I appreciate the opportunity to speak further about this critical priority of our government, and that is the proposed Your Health Act, 2023, an important piece of legislation to support better patient care. It will enable elements of the Your Health plan, which provides a very strong and comprehensive blueprint for improving our health care system.

We know that the sooner our fellow citizens have access to the care they need, the better the outcomes. That’s why the proposed legislation also supports another key pillar of our plan for connected and convenient care: hiring more health care workers.

Ontario has one of the most dedicated and highly trained health care workforces in the world. Day in and day out, well-trained and well-supported doctors, nurses, personal support workers and more keep Ontarians healthy and safe, and hiring more health care professionals is the most effective step toward ensuring individuals and families are able to see a health care provider where and when they need to.

One way we are supporting this is by expanding the Ontario Learn and Stay credit. We know that there are unique health care challenges in small, rural and remote communities, and that recruiting and retaining health care workers in these regions requires a dedicated approach. And so last spring, we launched the Ontario Learn and Stay Grant to help these communities build their own health care workforces. This program covers the costs of tuition, books and other direct educational costs for post-secondary students who enrol in high-priority programs in more than a dozen growing and underserved communities and commit to work in those communities when they graduate. That is the key to the program. This year, we are expanding the program, beginning in spring 2023, targeting approximately 2,500 eligible post-secondary students who enrol in high-priority programs. These include nursing, paramedic, medical laboratory technology or medical laboratory science.

We are also taking steps to help those who want to work here in Ontario. There are many health care workers from across the country, and indeed, across the world, who want to come here and work in the province of Ontario, so we are making innovative changes to make it easier and faster for them to begin working and providing care to our citizens right here in our province. With proposed new as-of-right rules, Ontario will become the first province in Canada to allow health care workers registered in other provinces and territories to immediately start providing care without having to first register with one of Ontario’s health regulatory colleges. This important change will help health care workers overcome excessive red tape that makes it difficult for them to practise in Ontario.

We will also help hospitals and other health organizations temporarily increase staffing when they need to fill very, very important positions, vacancies, or manage periods of high patient volume, such as during a flu surge.

We are continuing to make it easier for internationally trained health care professionals to use their expertise here in Ontario. And we are working closely with regulatory colleges to make it easier and faster for qualified health care professionals to work here as well—again, without facing unnecessary barriers and costs, including requiring colleges to comply with time limits to make registration decisions.

Our many initiatives to recruit, retain and optimize health care workers will ensure we have the right number, the right type and the proper distribution of health care resources and professionals in our province to meet the health care needs of all Ontarians.

Speaker, we know that reducing wait times for surgeries and procedures will ensure that Ontarians have faster access to care. Lengthy wait times for surgeries are one of the biggest challenges in our province. While Ontario leads the country in the number of people who receive the surgery they need for hip and knee replacements, we still are not yet meeting the right benchmarks. So we are doing more to make it easier and faster for Ontarians to get the publicly funded surgeries and procedures that they need. We are moving forward with innovation, because the status quo—the ways of the past—do not work and will not work. By further leveraging the support of community surgical and diagnostic centres, we will eliminate surgical backlogs and reduce wait times.

As a first step, we’re tackling the existing backlog for cataract surgeries, which has one of the longest waits for procedures in the province. Four existing community-based centres located in Windsor, Kitchener-Waterloo and Ottawa have been identified as successful applicants to a recent call for applications. These centres will be able to support an additional 14,000 publicly funded cataract surgeries each and every year. These additional volumes make up to 25% of the province’s current cataract wait list, which will help significantly reduce the number of people waiting outside appropriate wait times for this surgery. Our government isn’t just talking about it; our government is taking bold, innovative action and getting it done.

We are also investing more than $18 million in existing centres to cover care for thousand of patients, including more than 49,000 hours of MRI and CT; 4,800 cataract surgeries; 900 other ophthalmic surgeries; 1,000 minimally invasive gynecological surgeries; and 2,845 plastic surgeries.

