Yes, thank you. The bill amends the Consumer Reporting Act and the Prevention of and Remedies for Human Trafficking Act, 2017. The Consumer Reporting Act is amended to prohibit the inclusion in consumer reports of unfavourable information about a consumer that resulted from human trafficking. The Prevention of and Remedies for Human Trafficking Act, 2017, is amended to add a new part IV which provides for the concept of a coerced debt, that being a debt incurred under a credit facility while the debtor was subjected to human trafficking.

I’m also very proud to say that this bill is co-sponsored by MPP Glover, MPP Schreiner and MPP Scott. Thank you for the support.

MPP Wong-Tam moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 42, An Act to establish the Gender Affirming Health Care Advisory Committee / Projet de loi 42, Loi créant le Comité consultatif des soins de santé axés sur l’affirmation de genre.

I want to thank the member from Elgin–Middlesex–London. His contributions to the agri-food sector are well known, and we’re sure better off with him in our caucus making a difference in the agri-food sector. I appreciate him and my parliamentary assistant and the Minister of Agriculture joining me for more than $6 million worth of announcements in a variety of different places and spaces in the agri-food sector.

There’s a very important reason for that: The largest growth opportunity for the agri-food sector is actually in northern Ontario. That’s right; from the clay belt, in Thunder Bay–Superior North and Rainy River—the official beginning of the Prairies—we see a tremendous opportunity to boost up our agri-food production.

The Premier and I were announcing in the spring a beef barn—

Northern Ontario is ready to receive the opportunity to contribute to Ontario’s world-class agriculture sector.

The newly self-anointed and self-appointed food security man from Timiskaming–Cochrane had no less than $28 million worth of agricultural investments in his riding. And do you know what he did? He voted against them every time. Why?

Interjections.

Of course, the committees will make their own decisions with respect to what bills they hear at that time. I’m sure the member wouldn’t want the government dictating the work of committees.

For Jim and Joan—a wonderful letter from Jim explaining to me the circumstances of his situation. That is why we did make changes well in advance to ensure that we could speed up the process of bringing families and couples together much quicker. At first blush, the member’s bill actually would seem to delay that process and make it more difficult to bring families together—that’s certainly not, I’m sure, her intention. It’s not what we want to do.

Ultimately, one of the reasons why we’re making so many investments into long-term care across the province of Ontario is not only for people like Jim and his wife; it’s for families who want to be close to the people they love and communities that they helped build. That is why we’re building 60,000 new and upgraded beds in every part of this province. We’re going to rural and remote communities. We’re bringing long-term care into small communities that have never had long-term care before—because we’ve heard not only from people who live in big cities, but in small communities.

We want to be close to home. We want to be with our families and friends. And we want to be in the communities that we helped build for generations.

We’re getting the job done for people.

I remind members to make their comments through the Chair.

Minister of Health.

Response?

I will ask the minister when she might be able to give the House some indication as to when the response will be forthcoming.

The House recessed from 1150 to 1300.

Mr. Clark moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 39, An Act to amend the City of Toronto Act, 2006 and the Municipal Act, 2001 and to enact the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve Repeal Act, 2022 / Projet de loi 39, Loi visant à modifier la Loi de 2006 sur la cité de Toronto et la Loi de 2001 sur les municipalités et à édicter la Loi de 2022 abrogeant la Loi sur la Réserve agricole de Duffins-Rouge.

First reading agreed to.

First reading agreed to.

First reading agreed to.

First reading agreed to.

First reading agreed to.

