I had the benefit of reading comments from the CAO of Windsor Regional Hospital, who reflected positively on this bill.

My question to the member today is about hospital capacity. How would Bill 7 play a role in supporting Ontario’s broader health care system and perhaps even create hospital capacity?

Unfortunately, I was not here to be able to hear the members speak to this portion of the debate. But on this side of the House, we have real questions and concerns about this bill. So a question that I asked to the minister yesterday, I will put back to the members who did have the opportunity to speak to this bill yesterday.

We’re greatly concerned about patients being charged when they refuse to leave the hospital and go to long-term care or to be sent home. This is something that I know I’ve heard in my office for years has been happening. This bill will definitely seem to seal the deal to allow hospitals to charge an uninsured amount to patients. Could the member answer what his government is doing to ensure that that does not happen to patients going forward?

What I said in my question is that, for years, patients have been charged and threatened to be charged—so that is existing legislation. Where in this bill does it protect patients going forward? The hospitals are going to have the ability to move ahead, to push people out of hospital into long-term care, particularly when they’re not wanting to be there. And if they’re refusing to do so, what is going to happen? Did the government think to put a protection in this bill to make sure that patients wouldn’t be charged any further?

I would appreciate a reasonable answer from this member instead of just throwing stones back on this side. Let’s talk—

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.

I don’t think there’s any question that hospitals, alternate-level-of-care beds, are not the greatest place for people to be, but neither is a long-term-care home that is not of the patient’s choosing—a long-term-care home that likely has availability because no one wants to go there. We all know of those long-term-care homes that became notorious during COVID-19 because of their abject failure to protect the residents who lived in those homes.

Unless this bill is accompanied by a huge effort to improve PSW wages, to make those jobs good jobs, to improve supports for seniors in long-term-care homes, moving vulnerable people from one situation of crisis in a hospital to another situation of crisis in a long-term-care home will do nothing to solve the problem.

Clearly, I do not think it is okay to allow the provision of personal health information to any entity without the consent of the person whose information is being shared.

I did want to comment on the fact that private sector long-term-care homes are very likely to be the biggest beneficiaries of this bill, because many of the long-term-care homes that have the shortest waiting lists, that will be able to accommodate these alternate-level-of-care patients, are those private sector homes that other people don’t want to go to. They are the homes that were exposed as having the worst protections in place for seniors during COVID-19.

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?

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.

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?

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—

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.

Again to the Premier: The government is giving itself the power to sign people up to long-term-care homes they don’t want to go to. If they refuse, they could be slapped with a huge tab, like Jon Suter and his family.

To prevent seniors from being coerced into long-term-care homes against their will, will this government ban billing for hospital beds?

Dr. Vivian Stamatopoulos says she’s already hearing from families being threatened with high fees for their hospital stay.

Jane Meadus, a lawyer for the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly, says they get hundreds of these calls from families.

The government’s new legislation lets them send your information to a care home without your consent. They can sign you up for that care home without your consent. If you refuse to go, they have the power to use massive bed bills to force Grandma to get in that cab.

I ask again, will this government ban billing for hospital beds?

The changes that we are making in the more beds, more choice act are very clear: We are trying to ensure that people can get into long-term-care homes where the quality of care is better for them, full stop. I don’t think anybody disagrees that when somebody is in hospital and they’ve been discharged from the hospital, the better quality of care for them—where we can give them better services, where they can be closer to their family—is in a long-term-care home.

The member opposite references a tool that has been in the tool box for hospitals since 1979.

Ultimately, what we are trying to do, the changes we are suggesting and, hopefully, that this Legislature will pass will help us deal with the challenges of acute care; will help residents, like the one she is talking about, get a better quality of care in homes and communities close to their homes, while leaving them on the waiting list for their preferred choice. Doctors agree with this; hospital administrators agree with this, and I hope the opposition does—

What are we actually trying to do? What we’re trying to do is give people who are in acute care in hospitals who are waiting for long-term-care beds more options. We know—experts agree, doctors agree, hospital administrators agree—that the best place for somebody who’s waiting for a long-term-care bed is in a long-term-care home. It is about providing better services, better quality of services for a person waiting for long-term care. That is why we are providing for additional resources so that somebody doesn’t have to be transported back and forth, whether they need kidney dialysis—Behavioural Supports Ontario is getting more resources.