And I would like to emphasize that this is all publicly funded. The cost of receiving these insured services in community surgical and diagnostic centres is covered by an Ontario health card, not a credit card. We are committed to universal, publicly funded health care.

In committee, the Ontario Medical Association reinforced that: “The Auditor General’s recent report on outpatient surgeries in Ontario emphasized the experience in other Canadian jurisdictions that community surgical centres can treat 20% to 30% more patients within the same amount of time.”

The status quo is not working. Bold, innovative action must be taken and is being taken under the leadership of Premier Ford and Deputy Premier Sylvia Jones. We do need to be bold, we do need to be creative, and we do need to be innovative. We need to build on the spirit of collaboration on display across the health care sector. We need to have the courage to look to other provinces and countries and borrow the best of what the world is already doing. We will do this by increasing access to services in health care settings near you, like in pharmacies, by increasing the number of assessments and treatments that can be provided by your local pharmacist without a doctor’s appointment; by expanding the number of community surgical and diagnostic centres; by cutting wait times for services like MRI and CT scans and cataract surgeries; and by expanding access to home and community care services so you can stay safely at home.

Speaker, we know the only thing better than having care close to home is having care in your home. We have heard loud and clear that you and your family want better and faster access to home care services. Last year, we dedicated over $1 billion to expand access to home care services over the next three years. This funding will benefit nearly 700,000 families who rely on home care annually by expanding home care services while recruiting and training more home care workers. I can say with pride, Speaker, that for my late mother-in-law and my late mother, whom we lost at the end of last year, in 2022—we saw the improvements that our government’s policy made in the first term, and I know that many, like my late mother-in-law and my late mother, will benefit and their families will benefit by this $1-billion investment that will affect as many as 700,000 families. That is making a difference. That’s getting it done for our fellow citizens. That’s the innovative, bold action in publicly funded health care that Ontarians expect and need. That is moving beyond the status quo. It is the right thing to do, and it is the right time to do it.

This investment and this expansion in home care and home care workers will help prevent unnecessary hospital and long-term-care admissions and therefore shorten hospital stays, because there’s a ripple effect in each measure and each investment that we make, and that is a positive ripple effect across the entire health care system. Most importantly, it will provide families with the choice to have their loved one stay with them longer or to facilitate their loved one staying in their home longer. That is an important choice, and it’s a choice that respects dignity and love for our fellow citizens.

We are also working with Ontario health teams and home and community care providers to establish new home and community care programs. Your home care plan should and will start as soon as you set foot in the hospital or other health care setting. Connecting home and community care through these teams will expand the reach of health care professionals all the way to your front door and will ensure that you start to receive these important services sooner.

These investments and initiatives are only part of the solution. We know we need to do more to expand and improve home care services across the province, particularly in rural and remote areas.

We will continue to make investments to ensure you and your family are able connect to home care more quickly and easily when you need support.

Sue VanderBent, the CEO of Home Care Ontario, said, “Home Care Ontario applauds the government for recognizing the critical role home care plays in Ontario’s health system. Today’s plan says it best: ‘The only thing better than having care close to home, is having care in your home.’ Now is the time to put those words into action. The government can capitalize on its historic investments by fast-tracking funding to home care in order to stabilize and grow the sector.”

That is quite an endorsement from Sue VanderBent, the CEO of Home Care Ontario. That is an important recognition of the impact that our government is making with these bold, innovative investments.

Faster access to emergency care, Speaker, is another key priority as I move into this area. We continue to find innovative ways to reduce wait times and make it faster and easier for Ontarians to access timely care. Part of that solution in that regard is to divert individuals from emergency rooms, when it’s safe to do so, and then provide them care and treatment in the community. This takes pressure off the emergency care departments of hospitals, it supports our health care workers on the front line, and it makes a difference—literally a life-saving difference—for our fellow citizens in acute and emergency care.