I move that:

Whereas staffing shortages in Ontario have forced emergency room and ICU closures across Ontario, reducing access to complex and potentially life-saving care in many communities; and

Whereas other hospitals have been forced to close units, redirect patients to other facilities and reduce beds, contributing to ER wait times of up to 36 hours for patients that require a hospital stay; and

Whereas health care job vacancies have more than quadrupled since 2015, resulting in more than 45,000 openings in primary care, and research by the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario underscores the urgent need to train and hire tens of thousands of extra nurses, PSWs and allied health professionals to meet the government’s own 2024-25 long-term care targets for hands-on staffing care, while the College of Nurses of Ontario reports over 15,000 nurses in Ontario are licensed and not practising; and

Whereas health care workers are overworked, underpaid, subject to violence, and distressed by their inability to provide the care patients need due to poor working conditions and inadequate staffing, driving many to leave the profession in record numbers; and

Whereas Ford government policies such as the Protecting a Sustainable Public Sector for Future Generations Act, 2019—previously Bill 124—and other stopgap measures have failed to fix the problem, leaving nurses, allied health professionals and other front-line health care workers with wages falling far short of inflation, while the government of Ontario chose not to invest over $1 billion of the money allocated for hospitals in the 2021-22 budget; and

Whereas this government allowed the health human resource crisis to persist while billions of dollars in unspent public funds have been allocated to discretionary funds instead of Ontario hospitals that are struggling to maintain quality of care because they are dramatically understaffed; and

Whereas the Ford government has failed to develop a comprehensive health care staffing plan to train, recruit and retain sufficient numbers of health care workers and have ignored the advice of health care professionals on how to solve the staffing crisis in hospital and primary care; and

Whereas the Ministry of Health’s inadequate temporary retention bonus for nurses fails to address systemic issues in the sector and falls far short of the efforts to retain, retrain and recruit front-line health care staff in Quebec, British Columbia and Atlantic Canada; and

Whereas the Minister of Health’s recent directives on internationally trained health care professionals fail to provide the funding, education spaces and internships needed to help address the staffing shortfall, and fails to implement many of the painful lessons learned during the pandemic; and

Whereas nursing vacancies in Ontario hospitals increased by almost 300% between March 2020 and March 2022, the turnover rate for nurses has increased by 72% since 2020, and the turnover rate for RPNs, PSWs and other health care workers more than doubled since 2016;

Therefore the Legislative Assembly calls on the Ford government to create, in consultation with unions and other health sector stakeholders, a multi-layer health care worker recruitment and retention incentive package that includes short-, medium- and long-term solutions to recruit, retain and return workers across the health sector with full-time, public, unionized positions and immediately repeals Bill 124, restoring workers’ right to bargain for wages that reflect their worth and the significant impact of rising inflation.

There is a severe shortage of health human resources in Ontario, and it’s brought our health care system to its knees. We haven’t seen a crisis like this in generations. Health care is something that happens between two human beings. When one of them is burnt-out and cannot continue to work, our system collapses.

If it was even possible, across the province, hallway medicine has worsened; people are waiting 24, sometimes 48, hours on a stretcher in a hallway in an emergency room before being admitted. We’re talking about people that are sick enough to need admission into our hospital waiting in a busy, noisy emergency room for days on end, Speaker.

According to Ontario Health, in September this year, the wait times in our emergency rooms across Ontario hospitals reached a record high. On average, every single day—they take it at midnight—there were 946 patients waiting for a hospital bed in an emergency room. Think about it: 946 Ontarians who were sick enough to go to the hospital, who were waiting to be assessed by a physician and a team of caring health professionals who have told you that you need to be admitted, and they are waiting in our emergency rooms.

That number in August was 884, but I am sure that as soon as the numbers for October come out, it will be even higher than 946 people.

Since this summer alone, Ontario emergency rooms have shut down more than 86 times, Speaker. In October, the emergency room in Chesley announced that it was forced to shut its doors until December. This is over eight weeks where there is no emergency department available to the good people of Chesley. Speaker, would you say that this is normal?

This comes after years of neglect by previous Conservative and Liberal governments that have brought us to where we are today—add on top of this a pandemic. We are at the point where people are afraid of falling sick. They are afraid to seek medical support. They are afraid to go to our emergency rooms, because they know that they are going to wait too long.

Now this crisis has landed in our pediatric hospitals, and families—young children—are paying the price for a crisis created by Conservative and Liberal governments’ neglect. Parents are scared, Speaker.