I hope the opposition will join with us, help us. Ontario’s long-term-care system can be part of the solution of the acute-care problem in this province that has existed for decades. Join with us, because it’s better for the patients and it’s better for—

My question is to the Premier.

Good morning, Premier. A wonderful man in my riding, Jon Suter, had both legs amputated and waited months at St. Joe’s in Hamilton for an appropriate long-term-care bed. While he waited, he was billed $1,034 a day for his hospital bed. He received a bill for $241,956. His family contacted me, desperate and worried. Who can afford a quarter-million-dollar hospital bill?

Back to the Premier: This issue is not unique to Guelph. In London, OPSEU 147 reports that 30% of paramedics are looking to leave the field as soon as possible. They face dangerous understaffing and ever-increasing hospital off-load delays, and they run out of ambulances every day.

Communities across Ontario are worried, terrified, about not having access to emergency medical services. ERs are flooded with patients. So why is this government taking resources away from our public hospitals?

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?

That question is completely contrary to the question he just asked before.

What he is admitting, and what his party is admitting, is that there has been a tool in the tool box for decades in this province.

But what he doesn’t want to talk about is the fact that, because of the investments that we have made in long-term care, the investments that this Premier and this government and this cabinet and this caucus have made in every part of this province, we are able to be part of a solution to the acute-care bed shortage that has existed in this province for decades. We are talking about making 2,500 additional beds available. We are talking about better quality of care for people who are actually waiting for long-term care. Experts agree, doctors agree, hospital administrators agree that the best place for you to get the care you need if you’re waiting for a long-term-care bed is in a long-term-care home. That’s why we are providing millions of dollars in support to make the system even better. They voted against all of that. But we will not stop improving the system.

While I obviously can’t speak to an individual case that is in hospital right now, I want to reassure the people of Ontario and the members of this House that when people are in treatment, when they are in hospital, when they are receiving treatment, they will continue to receive that treatment, and they will receive it through their OHIP card.

We have to make sure that we have the capacity when we need it, as the example opposite was given, within our hospital system, within our long-term-care system, within our community care system to make sure that those people who need services right now are getting them.

I hope and trust that the member opposite has made sure that MaryAnn and her family are aware of those programs, and has been working through them to make sure they have applied.

I’d like to thank the member for her presentation. As you’ve heard throughout this debate, New Democrats are quite concerned about fees being charged to patients who are not able to leave the hospital, who are refusing to take the transfer into long-term care. It’s something that’s been happening historically, as we know, but the government did nothing to reverse that, and yet is putting more pressure on people to have to move to a long-term care that is not of their consent.

Has the member heard from her constituents in this regard, because it clearly is a big deal throughout all of our constituency offices and has been for some time. How would she deal with that when it comes to her office and her constituents?

Thank you for the question. I think we’re doing a terrific job with this bill. It’s all about investing in long-term care and hospitals, and I think we’re there when it comes to the record investment by our government. We’re going to be looking after our people.

I can say for myself that in my riding, with the big $200-million investment at the local hospital and the $90-million long-term-care project, it’s hard for me to agree with the opposition. All I can say is, there is major investment done in our riding and I thank our government for that.

Good afternoon. I am really pleased to rise today to join the debate on this new bill, the so-called More Beds, Better Care Act, or, as it’s been called by experts, health care workers and seniors’ advocates: “morally repugnant,” “shameful,” and “a violation of patient rights.” It seems the government is feeling this negative response to this move as well, as they enter into—and we’ve seen it all week this week—serious damage-control mode here in the Legislature and in the press.

What I would like to start with, Speaker, is explaining and trying to understand a little bit about why there has been such a negative response out there to this legislation. Let me start by explaining that this bill seeks to amend the Fixing Long-Term Care Act, 2021, to include a provision that would allow hospitals to discharge patients determined to need what they call alternate levels of care, or ALC, without their consent—and I underline that: without their consent—to increase, allegedly, hospital capacity. It’s part of the ministry’s stated plan, and this is what they’ve said they’re trying to achieve, to move 200 people who have been in hospital for six months waiting for long-term-care beds, within the next three months, to a total of about 1,000 more by March 2023. By amending the Health Care Consent Act, this bill will provide authority for clinicians and placement coordinators to determine the eligibility for a patient to be transferred into long-term care, and that could be a location far, far away from their loved ones, from their caregivers, or it could be—and I think this is increasingly likely under this government—to a private care home. It could be, as we have all discovered, unfortunately, in the great tragedy that overtook this province during the COVID pandemic, to a private care home that could offer substandard care.

