Thank you to the member for Hamilton Mountain for that question. My riding is very diverse. We have people with complex care needs and opioid addictions. There’s a homelessness crisis in our riding. These are typically not people that private clinics will accept and operate on, which makes it even harder for our public health care system to deal with people who are suffering from complex needs.

We also have an aging population in University–Rosedale and they often need more care as well. Understandably, many of them are concerned about what the private delivery of surgeries will mean for them.

I’d like to ask the member here about some of the tone that we’re hearing around this debate. When we first brought out the plan to expand more publicly funded, OHIP-paid procedures, we heard from the opposition—you can hear them now, saying that the sky was falling and that this was us leading to American-style privatization.

What I actually think is American-style was the deliberate fearmongering by the opposition, telling residents that they would have to pay with their credit cards, not their OHIP cards. We know that not to be the case; Ontarians will always use their OHIP cards.

Will the member condemn this type of rhetoric that we hear from the opposition?

Yes, Speaker, that’s true. Prior to that, I was a civil servant at Queen’s Park where I worked for the Ministry of Health, I worked for the Ministry of Long-Term Care and I worked for the Ontario Seniors’ Secretariat. Following that, I started my municipal career in 2003, and was 13 years as a regional councillor for the region of Durham. At that council, I was the chair of the health and social services committee for seven and the president of the local public health agency of Ontario for two.

I offer that particular background because it provides some context for what I’m going to say and relate it not only to that experience but also, at the same time, Speaker, to the riding that I’ve had the privilege of representing now with that combined experience for 20 years.

Under our government, we’ve increased health care funding by $14 billion since 2018. To put things into perspective, in 2015, the health care budget was $50 billion. Today the health care budget is $75 billion, a 50% increase in eight years. I call these investments and not simply spending. That’s an important distinction, I believe, because our government believes in fiscal responsibility, respecting taxpayers’ dollars and not simply throwing money like previous governments did, without a plan. We have a plan, and that plan is being implemented.

Let me highlight some of the bricks we’ve put in place to enable this ambitious and innovative work. Over the last four and a half years, we have built 3,500 acute hospital beds, including pediatric critical care beds. We currently have shovels in the ground on 50 new major hospital projects in total, including one in Brampton. It’s a historical infrastructure investment of $40 billion over 10 years. We’ve also provided operational funding for 49 new MRI machines in hospital since 2021 to help us address some of the diagnostic imaging backlog. We’re on track to building 30,000 new long-term-care beds by 2029, including culturally and linguistically appropriate beds for Francophonie, Muslim, Coptic, Punjabi and many other diverse communities living and thriving in the region of Durham and other parts of our province. There has been a long-standing demand in providing these types of beds and we’re responding directly to those demands, not only in my region but in other regions of the province.

We’ve also grown our health care workforce by 60,000 new nurses and 8,000 new physicians since 2018. We currently have 30,000 nursing students enrolled in colleges like Durham College in my riding and other universities outside of my riding in Oshawa: Ontario Tech and Trent Durham. Those programs are oversubscribed. The need is there, and we’re filling that need with this plan.

Speaker, with my remaining time, I’d like to outline the three health care pillars and what they mean to hard-working families in Whitby and other parts of the region of Durham, where there’s close to a million people.

Pillar one is the right care and the right place, and we’ve expanded the role of pharmacists to allow them to prescribe for 13 common ailments such as hay fever, oral thrush, pink eye, acid reflux, cold sores and insect bites, to name a few. This will allow patients convenient access to care, while off-loading some of our primary care clinics. We’re also supporting end-of-life care by adding new hospice beds; for example, Oak Ridges in Port Perry, which is in my deputy whip’s riding in Durham—a long-standing need there. Again, we’re filling a need. We’ve listened carefully, we’ve included it in our plan and we’re responding.

The second pillar, faster access to care, under which the government is investing $18 million into existing surgical and diagnostic centres, will allow thousands of patients access to those much-needed procedures; for example, Lakeridge Health. That’s situated in Oshawa, but it’s also situated in Ajax and Pickering. This investment into 49,000 hours of MRI and CT scans represents cancers caught earlier and lives of region-of-Durham residents prolonged. Once these patients are diagnosed, they often need surgery. That’s why our government is investing $300 million into the Surgical Recovery Strategy.

Finally, the third pillar: hiring more health care workers. I’m so proud of 2022 seeing a record-high number of registrations under the College of Nurses of Ontario. Some 12,000 nurses, a record-high number, have entered the profession—absolutely outstanding. As I mentioned earlier, the programs at Durham College and Trent Durham and Ontario Tech are all oversubscribed, so we’re adding to that as well. We’re the only jurisdiction that is currently doing that in Canada, and 5,000 internationally educated nurses are on track to work in our health care system.

