I really want to thank the minister for that question.

I think we all should really thank the minister for the outstanding work that he has been doing on this file. When you look at the work that’s being done in reducing wait-lists and ensuring that patients—

Interjections.

It really is unfortunate that the members opposite don’t want to listen and they don’t want to read and they don’t want to understand that the work we are doing has helped so many people in our province. One only need look at the makeup of this room after June 2, 2022, and it’s evident that we are helping so many in our communities across all of Ontario, and the people of this province are seeing the results, are appreciating that response and responding in turn.

I look forward to being able to speak a little further in the next opportunity here about the outstanding work that we are doing.

The Minister of Long-Term Care.

Further debate?

It’s always an honour to rise in this place and speak on behalf of the people we represent in the communities that brought us here.

To anyone who is watching the proceedings this morning, I just want to provide some context for the debate that is under way today. This is the third government bill that has been brought to this floor in this very rare summer session of the Legislature. As the Speaker will know, typically the Legislature does not sit in the summer. But this government brought MPPs back in August to presumably engage in very important legislative debates about urgent issues that are facing this province.

The first bill that we considered was the budget bill. That was a bill that the government had tabled prior to the election. So that bill was brought to this floor.

The next bill was the strong-mayor bill. That was something of a surprise, because never in the election did we hear the government mention its priority focus on increasing the mayor powers in Ottawa and Toronto. Regardless, that was the bill, that was the second piece of legislation the government brought forward.

That brings us to today and Bill 7, the More Beds, Better Care Act. This is a bill that purports to address the health care crisis we are facing in this province. All of us are seeing in our communities that the health care system is crumbling before our eyes.

There are at least 25 emergency rooms across this province that have either closed or reduced hours over the past many months—and it hasn’t only just been this summer. This is a problem that we have seen in Ontario for quite some time.

As the representative of London West, I want to acknowledge that many of these closures have occurred in some of those small, rural communities in southwestern Ontario that surround London. Some of those closures are under way right now. We know that St. Marys hospital closed overnight hours this very week. This is the second closure of St. Marys hospital in August. Seaforth hospital closed its ER earlier in August. Walkerton and Chesley hospitals closed their overnight emergency services last week. What this means for London is increased pressure on London Health Sciences Centre because, of course, London Health Sciences Centre is a regional hospital that serves many of the surrounding municipalities. With those closures in those rural communities, there are increased pressures on LHSC, and we have seen that in London with changes in the emergency ward.

There was a story on CBC just recently about a Londoner who was 40 weeks pregnant with her first child, and her midwife had been bracing her for the possibility that she might not get a scheduled induction due to the shortage of support staff, nurses and doctors. That’s one example of the kind of pressures that LHSC is facing in its maternity ward because of some of these increased pressures.

LHSC’s epilepsy monitoring unit also had to reduce services. There is a temporary closure, until September, of the epilepsy monitoring unit, although critical care services will continue to be provided.

We are hearing about an ever-growing list of people in London who are facing incredible challenges accessing a family physician. For many people who don’t have an emergency that requires ER support, that’s the canary in the coal mine. That’s the first indication that something is fundamentally wrong with our health care system—when people cannot find a family doctor in order to get that preventive care that will keep them from having to access critical care in our hospitals.

It’s interesting, Speaker; when you read some of the stories about why our system is experiencing these challenges, it’s pretty unanimous that one of the reasons for these closures is the staffing pressures in our health care system. Those are pressures that have been growing for years, in fact, because of the lack of health human resource planning, but they have certainly been exacerbated by COVID-19. Nurses and health care workers are exhausted. They’re burnt out. They are disrespected by this government, by its ill-considered policy to introduce a cap on any wage increases of 1%. That has been incredibly demoralizing for health care workers. We’re seeing nurses leave the profession in droves. They are going to the US to find better jobs, better working conditions, better salaries, or they are switching careers altogether. They’re retiring early. We have all heard these things.

As a result of these staffing pressures, what we’re seeing in our system is that hospitals, including those small, rural hospitals I mentioned, are having to spend money on temp agency nurses. There was a story last week in the Toronto Star that revealed that spending on temp agency nurses is up more than 550% since before the pandemic at a Toronto hospital. Speaker, that’s not a unique situation at that hospital. We know that hospitals all over this province are having to spend those dollars on agency nurses in order to deal with the workforce pressures they are facing.

