Six times in this bill we read “without consent.” Mushkegowuk–James Bay has two communities that don’t have long-term-care beds—or hospitals with ALC, I should say. All the long-term-care homes have a two-to-three-year waiting period; the others closest are Cochrane and Timmins—which are an hour and a half away from Timmins, two and a half hours from Hearst. The other ones, we’re going further out—five, six hours—Thunder Bay, and then we have Sudbury. If they have no room there, guess what? Now we’re going to eight, nine hours away.

My question to you is: Without consent, where are you going to send these people, away from their families, when we’re talking about how the closest don’t have room or may be five hours to six hours away?

Ma question est pour le premier ministre.

Like all hospitals in northern Ontario, the Hearst hospital is struggling to find doctors to keep its emergency department open, and half of its population has no family doctor. Hearst hospital administrators have solutions that would save up to $185,000 per year. With funding for nurse practitioners, this would address the lack of doctors in their emergency department and locum clinics.

Premier, will your government help the Hearst hospital and give them separate funding so that they can hire nurse practitioners to alleviate the lack of doctors and help keep their emergency department and locum clinics open?

I want to thank my colleague for doing such a great presentation. I really appreciate that you went through the explanatory note, because in the second sentence it says, “This new provision authorizes certain actions to be carried out without the consent of these patients.”

Six times in this bill it talks about “without consent.” But they say we’re fearmongering. They say that we don’t read the bill.

I’d like to hear from you—why do they say that we’re fearmongering, yet it’s in their bill? It’s very clear. What do they have to gain from doing that?