You had four years to improve the system and made it infinitely worse over those four years. The system has been in desperate crisis for that whole time.

The health care crisis is hitting northerners especially hard, and Bill 7 will make the crisis worse, not better. Forcing seniors to move 300 kilometres away from their loved ones will be devastating and traumatic for elders and their families. Currently in Thunder Bay–Superior North, we face—actually, we have beds. We have some beds, but there’s no staff, and this has been going on for a long time.

Seniors and persons with disabilities are being defined as bed-blockers by this government, only to be repurposed as profit enhancers for privately owned homes when they haven’t fulfilled their 98% fullness to get their full public allotment of dollars. Why is this government refusing to address the staffing crisis that is the source of the funding crisis?

I appreciate the comments from my colleague from London North Centre.

We’ve just heard the member from Barrie–Innisfil stand up—and she makes it sound as though it’s a one-way street, that we’re just supposed to agree to everything the government wants to do, and that it doesn’t work the other way around.

I know that we have brought forward many solutions to the health care crisis—and it’s not just us bringing them forward; it’s actually because we’ve listened to the front-line health care workers, we’ve listened to people who have accessed health care. I shared a story in the House about a woman in my riding who waited over 16 hours to be seen in an emergency department.

This government seems to think that, with Bill 7, just transferring seniors and people with disabilities into long-term-care homes hours away from their own home, without their consent, is the answer to fixing the health care crisis.

I’m wondering if the member from London North Centre could talk about some of the things that we have brought forward and that the public has brought forward, because this government doesn’t want to do committee on Bill 7. So maybe we can have an opportunity, through my colleague, to share some of the things that we’ve heard from the front-line people, the workers, and the people accessing health care in the province.

The member spoke quite passionately about another crisis that is going on in this province, and that’s the opioid crisis. I’ve seen, and I know the member has seen, so many crosses—the white crosses that we see in many of our communities across northern Ontario. Actually, in a couple of weeks I’ll be participating in a community walk—where we have another beautiful young person who succumbed to the opioid crisis. Week after week, those numbers keep getting elevated.

We have these buildings where individuals go and get the treatment they need, but it’s the aftercare that is not being provided to them. They’re being subjected to going back to the environment that they were in, and they slip back into that routine. That aftercare, that continuum of care is so needed, and we need to make those investments if we’re going to get on top of the opioid crisis.

I’d like to hear from the member: What do you see, as far as the Sudbury area, northern Ontario, that is absolutely needed to battle the opioid crisis?