Well, Mr. Speaker, it’s not about the cost; it’s about giving proper health care to people who should be in long-term-care homes. It’s differentiating between sticking your loved one in a hospital bed—imagine that: a hospital bed for one of your loved ones, when alarms are going off, bells are going off all night, compared to giving them a beautiful home to stay in, a long-term-care home, which will have proper care.

Mr. Speaker, let me remind the opposition: They were preaching at the top of the mountain, saying, “Get people out of the hospitals.” They kept going on and on, and many of them were quoted in the media. All of a sudden, now they change their tune. They can’t have it both ways.

The right place to put people who have been discharged from the doctor is in a proper home, for proper care, to make sure they have a better quality of life.

We aren’t being political. We’re making sure we’re taking care of the people who need support, who need patient care. They’re going to get much better care in a long-term-care facility than sitting in a hospital bed. Even one of the CEOs said this is not good for the ALC patients. What is good is to make sure they get the proper care, and that’s what we’re going to give them.

As the Minister of Long-Term Care said, we’re building 58,000 beds for these seniors.

Mr. Speaker, in fact, the only people who have been talking about a fee like that for seniors who are going into long-term-care homes have actually been the opposition. They’re the only ones who have talked about it—the Leader of the Opposition, the critic, and the members of the Liberal Party, and, of course, the media, but only as they’re reporting what they have been saying.

We have been saying right from the beginning that the goal of this is to ensure that those who are waiting to go into a long-term-care home, who have been discharged or are about to be discharged from a hospital, have a better opportunity, better outcomes. That is what this legislation was all about.

This is another step, yesterday was another step on the road to improving health care in the province of Ontario—a step that started with Ontario health teams, a step that continued with 58,000 new and upgraded long-term-care beds in every region of the province, with the addition of 27,000 health care workers for long-term care alone, with new hospitals in every part of the province. It is another step to making Ontario have the best health care system in the country and in North America.

They say that it’s a new problem, but let’s look at the Auditor General’s report of 2012: “Given our aging population, developing alternatives to long-term care and implementing more efficient processes for placing people in” long-term-care homes “in a consistent and timely manner is critical.”

She went on to say, “Numerous studies have shown that remaining in hospital longer than medically necessary, including waiting in hospital for” long-term care “can be detrimental to a person’s health for various reasons, among them the potential for a hospital-acquired infection such as C. difficile, and, for older patients, a decline in physical and mental abilities due to lack of activity.”

She went on to say that five provinces have a first-bed policy. This is back in a 2012 report, based on 2011.

What was done in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018? Nothing.

What is true: more resources and better care. We’re standing up for seniors who want better care, who are on a long-term-care waiting list. They want to be in a home. Experts agree it is better to get that care in a long-term-care facility.

This is another step on the way to finally tackling the challenges in health care—that include staffing, that include more hospitals, that include better long-term-care homes.

They should get on board because the status quo is working for nobody.

Under our watch, Mr. Speaker, we have seen the level of care increase in this province like it has never happened before. Under our watch, his own riding is getting $55 million more for care in the homes that he has. Under our watch, I have approved over 500 new long-term-care beds for people in his riding alone. Under our watch, investments in health care have grown to the highest level in Canadian history. Under our watch—a new hospital in Mississauga. Under our watch, small and medium-sized hospitals finally get budgets that are equivalent to large hospitals. Under our watch—the largest investment in health care in Ottawa’s history. Under our watch—new hospitals in Niagara. Under our watch—four hours of care for seniors. Under our watch—58,000 new and upgraded long-term-care beds. Under our watch, we’ll get it done.

My question is to the Premier.

In February, 83-year-old Don Wilson slipped and cracked his pelvis. Four days after admission to London Health Sciences Centre, Don was transferred to a long-term-care home—a home that was in COVID outbreak, with only two PSWs for a ward of 30 residents, and no rehab services. Less than a week later, Don fell out of his LTC bed and was readmitted to hospital, where, tragically, on April 15, he passed away.

Is this the kind of trauma and grief that more families will face with Bill 7?

Will the government do the right thing and withdraw Bill 7?

Speaker, I think that the member opposite is forgetting that the health care system, as a whole, needs to co-operatively work together for the patient. That is our goal, as a government.

I point to Anthony Dale from the Ontario Hospital Association, in reference, specifically, to alternate-level-of-care patients. Health care providers in Ontario are committed to working collaboratively with patients, with substitute decision-makers, families and caregivers during any transition into patient care.

We are transitioning people into their homes with sufficient community care support. We are transitioning patients into long-term-care homes with sufficient support. We’re getting it done because we understand, at the end of the day, alternate-level-of-care patients deserve better than sitting in a hospital waiting for their next transition.

My question is to the Premier.

Speaker, many of my constituents have reached out, horrified about creeping privatization and the overt destruction of our treasured public health care system under the Ford government.

Ryan wrote to me about how the care he received for his aortic stenosis would have cost at least $250,000. Without it, he would not be alive. He remains deeply thankful, but he worries about the deteriorating quality of health care and this government’s obvious movement towards profit-making in health care.

Will this government continue to destroy health care with their privatization agenda or finally fund health care and health care workers properly?

Underfunding health care by $1.8 billion last year was a destructive act, and so is Bill 124, and now the government claims the system they’ve been strangling is barely breathing. This government manufactured this crisis in order to promote privatization.