SickKids, a world-renowned pediatric hospital, had to shut their intensive care unit. The intensive care unit is where you care for the sickest of the sickest of the children. Right now, over half of the kids in intensive care are on a respirator. This is unheard of. SickKids cannot care for all of the kids. Their intensive care unit is full, at 130% capacity, yet here we are. They’re sending kids as young as 14 years old outside of the pediatric hospital into general hospitals, because they have no room to care for them. In a province as rich as Ontario, it is incomprehensible that we have come to that.

There are presently 32,000 job vacancies in our hospitals, long-term-care homes and residential care facilities. Add to this another 10,350 job vacancies, for a total of over 42,350 vacancies in our health care system right here, right now in Ontario. Things have to change. We cannot continue this way. Ontario has the lowest per capita investment. We have the lowest nurse per capita in Canada. We have the least hospital beds.

There are solutions: Repeal Bill 124 and give our nurses and everybody else who works in health care the respect they deserve. There will be many other solutions coming forward by my colleagues, and I hope they will be acted upon.

Madame Gélinas has moved opposition day number 2. Further debate? I recognize the member for Nickel Belt.

I stand today in support of this motion because it supports health care workers, and, by retention, seniors, children, families and hospitals in Niagara and across Ontario. In Niagara, we have seen the cost of staffing shortages. We have seen a Niagara Health system that has buckled under the pressure. The results have been closures of emergency rooms in our region.

We have also seen the cost for families seeking pediatric care having to wait hours to get the help they need. Niagara has seen sexual assault survivors that are seeking justice having to be redirected to other communities, often more than an hour away.

We are well into half a decade of majority PC government and I think everyone will agree that health care access is worse now than it was five years ago. If the problem is getting worse—which it is—this government must take responsibility: Do more. Take action.

Nursing vacancies in Ontario hospitals have increased by almost 300% between March 2020 and March 2022. Health care workers and Ontario patients need immediate and sustainable solutions. At this point, the weight of the response needs to match the crisis.

This is why I was shocked this week to learn that in the fall economic update there is not a single new penny in the government’s economic update for nurses and health care workers as the staffing crisis shakes our hospitals.

Ford is refusing to spend in critical areas like public health and yet sits on billions. Nurses need support. They are being run off their feet. Families are facing the fear of what it will mean if their loved ones—a child or a senior—get sick and have to go into their local hospitals. Instead, we have seen the government put in policies like Bill 124, which has been widely recognized to make the health care staffing crisis worse.

The previous PC government under Mike Harris met the moment of a health care crisis with privatization and cuts. Those actions led to fewer nurses and a provincial long-term-care sector that was one of the worst performers in Canada throughout the pandemic.

Over the last five years, we have had opportunity after opportunity to fix the staffing crisis in hospitals. It is about time we do that, and it is why we need to pass this motion and fully commit to solutions to retention and recruitment in health care right now.

Further debate?

Further debate?

Today, I want this Premier to hear from people in my community, to hear from my hospital and health care professionals. I want this Premier to stop and listen and understand that his sycophantic echo chamber of yes men are not listening to women in care fields or health care workers who are desperate for support to care for their patients.

I wish this Premier cared about parents who are terrified that their kid will be one of the growing number of children who need to be resuscitated or ventilated or whose surgery will be postponed because there isn’t enough room or staff to care for them.

This government is allowing folks to get sick and to suffer. Day after day, listening to the health minister talk about the fact that they knew the surge was coming is enough to make anyone sick. How is it that they declare proudly that they anticipated this surge, but don’t understand that the terrifying and deteriorating situation we find ourselves in was not the foregone conclusion that they have accepted, knowingly, and, I would argue, invited with complacent and complicit arms.

Speaker, we are hearing terrible stories from real people. Here is a wrenching email that I received:

“Hi Jennifer. I’m sending this email because our health care system is falling apart. The hospital is understaffed with only half the amount of staff working. I’m currently at the hospital having a miscarriage and I have waited seven hours to see a doctor. This is insane, and we need to do something about this. There’s people laying on the floor who have been here before I got here waiting to see a doctor. We should not have to wait this long for health care. The hospital staff shouldn’t have to be under this much stress trying to give care to people, short-staffed.”

