I’m always happy to talk about our plans to stay open. It is a very important tenet of how we are making sure that our hospitals, our long-term care and our community care are working at full capacity so that they can look after the individuals who need help, where they need it, when they need it. We have worked very well with the College of Nurses of Ontario. In fact, we have over 1,000 new internationally educated RNs who are licensed and practising in the province of Ontario because of the changes our government has made.

The member opposite is right on one point, and that is that this file was ignored for far too long. We have Auditor General reports saying that we had a shortage of family physicians in northern Ontario. Did the government of the day do anything? No. It took Premier Ford, it took this government, to act and make the changes needed to make sure that our health care system is protected.

We have, with our plan to stay open, added over 6,000 more health care workers, including nurses and personal support workers, to Ontario’s health resource workforce. We will free up 2,500 hospital beds so that care is there for those who need it. And we will expand models of care that provide better, more appropriate care to avoid unnecessary visits to emergency departments.

There is no doubt that our government is seized with this issue—it is happening internationally across other countries, across Canadian jurisdictions—to make sure that we have sufficient health human resources. We’re doing the work here in Ontario to make sure that people who want to practise and work in the health care system have that opportunity here in Ontario.