So in light of this crisis in our health care system and in light of the fact that we were brought back here this summer to deal with some urgent issues, one would have thought that the government would have brought forward legislation that would actually deal with the problems we are seeing. One would have thought they would have brought in a bill to repeal Bill 124—because that is what the health care sector, including hospital CEOs, including physicians, certainly including nurses, including a whole gamut of health care workers, have consistently highlighted as a huge factor in the exodus of health care workers from our workforce.

One would have thought that this government might have brought in legislation to require long-term-care homes to make PSW jobs full-time jobs with proper salaries, with benefits, with job security, with paid sick days. That would have gone a long way to improving the quality of care that seniors receive in our long-term-care homes—and also those PSWs working in home and community care, because we know that seniors want to remain independent in their own homes as long as possible and rely on PSW support in order for that to happen. As I said, instead of bringing in legislation that dealt with the real problems, we have before us this bill entitled More Beds, Better Care Act.

I do want to acknowledge that the government has gone some way since we first came back here in August. When we first arrived back, we saw the Premier and the Minister of Health denying—“There’s no crisis in health care. This is all just part of the normal ebbs and flows.” Then we heard the Minister of Health blaming vacationing nurses for the closures of our ERs, which is reprehensible, to make that allegation. Finally, we saw the government realize that they had to do something, and last week they released a five-point plan. This is the signature legislation that accompanies that plan. It’s clear that they scrambled, because this signature legislation is exactly two and a half pages long. It is very thin on substance but deeply concerning in terms of its content.

I want to start with the title of the bill—as I said, More Beds, Better Care Act. The first half of this title, “More Beds,” clearly reveals this government’s fundamental misunderstanding of the issues that we are experiencing in our health care system. It is not beds that are the problem; it is staff to provide the care to the patients in those beds that is the problem. That’s why, again, I point to the urgency of repealing Bill 124. Unless we do something to increase our health care workforce, we’re not going to have the staff we need. The second part of the title, “Better Care,” suggests that, somehow, transferring alternate-level-of-care patients from hospital into long-term-care homes is going to automatically ensure they get better care.

Speaker, I have to say that Ontarians don’t have a lot of confidence, frankly, in this government’s ability to ensure that seniors in our long-term-care homes are properly protected. We heard about the iron ring around long-term care during COVID that never materialized. We saw more than 4,000 seniors die in long-term-care homes. We saw the military being called in to pull the curtain on the horrendous conditions that our long-term-care-home residents were facing.

Again, I want to say that the crisis in our long-term-care homes will not be fixed unless the staffing in those homes is improved.

Speaker, now I want to turn to what the government decided to do to deal with this crisis. This bill authorizes a whole range of actions that can be taken by placement coordinators at hospitals without the consent of an alternate-level-of-care patient. It authorizes a placement coordinator to determine eligibility for admission to a long-term-care home. It allows the coordinator to select a long-term-care home. It allows the coordinator to provide information about that patient, including personal health information, without the consent of that patient. Finally, it authorizes the admission to the home of an ALC patient without their consent. It’s very clear that all of these actions I have just described can be carried out without consent, provided that reasonable effort has been made to obtain consent—without any definition of what constitutes reasonable effort. As my colleague, our immensely capable health critic, pointed out, that leaves it open to the possibility that a patient could be asked, “Ms. Sattler, are you ready to go to a long-term-care home? We need your consent.” If I say no, is that a reasonable effort? Who knows? It’s not defined in this bill.

The only limitation on consent that is listed in this bill is the inability for a placement coordinator to put physical restraints on a patient and to physically transfer that patient to a long-term-care home. Other than that, there are all of those actions I previously described that can be carried out if the patient does not consent.

Speaker, moving an ALC patient, an alternate-level-of-care patient, into a long-term-care home that is not of that person’s choosing is, as critics have pointed out, a fundamental violation of the human rights of that patient.

The only right to appeal that is included in this bill is, if someone is deemed ineligible for a long-term-care-home admission, then they can appeal that. However, there is no appeal whatsoever for an alternate-level-of-care patient who is placed in a long-term-care home that is not of their choosing.

