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.

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, 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 with regret today that I rise to speak to Bill 60, the government’s plan to introduce two-tier health care in Ontario. Public health care is a key component of our identity in Canada. Unlike our neighbours to the south, we made a decision that we weren’t going to let wealth determine people’s access to vital health care. We created a public medicare system that ensures everyone is able to get the health care they need, when they need it, without any question of how much money they have. People don’t have to go deeply into debt or sell off homes or businesses just because a family member got sick. People without money don’t need to worry that people with more money are going to come along and bump them out of the way. Access to health care is based on the urgency of your condition instead of your bank account.

Conservatives have never liked this system. They’ve always hated the fact that you can’t buy your way to the front of the line, and we know there have always been many people lobbying them, salivating over the opportunity to make a lot of money off of people in need. So, over the past four years, they’ve been hard at work generating a crisis.

Admittedly, the past Liberal government wasn’t great at managing health care either. They cut and underfunded until people were being treated in hallways—hallway medicine, everyone called it. But, under this Premier, we’ve gone from hallway medicine to no medicine. Emergency rooms are closed, so people can’t even get into the hallways. We’ve got beds and operating rooms that are empty despite the demand for health care, the long wait-lists, because we don’t have nurses and health care workers to staff them.

I guess it’s “mission accomplished” for the Premier and for the private, for-profit health care industry that has been lobbying him so hard for the past few years. Now that he has made the crisis so bad that nurses are leaving the profession in droves, now that people are waiting 12 hours at the emergency room, now that the wait-lists for surgeries are so long, the Premier has decided that this is the moment to really stick the knife in public health care and introduce two-tier health care in Ontario.

Make no mistake: This is deliberate. This government has set up public health care to fail so they could replace it with a for-profit model to line the pockets of their wealthy friends. And it is Ontarians—as always, with this government—that will pay the price, that will have to pull out their credit cards to pay for health care at these private facilities, that will wait even longer for health care in our public system as they bleed even more health care workers out of our hospitals, that will have to pay the taxes that are going into the pockets of private shareholders instead of to strengthening and expanding our public health care system.

This is part of a pattern with this government. Whether it’s the development of the greenbelt, the refusal to invest in public education or the destruction of public health care, we see this government constantly make decisions that don’t help people with the very real challenges that they face every day but somehow manage to make a bunch of friends and lobbyists around the Premier a lot of money.

We’ve seen this pattern with health care throughout this government’s time in office and throughout the pandemic. They took away public oversight of home care, leaving people vulnerable to the whims of for-profit companies. They granted licences to for-profit long-term-care providers that had hugely disproportionate death rates and they took away the rights of family members to sue. They contracted out PCR COVID testing to for-profit companies, leading to Ontarians having to pay $200 out of pocket to be tested because publicly accessible tests were so tightly rationed—unless you happened to attend a private school. And they’ve been expanding private clinics.

This most recent bill is not the innovative, bold or creative solution to surgical backlogs the health minister has claimed it is. It is the oldest trick in this government’s book: Put further pressure on an already struggling sector and offer privatization as the only way out.

If this government really wanted to address the current concerns in the health care sector, they would actually listen to nurses and health care workers about why they are leaving the health care sector and stop their appeal to try to save Bill 124, a bill that the courts found unconstitutional, a bill that nurses and health care workers have told this government they found profoundly disrespectful—humiliating, even—at a moment when they were working so incredibly hard throughout the pandemic, with their wages capped well below the rate of inflation.

I was at the pre-budget hearing in Ottawa, where nurses said that they were leaving the profession because of Bill 124 and that they found Bill 124 profoundly humiliating. Instead of listening to them, government members of the committee got into arguments with them. Nurses were literally telling them, “We’re leaving because of Bill 124,” and the government was saying, “No, that’s definitely not it.” How profoundly disrespectful is that?

What’s even more disrespectful is that government members tried to claim that it wasn’t Bill 124 that’s causing the shortage, because other jurisdictions also have a shortage of health care workers. Well, if other jurisdictions also have a shortage of health care workers, then how foolish is it to cap the wages of our health care workers and drive them away when there are job opportunities in other provinces?

If the government actually wanted to improve health care, they would focus on recruiting, retaining and returning nurses to our health care system—and personal support workers and other health care workers—providing them with better pay, better working conditions and the respect they deserve.

