Speaker, more than a million Ontarians don’t have access to a doctor or a nurse practitioner. People are waiting for hours and hours in pain in emergency rooms, waiting for months and years for surgeries, and more than 1,400 died last year while waiting.

There are over 12,000 internationally trained doctors and thousands more internationally trained nurses in Ontario ready to help fill the gap in primary care.

Why has this government failed to remove the unfair barriers for these doctors and nurses?

Nothing the minister says actually removes the barriers that internationally educated health care workers face in this province. The government says that they’re doing everything they can to work with internationally trained doctors and nurses to address the staffing shortage in health care. And, yet, data from the CPSO shows that only 739 applicants became members in 2020, compared to the 2,074 in 2019.

My question is, why was there a decrease when we’re in the middle of the pandemic and we’re facing a health care crisis?

The practice-ready assessment program, which was standardized, that this government cancelled in 2018, is actually working very well in seven other provinces. The model could have been used to implement a similar or even improved assessment process for doctors and nurses in Ontario. We could have had thousands of health care workers added to the system in as little as 12 weeks. I want everyone in Ontario to listen: In as little as 12 weeks, we could have had more health care workers in this province.

Will this government reverse its cuts? And why is this government dragging their feet in bringing in the solutions that can save lives in Ontario?

This government has a strong track record in supporting and investing in Ontario’s health care and health human resources. In fact, we have added over 10,500 new health care professionals since March 2020.

We’ve also put forward plans that would create the first new medical school in over 100 years in the city of Brampton and in Scarborough—as well as doubling the amount of doctors in the north.

Mr. Speaker, every step of the way, any action that this government has taken to increase the amount of health care professionals in Ontario—the members opposite have always voted against those measures.

We will continue to make historic investments into health care and supporting our health human resources across this province.

When we took government, we inherited a health care system that was badly neglected by the previous Liberal government, which was consistently supported by the NDP. Because of their chronic mismanagement, scandal and a once-in a-lifetime pandemic, our government needed to take immediate action to bolster all aspects of our front-line health care system.

In my riding, people are hearing reports about concerns regarding the health human resources needs and staffing for hospitals and emergency rooms.

Speaker, can the Minister of Colleges and Universities please elaborate more on what the government is doing to continue to educate more health care workers to help combat the shortage of nurses and doctors that we face here in the province?

I’m curious as to what is being done by our government to support medical education in order to support our future doctors and address the doctor shortage.

Can the minister please inform the House of what she is doing to support medical students, to ensure a more resilient health care system here in the province of Ontario?

Speaker, I don’t think I’ve had the opportunity, so congratulations on being re-elected as Speaker. I know all of us here are delighted that you were successful in the chair, and I wish all the best to your contested opponent that didn’t make it.

I want to congratulate the member from Thunder Bay–Superior North for getting elected this session. She mentioned in her speech many very relevant things about the north, and one of the comments she said was that sometimes the north is an afterthought. We’ve heard that a lot from our northern members.

She highlighted that the first working group of injured workers was developed and created in Thunder Bay, and I wondered if she could speak to the challenges of how they get pushed into poverty, into ODSP, and the challenges around finding housing. I know in London it’s really difficult to find affordable, geared-to-income housing, especially when you’re on things like ODSP and OW.

And then the other thing that I hear a lot, and I wonder if it’s a commonality in the north, is about access to doctors. I’m getting, almost daily, constituents saying that Health Care Connect is not working and they cannot get a doctor.

Thank you. I will try to remember all the pieces of that.

Yes, the Thunder Bay injured workers support group is an amazing group of very hard-working activists, and the problems they face are—first of all, if they experience an injury and can’t work anymore, it’s a loss of self; it’s a loss of identity. And then to be told, “No, you haven’t been injured” or “We’re going to deem that you can be a parking lot attendant” after having a good job is extremely demoralizing.

Now, finding a doctor: We know that the waiting list for doctors in Thunder Bay has as many as 2,000 people on each list, so it’s extremely difficult. But in addition to that, the WSIB has created a policy where it does not listen to the doctors of those who have been injured. Instead, it chooses to listen to doctors who never actually meet the people—it’s done over the phone—and they deem that they are not permanently injured. So it is a massive crisis for people who receive permanent injuries on the job, and then if they’re put on ODSP, well, there is no housing.

Social housing lineups are also very, very deep. And frankly, social housing has not been maintained and funded to be maintained for a very long time, and so it’s actually quite dangerous if you wind up living in social housing. It shouldn’t be. We have fantastic co-operative housing in Thunder Bay that should be a model for the entire province, and that is the best place for people with disabilities to live. However, they have a seven-year waiting list.