Good morning. Let us pray.

Prayers.

Resuming the debate adjourned on February 27, 2023, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 60, An Act to amend and enact various Acts with respect to the health system / Projet de loi 60, Loi visant à modifier et à édicter diverses lois en ce qui concerne le système de santé.

Oh, there’s 20 minutes on the clock; I thought there would have been 10 minutes by this point. Good stuff; excellent, because I have a lot to say when it comes to this bill.

I’m pleased to have the opportunity to be able to speak up to this government to the concerns I’ve heard from my community when it comes to privatizing—profitizing—our health care system, which is exactly what is happening here in Bill 60—oh, it is 10 minutes. Now I’m disappointed because this is an important bill. We have definitely seen the crisis that has been happening in our health care system for years. Under the Liberals, we’ve seen hospitals underfunded, not kept up with inflation, and that was happening year over year.

The Conservatives come in in 2018 and continued and furthered that train even further. We’re watching emergency rooms that are exploding at the seams, surgeries that have been cancelled. Sure, COVID definitely played a huge part in the struggles that we see in our health care system, but investment into our health care system would have helped alleviate some of those issues, and this government is sitting on billions of dollars that could be invested into our empty operating rooms. They could be investing into the empty beds that we see in our hospitals. It could be invested into the nurses in the health care system that we have relied on our entire lives here and who put everything on the line for each and every one of us during COVID and were thanked with a pay reduction—with legislation that forced their wages to receive 1% or less in raises. As we know, the cost of living has definitely increased, inflation has gone up, and we have put nurses, who did everything for us, further behind, and we’re seeing the effects of that.

To me, knowing that the Conservatives have always believed in small government and a privatized health care system, this is by design. We know that the government has starved our health care system and now created the scenario where people think that it’s better—that it will be better, that it will be easier for them to receive the health care that they need if it’s a private system, if we’re “innovative,” as the government likes to call it.

Well, if they would have funded the public system, our public system would not be in the disrepair that it’s in. And they have billions of dollars to be able to do that and, instead, they’re choosing to sit on it, and what money they are investing into health care, they’re investing it into for-profit institutions to be able to pick up those surgeries—the same surgeries that could be done in the public system if the dollars were there.

So the government is putting the money where they’re choosing, and it’s not in our public health care system so that everyone can get the health care that they need when they need it. Instead, they’re going to put it in a for-profit investment system.

When people are building and creating these surgical centres of excellence, that they’re going to be called—integrated community health service centres—they’re doing that with their own money. They’re doing that with investor money. When you invest in something, you’re expecting a return, and that return is going to come from our collective health care dollars. Those collective health care dollars get there by the public’s taxes. And so, to be taking those valuable taxes and giving them to profiteers to fix a problem that you created instead of just putting those into the public coffers and paying for our public health care system—that’s a mess. That’s definitely the wrong direction and nothing that I know my community wants to see.

I hear it on a regular basis of how disheartened they are with this government—I know they never really did have much faith in the Conservative government in my riding of Hamilton Mountain. That’s why they don’t vote for them and—I get it, and I’m grateful, because I’m here. But I’m here to speak on their behalf and through their voice. And that’s exactly what the plan here is, and it is making sure that we are fighting back against the profitization of our health care system.

We hear from families who are struggling on a regular basis. This morning, I had the opportunity to go downstairs and to have breakfast with the rare disease folks, and I ran into someone who has been known here for quite some time, definitely to me: Sherry Caldwell. She’s from the Ontario Disability Coalition. She is an advocate. She is a mom. She is a mom with a now young woman daughter, who has had critical needs for her entire life, and that has forced Sherry to become an advocate. Because you can’t just be a parent and sit back in Ontario when you have a child who has needs, because you will literally drown in the bureaucracy and in the wait times and in the not being able to get the services that your child needs. So these parents have to take on extra and become advocates to be able to work through our system.

She talked about the poverty that people with disabilities face. She talked about the struggles. And if you want me to expand on the poverty portion, a mom who has a severely disabled child—probably trach, feeding tubes, constant care—not able to get enough nursing care into the homes for these critical kids was definitely a story that she was telling me. And so mom has to stay home, and a lot of times, it’s a single mom, and now she’s forced to be on Ontario Works—she can’t even get on a disability program or a caregiver program—to be able to care for her critical-needs child because she can’t go to work because the government is refusing to provide the services and the funding that she needs.