We have heard in the media and we’ve heard the minister talk in this House about the fact that no patient would be transferred out of their community, but that is not in the bill. If you read this bill, it indicates that the geographic restrictions around placement decisions will be outlined in regulations. We don’t see regulations—the regulations are written after a bill is passed. So this gives the government huge latitude to prescribe whatever geography they decide is appropriate, which means that an ALC patient in London could be discharged without consent from hospital, could be assessed for eligibility to long-term-care without consent, could be admitted to a long-term-care home without consent, and that long-term-care home could be in St. Catharines; it could be in Hamilton; it could be in Hanover; it could be in any number of communities that would take that person out of their circle of care and away from their family members, away from the support and the love they need in order to live out their final days with dignity and respect.

The bill also indicates that the regulations are going to prescribe what personal health information can be provided without the consent of the patient. That is very troublesome because everyone should have the right to consent to the use of their own personal health information.

What is entirely missing from the bill is any reference to charging alternate-level-of-care patients who do not consent to a physical transfer to a long-term-care home. I want to remind members who were here at question period yesterday that our interim leader asked the Minister of Long-Term Care, “Can the minister guarantee right now that if a senior refuses to go to a care home they don’t want, they will never be billed for their hospital bed?” And the minister responded, quite rightly, “That is not in my bill.” He’s absolutely correct; that is not in this bill. That is why it is so worrisome that this bill is silent on the question of whether a patient can be charged by the hospital if they refuse to go to a long-term-care home.

We hear this government suggest somehow that it’s the opposition who is fearmongering. But I want to highlight comments that were made by Jane Meadus, who is a lawyer with the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly, who shares these exact concerns about the possibility of patients being charged if they refuse to move to a long-term-care home. She provided a memo that says if patients “refuse a bed offer for a LTC home they apply to, a determination may be made that they are no longer in need of treatment in the hospital. A discharge order may then be communicated to them, and the hospital may charge them an unregulated daily rate if they choose to remain in hospital.” So unless this is explicitly prohibited in this bill, you can be sure that it will happen. That just increases the pressure on an alternate-level-of-care patient in a hospital who does not want to move to long-term care because it’s not the long-term care of their choice. It increases the pressure on those family members, those substitute decision-makers, who are having to decide in the face of these medical professionals what can be done with their loved one. And it makes it ever more likely that people are going to be moved against their will to a long-term-care home where they do not want to be.

Advocates, people who are involved in this sector, have called this bill “morally repugnant.” It is an assault on the fundamental human rights of some of the most vulnerable and frailest people in this province.

The member for Mississauga–Lakeshore.

I want to thank the member for her address this morning.

I’ve been here for nearly 19 years, and this is probably the most egregious example of NDP fearmongering since I’ve been here.

Since I’ve been here, ALC patients have been a huge problem in this province. We’ve got our vulnerable seniors in a place where they shouldn’t be, but no capacity was built in long-term-care homes to accommodate those seniors who would be best cared for in a long-term-care home.

This government has acted expeditiously and quickly, since the election, to bring in the proper legislation so we can actually move those patients to a home—

Interjections.

And now we have the NDP inventing all kinds of voodoo scenarios that do not exist.

So I do ask the member, could you please stick to what the bill actually says? No one will be going to a home that they’re not consenting to. Stop with the fearmongering—

Yesterday, the Toronto Star editorial board wrote in support of Bill 7:

“Earlier this year, the Ontario Hospital Association estimated there were 5,800 patients waiting in hospital beds for what is known as ‘alternate levels of care.’

“The consequences of such hospital stays ripple through the system and impact others seeking care. With beds occupied, other patients can’t be admitted and emergency rooms back up.”

“Hospitals are not the ideal location for such patients. They don’t require the intensive medical care hospitals are meant to provide. Nor do they receive the variety of supportive programs offered at long-term-care facilities designed specifically for seniors.”

I’d like to give the member an opportunity to comment on the Toronto Star editorial.

We know that under this Conservative watch, close to 5,000 seniors—parents, grandparents, mothers-in-law, fathers-in-law—died in long-term care. Most died in for-profit homes. Forty seniors died just in the last two weeks alone. Knowing this, do you feel it’s okay to give medical information of patients, seniors, to long-term-care providers without consent?

