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 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’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 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?

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.

It’s now time for further debate.

I recognize the member for Durham.

Please continue.

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.

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?

It is now time for questions.

I recognize the member for Nickel Belt.

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?

What I can tell you is this: I would support you repealing Bill 124 and not attacking health care workers in the publicly funded, publicly delivered, not-for-profit health care system, sir. I will never, never support a health care system that is driven solely on shareholders making a profit at the expense of the people who simply need medical care. We’ve seen what has happened in long-term care with a profit-driven system.

Are you proud of the record of 5,400 people dying in long-term care because profit was put above care? That’s my question to you.

The government actually voted against every single amendment that would have made this bill better and made it safer for people in the province to get care, to make it faster for people in this province to get care.

I want to quote Dr. Bernard Ho, who came to present. He’s a family and emergency physician in downtown Toronto. He said, “I’m also concerned that these new facilities will pose a safety risk to our patients. These proposed facilities will operate independently of any hospital or oversight committee. There’s currently a lack of detail and transparency for what safety standards these clinics will need to meet and how these will be regulated or monitored.”

I will add, again, this director who will be appointed can hold shares and ownership in these for-profit, shareholder-driven clinics that they’re supposed to be able to issue licences to. If the government can’t see how that is a conflict of interest, then they have their heads in the sand.

What you are talking about in this bill is largely opening up these private, for-profit clinics with no oversight—and I just quoted a family physician who also works in the emergency department in a hospital. There is no oversight and no transparency.

Again, I will go back to the appointment of the director, where you will allow the director who issues licences to these private, for-profit, shareholder-driven clinics to own shares in those clinics. You are talking about lives and deaths, and yet you are allowing a system where the director can hold shares in a company that they give licences to to provide health care, with no oversight and no transparency.

And when we’re talking about mental health and mental well-being and we’re talking about patient care and we’re talking about health human resources, this government is driving health care workers out of the health care system because of Bill 124. These workers are burnt out, they feel demoralized, they feel unappreciated, and they are overworked. Until Bill 124 is repealed, that is not going to change. It doesn’t matter what kind of programs you put in, saying we’re going to get thousands more. Until you stop attacking them and start paying them and respecting them, we are going to continue to have a health human resources issue.

For the record, I have talked to those people. I’ve also talked to the front-line workers who are telling me the issues they’re facing working in our health care system. I would recommend that the member for Windsor–Tecumseh do the same.

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?

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?

Further debate?

I’m pleased to rise in this House to have the opportunity to speak to Bill 60 and our government’s plans to clear the surgical backlog so Ontarians can get the care they need when and where they need it. We are proud that, as a result of almost $1 billion in funding from this government and the hard work of our hospital sector, doctors and nurses, Ontario has returned to pre-pandemic wait times for surgical and diagnostic procedures—pre-pandemic. This bill is part of our many efforts to do even better.

I should add, when I look at the clock, that the member from Stormont–Dundas–South Glengarry will be speaking to this bill—I’ll be sharing my time with the member.

As a result of our investments, Ontario has some of the shortest wait times in all of Canada, but we know that’s not enough, because even with all the success from our surgical recovery funding, we’re still back to where we were with the backlog that we inherited from the previous government. We can do more and we will do more to improve wait times across the province. That’s why we introduced Bill 60, which supports the expansion of surgical, procedural and diagnostic services in the community. By doing this, we are reducing wait times by increasing access to surgeries and procedures such as MRIs, CT scans, cataract surgeries, orthopedics, colonoscopies and others.

In December 2022, this government invested in operating funding for 27 new MRI machines, including one in my riding. The Smith Falls site of the Perth and Smiths Falls District Hospital is one of those recipients. For over 30 years, community surgery and diagnostic centres have been partners in Ontario’s health care system—for over 30 years. This is not new.