It’s a broken, broken, broken system, but privatizing the system is not going to fix it. It is not going to help these moms who are struggling and kids who are on wait-lists to get surgeries. Some 12,000 kids waiting for surgeries in the province of Ontario—how is this humanly possible? Where is the heart in any of this government when it comes to taking care of our children? Because when we’re not taking care of them now, we’re destining them to a life of need, to a life of more services, to more supportive housing, to more social services.

Not providing kids what they need when they need it is a problem, and I wish I could get that through to this government. Our most valuable resources, our future, are our children. They are the ones who are going to lead us in the future. Without providing them with the resources they need when they need them, you’re setting them up for failure. That is a big message—that has to happen.

Privatizing our health care system is not going to fix any of this. It is not going to alleviate the wait-lists. It’s the same pool of nurses, it’s the same pool of doctors that we have that have to be able to manage the public system and the private system. What are those same nurses and doctors going to do? They’re going to go to the private system because they’re going to get paid more, and they’re going to get paid more out of the same pot of dollars that you’re refusing to pay them with in the public system. How does this possibly make sense, other than it’s buddies, it’s friends, it’s investors, it’s “How do you help your friends make more money?”

There’s no other explanation for investing in a for-profit system instead of into our precious, precious public health care system. I know I’m out of time. I’m looking forward to questions from the opposite side and members on my side. I appreciate the opportunity of being able to speak to Bill 60 today.

I’m sure my friend from Hamilton Mountain agrees that we should be learning from other jurisdictions when we solve problems, and I’m sure she’s also aware that in British Columbia, under the Liberal-Conservative coalition, they put a lot of money into private clinics and it was a disaster. It was more expensive. They were upselling people. It did not work out well. The current BC government has been taking back private clinics into the public realm and solving those problems.

Why does my friend think that this government in Ontario has such a problem learning from best practices in other jurisdictions?

I want to commend my colleague the member for Hamilton Mountain on her remarks. A lot of concerns have been raised about this legislation and the impact on patient safety. There are concerns about the total vagueness of the legislation when it comes to protections for patient health and oversight.

I wondered if the member has also heard those concerns being raised and whether the legislation actually does include anything to safeguard patient health in these for-profit health clinics.

In the Thornhill riding, we’ve had the incredible opportunity to explore the health system within the Shouldice. For years now, it has been a historic precedent. We’ve had hernia surgeries performed at this location. People have always said such glowing things about this location. I think it’s actually the second or the third location in Ontario where these types of surgeries are performed. It is stand alone, one of the best locations in Ontario to have that kind of operation.

Everyone who walks into that facility pays with their OHIP card and not with a credit card. This has been going on for a very long time and I’m a very proud—

We are all aware of surgical backlogs and that the status quo is not acceptable. That is why we are expanding our publicly funded system.

Does the member not agree that all health service providers need to be part of this solution?

I’d like to thank my colleague from Hamilton Mountain for her comments and her concerns about privatization and profitization in our health care system. As well, I would like to thank you for mentioning the importance of publicly funded as well as publicly delivered health care.

Back in March 2022, the Deputy Premier and Health Minister Christine Elliott stated, “We are ... making sure that we can let independent health facilities operate private hospitals.” Then, the minister’s spokespeople jumped in and said, “The use ... of private hospitals and independent health facilities in Ontario is not being expanded or changed.”

My question to the member: Is this an example of the government being accountable or transparent, given that this privatization and profitization is exactly what Bill 60 is doing?

Thank you to the member from London West. She is absolutely correct. Schedule 2 is about deregulating health care settings by expanding the definition of “regulated health professionals” to include those who are not part of a regulatory college. So we’re actually going backwards when it comes to safety and regulation. Going into any health care clinic, as Ontarians, as Canadians, we have come to be comfortable with believing in the fact that they’re regulated, that they have the proper qualifications.

By deregulating the system under schedule 2, there will be no regulation. They have not decided who the oversight body is going to be. They said that will come later, in regulations. There are a lot of concerns happening here. The government has not thought this out. Again, I think it’s more about the quick buck than it is public safety.

