Thank you to the member for the question. I knew there was a reason we got along when I sat over there. People from the Hammer kind of hang together sometimes.

Thank you for the question. People in this province living with disabilities need our help—absolutely, they need every bit of help they can get—but do you know what? They’re living in poverty. You have ODSP rates that are below, below, below the poverty line.

We also had a bill the other day that MPP Begum brought forward, for example, to make sure that transit is accessible. There’s a small thing you could have done—actually not small; a very real and tangible thing you could have done—to improve the lives of people who are living with disabilities.

It’s one schedule in a giant bill, but there’s so much more to do before we come even close to the kind of equity we need when it comes to people living with disabilities in our community.

I just want to show you an example of who this government is listening to. I just want to show that in schedule 27, it opens up the Pension Benefits Act, and basically the only thing they do in there is to say that people can or cannot receive their forms electronically. But we have an Auditor General’s report that says, “Pension plan members may be unaware about the risk that they might not receive their fully targeted pension benefits, and improvements in sector oversight....” So we’re failing in sector oversights to protect people, especially pensioners, and we have done nothing in the bill. There’s nothing that directly supports small businesses, and there’s nothing here to support small investors, pension plan owners.

Your government came to power because they were going to fix the hydro mess. They blamed everything about hydro bills on the previous government. I could agree with that, but you’ve been in power for five years. You promised to reduce the cost of electricity. It hasn’t happened. People need to know. Ratepayers are paying high—they haven’t got the reduction—but taxpayers are still supporting this system to the tune of $7 billion—

To the member across, thank you so much for your presentation. I wholeheartedly agree with you that we have to be able to force and move and compel businesses to innovate, especially in the new digital economy. I’m a huge believer around modernization, especially around making it more efficient and reducing any type of red tape, as we like to call it in this House.

But the conversations I’ve had with small business owners and small-to-medium enterprise, including with the representatives with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, are that the biggest concerns right now with small business owners and business owners in particular is the debt that they’re carrying because of the COVID pandemic. That’s probably their number one concern that’s not being addressed in this bill. They’re carrying about $139 billion of debt. Over 76% of those businesses are going to have to take a lot of their one year to pay that debt. How does the government plan to address that specific business concern that’s coming so prominently from the community?

I know many seniors now who are on pensions. They’re not just using a computer for Hoyle’s book of games and solitaire; they’re actually doing their business online. Every person needs access to electronic files these days, and this is one of many measures in the bill that makes lives better for Ontarians and gives them access to information in the manner that they need it.

What our government has done through this bill and through other bills in the past has been the reduction of business costs. So far, there’s been historic progress, saving businesses nearly $700 million per year in net annual regulatory compliance costs, so that’s $120 million more than the 2022 burden reduction report. There have been 450 actions so far to reduce red tape for businesses and individuals without compromising public health, safety or the environment.

Thank you for the question.

Thank you to the member from Windsor–Tecumseh for your thoughts on this bill today. I want to refer back to your role. As you said, you were a regulator. Regulators play an important role in this province, particularly when it comes to protecting pensions that people have worked all their lives for, and when it comes to protecting investors, particularly small investors that have their life savings invested.

The Auditor General’s recent report—it’s actually from 2022, a value-for-money audit—talked about pension plan members who may be unaware of the risk that “they may not receive their full targeted pension benefits,” and improvements in sector oversight were needed to protect investors. She also went on to say that over the “past three fiscal years, about 718 pension plans submitted a total of” 1,000 “required filings late,” but they were not charged.

Rather than going after that, in this bill you just make it so that pensioners don’t have the—they have the obligation to say they want to receive their—

We are out of time for debate. We’re moving to questions.

I want to thank our member for providing that valuable information. He talked about multi-tasking and reflecting on today’s world, and he actually reflected on his own perspective, when he moved to a digital platform so many years ago, and our own government’s ability to pivot to a temporary flexible manner in which corporations can conduct meetings. Could he talk a little bit about that issue and the flexibility that’s required to maintain the virtual process?

I just want to again say what I said earlier this morning: This government is making sure that we are reducing the cost to the business; by reducing the cost to the business, we’re making sure that businesses are competitive, and that’s why we are seeing the investment.

