insured procedures, accelerating nurse practitioner-led clinics for primary care, and capital investment in new hospital beds. The government has also leaned heavily on announcements — new hospital projects, new clinic openings, new targets — while the lived experience of most Ontarians seeking non-emergency healthcare has remained one of months-long waits for family physicians, crowded ERs, and health providers leaving the province. The Ford government inherited real structural problems in Ontario healthcare that predated its time in office. But it has now held the health portfolio through two full terms and through significant federal health transfer negotiations. The proportion of Ontarians without a family doctor has grown, not shrunk, during this period. The ER closures in small communities have continued. The nursing shortage has worsened. A deputy premier who is also health minister has both power and accountability. Ontario's healthcare crisis is a political failure as well as a systems failure, and Jones holds the portfolio.