It’s great to be back at Queen’s Park, and I want to start by thanking the constituents of Markham–Unionville for re-electing me and giving me the honour to serve them. I also want to thank my family, campaign team, donors and volunteers for their endless support and encouragement.

Mr. Speaker, it has been an eventful summer. To kick off the season, I hosted an open house at my constituency office, the first in-person event since the pandemic. It was great catching up with my constituents and listening to their thoughts on how Markham–Unionville can continue to grow as a riding.

I’ve also attended many events organized by our vibrant senior community, including the Unionville Home Society’s Seniors’ Month barbecue and the Paradise Seniors Association’s 2022 Summer Dream event. In addition to that, I participated in local celebrations, including the 20th annual Night it Up! Night Market and the 45th anniversary of Apple Creek Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all the organizers for inviting me to participate in their celebrations. I look forward to celebrating more accomplishments, milestones and upcoming events.

And to my constituents watching, I will continue to work tirelessly to serve and be your voice at Queen’s Park. Together, let’s get it done. Thank you.

It gives me great pleasure to recognize two outstanding organizations from the riding of Durham that are 2022 recipients of the Ontario Trillium grant.

Last month, the Tyrone Community Centre was awarded $10,700 for much-needed improvements and expansion of community programs. And the Clarington Swim Club was awarded $32,800. This will be utilized to expand the club’s membership, program enhancement and club facilities.

Speaker, the Tyrone Community Centre and the Clarington Swim Club are just two of 279 organizations across the province receiving these important grants that our government is providing. I am proud that our government is supporting multiple applications to the Ontario Trillium grant program. I strongly believe that many organizations like the Tyrone Community Centre and the Clarington Swim Club enrich the lives of people in the riding of Durham while playing an important role in enhancing community spirit.

As the MPP for the great riding of Durham, I congratulate these organizations for their well-deserved honour and for providing excellent programs and services to the residents of Durham and the great province of Ontario.

I’m pleased to rise today to recognize and celebrate an important milestone in my riding of Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock, the 150th annual Kinmount Fair. Founded in 1872, the Kinmount Fair takes place every Labour Day weekend in the village of Kinmount. After two years, our loyal fairgoers will return to enjoy agriculture shows, horse pulls, live entertainment, the Conklin midway, a demo derby, tractor pulls, parades and more in what can only be described as the Brigadoon of Kinmount.

My family has been a part of the Kinmount Fair board for six generations, and my brother is the current president and author of a book on the story of the fair. I also have many memories of competing in horse shows, exhibiting in the exhibit hall and, when I turned 12 years old, being a junior fair director. I look forward to the unveiling of a 24-foot mural depicting 150 years of the fair and a fair film festival.

The Kinmount Fair has hosted events such as oxen pulls; fishing derbies; airshows; strongman, lumberjack and chainsaw competitions; as well a few unusual acts my dad recruited, including a mudwrestling team in 1985. The Tommy Hunter Show even filmed a special episode live for the 100th anniversary of the fair in 1972.

Every year there’s always something new to experience, and I hope to see some of you at the 150th Kinmount Fair because I’ll be there.

I just want to take this time this morning to mention some gatherings that we have been enjoying across Kiiwetinoong this summer. They include: the Sioux Lookout Blueberry Festival, which celebrated its 40th anniversary this year; the Red Lake Norseman festival; the Trout Forest Music Festival in Ear Falls; the Kingfisher Lake annual summer festival; Muskrat Dam family days; the Wunnumin Lake Warriors volleyball tournament; the annual Kingfisher Lake volleyball tournament; the Casey Tait Memorial Klik Cup tournament; the Wunnumin Lake summer festival; Neebin Odaminowin Summer Festival in Webequie; the Neskantaga traditional gathering; as well as powwows in Lac Seul, Grassy Narrows and, this weekend, in Mishkeegogamang.

These festivals are a celebration of community, of who we are, and the values that we have. These happen as a result of the planning and the hard work of many volunteers who create these events for us to gather.

I’d like to acknowledge and thank the volunteers and organizers for all the hours they work to continue making these events happen. These events are so important, as they allow us to show off our communities, but, most importantly, to have fun with our friends and families. Meegwetch.

