The Northern Health Travel Grant was set up to ease the financial burden on northerners having to travel down south for medical reasons.

As it currently exists, the Northern Health Travel Grant is leaving many northern patients in vulnerable situations, unable to access the care that they need. You see, Speaker, a patient needs to have the money upfront to travel to see a medical specialist down south, and then they wait, weeks or months later, to get reimbursed. Many low-income patients cannot afford those upfront costs, so the door to treatment for them is shut.

There is a list on the Ministry of Health website with 17 agencies in Nickel Belt that the minister says provide upfront funding to those in need. My OLIP intern Sophie called each and every one of them. If you are a member of a First Nation, if you’re on Ontario Works or the Ontario Disability Support Program, or if you’re a child registered with Easter Seals, there is a bit of help for you. But for most people, there is no help available.

Minister, this is wrong. People should not have to come to see me desperate for care but not able to afford a bus ticket to Toronto to get the care they need.

It’s clear that Ontario needs an emergency fund available to the people of the north facing these circumstances, because what we have now does not work.