Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. At the outset, let me just mention that I’ll be splitting my time with my parliamentary assistant, the member for Lanark–Frontenac–Kingston.

I rise today to speak on the proposed amendments to the Fixing Long-Term Care Act, 2021. The changes are part of the government’s larger Plan to Stay Open: Health System Stability and Recovery.

As everyone knows, health care systems around the world have been facing unprecedented challenges, obviously due to COVID-19 and a number of other issues that we have been facing across not only the province of Ontario, but all across the planet since the outbreak of COVID. Ontario, I would suggest, has done an exceptional job working together with our federal partners and really working with our municipal partners and across sectors to help address the challenges that we have been facing with COVID-19.

I think it is important to note, Speaker, that Ontarians have also really done an extraordinary job in helping us combat COVID-19. We have one of the highest vaccination rates in the entire world, and I think that is a testament not only to Ontarians’ desire to move beyond this, but it is also a testament to the incredible health care workers that have also helped us every single day to ensure that we had the ability to provide these vaccines in such an incredible fashion, as we have in the province of Ontario.

Now, based on the latest modelling from Ontario Health, further action is obviously needed to strengthen the health care system, action that if not taken immediately could see a shortage of beds of about 2,400 spaces as we head into the fall, where respiratory challenges, flu and COVID-19 again will rear their heads, because we are certainly not behind this.

Much of this summer’s focus has been on hospital emergency departments, which have faced many challenges. But of course, emergency departments are only a part of the larger, interconnected system of care. We need to look for solutions at every stage of a person’s health care journey, and that is why we are here today.

As Minister of Long-Term Care, and, frankly, as an Ontarian and parliamentarian, I take pride in our health care system and its ability to adapt. There are many steps that we can take now to address these challenges and to avoid overstrain of our health care system and to establish better models of care.

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

Our priority is for people to live and receive care where they can have the best possible quality of life close to their family, caregivers and friends.

As the Minister of Long-Term Care, my ministry is taking several actions to improve how we transition ALC patients, whose needs would be better met in long-term care, out of hospitals and into homes. Initiatives that help divert people out of hospitals when they don’t require hospital care are the key part of the broader health system stability and recovery plan that our government released last Thursday.

The steps that the Ministry of Long-Term Care is taking to deliver on this plan include, very specifically, the following actions: We will be reactivating long-term-care respite programs for high-needs seniors to prevent possible hospitalizations—and I want to just talk about this really briefly. This is a very important program, and I’m sure a lot of colleagues, as they were knocking on doors, might have heard people talk about this. I did on a number of occasions. This is a program where long-term-care homes are used to provide temporary relief for somebody who is providing care for a loved one at home and just simply needs a break. COVID-19 forced us to close these temporary respite care opportunities across the province of Ontario, forcing many people to use the hospital system as their opportunity to get a break. These people, these families, these caregivers providing help to loved ones—more often than not, it is for very challenging cases, like dementia and other very serious issues. I was knocking in my riding on a number of occasions, and I can’t tell you how many people asked me, “Could we reopen the respite care?” They’ve done all that they needed—a number of cases where people had said they can’t get the surgery they need because they don’t have another option for their loved one. So this is part of the plan.

Reopening these respite care opportunities for people would help open up spaces in our acute care system—also, opening up long-term-care beds that no longer need to be held for pandemic-related isolation purposes. I’ll be doing that through an updated minister’s directive coming into effect on August 23—today. I just want to really briefly talk about this. There are thousands of beds that were set aside for isolation purposes in the province of Ontario at the height of the pandemic, Speaker. Predominantly, as we learned through the first two waves—and admittedly, the province of Ontario was not in a position in the first two waves to properly address COVID-19.

I have said this on a number of occasions: We inherited a system that was badly broken. We inherited a system that was not prepared to deal with a global pandemic. It did not have infection prevention and control measures. It still had ward rooms, outdated and old long-term-care facilities. PPE was something that was not being addressed.

But, to be very clear, at the same time, we started, almost immediately after getting elected in 2018, to start to address the underfunding in long-term care with an immediate upgrade, an announcement of 30,000 new long-term-care beds across the province of Ontario. Part of the rationale for that was to not only catch up to the serious backlog that we had because of the years of underfunding, but it was also to modernize those old, outdated homes. That work was already under way. It also included, in co-operation with the Minister of Health, the transition to the Ontario health teams.

Now, that was something that is very important. We don’t talk about it a lot, but for long-term care, that is a very important part of an integrated health care system. Because what that means is whether you’re in long-term care, hospital care or have a family doctor, you have a ribbon of care. We saw that undertaken in some of the early stages when hospitals took over the administration of some of our long-term-care homes that were incapable of reacting as quickly as a hospital could.