Of course people are happy that they’re getting services. People need services. But they don’t see the difference if it’s coming from the public or from the for-profit. Who is going to see the difference is our public coffers and how far that can actually go. When they only have so much money, what’s going to go first? It’s not going to be the for-profit. They’re going to make sure that their shareholders get their investments back. What’s going to happen is it’s going to come from that health care service that individual’s counting on.

I think it’s unfortunate that they’re actually moving in the opposite direction from the fact-learning process that BC has put themselves into. It costs them money now to bring those systems back into the public realm. The Conservatives in Ontario are going in the wrong direction—for-profit is not for our health care system.

So who is it—which side of the aisle here—that’s actually preventing people from getting surgeries? People wouldn’t have the wait times they have now if this government wasn’t sitting on billions of dollars in contingency funds instead of investing it into our health care system. For years our health care system has been underfunded, has not kept up with inflation, and now we’re seeing the devastating effects and the surgical backlogs that go with that.

It’s now time for questions and answers. Questions?

I appreciate the opportunity to interact with the member from Hamilton Mountain. She always brings such clarity to the opposition position on an issue, and that’s what I was hoping to ask her.

Yesterday morning, during question period, we had a very interesting question from one of the opposition members stating that the operating rooms in many hospitals were operating overcapacity. And then yesterday afternoon, we were debating a motion from the opposition stating that the hospitals were under capacity. So I was wondering if the member could help clarify exactly what the position of the opposition is on this issue.

Further questions?

I’m happy to speak to Bill 60, Your Health Act.

Yesterday, I stood up in the House and spoke about the all-hands-on-deck approach that our government is taking to build a strong, more resilient health care system. As part of this approach, we’re working hard to hire more health care workers, and that starts with ensuring that the next generation of those workers have access to high-calibre education right here in Ontario. As Minister of Colleges and Universities, I have the distinct privilege of overseeing this important work. We are currently seeing record numbers of students registering in health human resources programs across the province.

At colleges and universities, students enrolled in health human resource programs such as nursing, PSW and paramedicine are getting the skills and training they need to make a difference in our communities and begin a rewarding career and to support a strong and sustainable health care sector that helps ensure people across the province have more ways to receive the high-quality care they deserve.

I think we can all agree that having faster access to care and the ability to receive care closer to home is a good idea. But what many seem to forget is that this is not necessarily a given, especially for those in remote communities. There are many, many Ontarians who need to leave their home communities just to access care they need. For example, in some cases I’ve heard of people travelling all the way from Timmins to Toronto, staying for a few days and then travelling back, just to receive patient care.

I can tell you, in the early days of when my middle daughter was born, we travelled from Orillia—not as far as Timmins or some of the areas that people are travelling from—but we were travelling to SickKids every two weeks for the first three years of her life. So I can understand how difficult that is for families to make the travel arrangements, arrangements at home with your family and how difficult that can be, especially with a newborn.

What’s clear is that while we’re lucky to boast both top-notch doctors and health care workers in this province, not all communities have equal access to those workers by sheer geography alone, and that’s just unacceptable. That is why, as minister, I was so eager, excited and proud to announce our medical seat expansion last year. This medical seat expansion announcement was the largest our province has seen in a decade, with our government adding 160 undergraduate and 295 postgraduate medical seats across the province to increase access to health care for more communities.

I was also thrilled to announce the creation of the northern Ontario medical school as a stand-alone institution and expanded enrolment capacity for the institution to help foster the next generation of doctors in the north. Last year alone, we had over 2,000 students preparing to become a doctor in Ontario, including 124 studying in the north.

I actually visited the Northern Ontario School of Medicine in Sudbury in November and had the opportunity to speak with fourth-year students. They were telling me about their third-year placements, which they spend in communities. These students are from northern communities, and they want to stay in those communities to practise in the future. They were telling me some of the reasons why. They like that community aspect. One student was telling me that he and his team were working on a young boy. He said, “A week later, we were at a local restaurant, and it happens to be owned by that young child’s family.” He said that’s the personal aspect they like of practising in small communities—and in family medicine as well. It was great to talk with these students. They were very excited, because they’re about to become doctors. But in their third year during these placements, compared to some of their other colleagues, he said, “We really get to participate in everything. It’s really all hands on deck and a great learning experience.”

