I just want to start off by stating that I’ll be sharing my time with the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Long-Term Care, the member for Lanark–Frontenac–Kingston.

I’m going to be very quick, Madam Speaker. What I want to do is thank the Minister of Long-Term Care and the hard-working parliamentary assistant for all of their hard work on behalf of the residents of Aurora–Oak Ridges–Richmond Hill for looking at ways to constantly improve the quality of lives of Ontarians. That is a huge undertaking when you look at the state of our health care system that was left behind by the previous government. From day one, you have seen the Minister of Health and the Minister of Long-Term Care, under the leadership of Premier Ford, look at ways of improving our health care system and our long-term-care homes.

On behalf of the residents of Aurora–Oak Ridges–Richmond Hill, thank you to the Minister of Long-Term Care and thank you to the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Long-Term Care, and I’ll turn the floor over to him, please.

I rise today to speak on Bill 7, the More Homes, Better Care Act. I want to recognize the work of the many residents that have reached out to me: Kate Chung, Cassandra Ryan, the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly, the Ontario Health Coalition, health care professionals, caregivers and loved ones.

This bill gives hospitals more power to remove the elderly and the sick, and move them into a long-term-care home they do not want to go to, without their consent. This bill would allow hospitals and give them the right to charge up to $1,200 to $1,500 a day to a patient that does not move out of the hospital.

Let’s get a few facts straight: No one wants to stay in a hospital any longer than they have to, period. There are 38,000 people waiting for a long-term-care home in Ontario. The good homes are full. In my riding, we have Kensington Gardens. That home is full. The only long-term-care homes that do not have waiting lists are those that people do not want to move into. These are substandard homes. These are for-profit homes. These are homes where the building is aging, where people live four people to a room, where there’s not enough staff available to help people eat and to change them at a regular level or help them bathe. These are homes where basic standards are sometimes not maintained because this government has made the decision to not properly enforce the rules and have a sufficient number of inspectors go in to ensure those rules, those standards, are maintained. These are the homes that have had seniors suffer and die during the pandemic—nearly 5,000 seniors.

It is also a myth that patients in hospitals are waiting for a long-term-care-home slot. It is a myth that they are all waiting for a long-term-care-home slot. There are many people waiting to move into another type of hospital care, such as rehabilitation or mental health care, but they cannot move because these beds are full.

Hospitals don’t just provide acute care. Elderly people and disabled people—people in need of a hospital bed—should not be discriminated against, and I would like to thank Cassandra Ryan and Kate Chung for their very eloquent letters to me explaining that. These people have lived full lives. They’ve paid their taxes, they’ve raised their families, they’ve volunteered in their community, they’ve contributed to building Ontario. They should not be treated as a nuisance, or as undeserving, or as the reason why emergency rooms are somehow full. It is not ALC patients’ fault that Ontario’s hospitals have the fewest hospital beds per person of any province in Canada. It is not their fault. It is not their fault that nurses and health care workers in Ontario are leaving and quitting because they are not paid properly. And it is not their fault that hospitals are not provided with sufficient funding from this government to do what they need to do to care for the people of Ontario.

It was an honour to listen to my colleagues today speak about the solutions that experts and stakeholders and family members are advocating for, because the solutions are clear: Ontario needs to provide a holistic and kind solution to the health care crisis, which means addressing the staffing crisis by repealing Bill 124 and paying our health care workers properly. It means committing to increasing funding to home care—not for-profit home care, but home care that is provided so people can get their first choice, which is to stay at home. It means increasing caregiver allowances so family members can provide care to loved ones. And it means reforming the long-term-care-home model, moving away from a for-profit model where we warehouse our disabled, our sick and our elderly, and moving towards a long-term-care-home model where people are provided with the quality care they need so that they can lead good lives.

Bill 7 is not the direction that we need to go to. We have better solutions that are being proposed to us, and I urge this government to look at them and implement them instead of this.

