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.

I rise today in support of our opposition day motion because it’s clear that Ontario is in the midst of an unmitigated health care crisis. Recently, the member for London West and I had the opportunity to meet with the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario at their event Queen’s Park on the Road. I’d like to share some of the information that we gleaned from that evening, because it’s important that we listen to the front-line workers who are dealing with this crisis day in and day out, and who are not affected by this government’s spin.

We heard stories about a fourth-year nursing student who was paired with a nurse as their mentor who had just two months of experience. Asking nurses who barely know how to be a nurse to perform as an educator—that’s the staffing crisis that we are in.

This government has introduced legislation that has had a dramatic and drastic impact on nursing morale and the amount of people who have decided to leave the profession altogether. In fact, RNAO shares that 69% of nurses, of respondents, are choosing to leave the profession entirely, and 95% want to go into another field somewhere else.

There are stories about people who had been on a wait-list for seven days in home and community care. Another example is of a patient who needed daily wound care and had to wait 28 days to get their care. In fact, they had to turn to an emergency room.

Because there is a lack of a health human resources strategy from this government, it’s no wonder we’re in the crisis that we are in. People who are waiting for home care are left in no position but to go to an ER because they’re simply waiting far too long.

We talked to emergency room nurses who shared that they had upwards of 46 patients by 5 p.m. and they had nowhere to put people. We’re talking that the hallways were full; the closets were full. There were people who were waiting for care and there was simply no place to put them, because ERs, unfortunately, cannot turn people away from the health care they need. When they’re not able to get the home care in their community, they simply turn to an ER.

They also mentioned that the London Health Sciences Centre had recently posted that there was a 20-hour wait for people to be seen in emergency rooms, and, unfortunately, that’s not an accurate portrayal. They shared with us that it was up to 48 to 72 hours before people received the care they needed.

I urge this government to support this motion because we need a health human resources strategy to make sure that we’re responding to the health care needs of Ontarians immediately.

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.

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.

I recognize the member for Scarborough Southwest.

Thank you to my colleagues opposite for your contributions to this debate. I am excited to talk about this today. I wanted to start by saying that I am really proud of our government, and particularly our government’s health care recruitment, retention and training strategy, which has been in place now throughout the pandemic, and we keep adding and enhancing it. We have short-, medium- and long-term solutions to recruit, retain and train our health care workers, and I am proud that we brought in the elements of that strategy at the beginning of the pandemic and ongoing throughout our term in office. So I am really excited to have an opportunity to speak today about the investments in our health human resources and our health human resource recruitment, retention and training strategy—the largest of its kind in Ontario’s history and probably the largest of its kind across Canada, given that Ontario is a big part of Canada.

First off, I want to reiterate how I am amazed every day by the ongoing, remarkable commitments, dedication etc. of all of our health care workers, all of our health care providers, to give every Ontarian the best care possible, often under trying circumstances. They do that every day and I think we all owe them at least a little applause for that, because they do such a great job.

But I can certainly tell you that, from the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, our government has been taking deliberate action on a health human resources recruitment, retention and training initiative that is, as I said, the largest of its kind. We’ve done everything we can to meet the health needs of Ontarians, and our commitment to that goal has not wavered in any way. We have worked and we will continue to work tirelessly to ensure that Ontarians’ health workforce is supported, equipped and able to respond to the needs of patients across our health care system.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, programs launched by our government have already added over 12,000 health care professionals to the system, including acute care settings, including long-term-care homes and including our home and community care settings that help to preserve hospital capacity, and we’re still doing more of that. After our initial work to create additional capacity through the Ontario matching portal, we invested $52.5 million to recruit, retain and support over 3,700 health care workers and caregivers, to ensure continuity of safe care for patients and long-term-care residents in the province.

In addition to the work we’ve done to increase the supply of health care workers to the province, we have worked to support and retain our existing workforce. We introduced temporary pandemic pay as a measure to recognize the dedication and the long hours of working to contain the COVID-19 outbreak. We introduced that, and Ontario’s pandemic pay program is one of the largest of its kind in the country, and it’s unprecedented in the province’s history. Under that, over 375,000 of Ontario’s front-line workers are receiving or have already received pandemic pay, of which over 225,000 are in the health care sector. On average, a nurse receiving pandemic pay received $12,000—on average, each nurse—of temporary pandemic pay during the period of the heart of the pandemic. From, say, March 2020 to March 2022, they received that $12,000 extra in temporary pandemic pay.

