It’s a great pleasure that I have 70 pages of petitions here, given to me by Marlene Haley, who is one of the co-owners of the Merry Dairy ice cream store back in Ottawa Centre. I’m sure you might have been there once or twice, Speaker, when you’ve been in Ottawa. It reads:

“I Support Small Ice Cream Shops in Ontario.

“Whereas small ice cream shops offer customers a delicious treat, dairy producers valuable clients, and offer staff jobs;

“Whereas the Milk Act prevents small ice cream shops from local wholesaling, even if the source of their dairy ingredients comes from a certified dairy plant. In fact, the Milk Act currently restricts the wholesale of any products made with dairy ingredients, not just ice cream;

“Whereas small ice cream shops that wholesale without their own certified dairy plants are subject to thousands of dollars in fines...;

“Whereas consumers have the right to choose from a variety of safe dairy products...;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to allow small ice cream shops access to local markets for wholesaling, provided all ingredients are fully traceable, and all dairy ingredients come from certified dairy plants in Ontario.”

I wholeheartedly thank Marlene for her work here. I will be signing this petition and sending it to the Clerks’ table with page Elya.

The bill amends the Occupational Health and Safety Act in two ways:

(1) The provisions of the act protecting workers against reprisals are amended to include protections against reprisals against workers who speak out about workplace violence and workplace harassment. The amendments provide that a reprisal is any measure taken against a worker that adversely affects the worker’s employment. Examples of reprisals are provided.

(2) The provisions of the act addressing violence and harassment against workers are amended to provide that an employer that is a hospital and an employer that is a long-term-care home shall, at least once a month, publicly report on its website the number of incidents of workplace violence and workplace harassment that took place at the hospital or the long-term-care home, as the case may be, during the immediately preceding month.

“Improve Winter Road Maintenance on Northern Highways....

“Whereas highways play a critical role in northern Ontario;

“Whereas winter road maintenance has been privatized in Ontario and contract standards are not being enforced;

“Whereas per capita, fatalities are twice as likely to occur on a northern highway than on a highway in southern Ontario;

“Whereas current MTO classification negatively impacts the safety of northern highways;”

They petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows: “to classify Highways 11, 17, 69, 101 and 144 as class 1 highways; require that the pavement be bare within eight hours of the end of a snowfall and bring the management of winter road maintenance back into the public sector, if contract standards are not met.”

I fully support this petition, will affix my name to it and ask my good page Ria to bring it to the Clerk.

I beg leave to present a report from the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, pursuant to standing order 113(b).

Well, I’d like to wish my grandson Hawk a very happy 11th birthday from Nan.

I would like to wish my wife a very happy birthday today.

I thank the unbelievably hard worker from Don Valley North for the great question.

Simply put, Ontario is in a housing crisis that requires strong leadership and bold solutions.

As I said yesterday here in this House, we have an ambitious plan to build 1.5 million new homes in the next 10 years, and our plan is working. Just last year, we had over 100,000 housing starts in our province—that’s the highest in over 30 years—13,000 of which were rental units.

Ontarians have seen the dream of home ownership start to slip under the leadership and governance of the previous Liberal government, always backed by the NDP, but that is going to change under the leadership of this Premier and this government.

Pour attirer des travailleurs, il est important de travailler avec les entreprises et les organismes francophones afin qu’ils puissent contribuer à la prospérité de l’Ontario. Lorsque j’étais président des comtés unis de Prescott et Russell, l’une des difficultés que j’ai constatées pour de nombreuses entreprises de ma circonscription était qu’elles étaient souvent confrontées à des refus de contrats, car il n’y avait pas assez d’employés pour faire le travail requis.

Je sais que la ministre des Affaires francophones est une championne de la communauté francophone et de ma circonscription depuis quatre ans, et j’ai hâte d’avoir l’occasion de travailler avec elle pour livrer la marchandise pour les gens de ma circonscription.

Monsieur le Président, sur ce, la ministre peut-elle décrire les mesures prises par notre gouvernement pour aider les entrepreneurs et les entreprises francophones de ma circonscription à s’assurer qu’ils puissent réaliser leur plein potentiel?

En tant que ministre des Affaires francophones, je travaille en étroite collaboration avec mes collègues au niveau de la formation et du recrutement d’une main-d’oeuvre bilingue et qualifiée, de l’élargissement de l’offre de services de première ligne en français et de l’appui aux entreprises francophones et bilingues pour maximiser leur apport dans notre développement économique.

Nous appuyons notamment des initiatives pour aider les entrepreneurs et les entreprises francophones de l’Ontario à profiter des occasions qui s’offrent à eux dans les marchés francophones extérieurs, comme le Québec et la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles.

Nous avons procédé à des investissements ciblés, et une enveloppe de 1,5 million de dollars sur trois ans permet d’élargir le soutien aux entreprises et aux entrepreneurs francophones de l’Ontario.

We have approximately 6,239 invitations issued. We’re creating the capacity for providers to do the work for us, capacity grants to make sure that the providers are there. This has not stopped and I would encourage parents and families to register their child when the invitation comes. We will continue to push out invitations, to make sure that the wait-list is reduced and that children can get the services that they need.

