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?

Well, clearly our investment of a billion dollars in our most recent budget speaks to exactly why we want to improve home care in homes, where people want to be able to recover and recuperate.

In our last budget, a billion dollars over the next three years—but what does that actually give you? In your community, in the case of Robin’s son, the funding will support an estimated 28,000 post-acute surgical patients and an estimated 21,000 patients with complex health conditions every year by providing 739,000 nursing visits. That’s 739,000 nursing visits that never happened under the previous governments.

We are making the investments because we understand it’s not just about hospitals. It’s not just about primary care and long-term care. It’s also about community care, because there are many thousands of people who want to do that recovery in their own home with appropriate supports. We’re providing those appropriate supports.

One very specific example: I’ve talked about complex health conditions, but over two million hours of personal support services will now be provided in Ontario in communities like yours to make sure that your constituents, your residents have that quality of life in their own home with their families.

The critical mineral deposits in the Ring of Fire represent an unprecedented opportunity for economic development for First Nations partners and all Ontarians. The Ontario government is partnering with First Nations communities to build road projects that will unlock development in the Ring of Fire and lead to more critical mineral mines.

The Anishinabek Nation Grand Council chief recently said that the Ontario government will need to consult with First Nations the “right way” and that it can be done in the right way, and it can be done faster. What is the Minister of Mines doing to ensure that First Nations communities are consulted effectively, and as the Grand Chief said, expediting the process faster?

The Liberals promised action on the Ring of Fire, and time and time again, they didn’t deliver. They announced funding for the Ring of Fire for three budgets in a row, but this was just window dressing. They then removed any reference to the Ring of Fire whatsoever.

Speaker, I agree with the statement from the Minister of Mines that “at the end of the day, we can do better than taking 15 years to get a mine built.” What is the government doing to get this project done?

Thank you for the question. In fact, our government is aligning our increases—historic increases—of ODSP to inflation. That’s exactly what we’re doing, and we’re taking an all-of-government approach. We’re listening across the board. We are making sure that those who can work are receiving the job readiness programs and the training they need, and for those who cannot work, we are supporting those individuals, those also in financial crises, the municipalities, and making sure that the social service providers have the resources they need. That was exactly what the $1-billion social services relief funding was for.

We are getting the funding to the communities, the people who need it, through the micro-credentialing strategy, the Roadmap to Wellness, the new child care spaces, the Ontario Child Benefit, the dental care for low-income seniors, the CARE tax credit, the LIFT tax credit, the Ontario Jobs Training Tax Credit, the Ontario Energy and Property Tax Credit, and the minimum wage increase. We are continuing to listen, continuing to do what is necessary to support our most vulnerable and to help those who can work get back into the workforce.

I want to thank the member from Ottawa South for his presentation. He mentioned the previous Mike Harris government and talked about hospital closures, funding cuts—I would add on the destruction of the model for our education system—privatizing our health care sector, long-term care, seniors’ care or home care. There are a lot of things to mention.

I would like to ask the member if you would enlighten us a little bit in terms of the way that the Harris legacy has impacted us and where we are today, and what this bill would mean for the future.

Thank you to the member for Toronto Centre.

Over the last four years, one of the things I was surprised by, as an MPP, was how little consultation we have with the public, that many things we discuss—and, I would argue, maybe everything we discuss—become time-allocated; that when we have public consultation, it is always five hours, the minimum allowed.

My background is in health and safety—there’s a bunch of different stuff, but health and safety is really my passion. I’ve learned over the last 17 years of doing that job that you don’t have to have all the answers. What you need to do is, you need to sit down with the people who are being affected, and they’ll give you the answers—and some of the answers we know already. Do you know how you solve housing? You build houses, affordable ones—not giant ones—public housing. That’s how you solve that.

Do you know how you get food to people? You give them affordable food. You give them enough money so they can make ends meet.

Those are the solutions.

But really, what we need to do is what we’re elected to do: to listen to our constituents, to tour, to talk to them and make good decisions, even if they don’t agree with what we thought we believed before we came there—to make decisions based on what people are telling us is the best thing to do.

It’s a weird thing, because it’s a yes/and conversation—it isn’t Highway 69 or Highway 413. I’ve looked at the data for Highway 413 because I was the northern infrastructure critic, and it doesn’t bear fruit; you can say that it does, and the Liberals tried saying it did before, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t reduce commute times. Really, if you want to go forward with that, if that’s what the constituents want in southern Ontario, more power to you. I would disagree about the strength of it. What I am saying is, don’t do it instead of Highway 69. On Highway 69, people are dying. People are being killed. Someone was killed in the last 15 days. I’ve been here before several times talking about people who were killed on Highway 69. So if we’re going to do either/or, let’s stop where people are being killed and let’s then do the next one—and if it’s going to be a yes/and, then let’s do both. But at the end of the day, let’s get Highway 69 done. If you really, really, really want 413, you have the power to drive that through. We can disagree about it—but what I’m talking about is that we have an area where people are being killed on the highway, and we need to support them and ensure that stops happening.

I talked a lot about Bill 124 in the debate, and my colleagues have talked about Bill 124. It’s a bad bill, and it’s punishing. The result of it, really, at the end of the day, is, even though the Conservative government stands up and says that these are heroes and role models and stuff, they’re not being treated like heroes; they’re not being treated like the best. There’s a quality of life that you want. You want to feel fulfilled about your job.

Let’s be honest. If somebody were to tell you to explain what it’s like to be an MPP—there are long hours, and we work hard; there are a lot of people who think that we don’t, but we do, and I know my colleagues opposite do as well. Why do we do it? Because we’re inspired and we enjoy it and it fulfills us.

As health care workers, when you’re being treated by the government as if you’re not valuable and not important, you exit those jobs.

In Sudbury, we have a supervised consumption site that we are waiting for an announcement of the provincial funding for—which, fingers crossed, is happening this week; I’ve heard a rumor, but to be honest, at the same time, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just a visit to evaluate it.

For four years, I’ve been talking about the opioid crisis in Sudbury—across northern Ontario, but in Sudbury in particular, because it’s my riding and where I see it the most. There’s a major intersection in Sudbury with a sea of white crosses, and it is sad that I have to count them to see how many there are on a regular basis. The number continues to grow. That only signifies the people who agree to put crosses up.

We need to inject money into people to be successful. The idea of quitting on your own and just magically overcoming this doesn’t make sense. The government can really, really help by an investment into mental health and addictions to help with aftercare, to help with beds, to help with addiction recovery.