Speaker, through you to the Minister of Health: Last week, we learned that the urgent cares in Port Colborne and Fort Erie are having their hours reduced by half, permanently. This follows the recent closure of after-hours emergency surgeries at Welland hospital. Welland is where Port Colborne patients go if they cannot access service in Port Colborne.

Does the minister understand that real people don’t plan to need emergency surgery prior to 10 p.m.? That’s why it’s called an emergency. Will the minister stop blaming volunteers on hospital boards for this crisis and finally take responsibility?

Through you, Speaker, what is the alternative to emergency care when you need life-saving emergency surgery and there is no emergency care available at the urgent care or the emergency department? Will this minister act before one of my constituents dies because they cannot get emergency service?

As I have said many times, when hospital leaderships make decisions about how to best serve their communities, it is not in our interest, as local members or government members, to second-guess those locally decided upon decisions.

Having said that, the investments that we are making to ensure that we have, as an example, last August, directed the College of Nurses of Ontario to quickly assess, review and expedite licences for internationally educated nurses, mean that in last year alone we had over 12,000 new nurses licensed in the province of Ontario; over half were internationally trained nurses. We’ve done the same with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

We will continue to make sure that pathways for licensing in the province of Ontario—the red tape is removed so that we can have as many people—

We will continue to invest. We have done that through surgical recovery programs. Hospitals have been able to expand and widen the number of surgeries that they can do with funds from the province of Ontario. We’ve done it to make sure that we have options, in the province of Ontario, including 24/7 health services provided with registered nurses, so individuals can have that conversation and make sure that they are going to the most appropriate level of care in the province of Ontario.