There’s this beautiful community in Nickel Belt called Gogama. They are about an hour and a half south of Timmins, and about two and a half hours north of Sudbury. The only access for the good people of Gogama to our health care system is through a nursing station. The nursing station has been there for decades, giving all of the residents of Gogama—I must tell you, though, that over 60% of them are over the age of 65, and they gain access to our health care system through the nursing stations.

Unfortunately, tomorrow, September 1, the nursing station will close. They were given notice that the nursing station would close on September 1, which means that all means of access to health care will stop.

I have approached the Minister of Health to see what can be done to make sure that the people of Gogama continue to have access to a full-time nurse practitioner in their community so that they have what we call equity of access.

Do we do a double lung transplant in Gogama? No, we don’t. But we need a full-time nurse practitioner working in Gogama so that the people of Gogama can gain access to the health care system.

I was talking to Dan Mantha yesterday. He needs to go to a walk-in clinic in order to gain access, an hour away from his home.

The minister has to get on this file. She has to sign a new agreement so the nursing station stays open.

Ma question est pour le premier ministre.

At hearings held by the NDP this week, front-line health care workers sounded the alarm about the Ford government’s Bill 7. The bill does nothing to address the human resources crisis in our health care system, but it will force frail seniors into private long-term-care homes miles away from their circle of care and their family.

This raises the question: Is the goal of the bill to help patients, or is it to force frail, elderly seniors into private, for-profit long-term-care homes that no one wants to live in?

Thank you, Speaker. I, too, would have liked to see things in the budget that are not there. The first thing is in my riding. In Foleyet, they are at risk of losing their ambulance services because the district services board doesn’t have enough money to maintain an ambulance service to a community that is an hour away from the next town, whether it be Chapleau or Timmins. How could you fathom that in Ontario there would be a community an hour away from the nearest hospital without ambulance service there? This is what’s about to happen in Foleyet if the district services board does not get an increase to their budget. But it’s not in the budget.

How could it be that in Gogama, tomorrow, on September 1, there’s a chance that their—well, there’s not “a chance;” Their nursing station won’t have a full-time nurse practitioner, won’t have a collaborative physician. The good people of Gogama won’t have a nursing station anymore. They have had a nursing station for decades. This is how they access the health care system.

Do we see in the budget money to improve people getting access to health care through nursing stations? Absolutely not. But what we do see are things to help the for-profits, whether it be for-profit home care or for-profit long-term care.

I just had the courage to read the Sienna Senior Living report—their second quarter for 2022. I am happy—no, I’m not happy to report at all that they made $354 million in the first six months. That’s $180 million in the last three months out of their long-term-care portfolio alone. That’s $2 million in profit. That would be 110,000 hours of care more if that money had gone to care rather than going to their shareholders. But no, they’re happy to report that their revenue increased by 10.7% to $180.2 million for Q2.

Also interesting is that they issued this on August 11, and they already knew that the bill to force people into the long-term-care home that they didn’t want was going to come. Not only did they know this, but they used it in their financial statement to say, “Don’t worry, although we are only at 88.5% average total occupancy in our long-term-care homes, we know that we will be at full occupancy to get the full amount of money, because we were made whole during the pandemic.” Although they’re supposed to have 97% occupancy to get full dollars, they were made whole. Now that the government is stopping this on October 1, they told their shareholders, “Do not worry, we will continue to be full; although we’re only at 88.5%, we will be at 97%,” because they already knew that the government was going to pass a bill that would force people to go into a long-term-care home that is not of their choosing. So that they could maintain, or even increase—rather than making $60 million a month, maybe they could make $65 million a month on the back of frail, elderly people who do not get the care they need in those long-term-care homes.

I could go on and on, Speaker. But the fact is that we will be voting against this budget because we want care to be based on needs. We want the taxpayers’ money to go towards the care, not the shareholders who make hundreds of millions of dollars, who are willing—it’s on the website, so anybody can go and see it. Sienna Living: Type it up and you will see they’re very proud of the $354 million that they made in the first six months. The $180 million—$151 million that they made in the last three months out of our long-term-care homes. I am not proud of that, Speaker. Not at all. And forcing people to go into those long-term-care homes so that they can continue to make millions of dollars is wrong.

I’ll be voting down that budget.