It is an honour to rise today representing the great residents of Toronto Centre and to speak to Bill 7. My colleagues have spoken eloquently to what is wrong with the bill, and I wanted to use my time to provide some additional commentary on it.

First of all, the bill will force our two-spirit, queer and gender-diverse seniors back into the closet by forcing seniors into long-term-care homes that they don’t want to go to. A hospital bed is no one’s choice of where they want to call home, yet this bill does exactly that. It doesn’t even pretend to hide its contempt for patients who have complex reasons for waiting. We understand how complex these choices are in Toronto Centre, especially with our population of aging seniors who are queer.

I hope this government understands that they are pathologizing our beloved queer and trans elders at their peril. My constituents have survived to the point that they are already ready for long-term care because they have had to advocate for themselves to survive homophobic and transphobic institutions. Moving out of the neighbourhood that they know, away from friends and families that they trust can only mean further isolation and fear of rejection.

But don’t take it from me; Arne Stinchcombe, a psychology instructor at the University of Ottawa who researches health and aging, told a TVO news show:

“‘There is evidence suggesting that fears of homophobia and transphobia within formal care prevent health care utilization, timely diagnosis and treatment of major health conditions and treatment adherence among older LGBTQ2+ people’....

“Providing inclusive and safe environments for LGBTQ seniors is ‘essential’....”

Earlier this year, I had the honour of attending the opening of the Rainbow Wing at the Rekai Centre right here in Toronto Centre. It is a brand new facility that was designed specifically for the 2SLGBT seniors’ community. It’s in a non-profit long-term-care facility and was created out of the recognition for the need to create more inclusive spaces for queer elders to thrive. And yet, still, while this is the first dedicated 2SLGBTQ facility in Ontario, even in North America and possibly in the world, the Rainbow Wing has only 25 beds. We clearly have a long way to go.

This government has not announced a single plan to expand 2SLGBTQ long-term care, and they expect queer and trans Ontarians to believe that forcing them great distances away from their chosen families will make their lives better. Speaker, I assure you that it will not.

LeZlie Lee Kam, a queer elder and advocate for inclusive long-term care, told the same TVO journalist, “I want to make sure that if I have to end up in one of those places, it’s going to be queer-friendly.” It has to be affirming.

In the final days, our loved ones are scared. No one should be forced back into the closet, but I’m afraid that by taking the choice away from our seniors, that is exactly what this bill will do.

The second point that I want to touch on is that it matters to Toronto Centre, one of the most diverse ridings in the country, where our seniors go. Our community and city is home to 120 different languages, so our elders need to be close to their families so that they can lean on them for support, especially when they have to translate the complex health care system for them into languages such as Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, Mandarin, Hindi, Somali, Singhalese, Tamil, Tagalog or Urdu, just to name a few of the languages that we speak.

My grandmother spent her final weeks in a city of Toronto long-term-care home called Fudger House. She actually was able to receive her care in Cantonese as well as Mandarin. She was able to eat culturally appropriate food. I couldn’t imagine better care for my grandmother as she died in the facility that was there, but she was taken care of in the way that she needed. I recognize how fortunate we are now, especially considering what we have in front of us today.

Not allowing seniors to exercise agency in health care during the time in life when people are at their most vulnerable, and most medicated, will make existing racial inequities in health care even worse. This government has no excuse for rushing through a bill that will affect vulnerable and already marginalized communities.

I want to finish by quoting my constituent Cee, who reached out to me to talk about how the government is planning to force people into long-term-care facilities that they don’t want to be in:

“This stuff was going on well before I retired,” but now it’s making it worse. “It demonstrates to me that the political will is lacking” and seniors need help. “Old people aren’t sexy. They cost the system and aren’t looked upon as people who contribute anymore.... They’re going to die anyway ... so why bother making their lives more comfortable?”

Speaker, Bill 7 is redesigning our health care system to take care of corporate shareholders, not people. It doesn’t have to be this way. Privatization is a political choice. I choose people over profits, and I think you should too. Please withdraw Bill 7.