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?

Just the opposite, Mr. Speaker: We are listening to front-line workers and we’re listening to health care professionals, all of whom are unified in telling us that when your loved one has been discharged from hospital, the best place for them to be is in a long-term-care home. There are close to 2,000 seniors waiting in hospital who have been discharged who want to be in a long-term-care home.

This bill facilitates that to happen. It ensures that they stay at the top of the waiting list for their priority home. It provides additional levels of care, whether it’s Behavioural Supports Ontario or kidney dialysis. It works with our health care professionals.

Had the opposition even read the Fixing Long-Term Care Act, they would know that no home in this province can accept a patient unless they have the appropriate level of staffing and resources to handle the person that they are getting. It is about fixing long-term care. It is about making things better for seniors—

We are making massive investments in health care all over the province. We started in 2018, when we brought in Ontario health teams. We then went further by adding 58,000 new and upgraded long-term-care beds. We closed down the ward rooms. We brought in infection prevention and control measures and supported that.

This bill brings back the respite care program, when a senior has no other option but to bring one of their loved ones to hospital because there’s no other option. We are bringing it back so you can bring them back into home care. Experts agree this is the best quality care, and we will stand up for the best quality of care for our seniors.

I hope, given the member’s question, he will agree that given that, it is obviously better for somebody, as opposed to being in a hospital, to be getting that care—the care for dementia, kidney dialysis—in a home. That’s what this is about, and I hope they will support us on this.

We are in a health care crisis. Emergency rooms are closing. Hundreds of health care jobs are vacant. The fundamental problem with this bill is that it’s blaming the patient—the most vulnerable, the seniors—for a problem that’s not their fault. Instead of solving the issue, it’s blaming the patient, the seniors. Patients, experts and front-line workers have offered this government solutions. Instead of listening, this government has ignored them all.

Repeal Bill 124. Give them paid sick days. Hire more nurses. Hire more PSWs. You can do so many things. Get internationally trained professionals recognized. These are real solutions to address this problem, not Bill 7.

This government has put a cruel plan forward that threatens seniors with huge fees if they refuse to move hundreds of kilometres from friends and families. My question is, why is this government being so cruel to the most vulnerable people of our province?

My Don Valley West constituents are also concerned about Bill 7 and the effect it will have on patient care, which is stated as a priority in the government’s budget. Yet elderly patients risk being transferred to facilities far from family and their community, which play an important role in supporting seniors in need.

Seniors in long-term-care facilities—in particular, private ones—have suffered a great deal during the pandemic, with higher death rates and long periods of isolation. Once again, this government is asking seniors, some of our most vulnerable, to take one for the team and help solve the crisis in our hospitals by moving to a home not of their choosing, instead of acknowledging that we are in a staffing crisis created by measures like Bill 124.

Mr. Speaker, could the Minister of Long-Term Care tell us why this government is treating our seniors like a burden and legislating unfair treatment with Bill 7 instead of solving the staffing problem and treating our health care workers respectfully by repealing Bill 124?

Mr. Speaker, I can only surmise that the leader of the Liberal Party put a new member up to ask that question because perhaps the member didn’t understand the legacy of the Liberal Party.

It was the Liberals who treated our seniors so poorly for so long. Six hundred and eleven beds is the legacy of the Liberal Party; 611 beds is the legacy of the Liberal Party, Mr. Speaker.

We have invested in 58,000 new and upgraded beds across the province. They refused to do it. They froze the food budget; we increased it, Mr. Speaker. We increased staffing; we increased inspections. These are all things that we are doing, and we are increasing the level of care to four hours a day. When we took over, it was at two and a half hours. That is the legacy of the Liberal government—a government that spent more than any other government in the history of this province and has what to show for it? They have nothing to show for it. We’ll get the job done for seniors because we know we can do better.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and to the minister for his view of history. I’ll add to that history that the momentous decrease in hospital beds—from which we are still recovering—occurred between 1990 and 1999, under two other previous governments.