Imagine that.

It was only this past July that Lakeridge Health had to make the difficult decision to temporarily close and relocate the Bowmanville ICU in the middle of a significant staff shortage. Speaker, while that ICU is thankfully again operational, things are not better. Just a few days ago, the Region of Durham Paramedic Services and Lakeridge Health put out this joint statement:

“Lakeridge Health’s emergency departments continue to experience critical staffing shortages and high patient volumes. This is impacting overall wait times for less acute patients and increasing the time that the Region of Durham Paramedic Services is able to offload ambulances at Lakeridge Health hospitals.”

Hospitals are struggling with a staffing shortage and are handcuffed by Bill 124. The government is fine with them being held hostage by private nursing agencies who can demand any amount for their nurses, but the hospital isn’t allowed to pay their own employees to retain them, to bargain competitive wages or to even remotely pay them what they’re worth. Breaking the system apart to privatize it is reckless, self-serving, backwardly ideological and not what leadership looks like.

What could leadership look like, Speaker? This government needs to repeal the wage-suppressing Bill 124. The government needs to work with unions and health sector stakeholders to create an effective plan to recruit, retain and return health care workers, and restore workers’ rights to freely bargain for fair wages. That would not only be leadership, but also responsible government.

People are not only sick and tired of this government’s bully tactics, they are sick. And this government needs to listen to the health care sector and the hurting public who are rightly demanding funded and supported not-for-profit health care.

Further debate?

Ça me fait plaisir de me lever pour la motion sur la pénurie dans notre système de santé.

Je vais vous parler d’une situation. On entend ce gouvernement-là dire de bonnes choses, mais quand ça arrive à l’action, ils ne sont jamais là. Je vais vous parler d’une proposition qui a été déposée en mars 2022. La ministre a demandé de l’aide aux hôpitaux, pour voir s’il y a des solutions, des propositions, qui pourraient aider la situation avec la pénurie qu’on vit. Ils ont fait une proposition en mars. Ils ont envoyé une lettre à la ministre, demandant de l’aide pour un anesthésiste.

On n’a généralement qu’un anesthésiste dans notre région. Ça veut dire que s’il n’est pas là, il n’y a pas d’opérations. Donc ils ont demandé un anesthésiste de plus pour les hôpitaux de Hearst, de Kapuskasing et de Cochrane, pour nous aider—puis pas rien que ça, l’anesthésiste est après de se brûler. On a un anesthésiste; s’il fait un « burn-out », on n’en a plus, et ça veut dire qu’on repousse tout. Ça veut dire qu’il y a eu, jusqu’à aujourd’hui, 75 chirurgies qui ont été mises de côté. Vous allez dire que 75, ce n’est pas gros; mais pour la région, c’est gros. Pour un hôpital comme à Hearst, c’est gros. Douze fois l’hôpital est passé proche de se fermer.

Mais ça s’arrête pas là. Ils ont demandé à multiples reprises, depuis 2020, à la ministre de répondre—une simple réponse. C’est un manque de respect, ça, quand tu ne donnes pas une réponse à quelqu’un. Ils ont une solution qu’ils proposent pour aider. Une simple réponse—aucune réponse. J’ai envoyé une lettre personnellement. Je l’ai délivrée en main personnellement; aucune réponse. Encore hier, en personne, j’ai dit : « Madame la Ministre, répondez, parce que ça va répondre aux besoins. » Silence radio; aucune réponse.

Des fois, les bottines, il faut qu’elles suivent les babines. Ce n’est pas compliqué, ça. Vous dites les bonnes choses, mais rien ne se passe. Sur le terrain, vous ne reflétez pas ce que vous dites.