In more than 40 communities across the province, we have approved 911 patient care models for mental health and addictions and palliative care patients that provide paramedics more flexibility to treat certain patients who call 911 at home or on-scene in the community rather than in emergency rooms. And we are having success: Patients diverted from emergency rooms through one model received the care they needed up to 17 times faster, with 94% of patients avoiding the emergency room in the days following treatment—that is radical and important and positive change. Based on the proven success of the program, we are now working with key partners to expand these models to different patient groups, such as people with diabetes and epilepsy. These initiatives are helping to divert patients from emergency rooms and are reducing repeat hospital visits, which helps reduce patient wait times and ensures these hospital beds are available for those who need them the most.

This is innovation. This is positive change. This is making publicly funded health care better for all. It’s a shared treasure among us all, and we need government to lead the kind of change that this government is leading to make sure we get it right.

We are also helping to reduce ambulance off-load times at hospitals through investments to support dedicated off-load nurses and other health care workers, to allow paramedics to drop off patients more quickly and be available to get to their next call faster; building new hospitals and adding more beds; relieving pediatric pressures on hospitals; improving and expanding long-term care; supporting end-of-life care; and expanding access to mental health and addiction services in our communities—I’ve seen those investments make an incredible difference for the better in my riding of Durham and in Durham region generally. We know that there was a record new investment in Oak Ridges Hospice, and the positive ripple effect upon that for end-of-life patients and their families is quite remarkable. And our government has been repeatedly applauded by our community for that investment and for the investment in expanding access to mental health and addictions, because of the many challenges our fellow citizens face who are burdened with that challenge.

These are the priorities under Your Health plan, Speaker, which will ensure Ontarians have faster access to the care they need. We know that, this year alone, we have close to $80 billion in total new investments in our publicly funded health care system. This government doesn’t just say it; this government gets it done.

And to ensure that we are building a system that works for all Ontarians, the province will continuously measure our progress, including tracking the ability of people to access services like primary care and mental health care and diagnostic tests, and to also track the time spent waiting in the emergency room. We can and will expect improvement in all facets of our health care system. We will also track how we are expanding our health care workforce to ensure it grows as our population in Ontario grows and ages.

Speaker, as we continue to roll out the Your Health plan, which is supported by the proposed legislation introduced this week—oh, not introduced today or this week, but this is third reading, of course. As we continue to roll out the Your Health plan, we remain focused on one fundamental goal: to provide Ontarians with more connected and convenient access to health care when they need it and where they need it.

Thank you, Speaker, for the allotted time today.

Let us pray.

Prayers.

Resuming the debate adjourned on April 26, 2023, on the motion for third reading of the following bill:

Bill 60, An Act to amend and enact various Acts with respect to the health system / Projet de loi 60, Loi visant à modifier et à édicter diverses lois en ce qui concerne le système de santé.

Point of order.

Madam Speaker, as you know, this week is National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Week. One donor can save up to eight lives through organ donation. With 1,300 people on the transplant wait list, every three days someone on that list dies a preventable death. I’ve said this many times: Go to beadonor.ca and register to give somebody the gift of life.

My question to the member is, through Bill 60, how will the Your Health plan expand access for Ontarians?

I want to thank the member for his remarks.

I’m proud to see what’s happening in my hometown of Windsor—Windsor Surgical Centre, operated by the Windsor Regional Hospital, with two esteemed and respected doctors, Dr. Barry Emara and Dr. Fouad Tayfour. They’ve been operating for a number of years now to provide ophthalmology. One of the keys to it is integration with local hospitals.

I’m wondering if you could speak to how integration with hospitals and other health care settings will reduce the wait times that we are experiencing in both our community facilities and our hospitals.

I thank the member for the question—but it’s very interesting about the language that’s used. In opposing this bill, as it seems the opposition intends to do, which I am saddened to hear, the language used is inappropriate.

What is happening, as I indicated, is close to $80 billion this year alone, record investments in public health care—health care that is accessed by our fellow citizens utilizing their OHIP card, not their credit card. And to protect Ontarians from extra billing, we’re expanding oversight and patient protections when it comes to Your Health. That is the key—publicly funded health care and guards against extra billing.