Last week, the Minister of Health finally admitted what the people of Don Valley East have been saying for months, that the status quo in health care is unacceptable. What my constituents have meant is that ER wait times, when ERs are accessible at all, are unacceptable. Not having a family physician for 15% of us is unacceptable. And because of this government, there are too many foreign-trained health care workers in my riding who are not getting credentialed. This is unacceptable.

Now, the status quo that the Minister of Health opposes is our publicly funded, not-for-profit health care system. Though she asserts that Ontarians will be able to access health care with their OHIP card, make no mistake, the plan for private, for-profit delivery of health care will harm the people of this province.

We have already seen the harms from for-profit long-term-care homes in Ontario that had significantly higher mortality than not-for-profit. We have learned the harms from for-profit outsourcing of public health care in the United Kingdom, which led to significant preventable mortality, and we have learned the harms from for-profit dialysis centres in the United States. We have learned the harms from all around the world, as reported in Scotland, Australia, Italy, Ireland and even the World Health Organization.

The lesson in all of this is consistent and clear: Health care must always be about patients first and not profits.

After two long years of waiting out the pandemic, the fall fairs in my riding of Flamborough–Glanbrook are back to welcoming visitors this year. For decades, the Binbrook, Ancaster and Rockton World’s Fair have showcased the incredible work done by the agricultural community, whether it’s growing crops or tending livestock or processing food on their farms.

The first is the Binbrook Fair, which opens September 16 and runs through the weekend. Binbrook is followed by the Ancaster Fair on September 22 through to the 25th. The Ancaster Fair is celebrating its 172nd season this year. It’s one of the oldest fairs in Ontario. The Ancaster Fair is a huge draw, attracting thousands of visitors from across the Golden Horseshoe. And then, there’s the Rockton World’s Fair on Thanksgiving weekend: a fair that has been running since 1852.

All the fairs are promising a full program this year, including exhibits, livestock competitions, horse pulls, dairy shows and, of course, traditional food and fun at the midway.

When my children were younger, I would take them to the fair and watch their eyes light up as they got close to the farm animals. This year I get to take my grandson. It’s important for city kids and adults to see what the people who work in agriculture do. One of the most enjoyable aspects of fall fairs is that they take us back to a much simpler time.

Mr. Speaker, this is a time to celebrate Ontario’s farmers. They are the people who keep food on our tables, and for that, I sincerely say, thank you.

I’d like to welcome our member of federal Parliament, Eric Duncan, from Stormont–Dundas–South Glengarry. He’s travelled here today to see us in question period.

I’d like to welcome some very special guests this morning: all the way from Poland, my godmother Kasia, her daughters Ola and Gabi; from British Columbia, my brother Jakub with his girlfriend Carlie; and, of course, endearingly known by our caucus as the perogy queen, my mom Anna Kusendova. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Meegwetch. It’s not every day that we get to see people from the riding of Kiiwetinoong because it’s just so vast, but I’d like to welcome Chris Moonias from Neskantaga First Nation. Meegwetch, say hello.

My question is to the Minister of Long-Term Care. The government is now going to move people from hospitals to nursing homes that they do not want to go to. If they refuse to go, will they be billed for their hospital bed?

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?

Why does this government believe it’s okay for health care to come with a bill?

It’s a great honour to welcome and introduce Garrett Hein from my office for the first time at Queen’s Park.

I only want to highlight one comment from Allan O’Dette from the Ontario Medical Association: The OMA “supports the initiatives announced today by the government....

“Strengthening collaboration with government, doctors and other health care stakeholders is critical to resolving the unprecedented pressures on Ontario’s health care system.”

No one group can do this alone, Speaker. We must do this together.

Our five-point plan does that. We are working with our partners to make sure that all capacity within our health care system is there when people need it, where they need it.

We are having a summer sitting, and this is the perfect time—the kids are having summer vacation—to bring them here and show them the chamber of responsibility. I’d like to welcome high school student and my daughter, Suvidhi Anand, to the chamber.

I really think the opposition would benefit from a reading of the bill, because if the Leader of the Opposition actually read the bill, he would see that on the very first page it says that nobody will be removed from a hospital who is discharged from a hospital into long-term care without their consent.

Just to reconfirm that: In subsection 60.1(7), it also again reconfirms that nobody will be removed from a hospital acute care setting to a long-term-care home without their consent.