Vous avez des solutions qu’ils vous proposent pour aider les communautés dans les régions du Nord. On n’a déjà pas assez de médecins; on n’a pas assez d’infirmières. Qu’est-ce qu’on fait? On ne donne pas de réponse. C’est un manque de respect, ça, aux commettants du nord de l’Ontario, de mon comté, où on a besoin de médecins et on a un anesthésiste qui est après de se brûler. S’il tombe, qu’est-ce qu’il y arrive? Aucune opération. Voyons, ça fait du sens. Réveillez-vous. On a du monde qui a besoin d’anesthésistes.

Emergency rooms are closing. Surgeries are being postponed and cancelled. Missing ICU beds for children—for children. Ils se sont endormis sur la switch, l’autre bord.

Hospitals are having to hire nurses through agencies with hefty fees, paying 50% or more—50 % et plus. Je parlais avec l’hôpital—250 000 piastres pour un mois. Est-ce que ça fait du sens, payer ça? C’est nous, les payeurs de taxes, qui payons plus pour un gouvernement qui fait pas assez—pourquoi? Parce qu’ils veulent privatiser notre système de santé.

On a une pénurie. Agissez. Faites la bonne chose. Commencez par enlever le projet de loi 124. Il y a plus de monde qui sort que de monde qui rentre dans notre système de santé. Comme on dit en français : « Allume, légume! » Je pense qu’on s’est rendu là. Le gouvernement devrait allumer, parce qu’il y a un manque, une pénurie. Le projet 124 nuit à ça.

Puis, répondez. Je dis à la ministre : répondez à l’hôpital de Hearst, qui mérite une réponse, parce qu’on a besoin—on a des solutions qui vont nous aider, mais c’est silence radio.

Commencez par enlever le projet de loi 124, puis répondez aux propositions qu’on vous a données pour répondre aux besoins de notre communauté. Merci.

It’s my honour to rise today to discuss our NDP motion to recruit and retain more front-line health care workers. This is an incredibly important motion. When you have a government that introduces legislation like Bill 124 during a global pandemic, capping the wages of our burnt-out front-line health care staff, you end up with a crisis in staffing.

In September of this year, the president of Niagara Health released a statement about the challenges created by the staffing crisis in health care:

“There is no bigger issue facing Ontario hospitals today than the serious shortage of health-care workers.

“These challenges are unprecedented and something we will be dealing with for years to come.”

This comes after another statement from Niagara Health in July, noting that the Niagara Health system was trying to fill a total of 608 positions, 608 vacancies, across the region of Niagara in our hospital system. Think about that. There are almost 5,000 patients awaiting non-emergency surgeries that have been postponed. Across the province of Ontario, emergency departments have had to close more than 86 times due to staffing shortages just since this summer. We see the results of the staffing shortages almost every day in my office.

This government introduced Bill 124, and it was a slap in the face to our brave front-line health care workers and other workers in the province of Ontario. It should be immediately repealed. This legislation has no place in a province of Ontario that respects workers.

We know that this government does not respect workers. They attack workers’ rights all the time. The labour minister, Monte McNaughton, supported Bill 124, the attack against workers, the attack against collective agreements, the attack against seniority. Also under a Conservative government, under Harris, they laid off 6,000 nurses.

Speaker, we know about how the province’s vacancies from nursing jobs have increased almost 300% since the start of the pandemic. Turnover rates for RPNs and PSWs have doubled in the last six years. Why do you think that’s the case? Maybe my colleagues can help me. Can we all say “Bill 124”?

Early retirements of nurses have doubled. Our health care staff are burnt-out, exhausted, leaving the profession they love because they just can’t do it anymore. They’re the people who showed up every single day of the pandemic to protect us—front-line health care workers.

This is a crisis. And where is this government? Nowhere to be found. Front-line health care workers have been telling them directly that they need to act to address this crisis. Five of the biggest health care unions wrote a joint letter to the Premier—think about this—asking him to address this crisis. As of last week, no response from the Premier—no mask, either. This government would rather attack the collective bargaining rights of workers than fix this problem.

