Thank you very much, Speaker. Thank you to the member opposite as well.

I was reading in Hansard yesterday that the member for Nickel Belt was talking about how, in Health Sciences North in Sudbury, we have 17 surgical units available. Only 14 of those are open; typically, they don’t even run the entire year because they run out of government funding.

I’m curious to understand why the Conservative government thinks that’s a better solution than providing the funding to operate these existing, publicly structured, already-built hospital surgical rooms; that funding them at a lower cost doesn’t make sense, but funding a private clinic where there’s a profit margin that will cost more, ultimately—it’s through the OHIP card, but it still costs the only taxpayer we have. There’s only one taxpayer; we’ll pay more, all of us, as taxpayers. Why is that a better solution than actually funding the hospitals that exist, that could be doing the work with the equipment in facilities that we already have?

Thank you to the member across for his comments. I wanted to just dig a little bit deeper. I think it’s important for to us recognize that there is a description of the annexed area that’s described in the bill, in the schedule, but we have learned that the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing can oftentimes prescribe a different outcome.

I just want to make sure that the area described, the annexed area in the bill, in the schedule, is going to be exactly what is going to be prescribed by the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing afterwards.

Well Speaker, I think the question calls for an answer about all of Ontario. This is mega-site specific. It will have the effect, we believe, of creating directly and indirectly tens of thousands of jobs. But as I’ve indicated, we are in conversation with municipal partners. We are in competition with 40 other potential jurisdictions in the United States. We are having conversations and we’ll continue to have conversations with Indigenous persons and their leadership. We will make sure that we identify properly ready, receptive mega-sites for these kinds of investments everywhere that we can.

I want to thank the member for Durham for educating us on not just the work that’s required for a mega-site, but the preparation. The member discussed the competition, with close to 40 US jurisdictions offering mega-site programs. With this in mind, the government needs to grow the economy and invest in the future, because if we don’t, somebody else will.

Speaker, can the member talk about this challenge for large-scale projects and how this legislation, if passed, will attract investment in Ontario that will have otherwise gone elsewhere?

I’m glad I have this opportunity because, as the member was speaking this morning, all I kept thinking in my mind is I want him to think of this scenario. He comes from Ford; he’s an autoworker. If he has the ability to buy and pay for a car at, say, $10,000—just to make it easy—under the public system, and then he has that exact same vehicle that he can get that’s privately done at $15,000, which one is he going to do? It is a perfect example of for-profit in our health care system compared to public.

I would love to hear from the member: Is he going to buy the $10,000 public vehicle or the $15,000 private vehicle?

I want to thank the member for that question. In health care, we want our patients to get the service they need, as quick as they can. If you have to wait for 18 months to have a surgery and I can get it done in four months and pay with my OHIP card, that’s what I’m going to do. I want to get it done quickly and have the care to take care of me and be able to get back on my feet and get back to work. So that’s what I would do.

If we can move the non-invasive surgeries out of the hospital so we can do the heart valve surgeries and the cancer surgeries in the hospital, that would save a lot of lives in the province of Ontario. I think that’s the way—

My goal is to get surgeries done. We have a 200,000-surgery backlog due to COVID. We have to get these surgeries done so we can get these people up and running quicker.

Time for questions and answers.

I recognize the member for Mississauga-Lakeshore.

Well, that was a multi-pronged question that went in all directions, but I would take from it that you’re asking me if I think that it’s okay, because I am forced to go to a privatized LifeLabs, a privatized diagnostic clinic, that I agree that the Liberals began the privatization of health care? No, I don’t think that makes any sense at all. I don’t agree with that.

Do I support family doctors? Of course I support family doctors. I want to give a shout-out to my doctor, Dr. Nathanson, who has been looking after me and my family and all my brothers and sisters for many, many years. Absolutely we support the idea that people should have access to health care, publicly delivered, publicly funded.

Yes, the Auditor General, particularly when it comes to cataract surgery, identified in this report that people were being overcharged for specialty lenses, that the surgeon said, “I only work with that kind of lens,” that they paid the money and afterward didn’t realize that it was optional. There were pressure sales tactics to spend extra money for something that should have been covered under the public dime, so it’s absolutely happening already.

I think what’s really important to note is that we’ve had the warning from this government and that they’re not being heeded. This is only going to continue, so people that are already stretched thin and are seeking care in their most vulnerable moments will be pressured into spending money that they don’t have and they don’t need to spend.