We have created a program—created by the community, for the community—to make sure that children who were not receiving the services under the previous government, supported by you, get the services that they need.

Childhood budget funding: 8,685 families have received the support. Families who accessed foundational family services: 24,305. Caregiver-mediated early years programs: as of June 30, 2022, 1,590. I could go on.

The reality is that we have created a world-leading program—never been done before—from the ground up, where there was no capacity because the previous government did not make the proper investments. We are doing it. We are the government looking after these children. And we’ll continue to do it.

Interjections.

My question is for the Premier. Sara is a mother of a nine-year-old boy who has been on a wait-list for autism services since July 24, 2017. She tells me about the lack of trust that families have for this government. Out of 8,000 children who have been promised to be enrolled, few are signing on. Many would rather wait to be forced into the program in the spring of 2023 than accept the invitation and risk changes to the current services that their children are currently in. This leaves families like Sara’s on a stalled wait-list.

Speaker, when will this minister and the government be forthcoming and transparent with parents, clear the backlog, and ensure that children receive the services and supports that they need, when they need them?

Families are enduring high levels of stress, years of neglect, abuse of power, and withholding of promised funding. Parents are tired, and they need their government’s help.

Can the minister explain to families like Sara’s, who are sitting on stalled wait-lists for more than five years, when they can expect to move on the list to receive the letter for the AccessOAP program?

I want to thank Brock for doing this petition and getting the signatures on it.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas as part of Ontario’s commitment to building a stronger health care workforce, the government is investing $142 million, starting in 2022-23, to recruit and retain health care workers in underserved communities, which will expand the Community Commitment Program for Nurses, up to 1,500 nurse graduates each year to receive full tuition reimbursement in exchange for committing to practise for two years in an underserved community; and

“Whereas starting in spring 2023, the government will launch the new $61-million Learn and Stay grant and applications will open for up to 2,500 eligible post-secondary students who enroll in priority programs, such as nursing, to work in underserved communities in the region where they studied after graduation. The program will provide up-front funding for tuition, books and other direct educational costs; and

“Whereas the government also proposes to make it easier and quicker for foreign-credentialed health workers to begin practising in Ontario by reducing barriers to registering with and being recognized by health regulatory colleges; and

“Whereas to address the shortage of health care professionals in Ontario, the government is investing $124.2 million over three years starting in 2022-23 to modernize clinical education for nurses, enabling publicly assisted colleges and universities to expand laboratory capacity supports and hands-on learning for students; and

“Whereas Ontario is accelerating its efforts to expand hospital capacity and build up the province’s health care workforce to help patients access the health care they need when they need it;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To urge all members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to continue to build on the progress of hiring and recruiting health care workers.”

I fully endorse this petition, will sign it and give it to page Samreen.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. First of all, I want to congratulate you. You look amazing in that chair.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas our government made a promise to hard-working Ontarians in each and every region of the province that we would have their backs and never stop working for workers; and

“Whereas under the leadership of Premier Ford and Minister McNaughton, we have brought in unprecedented reforms and support to deliver for the working people of this province; and

“Whereas our government has raised the minimum wage to $15.50 an hour to help workers and their families with the cost of living, earn bigger paycheques and save for their future; and

“Whereas we have committed to completely eliminating the provincial income tax for anyone making $50,000 or less, keeping money where it belongs, in the pockets of hard-working Ontarian workers; and

“Whereas new changes to the Employment Standards Act require employers with 25 or more employees to have a written policy about employees disconnecting from their jobs at the end of the workday to help employees spend more time with their families; and

“Whereas the government is now investing $1 billion annually in employment and training programs so that unemployed or underemployed workers can train for high-paying, in-demand, family-supporting careers; and

“Whereas we are spending an additional $114 million over three years for the skilled trades strategy, addressing the shortage of workers in the skilled trades by modernizing the system and giving Ontarians the tools they need to join this lucrative workforce; and

“Whereas we are introducing protection for digital platform workers, the first in Canada, to support workers in this economy bring home better, bigger paycheques while improving job security;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To urge all members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to deliver on the commitment made to the people of Ontario by working for workers.”

I fully support this petition, and I’ll give it to page Elya.

I want to thank Joanne O’Connor and other friends at 507 Riverdale Avenue in Ottawa Centre for helping me sign up a lot of these petitions that read:

“The Rent Stabilization Act: Pay What the Last Tenant Paid.

“Whereas average rent in Ottawa increased 13.5% from 2018 to 2019, the highest rate of increase in any Canadian city;

“Whereas average monthly rent in Ontario is now over $2,000; and

“Whereas nearly half of Ontarians pay unaffordable rental housing costs, meaning they spend more than a third of their income on rent;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to pass the Rent Stabilization Act to establish:

“—rent control that operates during and between tenancies, so a new tenant pays the same rent as a former tenant;

“—a public rent registry so tenants can find out what a former tenant paid in rent;

“—access to legal aid for tenants that want to contest an illegal rent hike; and

“—stronger enforcement and tougher penalties for landlords who do not properly maintain a renter’s home.”