My question to the member is very simple: The title says, “Less Red Tape, Stronger Ontario Act.” What is the significance of this title to the member?

I very much appreciated listening to the member from Windsor–Tecumseh and his remarks, and reflecting on the fact that he used to be, as I think I heard him say, a drainage superintendent in Windsor. That’s a very practical position, and, frankly, someone we really need in this building, and perhaps even in this Legislature sometimes.

I was interested in the comprehensiveness of this bill—energy, colleges and universities, mining, natural resources, infrastructure, transportation, so many ministries impacted directly. I wonder if the member can further reflect on, from his past experience in a very practical role, other practical benefits he sees from this bill going forward.

I also want to thank the member for his contribution to the debate as well. Actually, I want to follow up on the question that my colleague on this side of the House from Toronto Centre asked; I know that the member from Windsor–Tecumseh may not have had enough time to answer.

We have a lot of businesses that are in debt right now across this province, and because of the red tape created by your government, unfortunately a lot of these businesses did not qualify, or even after qualifying, did not receive the funds that they truly needed to just stay afloat.

What would you do to change that, and how come there is nothing in this bill to support those?

Further questions?

I appreciate the question from the member from Bruce–Grey–Owen Sound. I didn’t have enough time to mention it, but it actually is a nice full-circle moment. Back when I was in engineering school, in solid waste management, we had a class detailing the Blue Box Program and the issue with the refillable bottles and how troublesome that was, and that was in the early 2000s. Now, as part of the regulations affiliated with this bill, the government of Ontario is actually addressing them, getting rid of these regulations that were no longer relevant. They weren’t relevant in 1999.

I just brought up the article that was cited. I believe it was in the environmental science management journal, and I’ll quote—actually, another interesting part is the author of that report was Dev Tyagi, who I used to report to at work. He was in Toronto at the time and he eventually made it to Windsor.

That’s one other example of a practical implication that I have seen, in the Blue Box Program, and I’m looking forward to seeing many more of the options in this bill implemented for municipalities and corporations and persons to come.

Yes, we went through a pandemic, and, yes, you have to set limits as to what programs can do and cannot do, but this is a permanent, ongoing cost savings for all kinds of organizations, and that’s why this is worth implementing because, going forward, it reduces those costs, and that means that property owners, business owners, Ontarians do not have to lie awake at night thinking, “How am I going to address this?” Their costs are coming down thanks to the measures in this bill.

Bill 91 addresses red tape and regulations. In listening to the member, I was really focused on the priorities of the government, what areas you chose to bring in regulations. Because right now, the province of Ontario is making sure that ODSP clients have to weigh in every month to a MyBenefits app or to their worker to confirm that they’re still in Ontario. This seems onerous. It doesn’t seem necessary. You know what? It seems like red tape.

What does the member say to the government when they’re picking and choosing which areas to reduce red tape in or to actually just double down on regulatory burdens?

Thank you to the member for Toronto Centre for her presentation. I’m sure the member for Toronto Centre would agree that modernizing agency governance and clarifying rules for Ontario’s public appointees is an important thing that we do. What this Bill 91 is proposing is changing clarification rules for public appointees to align agencies and government best practices. What we want to do is ensure that we’re making it easier and more attractive to serve on their boards. This is specific to the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport.

Based on the member’s presentation, I would have to assume she would be fully supportive of this proposal for Bill 91.

I would remind the member her comments should reflect the bill that is before us today to debate.

Thank you, Speaker. This is specifically why I’m bringing this up, because my community is not getting the support that it needs in order for them to safely operate their business and to carry out their craft.

We’re not going back into the closet. We’re not going anywhere. As a matter of fact, we’re going to continue to stand and fight for the rights of our business owners and our cultural entrepreneurs and workers to make sure that they can actually freely, freely deliver their service. We’re all going to be richer for it, because love will always trump hate.

This bill does not meet the moment, as I have expressed. It’s so important for us to recognize that low-income Ontarians are not helped at all. Not one cent—no, one nickel; pennies are gone. They’re not helped one nickel in this bill. ODSP and Ontario Works recipients are facing some of the biggest deterrents in accessing employment, and what we hear from the government is that they should go get a job. Unfortunately, some individuals cannot get a job. There’s nothing in this bill that actually builds back stronger and better for that group of people, and I think that we need to be able to address that, because ODSP recipients oftentimes receive a marginal rate increase of up to 75%, which is not enough at all, and we need to be able to address that.