Like hospitals, community surgical and diagnostic centres are held accountable to the highest-quality standards, the standards Ontarians deserve and expect across the health care system. In committee, Dr. Agarwal commented, “I’ll say that the Ontario Association of Radiologists strongly supports the current Bill 60 that’s being proposed and we applaud the government for its innovative approach to solving a very complex problem,” in reference to expanding integrated community health services centres to address the MRI and CT backlog.

To make that happen, we are investing more than $18 million in existing centres—there are over 900 of them—to cover care for thousands of patients, including:

—more than 49,000 hours of MRI and CT scans;

—4,800 cataract surgeries;

—900 ophthalmic surgeries;

—1,000 minimally invasive gynecological surgeries; and

—2,845 plastic surgeries.

I would like to emphasize that this is all publicly funded. The costs of receiving these insured services in community surgical and diagnostic centres is covered by an Ontario health card, never your credit card. This is an expansion—an expansion—of our publicly funded health care system. It makes your OHIP card even more powerful.

To support integration, quality and funding accountability, oversight of community surgical centres will transition to Ontario Health. That’s beautiful. It embraces our community health services centres. This bill helps to create an environment where all of our health service providers work together in a more efficient and productive way, which is what Ontario Health and our Ontario health teams are all about. This improved integration into the broader health care system will allow Ontario Health to continue to track available community surgical capacity, assess regional needs and respond more quickly across the province and within regions where patient need exist.

Our government knows that by expanding health care services across the province, we need more health care providers to work in these settings. That’s why our government has launched the largest health care recruiting and training campaign in the province’s history. Hiring more health care professionals is the most effective step to ensure you and your family are able to see a health care provider where and when you need it. Well-trained and well-supported doctors, nurses, personal support workers and more are the people you rely on when you need care.

Let’s talk training—growing our own. This year, we’re training more health professionals than ever before:

—455 new spots for physicians in training;

—52 new physician assistant training spots;

—150 new nurse practitioner spots;

—1,500 additional nursing spots; and

—24,000 personal support workers in training by the end of 2023.

We’re investing to reduce fees for nurses who are ready and available to resume or begin practising in Ontario, who are retired and internationally educated. Some $15 million will temporarily cover the cost of examination applications and registration fees for internationally trained and retired nurses, saving them up to $1,500 each. This is often a barrier for nurses wanting to re-enter the workforce. This will help up to 5,000 internationally educated nurses and up to 3,000 retired nurses begin working sooner to strengthen our front lines.

In 2022, we helped 6,727 internationally trained health care workers get certified and start working in their chosen profession—6,727. You can’t argue with success.

Part of this investment will also be used to develop a centralized site for all internationally educated health professionals to streamline their access to supports such as education, registration and employment in their profession or an alternative career. This initiative will make it easier for internationally trained health professionals to navigate the system and get the support they need on their path to getting licensed to practise in Ontario.

To continue to support our health system, we will scale up the Enhanced Extern Program and Supervised Practice Experience Partnership program for an additional year. Since January 2022, more than 2,000 internationally educated nurses have been enrolled through the Supervised Practice Experience Partnership program, and over 1,300 of them are already fully registered.

We are providing additional funding to hire over 3,100 internationally educated nurses to work under the supervision of regulated health professionals in order to give them an opportunity to meet the experience requirements and language proficiency requirements they need to become fully licensed to work in Ontario. New funding will be extended to the home and community care sector to extend the reach of the program this year. This investment also expands the Enhanced Extern Program for an additional year.

Last year the program helped hire up to 5,000 qualified nursing, medical, respiratory therapy, paramedic, physiotherapy and occupational therapy students and internationally educated nurses to work in hospitals across the province.

Increased funding for both the Supervised Practice Experience Partnership program and Enhanced Extern Program will also allow hospitals to continue to hire more preceptors, mentors and coordinators to work with students and internationally educated nurses.

Another success story that I’ll just add in is the community paramedicine program. Since we introduced that and moved it across the province, it has now expanded and has supported more than 30,000 Ontarians.

