SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
March 30, 2023 09:00AM
  • Mar/30/23 10:40:00 a.m.

In fact, it’s just the opposite: Since this government has been in place, we have been systematically revamping our services for not only our seniors, but for our most vulnerable across the province. That is why we started off by ensuring that the lowest-income-earning people were removed from the tax rolls altogether.

When you look at the improvements that the minister is making with respect to senior care, not only in this current budget, where we increased access to the guaranteed income supplement—the incredible investments that we are making in home care, the investments that we are making in long-term care.

We’ve also heard from our seniors that they also want the opportunity, where they can, to participate in the growing economy. The Minister of Labour is making that available to them, as well. The Minister of Education, through COVID, ensured that those seniors—retired teachers, for instance—who wanted to come back and help us through the pandemic could do that.

So it’s more than just looking at seniors as exiting the workforce, it’s more than looking at them as exiting their time to participate; it’s about how we can integrate them into helping us continue to build an Ontario that they left us—a thriving Ontario that they almost destroyed.

When the hospital CEOs, in September, asked us to do more to help those seniors in hospitals who needed to be in long-term care or other options, the opposition suggested that people would be sent thousands of miles away and that they would be bankrupted by the policies that the hospital CEOs asked for. And what happened? In fact, just the opposite. When I tour long-term-care homes, the residents there say it’s the best thing that ever happened. The quality of care is much better. Why? Because we listened to the hospital CEOs.

When the hospital CEOs told us that we had to do better on small and medium-sized hospitals’ budgets, we did that.

When the hospital CEOs in Ontario—in eastern Ontario and Ottawa and Niagara—said we needed new hospitals, we came through.

When they said that they needed more staff, the Minister of Colleges and Universities came through with a program that is hiring thousands of nurses. When they needed more doctors, the minister of the Treasury Board—

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