Ontario doctors — many dressed in scrubs and lab coats — gathered Saturday along with family, patients and supporters to rally at Queen’s Park and march through downtown Toronto streets in protest of health care and fee cuts.

It is hardly rare for a group to gather on a weekend afternoon on the south lawn of the Ontario legislature in protest, but to see doctors — general practitioners and specialists alike, toting placards, chanting and marching, some wearing scrubs — was something to behold. Not since the 1980s have physicians gathered there in protest.

Don Smallman, 44, an ophthalmologist from Kingston who brought his young daughters to the protest, told the Star he made the trip because he was “frustrated and disappointed by the continuing cuts to health care services for the last four years, and I’m fed up and I want to see some changes to our health care system to allow for appropriate funding.”

Under a police escort, the crowd of about 300 marched south and circled through downtown streets, passing many of the city’s top hospitals and stopping traffic.

Rather than drawing the ire of motorists, there were honks of support.

While getting read to go, a Toronto police officer on a bicycle joked with marchers that, with so many “A-types” in the crowd, it might take a while to decide where to go. But the crowd, led by Dr. Andrew Lu, his megaphone and a drummer, had no trouble finding its way.

Organized by a group calling itself Concerned Ontario Doctors, the Queen’s Park protest by physicians was a grassroots affair, fuelled by its Facebook page and unsanctioned by the Ontario Medical Association.

After speeches by doctors, patients and Conservative leader Patrick Brown, the chants aimed at Liberal cuts, hospital and clinic closings and long patient wait times began.

Another went like this: “Stop the spin, Kathleen Wynne.”

The doctors accuse the Liberal premier and health minister Dr. Eric Hoskins of confusing the public by highlighting extreme examples of group billings by some specialists, while failing to properly fund the health-care system.

NDP MPP Jagmeet Singh, late to the rally, met up with the crowd after the march and said Liberal “investments” in health care are less than the rate of inflation.

“That is a cut,” said Singh, drawing applause. “The truth needs to be heard, loud and clear.”

Many were critical of the way doctor salaries are being talked about, without taking into consideration the overhead involved in maintaining a practice.

Pat Farquharson, 67, a doctor caring for patients at the University of Toronto’s Student Health Services, shared her message for the government via a placard tied with red bows to Joe, her 6-year-old goldendoodle. “Stop cuts to my mum’s pay,” it read on one side, and, “It’s not fur,” on the other.

“I get deductions off my pay every month, and I don’t like that,” said Farquharson, who said that her hairdresser makes more per hour than she does providing sexual-health care and psychiatric services to students.

She came to “support other doctors and to feel listened to, to show that we do care about our patients, and yet (are) not being respected for that, and I think we go into this job because we are people that really do care about what we do.

“We don’t do it for any other reason than we love it. That’s being taken advantage of.”

Chris Cull, 31, of Bowmanville, one of two patients to address the rally, told those gathered that he became addicted to painkillers and that it was a caring doctor who helped him to begin to stop harming himself. He has since cycled across Canada to raise awareness around addiction and mental health issues, and, he said, he learned many people are on long lists waiting for health care.

Lisa Hamilton, 45, of Peterborough, described having to wait four years for a primary care doctor and said, in Ontario, she “fears for our future. I fear to get older. I fear to get sick.” She urged people to “demand care, not cuts.”

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On its website, the group of doctors behind the rally says the Liberal government has cut a billion dollars out of the health-care system since the beginning of 2015, without seeking input from front-line workers.

“Family doctors are having to close their doors,” says the website. “Specialists and surgeons are leaving the province. Graduating residents are being forced to start their practices elsewhere.”

Ontario’s physicians, it says, “are now having to ration care for their patients.”

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