We dealt with the PPE not only in our long-term care but across our health care system. And of course, vaccines have changed the conversation, especially in long-term care. So what we did was put about 2,000 beds aside for isolation purposes across the province of Ontario. These are beds that could not be used, that needed to be there in case homes went into outbreak. That obviously is no longer required. That level of a bed is no longer required, because of the impact of vaccinations in our long-term-care homes.

I just want to leave you with this, Speaker. I think it’s close to 85% of our residents of long-term care who are eligible for their fourth dose have had their fourth dose. That is incredible. It is an incredible testament to the work that is being done by our health care professionals in those long-term-care homes and the impact that vaccines have, which allows us to remove so many of these beds for purposes of isolation, to put them back and make them available to the long-term-care system again.

But let me just say this: Part of the Fixing Long-Term Care Act requires that every home have an emergency plan and that that plan be submitted to the ministry for approval in case they have an outbreak. We are not suspending that, obviously. It just means that vaccines, the availability of vaccines, the investments that we’re making allow us to bring at least 1,000 beds back online into the system, and I think that is a very positive step for long-term care.

We are further exploring the use of vacant long-term-care beds as hospital-operated transitional or convalescent care beds, based on regional availability. And this is something that’s worked quite well, as well. This is where vacant long-term-care beds are, in essence, handed over to a hospital—we’ve done this in co-operation in Ottawa—and the hospital uses these beds as an extension of the hospital. It is a program that has worked not only in Ottawa and a couple of other communities in and around the GTA, it is a very important program and something that hospitals have asked us to continue. And we are going to be doing that.

We are going to work to enable community partnerships to provide more supplies, equipment, diagnostic testing in long-term-care homes to prevent potential hospitalization. And we are expanding specialized supports and services for people in long-term care with complex needs like bariatric, behavioural and dialysis.

I’m going to talk to those last two points before I get onto the final point of this. We’ve heard this a lot. Look, long-term-care homes can be more than just—it’s an important place. One of the things that I learned a lot, from the member from Haliburton and my parliamentary assistant too, and we’ve talked about this, is that a home is a home. My parliamentary assistant said it best when he said, “We want people to go from being patients to being residents.”

The member for Haliburton, every time we’ve discussed this, has always talked about—we always talked about long-term care homes. And I’ve heard this a lot. It’s not from her, because I’ll tell you what she has said. I’ve heard this a lot from people who have said, “You’ve got to stop thinking of long-term-care homes as places where we warehouse people, and we have to start thinking of long-term-care homes as a home, where somebody goes in their next chapter of life.” That is the guiding principle, something that the member for Haliburton has helped us understand and has helped guide—many of the things that are part of the Fixing Long-Term Care Act and many of the resources that we are putting here.

We’re talking about adding additional services in our long-term-care homes, Speaker, because they can be more than just a home. Like, if somebody needs dialysis right now, it is inappropriate, I believe, that we ship somebody from their home to the hospital and back to the home for dialysis. Can a long-term-care home provide that dialysis? Yes, it can. If it has the appropriate nursing staff, if it has the equipment, it can provide that service so the patient can be a resident and can stay in their home. This bill will allow us to do that.

We are also expanding behavioural supports through Behavioural Supports Ontario and with a partnership with Baycrest, which offers a virtual program which has been very, very successful across the province. We are seeing this more and more often. Dementia has become a very challenging issue, something that is challenging in our hospital settings, Mr. Speaker, but is also challenging in our long-term-care homes and, sometimes, a barrier to somebody going into a long-term-care home, where their needs are better serviced. This will allow us to provide those direct supports to homes. Before somebody has moved into a home, assess a home—does it need additional supports? This bill allows us to do it. It provides immediate funding and it provides permanent, ongoing funding. I think that is a very important part of this.

Finally, it provides further authority—and this is the part where I think a lot of discussion is, around this particular part. It provides further authority to assess an ALC patient’s ability to transfer into an alternative long-term-care home. What I mean by “alternative” is different from the home that they have put down as their preferred choice. I’m going to spend a couple of seconds just talking about that, because I suspect that that will come up a lot.

Let’s just take a look at that for a second, Speaker. Somebody who has been discharged from a hospital is an ALC patient but is staying in the hospital while they await their preferred long-term-care home. Right now they could be waiting in a hospital for six months—for six months. There is virtually nobody who would agree that, for somebody who is on the long-term-care waiting list, who wants to be in a long-term-care home, the best place for them to be would be in the hospital waiting for that.

What this bill allows us to do is it allows the long-term-care discharge coordinator in the hospital to access the resident’s choices: What are their choices? What are their preferred homes? Where do they want to be? Because when somebody has made that choice, they have presumably chosen to be near family, friends, their spouse, a partner, other available caregivers, in communities where they want to be. This bill allows us to do that. It allows us to say, “Look, these are your choices. They are not available, but these are the homes that might be available around your choices while you wait for a space to open up in your preferred home.” That is the very important part of this; it allows for these conversations to continue.