I completely endorse this petition, I’ll be signing it and sending it with page Colin to the Clerks’ table.

I want to thank Aaron for this petition.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas our government was elected on commitment of keeping costs down and putting more money back in Ontarians’ pockets by increasing housing supply, making it less expensive to drive or take transit, and by providing relief on everything from child care to taxes; and

“Whereas the government is delivering on that commitment by:

“—reducing 5.7 cents per litre on the gas tax for six months starting July 1;

“—$120 each year in savings in southern Ontario and $60 per year savings in northern Ontario by eliminating licence plate renewal fees for passenger and light commercial vehicles;

“—$300 in additional tax relief in 2022, on average, for 1.1 million lower-income workers through the proposed low-income individuals and families tax credit enhancement;

“—scrapping tolls” in Durham “on Highways 412 and 418;

“—cutting child care costs by 50%, on average by December of 2022; and

“Whereas the government is reducing the cost of housing by:

“—increasing the non-resident speculation tax rate from 15% to 20% and expanding the tax beyond the greater Golden Horseshoe region to apply province-wide and closing loopholes to fix tax avoidance;

“—implementing reforms that reduce red tape associated with new housing builds, making it easier to build community housing, and speeding up the approval process; and

“Whereas this plan is working—last year, over 100,000 new homes began construction, the highest in more than 30 years in the province of Ontario;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To urge all members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to support the housing action plan of the Ontario PC government.”

I fully endorse this petition, will sign it and give it to page Daunte.

This is a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas from electric and hybrid vehicles to barbecues, the government is supporting the development of homegrown supply chains, creating the next generation of products and returning Ontario to its rightful place as the workshop of Canada; and

“Whereas low-carbon steel production has become critical for jurisdictions to compete for manufacturing investments as businesses look to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their supply chain. This investment supports the creation of new jobs and economic growth as steel producers, automakers and other industries transform their operations; and

“Whereas critical minerals in the north will drive electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing in the south, where Ontario’s automotive sector is poised for resurgence as the industry continues its large-scale transformation; and

“Whereas the government’s plan will help Ontario become a North American leader in building the vehicles of the future and will build the next generation of vehicles in Ontario by securing auto production mandates to build electric and hybrid vehicles; and

“Whereas Ontario invested $1.5 million through the Regional Development Program to support an $18.5-million investment by auto parts manufacturer Ventra Group to create the Flex-Ion Battery Innovation Centre in Windsor and invested $250,000 to support the development of two new battery production lines at Electra Battery Materials Corp.’s future Battery Materials Park near Cobalt;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To urge all members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to continue to invest in the manufacturing sector that will contribute to the economic success of the province.”

I support this petition, I will affix my name on it and send it to the—

Further petitions?

Resuming the debate adjourned on August 23, 2022, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 7, An Act to amend the Fixing Long-Term Care Act, 2021 with respect to patients requiring an alternate level of care and other matters and to make a consequential amendment to the Health Care Consent Act, 1996 / Projet de loi 7, Loi modifiant la Loi de 2021 sur le redressement des soins de longue durée en ce qui concerne les patients ayant besoin d’un niveau de soins différent et d’autres questions et apportant une modification corrélative à la Loi de 1996 sur le consentement aux soins de santé.

I would like to thank Cassandra and René Grenier from Hanmer in my riding for these petitions.

“911 Emergency Response....

“Whereas when we face an emergency we all know to dial 911 for help; and

“Whereas access to emergency services through 911 is not available in all regions of Ontario but most Ontarians believe that it is; and

“Whereas many Ontarians have discovered that 911 was not available while they faced an emergency; and

“Whereas all Ontarians expect and deserve access to 911 service throughout our province;”

They petition the Legislative Assembly as follows:

“To provide 911 emergency response everywhere in Ontario by land line or cellphone.”

I fully support this petition, Speaker, will affix my name to it and ask my good page Pania to bring it to the Clerk.

“Gas Prices....

“Whereas northern Ontario motorists continue to be subject to wild fluctuations in the price of gasoline; and

“Whereas the province could eliminate opportunistic price-gouging and deliver fair, stable and predictable fuel prices; and

“Whereas five provinces and many US states already have some sort of gas price regulation; and

“Whereas jurisdictions with gas price regulation have seen an end to wild price fluctuations, a shrinking of price discrepancies between urban and rural communities and lower annualized gas prices;”

They petition the Legislative Assembly as follows:

“Mandate the Ontario Energy Board to monitor the price of gasoline across Ontario in order to reduce price volatility and unfair regional price differences while encouraging competition” and regulating gas prices.

I fully support this petition, will affix my name to it and ask page Natalie to bring it to the Clerk.

Earlier today during debate, the member from Nickel Belt had the floor. She can now resume her comments.

I would like to start by correcting my record. This morning, I gave the story of one of my constituents. I simply called him Mr. D. I said that he was waiting for a long-term-care placement. Mr. D has passed. He is no longer. I was giving the story about him not getting the home care he needed, but he is not on the long-term-care list; he has passed—just to correct my record.