We also announced the new Toronto Metropolitan University medical school in Brampton that will be opening its doors in the near future. This will help solidify local health care needs in the region for generations.

Along with the Premier, the Minister of Health and the rest of our cabinet and caucus, our government is forging ahead, stronger than ever before, to ensure that all Ontarians have the ability to access health care services whenever and wherever they need it. We recognize that in order to build on our health care system we need to ensure that students pursuing medical studies have access to a world-class post-secondary education. But doctors aren’t the only group we have focused on over the past few years. Part of being able to access care wherever you need it means we need to have a strong and reliable nursing team at your care centre, and as with any career in Ontario, a great team begins with a flawless education.

Last year alone, there were over 25,000 domestic full-time students studying at one of our colleges and universities—a number that continues to grow year over year. On our part, to help support these students, we’ve invested $342 million that will train an additional 5,000 RNs and RPNs as well as 8,000 PSWs over the next five years. But our work doesn’t stop there. When our students are ready to leave the classroom and head into the workforce, we have created pathway opportunities through clinical placements by investing an additional $160 million into these placement spaces and into our students. These investments are making a true difference in Ontario. At every opportunity, we are making the critical investments into health care education and training, supporting the amazing work done by our sector to ensure students are ready to take on these important roles upon graduation.

For a brief moment, Speaker, I would like to talk about a school that is very close to my heart, Georgian College. Aside from it being my former employer before I entered politics, Georgian is also my local college as the MPP for Simcoe North. I have had the great pleasure of visiting the campus as both the MPP and minister many times, seeing first-hand the incredible progress they have been making with their health human resources education. Since launching their own stand-alone nursing program—which is yet another initiative created by our government—Georgian College has been making incredible strides in training the next local nursing workforce. I want to really emphasize that point: a local workforce.

Before localized education like this at an institution like Georgian existed, many young people would finish their education at a major university and partner with the local hospitals in that area for their careers. We saw that at Georgian College. Students would do their first two years at Georgian, and then leave and do their second two years at York University. That meant they likely did their clinical placements in the big city and stayed here upon graduation.

While it’s great for communities like Toronto, Ottawa and London, smaller communities like Orillia, Owen Sound and Sarnia would continually see their bright young people leave their home communities for opportunities elsewhere. So as a ministry, we stepped in. We created pathways where students can choose the community where they’re able to study in, if they want to be at a college or a university, and allow for greater retention of young people to learn and stay in their home communities.

But this was just the beginning. I know the MPP for Sarnia–Lambton is very excited that Lambton College offers a stand-alone nursing program—as well as Sault College, my member colleague from Sault Ste. Marie, under his leadership, allowed and created the pathways for students in stand-alone nursing at that college.

Seeing the success of our stand-alone nursing program, we wanted to create even more pathways and incentives for young people to build their careers in underserved communities across the province, something we saw became more important when the pandemic hit. We also wanted to ensure that communities that have demonstrated the greatest need for increased health human resources could rely on this government to get it done and bring the workers to them.

With that, the Learn and Stay grant was born. Through this grant, which will see its applications open this spring, eligible students will be able to apply to in-demand health human resource programs at one of our institutions in an identified priority community. If selected, and if they agree to complete their studies and work for a period of time in that community, our government will cover the cost of their education.

Speaker, this is a program that we at MCU, this government as a whole and everyone should be very excited about. Let me just give you a couple of stats that are very exciting. Since the launch of the program, and to date as of February 9, we have had over 326,000 hits to the website, so students are excited about this. On January 20, with the announcement where we expanded the program to now include paramedics and lab technologists, that day alone we had over 14,000 visits to the website. So students are incredibly excited about this opportunity, and I hope those who are looking at going into nursing and having the opportunity to train and to possibly work in an underserved community—this is great for all students.

Partnering with the Ministry of Health, this program is meant to be responsive to evolving needs and could be tailored for any program or region, to ensure that people across the province continue to receive the health care they need, when they need it, no matter where they live.