When it comes to Your Health, under Bill 60, we know that the status quo is no longer acceptable. We must build on the positive aspects of the system but go in a direction of innovation for other aspects. That is why we are taking this bold action to eliminate surgical backlogs and reduce wait times for publicly funded surgeries and procedures. The three-step plan that better integrates and uses community surgical and diagnostic centres and their state-of-the-art facilities to speed up how quickly people are able to get surgeries, using their health care card, will add 14,000 more OHIP-insured surgeries—cataract surgeries, in particular—each year and expand access to diagnostic imaging tests.

Yes, we both share Oshawa; north Oshawa is part of my riding of Durham—proudly representing that part of Durham and all of the Durham riding.

I don’t know who the member for Oshawa has been speaking to, because in my meetings in the community—most recently, earlier this week at Lakeridge Health Oshawa—we were applauded for the plan with Queen’s University to add many new medical seats. We have Queen’s University medical faculty students working right at Lakeridge Health. That’s expanding the number of doctors. They will stay in the community. That’s getting it done, in a very, very important way.

We’ve made the investment in Oak Ridges Hospice for end-of-life care, adding two new beds, and that has made a remarkable difference.

I’ve been hearing nothing but thanks and applause for our government’s plan—not just in a general way, with the nearly $80 billion in new investment this year alone, but the effect on the ground in Durham riding, including Oshawa. We’re being applauded for it. That’s what I’m hearing.

Then, beginning in 2018, and now again in our 2022 new mandate, record investments—and not just talking about it, but getting it done and actually seeing the results, with more nurses, with more PSWs, more home care, more doctors, and a bright future, to save and expand our publicly funded health care system. Our citizens are seeing it right in our community of Durham, and that’s the difference compared to what we saw before 2018.

We’re now increasing, like we’ve not seen in decades, the number of medical places across the province—including our plan at Lakeridge Health with Queen’s University, which I was proud to be part of the other day. with Minister Jones, Minister Bethlenfalvy and Minister Dunlop. We were there with Dr. Jane Philpott, a former Liberal member of Parliament, who proudly stood with us as we made this announcement for more family doctors in Durham.

I was interested in the quote that the member brought forward from the long-term-care associations who represent the for-profit long-term-care association. Did the member know that one of their members, Extendicare, made over $300 million in profits during the first year of the pandemic? Those profits continue to increase, up to that day. Those are taxpayers’ dollars going to for-profit Extendicare that provides long-term-care services in Ontario.

How much profit does he think the corporate entity that will build the surgical suites will be making in Ontario once Bill 60 goes by? Will it be over the $300 million that Extendicare did in one year? How much more taxpayer money will be going to for-profit corporations once Bill 60 comes forward?

I know the member from Durham speaks to many folks in his region, and he has got quite the compilation of MPPs to help him, as well.

What have you heard prior to this bill, and what are you hearing about this bill and how it’s going to help people with access to health care, so more people can access our publicly funded health care throughout this province and in Durham region?

I’m pleased to be able to ask a question to the member from Durham.

There are seven members in this Legislature who are supposed to be representing the Durham region, and I’m proud to represent most of Oshawa.

The member talked about a spirit of collaboration in health care, increasing access to health care, the importance of care close to home.

So, with that in mind, I would ask why, in this most recent budget, Durham region didn’t see any provision for funding a planning grant for a new regional hospital and trauma centre for Lakeridge Health in Durham region? The folks in the region were sorely disappointed and, I think, were expectant; however, this government didn’t deliver. I wonder if he could answer to that, and the other six members of the government who represent Durham—why Durham’s needs are not going to be met in this budget.

I’ll just talk to the response to that question quickly. It was a Conservative government that closed 43 hospitals and laid off 6,000 nurses—under their watch. It was also the Conservative government, under Mike Harris, that brought in the privatization of our long-term-care facilities, which also, as we’ve seen over the course of COVID—5,500 of our moms, our dads, our aunts, our uncles, our brothers, our sisters died in long-term-care, but the stat that jumps out at you is that 78% of those died in long-term-care facilities that were private. It wasn’t about care. It was about profit. That’s the record.