The bill that we have in front of us has a very telling title. It tells us that we want more beds—that is, to free up hospital beds; and better care—that is, people who need long-term care should be in a good long-term-care home to receive the level of care that they need.

I started my remarks by saying the first part of the title of the bill, “More Beds,” is really because our hospitals are in crisis. You have heard me talk about hallway health care for a long time. Our hospitals are full—at more than 100% capacity most of the time. Even in the summer, which is usually the slow season for hospitals, you can look at 152 hospital corporations in Ontario, and the vast majority of them are full-to-overcapacity already, and this is before fall has even come. So the aim of the bill is to free up some of those beds.

The crisis in our health care system, in our hospital system, is not new. You will remember, many times, bringing examples of—I remember my good friend Leo Seguin, who spent 10 days in a bathroom at Health Sciences North because there were no beds left for him to be cared for. And this happens in every hospital when all their beds are full but the people that they see are too sick to be sent back home. They need hospital-level care. They get admitted into a TV room, a hallway, a bathroom, a shower room, whatever they can to keep the patient there so that they can be looked after.

If you look at a large community hospital, most of them have about 20% of their beds that are occupied by what we call alternate-level-of-care patients. Alternate-level-of-care patients are patients who were admitted into the hospital, they received the care they needed to get better, and now they cannot be sent back home.

The example that I was giving this morning, and I have a pile of examples—90% of frail, elderly seniors want to be home. Their loved ones, their families, their neighbours do everything they can to try to support them at home, but they need the home care system to be there, and the home care system fails them day after day, week after week, to the point where they end up in trouble. They end up in the hospital, and their physician looks at this and says, “It is not safe for me to send you back home. The home care system will not support you. The home care system will fail you again. We will send you to a long-term-care home.”

Once they don’t need the level of care in a hospital anymore, they are labelled “alternate level of care,” ALC, and it simply means we are not able to send you home. The home care system will not be there for you. You will be going to long-term care. Once this happens, they get assessed, and they get to pick a long-term-care home of their choice. They can put up to five homes, but they don’t have to. They can put only one long-term-care home.

The aim of the bill is really to take some of the frail, elderly people who are patients in our hospitals, who have been labelled alternate-level-of-care, and get them into a long-term-care home. In theory, they will be getting better care in a long-term-care home. This is addressed not only to their physical and medical needs but to the need to socialize and the need to eat with other people and the need to take part in activities that they’re able to enjoy. That’s the theory behind what we have.

But we all have to realize that, when you move to a long-term-care home, there’s a good chance that you are moving to your final residence. The great, great majority of people get discharged from a long-term-care home after their passing. So families take that decision seriously—“Where do we want our loved one to go? Which long-term-care home will best meet the family’s needs so they continue to have frequent visitors and continue to be part of the family and we’re able to take them home for a special birthday, and is not too far?” If they speak French, they may want to go to a home that’s able to provide services in French.

In Sudbury, we have Finlandiakoti, which offers services in Finnish. They are supported by the Finnish community in our area etc.

There are many that either are able to offer different languages or are anchored in different cultures so that the food that is served to you is food you’re used to eating and the activities are activities that are in line with your culture and things you like to do.

All of this happens at a very, very slow pace because most of our long-term-care homes are full. I can give you the statistics. They are available online, if anybody wants to know. You can go right now—information on long-term care. I looked at the one in my riding called Sudbury-Manitoulin. You can see that we have 1,555 long-term-care beds—we are higher than many other areas of the province because we have very few other services to support people in the community to keep them there, as opposed to other parts of the province that are able to keep frail, elderly people in the community longer—and right now, on the wait-list there are 1,107. I will let that sink in: 1,555 beds for the Sudbury-Manitoulin area, which is a huge area, and we have 1,107 people on the wait-list.

I want to talk a little bit about the different homes.

We have two private, for-profit—we have more than this, but we have two Extendicare long-term-care homes in Sudbury: Extendicare Falconbridge and Extendicare York. Both of them are big homes—Extendicare Falconbridge has 232 beds, and Extendicare York has 272 beds—but they have very small wait-lists compared to others. Extendicare Falconbridge has 53 people on their wait-list. Extendicare York has 37 people on their wait-list. I was mentioning Finlandiakoti. Finlandia has only 108 beds, but they have 445 people waiting for those beds. I’m strong in math. If you look at the difference between the two—if you put your name at Finlandia, you will wait 32 times longer than if you put your name to go to Extendicare York. Extendicare York is an older home that still has four beds to a room. It hasn’t been renovated for as long as I can remember; I would say at least 50 years. It is not the long-term-care home of choice.

That brings me to the content of the bill. Bill 7 is quite modest, really. It’s a page and a half. That’s it. That’s all. That’s the entire bill. So what the bill does is that it changes—section 1 of the bill amends the Fixing Long-Term Care Home Act by changing the definition of “personal health information” under the Personal Health Information Protection Act. This is significant, because what the bill will do is it will give a bigger amount of people the right to assess you, to see if you could be transferred into a long-term-care home, whether you give your consent or not. In a hospital, nobody can do anything to you without your consent. If you don’t consent to a test, it will not be done. It is the bedrock of our health care system. Everybody has to give consent before anything is done to them. You don’t want a vaccine? If you don’t consent to a vaccine, you’re not going to get a vaccine. In our health care system, you have to consent.

