We keep hearing that Ontario's health care crisis is about hospital beds and doctor shortages, and it is. But there is a quieter emergency sitting in living rooms across this province: nearly half of older Canadians are at risk of social isolation, and most of them will never mention it to anyone. We believe the most affordable tool we have against that emergency is one our province has barely picked up. It is called social prescribing, and if you have not heard of it yet, you are not alone. That silence is exactly the problem.

Here is what it means. When you visit your family doctor and the real issue is not a prescription drug but loneliness, grief, or months without a meaningful conversation, social prescribing lets that clinician write a different kind of referral: one to a friendly visitor program, a seniors' centre, a walking group, a meals program, or a volunteer role. A trained navigator then helps you actually get there and stay connected. It treats connection as health care, because it is. Research on community-based seniors' services shows that every dollar invested in this social sector returns between two and six dollars, and modelling from the Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing puts the return at roughly $4.43 per dollar invested, with acute care savings of about $268 million a year among older adults alone. Formalized social prescribing is already reducing 911 calls, emergency department visits, and hospital stays.

We will be honest with you about why this matters so much to us. Ontario's community support providers receive less than two percent of the overall health care budget, and our province has no formal, funded coordinating mandate for these services. Meanwhile, 43 percent of older Canadians are at risk of isolation and 57 percent report loneliness, and unpaid caregivers, already stretched thin, are heading into decades with far fewer family members available to share the load. Deloitte Canada estimates that poor health and caregiving costs this country more than $100 billion in economic output every year. Isolation is not just sad; it is expensive, and it is landing in our emergency rooms.

Other provinces are moving. British Columbia's social prescribing programs reached tens of thousands of older adults, Alberta has embedded social prescribing in its continuing care system with dedicated multi-year funding, and Manitoba routes referrals through its regional health authorities. Ontario has the building blocks: more than 200 non-profit agencies through the Ontario Community Support Association, over 400 Seniors Active Living Centres, and thousands of volunteers who show up because they believe, as we do, that a province works when its people are connected. What we lack is the funded bridge between your doctor's office and your community.

So here is what we are asking for, and what we hope you will ask your MPP for too: a provincially funded social prescribing program that links primary care to community-based seniors' services, with stable multi-year funding instead of one-off project grants. Ask your family doctor whether they could refer you somewhere besides a pharmacy. Ask your local seniors' centre what a navigator would need to serve your neighbourhood. And if you are reading this feeling that ache of isolation yourself, please say it out loud to someone this week, because the evidence is thin only where we refuse to measure it, and these recommendations are starting points to test, not promises. We are optimistic about this province precisely because the solution is already in our communities, waiting for the political will to fund it. Connection is the cheapest medicine Ontario is not yet prescribing.

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This article was created using research from the cited references below, a human editor and an AI-assisted workflow.

References:
Poor health cost Canada more than $100 billion in economic output in 2025: Deloitte Canada