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.

Speaker, that’s from the Auditor General’s December 2021 report. Let me quote further from that report:

“We found that some patients could be given misleading information as part of sales practices to make a profit.”

Further, “The ministry is putting patients at greater financial risk by allowing additional private organizations to provide publicly funded surgeries while also being allowed to charge patients directly for additional uninsured services to make a profit.”

In the case of cataract surgeries, these add-on charges cost patients anywhere from $450 to almost $5,000.

So my question: Do you believe it is your job to protect Ontarians and not the bottom line of for-profit providers?

The most disturbing finding in the Auditor General’s report: “The inconsistency in the way oversight of various service providers is conducted means that neither the Ministry nor Ontario Health has a full picture of outpatient surgeries across the province.” This is remarkable.

We know that your government’s failure to provide oversight in for-profit long-term-care homes resulted in thousands of seniors’ deaths. So why then, for heaven’s sake, are you rushing into privatization before you make sure Ontarians can get the care they need in a public universal health care system in Ontario?

Nobody believes it anymore.

It was Mike Harris who also opened the door to privatization of our long-term-care homes. More than 50% of every long-term-care bed in Ontario is privatized. What does that mean? That means that shareholders make millions of dollars on the backs of frail, elderly people. We have just gone through a pandemic. Would anybody in this House believe that the private long-term-care homes do things better, faster, cheaper than the not-for-profit, than the homes for the aged? Nobody believes that.

The statistics are there; the statistics speak for themselves: There were twice as many deaths in private for-profit long-term-care homes during COVID than there were in not-for-profit. There were three times as many deaths in private for-profit long-term-care homes than there were in homes for the aged, which are managed by municipalities. Those sad statistics speak for themselves. The quality of care is directly linked to the fact that they are not-for-profit, that every dollar that they get goes to the bedside, as opposed to the $300 million that was paid by the biggest chain of long-term-care homes in the first three months of the pandemic. In the first three months of the pandemic, they got $280 million in government subsidies to help them face the pandemic, and they paid their shareholders $300 million during that same period of time. That’s not quality care. That is the private sector gouging frail, elderly people.

What we have here with the More Beds, Better Care Act—the idea behind more beds is good. The idea behind better care is good. To take away your right to consent so that you can take someone out of a hospital and put them in a long-term-care home not of their choosing? That’s not respect. That’s not right. Whether you are frail and elderly, whether you have cognitive impairment, you are still a human being. There are still people who love you, who care about you, who want to be near you. None of that is taken into account in this bill.

I see that I only have a few minutes.

The bill goes on to say, “Certain limitations apply. The actions cannot be performed without first making reasonable efforts to obtain the patient’s consent.” Again, what is “reasonable effort” is not defined in the bill and could be interpreted in many different ways. When you have an emergency room with 30 patients who need to be admitted and you have no beds and nowhere to place them, the pressure on people to leave the hospital is tremendous.

I want to remind everyone, though, that most people who get admitted through our ERs—our emergency rooms—are really sick. They will need the care of specialist physicians, they will need the care of specialist nurses to be able to regain their health.

Most people who have been labelled as ALC will be put in a part of the hospital that is staffed mainly by PSWs—personal support workers—and registered practical nurses. They are the ones with the right set of skills to meet the needs of the people labelled as ALC, who meet the criteria for ALC. So even if you free up what is called an ALC bed in our hospitals, that certainly does not mean that you will have the right amount of trained nurses in place to take on the extra load or that you will have the right amount of physicians in place to take on the extra load—not to mention the staffing crisis in our long-term-care homes.

No matter where they are, in every part of our province, long-term-care homes are having staffing issues. Many long-term-care homes are not able to take more patients, but remember, the new bill will require the long-term-care home to admit the patient to the home. They won’t have a choice. It is in the bill. They will have to admit them whether they have the staff to do this or not.

The crisis in our long-term-care system has been there for a long time. There are solutions that should be implemented right now. The number one solution that everybody knows would make a huge difference is for this government to mandate a minimum of 70 permanent, full-time jobs, well paid, with benefits, with sick days, with a pension plan and with a workload that a human being can handle. There are thousands of PSWs right now in every part of our province who would love to go back to do what they do well. They are good at taking care of the frail, elderly patients in our long-term-care homes, but if they do this as a part-time job, sitting by the phone, they cannot pay their rent and feed their kids. So they leave the sector so that they can go work at another part-time job that would allow them to pay the rent and feed their kids.

Why don’t we make PSW a career? Why don’t we give them permanent, full-time jobs with decent pay, with benefits, with sick days, and give them the respect that they deserve? These women—because the great majority are women—deserve to be respected. Do that.

Same thing with our hospitals: To free up an ALC bed in a hospital does not mean that we will have the staff to look after whoever gets admitted into that bed, because remember, the person who was there before was cared for by a PSW and an RPN. If you’re admitted through the emergency room, you are sick enough that you will need a physician, an RN and specialized care. Where will those people come from when we see every weekend there are emergency rooms that close, parts of our hospitals that close because we haven’t got enough health human resources?

Why don’t we give those health human resources a little bit of respect? I tabled a bill today that has to do with violence and harassment in the workplace. Why don’t we pass that bill? Because if you have worked really hard for the last two and a half years in health care and you are completely burnt out, and you go to work—and 1 in 2 have an incident of violence or harassment at work—and you are one of the 1 in 2 who gets violence or harassment at work, there’s a good chance you will walk away from a profession that you love and a profession that you are good at. Because in order to care for others, you have to care for yourself. This is where nurses are at.

There are things that you could do right now that would help with the health human resources crisis. Repeal Bill 124. Show respect to our health care workers. Pass the bill from my colleague about internationally trained physicians and nurses. There is lots that can be done. None of that is in that bill.

The bill wants more beds in our hospitals and better care in our long-term-care homes, but all this does is take away the right of people to consent to what is done to them, to consent to share their personal health information. I cannot stand for this and I will never stand for that.