Let me tell you, and I think we’re all hearing it—I know we’re all hearing it, and that explains, in part, why the government has been in damage-control mode this week. We’ve been hearing a great deal of fear out there from families with loved ones in this situation. I think many of us here at some point in our lives have experienced this, have had somebody in our families who were in long-term care. I certainly have. If we haven’t, then we will. You can be sure of that. It’s almost a given: At some point, you’ll probably go through this with your family, if not yourself, right? We’re hearing from so many of these families who have people in this situation right now. We’re also hearing from seniors and others in long-term care themselves or in hospitals right now who are terrified, absolutely terrified, that they could end up separated from their families, from their support networks.

Rainer Pethke, who cares for his 95-year-old mother while looking after his own kids—and this is the other piece of this; it’s often people who are sandwiched between those generations. He told CBC this week that his heart absolutely sank when he heard about the changes that were being made in this bill. And I wanted to quote him, because it really touched me: “My fear is they’ll move her into some location, Lord knows where, where I can’t support my son, I can’t support her” and “eventually, I wouldn’t be able to support even myself.” And that is reflective in a lot of what I’ve heard from people in my community—similar concerns.

The Advocacy Centre for the Elderly issued a statement on this bill, and I want to quote it as well: “We oppose today’s proposed amendments to the” legislation “revoking the right of seniors in hospital to consent to #LTC which will result in them being moved far from supportive family & community, again attempting to ‘fix’ health care to the detriment of #seniors.”

The Minister of Long-Term Care has been working really hard to walk back this element of this bill this week, spinning that this power has already existed. So why include the change in the legislation then, Speaker? That’s what I want to know. If this was already there, if they already—what is this all about? Really, I’ve been struggling all week to understand that spin. I cannot for the life of me get my head around it, because the fact in this bill is that most of the requirements, the criteria, the restrictions—even the geographic boundaries from within which ALC patients could be transferred into long-term-care homes is going to be determined in regulation. And what does that mean for those watching? That means behind closed doors, that’s what that means. Everything in here that really matters is going to be determined in the regulations. That’s my read on this bill.

Many, many people—I will say, as well, as I find it very concerning, although it’s definitely been a trademark of this government over the last few years—are just hearing about what’s happening, what’s going to happen here. And the reason that they’re just hearing about it is because, hey, it’s summer. A lot of people are hopefully taking vacations or spending time with their families, maybe not paying attention to the news every second of every day. And the other piece of it is that the government is actually, once again, trying to rush this legislation through. And you’ll know, anybody who’s been watching what’s been going on over the last few years, that this government has used every tool in the toolbox to try to limit the ability of opposition and the public to have their voices heard on debate and in discussion and to actually provide the time and the opportunity for real, fulsome debate and discussion and amendment of legislation, which is what we should all be here to do. We are legislators, right?

Ontarians who want to have their say on this bill won’t even have time to participate in the legislative process in any kind of fulsome way because the minister has already publicly stated he wants the bill passed by September 1. So, Speaker, here we are once again faced with significant changes to our long-term-care system, to our hospitals, being rushed through the House with little review, little oversight and with most details, again, to be determined after it has passed. This Premier and this minister are asking vulnerable seniors and their loved ones to simply trust them to respect their rights, their health, their autonomy. Well, Speaker, I can tell you that we don’t trust this government. I think most people do not trust this government. And, I tell you, where they really don’t trust this government? They don’t trust this government when it comes to long-term care because 5,000 vulnerable seniors died under this government’s watch. This “just trust me” approach isn’t going to fly.

This is a government and a Premier who claim to be building an iron ring—do we remember that? We remember that. They claimed to be building an iron ring around long-term care, while over 4,000 seniors died. They cut comprehensive inspections to a pitiful nine out of 626 long-term-care homes in 2019. Remember that? I remember that. They were cutting millions of dollars from long-term care even before the pandemic began.

Thank you, Speaker, and thank you to the member opposite for her contribution to the debate. The members opposite, as a whole, have been saying to this government, “Do something about crowded emergency rooms and closing emergency rooms,” and yet when we added 3,500 new hospital beds, they opposed that. Then, when we said we were going to add another 3,000 hospital beds, they opposed that.

What I’d like to know is just how you expect people to be able to get into the hospitals if nobody is leaving the hospitals and you don’t want us to build any more beds.