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.

I want to commend my colleague for her very astute remarks about this bill.

I wanted to highlight a model that exists in my community in London. The London Health Sciences Centre has created the first-of-its-kind, stand-alone, self-contained, ambulatory surgery centre to allow people to get less complex minor surgeries performed there. It has demonstrated its effectiveness. The cost for surgeries is way down. It is a model of how we can deal with the backlog in hips, knees and cataracts surgeries under a public system, with oversight from the hospital.

I wondered if the member has any thoughts on why the government didn’t just expand this model across the province to ensure that people have access to publicly funded and publicly delivered surgical care.

I want to thank the member from Ottawa West. Last month, my son had a very minor infection—I’m getting very personal—but we went to the hospital. That wasn’t a good place for him at that time, and we decided that it was going to be a better spot at a pharmacist. The pharmacist actually took care of this minor situation, and we were in and out of the door very quickly.

This kind of innovation has made positive improvements for the health care system and the residents of Ontario. Will the member opposite support expanding the scope of pharmacists so that their constituents can get better access to care closer to home?

Let me share my own little story. In December, I visited the Queensway Carleton Hospital, which is actually closer to my home than any pharmacy, and it was hell on earth. There were people sitting in every chair in the emergency room. There were people sitting on the floor. There were people lined up on the walls. There was a lineup of people outside the door. There were seven stretchers in hallways outside of the ER and there were six ambulances waiting to off-load patients. Nobody wants to be in the ER right now. That’s the crisis that your government has created. That’s the reason that people are not being able to get the health care that they need. What I want to see is investments in our public system, to see investments in preventative care, to see everyone have access to a family doctor so that people get incredibly quick, timely care when they need it.

In the midst of that incredibly hard and difficult work, this government capped their wages well below the rate of inflation. It’s incredibly disrespectful and, as nurses said, humiliating, and we absolutely need to do better.

Thank you, Speaker. It’s always great to see you in the chair.

It’s a great honour to rise in the House this morning to speak in support of Bill 60, Your Health Act. I would like to thank the Minister of Health and her team on the work on this bill.

I was proud to join the minister, the Premier and the Prime Minister at AstraZeneca in Mississauga yesterday, where they’re investing $500 million in a major expansion in their Mississauga site, which will become their flagship global clinical research centre, with 500 new jobs right here in Ontario. This is very exciting news for Mississauga.

Just a few kilometres west of AstraZeneca, a new eight-storey parking structure is almost completed, which is the first step towards the complete reconstruction of the Mississauga Hospital. The new hospital will be almost triple the size: 24 storeys, three million square feet, with 1,000 beds—80% in private rooms. This will be the largest and most advanced hospital in the history of Canada.

And on the other side of Mississauga–Lakeshore, two new long-term-care homes, with 632 new beds, will be ready later this year. This is the largest long-term-care building program in Canadian history, including 1,152 new and upgraded beds in Mississauga–Lakeshore alone, more than any other riding in the province of Ontario. So again, I want to thank the Minister of Health and the Minister of Long-Term Care for all their work on these projects.

Speaker, over the last two months, I had the opportunity to travel around the province for pre-budget consultations with the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs. We heard from many stakeholders, including the Ontario Health Association, the Ontario Medical Association and hospital CEOs across Ontario who support Bill 60. They understand that the status quo in health care is not acceptable, and they appreciate all the investments our government is making to eliminate surgical backlogs after the COVID-19 pandemic and to reduce wait times for publicly funded surgeries and procedures.

In Windsor, David Musyj, president and CEO of the Windsor Regional Hospital, told us about the Windsor Surgical Centre, a new community clinic that opened in 2020 that now handles about 6,000 eye surgeries each year. This hospital CEO said that without this community clinic, the wait-list for eye surgery would be 20,000 people. Instead, these 20,000 people got the surgery that they needed when they needed it—and they all paid with their OHIP card, not their credit card. He called this a “massive success,” and I couldn’t agree more. This model has been successful in Ontario and many other provinces, including Quebec and Alberta, and as many members have noted, it was recently expanded in British Columbia under an NDP government.

Some of my friends on the other side defend the status quo, but as our former Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and the Supreme Court wrote in Chaoulli v. Quebec in 2005, “Access to a waiting list is not access to health care.” As the minister said, that’s why, if passed, Bill 60 would expand community-based clinics to perform 14,000 more OHIP-insured eye surgeries each year across the province, and it would expand knee and hip replacement surgeries in community-based clinics by 2024.

In Windsor, Mr. Musyj also said a few comments for the opposition members, which I’d like to quote briefly: “Whenever Windsor Regional Hospital has asked for help in the last three years” our government has “answered the call. This includes extra funding for hiring close to 500 more front-line clinical staff ... 60 more medicine-surgical beds ... funding for lost revenue, funding to recruit more staff,” funding for “signing bonuses.... Nothing has gone unanswered.”

He said it is true that Ontario has a health care human resources problem, but this hospital CEO said he was “offended” by the members opposite trying to “paint” the problem as “the government not allowing us access to resources or telling us no. That’s not what’s happening.”