We have heard now this morning about the astronomical line-up and demand on food banks. One in four children in Ontario is using a food bank. Children aren’t poor; their parents are poor, and oftentimes their single-parent-led households are poor. Food banks in the GTHA have seen their usage quadruple from 65,000 users a month to 270,000 users a month. They can’t find baby formula anywhere. And how is this bill going to support them?

So yes, absolutely, cut the red tape that you need. We should all embrace that. But does this bill build back a stronger Ontario, a stronger economy for all? It certainly does not.

There are other things about this bill, Speaker, that I want to be able to highlight, and I mentioned it before. This bill specifically talks in schedule 11 about the repealing of the Auditor General’s oversight of the Children’s Lawyer. It’s not clear who asked for this. As far as I can tell, the Auditor General actually is a top-notch accountability officer. Their job is to make sure that the people’s money is going to be well spent and that services are going to be delivered properly. Why was this oversight repealed? Nobody can explain it to me; I haven’t heard it in any speeches. It wasn’t explained in any of the presentations I’ve heard so far. And why doesn’t the Children’s Lawyer—the Children’s Lawyer, who defends the rights of children in Ontario—have the right to have an accountability officer review the spending of that office? And what mechanisms are in place to ensure that transparency? That’s not clear in the bill as well.

What we also have, Speaker, is a bill that speaks specifically to the Private Career Colleges Act. Now this is actually a really interesting piece, Speaker, because if you blink, you’ll miss it. The word “private career college”—the amendment is suggesting that we’re going to delete the word “private,” because it may stigmatize the college itself, and that may be the reason why this word is being removed. Well, I’m very sorry, Speaker; that’s not good enough. Just because someone doesn’t like the fact that it’s calling on the act to reflect who is affected, which, in this case, is private colleges—I see no reason why that word is to be removed.

The other thing, Speaker, is schedule 30, Protecting Farmers from Non-Payment Act. It takes up one third of the bill—one third. What we know is that the Ontario Federation of Agriculture didn’t receive any updates about this bill, nor were they consulted. So who is this government speaking to and who specifically are those changes for?

Thank you to the member opposite for her submissions. I know that the member opposite represents the riding of Toronto Centre, and I know lots of people who live in the riding of Toronto Centre, lots of people there who run businesses and own businesses.

I wanted to ask the member opposite if she didn’t think that there are a lot of great things in our red tape reduction package this year, the Less Red Tape, Stronger Economy Act, that will help the businesses in the member’s riding and those constituents who I’m sure want her to represent them today.

Thank you to the member for your contributions today. My question is this: This government pretends to be preoccupying itself with reducing red tape, building a stronger economy, but the truth is we have so many Indigenous people who are living without clean water.

If we were going to build a stronger economy, why is it, do you think, that racialized people, Indigenous people and the concerns of queer people are not properly reflected in bills like this? What do you think we need to be adding?

Referred to Standing Committee on Justice Policy.

It’s my pleasure to rise in the Legislature today to speak to Bill 60 as parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Health. I would like to note that I will be sharing my time today with the member for Eglinton–Lawrence, my fellow parliamentary assistant.

Madame la Présidente, la principale promesse que nous faisons à chaque personne en Ontario est la suivante : vous serez aiguillé vers les soins dont vous avez besoin au moment où vous en avez besoin, qu’il s’agisse d’une visite imprévue à la salle d’urgence à 3 h du matin avec votre enfant ou bien d’un bilan régulier chez votre médecin de famille; que votre mère vieillissante ait besoin de plus de soutien pour continuer à vivre dans la maison familiale qu’elle aime, ou que vous ayez besoin d’une chirurgie de la cataracte pour régler un problème qui vous ennuie depuis des années; que vous viviez dans une grande ville, ou bien dans une petite ville, ou bien un lieu éloigné dans le Nord.

Votre santé : Plan pour des soins interconnectés et commodes place les gens au coeur du processus, en ajoutant et en élargissant les services de santé près de leur domicile.

