In a few weeks, one of Canada’s first fertility clinics is closing its doors after 50 years of helping families grow. The fertility clinic at London Health Sciences Centre has helped bring more than 4,500 babies into the world since opening in 1972. These services are shifting to a private clinic, Omega, due to a lack of funding.

Speaker, what does this government have to say to the thousands of families who depended on this vital public service?

What we need right now is action to address the hospital crisis and a plan to recruit, retain and return health care workers in our public hospitals, not further privatization. Why does this government want Ontarians to settle for less when it comes to creating their families?

Speaker, I rise today to support this motion. My colleagues have explained some of the many reasons why this is necessary.

We have operating rooms that are sitting empty because we don’t have the workers needed to staff them. At best, this is incredibly problematic, fiscal mismanagement on the part of this government.

In Ontario, when you look at our operating rooms—it’s like a person who has a beautiful, high-end car and decides to go and park it out in a field so they can get into somebody else’s tired old limousine that won’t take them where they want to go and will charge them extra once they get there.

Bernie Robinson, ONA’s interim president, said it best: “There is no health care without the dedicated care from nurses and health care professionals. A bed is just a bed without the staffing and support to ensure the patient is receiving quality care.”

It’s clear that this government has no plan to actually address the health care crisis. Look at what happened in Walkerton. Look at what happened in Chesley. Look at what happened in Listowel. They are shortchanging rural and small hospitals, and they’re shortchanging health care. Look at the 80 ER closures over the summer.

Across the province, we heard during the pre-budget consultation that Ontarians want this government to invest in a health care human resources strategy. We have the lowest nurse-to-patient ratio per capita in the entire country.

Shortly after I was elected, I was approached by seniors who had been waiting years—years—in pain for joint replacement surgeries. They were left languishing on that wait-list as a result of the Liberal government, who put those arbitrary caps on the amount of time that they could spend in those ORs. And this government is going down the same path. It’s not the answer.

This government could say yes today—they could say yes to a plan that can be implemented immediately—but they keep saying no. They want people to settle for a system that’s less effective and that will cost them more. They want to waste money. It’s wasteful to underuse our public health care infrastructure. We on the official opposition side want people to expect more. Let’s not go backwards.

I urge my friends across the aisle to protect our values, protect Ontario’s integrity, protect our health. Let’s build a province where companies want to invest. What is required is a publicly funded, publicly delivered health care system so companies know they have a healthy workforce, so they don’t have to pay for that extra—an educated workforce, so they don’t have to always retrain.

Support this motion today. Say yes.

I’d like to thank my colleague from Oshawa for her wonderful presentation.

I want to take you back to March 2022, when Ontario’s former Patient Ombudsman and, at that time, the Conservative health minister, Christine Elliott, almost issued a warning—or, at the very least, let it slip. She stated: “We are ... making sure that we can let independent health facilities operate private hospitals.” Possibly, when they realized how foolish and wrong this was, the minister’s spokespeople said, of privatization, “The use or function of private hospitals and independent health facilities in Ontario is not being expanded or changed.”

Clearly, funding is being cut for publicly delivered health care, as we’ve seen in the FAO’s report—cutting $5 billion—and it’s being put into for-profit health care profiteers’ pockets.

My question to the member is, why did they flip-flop?