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 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 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?