Why would you ever think to go down the same road that you did with long-term care after you have that example in front of you? As you privatize our health care system across the province of Ontario, more people will die.

It’s now time for questions.

Well, those investments have made a difference, to reduce wait times and increase access to care in Windsor and my riding of Durham. And these areas are particularly benefiting after years of neglect, when they were represented by Liberal or NDP members. Now that those communities have made the right choice and given this government—or contributed to this government’s mandate to make a difference, we’re getting it done. We’re improving publicly funded health care, and we see it locally in Windsor and in Durham.

I want to remind the member for Durham that they were in government before the last Liberal government, and while we had 15 years of the Liberal government, you guys were the official opposition. So stop trying to shirk responsibility. You’ve been government for five years—for five years—and the health care crisis is only getting worse.

On that note, I want to mention that one of the key issues that we are seeing with the issue of health care is Bill 124, a bill that the Conservative government passed, rushed through with their majority government, that directly attacks health care workers—a largely woman-led profession, I will add. And rather than repealing Bill 124, after the courts have already found it unconstitutional, this government is spending more taxpayer dollars—

Anyway, about Bill 124: This government is fighting those workers in court after that bill was found unconstitutional. You are actually taking taxpayer dollars to fight nurses, to fight health care workers in court. You are the cause of the health care crisis, sir.

Madam Speaker, I was in committee for this bill. We heard from many workers, health care workers and organizations that represent health care workers. I chuckled—I had to chuckle; sometimes you just have to laugh or you lose your sanity in this place—when my colleague from Oshawa asked a question and the member opposite said, “It’s about consultation and talking to health care providers and health care workers and working together.” Not a single one of these workers or the organizations, the unions that represented them had consultations with this government. The government didn’t talk to any of the front-line workers who actually live it day in and day out and can tell you and have been telling you what needs to happen to fix the system. We talked about staffing crises. We heard how these health care workers feel dismissed and demeaned by the government and the legislation that this government is fighting. We heard that health care workers are leaving in droves, because they are burnt out, because they just can’t do it anymore.

In my area, health care workers take a five-minute drive across the border to work in American hospitals where they get regular, steady, reliable hours, decent pay and the respect that they deserve.

So if you want to fix the staffing crisis in health care in this province, start treating health care workers with the respect they deserve and start paying them properly.

Speaker, I want to thank the residents of Windsor-Essex. Earlier this week, I read a petition into the record, and that came from residents of Windsor-Essex who want this government to stop this bill. They do not want this government to profitize and privatize health care.

My colleague from Oshawa had also asked a question, and the member for Durham—sorry, it was my colleague from Nickel Belt who asked a question about Extendicare. She raised Extendicare, a company that runs for profit, a long-term-care company and corporation that made $300 million in profits in the first year of the pandemic alone. I want to point out that, throughout the pandemic, 5,400 people died in long-term care. The military had to go in. And there was a report talking about how many of these residents died from lack of basic needs. Water—I can pick this up and have a drink. These residents didn’t have that option because of the staffing crisis, because it was a for-profit company that was putting the profits—$300 million in profits in the first year of the pandemic alone, while people in their facilities were dying. And the member from Durham got up and said to the member for Nickel Belt that it was an inappropriate question—inappropriate. Well, I’m pretty sure that the families of those 5,400 residents think it’s a very appropriate question. And what did this government do? They brought in legislation to protect corporations just like that one from being sued.

That’s one of our major concerns—the lack of accountability, the lack of transparency that is baked into this bill. It’s throughout the entire bill.

There will be a director appointed. It doesn’t have to be someone with any health care background, any expertise. We don’t know who it will be. And what’s really alarming is that, within this bill, it gives that director—the very person who gets to issue licences to these profitized, shareholder-driven clinics—the right to own shares in those companies. Can you imagine that? The government wants to say to somebody who wants to make a boatload of money, “We’re going to give you the ability to issue licences to these for-profit clinics, and you can have ownership in them and make even more money, and we’re not concerned about conflict of interest.” Well, I can tell you, the people who access health care are very concerned about conflict of interest.