But this bill takes away consent. First, it used to be that once you are finished your active treatment in a hospital, a physician had to assess you to see if you meet the criteria to be transferred into a long-term-care home. The bill changes this—that, now, it’s not only physicians who can do this, but other health care professionals can do this. And then it takes away your right to consent. That professional—be it a nurse, be it a care coordinator, be it a social worker, be it a physician—is allowed to go and assess you to see if you meet the criteria to go into a long-term-care home. Not only are they allowed to assess you without your consent, they’re allowed to access your personal health information and they’re allowed to share that personal health information with the long-term-care home of their choosing.

This is not how health care is supposed to work. In health care, the dignity of the person, the quality of care is always linked to you. You only get done to you what you consent to. But this bill changes this and gives physicians, nurses, social workers, care coordinators, the right to assess you to see if you meet the criteria, whether you give your consent or not. The bill gives physicians, nurses, social workers, care coordinators the right to share personal information about you to a long-term-care home that you don’t want to go to. They have the right to do that. They are giving themselves in this bill the right to do that.

The second part, section 2 of the act, also amends the Fixing Long-Term Care Home Act by adding section 6.1, which provides for a modified long-term-care-home admission process for alternate-level-of-care patients. I have described what the admissions process looked like before. Section 2 of the bill will change this.

Usually, you need to have consent from the patient or from their substitute decision-maker to be allowed to go and assess. This is being taken away. It goes on to say, if an attending physician reasonably believes that an ALC patient was eligible for admission to a long-term-care home, paragraph 1 would authorize the clinicians to “request that a placement co-ordinator carry out” an action described under paragraph 2.

Placement coordinators are people who exist right now in our hospitals. They are usually linked to the home and community care sector, HCCS. They are the ones who manages all of the long-term-care-home wait-lists. For every home, there will be a wait-list for a private bed, for a semi-private bed, for a basic bed—for all of the homes, they will keep the wait-lists. Those wait-lists are available online if you want. You won’t see names on it, but you will see numbers. Every patient is assigned a number so that you can see where you are on the different lists that you have chosen.

The bill will change all of this. It brings forward a new admissions process for alternate-level-of-care patients. So the attending physician requests a placement coordinator to carry out the assessment. The placement coordinator would have the authority to:

“i. Determine the ALC patient’s eligibility for admission to a long-term-care home.” Usually, this is only done with consent. With this bill, they can do this whether you consent to it or not.

“ii. Select a long-term-care home ... for the ALC patient in accordance with the geographic restrictions that are prescribed by the regulations.” I have to tell you that the geographic restrictions prescribed by regulations—we don’t get to see the regulations. I know that they are being worked on right now. I know that the Minister of Long-Term Care has the full intention of making those regulations available within a week of the bill passing. But there’s this element of trust. We have to trust that the regulation as to how big of a geographical area will be in the regulations will make sense—that it will make sense to us in northern Ontario.

I have to admit to you, Speaker, the level of trust in this government regarding the safety of our long-term-care homes is very, very low in parts of the province where we have seen people dying by the hundreds in our long-term-care homes through COVID, with a government that was not prepared, that didn’t do anything to protect them. To trust that whatever those geographical limits will be will make sense is a big pill to swallow. I can talk to you about when our hospital was designated crisis 1A.

People will say, “Oh, but they were placed within the city of Greater Sudbury.” The city of Greater Sudbury is huge. You can fit Toronto, Mississauga, Hamilton—you can fit many, many cities in southern Ontario into the geographical area of the city of Greater Sudbury.

Some of the people I represent, my constituents—if some of you come from northern Ontario, you will know where Onaping and Levack are. The long-term-care home that is closest to Onaping and Levack is in Chelmsford, which is about half an hour’s drive away from their community. So if you come from Onaping or Levack or Dowling or Chelmsford or Azilda, you want to go to the long-term-care home in Chelmsford. Unfortunately, the long-term-care home in Chelmsford, called St. Gabriel Villa, has 128 beds and 367 people waiting to go to that home. Usually, the average beds available per month is three. I will let you do the math. There are 367 people waiting for a long-term-care bed and they take, on average, three new residents. That means most people will wait over 120 weeks before they are admitted into that long-term-care home. But if you want to go to Extendicare York, you can get there within a week.

For the people I represent, if your loved one is 90 years old, going into a long-term-care home, there’s a good chance that the spouse is also close to 90 years old. He may very well be able to still have a driver’s licence, because I have many elderly people in my riding who are still very good, but they are very careful about where they drive. They would drive from Onaping-Levack down Highway 144 to Chelmsford, because this is where the Canadian Tire is. This is where the grocery store is. This is where the bank is. That’s okay. But to make it all the way to Extendicare Falconbridge, that’s, at a minimum, an hour’s drive to get there.

