I thank the member for Mississauga–Lakeshore for sharing his time today. I am very glad that he mentioned the accelerated build on Speakman Drive. This is a project that all six Mississauga MPPs are very proud to support. The member and I are working very hard to ensure that, for the very first time in the region of Peel, there will be some long-term-care beds available to also service our francophone population.

It is indeed an honour to rise today and speak to Bill 7, More Beds, Better Care Act. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Minister of Long-Term Care on the work that he has been doing since taking over this portfolio.

Before I dive into this bill as well as speak to our five-pillar plan to stay open, I would like to lay down some context and highlight some of the tremendous and unprecedented work and investments we have made in long-term care during our first mandate.

The Fixing Long-Term Care Act instilled four hours of direct patient care per resident per day, leading the country in legislating such high standards of care. This is an increase from 2.75 hours, on average, to four hours—an increase of 42%. Conversely, the previous Liberal government increased the direct care to residents by only 21 minutes from 2009 to 2018—an increase of only 12% over nine years, or about two minutes per year. Speaker, two minutes per year. I think you and I can both agree that our residents deserve much better.

We are also hiring 27,000 more health care workers into the system to live up to this four hours of care standard. We will do this over time, of course, in tranches, by investing $270 million last fiscal year, $673 million this fiscal year, $1.25 billion in 2023-24 and $1.82 billion in 2024-25.

We are also offering free education to 16,000 PSWs, who have taken these courses and are starting to enter the workforce currently. We have made the PSW wage increase permanent, from $15 to $18.

We have also committed to building 30,000 long-term-care beds over 10 years through accelerated build projects such as the one on Speakman Drive in Mississauga.

And we have committed ourselves to linguistically and culturally appropriate care, some examples of which include the Muslim Welfare Centre we recently announced with our members in Mississauga, as well as the Coptic home in Mississauga, through Virgin Mary and St. Athanasius church, which will provide for the first time in the history of Ontario long-term-care services available in the Arabic language.

I’m also, of course, very, very proud of our francophone strategy, which we announced last year, which saw 777 new and renovated beds for our Franco-Ontarian population. For the very first time in Ontario, we are building a francophone long-term-care home right here in Toronto, with 256 projected beds. These underserviced and equity-seeking populations will now, for the first time, have access to care, here in Toronto—par et pour les francophones.

An example of this incredible work is the Foyer Richelieu. I had the opportunity, recently, to meet with the mayor of Welland, Frank Campion, to discuss the incredible projects that are happening there under the leadership of Foyer Richelieu and Mr. Sean Keays.

All of these actions taken by our government are not just lip service. Let me speak a little bit about what these actions mean on a practical, human level.

I never had the opportunity to work in long-term care; however, I did work at the Bickle site of the Toronto rehabilitation centre as a nursing student, where the staffing and care models resemble long-term care. Residents were staying there for a prolonged period of time to seek complex continuing care and geriatric rehabilitation and dialysis. A team of nurses, nurse practitioners and PSWs were taking care of residents to overcome challenges of disability, injury, illness or age-related conditions, to live active, healthier and more independent lives. I was happy to be an addition to this team as a nursing student, to help these patients get better, to be able to hopefully transition safely back home from patients to residents.

Due to limited time, I remember rushing with my preceptor through the morning routine, which began at 7:30 a.m. with a report from the night shift, ensuring that all of our patients are bathed, changed, have gone to the bathroom and set up in their chair for breakfast. Next was the race through breakfast. Mrs. Jones needed her toast to be buttered and cut into small pieces, and orange juice to be opened within arm’s reach. Mr. Smith was getting total parenteral nutrition and needed his pump primed and bag hung and run properly. Mrs. Brown needed to be fed under supervision from start to finish to avoid any choking hazards, and so on until all of our patients were fed.

Next came medication time—the dreaded 10 a.m. rush. Racing against the clock, first pulling all of our medications from the med stations for all of our patients at the same time, ensuring no med errors were made, then crushing the pills that needed to be crushed, again for swallowing ease, then pulling our injections like insulin and doing point-of-care sugar tests, and finally making the rounds with all of these medications prepped in our cart, ensuring we administered the right medication to the right patient, at the right time, at the right dose, through the right route. Then came our mobilization activities, which included fitness, rehabilitation, occupational therapy or cognitive activities, getting each patient ready and transferred to the right room. We are now at about 11:30 a.m., and my preceptor and I are sweating from all the running around, without having had the chance to take a coffee break or go to the bathroom or simply to pause and take a breath.

Speaker, why am I painting this picture? Because I strongly believe that had we had, back then, four hours of direct, hands-on care per resident, which would mean more staff—on average 25 more PSWs, 12 more RPNs, or six more RNs per home of 160 residents—we would have had the ability to spend more time with each resident, giving them the dignity and, at the most simple humanistic level, more time to chat about their grandchildren, to bring them their favourite flavour of pudding or take five minutes to play cards or board games. To these seniors, it is the smallest things that make the most difference, like asking them what flavour of pudding they like, and giving them that small level of autonomy to decide for themselves. And I truly and wholeheartedly believe that the Fixing Long-Term Care Act will allow that extra time for health care providers to turn patients to residents and facilities into homes.

Speaker, with my remaining time I would like to address some of the pillars of Bill 7, More Beds, Better Care Act, 2022. The bill, if passed, will enable the transition of patients who no longer require treatment in hospital into long-term care. Currently there are almost 5,000 alternate-level-of-care patients, with about 39% of them waiting for long-term care—5,000 patients, Speaker. That is the equivalent of 11 large community hospitals. This is a staggering number. To ease off the pressures of our emergency rooms and acute care and patient units, and to allow for surgeries to go back to pre-pandemic levels, we simply must make the room. The status quo will simply no longer be acceptable.

You know, Speaker, I’m having trouble understanding the members opposite. On one hand, they are sounding the alarm on the health care crisis with long wait times in the ERs, long wait-lists to access surgeries and diagnostic imaging. But on the other hand, when we bring outside-of-the-box, innovative and very practical solutions to make room for around 2,400 acute care beds, all we hear from the opposition is “no, no and no.”

Speaker, the member from Nickle Belt said that people do not like to be institutionalized, and I could not agree more. Patients do not like to be staying in sterile hospital environments with bells and alarms sounding at all times of day and night. Hospitals have simply not been set up for patients to stay for months at a time—up to two years. Our long-term-care homes provide more home-like environments with the proper social and recreational programming, in addition to the new services like bariatric, behavioural and diagnostic services in long-term care, which our government is funding with an investment of $37 million.

In conclusion, Speaker, these are just some of the actions our government is taking to fix long-term care and build more beds and better care.