Speaker, we need a serious plan for the staffing crisis in our health care system. And do you know how to start? It starts by repealing Bill 124. That’s the first step in fixing this incredible problem. Because Bill 124 froze wages, including for nurses, they have taken—think about this—with the rate of inflation, a 6% pay cut during this time. It’s unacceptable. Frankly, it’s another attack on the collective bargaining rights of workers. We need to repeal Bill 124 immediately—

Interjection.

It’s a real pleasure to speak to this very important motion that would launch a massive recruitment and retention plan to address the health care staffing shortage in our province, a shortage that has resulted in the worst health care crisis in generations.

For the last few months, I’ve been travelling around Ontario, from North Bay to Nepean, from Fort Erie to Whitby, from Brampton to Sault Ste. Marie, and just last weekend to Kingston. A few weeks back, I was up near Chesley. We’ve heard Chesley talked about a lot in this place. Back in October, they announced that they were going to be closing their ER until December. And if it wasn’t already bad enough, that situation—for this government to take some kind of urgent action, surely the desperate pleas of parents whose children are stacked up in overcapacity children’s ICUs should be enough, you’d think, but no, Speaker. In the midst of this, this government chose not to spend a single new dollar to address this situation—absolutely shameful.

From March 2020 to March of this year, nursing vacancies increased by 300%. Health care professionals are clear about what’s happening—the terrible working conditions; overworked, stressed, underpaid, underappreciated; unable to provide the quality of care that they know their patients deserve; hospitals forced to close emergency rooms and ICUs. Speaker, I know that many people out there have been told by this government and governments before them that this is the best they can expect, but I can tell you one thing: Waiting in an emergency room for 14 or 20 hours, that’s not normal, and we should not be forced to accept that in this province.

This government wants to tell you that’s as good as it gets, but the answers are right here in this motion. Get rid of Bill 124—there’s a start. Get rid of Bill 124. Restore health care workers’ rights to bargain for wages that reflect their worth. Work with us. Work with health care stakeholders to develop an incentive package. This government needs to do better and they need to do it urgently.

Further debate?

I appreciate the opportunity. I want to thank all my colleagues who have spoken so far today and who I know will be speaking further to this opposition day motion this afternoon.

Speaker, there is no doubt whatsoever that we have a crisis at our hospitals. You are well aware of this. McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton is strained to the limit. We’ve had ERs shut down this past summer alone more than 86 times. In October, the emergency room in Chesley was forced to shut its doors for eight weeks.

The reason for this strain or crisis on the system is not mysterious: We have a body of workers—nurses and health care workers—who have been pressed to the limit through the pandemic, who were suffering under a huge strain before the pandemic and who have been put in a box of a 1% wage increase per year. These people who risk their lives, who risked the lives of their families, were told that they were heroes, yet their financial needs, their aspirations to live a decent life, have been kicked to the side, have been forgotten.

Until we get rid of Bill 124, until we actually bring in compensation that will retain these people that we need to have, until we actually bring in compensation that will bring back some of the early retirees, we will not be able to make up for the number of people that we’re losing in our health care system, in our hospitals. That will mean the crisis that we face will continue.

Speaker, this motion to set in place an approach to retention and to recruitment is going to be critical to make sure that any of us in this room and our families will be able to get the urgent medical care they need when they need it, will be able to get the surgeries that they need when they need it—not delayed six months, not delayed a year or two years, but when they need it. If we fail to do this, we are putting the people of Ontario in an impossible position, a position where their lives are at risk, the lives of their children are at risk, the lives of their friends and family are at risk.

I am urging the government to not only vote in favour of this motion today, but, upon passage, to actually take the steps necessary to implement these very critical measures so we have a health care system that works, that will deliver and once again will be the envy of people around the world.

Further debate?

It’s my honour to stand in support of our NDP opposition motion calling for a health staffing shortage strategy so we can recruit, retain and respect—and pay, quite frankly—HCWs, who are supporting our community, supporting those in St. Paul’s and across Ontario.