What’s clear is that for too many people, whether it’s the region of Durham or other parts of our great province, health care is too hard to access. I think you would agree with that. The status quo is not working. Whitby residents and those in other parts of the region of Durham deserve to be able to get care where and when they need it. Our plan does exactly that.

This means more hospital and long-term-care beds in the communities. It means more diagnostic testing, like MRIs and CT scans, closer to home. And it means more skilled health care workers—some of whom I just referenced—available to provide care. Clearly, we need to be bold, innovative and creative, and we absolutely are.

Over time, Ontarians will see and feel real improvements in the care they receive as we build a better health care system for the future, for my children and my granddaughters, Annette and Sophia. People have more information and better tools to make the right decisions about their health, and it will become faster and easier for Ontarians to connect to the health services they need in their community or at home, no matter where they live, using their OHIP card—not a credit card. This plan has been well-conceived and it’s been based on wide consultation with different sectors across the province.

I’m happy now to turn over the next 10 minutes to my colleague MPP Trevor Jones.

Interjections.

Please be seated. I’m going to ask all members to keep in mind that you have to refer to other members by their riding names and not their actual names.

The member for Chatham-Kent–Leamington.

I always find it interesting listening to my Conservative friends. You talked about listening; I think both presenters did. There was no consultation with the nurses. There was no consultation with paramedics. You brought in Bill 124; you never talked to the union leadership. I’d just like to know who you consulted with—certainly none of those who really are front-line.

So my question is pretty easy—well, it’s not easy for you guys. Why are you funding for-profit clinics instead of adequately paying doctors and nurses who would help increase surgical capacity in public hospitals? And this is the one that’s really creating a crisis which they won’t address—why is this government still challenging the ruling on Bill 124?

Questions?

Good afternoon. It’s a privilege to speak today to Bill 60, Your Health Act, 2023. I’d like to thank the Minister of Health and her amazing parliamentary assistants for their tireless work and their collaboration with health care providers and Ontarians from every corner of the province. The objective? Bring innovation, best practices and real solutions to support efficiencies that benefit all of Ontario.

This investment has already begun. Since 2018, we have built 3,500 acute-care beds around the province, and even more importantly, staffed each bed with exceptional, trained professionals to provide the highest standard of care to anyone requiring it—world-class care, close to home, paid for with our health cards.

Our government has demonstrated a commitment to building a modern, sophisticated and agile health care system with resilience. We have grown our health care workforce by 60,000 new nurses and 8,000 new physicians since 2018. But even more promising—like my colleague alluded to—we have 30,000 nursing students enrolled in colleges and universities right now, including my son Samuel’s friend Jackson, who chose to follow his father’s footsteps by choosing nursing as a career, bolstered, confident and inspired because of the actions of this government.

As a long-standing member of the Ontario Provincial Police, I had the privilege of serving in communities throughout Ontario, as far north as Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug and Pikangikum to our National Capital Region to right here in downtown Toronto, and as far south as Pelee Island, in the middle of Lake Erie, in my riding of Chatham-Kent–Leamington. In every community I worked in as a first responder, I came to closely rely on the brilliant, skilled and dedicated professionals, from paramedics to nurses, pharmacists, medical technicians, doctors and all the staff who support them. Probably more than any other profession outside of health care, police officers spend a considerable amount of time in hospitals and other health care centres by the very nature of our work. In some communities and at certain times, they were all I had. I deeply respect and value their insights, experience and the unique perspectives they candidly offered me. Those years working alongside so many diverse health professionals taught me a number of valuable lessons, the most important of which was to listen. These amazing people work with one common goal and one agenda: apply their training and experience to serve, care for, and support and improve the health of others to the best of their abilities. In my humble opinion, that is truly the most honourable pursuit. I have sought the advice and earned the trust and friendship of world-class orthopaedic surgeons, ER doctors, front-line nurses and paramedics.

At home, I’ve been blessed to live beside the same amazing family for nearly two decades, and I have watched their two brilliant, caring daughters, who babysat my own kids, graduate with distinction from the University of Windsor nursing school and begin their professional careers in our local hospitals.

Just around the corner from my home, our friends have three daughters very close in age to my sons, one of whom has just graduated from medical school and is currently completing her residency with the hope of gaining the skills necessary to set up her own care practice in our community. Interestingly, her two sisters are completing their undergraduate degrees with the hopes of aspiring to careers in health care.

As one of my first orders of business after being elected to this House, I sought out and met personally with health care leaders from Chatham-Kent–Leamington. The Chatham-Kent Health Alliance and Erie Shores HealthCare are both led by brilliant, credible, experienced women—leaders who started their careers, one as a pharmacist and the latter as a front-line nurse. Both women excelled in their fields and continued to advance their studies while getting the precious experience to take on greater leadership roles that culminated in each earning their titles as president and CEO. Cheers to that, and my congratulations.

