I had the chance to listen to the minister this morning talk about her plan to stay open in Ontario, in our health care system. While—

Interjections.

While the thousand beds of isolation opening up are welcome, they are months late. Forcing residents to go to a place outside of their community seems cruel. It really doesn’t reflect the lessons we learned in the pandemic, in long-term care.

The thing that’s most concerning is the minister’s refusal to rule out private, for-profit care—increasing that in our system. Some 25 years ago in this province, a government of the day told us that was our only solution for long-term care. We have all seen the results of that in the pandemic.

This government seems to be set on establishing separate, parallel systems—private, for-profit.

Here’s the challenge: The greatest challenge that exists right now in our health care system is people—having enough people to care for the people we care for most.

Our public system is in crisis, and what this government is proposing is—they are proposing to set up another parallel system that is going to compete for those personnel, to make a profit.

What this government needs to do is to repeal Bill 124, get serious about foreign-trained health care professionals, and actually talk to front-line workers.