Speaker, there are also many health care workers from across the country who want to work in Ontario. Through this legislation, we’re making innovative changes to make it easier and faster for them to begin working and providing care to people in Ontario. We are significantly reducing unnecessary bureaucratic delays and bringing reinforcements to the front lines of our health care system.

With 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 caring for you, without the delay of having to first register with one of Ontario’s health regulatory colleges. They are already registered with a regulatory college. This 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 vacancies or manage periods of high patient volume, such as during a flu surge. This will allow nurses, paramedics, respiratory therapists and other health care professionals to work outside of their regular responsibilities or settings, as long as they have the knowledge, skill and judgment to do so, providing hospitals and other settings with more flexibility to ensure health care professionals are filling the most in-demand roles at the right time. Together, these new initiatives will strengthen our workforce during the busy months ahead and ensure care is there when and where you need it most.

With that, I will close by thanking all of our dedicated health care workers for the incredible work they do.

Grief is an expression of love. If we don’t love, we don’t grieve. My grandmother Patricia Cunningham passed away last spring in Windsor, Ontario. She was 95. She was a mother, a grandmother, and a wife to her first husband, Ken Wood, and her second husband, Colonel Roger Cunningham.

My grandmother was an artist. She loved to find good trouble throughout her life, right up to the retirement home stage. She loved animals, music and, for some unknown reason, devilled eggs. One of my favourite memories with her is visiting Ontario Place. A lifelong resident of Windsor, she loved all genres of music and was a talented artist whose paintings grace homes worldwide, including my own Queen’s Park office.

She will be missed by her children, Allan, Laurie, Laine and Brent, and her stepdaughters, Sheila, Alexis and Martha, their spouses, and some pretty awesome grandchildren, plus family and friends.

She reminded me of Mary Tyler Moore. She was strong, creative, intelligent, independent.

Former MPP and CBC reporter Percy Hatfield told me that he used to hang out in Pat’s office waiting for the “scoop” when she was a hospital administrator. She was thrilled when he delivered a 90th birthday scroll.

I would be remiss if I didn’t ask the government to honour their promise of Alzheimer’s funding. It’s never the wrong time to do the right thing. Alzheimer patients require leadership. It is a cruel disease.

I feel fortunate to have called her my Nanny Pat. She was a good person who loved us and was loved.

I rise today to recognize the outstanding work of Donald Halsey and Johnny Valencia from the Salvation Army chapter in Scarborough Centre.

The organization has been serving the community for over 50 years. Their leadership has been instrumental in providing critical services such as operating a homeless shelter, providing housing and support services; running a food bank to help assist the needy; counselling, job training, financial literacy; and the list goes on. They have a network of churches throughout the Scarborough community.

Their school meal program provides meals for children who may not have this regular access at home. Last year, 115,000 students received nutritious meals that helped them learn and thrive.

I want to acknowledge the staff and scores of volunteers for their hard work and dedication in making a positive impact in their community of Scarborough Centre.

It is a real shame in 2023 that we still lose loved ones because of weak enforcement of workplace health and safety regulations. But that is what happens every year—nearly 1,000 workers die from work-related injuries and illness, while others are injured or suffer from occupational diseases. This is why we gather on April 28—a day set aside to honour the memories of fallen workers—to raise awareness for those who suffer the consequences of work-related injuries and illness, and commit ourselves to do more. Across Canada, people will gather to express these common beliefs; that all workers deserve a safe work environment, and that we must learn from past tragedies. This is why we state clearly that we need more than promises from employers and government.

We gather to celebrate the Westray Bill C-45, but also to demand that it be enforced. We have to do this because every year too many workers are victims of work-related injuries, occupational diseases, and lose their lives on the job. Those numbers confirm that the law is not being sufficiently enforced.

It is clear that proactivity is central in the prevention of workplace injuries. Being vigilant to potential threat and holding companies accountable for their neglect are just two ways in which we can ensure workers are able to go home once their workday is over.

The member for Stormont–Dundas–South Glengarry.

Third reading debate deemed adjourned.