It also then allows the long-term-care placement coordinator to look to ensure that there actually are the services and supports that a patient would need when they become a resident of a home while they are waiting. There is no point in us transferring somebody who has been discharged from hospital out of hospital into a home that doesn’t have the appropriate nursing staff, that doesn’t have the appropriate PSWs, that doesn’t have the supports like behavioural supports or other supports needed to handle that patient. It allows us to review the homes, making sure they can handle the patient and, should the patient then ultimately consent to going into one of those homes, what changes would need to be made to ensure that we can accommodate the patient as they become a resident of that home temporarily.

Now, I’ve heard a lot of discussion from the opposition critic, who suggested we are going to be filling up the ward rooms and that’s where patients will go. Well, that is absolutely, positively false. It is absolutely incorrect. It is not something that is contemplated in this legislation. The vast majority of the rooms that are available in the long-term-care system right now are preferred rooms. It is a higher standard of room than the person has actually asked for. This bill protects them, because the vast majority of the times when we are placing somebody with their consent into a temporary home while they wait for their preferred home, they will be placed in a preferred room. And what I mean by “preferred room” is a single room or a higher standard than what they have chosen for. This bill protects them because it obviously is not going to charge them for preferred rooms; we offset that cost while you wait for your preferred choice. I think that is a very, very important part of this, because we obviously don’t want to disadvantage people while they are waiting for their preferred home.

There have been a lot of things that we have done, across the sector, to prepare our homes. I’ve said this on a number of occasions: Long-term care, finally, is in a position in the province of Ontario where we can be part of the solution to the acute-care challenges that have faced this province for literally decades. The fact that we so underfunded long-term care, as a province, for so many years is what has, in part, led us to the situation that we are in today. It is no secret that we have an aging population. It is no secret that we have to make the investments that we are making in long-term care, and it is no secret why we are making those investments—because we are building an integrated system of health care in the province of Ontario, something that people have called for for decades. We are doing it, and long-term care is going to be a part of that. Let’s look at some of the investments we have made that led us to the ability to do this.

We are bringing about four hours of care. This is an enormous change for the province of Ontario. I think when we took office in 2018, the previous government had left us with about two-and-a-half hours of care per resident a day. That was the legacy of the previous government. They had built something like 600 long-term-care beds. What have we done? Speaker, 58,000 new and upgraded beds across the province of Ontario. At the same time, we said it’s not just enough to build new beds; we have to have an increased level of care in every single long-term-care home across this province. That means 27,000 additional PSWs to care for people, and not just PSWs, but other health care professionals: nurse practitioners, allied health, dietitians—a whole spectrum of services available for our residents in long-term care as we go to the North America-leading four hours of care.

Again, I have to thank the member for Haliburton, who was instrumental in helping us get to this understanding of how important it was that we close down the ward beds and how important it was that we build new and modern facilities, and how important it was, if you’re going to build an integrated system, that you do it with the appropriate level of care so that there is no difference; so that, whether you’re in a hospital, whether you’re in a long-term-care home, you know that you’re going to get the highest level of care that is available to you as a resident in the province of Ontario.

We have also gone further than that. We’ve said that we have to do a better job of inspecting, ensuring the accountability.

A lot of people in this place will say that there can’t be private, for-profit, not-for-profit or municipal—one is better than the other, and so on and so forth. Mr. Speaker, I would submit to you—and I’ve said this outside of this chamber as often as I’ve said it inside of this chamber: When long-term care has failed, it is the responsibility of all of us that it has failed. It is because the rules weren’t put in place. It shouldn’t matter where you are, in what type of home you are; the standards should be exactly the same. And that is what we are doing through the Fixing Long-Term Care Act. We are ensuring that all of the standards are the same.

Mr. Speaker, we have hired additional inspectors. We are literally doubling the inspections. We will have the highest inspector-to-home ratio in the entire country by virtue of the investments we are making in long-term care.

But we’re going even further than that, because we know how important it is that people have access to information, at the same time—and finding the information on long-term-care homes in the province of Ontario was a difficult thing to do. You had to be able to search through a whole host of different websites to find information, to find an inspection report, to see what’s going on in a home. That is no longer the case in the province of Ontario. Through the good work of the Associate Minister of Digital Government, we were able to bring forward a brand new website that allows individuals easy access to click on a map and say, “This is the home I’m considering. What is the vaccination rate? What is the care that they are having there? What is the last inspection report that they have had? What are the issues that are facing that home? And how do I apply and get into the system if that’s where I want to be?” You can do that all across the province. It also allows you to look up that this is what’s happening in the community, this is the construction that’s happening, this home is being updated, when it is being updated, and where they are at in the process. I think that is also a very important change to long-term care.