I’ve been listening to this debate in the House for the last few days. The thing that seniors are most concerned about is that they will be forcibly transferred to long-term-care homes against their will. And the government keeps responding with diversions, with insults to the NDP—“Oh, you haven’t read the bill. There’s nothing in there about consent.”

I’ve read the bill. The bill is right here, and I can see in this bill that it says “certain actions” are “to be carried out without the consent of these patients.... The actions cannot be performed without first making reasonable efforts to obtain the patient’s consent.” There’s a list of 13 actions that can be taken without the patient’s consent. That’s what this bill is about. It also says—and I think this is the most terrifying statement for seniors in the province of Ontario—“The section does not authorize the use of restraints in order to carry out the actions or the physical transfer of an ALC patient to a long-term-care home without their consent.” In other words, they set the bar at they will not handcuff seniors who are in hospital beds and refuse to be transferred, but they will do everything up to that.

So my question to this speaker is—

It’s great to be able to take part in debate here today and in questions and comments.

While I do have a great working relationship with the member from Guelph, I do have a few concerns with what he has brought up here today, when we talk about this bill going to committee or some of the different provisions of the bill.

Again, as part of the kinder, gentler Mike Harris that we’re all experiencing here in the 43rd Parliament, I want to give the member an opportunity to share some solutions, rather than just trying to carve up the problems. Let’s hear some solutions. What can we do to get ALC patients out of hospital? How can we move forward with making sure that those people are still looked after in the way they need to be here in Ontario?

Thank you to the member opposite for her contributions today.

It’s no secret that the health care system is under immense pressure, and if we do nothing, we could see a shortage of 2,400 hospital beds by the peak of a potential flu or a COVID-19 wave later this year. Our government is seeing this potential wave on the horizon and we’re proposing real steps to address it, to help ensure that our health care system is properly resourced to deliver the care Ontarians need.

Meanwhile, the opposition seems content to sit around and oppose, much like they were content to support the Liberals between 2011 and 2018—propping up that Liberal government when they built only 611 beds for 176,000 new, elderly patients over the age of 75.

My question is really simple: Are you content to sit back, support the status quo and do nothing when action is clearly needed?

I appreciate the comment from my colleague because he is exactly right. What this bill does is allow a long list of actions that can now be taken without the consent of a patient that will coerce or pressure alternate-level-of-care patients to feel that they have to leave the hospital and move to a long-term-care home, and the only restriction is that they cannot be forcibly handcuffed, physically restrained and physically transferred from the hospital to a long-term-care home.

So I understand why seniors are terrified of this bill, and I understand why experts and advocates also have raised those concerns.

Health care workers are leaving. They’re leaving because of this government’s low-wage suppression policies that are driving them to retire early or leave the province.

It’s always an honour to rise and participate in the debate—today, on Bill 7 at second reading. For members opposite and for people watching at home: One of the reasons second reading debate happens is so that concerns can be raised and addressed—and amended at committee. Advocates for the elders, seniors, doctors, and health care policy experts have all raised serious concerns about the implications of this bill and the possible unintended consequences.

I understand that we are facing a health care crisis and that that crisis predated the existing government, but it has been made worse by the existing government because of their failure to invest in the people who deliver care. Nurses, front-line health care workers and doctors have all said that wage caps and benefit caps are a significant contributor to the inability to retain nurses and other front-line workers in our health care system. Yet the government—after calls from almost everybody across the province, including the opposition—has failed to say, “Maybe we need to make an adjustment and invest in the people who deliver care.”

One of the concerns that seniors have is the consent provisions in the bill. I’ve heard the argument about, is there consent or is there not consent? Well, I guarantee you, Speaker, that elders deserve clarity around the consent provisions in this bill, because when you combine this bill with legislation that I know has been there since 1979, they could charge elders up to $1,500 a day if they do not consent to being transferred to a long-term-care home they do not want to be in. One of the reasons they may not consent is that they would be a long distance away from their family, which is one of the unintended consequences of this bill. We already have a home care system and a long-term-care system that’s underinvested, understaffed and overwhelmed. Family members play a key role in providing additional care for elders. It will be incredibly difficult if elders feel forced to consent to agree to move a long distance away from family and lose that additional care, which will then put additional pressure on existing staff.