Nous adoptons des mesures pour renforcer tous les aspects des soins de santé, particulièrement aux endroits où vous y accédez le plus souvent—dans les salles d’urgence des hôpitaux, dans les installations en milieu communautaire comme les pharmacies et les cabinets médicaux, dans les foyers de soins de longue durée et grâce aux soins prodigués, à votre domicile.

Nous savons que nous ne pouvons pas y arriver seuls. C’est pourquoi nous embauchons et formons davantage de médecins, de personnel infirmier, de préposés aux services de soutien à la personne et plus encore afin de nous aider à concrétiser cette promesse.

Ce plan à long terme est axé autour de trois piliers : premier, les bons soins au bon endroit; deuxième, un accès plus rapide aux soins; et troisième, d’engager davantage de travailleurs de santé. En nous concentrant à améliorer les expériences en matière de soins de santé de la population ontarienne et à faire croître notre main-d’oeuvre de la santé, nous améliorerons la qualité de la prestation des soins de santé dans l’ensemble de la province pour les années à venir.

Certains de ces changements surviendront immédiatement alors que nous prenons des mesures pour régler les problèmes urgents. D’autres changements nécessiteront du temps. Ils seront déployés progressivement au cours des mois et des années à venir alors que nous formons et diplômons de nouveaux travailleurs de la santé et construisons de nouveaux hôpitaux, centres chirurgicaux et de diagnostics en milieu communautaire et foyers de soins de longue durée, et prodiguons des soins à l’aide de nouvelles façons innovantes.

Mais au fil du temps, vous verrez et ressentirez de véritables améliorations dans les soins que vous recevez, alors que nous érigeons un meilleur système de santé pour l’avenir. Vous aurez plus de renseignements et de meilleurs outils pour prendre les bonnes décisions concernant votre santé.

Vous serez en mesure de prendre des rendez-vous en ligne ou de participer à un rendez-vous de façon virtuelle. Il deviendra plus rapide et plus facile pour vous d’obtenir les services de santé dont vous avez besoin dans votre collectivité ou à domicile, peu importe où vous vivez.

Vous serez confrontés à des temps d’attente plus courts pour des services clés—comme les chirurgies, les soins d’urgence et les soutiens en matière de santé mentale et de dépendances.

Vos travailleurs de la santé seront outillés pour travailler ensemble comme équipe pour vous, facilitant votre orientation dans le système de santé à chaque étape de votre vie.

Se fondant sur les meilleures preuves disponibles et sur les réussites obtenues dans d’autres collectivités publiques, l’Ontario agit pour vous aiguiller vers les soins au moment et à l’endroit où vous en avez besoin. Il s’agit de rendre les soins de santé plus commodes. Il s’agit de vous aiguiller vers les soins dont vous avez besoin. Il s’agit de vous et de votre santé.

Madam Speaker, our core promise to every person in Ontario is this: You will be connected to the health care you need, when you need it, whether it’s an unplanned 3 o’clock in the morning trip to the emergency department with your child or a routine checkup with your family doctor; whether your aging mother needs more support to keep living in the family home she loves, or if you need a cataract surgery to fix a problem that’s been bothering you for years; whether you live in a big city, small town or in a remote spot in the north.

Your Health: A Plan for Connected and Convenient Care puts people at its heart by adding and expanding health care services closer to home. We are taking action to strengthen all aspects of health care, particularly where you access it most frequently: in hospital emergency rooms, in community settings like pharmacies and doctors’ offices, in long-term-care homes and through care delivered right in your own home.

Speaker, we know we can’t do it alone. That’s why we’re hiring and training more doctors, nurses and personal support workers to help us deliver on that promise. This long-term plan is built on three pillars: first, the right care in the right place; second, faster access to care; and, third, hiring more health care workers. By focusing on improving the health care experiences of Ontarians and growing our health care workforce, we will improve the quality of health care delivery across the province for years to come.

Some of these changes will happen immediately as we take action to address some pressing issues. Other changes will take some time. They will be phased in over the months and years ahead as we educate and graduate new health care workers; build new hospitals, community surgical and diagnostic centres, and long-term-care homes; and deliver care in new and innovative ways.

