Thank you to the member opposite for the question.

Our government knows that the status quo is not working. That is why we’ve been making all the changes we have, why we introduced the Your Health Act, and why we’ve got the largest health human resources recruitment, retention and training initiative in Ontario’s history to address any concerns, such as the ones the member opposite has mentioned.

This Tuesday, our Minister of Health and our Minister of Colleges and Universities were in Owen Sound to announce training programs, Learn and Stay programs, to ensure 2,500 post-secondary students in nursing, paramedics and medical laboratory technology would get training covered by the government. What we’re doing is making sure that those programs are available.

This is building on programs that we announced in March 2022. We think that this is part of the solution to make sure that we have the health human resource and make sure that the emergency rooms are operating.

When it comes to the ambulance off-load delays, we have a many-step process we’ve put in place. We’re returning ambulances to communities faster through the dedicated off-load nursing program. We’ve increased ambulance availability by about 600,000 hours with that program. We’re providing timely and appropriate care in community through the expansion of our 911 options. And we’re investing in new technologies through the central ambulance communication centre. We’re also helping with the transport of medically stable patients so they don’t have to use ambulances. And we’re maximizing, as I’ve said, our health human resource capacity.

This year, we’ve increased dedicated off-load funding to over $23 million for 27 municipalities; that’s seven additional municipalities receiving that funding for the first time.

We’re going to continue to make sure that our ambulances can be in the community, not waiting in hospitals, and that our emergency rooms are well staffed.