Heather wrote to me about her stepfather being pushed out of hospital into a for-profit long-term-care home, where they would then squeeze an additional $4,000 per month for his care.

Is this government morally and ethically comfortable padding the pockets of the private long-term-care industry and private, for-profit hospitals rather than fixing our public system and paying health care heroes what they deserve?

It’s an honour to rise today to participate in the debate on budget Bill 2.

Speaker, budgets are about priorities. They define who we are and who we want to be. And yes, I want to build in Ontario, but we have to build in a way that is strategic, sustainable and responsible, and this budget fails to meet the moment that we’re in, in achieving those criteria.

I’m going to focus in my limited time on three critical areas. The first is health care. The government talks a lot about building hospitals and long-term-care homes. Yes, I want those. Yes, we need a new hospital in Guelph and in many other communities. The bottom line is: If you don’t invest in the people who are going to run those hospitals and care for the patients who access those hospitals, they will not provide the care we need.

I wanted to see a budget—I believe the people of Ontario wanted to see a budget—that repealed Bill 124 and said nurses and front-line health care heroes can negotiate fair wages, fair benefits and better working conditions, that we could have fast-tracked internationally trained health care providers to address the chronic health human resource crisis we’re facing across our health care system. We could have invested in the 28,000 young people who are on a mental health wait-list right now that averages 18 months. Imagine: Imagine not being able to access care for your child for 18 months.

Secondly, investing in people is also about addressing poverty and housing in ways that take pressure off our health care system. We are forcing people in this province to live in legislated poverty if they’re on social assistance. Doubling social assistance rates would be the right thing to do, to bring them up at least to the poverty line, and it would help save Ontario $33 billion a year, which is what poverty costs this province.

Finally, Speaker, the biggest crisis of our generation is the climate emergency, and I don’t understand how a government, in the face of the fires we see, the flooding we see—the fact that just in the month of May, when we had an election campaign, we had people in northwestern Ontario being evacuated from their communities because of flooding. We had a storm that hit eastern Ontario which forced people to go two weeks without power, and we were already having extreme heat days.

As a matter of fact, a report just came out two days ago saying that the climate crisis is going to cost us, from an infrastructure standpoint, $139 billion over the next two decades. And yet, this budget proposes to spend $25 billion paving over the farmland that feeds us, the wetlands that protect us from flooding—protect us from flooding at no cost. We simply cannot afford in this province to continue to pave over the farmland that feeds us and the nature that protects us, if we have any hope of mitigating the costs of the climate crisis and leaving a livable, sustainable future for our children and grandchildren. That’s why I will be voting against this budget.

Thank you very much, Speaker. This is my first opportunity to see you in that chair, so I want to offer you my congratulations. It’s great to see you there.

I’m pleased to rise to offer a few minutes of comments on this bill, this budget that is before us today, on behalf of the people I represent in London West.

This week and last week I have been raising stories of people from my riding who are experiencing first-hand what the crumbling of our health care system means for them. Our home care system is broken.

I raised the story of Robin Floyd; her son was discharged from surgery with a drainage tube. He had to wait nine days before he had a home care appointment.

I raised the story of Kim Fowler, who is exhausted trying to care for her mother, who is at home with dementia and COPD—cannot get admitted into long-term care, PSWs regularly don’t show up. Kim is frantic with worry about what will happen if she herself gets sick and cannot get the care that she needs and her mother deserves.

Today I raised the story of Jane Berges; her husband Don was discharged from hospital and admitted to a private sector long-term-care home that did not have the capacity to care for him properly. He fell out of the bed in the long-term-care home, was readmitted to hospital and tragically died.

I hear regularly from constituents who do not have access to a family physician, whose only recourse if they or a family member are sick is to use our overcrowded and stretched-thin emergency services.

And yet this budget that is before us today does nothing to address these pressing problems in our health care system. It does nothing to repeal Bill 124 and make sure that our front-line health care workers are compensated fairly, they get the wages that they deserve and the benefits that they surely have earned. It does nothing to deal with violence in health care workplace settings. It does nothing to fast-track internationally educated health professionals at the rate that they need to be fast-tracked.

I hear the government talk about their plan to stay open, as if that plan is to ensure that the health care system is going to be there when people need it. But one of the most important things that this government could do if they want to stay open, if they want our health care system to be there for Ontarians, is to legislate paid sick days. We heard today from Dr. Moore that Ontarians are supposed to stay home until their fever clears, until their symptoms have improved—60% of Ontarians don’t have access to paid sick days. They can’t stay home if it means losing a paycheque, if it means not being able to pay the rent or put groceries on the table. And we know that for racialized workers, for Indigenous workers—they are highly more likely not to have access to paid sick days.

The other issue that is of grave concern to people in London West with this budget is the absence of any appropriate measures to lift people out of poverty. The minister talks about the LIFT tax credit, but more than 200 advocacy organizations have told this government that what we need is to double social assistance rates. Instead, we see a paltry 5% increase for ODSP and nothing for Ontario Works. That ODSP increase will mean $58 more a month, which locks people into legislated poverty.

There’s no mention of rent control for the many London West constituents who don’t know that when they move into an apartment that was built after November 2018, there’s no rent control whatsoever. They are being hit with double-digit rent increases, unable to know how they’re going to afford to continue to live there.

There’s no mention of the climate crisis and the need for strong climate action. There are many, many gaps in this budget that make it impossible for me to support it if I am doing my job on behalf of the people of London West.

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.