I would like to say a few words in tribute to Dr. Barry Adams, a pediatrician from Ottawa who was my pediatrician and my children’s pediatrician and, in fact, the pediatrician for thousands and thousands of families over his long career.

Barry was an incredible, gentle, warm, kind person. He was always available. He was a big proponent of our Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. I wanted to spend all this time talking about his accolades, but his accolades are actually the thousands and thousands and thousands of families whose lives he touched and improved by his work.

I was thinking about what Barry would have had to say today, if he were alive, about what’s happening at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario and with our children in this province.

Barry could be very kind and very gentle, but he could also be very stern. And what he would be asking us is, “Why is there this indifference to what’s happening to our children? Why are we not masking? Why are we not making sure we’re all vaccinated and our kids are vaccinated?”

You know, Barry was a physician who was old enough to know when measles outbreaks occurred, and he was always astonished at the efficacy of the vaccine, and how it was almost non-existent.

So, Speaker, I think we should learn from Dr. Barry Adams’s example that our children are important and that right now there are some things that we need to do to protect our children. We should be doing them: masking, vaccination, washing our hands and staying home when we’re sick.

The physician shortage in northern Ontario small town hospitals is facing a crisis. With three of six physician positions soon to be vacant in Wawa, the hospital there is desperate for assistance from this government to help to prevent closures and staff burnout.

We’ve already seen ERs and primary care affected across the region in the north. What is this government doing to ensure that small northern hospitals will not have to close their doors to patients?

When concerns about keeping the doors open were expressed to the Ministry of Health officials, the ministry suggested, “Well, why don’t you just divert your primary care support to your emergency support?”

Speaker, this is a recipe for disaster. Without primary care, you’re setting up the system for failure. Will this government work with northern health care providers to recruit and retain doctors in the north?

I have to ask, because the member opposite has been in this chamber for many, many years: Where were you when the Auditor General talked about the fact that northern Ontario was facing a physician shortage in their Auditor General’s report when the Liberal Party was in power? Where were you?

Are you willing to stand and agree that increasing the number of physician positions available in northern Ontario in rural and remote communities across Canada is the appropriate thing for us to do?

Where were you when the Liberal government was cutting those spots in northern Ontario?

We have made the investments. We will continue to make the investments. We have a northern medical school that is expanding the number of residency positions. We are expanding—

We are making those investments now. We will continue to make those investments. We are doing it with investments in peer-to-peer programs. We are making it with investments in Ornge air ambulance to ensure that northern and remote hospitals make sure that they have coverage in their emergency department.

We will continue to make those changes. We will continue to work with our hospital corporations, and we will make sure that, in the future, we do not deal with health human resources that were as a result of governments ignoring a pending surge in population and a need to make those investments.