As well, he said, “this government delivered on a previous government’s failed promise to provide stage 2 funding to build a new acute care hospital” in Windsor. This is “the first government to actually put money where their mouth is and get this project going.” And Speaker, I know the same is true in Mississauga, Brampton and communities across Ontario.

I don’t have time to list everyone who supports Bill 60, but I do want to thank Karli Farrow, the president of Trillium Health Partners, for joining us at Sheridan College for our pre-budget consultation in Mississauga. We also co-hosted virtual town hall meeting together about the new Mississauga hospital in January.

I’d like to quote from her statement as well: “As one of the largest surgical service providers in Ontario, that also serves one of the most impacted communities due to COVID-19, we’ve been working to address wait times, which have grown due to the pandemic, by focusing on operational efficiencies and hiring more staff.” Bill 60, she said, is “an important step in expanding access to surgical care, for patients in Mississauga and west Toronto.”

Today is International Rare Disease Day, and I want to thank the Canadian Organization for Rare Disorders for their breakfast reception this morning. The patients who joined us know that timely access to diagnostic testing, including MRI and CT imaging, is critical to improve early detection, to improve the length and quality of life for patients with rare conditions and also to reduce pressure on our hospitals. That is why it is so important that Bill 60 would expand access to these tests in community-based clinics to help reduce wait times.

Speaker, this is a personal issue for me. As some members know, I was fortunate to be diagnosed early, with heart valve disease. I had a mechanical valve installed 12 years ago.

I want to take a moment to thank all the members who came to our reception last week and had a stethoscope check. Dr. Janine Eckstein flew in from Saskatchewan, and Dr. David Messika-Zeitoun came from Ottawa. I also want to thank them, and Ellen Ross of Heart Valve Voice, for all their support and for their help drafting my private member’s bill. I hope all members will support Bill 66, as well, later this year.

Returning to Bill 60: I use community-based clinics every month. Because of my mechanical heart valve, I have to be on Coumadin for the rest of my life. So I use LifeLabs clinics on a monthly basis, and I thank them for all the great work they do in the area of Mississauga and across this province of Ontario. Instead of going to the hospital or to my family doctor, which would take up the physician’s time or the hospital’s time, it’s good to have clinics like this in the community to make it easier and faster to access more convenient services, closer to home. This allows our doctors and hospitals to focus on more complex, high-risk cases.

Lastly, it is important to note, Ontarians will always access health care with their OHIP card and not their credit card.

The Prime Minister, when he was asked to comment on Bill 60, said that a certain amount of innovation is good, as long as we abide by the Canada Health Act. Section 12 of the Canada Health Act requires that we provide reasonable access to health care services. But as the Supreme Court of Canada said, “Access to a waiting list is not access to care.”

The status quo might be good enough for the opposition, but it is not good enough for this government.

Bill 60 would help us improve access to care, within our publicly funded system. Again, I want to thank the Minister of Health and her team for all their work on this bill.

I urge all members to support this bill and provide the good health care that Ontario residents deserve and need in this province.

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

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.

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 very much, Speaker. It’s a pleasure to see you in the chair; it’s the first time.

It is always an honour to rise in this House to represent and speak on behalf of the good people of my riding, Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas. This Bill 60 and the changes that this government is making to our public health care system are of significant concern to the people in my riding. They call to share their hopes and their dreams and—I’ve been hearing so much from my constituents—to ask the question: Why is this government rushing to dismantle our public health care system, our publicly delivered, world-class health care system that has been the envy of the world?

As has been said here, health care is in crisis. We acknowledge that; we recognize it’s in a crisis, but it’s this government’s job to fix that crisis with the solutions they already have before them, not in fact to make it worse. For example, in Hamilton, we have world-class health care facilities. We have Hamilton Health Sciences, we have McMaster Children’s Hospital and we have St. Joseph’s. These are world-class hospitals that are struggling under the underfunding, the lack of funding, the lack of supports they need to be able to continue to deliver the health care the people of Hamilton need. It’s been said many, many times here that the solutions—in fact, it’s been said that you’ve manufactured this crisis, taken hallway health care that was a legacy of the Liberals and doubled down by making it worse by underfunding health care, and by introducing Bill 124, that has created and exacerbated a health care human resource crisis.

It’s a mystery to me why this government would, rather than the easy solutions which are to fund the health care hospitals we have, these world-class hospitals, cut them off and let them have to put people on wait-lists for surgery. Why you wouldn’t make sure they have the adequate funding? Why you wouldn’t make sure that the money you have in contingency funds and $12 billion of unspent money could be going right now to address wait-lists? Why are you not doing that? Why is that not your first choice?

Why are there 12,000 children on a surgery wait-list in the province of Ontario when you could start to address that by making sure these closed operating suites, these unused facilities are open again so that people could start getting the procedures and the surgeries they need to save lives, relieve pain and suffering and the fears of parents who are hoping that their children would get the care they deserve under this government?

I also wonder why you continue to disrespect health care workers, nurses and PSWs and refuse to repeal Bill 124. You continue to underpay them in a time when they are burnt out, stressed and doing the best they can in a system that you have destabilized further. Why are you taking nurses and PSWs back to court on Bill 124 when it’s been shown that this is an unconstitutional bill? Why is that not your first act?