We think that the whole idea of dental care is something that people should be able to have covered. People go to emergency rooms—I think one in five visits to the emergency rooms are for pain in people’s teeth. That is a waste of a service when we could be covering dental practice in a publicly funded system.

And eye care: Eye care is very, very expensive for families that can’t afford the tests for their young children. They can’t afford the glasses. We should be bringing that into a public system to allow people, from head to toe, to have the kinds of supports they need to keep themselves healthy.

Interjection: Your constituents will thank you.

Further questions?

Further debate?

I was intrigued by the comments from the member from Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas. I’m an optometrist. I have a small-town private clinic. I sell some of my patients glasses and/or contact lenses. Using her logic, because I support my family that way and I bill OHIP, it sounds like she’s intimating that I’m somehow gouging people. I would just like her to give clarity to optometrists across the entire province of Ontario who operate their own private clinics, billing OHIP and also selling people optical goods, whether they’re good people or bad people, from her logic.

It’s great to stand and talk to this bill.

One of the things that we were first electing on in 2018 was reducing hallway health care. Obviously, with COVID, there were some changes that had to happen, some things that we had to do differently. Let’s be honest, there were 214 countries dealing with it, and they all had to do things in a different way.

Now that we’re transitioning out of COVID—it’s not the pandemic; it’s become more of an endemic—we can get back to dealing with some of the challenges that we had. But COVID did do something that created a negative for us, as well, and that was to increase the backlog of surgeries. One of the things that we did earlier on was to increase funding to hospitals, to their operating rooms, to try to clear up some of that backlog. I’m going to give you some statistics on it, and I’m kind of averaging and rounding it—not giving the total number, but an average of what they were. Roughly 260,000 surgeries is what we had as the backlog; prior to COVID, we had a backlog of about 200,000. We’ve brought that back down to about 200,000. It has taken almost three years to bring that down. So about 20,000 extra per year is what we can handle under the current system. That means it would take a decade to clear the backlog that we currently have under status quo. I’m not a rocket scientist, but I can look at it and say that 10 years is not realistic—status quo cannot remain.

I’ve heard some of the opposition members talking about this, and they’ve thrown these scare tactics out—“Oh, my goodness, the sky is going to fall if the ophthalmologist who does the surgery in the hospital does that same surgery someplace other than the hospital.” What we’ve heard from ophthalmologists is that they can do more surgeries in the same length of time if they’re not using the hospital operating room. We’ve heard the opposition say, “Well, they’re only going to do the easy surgeries.” Yes, that is correct. They are only going to do the surgeries that do not require hospitalization after surgery.

If you think of it from a common-sense approach—common sense doesn’t seem to be something that I’m hearing an awful lot from the opposition on this—would you want to have a surgery outside of the hospital if you were going to have to be hospitalized directly after the surgery? The answer to that would be a resounding no. But, if you’re going to have a surgery that’s going to take roughly 20 minutes, and 15 minutes after the surgery you’re in a condition that you could go home, wouldn’t you prefer that? Wouldn’t you rather come to the clinic, have your surgery fairly quickly, go through the appropriate processes to make sure there aren’t any side effects, and then go home? Or would you rather go into the hospital; spend some time waiting, prepping; go into the surgery room; leave the surgery room or the operating room; and follow the hospital’s protocol, which is probably closer to an hour? You’re going to spend roughly a three-hour time frame for a 35-minute process that wouldn’t be at the hospital. To me, it makes logical sense. If I only have to spend 35 minutes someplace to accomplish exactly the same thing, I’m going to want to do that. And if I only have to spend 35 minutes instead of three hours, wouldn’t that tell you that more surgeries could actually be completed?

It seems like this is something that’s a stretch for the opposition, and I truly do not understand why, because the same doctor who would operate on you in the hospital is the doctor who’s going to operate on you in the clinic. They’ve said things like, “Oh, my goodness, it’s going to cost millions of dollars more to do that.” The doctor gets paid the same, whether they’re in the hospital or their clinic for the surgery portion of it. And then they say things like, “Oh, my goodness, you’re doing this instead of doing it in the hospital. We should be opening it up so it can be done in the hospital.” Obviously, they have not read the legislation or, conveniently, they skipped over parts of the legislation, because nowhere in the legislation does it say the hospital can’t apply for this. Nowhere does it say, if a hospital has extra capacity and wants to do it and has the staffing to do it, they can apply for this and do it—nor does it say that they can’t; the reality is, they can.