And the government has continued to invest in Ontario’s health care workforce. Since October 1, 2020, the government invested more than $1.3 billion to provide a temporary wage enhancement to more than 158,000 personal support workers and direct support workers providing publicly funded services in hospitals, long-term-care homes, home and community care, and social services. We’re now investing $2.8 billion over the next three years to make this temporary wage-enhancement program permanent.

In February 2022, to retain nurses across the health care sector and to stabilize the current nursing workforce, the government announced that it would invest, over two years, $764 million to provide Ontario’s nurses with a retention incentive of up to $5,000 per nurse. Taken together, then, during the period from March 2020 to March 2022, the average nurse in Ontario received $12,000 in pandemic pay and $5,000 in a retention incentive, for a total of $17,000 extra during that period of time—which, of course, they earned, because they all were working so hard, but this is important to recognize, that that was during that period of time.

In the summer of 2020, our fall preparedness plan invested $52.5 million to recruit, retain and support over 3,700 health care workers and caregivers, to ensure continuity of safe care for patients and long-term-care residents. Amongst other things, we supported the Nursing Graduate Guarantee program, providing nursing graduates, registered nurses and registered practical nurses in Ontario with temporary full-time employment above staffing complement, to support their successful transition to practice and to full-time employment. The program provides 20 weeks of funding for each new nurse approved to participate in the program, and includes 12 weeks of funding for the nurses’ transition-to-practice period and eight weeks of funding to reinvest in existing front-line nurses and their professional development.

In 2021-22, more than 1,500 new nurses were matched to employers through the Nursing Graduate Guarantee program. So far, in 2022-23, more than 1,200 nurses were matched to employers through the Nursing Graduate Guarantee program.

The plan also supported the community commitment for nurses, which offers registered nurses, registered practical nurses or nurse practitioners a $10,000 incentive in return for a one-year commitment to practise in a hospital, long-term-care home or home and community care agency in high need.

While COVID-19 has been a testing time for the system and for all of us, the PSW return-of-service program and the Community Commitment Program for Nurses are examples of programs that will be instrumental to us in the future as we continue to work to distribute the workforce effectively, placing our precious resources where system gaps appear or where the demands are the greatest. We hope to place up to 3,000 nurses in areas of need through the program ever the next two years. Over 600 nurses have already been placed with employers through the program since it relaunched in May 2022, and the government is supporting important actions to attract our new nurses to where they are needed most in the province.

Additionally, the government has announced the new Learn and Stay program. Starting in the spring of 2023, up to 2,500 eligible post-secondary students who enrol in priority programs, such as nursing and paramedic and work in underserved communities in the region where they studied after graduation, will be eligible for grant funding.

I know the young pages around here are listening intently because they can see there’s some good opportunities in health care in Ontario.

Certainly our physician workforce needs to grow too, so that we can continue to meet demands in the system. In March 2022, the government announced a significant expansion of medical school education in Ontario—so pages, listen up; this could be you—adding 160 undergraduate seats and 295 postgraduate positions over the next five years. This is the largest expansion of undergraduate and postgraduate education in over 10 years. The expansion aims to increase access to family and specialty physicians all across the province. Training more doctors will ensure that Ontarians can access the health care they need, when they need it and wherever they may live.

Internationally educated health care providers are a large and important part of our health care workforce that has been neglected for many years, but we’re fixing that. This government is taking action to fix that. That’s why we’ve got lots of expanded opportunities for internationally educated providers across the province, including our supervised practice experience partnership program, which provides internationally educated nurses the opportunity to achieve their evidence-of-practice and language proficiency requirements to obtain their nursing designation. As of November 4, 2022, over 1,700 internationally educated nurses are actively enrolled in that program, and ever 900 have achieved their registration to practise through this program since it launched in January of this year.

That probably has been plaguing Ontario’s health system for years and has never been addressed until now. It is this government, fronted by a Premier who cares very, very much and a health minister who is willing to consider all options, that we’ve come up with these solutions, and we’re making a real difference for immigrant communities who come here with lots of talent and want to apply them, and we need them to work in our health workforce. So I’m so glad that we’ve managed to get that done. That is a serious plan to address our health human resource needs.

