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 It should be immediately repealed.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 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.

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.