I, too, would like to welcome our friends from Hospice Palliative Care Ontario: Jennifer Mossop, former member for Stoney Creek; Rick Firth, president and CEO; and everyone here from Hospice Palliative Care Ontario.

The member from Nickel Belt gave a great introduction, but she missed one thing: that in rooms 228 and 230, there’s pizza and there’s candy. So everybody should stop by and have some pizza and candy.

Thank you to the member opposite for the question. This government, this Premier and the Ministry of Health are committed to supporting high-quality palliative end-of-life care for all Ontarians who need it, and I think we’ve done more than any government in recent history to support that initiative.

In 2019-20, the ministry provided Hospice Palliative Care Ontario with $1.7 million in additional funding over two years to support initiatives related to advance care planning. In October 2021, Ontario introduced a one-time investment of $23 million in hospice residences across the province to help them continue to provide high-quality, compassionate end-of-life services and care to people and their loved ones during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ministry is also supporting new hospices across Ontario by contributing to the cost of operating and constructing new and existing facilities. This government is making historic investments in palliative and end-of-life care, and we will continue to do so.

This government and Ministry of Health recognize the important role that hospices play in helping people live well from the time of diagnosis to a terminal illness at the end of life and while grieving a death. We continue to look for other opportunities to work with and implement the province’s palliative care framework and to work with Hospice Palliative Care Ontario.

Bonne Halloween. Ma question est pour le premier ministre.

Members of Hospice Palliative Care Ontario are at Queen’s Park today. Their message is really clear: Annualized operating funding increases are needed now to prevent the collapse of the lower-cost, highly valued hospice sector.

Does the Premier think that palliative care patients should do grocery shopping, cook their own food, wash their own dishes? Does he think that they should change their own bed and do their own laundry? Does he think that they should clean their room, wash the floor, take their trash to the curb? Does he think that palliative care patients should pay for heat, hydro, telephone, cable, Internet? Then why is it that the Premier does not fund any of these basic services in Ontario hospices?

Hospices are not only a pressure valve for emergency room crises, but they’re an access point for grief, for bereavement, for mental health services. Members of Hospice Palliative Care Ontario are here to remind us that hospice palliative care means system savings and efficiencies. It means improved patient care and caregiver experience. Nobody should spend their last day alive washing dishes.

Can your government commit today to funding hospices to a minimum of 70% of their operating costs?