Thank you, and it’s great to see you in the chair, Speaker.

The member opposite knows very well that hospitals are responsible for their day-to-day operations and make those decisions independent of the Ministry of Health and government. We have been assured that the Haliburton Highlands Health Services board and leadership have made this decision carefully and thoughtfully, understanding and appreciating the needs of their community and their staff. I will let them do that work.

Our government continues to support hospitals in many ways, including Haliburton Highlands Health Services, to which we have increased funding by 11% since we came into office.

This is not a funding conversation; this is a conversation that the hospital leadership, the hospital board has made based on the needs of the community, and appreciating that they want to best serve the community, and they’ve done that.

As I said when we highlighted this pilot project that is available at Holland Bloorview, Hamilton, CHEO and SickKids, it really is an opportunity to make sure that those youth, those children have those wraparound services. It is a very exciting pilot project, and we will monitor very carefully to see how they can actually improve the access to service for those young people and their families.

I will remind the member opposite, a pilot project means that we need the data, we need the material to see whether it is an effective one. As I said that day at the announcement, if this turns into a program that will help many people and many families, we will absolutely work together to ensure that we can expand it.