The government could work on licensing tens of thousands of internationally educated nurses and doctors already in Ontario, who are waiting years and paying thousands to have their credentials certified. The government could also fund hospitals across the province so that they have enough staff on every shift and on every ward, so that rooms don’t sit empty due to understaffing.

Make no mistake: The bottleneck for the surgical wait-list in Ontario is not due to a lack of operating space, it is due to a lack of staff for these operating rooms. Operating rooms are sitting empty because hospitals don’t have the resources to staff the ORs they already have. And now this government is trying to create a parallel system which will pull more staff out of our publicly funded system.

This move is also going to cost our health care system more. Services in private clinics receive more money than our public hospitals do for the same service, meaning that when private facilities perform surgeries, Ontario tax dollars will be going right into the pockets of shareholders that have invested in these facilities. The government’s actions will lead to investors making large profits off the backs of sick Ontarians.

Meanwhile, our hospitals depend on economies of scale to be able to fund more complex surgeries. So when we pull services out of the hospital, we leave the hospital trying to provide the more complex surgeries and the people with complications requiring longer surgeries, but we’re paying the hospitals less money than the private facilities are getting for simple surgeries, so we’re actually making it harder for the hospitals to pay the cost of these surgeries.

And while these clinics are able to charge our health care system more for the services they provide, they can also charge extra fees directly to the patients who are being sent there by this government. These fees take the form of consulting fees or membership fees that patients are made to cover in order to receive the health care they desperately need. We also know that many patients are upsold by doctors keen to make a profit.

But it’s not just people who are getting surgeries or procedures at private clinics who will be paying a price for this government’s policies; patients using the public system will also pay a price. They’re already paying a price now for Bill 124, with 12-hour wait times or longer at emergency rooms.

The Ottawa Hospital has had many times over the past year where they have been short as many as 800 nurses. They’ve had to get creative, and these absences are filled with unregulated, unlicensed care providers, not trained, professional registered nurses. In January, the Ottawa Hospital lost more nurses than they were able to recruit. While this is happening, this government has chosen to suppress nurses’ wages, ignore their concerns and undervalue their profession, while people are working in unbelievable conditions.

Here’s why this really matters, Speaker: There’s not a magical pool of nurses and health care workers that we just haven’t tapped yet who are suddenly going to appear and fill these positions in private health care facilities. These nurses and health care workers are going to come from our public system. And when we’re capping their wages in the public system, when we are putting them into unsustainable and dangerous working conditions, when nurses are already leaving to work at Costco because it’s less stressful, then why wouldn’t they leave to take a job at a private facility that only works weekdays from 9 to 5 and doesn’t have a wage cap?

This move is only going to pull more nurses and health care workers out of our system, leaving public health care in an even more precarious state, lengthening wait times for everyone, and the minister’s toothless staffing plan requirement isn’t going to address that, as we’ve already seen at the Riverside hospital in Ottawa, because that’s not a magic wand that can miraculously create more health care workers.

Ontario’s public health care system needs fixing. It absolutely needs fixing, but by allowing for-profit companies to offer health care services that were originally done by the public sector, this government is instead ensuring that sooner or later, those with more money will have access to better health care faster than other Ontarians, and this is unacceptable.

And so, Speaker, here we see another pattern emerging: Ontario residents are demanding better, health care workers are demanding better, but instead of listening to them, working with them and investing in the system, the government is enriching some private, for-profit corporations that lobbied really hard. Shame on them.

Thank you to the member opposite for your comments this morning. Our public health care system in Canada is one of our biggest competitive advantages. When companies are deciding whether to locate in the States or in Canada, they look at our public health care system and they say it’s a far better system, it’s a far less expensive system. A previous Conservative government converted our long-term-care homes from public not-for-profits into private for-profits, and then the Armed Forces report during the pandemic showed what a travesty that was, how people were dying of thirst because there was nobody there to give them a glass of water.

Why is this government converting our public not-for-profit health care system into a private for-profit system that will prioritize profit over the care that people receive?

I thank the member from Ottawa West–Nepean for her discussion this morning, but it left me curious. Obviously the opposition has to oppose what we’re doing, and it sounds like they’ll be voting against this piece of legislation also—

So I was wondering if the member—because I know she has experience working on different sides of the House in different places—has any ideas on how we could actually improve this legislation or what we could do to improve the health care system in Ontario, other than just continuing to maintain the status quo, which is what I’ve heard so far.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s good to see you in the chair.

