I really want to thank the member from Niagara Falls for bringing forward this motion. I want to thank Anthony Henry for your advocacy and for being here, and the Canadian Cancer Society. Today, the motion from the member for Niagara Falls is to ask that OHIP cover PSA testing, which is a prostate screening test, in all cases, because right now some men, when they go to get a PSA blood test to see if they’ve got prostate cancer, have to pay for it, and that’s absolutely inexcusable.

I was listening to the deputy to the Minister of Health’s comments earlier in regard to this motion. She recited this line that the government always recites: “You’re going to pay for your health care with your OHIP card, not your credit card.” And yet, the very motion that she was speaking about is a case where Ontarian men have to pay for their health care with their credit card and can’t pay for it with their OHIP card. If you actually pass this motion today and make it into law, then Ontarians won’t have to pay for PSA testing with their credit card; they will be able to pay for it with their OHIP card. I just can’t believe that the deputy to the minister actually recited that line in the context of this motion that we’ve got here.

The other thing about this is that prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among men: One in eight men in Canada will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime. It disproportionately affects Black, Indigenous and people of colour, and there are higher rates of prostate cancer among men of African and Caribbean ancestry. There is racial inequality in access to health care in this country, that’s something that we have to acknowledge. This motion today would actually help to address some of that racial inequality in access to health care.

Right now, OHIP pays for a PSA test—this is a prostate-specific antigen test; it measures to see if those antigens are in your blood, which could indicate that you’ve got prostate cancer—only if your physician suspects prostate cancer, if you’ve been diagnosed or if you are being treated for prostate cancer. Well, this is too late. The idea of cancer screening is that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You want early detection of cancer.

That’s what this motion is about. It’s about making sure that everybody, regardless of their ability to pay, can access a PSA test, so that they can get the earliest detection of prostate cancer and have the likely best health outcomes. So I don’t know why it sounded like, from the deputy to the minister, the government is not going to be supporting this motion. I think that’s really shameful. It just shows that when the government says you’re going to pay for your health care with your OHIP card, not your credit card, you’re not telling the truth, because this is a case right here where you have the chance to fix—