I would say to the official opposition and to the government: Listen to the concerns that people have and amend this bill at committee, because we know that properly placing alternate-level-of-care patients is important to the health care system.

First of all, repeal Bill 124 so nurses and front-line health care workers can negotiate fair wages, fair benefits and better working conditions. Speaker, do you know what it’s like to be overworked in understaffed wards and feeling underappreciated and disrespected by government? Do you know what it’s like to not be able to access mental health benefits, for example, because your benefits are capped, let alone being able to have your wages keep up with inflation?

Second, two years ago, we were asking this government to fast-track the accreditation of internationally trained health care professionals. They are now finally starting to do that. According to the RNA, that was 15,000 to 20,000 nurses or other front-line health care workers who could have been part of the system, taking a burden off the system, if the government had acted on that two years ago.

Speaker, I have more solutions I’d like to offer, but I know my time has run out.

So I encourage the members opposite: Listen to the advocates, listen to the seniors, listen to the health care policy-makers who are putting forward concerns about this bill and address those concerns, because we know that we need a better process for properly and justly placing seniors who have alternate-level-of-care needs.

That is pathetic.

Thank you.

The member for London West can reply.

I’ve always been one to look at legislation—and words are very powerful. I know the member from Guelph talked about consent. If I’m sitting in a long-term-care home or if I’m a family member, I’m looking at this bill and I’m reading the first two sentences—it says, “The bill amends the Fixing Long-Term Care Act, 2021 to add a new provision for patients who occupy a bed in a public hospital and are designated by an attending clinician as requiring an alternate level of care. This new provision authorizes certain actions to be carried out without the consent of these patients.” What else could that possibly mean? It’s removing the consent of individuals. The outcome is what I’m concerned about. When you look at legislation, there are winners and losers. We see who the losers are going to be here.

Who is going to benefit from this legislation? Who is this for? That’s the question that I’m asking the member.

It is my privilege to rise in the House to speak to the debate on Bill 7, the More Beds, Better Care Act, 2022. This bill, if passed, will make amendments to the Fixing Long-Term Care Act, 2021, as part of our government’s larger Plan to Stay Open: Health System Stability and Recovery. This five-point plan aims to provide the best care possible to patients and residents while ensuring the necessary resources and supports are in place to keep the province and the economy open. The plan further bolsters the Ontario health care workforce, expands innovative models of care, and ensures hospital beds are there for patients when they need them.

As everyone in the chamber knows, health care systems around the world are facing unprecedented challenges lately, and Ontario is no different. In order to address these pressures, make more progress with the surgical backlog, and be properly prepared for a potential winter surge, we need to do more. If we keep the status quo, we could see a 2,400-hospital-bed shortage by the peak of the potential flu and COVID waves later this year.

Over the last few weeks, our government has been actively engaging with front-line partners, hospitals, long-term care, union leadership and the best experts available to identify concrete, actionable solutions to respond to urgent pressures as well as prepare for any potential surge in the winter months. Our government is looking at every possible option as we look for ways to address the challenges facing our hospital capacity, avoid overstraining the health care system, and establish better models of care.

One of the main ways we help with hospital capacity challenges is to ensure that patients are getting an appropriate level of care in an appropriate setting. Across the province, there are many patients whose care needs could be better met elsewhere. These patients are sometimes referred to as alternate-level-of-care patients, or ALC for short. ALC patients in hospital no longer need to be there, and many would have better quality of life in a long-term-care home. At the same time, moving these ALC patients out of hospital and into long-term care frees up much-needed space in hospitals for patients who require hospital treatment.

Our government’s priority is for people to live and receive care where they have the best quality of life, close to their family and loved ones and their community. With this bill, we would add a new provision to the Fixing Long-Term Care Act, 2021, to ease the transfer of patients in ALC into long-term care.

ALC pressures are not unique to Ontario. Several provinces, like BC, Alberta and Nova Scotia, have similar policies which encourage the movement of patients into temporary care settings while they wait for their preferred bed.

