It is my honour to present 17,107 names that were collected by Save the Minden ER. That’s 95% of the population. It reads as follows:

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the Haliburton Highlands Health Services board of directors has, without consultation with the affected stakeholders, announced the permanent closure of the emergency department located in the municipality of Minden Hills, Ontario, effective June 1, 2023;

“We, the undersigned, petition” the Legislative Assembly “that a moratorium of this decision be implemented by the” Ministry of Health “immediately for a period of a minimum of one year to allow for consultations with all affected stakeholders to occur.”

I fully support this petition, Speaker, will affix my name to it and ask page Christopher to bring it to the Clerk.

I was very pleased to meet with some of the folks from Save the Minden ER today at Queen’s Park. I want to thank Richard and the folks who set up signing set-ups at coffee shops and corner stores to get 17,107 names. I just have a couple of pages here, though, Speaker.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the Haliburton Highlands Health Services board of directors has, without consultation with the affected stakeholders, announced the permanent closure of the emergency department located in the municipality of Minden Hills, Ontario, effective June 1, 2023;

“We, the undersigned, petition that a moratorium of this decision be implemented by the Ministries of Health and Long-Term Care immediately for a period of a minimum of one year to allow for consultations with all affected stakeholders to occur.”

I’m pleased to affix my signature and will send this to the table with page Maya.

What I hold in my hand is just part of 17,107 signatures.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the Haliburton Highlands Health Services board of directors has, without consultation with the affected stakeholders, announced the permanent closure of the emergency department located in the municipality of Minden Hills, Ontario, effective June 1, 2023;

“We, the undersigned, petition that a moratorium of this decision be implemented by the Ministries of Health and Long-Term Care immediately for a period of a minimum of one year to allow for consultations with all affected stakeholders to occur.”

I fully support this petition. I will affix my signature and pass it to page Frederick to take to the table.

It’s my honour to present the following petition on behalf of Save the Minden ER group with part of the 17,107 signatures—collecting 95% of the population’s signatures is a pretty strong mandate.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the Haliburton Highlands Health Services board of directors has, without consultation with the affected stakeholders, announced the permanent closure of the emergency department located in the municipality of Minden Hills, Ontario, effective June 1, 2023;

“We, the undersigned, petition” the Legislative Assembly of Ontario “that a moratorium of this decision be implemented by the Ministries of Health and Long-Term Care immediately for a period of a minimum of one year to allow for consultations with all affected stakeholders to occur.”

I fully support this petition, will affix my signature and deliver it with page Mridul to the Clerks.

Thanks for the question. I think everything is on the table right now. We’re having those discussions. We’re just really in the early stage.

I think the most important thing is consultation. It’s not for a small group of us to make those decisions. This is Ontario’s place. This is for Ontario. This is for Ontarians. This is for future politicians and parliamentarians. Certainly I’d love to do a design, but it’s not just about me. It has certainly never been about me. It’s about our communities. It’s about all of us. It’s about our history. It’s about our future.

Any type of information that they would like to share, please share it with the committee, because I think we all have something to say on how we’re going to make this place even better than it is today.

I actually have to applaud the staff. The staff who work here have done a phenomenal job making this work. I’m sure they all walk around with a roll of duct tape—my goodness, some of the stuff that you’d think was duct-taped together. But they’ve done a phenomenal job to make sure that we can debate; to make sure that these lights allow the proper lighting to come down, so when the cameras are rolling, we’re seen; the work that they do to make sure that when we’re called upon, our speaker comes on; and the translation, so we can certainly have our debate in multiple languages for those francophones in our province.

Technology is certainly something that is important, and it’s also the future. I think I was on the top floor, the third floor, when we saw the one room where a lot of the tech—I guess the background, where they have all the knobs and tubes and all that type of business. There’s lots of work to be done at the technology stage. All you have to do is go into any of these offices, and you will see a lot of cable, and none of that cable is even used today.