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.

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.

Back to the Premier, through the minister: Increasing nurses at this time for Jack and Sabrina doesn’t help. They’re RNs. They’re nurses. Their workplace will be short now that they have to go and look after their daughter.

During the pandemic, we saw that working mothers became the default parent, leaving their jobs to manage virtual learning during a time when daycares and schools were closed. Now nursing shortages have trickled down to the education sector. Every child has the right to equal access to education, and every parent deserves to know their child has the care they need when they need it—without sacrificing their career.

Premier, will your government commit to a plan to ensure working mothers like Sabrina are not forced out of a workplace that is already in a severe crisis to fill gaps within an already broken system?