It’s my honour to be able to rise to speak to this bill. I wish it wasn’t necessary. This bill frankly should never have been tabled in the first place.

I don’t have a lot of time, so I’m just going to highlight some of the key points in the bill that are very concerning, and although the government House leader, who is the part-time Minister of Long-Term Care, tries to gloss over these facts and say that they’re not accurate, the reality is it’s in the bill. We’re reading directly from the bill, and it’s not just us raising these alarm bells about what’s in this bill. There are many other people.

I’m hearing from my constituents who are concerned about this. What this bill does is—and I quote; it’s right in the bill: “The actions listed ... may only be performed without consent if reasonable efforts have been made to obtain consent of the ALC patient or the substitute decision-maker.” But there is nothing that defines what a “reasonable effort” is, or who gets to choose what a “reasonable effort” is to have a conversation and to gain consent. That’s concerning. We’re talking about taking somebody’s right to bodily autonomy away, or their substitute decision-maker, to be able to make those decisions if the patient themselves is not able to.

I’ve heard a great deal of conversation from the government side that is also very alarming. They are weaponizing patients. They are weaponizing seniors and people with disabilities by saying that those people that are in those alternate-level-of-care beds are preventing others from getting care. They’re saying that this person’s care is more important than this person’s care. And if you happen to be one of these people who go into hospital for care and you’re not able to get it because of things like Bill 124 that they brought forward, which is forcing our health care workers, our nurses, out of the system—because we’re short on doctors, because this government is privatizing health care rather than investing in our publicly funded health care system. So if you fall into this category, according to the government, and you go for health care and you don’t get it, it’s this person’s fault who came in for care. It’s their fault. It’s that senior’s fault. It’s that person with a disability’s fault.

And it’s really shameful that that is the narrative that this government is driving instead of taking responsibility for their lack of actions—and I’m getting really tired of the whataboutism. We know what the government before them did, what the Liberals did or didn’t do. But you’ve had over four years to actually do something progressive and invest in the health care system, invest in the long-term-care system, take profit out of care, invest in the front-line workers. You guys brought in Bill 124. It’s not the fault of the folks on this side of the House. So stop with the whataboutism and actually do something to start repairing the system.

But instead of doing that, they’re making it sound like the people that access health care are the problem. It’s their fault. And so what we should be able to do is strip them of their rights, move them into a long-term-care home that they don’t want to go to outside of their community—and there is nothing in this bill that dictates the distance. That’s up to regulation, and that’s important to note because any government, at any time, can change a regulation without it coming before this House—not that this government cares about debate anyways, or public consultation. But that’s important to note. They could change this at any time. So someone in my community, in what I call the deep south of Ontario, could be shipped up to Timmins for care, away from their families, unable to have access to their family caregiver, something this government did during COVID. It locked those family caregivers out.

As others have pointed out, it says, “Interaction with Residents’ Bill of Rights

“(9) Despite subsection 3(2), this section and any regulations made under clause 61(2)(h.1) or (h.2) shall not be interpreted or construed as being inconsistent with the Residents’ Bill of Rights,” which is basically saying that this bill overrides the Residents’ Bill of Rights.

This government is okay with stripping people of their rights. This government is okay with pitting patients against each other. This government is okay with chipping away at our publicly funded health care system and blaming it on others. And they’re okay with taking seniors and people with disabilities and shipping them outside of their communities into for-profit, private homes that many former Conservative Premiers and others are on the boards of, making millions of dollars. They’re okay with that. But instead of standing up and admitting that, they’re dancing around it and they’re defending what’s in here, rather than holding public consultations and hearing from the public.