The people I’ve spoken to across this province, including young recent graduates, established practitioners and formal leaders, all agree that the status quo is not working. Many of these same caring professionals were directly impacted and suffered, witnessing first-hand the lack of investment from previous governments. I have listened and seen from personal experience that it’s taking far too long to get an appointment or a surgery.

We now have a government committed to health care workers and everyone across this province who must rely, at many times in their life, on our health care system. This government agrees the status quo is not sufficient, and we were elected with a strong mandate to take decisive action and make the necessary historic investments to infrastructure projects like the one in Windsor and Essex county—the Windsor-Essex single-site acute-care hospital—and our Toronto Metropolitan University school of medicine.

There is genuine excitement building in our community as projects begin to materialize. Don’t let the naysayers dissuade you. To accompany this important work and to propel our health care system forward, we need the critical legislation that is equally bold, creative and innovative. We need true collaboration across the health care system and the courage to install the proven best practices from our neighbouring jurisdictions, while protecting the fundamental way we pay for health care: with our OHIP cards.

Bill 60, if passed, will allow all Ontarians to be better connected to the care we all need at a time and a place where it’s most convenient. We’ll be able to get the care we need more quickly, when it have the greatest impact on our health. Further, all parts of the health care system will be more flexible and responsive to our needs, making it easier for everyone to navigate the system that our lives depend on.

This strategy, as my colleague alluded to, is based on three critical pillars:

The right care in the right place supports more care in the community, leveraging the very best virtual care, supporting targeted critical care needs and specialized supports, including mental health and addictions services.

Faster access to care—maximizing surgical capacity, expanding hospital and community bed capacity to provide needed services, and building new and improving existing hospitals. By maximizing the scope of practice, we increase access to care universally.

And, most importantly, hiring more health care workers—recruiting, retaining and optimizing to ensure we have the right number, types and distribution of health care professionals in every community in Ontario.

I have listened to our professionals. Our government has listened to our people and our professionals.

Bill 60, if passed, will support innovation and efficiency, like using community-based surgical and diagnostic centres with state-of-the-art modern facilities to diagnose and treat patients more quickly, while safeguarding and ensuring patients pay for such procedures with their health card. These investments, this collaborative effort, this support, and this bold, whole-health approach are what will draw our young people—just like my neighbours—into the critical broad spectrum of rewarding health care careers, where every day you get the opportunity to care for and improve the lives of those in your communities. I encourage all members in this House to support a bill that will help safeguard and modernize this most precious resource for generations to come.

I want to thank my colleagues for their speeches today.

I’m so proud of this government. You look at looking outside the box—we know that health care cannot be done the same way over and over and over again. We see that with our parents, our grandparents and our kids. We need to do better, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.

Even the announcement last week about 13 common ailments that can be fixed by our pharmacists—that’s great news for anybody, all of our constituents. Regardless of your political stripes, you can’t tell me that that senior is not saying thank you because they can go right down the street and get ear infection or pink eye infection medicine versus having to wait for their doctor.

When it comes to the status quo, we all know—

My question is for the member for Chatham-Kent–Leamington.

He talked about supporting front-line workers. If he really supported front-line workers, he would pass anti-scab legislation so that Highbury Canco couldn’t be using scabs and keeping people in his riding out on the picket line.

Speaker, it’s interesting; the member for Chatham-Kent–Leamington—I didn’t know that he was a police officer.

Thank you for your previous service.

My question is around salaries. When we’re talking about compensation, specifically with nurses and Bill 124—I think it’s interesting that 78% men make up the OPP. They had a salary increase of 2.22%. Some 97% of firefighters are men. They had a wage increase of 2.5%. Yet nursing is made up of 93% women, and this government capped their wage increase at less than 1%. I’m asking the member for Chatham-Kent–Leamington, can you explain why you and your government value the important work of women-led professions far lower than those with men?

My question is to the MPP for Whitby.

We’ve heard a lot in the discussion about this bill, as well as the previous discussion about the opposition bill, about privatizing health care.

I’d like the MPP, please, to tell us what this government is doing to protect Ontarians from extra billing.

Thank you to my colleague from the riding of Niagara Falls for his question and the passion that he provides in the Legislative Assembly on a variety of topics.

To the question: We talk to front-line providers all the time. Every other weekend, I’m out knocking on doors in my riding, and it’s inevitable that I’m going to knock on a door that is inclusive of front-line providers—but more directly, we talked to front-line providers all along.

In terms of Bill 124, I can’t speak to that directly because it’s still before the courts, and my colleague knows that. In terms of—

Interjections.