I then turn to my opposition friends and say, what’s the issue? If the hospital can do it and the hospital says, “We can do it,” and the hospital applies to do it, they get approved to do it. But if the hospital says, “Right now, we’re at capacity and we can’t,” or “We have some higher-risk surgeries that we need to get completed, so we would like to have some of those low-risk things moved out so that we can have the capacity to do things like a valve replacement surgery”—as one of our colleagues has had done to him. Or perhaps they’re looking at it and saying, “Our backlog for cancer surgery is too long. We could do more cancer surgeries if we take these non-invasive, non-medically critical surgeries and move them out.” Wouldn’t that be something to which the average person would say, “This is a good idea”? Those who need medical intervention, those who need to have hospitalization after their surgery, those who have those critical illnesses that are more complex that should be done in a hospital will have faster access to it. Don’t you think the average person is going to say, “That’s a good idea”?

Now the sky is going to fall because your OHIP card is going to be used to pay for this someplace else—because that doctor who is doing the surgery in the hospital suddenly is an evil person for doing that same operation someplace else and getting paid by OHIP. Where they were getting paid by OHIP to do it over here, it’s evil for them to get paid by OHIP to do it over here—and if we only kept status quo, nobody would be evil. Of course, our backlog would take a decade to get cleaned up. I’ve had a number of people reach out to my office and say that’s just not acceptable. They want service.

I find it so ironic that the opposition members stood up last term and presented all kinds of petitions to save eye care, because those evil optometrists, as my seatmate described, who get paid by OHIP to do eye exams, were selling glasses to those people or selling contacts to those people—we can’t trust those doctors because they’re getting paid by OHIP and they’re selling something as well. Perhaps what we should have been doing is having petitions by the opposition saying, “Optometrists should never be able to sell glasses to people because OHIP is going to fund them to do the eye exam, and they should only ever do eye exams, and we should have glasses sold someplace else because they can’t be in the same building as each other, because that would be evil if we were to do something like that.”

The logic the opposition has put forward just doesn’t make any sense. At the end of the day, you’re getting the care you need, when you need it, where you need it, and you’re paying for it with your OHIP card.

With that, Speaker, I move that the question now be put.

Thank you to our member for that wonderful presentation. The government seems to think that privatization of health care gives Ontarians choices. But really, it gives choice to those who have the deep pockets to be able to take advantage of private care. I’m wondering if the member can express how this broadens the gap between the haves and have-nots in terms of access to health care, where it seems that the healthy and the wealthy are at the front of the line. They’re at the top. But where are those who don’t have? Where are they?

I have here a long list of people who have already been extra-billed substantial amounts of money for various surgeries in for-profit clinics: $8,435, plus $150 for a checkup, for cataract surgery, upsold; in Lindsay, $5,300, private cataract clinic, upsold—this already happened in 2019—a private eye clinic, another one, $58,000.

I wonder if the member from Ancaster—

Interjection.

Thank you for the member opposite’s presentation. When it comes to your health, the status quo is no longer acceptable. Our government is taking bold action to eliminate surgery backlogs and reduce wait times for publicly funded surgeries and procedures. By boosting this availability of publicly funded health services in Ontario, our government is ensuring Ontarians currently waiting for specialized surgery will have great access to the world-class care they need when they need it.

My question is simple. Will the member of the opposition support their constituents by supporting this bill to ensure that Ontarians are not waiting too long for surgeries and procedures?

My question is really about the state of health care right now. We know that the system is in crisis. We have ORs that are not up and running. They’re actually tired, largely because there is a shortage of health care workers.

Does this legislation do anything to bring the nurses back into the field? Does it do anything to retain health care workers? Does it do anything to address the shortage of primary care providers across the province?

I am proud to stand today to talk about my first private member’s bill, Bill 50, the Building Better Business Outcomes Act. It is great to have with me for this occasion my family, friends, and business and community leaders who are committed to diversity and inclusion for a stronger economy and a more inclusive society, and to also have people here from groups identified in this bill.

I will add that, while I did not pick the date for the debate of the bill, I’m delighted that this is happening during Black History Month and just ahead of International Women’s Day.