Let me be clear: Any new beds or hospitals this government has promised do not mean anything without the staff, without the front-line health care workers, in place—not burnt-out, not stressed out, not sick themselves—there to do the caring work.

In order for the Conservative government to do what they need to do, they must repeal Bill 124, a wage-suppressing bill, a bill that takes away workers’ collective bargaining rights. And frankly, these workers are predominantly women and BIPOC folks, as I have said over and over. Bill 124 is driving our front-line health care heroes, our workers, angels—whatever you want to call them—out of the profession.

We need to ensure that internationally trained professionals can enter the workforce. The Conservative government had a chance to support the member from Scarborough Southwest’s legislation, and they chose not to. The government has had opportunities to support the member from Sudbury’s PMB to raise the wage floor for hard-working PSWs so they can simply make a livable income.

The government is not listening. The impact of them not listening means that our ERs are closing down. Children are being turned away. Parents like Lisa, a mom in my riding—she has pulled her 15-year-old daughter from school because the risk of her contracting COVID in a mostly unmasked classroom, thanks to the Premier, is too high and life-threatening given her lifelong cardiac and respiratory medical complications. If this 15-year-old needs service, she will be triaged into an adult facility, because there’s no space in child ICUs.

In the Niagara region: Myself and the MPP for St. Catharines wrote to the Minister of Health in September about the crisis happening there with sexual assault survivors who cannot access kits, because, frankly, there aren’t enough specialized staff, the sexual assault nurse examiners, to administer those kits. September 29—I’ve got the letter right here to the Minister of Health; no response. We need a response.

This government needs to give health care workers 10 paid sick days so they can actually heal and stay in the profession when they’re sick.

And finally, Speaker, they must end the scheme—because this is a scheme. Their Christmas wish is to privatize health care, and there isn’t a single Ontarian who is on board with that and neither are any of our health care workers. The government needs to create a health care strategy to keep our front-line health care workers on the job, happy, respected, paid and protected.

This is about health care, and there are often times when members of the opposite side won’t listen to us, so I’m going to read some letters that I have about the real crisis in health care. I’m going to ask my colleague to let me know when I start running out of time.

The first one is from an RN: “I am a registered nurse in the province of Ontario and I do have a deep appreciation of the current situation in our diverse sectors of health care. I am reaching out this afternoon, not as a nurse but as a very concerned patient currently in the system. Last summer I was diagnosed with bilateral pulmonary embolisms from which I almost died.

“During this hospital stay, I was made to wait 24 hours in the emergency department as no critical care beds were available.

“While I survived this ordeal, I am still not fully recovered and need further testing done and possibly surgery to remove the blood clots in both of my lungs.

“I had to wait at least a month to have a CT scan of my lungs.

“My biggest concern at this time is that I will need surgical intervention that cannot be done close to home. I will need to travel to southern Ontario for this procedure.

“With the current state of our health care system, how long will this be?

“How many times will this procedure be cancelled and rebooked due to a lack of physicians and nurses?

“Will I need to pay for the procedure and for any further diagnostic tests that I my need?

“I cannot afford to pay for expensive procedures and test if the” Conservative “government moves ahead with privatization of our health care system.

“While all of this was happening, I was also laid off from my full-time job. I am only able to find part-time work and therefore I have no benefits, no sick time, and I must pay out of pocket for medications, which total roughly $400 every three months.

“I am having to make the hard choice to remain on my medications and not be able to purchase enough groceries. At times, I have to deny myself meals in order to pay for medications and maintain my household expenses.

“Please help not only myself, but the many ... patients who are in similar situations.

“When will” the Premier and the Minister of Health “realize that our system is in crisis now and this crisis will not improve unless Bill 124 is repealed and they are willing to listen to the people who are currently facing such challenges?

“The plan to privatize the health care system is not the solution.”

Karen is an RPN. She reached out to me.

“I am a constituent in your riding of Sudbury.

“I am ... one of Ontario’s 50,000 registered practical nurses (RPNs) who has been working on the front lines of this pandemic, providing critically needed care for the people in your community. I am writing today to share my concerns that RPNs continue to be undervalued for the important care we provide, despite going above and beyond the call of duty.