We are also approving regulation changes, including internationally educated nurses to register in temporary class and begin working sooner as they go through their full registration. As the pandemic has unfolded, of course, the government has recognized mental health challenges faced by our health workforce. In response, because we have a Premier who cares so much, we have invested a continuum of supports for health care workers, including in-person and virtual supports, with funding of $3.8 million in 2021-22 and $8.7 million in 2022-23.

These investments support existing and expanded mental health and addiction supports for our health care workers whose mental health has been adversely impacted by COVID-19 and workplace and occupational stress.

I find it interesting that the members opposite have chosen to highlight some of the challenges our health care system is facing without acknowledging the role that they played for 15 years.

Speaker, for years Ontario has been facing a rising number of individuals in the province without access to primary care physicians. After cuts to residency programs and caps on medical school spaces from the previous government, it’s our government with a Premier who really cares and wants to do something about it and is looking for solutions that is putting forward those solutions.

In the 2012 Auditor General’s report on health human resources, it was revealed that northern Ontario had a shortage of 200 physicians, or 40,000 hours of care, and yet little was done. And that was 2012. I know the member from Mushkegowuk is concerned about the lack of access in his community. These things existed in 2012, and yet, when the members opposite held the balance of power, when the NDP held the balance of power, they did nothing to solve this problem.

It’s important to note that at that time there was a minority Liberal government supported by the members of the NDP, many of whom are the same members here today complaining that nothing was done.

Interjections.

Ontario needs a human resources strategy for our health care system, which is why we brought forward this motion.

“There are more vacant positions for nurses than nurses working in one GTA” hospital, as CTV reported last week, “a sign of how dire staff shortages are ‘deteriorating’ a medical system already on edge.

“A consultants report for Lakeridge Health calls the situation at its Oshawa hospital a ‘crisis’ as it lays out how” workers are leaving the system en masse, primarily because of “low morale, misaligned incentives, and EMS offloads,” which are compounding the problem.

The chief emergency room doctor said, “Normally we would internally try to work on solutions and try to improve our efficiencies ourselves, but realistically the government is not coming in on a stallion to fix everything for us,” which means that they do feel abandoned.

“He said that the hospital is far from the only one feeling the shortage of nurses who, because of stress and overwork, are choosing to retire or leave at faster rates than they can be hired or trained....

“It’s extremely troubling that there’s a majority of vacancies. More vacancies for nurses than there are nurses.”

They are going south of the border.

Natalie Mehra of the Ontario Health Coalition said this “is indicative of what’s happening in large hospitals all across Ontario. We’ve never seen anything like it. It is really serious.”

As the finance critic, I want to point out that the government, just this week, said in their mini-budget that there’s no new money for health care in their economic update because they already prepared for the surge in illness. Parents are being sent home from my local hospital of Grand River Hospital, which is at 150% capacity in our pediatric ICU unit. It doesn’t sound like you’re prepared, it doesn’t sound like you invested, and it doesn’t sound like you are fighting for health care.

This province has the money. That’s the important part I want to tell you. The FAO has forecasted a $100-million surplus just this year. He is projecting surpluses for the foreseeable future. If the political will were there, if this government cared, they would use the unallocated contingency funds, which the FAO has said, over the next six years, will balloon to $44 billion. This is not about money; this is about political will and this is about not having a human resources strategy which recognizes how important our health professionals are to maintaining a publicly funded health care system.

I urge the government to listen to this motion and to work with the NDP—His Majesty’s official opposition—to bring forward solutions to serve the people of this province.

Last week, the member for London North Centre and I met with RNAO’s Middlesex-Elgin chapter, and we listened to the nurses who attended that meeting. These were nurses who worked in home care, long-term care. They worked in emergency and pediatric emergency. They worked in the ICU. They worked offloading patients from ambulances. They worked in public health. It was a mix of experienced nurses, student nurses, nurse educators. They told us that they are exhausted, they are burned-out, they are done, and they have no faith that anything the government is going to do will help make a difference. They saw the growth of hallway medicine under the Liberals, and they have seen the weaponization of Bill 124, legislation that directly targets a predominantly female workforce and tells health care workers, tells nurses, that this government does not value them, does not respect them and does not care about the demoralization they feel after almost three years of a pandemic and the workload pressures, the stress and the violence that they face every day on their job.

