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.