Think about it. You want to go see your wife every day. You are worried about her because she is in a long-term-care home. We’re telling you that we will place her in a long-term-care home that is within the city of Greater Sudbury, but that is an hour’s drive away. That means an hour there, an hour back. Two hours of your day on the road when you’re 90 years old to go see your wife means that your wife is not going to be supported.

That means that your wife will be wondering, “Why am I being abandoned? Why have I been moved to this part of the city that I have nothing to do with? I come from Onaping-Levack. This is where I want to be. This is where my children are. This is where my grandchildren are. This is where my friends, my family, my husband, my home are.” We will place you within the city of Greater Sudbury, but an hour’s drive away from where you live, where your husband of 60 years won’t be able to go see you, because it is just too dangerous for him to drive all the way down there. He could go see you if you were in Chelmsford, because there’s one highway; you go in and that’s it, that’s all. But to make your way and zigzag through the city to make it to Extendicare, where there are beds available, means that he won’t be able to go see you.

So when we see in the bill, “Select a long-term-care home ... for the ALC patient in accordance with the geographic restrictions that are prescribed by the regulations,” can you see how people are nervous when they see this? First of all, we don’t know what the geographical area is going to be, but if the geographical area is the city of Greater Sudbury, then that means that if you live in Alban, Estaire, Onaping, Dowling or Whitefish—everybody that I represent—you could very well find yourself in a long-term-care home that is an hour away from your loved ones, from your circle of care.

I can tell you exactly what happens to those good people who get transferred to a home where they have no support. You feel, first of all, “Why am I here? Why am I so far away? Why is it that I don’t see my family anymore? Nobody loves me. Nobody cares about me.” It’s easy to get depressed. It’s easy to give up. And when you’re 90 years old and you meet the criteria to go into a long-term-care home, it’s a good chance that you have a number of health issues that qualified you to go into a long-term-care home, and those health issues will take over.

There are statistics that exist for people who get transferred into a long-term-care home not of their choosing, into a long-term-care home that is away from your circle of care, from your family, from the people who support you. You will see the huge difference in life expectancy. The average life expectancy in a long-term-care home is around three years; if you don’t go into the long-term-care home of your choosing, if you don’t have a circle of care about you, if you miss your friends, if you miss your spouse, it will be in months, not in years. Is this really how we want to treat frail, elderly people? I am worried. I am very worried.

That was paragraph 2, subsection 3: A placement coordinator would have the authority to:

“i. Determine the ALC patient’s eligibility for admission”—that is, without their consent;

“ii. Select a ... home ... for the ALC patient in accordance with the geographic restrictions that are prescribed by the regulations”—regulations that nobody has seen;

“iii. Provide to the” long-term-care home “licensee ... the assessments and information set out in the regulations,” including “personal health information.”

Remember, your personal health information is something that is just that: It is personal. You get to decide who sees that information and who doesn’t, and you do that through consent. This bill takes that consent away from you. The coordinator will do the assessment, will access your personal health information and will share that personal health information with the long-term-care home of their choosing, not of your choosing.

This is a dangerous door to open, Speaker. I fully understand that our hospitals are full, that we are expecting a surge in demand for our hospital beds coming this fall, that 20% of our hospital beds are being occupied by people who could be cared for someplace else. But I can’t help but think there is a cost to those decisions, and the cost to those decisions is that frail, elderly people lose their right to consent. I’m not willing to do that, Speaker. I’m not.

So your personal health information will be shared with a long-term-care home. There could be many reasons why a patient, a hospital patient, would not want their personal health information shared with a specific long-term-care home. They could have an ex-wife or ex-husband who works in that long-term-care home, and the relationship is not good. So you would have never chosen that long-term-care home because you-know-who works there, but you have no choice, you have no say. The bill takes away your right to consent to sharing of your personal health information, and the health information is shared with the long-term-care home that the care coordinator has chosen, not you.

And “iv. Authorize the ALC patient’s admission to” the long-term-care home. So the admission has been authorized by the placement coordinator. The placement coordinator will also have the authority to “transfer responsibility of the placement of the ALC patient to another placement coordinator....” This always brings confusion. I can tell you that a transfer of a loved one into a long-term-care home after a hospital admission is always something stressful. Most of the care coordinators are nurses or social workers. They do a fantastic job trying to calm the residents, calm the family, explain the process. But now we are giving them a job to do, that is to move that patient out of that bed, out of that hospital bed, and into the long-term-care home that has beds available.

Paragraph 3: “A physician, registered nurse or person described in paragraph 3 of subsection 50(5)” would be authorized to “conduct an assessment of the ALC patient for the purpose of determining the ALC patient’s eligibility for admission to a long-term-care home.” Some long-term-care homes have specific services that are not available. Some will have lockdown units for people who have dementia, who are hard to control. So with a lockdown, if your level of care is such that you need a lockdown unit, then you could only be transferred to a home that has that level of care, so that is in the bill.

Then it becomes even more interesting. “A long-term-care-home licensee” would be required to—so the long-term-care home now has a requirement added to them to:

“i. Review the assessments and information provided by the placement co-ordinator....” So whether the patient has consented to it or not, the long-term-care home has no choice; it has to review the assessment.