I’ll give it to the member opposite: As I said yesterday, I can appreciate that they didn’t read the bill when they had the opportunity Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday or even this morning. I can appreciate that he wasn’t here for the leadoff speeches, where we identified what we are actually—

This government’s grand plan to fix our health care crisis is to throw open the door to privatized health care. But funnelling patients to private health care will only bleed resources out of our public hospitals and will make the health care crisis even worse.

We know that health care privatization always ends up with patients getting the bill. If Ontarians won’t need to use their credit cards for health care, please explain why there is currently no provincial oversight to protect patients against inappropriate charges for publicly funded surgeries.

I would like to introduce nurse Dave Verch as well as Angela Glanzman from the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions who are here with us today. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

It does concern me that the member opposite and the party opposite do not believe that there can be innovative solutions to what are very long-standing problems. We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect different results. Status quo is not an option. That is why our five-point plan includes additional capacity, like expanding surgical units and the access to it, like expanding how we are using—in 40 communities across Ontario—the community paramedic program. These are the innovations that Ontarians need and deserve.

I don’t know if you’ve heard from your constituents waiting for those surgeries, but I have. I want to make sure that where we have capacity within our health care system, whether it is in hospitals or, in fact, in independent health facilities, we use that to make sure that people get the surgeries when they need them, as quickly as we can get them.

I point to a quote from Dr. Rose Zacharias, the president of the Ontario Medical Association: “Physicians are resilient, compassionate, high-capacity people. We need to spend our health care dollars strategically and fill these existing gaps.” We will do that working with our partners. I implore the members opposite to work with us on it.

Specifically on the surgical wait-lists: As part of our province’s Surgical Recovery Strategy, we’ve invested over $880 million over the last three fiscal years—and Speaker, I might remind the member that that’s over the last three years because we understood that there were going to be backlogs and we needed to take these steps proactively to make sure that individuals like Doug got their surgery as quickly as they could. We have funded Ontario hospitals to expand their surgical unit hours for exactly the reason the member opposite raises.

The 400 additional physician residents who are now practising in northern and rural Ontario are to expand and allow more opportunities for people to be able to access care closer to home as quickly as possible. We are making these investments. We are doing this because we understand. We want people like Doug to make sure that the high-quality, amazing health care that we have in the province of Ontario—they are accessing closer to home.

Many of my constituents have seen commentary and concerns being raised by a group of former Toronto mayors regarding the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act. According to them, the proposed legislation would eliminate any meaningful role of city councillors and therefore the voice of the local residents who elect them.

Residents of Toronto and Ottawa deserve the peace of mind that their elected officials are accountable to them and will act in their best interest.

Mr. Speaker, will the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing please explain how this legislation will ensure that my constituents still have power regarding the role of municipal mayors and councils and the democratic principles that shape governments are being upheld?

Some of the additional concerns raised by the previous mayors of Toronto about this legislation include claims that mayors will have too much power to hire and fire senior staff, impacting the separation between executive and legislative functions. Additionally, they have said that the system provides too much control for mayors, providing them a veto on decisions that intervenes with provincial priorities.

Speaker, can the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing provide certainty for the people of Toronto and Ottawa by addressing the outstanding questions regarding this legislation?

Speaker, through you to the Minister of Health: A Niagara boxing legend is fighting for his life. Doug Dobias is a prolific boxer and coach. Nearly a decade ago, Doug suffered a botched surgery on a hernia. Over the years, it got so bad he lost nearly 100 pounds and was unable to eat or drink. His nutrient levels were so low doctors feared his heart would give out.

Surgeons have installed a feeding tube, but it can’t stay in place for long. If the surgery to correct the initial operation can’t be done quickly, Doug will suffer lifelong consequences. But because of Ontario’s massive surgical backlog, it will be many months before it can happen, and by then, it might be too late.

Will this government invest the $1.3 billion earmarked by the FAO to address the surgical backlog so that Doug and people like him can have timely, life-saving surgeries? Yes or no?

Is it acceptable to this government that people in Ontario have to crowd-fund to pay for life-saving surgery in the US?

And will the minister stand up today and abandon her plan to bankrupt and privatize our health care system and instead invest in our public system so that people like Doug don’t have to pay with their credit card to save their lives?

Supplementary question.

To respond, the Minister of Health.

The final supplementary.

Minister of Health to reply.