SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
May 31, 2023 09:00AM
  • May/31/23 10:50:00 a.m.

Let me help the minister. She has met with the staffing agency Canadian Health Labs six times since becoming minister. Fly-by-night staffing agencies are hurting our hospitals. They are hurting the patients in our hospitals. They exist for one reason: to make money for the investor. They take health care workers from our public system and sell them back at huge profits.

How big, Speaker? A whistle-blower showed us: a $154-million profit off the backs of 500 Ontario health care workers. Let that sink in, Speaker. Let that sink in. This is sickening. Why is this minister letting this happen?

Interjections.

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  • May/31/23 5:20:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 97 

I know that the member has an area with a lot of need, and as she had mentioned, there is lots of opportunity and need for investment with struggling populations.

Not too long ago, I visited the Back Door Mission in Oshawa, which does important outreach to street-involved and unsheltered communities. One of the things that I heard—and the Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions heard—is that there are housing units available, but there isn’t subsidy available. The government isn’t keeping up with the need, and the cost is going through the roof.

So we have agencies that could house people across Durham region, but they don’t have the subsidy and they can’t afford to. That’s a failure of government, whether that’s a matter of emails getting lost in the chain or whatever.

What is in this bill that would help the folks who are really desperately needing housing—especially with help from agencies?

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