“ii. Approve the ALC patient for admission” unless one of the conditions specified in the Fixing Long-Term Care Act for not approving the admission was met. And usually, as I said, it’s a patient that has a level of care—some are on dialysis, some need a lockdown unit, some need special care that may not be available in that home. But I would tell you that the placement coordinators know the long-term-care homes inside and out. They will know where to refer the different patients.

And then, “iii. Admit the ... ALC patient” as a resident “when they present themselves” at the long-term-care home. This is where we have this gap. So once the patients present themselves at the long-term-care home, the long-term-care home has to admit the ALC patient as a resident once they present themselves to a long-term-care home. So the Minister of Health goes to great length to say, “You will not be forced out of the hospital into a home that is not of your choosing,” but we will have taken away your opportunity to consent. We will have assessed you. We will have shared your personal information with the long-term-care home, and the long-term-care home will have to admit you if you present yourself.

Then paragraph 5, subsection (3): “A person with authority to carry out an action listed in paragraph 1, 2, 3 or 4,” that I just went through, “a hospital ... or any other person prescribed by the regulations” would have the authority to “collect, use or disclose personal health information if it is necessary to carry out an action listed in paragraph”—the actions are to do the assessment.

So that would be a person listed: a physician, a nurse or a social worker—I still have a lot of problems with giving them the authority to do an assessment without consent, to access your health information without consent and to share your health information without consent. But this bill now says that there could be “any other person prescribed by the regulations.” I’m a little bit afraid to read that part of the regulations.

The bill already talked about physicians. They already talked about nurses. They already talked about care coordinators. “Any other person prescribed by the regulations”—I don’t think you and I, Speaker, should be the one deciding if somebody is ready to go into long-term care and which long-term care they should go to—

Joe the plumber.

Joe the plumber. Yes, maybe. No, no—Joe the Plumber is not a good one either.

It’s that we have to have faith that the government will do the right thing for frail, elderly people needing long-term care; this is not an easy one to agree to when we have not seen the regulations. I don’t want Joe the plumber to be the one doing that work.

Then, again, subsection (4) of the new section would provide that the actions described under subsection (3) may only be performed without consent of the ALC patient or the substitute decision-maker after “reasonable efforts have been made to obtain the consent.”

It’s making it clearer and clearer all the time that—you try to get someone to agree that they need to go to long-term care. You try to get someone to agree to list that long-term-care home that doesn’t have a big wait-list—because it is an old home that hasn’t been renovated in 50 years. It has one bathroom per floor. It has a room with four people to a room. It has no air conditioning. It has very little facilities. Those are the long-term-care homes that do not have a long wait-list, and you can understand why. Would you want to put your mother at Orchard Villa when they were still in an outbreak of COVID a couple of weeks ago? I don’t think so. Those are the homes that are available.

What this said is after “reasonable efforts have been made to obtain” consent. “Reasonable” is not defined in the bill. Again, we have to trust that the government is going to do the right thing and put the bar for reasonable at the right height. But who knows? If reasonable is: “Mrs. Gélinas, would you like to go to Extendicare York?” “No, absolutely not. I don’t want to go.” Okay. “I tried. She said no. I’m moving on. I’m now going without consent.” What is reasonable, when it’s not defined and all of the other provisions in the bill lead me to believe that there is very little respect left for frail, elderly people in our hospitals, waiting? There will be very little respect left for frail, elderly people labelled ALC, waiting for long-term-care placement in our hospitals once this bill will have been passed—not good.

But it does say in section 6 that ALC patients or their substitute decision-maker could provide their consent at any stage of the admission process. So this bill is describing a new admissions process that does not need your consent, but at any time in the process you could give your consent. It just reinforces the fact that we are taking your right to consent away from you.

It does go on to say that you are not authorized—“any person to restrain an ALC patient or to physically transfer an ALC patient to a long-term-care home without consent.” So they did keep consent for one thing. We’re not going to be able to tie you down while you’re screaming and shouting that you do not want to go to this long-term-care home. So, for anybody out there, if this happens to you, remember, if you scream and shout loud enough that you don’t want to go, they won’t be allowed to restrain you. I’m joking. We should never get to this, and I know I’m not funny. At least the bill says that you won’t be allowed to restrain patients to physically transfer them.

This bill is about transferring patients. The transfer of a patient in a hospital to become a resident in a long-term-care home requires consent. This is what our health care system is based on, and this bill takes all of that away.

Section 3 of the act would amend subsection 61(2) of the long-term-care-home act to confer authority on the Lieutenant Governor in Council to make regulations governing the actions that may be performed under the new section with respect to ALC patients, including prescribing and governing any procedures that must be followed as part of the modified admissions process for ALC patients.

So it is clear that this bill is about the admissions process for ALC patients. The bill says this many, many times. The bill says that we will take away their right to consent, and it goes on to say that there’s a general definition of personal health information that is being changed just for the Fixing Long-Term Care Act and its regulations.