This bill has a simple premise: that progressive policy is good business policy; that more diverse boards magnify the success of business, which grows our economy and is good for our society. My goal is to drive more opportunity in our economy through improving diversity.

Specifically, this bill will require an issuer whose shares are publicly traded to adopt and make publicly available a written policy respecting the director nomination process that provides for the identification of candidates who belong to one or more of the following groups: women; persons who are Black, Indigenous or racialized; persons with disabilities; and persons who are LGBTQ+.

During my corporate career, I developed an early interest in advancing women in business, and that grew to supporting others from under-represented groups. I have followed with interest the advocacy of organizations who work in this space. I truly believe that diversity at the table and real inclusion lead to better business outcomes, from team decisions made every day at work to big decisions made by the board.

Governments have a role in helping to create the conditions for people of our community to succeed. Many of the residents in my riding of Don Valley West come from racialized communities. Many are immigrants. I want to make sure that we have an Ontario where more of them can become leaders in corporate Ontario.

I want this government to do something that advances where we are today with this very important issue of diversity and inclusion on corporate boards, which, as importantly, will lead to enhanced opportunities in other areas of corporate life for the groups identified in this bill. I want the diverse populations in my riding of Don Valley West and across Ontario to see more people who look like them on boards, because that will create more opportunities for them to succeed in our province.

The topic of diversity on boards has been talked about and researched for decades. Let me share with you the current state of affairs with respect to diversity on boards in Canada. Statistics from the most recent Osler report on board diversity show that women make up 26% of board members of TSX companies—not bad, but we can do better. When we look at other groups identified in the bill, we see that there is still much, much further to go. Of companies that report this data—there are 162 board members who are visible minorities, 17 who are Indigenous and 10 with disabilities, and we don’t know how many LGBTQ+ members, because we don’t track or report that today.

People from under-represented groups, starting with women in business many decades ago, have used three primary arguments to convince decision-makers that diversity on boards is worth pursuing:

(1) the capability argument: “We are capable and deserve as much opportunity as those who are already here”;

(2) the equity argument: “Since we are capable, it is fair and just that we should have a seat at the table”; and

(3) the business-case argument: “Putting women on your boards will help your organizations perform better.”

I believe there’s merit in all of these arguments, and so does this government’s own Capital Markets Modernization Taskforce, which the government commissioned “to help transform the regulatory landscape for the capital markets sector, and advise the Minister of Finance on how to improve the innovation and competitiveness of the province’s capital markets and best help build Ontario’s economy.” I commend the government for initiating this work and the members of the task force who worked on it.

In 2021, the task force issued its report, with 74 recommendations, including three on how to improve corporate board diversity. My bill is taken word for word from one of these three recommendations. In fact, the government has implemented or is moving on many of the 74 recommendations, and I commend them for that too. But there has been no progress reported on the three recommendations related to corporate board diversity, and my hope today is that the debate of Bill 50 will nudge the government to take that action.

As the task force said, “Investors are increasingly demanding data on diversity on boards and in executive officer positions to make informed investment and voting decisions.”

My intention is not to criticize when I say this, but I had to consider the lack of movement on the three diversity recommendations as I sit here in the opposition. In talking to people, some of them said, “Your bill goes too far.” Others said, “Your bill doesn’t go far enough.” I thought about how to encourage the Conservative government to take some action to move on this important issue, so I decided to make this bill only about the least interventionist policy from government and market perspectives. This bill, about adopting a policy, is a light touch to advancing diversity by helping to ensure boards are looking at the broadest possible pool of qualified candidates.

Other jurisdictions are ahead of Ontario on this front. The European Parliament recently passed legislation that compels member states to create their own policies for ensuring that there is diverse representation on boards. In the US, NASDAQ has adopted policies that require women, under-represented minorities and LGBTQ+ persons to be nominated to boards.

So why this bill and why now? There are three reasons:

(1) It has taken decades for our corporate boards to reach about 25% women directors and just 4.5% people of colour, 17 Indigenous board directors, 10 directors who are people with disabilities—and as I said, we do not know the number of LGBTQ+ directors because it’s not tracked or reported. So while the progress and the attention to diversity in ESG more broadly is something to celebrate, we still have a long way to go. About Ontario’s current “comply or explain” policy, which relates only to gender diversity on boards, Maureen Jensen, former chair and CEO of the OSC, said, “The progress has been slow.”