We also brought in—and this was something that was driven by the former minister, now the minister of children and family services, the member for Kanata–Carleton, Minister Fullerton—the community paramedicine program. This is something that was driven by Minister Fullerton. This program started off as a pilot program. Those people who are waiting for long-term care, who are on the waiting list for long-term care, it allows paramedics in communities across the province to provide direct services to them as they wait.

This program has been so incredibly successful. It is something that communities across the province of Ontario have been asking us for, and it is something that, recently, I was able to extend across the entire province. I can’t tell you how well received it has been, how well it is going and how important it is to recognizing the fact that, yes, people may be on a long-term-care wait-list, that may be the case, but they don’t want to go into long-term care, in a lot of instances, until they are ready to go into long-term care. There should be other options available to people.

The community paramedicine program allows that to happen, in co-operation with what the Minister of Health is doing with respect to the billion-dollar investment in home care in the province of Ontario, the initiation of Ontario health teams. This is a very, very important time, I would submit, Mr. Speaker, for legislators and for us as the province of Ontario, because what we are doing is putting in place a change, a fix for health care for generations to come. It recognizes the extraordinary work that has led up to this.

Now, look, have we had challenges in health care? Absolutely, we have. We have a province that has grown so quickly, so fast, but despite that, Speaker, I would submit to you—and I hear this constantly—part of the challenges that people have with health care is not the care that they are getting. It is accessing the system. It is very difficult from one region to the next.

I’ve talked about it in the House. A father-in-law who injured himself in Durham region coming to live with me in Stouffville, changing from Durham to York region, how you get your PSWs to help, and the assistance, the changes—very, very difficult system to get into. But once you are in the system, it is a spectacular system despite the challenges that we are facing. We want to ensure, by the investments we’re making in health, the investments we’re making to increase staffing, that we are in a position to have the best quality of care.

Speaker, I talked about some of the new building that is happening across the province of Ontario. I think it’s worth noting, because a number of colleagues here will know that last year, as part of this, we announced a number of allocations, which have actually exceeded what our goal was. We’ve actually exceeded the goal.

I’ll put that in context. In the first three months of this year, I announced bed allocations in pretty much every part of the province. Some of the areas: Lancaster, Simcoe, Brantford, Sarnia, Hanover, Hamilton, Mississauga, Guelph, Gananoque, Paris, Killarney, Marathon, Elliot Lake, Manitouwadge, Haliburton, London, Timmins, Kapuskasing, Toronto, Niagara, Markham and Stouffville.

We also announced that surplus government lands in Mississauga, Hamilton and Etobicoke would be made available for long-term care—and these are unused government properties—something that we’re able to do, that we’re able to expedite and get moving quickly. We also did the accelerated build program, which saw the Lakeridge Gardens built in Ajax in record time as part of this, trying to understand how we can get shovels in the ground quicker and faster.

The other part of what we’re doing—I think there are over 115 homes that are being built as part of a campus of care. Now, this is such an important part of the transition on—it’s partnering. As I said, it’s part of this partnering that we’re doing in health care in general, building a system that allows health care to be integrated.

If you’re in a hospital and you need service of some sort, you’ll know before you leave that you will have your home and where your home is going. If you’re going into long-term care, that will be made available to you. But these campuses of care are so important to the transition of health care in the province of Ontario. I can’t tell you how exciting and gratifying it is to see that so many partners are coming on board for that.

Ultimately, Mr. Speaker, in the short time that I have left, I wanted to reiterate that this is a very important part of helping the acute-care challenges that we have faced in the province of Ontario. We are not leaders on this. This legislation does not make Ontario a leader. In fact, many provinces already have similar types of legislation, have been doing this for much longer than we have. We are catching up. But we are catching up because we’ve made the investments that allow us to be part of the solution. We are behind other provinces because the previous government never made these investments. And because this government has made those investments, Mr. Speaker—and that is the important part.

Again, despite what we are hearing from the opposition fairly, pretty exclusively on this, it does not remove somebody’s ability to consent. We are not forcing anybody out of a hospital into a place where they do not want to live. That is not what this legislation does. It allows us to better prepare and to assess where somebody could go and to present those options to an individual. It allows us to continue conversations that would have otherwise stopped right at the beginning, Mr. Speaker. Since long-term care can be part of the solution, I think it should be a point of pride for us that we are in this spot in the province of Ontario.

I do hope—I do sincerely hope—that my colleagues will take the time to read the bill; to see what it does; see how it will impact your local communities; see how it will impact your local health care, your local hospitals. Talk to your administrators in your hospitals, but also talk to your long-term-care homes. Talk to them. Hear what they say about the quality of care that they can provide. I think if you do that, you will see that this is the right approach, and I hope that all members will support us on it.

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.