My colleague from Nickel Belt spoke for an hour yesterday and raised a lot of concerns that we heard at committee and from people within the health care sector, individuals who access health care, and one of the key things that kept coming up during committee was OR capacity. The government is saying we don’t have OR capacity within our public, not-for-profit health care—a system that they are underfunding. We heard that in committee. We heard many presenters say, “This is deliberate. They are deliberately underfunding, deliberately attacking health care workers”—I said it myself—“to drive the narrative that we have to move towards private, profitized, shareholder-driven health care.” It’s not accurate. We had doctors come forward and say, “There’s OR capacity. The problem is, we don’t have the staff.” So these ORs are being shut down in our public, not-for-profit hospitals, when—if the hospital would provide the proper funding, if they would repeal Bill 124 and stop fighting these health care workers in court, if they would raise the caps on the number of surgeries that hospitals are funded to do, that backlog could be addressed within the not-for-profit, public health care system. But what this government does is, it gives more money to the profitized clinics, gives them a higher ceiling, a higher cap on how many surgeries they can do, and they fund them more than our public system.

I want to quote Sara Labelle; she was one of the presenters at committee who represents health care workers. She’s from OPSEU, and she represents thousands of workers in health care settings, and I think it was a really good analogy she used to compare what this government is trying to tell people is going to happen. They’re saying, “Don’t worry about it. We have a staffing, health human resource crisis in our public health care system, but when we open up these private, for-profit, shareholder-driven clinics with very little oversight, that’s not going to strain the public system anymore.” And what Ms. Labelle said was: Imagine there are two homes and the pipes burst in each of those homes, but there’s only one qualified plumber. The Conservatives probably wouldn’t care whether it was a qualified plumber or not. There’s only one plumber. That plumber cannot be in two places and do the work in both of those homes. Health care workers can’t be in two places providing care to patients. It’s just not possible. They can’t even be in two rooms within the same facility, let alone working in two different facilities and provide care.

We heard from numerous Indigenous groups, faith-based leaders, people who represent marginalized communities and people living in poverty, who said this bill will only further marginalize them, will further decrease their access to health care, because these private, for-profit, shareholder-driven clinics will only take the easiest surgical cases available. As my colleague says, they’ll take the healthy and the wealthy, and if you have complex medical needs, you’ll be sent back to the public, not-for-profit health care system, to the hospital where you’ll sit in line and wait for care because we do not have the health human resources. We don’t have the human beings, the health care workers to provide that care, because they’re going to go to the private clinics, and I can’t blame them for that. They’re going to go where it’s a 9-to-5 job, no weekends, no evenings, no holidays. They’ve got steady hours, and they’re going to get better pay. They’re going to be able to go home and spend time with their family. But with this government, under Bill 24, they can’t do any of that. They’re lucky if they get to go to the bathroom during the day.

Yesterday, my colleague from Toronto–Danforth asked the question of the Minister of Health—and I’m going to quote some of what he said. He said a resident of York region had reached out to him. The resident is an 80-year-old man who “was just recently told that his prostate condition could no longer be controlled by drugs and that he needed surgery. He was offered two choices: He could wait for a year and a half to get surgery with his OHIP card through Mackenzie Health, or he could pay $6,000 with his credit card and get his care within three weeks at a private clinic.”

Yet this government says, “Don’t worry about Bill 60. All your care is going to be covered by your OHIP card.” They’re anticipating this bill passing; because the Conservatives have a majority government, it will.

It’s already happening—where they’re saying, “You give me a few thousand dollars, I’ll take you faster and get your care.” And who can fault somebody for wanting to get their care faster? But people are literally mortgaging their futures. They’re taking out loans, taking out their credit cards and maxing them out to get care at these profitized clinics. Because these clinics will have shareholders, legally they are beholden to the shareholders to produce profits. That is number one.