(2) Research shows that more diverse boards are more likely to have better business outcomes than their less diverse peers, so this kind of policy is good policy to grow our economy. One report by McKinsey demonstrates that businesses with more women and more racialized people are 48% and 36%, respectively, more likely to outperform their less diverse competitors. We need this kind of progressive policy here at work in Ontario, for Ontario and for Canada. We know that we want our companies, our corporations to invest more, to innovate more. But Canada is behind its international peers, and this bill can help.

(3) It is a positive, light-touch, action-oriented bill that provides a gentle nudge to business leaders to demonstrate Ontario’s commitment to diversity at all levels of corporate life, starting at the top with their boards.

But let’s be clear: We should not do this only because the business case is solid. Sarah Kaplan, distinguished professor of gender and the economy at Rotman School of Management, has studied this topic extensively and said, “We are not debating the business case itself. Many are convinced that the case has already been made. Complex social issues such as changing social norms and challenging stereotypes cannot be reduced to a spreadsheet. They can only be tackled with an unreserved, passionate commitment from senior leaders.”

This House is among that group of senior leaders who have the power to help make change. That’s why I’m here—that’s why all of us are here. If improving the level of diversity of other under-represented groups takes us as many decades as it did for women to get to just 25% of corporate board positions, that will be decades of missed opportunity and economic growth that the increased diversity could bring.

My hope is that this bill will ensure that more boards, at a minimum, are having this conversation, are looking at the broadest pool of candidates possible to advance their diversity, not only for women but for persons who are Black, Indigenous or racialized; persons with disabilities; and persons who are LGBTQ+; and that boards will do this more quickly than if we maintain only the status quo rule of “comply or explain,” which has moved the needle only slightly.

Leading scholars and businesspeople support this bill. Poonam Puri—who I’m delighted to say is here today with her daughters—an esteemed professor at Osgoode Hall Law School who researches and teaches in the areas of corporate law, corporate governance and capital markets regulation, said that Bill 50 would benefit corporations and their investors, as it “will require companies to consider how they approach their board nomination process to ensure they are getting the best voices they can and will show investors which companies are taking this issue seriously.”

Pamela Jeffery, founder of the Prosperity Project, said, “When you have competent directors looking at a problem through different lenses, better discussion ensues which in turn leads to better decision-making.”

Deborah Rosati, founder and CEO of Women Get on Board, said, “As business leaders, our duty is to all step up today and collectively be agents of change in advancing board diversity in Canada. Together, we can make a difference by promoting diversity as a strategic opportunity for board-building.”

I’m pleased to say this bill is also supported by organizations like Meridian Credit Union, the March of Dimes, LGBTQ+ Corporate Directors Canada Association, the Arya Samaj community of Markham and Toronto, and Intriciti.

I’m also pleased to have the support of Cody Anthony, the founder of the Ted Rogers Indigenous in Business student group that works to increase Indigenous participation in leadership positions, highlight Indigenous entrepreneurs, and encourage Indigenous students to seek an education at the Ted Rogers School of Management.

I’m also proud that Leaside Business Park Association in my riding of Don Valley West supports the bill.

Thank you to all who gave me input, advice and their support.

This issue is a business issue, it’s a societal issue—it’s not a partisan issue. I look forward to hearing from my colleagues on this side of the aisle, as well as from the government members.

There is a time for waiting, and there is a time to act. A vote in favour of this bill is a vote for building our economy by maximizing the diversity of our population, by leveraging the talents of constituents across all 124 ridings represented in this House.

Speaker, it is time we act on this issue and send a signal to all communities that Ontario is not only open for business but that Ontario business is open to them.

Madam Speaker, if you seek it, I’m sure you’ll find unanimous consent to see the clock at 6.

Mr. Smith has moved that the question be now put. I’m satisfied that there has been sufficient debate to allow this question to be put to the House.

Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? I heard a no.

All those in favour of the motion that the question be now put, please say “aye.”

All those opposed to the motion that the question be now put, please say “nay.”

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

A recorded vote being required, it will be deferred to the next instance of deferred votes.

Vote deferred.

Ms. Bowman moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill 50, An Act to amend the Securities Act to require certain issuers to adopt and make publicly available written policies respecting their director nomination process / Projet de loi 50, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les valeurs mobilières afin d’exiger que certains émetteurs adoptent et rendent publiques des politiques écrites concernant leur processus de mise en candidature des administrateurs.

Further debate?