In Ontario, there are approximately 1,900 ALC patients on a long-term-care wait-list or in need of long-term care. Some patients can spend up to six months or longer in hospital waiting for a space in their preferred home to open up, even though they no longer need hospital services. When they cannot be discharged, these patients continue to receive care, but in the wrong setting. These patients contribute to backlogs in acute-care services in hospitals because they occupy beds that other patients urgently need.

The More Beds, Better Care Act will enable the movement of these patients to a more appropriate care setting that can better support their quality of life and better meet their needs. ALC patients who are placed in a long-term-care home that was not selected by them will be there temporarily, until they can be placed in their preferred home.

As members in this house surely know, the wait-list for long-term care is sizable, thanks in large part to the neglect of the former Liberal government, who, from 2011 to 2018, only managed to build 611 net new beds across the province—611 net new beds while the population of Ontarians aged 75 and older grew by over 176,000. This blatant neglect of the sector left our government with a wait-list of over 40,000 patients.

Speaker, I am sure you know that our government wasted no time in developing new long-term-care beds. Since 2018, we have invested $6.4 billion into the development of new beds and new homes, and we currently have over 30,000 new and more than 28,000 existing beds to be upgraded in the development pipeline. Despite all of that, we still have a long wait-list for long-term care in Ontario, so I am sure everyone is wondering where we are going to place all of these ALC patients.

Well, as we have done since the beginning of the pandemic, we are working on the advice of the Chief Medical Officer of Health, and we are taking immediate action to increase bed capacity in long-term-care homes by right-sizing the number of COVID-19 isolation beds, based on community demand and COVID-19 risk levels. By the end of the summer, approximately 300 long-term-care beds that were set aside for COVID-19 isolation will be safely available for the people on wait-lists, with a potential of 1,000 more beds available within six months.

I am sure some members in this House are wondering, if we eliminate isolation beds in homes, are we putting long-term-care residents at risk of contracting COVID-19? That is a very good question. Isolation beds were implemented at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to protect residents from contracting this highly contagious virus. Since that time, long-term-care homes have implemented enhanced infection prevention and control practices, personal protective equipment is more readily available, and a large majority of residents and staff have been vaccinated. Because of these factors, isolation beds are no longer as necessary as they were in the early days of the pandemic.

Over the course of the last couple of days, I have heard some members of the opposition suggest that the homes that ALC patients would be sent to could be in outbreak, or experiencing staffing shortages. However, I would like to remind those members that, as set out in the Fixing Long-Term Care Act, 2021, long-term care licensees must approve the applicant’s admission to the home unless the home lacks the physical facilities necessary to meet the applicant’s care requirements, or the staff of the home lack the nursing expertise necessary to meet the applicant’s care requirements. In the case of an outbreak, homes must follow guidelines and direction from their local public health unit with respect to any additional measures that may be implemented to reduce the risk of transmission in the home. All this to say, if the home does not have the capacity to take on additional residents, they will not be asked to do so. One thing that we should make clear is that this would not apply to all patients in ALC. It would only apply to ALC patients who have been deemed by a medical professional to no longer need to be in a hospital and who may benefit from receiving care in a long-term-care home instead, but are either waiting for a preferred long-term-care bed or do not consent to apply to a long-term-care home suitable for their needs.

By allowing a placement coordinator to access and authorize an ALC patient admission to a long-term-care home, this amendment, if passed, will allow seniors, their families, caregivers and clinicians to shift the conversation from where a person’s needs can best be met to where a person’s quality of life would be better. The focus should always be on providing the right care in the right place.

Speaker, now I would like to spend a few minutes talking about some of the landmark changes our government has made in long-term care to make sure that seniors receive the care they deserve. When it comes to long-term care, our government saw the status quo that was left behind. We saw a system that had been neglected by the previous Liberal government, with out-of-date homes, understaffing across the sector, and little accountability measures. We knew that we would have to work quickly and that we would need to come up with innovative solutions to accomplish what needed to be done in the sector.

When the Premier promised to build 30,000 net new beds in the province, we acted quickly. In four years, we have had more than 30,000 new beds allocated across the province and another 28,000 existing beds that are being upgraded to modern standards. This means no more four-bed ward rooms with poor ventilation designed to outdated standards.