This government’s Bill 7 will send seniors to long-term-care facilities that are not amongst the choices that are best for them. Furthermore, these seniors could be going into for-profit long-term-care facilities which are suffering from severe staffing challenges, as referred to in their recent quarterly reporting increases.

Will the Minister of Long-Term Care tell us how he can assure patients and their families that seniors sent to their non-preferred homes—in particular, for-profit ones—will receive the care they need when these facilities continue to deal with pervasive staffing challenges?

Because it is the law in the province of Ontario, and became the law through the Fixing Long-Term Care Act. Nobody can be moved into a home that does not have the resources to handle the person that is being transferred in. That is the whole point of this bill. I’m not sure how the member could actually get up in her place and ask this question, and then say that she’s not in support of the bill that we are bringing forward.

But I’ll go even further: I challenge the member to lay on the table what the Liberals did with respect to long-term care. Did they get us to four hours? No. Did they build new homes? No. Did they increase the food budget? No. When it comes to health care, they failed not only seniors in this province, they failed so many people in the province of Ontario. We’re reversing that. We are making historic investments because we know how important health care is to ensuring a strong, stable government that can meet the needs of Ontarians for decades to come, for the economy and education. We’re getting it done because we know how—

I’d like to thank the member for the question.

This bill is about long-term care. Twenty-five years ago, we started an experiment in long-term care here in this province, bringing in for-profit long-term care, and successive governments, of which I was a part, continued it. I have to say, during the pandemic we all saw the results of that experiment—not good results. It’s not a path we should have gone down. It doesn’t work. You can’t serve two masters. You can’t pay dividends and care for people.

The homes that generally aren’t on people’s list of choices are the for-profit homes. The lists for non-profit homes are very long.

What this bill is going to do right now is, it’s going to send people where they don’t want to go. It’s not right. This is kind of a continuation of that legacy.

I think we all care about seniors here—people in our families, people in other people’s families. But I kind of feel like I’m in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. There’s a bill that says you can move people without their consent, and the government continually says, “You can’t do that”—but it’s in the bill.

Then, nobody says how far people are going to move—“Well, just leave that for regulations. We’ll find out later.” No one says anything about how it’s going to cost you more money if you decide not to go.

I think it would be easier to have a reasonable, positive debate if we could actually debate, if we could actually put it to committee, if we could actually let people come and tell us what was going to happen. That’s why we have committees—because we don’t all work in that sector; we don’t all know that sector. But I’ve been doing this for 20 years in a community office. I know what happens when couples get separated.

What I’m saying is, this bill is going to create more problems. It’s going to hurt more than it helps.

I think we answered the question about how long—this is being put out as a temporary measure, but it’s permanent. There’s no sunset clause in here.

Interjections.

I’m sorry I missed the member’s press conference, but I think Ontarians deserve these answers. That’s why we should be debating it and putting it to committee. The government should be forthright about it. It’s obviously something that they’re proud of.

I think that your question is spot-on.

What I would say, respectfully, is, Bill 124 has done more damage to our health care human resources—

Interjections.

Interjections.

Respectfully, if you don’t have a nurse, it’s pretty hard to get someone off a gurney into a bed. But I would also say to the person who’s in that bed, who’s 80 or 90, who has a spouse—the farther you move that person away, the harder it is for that spouse. It’s about their quality of life. Just because they’re old doesn’t mean they don’t have rights. Just because they’re old doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a quality of life. So that shouldn’t happen.

I would, respectfully, submit that actually repealing Bill 124 about 18 months ago would have made a difference in this province, and actually respecting nurses and front-line health care workers, and not saying wonderful things and then not following it up with action.

Do you know what? When they engrave this Ford government in granite, it is going to say, “Here lies the Ford government—I need a plan in two weeks.”

My question to the member opposite is regarding things that are in the bill. The things that have been mentioned, the language that has been used—“coercion,” “forced to move away from friends and family,” “move to the worst homes in the province”—are all things that this bill protects our fragile seniors in ALC from. What does the member think language like that means to a fragile person sitting in ALC?

I encourage all of us to speak positively to our seniors and not put this fear forward.