But over time, you will see and feel the real improvements in the care you receive as we build a better health care system for the future. You will have more information and better tools to make the right decisions about your health. You will be able to book more appointments online or take an appointment virtually. It will become faster and easier for you to connect to the health care services you need in your community or at home, no matter where you live. You will experience shorter wait times for key services like surgeries, emergency care and supports for mental health and addictions. Your health care workers will be set up to work together as a team for you, making it easier for you to navigate at every stage of your life.

Following the best evidence available and successes of other jurisdictions, Ontario is taking action to connect you to care when and where you need it. It’s about making health care more convenient. It’s about connecting you to the care you need. Speaker, it’s about you and your health.

It has been over a month since we released Your Health: A Plan for Connected and Convenient Care, and we are already seeing results in our health care system across the province. Already, we’ve seen emergency department wait times coming down, and we’ve started to shorten wait times for key surgeries. Nearly 100,000 people have connected to convenient care at the pharmacy for a common ailment.

Through the Your Health plan, our government is taking action to strengthen all aspects of health care, particularly where people access it more frequently, and Bill 60, the Your Health Act, 2023, supports our efforts to do so. The Your Health plan, which is supported by this bill, builds on the significant progress our government has made over the last several years. Since 2018, we have increased health care funding in our province by $14 billion.

We have expanded Ontario’s health workforce with more doctors, nurses and personal support workers. In fact, since 2018, we’ve grown our health care workforce by 60,000 new nurses and 8,000 new physicians. We’ve added more than 3,500 hospital beds across Ontario, including acute, post-acute and critical care beds. We’re building new hospitals in every region of the province, getting shovels in the ground for 50 new major hospital development projects.

Since 2021, we’ve provided funding to support operations of 49 new MRI machines.

We’re adding nearly 60,000 new and upgraded long-term-care beds and investing nearly $5 billion over four years to hire more than 27,000 long-term-care staff, including nurses and personal support workers, and increasing the amount of direct care residents receive.

We continue to make it easier and faster for individuals of all ages to connect to mental health and addictions supports by building on our Roadmap to Wellness.

We have made it more convenient to book or take a health care appointment by launching virtual care options and adding more online appointment booking tools.

Our government is better connecting health care organizations and providers in our communities through Ontario health teams.

Through Bill 60, our first objective is taking steps to help those who want to work in Ontario. There are many health care workers from across the country and across the world who want to work right here in Ontario, and we are making innovative changes to make it easier and faster for them to begin working and providing care to people in Ontario.

With the legislation’s new as-of-right rules, Ontario will become the first province in Canada to allow health care workers who are registered in other provinces and territories to immediately start providing care without having to first register with one of Ontario’s health regulatory colleges.

If passed, Bill 60 would result in amendments to certain health profession acts, which would allow out-of-province registered health professionals to practise immediately in Ontario while waiting for their registration with their respective Ontario health regulatory college—because I think we can all agree here that a doctor from BC shouldn’t face bureaucratic delays to be able to practise in Ontario. This change will help health care workers overcome excessive red tape, something that we’ve just been talking about, that makes it difficult for them to practise in Ontario.

We will also help hospitals and other health organizations temporarily increase staffing when they need to fill vacancies or manage periods of high patient volume, such as during a flu surge. Participants will need to be in good standing with their home regulatory college and have a job offer at a health care facility, like a hospital or a long-term-care home, in Ontario to be eligible. This will allow nurses, paramedics, therapists and other health care professionals to work outside of their regular responsibilities or settings as long as they have the knowledge, skill and judgment to do so. That’s the kind of innovative solutions that will help bring reinforcements to the front lines of our health care system.

We are also continuing to make it easier for internationally trained health care professionals to use their expertise here in Ontario. We are working closely with regulatory colleges to make it easier and faster for qualified health care professionals to work here as well, without facing unnecessary barriers and costs, including requiring colleges to comply with time limits to make registration decisions. These proposed changes are another way we are looking to reduce administrative barriers and help to allow qualified professionals to work in Ontario quickly and efficiently.

