I love being able to highlight all of the work that our government is doing to increase the number of health human resources who practise and work in the province of Ontario.

There is no doubt that across Canada, and indeed the world, we are experiencing shortages in our critically important health care system.

However, what we have seen here in Ontario is that by investing $35 million to increase enrolment in nursing education programs, we are actually expanding spaces to introduce over 1,130 new practical nurses and 870 registered nurses into the health care system.

I’ve been working with the College of Nurses of Ontario to make sure that individuals who have applied to practise and work in the province of Ontario get those applications reviewed and expedited quickly. We’ll continue to do this because people like Sabrina need to have that confidence that when their young daughter goes to school, they have the resources they need to make sure her diabetes is monitored and they’re looked after.

We have talked and we have acted on home care in particular. I often talk about how, as a government, we are ensuring that hospitals have capacity, that community care has capacity, that long-term care has capacity, that primary care has capacity. We’re doing that through investments specifically related to home care.

I want to highlight the $1 billion that is in our most recent budget, which will ensure that 739 nursing visits are able to be provided in community—157,000 nursing shift hours in community; 117,000 therapy visits, including physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech-language pathology, in community. It’s what people deserve. It’s what people expect. It’s what we are delivering.