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’d like to welcome Miguel Avila-Velarde, a resident from Regent Park and advocate and strong community member from the Toronto Community Housing community.