This includes the brand new 320-bed Lakeridge Gardens home in my riding of Ajax, which was built as part of our accelerated build pilot program. Launched in July 2020, this program uses hospital-owned land and accelerated procurement and construction methods, and aims to deliver new long-term-care beds up to two years quicker than the traditional pilot program. Our government recognized that large urban centres are areas of high service need. The need for additional long-term-care capacity is critical, but it’s often difficult to build due to issues like availability and cost of land. This program leverages the expertise of Infrastructure Ontario to accelerate construction. In addition to the Lakeridge Health home in Ajax, this program will also see the building of two homes with a total of 632 beds in Mississauga by Trillium Health Partners, and another 320-bed home developed by Humber River Hospital in Toronto. This is just one more example of how our government changed the status quo on building long-term-care homes.

For years, the status quo with the Liberal government was reading reports about the need for more staff to deliver more care to residents, and ignoring those reports. From 2009 to 2018, they only managed to increase direct care to residents by 21 minutes. That is a 12% increase over nine years in government, or slightly more than two additional minutes of direct care per resident per year.

Our plan includes a historic investment of $4.9 billion over four years to increase direct care to an average of four hours per resident per day. This plan will require hiring 27,000 support workers and nurses to work in long-term care. But we all know that these highly skilled workers do not just appear. That is why we invested in programs to train these workers. Partnering with our publicly funded colleges, we invested $121 million to accelerate the training of 9,000 PSWs. We invested another $86 million to train up to an additional 8,600 PSWs through private career colleges and district school boards. But we weren’t done there. We invested a further $35 million to increase enrolment in publicly assisted colleges and universities to introduce 2,000 nurses to the health care system.

Training and hiring new staff is one thing, but retaining that staff is a completely different thing altogether. That is why we invested $100 million to add an additional 2,000 nurses to the long-term-care sector by 2024-25 by supporting the training of thousands of support workers and nurses who want to advance their careers in long-term care.

The first program we launched is the Bridging Educational Grant In Nursing—or BEGIN—initiative. Partnered with WeRPN, eligible PSWs will receive $6,000 a year to pursue further education to become registered practical nurses, and eligible registered practical nurses will receive $10,000 a year to become registered nurses.

The second program: We partnered with Colleges Ontario to increase access to nursing programs at publicly assisted colleges through:

—the introduction of hybrid online and in-person models in practical nursing and bachelor of science and nursing programs to provide students with greater flexibility and choice;

—the creation of an additional 500 enrolments in bridging programs for the 2022-23 academic year, designed to give applicants the skills and credentials they need to move to the next stage of their careers; and

—providing up to $6,000 a year in financial support to internationally trained nurses to gain the credentials required to work in Ontario.

Speaker, when it comes to ensuring Ontarians receive the care they require, our government continues to go beyond the status quo and find innovative solutions. That is why we are listening to experts and stakeholders from across the health care and long-term-care sectors. That is why we’re listening to seniors, their families and caregivers. We’re listening to nurses, PSWs and front-line health care workers as we move forward with our plan to fix long-term care. The feedback and insights that we receive from people on the ground in long-term care is invaluable and helps to shape the solutions and direction our government pursues. This will continue to be this government’s approach as we continue to go beyond the status quo to innovate and evolve the long-term-care and health care systems in Ontario.

We all know that this is a critical time for action in Ontario, and I am proud to be part of the government that is taking real steps to fix long-term care and evolve our health care system. With the proposed amendments in the More Beds, Better Care Act, 2022, and our five-point Plan to Stay Open: Health System Stability and Recovery, we are taking actions to solve the challenges and alleviate pressures facing the health care system. I am proud to support this bill, and I hope the members opposite will join us as we ensure that every Ontarian has access to care when and where they need it.

Thank you to the member opposite.

A recent editorial in the Globe and Mail discussed the government’s five-point Plan to Stay Open. It talked about how acute-care beds are really for acutely ill patients, not those waiting for long-term care. Patients who need long-term care should receive it in a proper setting.

They do something similar in BC, Alberta and Nova Scotia. So, why, when we try to improve the system here so that patients can get into the hospital—

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?

I don’t believe the member opposite has actually been attentively listening to my comments. My comments have acknowledged the need to address alternate-level-of-care patients in hospitals.

What I’m asking the government to do is to listen to the experts and address the concerns that elders have about this bill.