There’s also section 9 of the bill. Section 9 of the bill does not apply to an authorization by a placement coordinator of an ALC patient’s admission to a long-term-care home in accordance with section 60. The amendments would further clarify that an admission of an ALC patient to a long-term-care home under section 60 would be distinct from, and would not preclude, an admission to a long-term-care home under the HCCA crisis admission provisions.

Let me talk to you a little bit about the crisis admission provisions. The minute that the Minister of Health declares a hospital in crisis, then there are new provisions that apply. There are provisions that apply in our Health Care Consent Act, 1996. If you were at question period this morning, you would see that the Minister of Long-Term Care made reference to it. Basically, what the Health Care Consent Act, 1996, talks about is—and I will read it:

“Despite any law to the contrary, if a person is found by an evaluator to be incapable with respect to his or her admission to a care facility”—that’s long-term care—“the person’s admission may be authorized, and the person may be admitted, without consent, if in the opinion of the person responsible for authorizing admissions to the care facility,

“(a) the incapable person requires immediate admission to a care facility as a result of a crisis; and

“(b) it is not reasonably possible to obtain an immediate consent or refusal on the incapable person’s behalf....

“Consent or refusal to be obtained

“(2) When an admission to a care facility is authorized under subsection (1), the person responsible for authorizing admissions to the care facility shall obtain consent, or refusal of consent, from the incapable person’s substitute decision-maker....”

Basically, what this means is that if the Minister of Health declares a hospital in crisis, you can take anybody who is labelled ALC and move them to the long-term-care home of your choice. So we now have a whole lot of people who won’t have given consent to be assessed, that will have been assessed as requiring a long-term-care home, and all this without their consent. And then all we have to do is declare this hospital in crisis, and all of those people will be transferred to the first available bed. Then people say, “Well, even if you’re in the first available bed, you just have to wait until your turn comes.”

Let me talk to you about placement categories. There are four placement categories as in the wait-list to go into a long-term-care home.

Category 1 are people who need immediate admission to a long-term-care home and cannot have their needs met at home or are in hospital when the hospital is in crisis. What that means is that category 1, the first people—it doesn’t matter how long you have been waiting for long-term care. If you are in a hospital, declared ALC and the hospital is in crisis, you get the first bed. You get to go.

Category 2 are people who need to be reunified with their spouses. That’s something we have worked really hard on. One spouse is in one long-term care; the other one is in the other long-term care. As soon as a bed becomes available in the long-term care of your choice, you are category 2.

Category 3 are people waiting for services of a particular religion, ethnic origin or culture.

Category 4 are people who have high-care needs but can still be supported at home, or people in a long-term-care home seeking transfer to their first choice.

In Ontario right now, if you are not in category 1, you are not moving. Once we have transferred you against your consent to a long-term-care home that is not of your choosing, the minister has made it clear that he has no intention of changing the placement categories and that is not in the bill, which means that you will now be category 4, and in Ontario, nobody in category 4 ever moves anywhere. The only people who get placed are category 1. They are people waiting in our hospitals, labelled as ALC, or if there is a crisis in the community, they will qualify as category 1 and they will get the next available bed, hopefully of their choosing.

I want everybody to realize that under the bill that we have now, people will end up in long-term-care homes not of their choosing. Once they are there, they will be labelled as category 4, for placement into long-term care. That means the home that they want to go to, that home that the family has identified that they want to go to, they will never get to go there because there will always be someone in category 1, category 2 or category 3 that will be ahead of them on the wait-list. Their chances of ever moving from that long-term-care home that was not of their choosing are zero.

So here we have this More Beds, Better Care Act. I’m sure we have all read the explanatory note, which goes on to say, “The bill amends the Fixing Long-Term Care Act.... This new provision authorizes certain actions to be carried out without the consent of these patients. The actions include having a placement co-ordinator determine the patient’s eligibility for a long-term-care home, select a home and authorize their admission to the home. They also include having certain persons conduct assessments for the purpose of determining a patient’s eligibility, requiring the licensee to admit the patient to the home when certain conditions have been met and allowing persons to collect, use and disclose personal health information, if it is necessary to carry out the actions.”

Certain sections of the act “do not apply to these actions, and instead they shall be carried out in accordance with the regulations” that we have not seen.

So the explanatory note, as well as the compendium that I have quoted to you before, make it clear that it will now not be a physician who will decide if you are ready to go into a long-term-care home; it will be a placement coordinator that will determine your eligibility for a long-term-care home. That same care coordinator would be the one who will select the home and authorize their admission to that home, and the home—which they call the licensee—will be required to admit the patients to the home when certain conditions are met.

Do I think that our hospitals are overcrowded? Yes, absolutely. Do I think that people requiring long-term care should be in our hospitals? No. But do I think that they deserve respect? Yes, absolutely. And every single one of them will tell you the same story: They want to be supported at home. In order for them to be supported at home, we have to fix our home care system. Remember, when Mike Harris was there, we used to have a publicly delivered home care system. When Mike Harris was there, the Conservative government of the day convinced everybody that the crisis in home care could be fixed with privatization. Private home care companies were going to do things better, faster, cheaper. In 2022, does anybody believe that the private companies provide better home care?