The member for Ottawa South then did a question later on in question period yesterday, and I was alarmed. Nothing really shocks me with this government anymore, but I was alarmed. He said that Lisa, a patient whose wait time for breast cancer surgery at the Ottawa Hospital was so long that she was forced to go to a private clinic to pay $50,000 for the life-saving surgery she needed because the wait times for breast cancer surgery are so long—and we are only going to see more of that. We’re going to see an explosion of that. Can you imagine—life-saving surgery, breast cancer surgery, and she has to come up with $50,000 for care—$50,000.

Speaker, there were a few Conservative members in the committee who said—because we talked about Tommy Douglas, the father of medicare, the person who believed in equity of access, that nobody should be able to pay to go to the front of the line, nor should anyone ever have to pay for health care, frankly. We heard Conservatives say, “Oh, you guys don’t know what you’re talking about. Tommy would be proud of Bill 60. He’d support this.” This is the exact opposite of what Tommy Douglas fought for and what he brought in under an NDP government.

The Ontario Health Coalition is holding a referendum with over 1,000 polling stations across Ontario on May 26 and 27. I encourage everybody to get out to their communities and vote in that referendum against Bill 60 and against the privatization and profitization of health care. You can also vote online beginning May 2. You should check out the Ontario Health Coalition website.

I want to point out, as I said before, there are front-line workers who weren’t consulted. They came to the committee—Unifor, SEIU, OFL, CUPE, ONA all came to committee. Every single one of them said, “Repeal Bill 24. Stop fighting health care workers in court”—every single one of them. Every single one of them was asked, “Did anybody consult you or your members?” The answer was “No—didn’t happen. No collaboration.” And they actually came with solutions. I only have five minutes left, so I can’t read through all the committee transcripts, although I did print them off just in case. But they came with solutions that this government just doesn’t want to hear, because they want these shareholders—friends, donors, maybe? I don’t know—to make all kinds of money.

The member opposite—he’s not the only one, the member for Durham. We heard it all throughout committee. We hear the talking points from the government side when they talk to this bill, about it being innovation.

I’ve said it every time I’ve had a chance: Privatization and profitization is not innovation. It’s a cop-out. It’s taking us backwards.

I stood here in this place a month or so ago and talked about how universal, single-payer health care came to be in this province and in this country—not long before I was born, and I’m in my early 50s. Before that, it was privatized and it was profitized. It is the oldest game in the book, and it is a cop-out.

If the government would stop attacking health care workers, would repeal Bill 124, would actually invest in our publicly funded, publicly delivered, not-for-profit system, we could address these backlogs. The workers within the system are telling you that it can be done. You just need to give them the tools to do it.

Again, I want to point out that the government is funding these private, for-profit, shareholder-driven clinics more than they are our publicly funded, publicly delivered, not-for-profit health care system. These clinics can do more surgeries not because of capacity, but because the government gives them more to be able to have the staff to be able to do that.

The last thing that I want to say, as I see my time is running out, is that there’s great concern around upselling. It’s already happening, where people are told, “This is what you need. Here’s your medical condition. We can address that condition. Here’s kind of like the basic thing, but, hey, this is better and you should have this.” It’s preying on vulnerable people who just want care. They just want to feel better. They just want to see better. They just want to walk better. That’s what they need. They want out of pain. They’re taken advantage of in many of these clinics—not all clinics, I want to be clear—and you’re opening the door for more of the people to do just that, to take advantage, because there’s no oversight.

I want to make it clear in the last couple minutes that I have, Madam Speaker: I think most of the people in this province were left out of this conversation because you rushed this bill so quickly. I said that you should be travelling it; you didn’t. You pushed it through as quickly as you possibly could so that people wouldn’t have time to know what you were up to. That is absolutely shameful because it will affect millions of people in this province. Many of those will be excluded from being able to get the care they need in a timely fashion. This is private, for-profit, shareholder-driven decision-making.