Another way we are supporting this is by expanding the Ontario Learn and Stay Grant. We know that there are unique health care challenges in small, rural and remote communities and that recruiting and retaining health care workers in these regions requires a dedicated approach. Last spring, we launched the Ontario Learn and Stay Grant to help these communities build their own health workforces. This program covers the costs of tuition, books and other direct educational costs for post-secondary students who enrol in high-priority programs in more than a dozen growing and underserved communities and commit to work in those communities when they graduate. This year, we are expanding the program beginning in spring 2023, targeting approximately 2,500 eligible post-secondary students who enrol in high-priority programs like nursing, paramedic, and medical laboratory technology or medical laboratory science.

Another aspect of Bill 60 I’d like to highlight is repealing the Independent Health Facilities Act and replacing it with new legislation, the Integrated Community Health Services Centres Act, 2023, to better reflect the settings where care is taking place across the province. The health care landscape has changed significantly since the enactment of the Independent Health Facilities Act in 1990. There is a need for a legislative framework that better responds to current surgical demands in a manner that is integrated within the broader health system, that prioritizes safety and patient needs and better reflects the modern health system landscape and priorities. This proposed change would support the expansion of surgical, procedural and diagnostic services in the community, which is another important part of our plan for convenient and connected care.

We are reducing wait times by increasing access to surgeries and procedures such as MRIs and CT scans, cataract surgeries, orthopedics, colonoscopies and endoscopies. For over 30 years, community surgical and diagnostic centres have been partners with Ontario’s health care system. Like hospitals, community surgical and diagnostic centres are held accountable to the highest quality standards—the standards Ontarians deserve and expect across the health care system.

In committee, Dr. Agarwal commented, “I’ll say that the Ontario Association of Radiologists strongly support the current Bill 60 that’s being proposed and we applaud the government for its innovative approach to solving a very complex problem,” in reference to expanding integrated community health services centres to address the MRI and CT backlog.

To further support integration, quality and funding accountability, oversight of community surgical centres will transition to Ontario Health. This improved integration into the broader health care system will allow Ontario Health to continue to track available community surgical capacity, assess regional needs and respond more quickly across the province and within regions where patient need exists.

We’re also expanding oversight and patient protections when it comes to your health. Integrated community health services centres will now have to post any uninsured charges both online and in person. Every community surgical and diagnostic centre must have a process for receiving and responding to patient complaints. Patients cannot be denied access to treatment if they don’t purchase uninsured services. We’re also expanding the oversight of the Patient Ombudsman to include integrated community health services centres. These safeguards are in place to ensure that no extra charges occur for OHIP-funded procedures.

By further leveraging the support of community surgical and diagnostic centres, we will eliminate surgical backlogs and reduce wait times. We know that lengthy wait times for surgeries are one of the biggest challenges you and your family are facing in Ontario. While Ontario leads the country in the number of people who receive the surgery they need for hip and knee replacements, we still aren’t meeting the right benchmarks. We need to do more.

As a first step, we are tackling the existing backlog for cataract surgeries, which has one of the longest waits for procedures in the province. Four existing community-based centres, located in Windsor, Kitchener-Waterloo and Ottawa, have been identified as successful applicants to a recent call for applications. These centres will be able to support an additional 14,000 publicly funded cataract surgeries every year. These additional volumes make up to 25% of the province’s current cataract wait-list, which will help significantly reduce the number of people waiting outside appropriate wait-times for this surgery.

We are also investing more than $18 million in existing centres to cover care for thousands of patients, including more than 49,000 hours of MRI and CT, 4,800 cataract surgeries, 900 other ophthalmic surgeries, 1,000 minimally invasive gynecological surgeries and 2,845 plastic surgeries. And I would like to emphasize that this is all publicly funded: The costs of receiving these insured services in community surgical and diagnostic centres is covered by an Ontario health card, never by your credit card.

As the government significantly expands the number of surgeries being done through community surgical and diagnostic centres, it will do so with measures in place to protect the stability of staffing at public hospitals, including requiring new facilities to provide detailed staffing plans as part of their application and requiring a number of physicians at these centres to have active privileges at their local hospital. Further, Ontario Health will ensure that these centres are included in regional health system planning.