Thank you to the member for Ottawa West–Nepean for that presentation this morning. One thing I don’t think has been touched on in the debate that I’ve heard so far is that Bill 60 talks about expanding the number of physicians who can join a family health team. I’d like to know the member’s position on that, if she supports expanding access to family health teams with more doctors.

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.

Good morning. It’s a beautiful day, everyone.

In the heart of Crescent Town resides Health Access Taylor-Massey, a health care centre oriented around community and social services. It’s actually an amazing health care model for all of Ontario. They are a crucial part of the East Toronto Health Partners, who are responsible for providing quality care and resources to the 300,000 people living in east Toronto communities, including my riding of beautiful Beaches–East York.

Health Access Taylor-Massey has helped 75,000 clients in an underserved community, addressing health inequities that have only become more prevalent with the COVID-19 pandemic. Their extraordinary services include family doctor appointments, vaccines, prenatal care, pap tests, cancer test referrals and COVID testing and treatment.

The strain on our health care system is evident with each passing day, with inconsistent wait times and long backlogs for medical services. Our health care system needs some more support to keep up the quality care provided for Ontarians. Neighbourhood-based care models like Health Access Taylor-Massey help alleviate the burden for hospitals. This centre was developed with the dedication and hard work of many of our East Toronto Health Partners, including our ever-energetic Stephen Beckwith, and the input from the Taylor-Massey Residents Wellness Council, where community members were given the opportunity to share their opinions to have a say in the building process, led from the ground up.

We must strive toward accessible health care that prioritizes specific needs, making it easier for residents to find specific care in one place closer to home. I regularly hear from many happy residents who utilize the valuable services of Health Access Taylor-Massey. Thank you to the staff for keeping it running, and keep up the great work. Let’s roll that model out right across Ontario.

Thank you to the member opposite for that question. Last week, I highlighted that the budget date would be March 23, so I would encourage the member opposite to join us on March 23 when she will find out the historic and the unprecedented investments that we’re making, not only in health care, but in infrastructure, in jobs, in labour and right across the board, Mr. Speaker.

This is a good point in time to highlight a very, very important point, something that happened last week on Thursday. You know what happened last Thursday? Under the Premier’s leadership—and the Deputy Premier—Ontario was the first government in Canada to sign the Canada Health Transfer agreement. The Premier broke the logjam in this country and that allowed for us to get it done, because people don’t want to hear governments just yapping and yapping. They want actual results. They want no backlogs in surgeries. They want better health care. They want access. They want—

Do you know what we heard? We heard, Mr. Speaker, our investments and our plan to build—we heard, “Keep going. Keep making those critical investments in subways, highways, in hospitals, in long-term care, in human health resources.” This government is listening and that’s why most of us are on this side, because we listen to the people of Ontario, and we’re going to get that job done.

Ah, the Liberals. Things are so bad for the Liberals that the leader of the Green Party took one look and said, “I don’t even want to lead this party”—right? This is a party—25% of their caucus wanted to support the Green leader to take over the leadership of the party. Their House leader actually wrote a letter supporting the Green leader to “please take over for our party.”

He wants facts? I’ll give him facts. Under the Liberals, 300,000 jobs gone; under the Liberals, manufacturing in this province decimated; under the Liberals, hydro rates through the roof. Under the Liberals, people had to decide whether to keep their homes or eat. Under the Liberals, long-term care decimated; under the Liberals, schools closed; under the Liberals, health care brought to its knees.

Under Conservatives: massive investments in health care, massive investments in education, transit and transportation back on track, Mr. Speaker—

Interjections.

I find it interesting in the House this afternoon—especially since we were just debating putting together this big piece of land for, potentially, a new automotive manufacturing plant—to hear from the opposition that they actually want to set the price of vehicles that an auto manufacturer can charge. I find that amusing.

But I know for the member, who had to have life-saving surgery himself and has been quite open about that in the House, that wait times are very, very important. They’re very personal to him.

I was wondering if he could speak a little bit more about how important it will be for everyone in Ontario to be able to get the health care that they need, faster and more effectively, when they need it, and to be able to pay for that with their health card.

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 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?

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?