“Ontario’s RPNs are college-educated, regulated nurses who combine nursing skill, knowledge and judgment to deliver exceptional care....

“I work alongside RNs and perform the same care, and am paid considerably less....

“Though the RPN role is much more similar to our registered nurse (RN) colleagues, our compensation continues to be more closely aligned with personal support workers (PSWs)....

“RPNs are continuing to be squeezed by growing workloads as they care for an increasingly complex patient and resident population, while facing stagnant wages. We have also seen inflation grow to over 4.5%”—higher since she wrote this. “I am paying more for gas, groceries, insurance as well paying my licensure and mandated liability insurance through WeRPN. This is over $700 per year.

“More and more nurses are considering leaving the profession at a time when we need them most. As my elected official, I am urging you to take action to recognize the extremely challenging realities that RPNs like myself are facing.... As a first step, I am asking that the government take immediate steps to increase the wages of RPNs to align with the current realities of their role.”

I am asking on behalf of her for the government to repeal Bill 124.

I’m proud to rise and speak on behalf of my good people of Scarborough Southwest to speak to this bill to recognize the staffing shortages that we’re facing in our province and, frankly, propose solutions, because this government—seeing the crisis that we’re facing in our health care sector, seeing the crisis we’re facing in our hospitals—does not have a clear plan to respond to the health human resource crisis that we’re facing in Ontario.

Hospitals, long-term-care homes, home care and community care settings are all reporting critical staffing shortages, and it is causing major damages across the board. When we look at the Health Quality Ontario report, they reported the average wait time was seven times the provincial target of two days in Kingston and six times the target in Milton, Oakville, London, Toronto and Scarborough. And 13 hospitals reported that patients have waited over 24 hours on average—and that’s just the average.

I was recently in an emergency room and I have seen first-hand what people are facing, what kind of injuries people are sitting with and the amount of excruciating pain people are having to go through. I just look at the faces of the nurses and the doctors and how hard they’re trying to be able to just keep up and the amount of time they would come back and say, “We’re trying our best. We’re trying our best.” You could see the stress in their faces, their eyes. They want to help, but we are failing them and we need to do better, and this does that.

I heard from a constituent, Farzana Ghani, recently. Her husband has cancer and he was diagnosed at Michael Garron Hospital. He waited for months for an oncologist appointment, and now they are waiting another month just to get a PSW and a caregiver. This family had to lose their income just to take care of him because they are waiting for a caregiver. We don’t have enough PSWs and caregivers.

Another constituent in Scarborough Southwest reached out. Her adult daughter has experienced trauma recently. There is an 18-month waiting period to access the trauma program at the Women’s College Hospital—18 months. That’s the norm that she was told.

Another mother actually wrote, and because I have a short time, I am just going to say that all she asked is, “Can you ask this government, ‘Has everyone given up? Are we accepting this as the norm? Has everyone given up?’” Because if we look at the government’s fiscal update, it looks like they have given up. They don’t see the health care crisis.

We need to have a multi-layer health care worker recruitment and retention incentive package that includes short-, medium- and long-term solutions to recruit and retain workers across all health care sectors with good jobs. We need to repeal Bill 124. It is the number one thing that’s causing so many health care workers to leave our province and go to other professions, because they do not feel respected and they do not feel appreciated. Even though we’re calling them heroes, we’re not paying them the wages that they deserve.

We need to restore workers’ rights to bargain for wages that reflect their worth and we need to recognize the internationally trained professionals, the internationally trained health care workers, who are waiting to contribute to this province, who have waited for years. There are workers across this province who are Canadian citizens, are Ontarians, who can be contributing right now to this province, but we’re not making it easy for them.

We need to do better by all of these people and we need to do better by all the kids who are waiting in our hospital rooms. We need to do better for our seniors who are waiting to have better care and we need to do better for all our health care workers.

Please pass this. I hope the government will listen and, this time, come up with a strategy.