The government side will say it’s about—the name of the bill is Your Health. They’ll say that it’s about your health and you accessing health care faster: “You’ll get it with your OHIP card, not your credit card”—which we know is not accurate. It’s already happening; people are paying.

But this is what I want to say to the people in my riding of Windsor West and across the province: This is not about your health. This is about their wealth. This is about the wealth of shareholders. This is about the wealth of corporations and enriching them and making life better for them. This is not about your health. If the government really cared about your health, they would invest in the publicly funded, publicly delivered not-for-profit system that we have now so that people get the care they need when they need it. If it was about the health of the people in this province, they would be investing in the front-line workers, in the publicly delivered, not-for-profit system.

You are purposely—purposely—trying to collapse a health care system that reaches all of Ontarians and cares for all of Ontarians, for the sake of pushing your privatization agenda.

It’s now time for further debate.

I recognize the member for Durham.

Please continue.

I would like to take this opportunity to raise awareness of next week being Mental Health Week in the province of Ontario, May 1 to 7. Mental health is so important in all of our lives. This year’s theme is #MyStory. So it’s encouraging folks to tell their stories, to break the stigma, in knowing that every single one of us have mental health—it’s how we deal with it, it’s how we encounter it with others, and it’s how we support others in our communities.

I will bring it to the question to the member and thank her for her time on Bill 60 today.

Retention in our hospitals for nurses and doctors is a major problem. A lot of that goes back to mental health.

Does she think that the 5% that was given to our mental health programs in our cities was enough, instead of the 8% that they had asked for across the board?

I thank the member for her comments.

The member mentioned spending. As she knows, there is the budget debate bill that’s proposed. On page 139 of this document, it outlines health sector spending for this upcoming year of $81 billion—a record—and over the next three years an increase of $15.3 billion from previously.

The member quoted some references. I’d like to quote one too. The president and CEO of the Ontario Hospital Association said, “With the introduction of the government’s Your Health Act, Ontario is setting the foundation to expand and integrate community-based surgical and diagnostic centres into the public system. The Ontario Hospital Association welcomes the legislation which will require, for the first time, prospective clinics to satisfy public interest requirements and expectations to be granted for a licence.”

I’m wondering whether the member supports the quote from the Ontario Hospital Association regarding this bill.

Thank you, Speaker. You were there when we went through clause-by-clause. We brought forward 74 amendments to Bill 60. The amendments were focused on, if we are going to have investor-driven OR suites built in Ontario, let’s make sure that we protect the public. So a lot of the amendments were about bringing in transparency, bringing in oversight, bringing in protections for the people who will have to receive their care in the profit-driven system that the government is so focused on bringing forward. We also had protections for new health care workers coming in and not belonging to their college.

How did the government receive those 74 amendments to make things better, with more transparency and more accountability in our health care system?

It is now time for questions.

I recognize the member for Nickel Belt.

Speaker, our government has launched the largest health care recruiting initiative in Ontario history—in addition to the thousands of new health care workers, including nurses, who have been hired in the past several years. We are on track for thousands of more health care professionals to be recruited and placed in our health care system across the province. That’s more doctors, more nurses, more personal support workers.

My question for the member opposite is, will she and her colleagues support the future of our publicly funded health care system by supporting Bill 60?

I want to thank the member from Windsor West for sharing the great people of Windsor and making sure that we have a balanced viewpoint here.

I know I’ve spoken to Windsor Regional Hospital, David Musyj, Drs. Tayfour and Emara—on the success of the ophthalmology centre servicing the patients of our region and the success of that program, the reduction of wait times. We could have had 15,000 to 20,000 on a cataract wait-list without it. All have confirmed they’re not stealing staff from the hospital, and all the patients I have spoken to who have attended have said that the only thing that’s different is the location; they pay through OHIP.

So my question to the member is this: Have you listened to the perspective of David Musyj, Dr. Emara, Dr. Tayfour and the patients of the Windsor Surgical Centre so far?