The question really stands: Why are you rushing, rather than looking at the solutions that are before you? Why is your first act, the thing you’re putting all your effort into, to introduce profits into the health care system? It’s been called the profitization of our health care system, and it’s hard to describe it as anything other than that.

We have talked in this House about the proud history of the NDP and Tommy Douglas and our medicare system. All of you know, and all of you have been hearing from your constituents, that that is the pride of Ontario. That’s one of the things we’re so proud of: that people can get access to the health care and the emergency care they need, despite their ability to pay, anywhere in this province. To now go down the road of a two-tier health care system is exactly the wrong, wrong direction and nobody, if they understood what you are doing, would support this. I can only imagine that you are also hearing from your constituents that this is not what they expected and this is not where they want to see you going with their precious health care system.

Rather than taking the steps that you know will help to relieve the burden and will help to improve our publicly delivered health care system, you’re still rushing to introduce privatization without learning the lessons of the past. In this bill, there are absolutely no protections for patients seeking care in private, for-profit, corporatized facilities. It’s not in the bill. All you have to do is to look at the evidence that comes from what already exists in private, independent health facilities.

The report from the Auditor General is invaluable, and I wonder whether the opposite members, the MPPs or the ministers, have taken into account the findings of this value-for-money audit that the Auditor General has put out, because the warnings are there. The recommendations to protect patients both financially and health outcomes are in this report, but nothing has been put into this bill to address that.

Let me just point out some of the highlights—not really highlights; some of the actual dire warnings or recommendations that come from this report that should have been included in this bill but are not there.

I’m just going to start by—it’s interesting reading if you take the time to look at it, but really, the Auditor General said that there is “inadequate and inconsistent monitoring of the quality of outpatient surgeries.” No one is monitoring the results, the outcome of how people fare after they have surgeries or procedures in these independent health care facilities. There’s inadequate monitoring.

There’s also “no regular review and monitoring of funding and billings for outpatient surgeries.” So it’s all fine and dandy for you to say that people won’t have to pay extra—it’s absolutely not the truth, because in Ontario, people already pay extra for these procedures. They pay dearly for these procedures.

In fact, the Auditor General goes on to say that there’s absolutely “no provincial oversight to protect patients against inappropriate charges.” The ministry has not sufficiently reviewed “unusual billing patterns or trends to identify possible issues, such as inappropriate billings or inappropriate rendering of services.” These are the findings that the Auditor General did in 2021, and these problems still exist and are only going to be exacerbated by this bill.

I think the overall conclusion of the Auditor General that speaks to the two protections that people should expect from a government—to protect them financially and to protect their health outcomes—when they’re being driven by this government to private, for-profit clinics, the Auditor General says, clearly, “The ministry does not have a centralized way to measure and report on surgical quality and outcomes for all surgeries being performed in Ontario.” That’s shocking. There’s no oversight in place, and this bill does not put any in place.

The Auditor General also goes on to say that “We found that some patients could be given misleading information as part of sales practices to make a profit.” So the warning is here. This is already happening. The quality of people’s outcomes are not being monitored, and the fact they’re being charged inappropriately and overcharged for fees is not at all being addressed by this government. I would be curious to know what the government is doing to address these recommendations and these findings from the Auditor General.

The Auditor General’s work is invaluable to all of us in this House to do our work. Her work is stellar, and her work is invaluable. She’s an independent officer of this Legislature, and we should be listening to this and using this to make our bills better and to improve our bills. She said, mincing no words, that “the ministry is putting patients at greater financial risk by allowing additional private organizations to provide publicly funded surgeries while also being allowed to charge patients directly for additional uninsured services to make a profit without appropriate oversight mechanisms in place.”

There it is. It’s happening already in this province. You’re putting a bill forward that’s going to double down on this and that has not in any way addressed those concerns.

My question to the government would be, what happens if something goes wrong in one of these private clinics? What is the procedure when there are complications or urgent issues that arise? How will this impact our emergency rooms that are already closing? Have you considered any of this? Because it’s not in the bill, and in the debate that I’ve heard, you don’t address any of the concerns that people have.

So I would just say, despite the despair that we feel that this government is not protecting people when they need health care in this province—that in fact, you’re protecting profits over patients—I just have to end with a quote from Tommy Douglas, because it is the anniversary of his passing. Despite the despair that we feel, I think Tommy’s words would be, "Courage, my friends; ’tis not too late to build a better world.” That’s what we should be aspiring to, not a downward spiral to privatization and lack of services for the people of the province of Ontario.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I thank the member for her debate today.

I just want to ask the member a few questions. I hope that she can answer them.

Do you go to LifeLabs and do you use LifeLabs? It’s a private organization where you pay with your OHIP card. And if you do have a family doctor, which most of us do have, it is another private organization where you pay with your OHIP card. So are you against family doctors and LifeLabs? Do you want us to put them back into the hospital?

As well, the late Jack Layton, rest his soul, used Shouldice Hospital to have his hernia repaired. Do you agree with what Jack Layton did?