The member raises a great point. This is crisis-by-design. The minister, back in the day, spilled the beans that it was happening when she wasn’t supposed to. Comms tried to cover it up and to fix that issue. But here we are, seeing exactly what she had said years ago with the for-profit system that is going to siphon our precious health care dollars that could be paying for those surgeries, that could be paying for those kids’ critical needs and nurses at home instead of having moms struggling, not being able to go to work, instead of 12,000 kids on wait-lists for surgeries. All of those things could have been paid for instead of investing into a for-profit system helping those investors get money back when they shouldn’t even be in there in the first place.

This bill will do nothing to correct that. It is going to be the same number of nurses, the same number of doctors. You’re just splitting them in half.

Thank you to the member for that question. Having supports in the north is very important, and in underserved areas. That’s why, with the new Learn and Stay grant, we’ve seen those areas specifically identified not just for nursing, but for lab technologists, for paramedicine.

With the work that we’ve been doing to ensure that there are more doctors, this is the first time in 10 years that we’ve seen a seat expansion for doctors: 160 undergraduate spaces and 295 postgraduate spaces. This was not done under the Liberal government. It was this government that came in and said, “We need to ensure that people have access to doctors.”

I can tell you that in my own area, I’ve talked to families who are experiencing not having a local doctor, but accessing the work at some of our community care clinics through our local health teams and the resources and supports that are served there. So we do recognize the need for more doctors in the north, but also in rural and underserved areas across this province.

The status quo is not working. We need to do better for the people of Ontario. Before COVID, we were working hard, and COVID just expedited that as well, but the investments are being made. We’re here to support all Ontarians and ensure that you’re going to the doctor or a hospital and using your OHIP card and not a credit card.

I just have a note from my staff that says that as of 9 a.m. today, the Ontario Learn and Stay Grant website has had over 405,000 visits, so the word is getting out there. It’s to support northern and rural communities, the ones you’re talking about, that we’re encouraging students and paying for their education to get them to learn in those communities and make that commitment of staying for two years, because if you’re staying there for two years, you’re starting to set down roots. You are becoming familiar with the community and maybe meeting someone there and staying in that area.

But the supports that we’re giving to ensure that more nurses, paramedics, lab technologists—we’re also working with the Northern Ontario School of Medicine to ensure there are more doctors in the north as well, so that everyone has access to quality care.

Thank you, Speaker. You had me fooled there for a second.

I have to say to the House that one of the things I appreciate most about being a member of this government is that we refuse to accept the status quo, and what’s so interesting is that all we hear from the opposition is that they tell us that we must continue to invest in the status quo.

Travelling around with the minister in my riding and seeing the incredible work we’re doing in training new people to go into the health care field in different directions than we ever have before and seeing the success of those programs like the Learn and Stay program is so exciting to me. I’m just wondering if she could expand on that further, on what it means in the health care system that we are looking at different options. Ontario is a land of innovators and to see innovation bear fruit in the health care system is really exciting for me, and I’m wondering what that means for her.

When it comes to our health, the status quo is no longer acceptable. Can the member tell this House what our government is doing to protect Ontarians from extra billing?

It’s now time for questions.

My thanks to the member for her presentation. At the beginning of her comments, she noted that a lot of what is driving this is concern that services be made available to people who are in remote locations who may not be close to major medical centres.

I just want to note that last year, the payments to doctors for doing remote and virtual consultations were cut dramatically, so that many doctors have now abandoned that. Talking to my friends from the north, their experience has been that those arrangements allowed people for the first time, for many of them, in their lives to access a doctor quickly. Why did you cut that support for virtual consultations while you are espousing support for greater access to medical help?

Meegwetch for the presentation. I know that in far northern Ontario—sometimes I refer to it as the other Ontario because we’re treated differently because of who we are and where we live. In the north, it’s not a health care system, it’s not a health system; it’s a sickness system. It’s a sickness system because you don’t get access to health services until you are sick. For example, Ornge is our ambulance.

When you have a community of 1,000 people, you have five days of physician services per month, which is only—five days and two days are travel days, so that’s three days per month. Like, the needless deaths, the unnecessary suffering: That is our status quo. Status quo is construed as normal and acceptable. That would not be acceptable anywhere else in Ontario, anywhere else in Canada. How will this bill help First Nations and northern Ontario, for example, Fort Severn?

Thank you.

Further questions?

Further debate?