Funding agreements with new community surgical and diagnostic centres will require these facilities to work with local public hospitals to ensure health system integration and linkages, including connection and reporting into the province’s wait times information system and participation in regional central intakes, where available. Community surgical and diagnostic centres will also coordinate with local public hospitals to accept patients that are being referred, ensuring people get the surgery they need as quickly as possible.

In addition to shortening wait-times, providing these publicly funded services through community surgical and diagnostic centres will allow for hospitals to focus their efforts and resources on the more complex and high-risk surgeries. This is another way our government is making it easier for people to connect to care and access publicly funded services in more locations. Because we all know, the sooner you have access to the care you need, the better the outcomes.

Long wait times take a toll on people’s physical and mental health, creating more anxiety and stress. We have all seen our loved ones struggle because the wait for the knee or cataract surgery is way too many months long. Delays and complications in care only add to the toll of dealing with health issues. For health care to help, it needs to happen in a timely manner. And that is the primary reason we are investing to expand surgeries across the province, so that you and your family can have faster access to care.

The final aspect of Bill 60 is to enhance privacy obligations related to certain health administrative data through proposed amendments to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. These proposed amendments will benefit patients by supporting improvements to the health care system through linking de-identified data while enhancing privacy protection, transparency and accountability for entities that collect, use and disclose government data. The Information and Privacy Commissioner, which provides oversight to ensure compliance with the proper handling of data, has collaborated in the development of the proposed approach.

But we know that none of this would be possible without the dedication of our world-class health human resources here in Ontario. Ontario has one of the most dedicated and highly trained health workforces in the world. They step up, day in and day out, to keep you and our communities across this province safe and healthy. We’ve made significant progress recently to increase the number of health workers available to provide you care and support. Together, we’ve come so far. Over 60,000 new nurses and nearly 8,000 new doctors have registered to work in Ontario. In fact, last year was a record-breaking year for new nurses in Ontario, with over 12,000 new nurses registered and ready to work, and another 30,000 nurses studying at a college or university, providing a pipeline of talent and reinforcements.

But we know we need to do far more, and we are doing more. Hiring more health care professionals is the most effective step to ensure you and your family are able to see a health care provider where and when you need to. Well-trained and well-supported doctors, nurses, personal support workers and more are the people you rely on when you need care. This year, we’re training more health professionals than ever before, with 455 new spots for physicians in training, 52 new physician assistant training spots, 150 new nurse practitioner spots, 1,500 additional nursing spots and 24,000 personal support workers in training by the end of 2023.

And we’re investing to reduce fees for nurses who are ready and available to resume or begin practising in Ontario for retired and internationally educated nurses; $15 million will temporarily cover the cost of examination, application and registration fees for internationally trained and retired nurses, saving them up to $1,500 each. This will help up to 5,000 internationally educated nurses and up to 3,000 retired nurses begin working sooner to strengthen our front lines.

Part of the investment will also be used to develop a centralized site for all internationally educated health professionals to streamline their access to supports such as education, registration and employment in their profession or an alternative career. This initiative will make it easier for internationally trained health professionals to navigate the system and get the support they need on their path to getting licensed to practise in Ontario.

To continue to support our health system, we will scale up the Enhanced Extern Program and Supervised Practice Experience Partnership program for an additional year. Since January 2022, more than 2,000 internationally educated nurses have been enrolled through the Supervised Practice Experience Partnership program, and over 1,300 of them are already fully registered. We are providing additional funding to hire over 3,100 internationally educated nurses to work under the supervision of regulated health professionals in order to give them an opportunity to meet the experience requirements and language proficiency requirements they need to become fully licensed to work in Ontario.

New funding will be extended to the home and community care sector to extend the reach of the program this year. This investment also expands the Enhanced Extern Program for an additional year.

Last year, this program helped hire up to 5,000 qualified nursing, medical, respiratory therapy, paramedic, physiotherapy, occupational therapy students and internationally educated nurses to work in hospitals across this great province.

Increased funding for both the Supervised Practice Experience Partnership and Enhanced Extern Program will also allow hospitals to continue to hire more preceptors, mentors and coordinators to work with students and internationally educated nurses.

With that, Madam Speaker, I will turn things over to the member from Eglinton–Lawrence to say a little more about Bill 60 and what we heard at the committee on social policy.