Speaker, I hear daily from Londoners who contact my office who can’t find a family doctor, whose routine screening tests were cancelled, whose surgeries were postponed. I hear from worried parents who are reaching out to my office, asking me what is going to happen if their child becomes seriously ill and they have to take that child to a children’s hospital in London where there are waits of hours—hours-long—with a desperately ill child. Imagine how you would feel as a parent, knowing that if that child had to be admitted to an ICU bed and they’re over 14 years of age, it may be to an adult ICU bed or it may be to an ICU bed in another community altogether.

Speaker, we have heard the Minister of Health say that this surge was expected, that the overwhelming of pediatric emergency rooms is not a surprise to this government, that the number of children being ventilated is nothing to worry about, that they have a plan, and that plan, this government claims, is so good that no additional resources or measures were necessary in the fall economic statement.

We just heard the parliamentary assistant talk about the recruitment programs that this government has put in place. But I have news for this government: Investing public dollars to recruit workers who don’t stay in the health care profession won’t do a thing to shore up the health care workforce.

What we need to do is compensate them fairly. We need to improve their working conditions. We need to support them with appropriate mentorship programs, training programs, other programs. We need to repeal Bill 124. These are the measures that would really make a difference.

I call on this government to support the motion before us today, to consult with unions and health sector stakeholders to develop a multi-layer health care worker recruitment and retention incentive package that includes short-, medium- and long-term solutions. We need to do everything possible to recruit, retain and return health care workers.

They’re asking me where I was. Well, I wasn’t elected then, so I couldn’t make a change. But you could have, sir. You could have made a change, and you did nothing.

If the members opposite truly wanted to improve access to primary care at that time or at any time, they could have made it a condition of their support. Yet they chose not to do that.

The former Premier admitted to freezing hospital spending for years and, in 2015, eliminated 50 medical residency positions from Ontario. They defended their decision to eliminate the 50 positions, when 800,000 Ontarians were without a family doctor, by saying they were, “scaling back to make better use of scarce health care dollars.”

This reduction came in the same year that 250 nurses would be laid off from hospitals in communities across the province, including Newmarket, Sarnia and London. If the members opposite were committed to improving our health care system, they could have done it then, and yet they did nothing.

Madam Speaker, I get tired of listening to some of the complaining going on. I get tired of listening to people trying to make a crisis and make fear in the population at a time of pandemic even worse by using words and expressions like “the worst crisis in generations” and “oh my God, the government is going to privatize,” trying to scare people. I think it’s irresponsible to be talking like that at a time when the health care system is of course under strain.

The interim leader for the NDP said that the reasons for the crisis are not mysterious. And the first two he listed, I agree. People worked hard before the pandemic in our health care system, and they worked very hard throughout the pandemic. That is true. That is why we continue to work to improve the system and pay them back.

But let’s remember that these waits in emergency rooms for health care have been going on for many, many years. I personally have waited—what was the example given, 14 hours and 20 hours? Is that normal? No, it’s not normal, but I have personally waited that long over 10 years ago with my parents in the emergency departments. So that is not new, unfortunately, in Ontario. That is why this government is taking steps to address it.

At the same time, in 2019, before the pandemic arose—November 2019, as I recall—emergency rooms were being closed in Nova Scotia. I remember the story on the national news. It said there’s a sign on the door in the emergency department of this town in Nova Scotia: “Don’t go to this emergency room because no one is here. Drive to the next town.” That is not a new issue. It was a pre–pandemic issue, and it’s a staffing challenge.

Why do we have a staffing challenge? The members opposite are correct. There is some pressure in our staffing, but let’s talk about that. It’s not a funding issue. It is a staffing issue because there are not enough health human resources—

I just went through a lot of things we’re doing to fix that problem, but let’s just talk about this for a second. Part of the reason that we need so many new staff is because we have so many more jobs for them, because we’re trying to hire more, right? We’re trying to hire 27,000 new PSWs and nurses for our long-term-care homes. That will make more jobs available. So, yes, there are more vacancies. And we’re trying to hire nurses. We’ve just added—

Interjections.

Somebody over there said, “We’ve never seen anything like this before”—

Interjection.

That’s a funding issue.