Thank you for asking a question about home care. The solutions in home care are clear. To continue to invest into the for-profit companies that dominate our home care system, when there are no checks and balances, does not give us better home care.

To give us better home care, mandate permanent full-time—mandate 70% of jobs in home care to be permanent, full-time, well-paid, with benefits, sick days and pension plans, and the problem will be solved. You will make a huge difference. Tens of thousands of PSWs who presently work elsewhere will come back to the job that they love, to the job that they are good at doing.

By keeping all of those people in their homes, you free up beds in the hospitals. There are solutions that are within the government’s control to help free up beds in the hospitals. I hope you will do it.

If you share information with a physician, with a nurse, with a lab tech, with a physio or whatever, they are bound to keep that information secret. Nobody will know. The bill, Bill 7, takes away that right, takes away that bond. Now health care professionals will be able to access information without your consent—

We just came out of a pandemic. We have seen the difference between private, for-profit long-term-care homes, where two times or three times more people died than in not-for-profit. When you see the difference is so clear in the quality of care—it costs the exact same to the taxpayer to invest in a not-for-profit home as it does to invest in a for-profit home. Why not make sure that we get the best value for taxpayers’ money and invest in a not-for-profit long-term-care home, as opposed to what you’re doing?

My question is to the Premier. I was recently written a letter from one of my constituents. They actually provided, quite honestly, some very sad news. They received some communication from their medical health care provider, their primary doctor, who is actually asking them to find a new doctor after 17 years of being their primary physician. What the doctor said to the patient was that his workload is untenable, it’s unmanageable, and that he has to reduce the workload. So out of a randomized system that’s set out by the College of Physicians and Surgeons, they’ve selected 262 patients—anonymized—and they sent out the same letter to those patients telling them to find a new doctor in their neighbourhood. That represents a reduction of 40% of patients in that clinic now.

My constituent went about asking community members for referrals and none of them were able to help them. The medical care professionals said to them, “We’re not taking new patients.”

What will this government do, what will the Premier do, to stop this dumping of patients by medical professionals because they can’t manage the workload? What can you do for my constituent and the—

What is the government going to do to address the current health care crisis? What do I say—what do we all say—to this particular constituent or to an Ontarian who is looking for a family doctor? What do we say to the other families that are looking for primary care professionals? We are in a health care crisis, and I don’t think this government is taking it seriously. We need help; our constituents need help. What can you do to help them today?

Thank you to the member for the question. We are taking it very seriously. This government wants to ensure that everyone in this province has access to a family physician, whether you are living in northern Ontario, rural Ontario or underserved areas within the GTA. That’s why we are taking measures to ensure that we are training more and more doctors by opening the new Brampton medical school, the Scarborough integrated medical school, as well as expanding the Queen’s Lakeridge Health centre. These are all measures we are taking to ensure we have more doctors for the future.

We’re also expanding the medical seats in this province. This is the first time this has been done in over a decade. There will be 160 undergraduate seats and 295 postgraduate seats.

This government takes this very seriously. We want to ensure every Ontarian has access to doctors and proper health care resources across this province. We will continue to work together with this and ensure that everyone has access to these resources.

I sincerely appreciate the question from the minister, and I’ll begin by saying as a physician that every member has a right to patient-physician confidentiality. I admire you for acknowledging me publicly, but it is my pleasure to serve both in a political capacity and, of course, if my services are ever required, in a clinical capacity as well.

One of the things that I hope to bring forward as a physician in this Legislature is the fact that I have a unique privilege: When serving in the emergency department, my patients tell me things that they don’t necessarily feel comfortable sharing with other people, because of stigma, because of things that have happened to them in the past. I hope that when I rise in this chamber, I can amplify those voices and tell those stories, and I would humbly ask if you would join me in listening, in helping me to amplify those voices as well, so that we can fight for every single person in this province, not just the ones who can be the most vocal. For me, that is one thing I would hope for.

A close friend of mine shared with me an account just last week of a young woman who had passed out, and so she came to the emergency department. It costs hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars just to register someone in the emergency department, to ensure that it’s adequately staffed and to pay for the services that are provided. Ultimately, after the consultation was complete, the reason that she had passed out was because she hadn’t been able to eat that morning. She couldn’t afford to do it.

Stories like this remind me that up-front investment in things like—sir, you spoke about food insecurity earlier. Investments in things like housing, in food, in making sure that disabled people can access the services that they need, can have profound and massive impacts on their long-term quality of—