There’s a frightening crisis in children’s hospitals across Ontario. Children are waiting days in emergency rooms, facing cancelled procedures, and—for what must be every parent’s nightmare—they are being sent across the province to find care beds.

Bruce Squires, who is the president of McMaster Children’s Hospital, is sounding the alarm: “Our pediatric critical care capacity is so limited that critically ill children are having to be transferred outside of their local area to be admitted to an ICU.” This is a situation that he calls “extremely concerning.” Critically ill children from Hamilton have been sent as far away as Ottawa to find a bed in a pediatric unit. As of Thursday, there were 11 patients in the ER who had been admitted to hospital but were still waiting for a bed, some for 30 hours or more.

Grey, who is a four-year-old boy from Ancaster, waited five days for emergency elbow surgery. Now his mom is warning other parents that the system is a disaster and people need to know what to expect.

It should be our highest priority to care for sick, injured or dying children. But instead, hospitals are being slowly starved by this government’s disastrous plan to privatize health care. We need more investments in our struggling health care system, not a profits-over-people approach.

We have the solutions. We need to implement them now to make things better for children across Ontario.

I find it really rich coming from the Liberals that destroyed the health care system and created hallway health care. They fired nurses, shut down the health care system and reduced the funding.

What we’re doing is we’re hiring more nurses, over 12,800 nurses; they were firing thousands of nurses. We’re building new hospitals; they were closing hospitals.

We’re going to continue increasing the funding in health care, ending hallway health care that they created for decades, and we’re hiring more doctors, more nurses, and creating a medical school university. They never created even one spot in the medical universities; they actually took spots away, Mr. Speaker.

My question is to the Minister of Colleges and Universities. All Ontarians should feel proud of the great history of medical and science research from our post-secondary institutions that has saved lives and changed the world. Just one example: We only have to look across the street to the University of Toronto to see the Banting and Best Diabetes Centre, which is Canada’s leading centre for innovation in diabetes research, education and clinical care. In my own personal experience of having spent 25 years at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, I’m very aware of the wonderful research being done at that institution.

To this day, we know of the positive role that our colleges’ and universities’ hospital research institutions continue to play when it comes to innovations and progress in our health care system.

Can the Minister of Colleges and Universities please inform the House on what is being done currently by our government to support these investments?

Working with so many stakeholders, our government has often talked about the investments in hospitals and strengthening our province’s public health sectors.

Speaker, can the Minister of Colleges and Universities elaborate further about the initiatives that our government has invested in to support a more robust health sector?

Thank you to the member from Hastings–Lennox and Addington for that important question. This government understands that investments in college and university hospital research not only strengthens Ontario’s existing innovation and commercialization capacity, but also grows our province’s professional and skilled workforce and positions us as a global leader. Our government is supporting research and innovation that lead to the discoveries and advancements that make a real impact in people’s lives.

Ontario will be supporting innovation with an investment of more than $198 million in research projects at colleges, universities and research hospitals across the province. This funding will support 241 research projects across this province, and these projects will be integral in building, renovating and equipping research facilities with upgraded technology and supporting research to attract new research talent. We will continue our commitment and efforts in strengthening Ontario’s college and university hospital research initiatives, which provide college and university hospitals with the ability to adopt advanced technologies to remain competitive and move Ontario forward.

My question is to the Premier.

MPPs across the province have been hearing from constituents about the unmitigated crisis in our hospitals. But are Conservative MPPs truly listening?

My constituent Colleen told me about her mother’s ER experience: “My brilliant, independent, selfless, always-helping-others mom had to hope and pray for someone to walk down that hall to attempt to get help.” Her oxygen machine was empty. When Colleen brought this to the hospital’s attention, the nurses’ overwhelmed exhaustion was clear. It wasn’t their fault.

Will this government keep blaming others and keep neglecting public health care or fund it properly and pay nurses what they’re worth?

Just last week, LHSC in London posted a 20-hour delay for their ER and asked patients to bring a snack and activities. My constituent Tina told me about searching in vain for a nurse or doctor after her partner Rod’s major surgery. No doctors were available and nurses were run off their feet. Tina waited for days until she finally got a phone call.

The RNAO surveyed nurses and found that 69% are planning on leaving the profession in the next five years. When will this government admit they’ve created a crisis and spend money on front-line health care heroes?