In terms of the Ontario Health Coalition, Ontario will continue to have one of the largest publicly funded—

Another aspect I think that’s important for people who are watching this afternoon, or listening in, is that integrated community health services centres will now have to post any uninsured charges both online and in person. That’s an important step. Whether it’s the Oshawa community clinic on Taunton Road in the north part of my riding or any other six clinics that extend within the region of Durham, that is going to be the practice.

Last but certainly not least, patients cannot be denied access to treatment if they don’t purchase uninsured services. That’s a very important distinction that I want to leave—

Speaker, what we’ve done with the pharmacists is just another example of the innovative thinking that has taken place in the development of our plan. The plan that’s in place wasn’t in place for 15 years with the Liberal government—

I appreciated listening to the members’ comments.

I have a question for the member for Chatham-Kent–Leamington. He talked about the importance of supporting health care workers, and we’ve heard this for years now from the Conservative government. We heard it when they tabled Bill 124 and we told them it was unconstitutional and that it would be struck down. We heard it when the Superior Court struck it down and in their ruling, which is over 100 pages, they said there’s absolutely no reason to have it. Now we’re hearing it again, even though they’re appealing Bill 124 and attacking health care workers and public sector workers. So I’m wondering—to my colleague—how do you circle that, when you say you support health care workers, knowing the health care workers are outraged and offended by Bill 124?

My question is to my great colleague from Chatham-Kent–Leamington. He mentioned some great examples of young people getting into the health care profession, and it’s great to see that. I just wondered if he could elaborate on some of our government’s good investments—I know it’s benefiting rural Ontario with the Ontario Learn and Stay Grant.

Thank you. Questions?

Further debate?

Speaker, I’m very glad to have an opportunity to stand on behalf of the people from Oshawa and Durham region broadly to talk about health care today. We’re debating Bill 60, which is An Act to amend and enact various Acts with respect to the health system. The short version of it is that this is an attack on medicare. I am a medicare defender and I am Canadian, and I recognize the value of health care access for everyone, and publicly funded health care, but importantly—what we don’t hear from this government, we don’t hear from the Liberals—publicly delivered health care.

I’m going to explain a fair bit for the folks at home, but also for this government, because the government has its talking points and they seem to be confused when the members of the opposition are raising important concerns. I’m going to continue to do that and I hope we’re going to have a spirited discussion this afternoon.

Tommy Douglas is known as the father of medicare, among other things, frankly. One of his quotes—and we’ve heard a lot of them lately, but one of them is, “We are all in this world together, and the only test of our character that matters is how we look after the least fortunate among us. How we look after each other, not how we look after ourselves. That’s all that really matters, I think.” That’s from Tommy Douglas.

We hear a lot in this space, especially from the government, that there’s a lot being done for folks that they know—maybe folks they play golf with; I’m not sure—folks who stand to make a lot of money. This government makes a lot of decisions that benefit them. I can’t speak to the why. I can’t speak to the relationships. It doesn’t look good, doesn’t smell good, but that’s where it stands. A lot of the decisions that are made are not benefiting the vast majority of Ontarians, the average folk, our friends and neighbours, people we haven’t met yet. Imagine putting forward legislation that actually benefited people that they didn’t know. That’s how Ontario used to operate, but here we are.

Another quote from Tommy Douglas about medicare: He said, “I came to believe that health services ought not to have a price tag on them, and that people should be able to get whatever health services they required irrespective of their individual capacity to pay”—again, having access to health care based on need, not the ability to pay.

That’s something we’ve heard from folks across the community writing in to us. The government hasn’t admitted it, but I’m willing to bet that they’ve also been hearing from folks saying, “Medicare is what makes us Canadian. That’s part of who we are. That’s part of our identity. It’s part of how the world sees us.”

A bill like this, which is just chipping away at the system, which is undermining the integrity of medicare, will lead to more degradation and, ultimately, potentially, to a lot of people being sick, harmed or worse.

The government is going to stand—I can feel it coming—and they’re going to call me a fearmonger. But what I am is a medicare defender. What I am is a champion for the folks who write to my office that say, “I already can’t afford these random fees that I’ve got from my private clinic,” or that there’s a blood test that they weren’t told now requires a fee—that’s not legal; we’re working with them. But this is already happening. Now, imagine, with this bill, the private surgical clinics that are not going to have the oversight that they need—more on that later.

Speaker, we have a lot of folks writing in. I’ve got one here from someone named Krystle: “My name is Krystle and I am writing you because of fearing for our city, our province and our country.

“This week I waited eight-plus hours in Oshawa emergency department for my seven-year-old son to see a doctor.

“There is currently an 18-month wait to see a therapist/psychiatrist covered by OHIP in Ontario.

“Real people will die. That is unacceptable and too long in either regard.

“I urge you to please do whatever is in your power to request more funding for our health care. I fear our health care system is beyond repair. However, I can’t stand idle while it crumbles.” That’s from Krystle.

Folks are worried and they don’t know where to turn, so they reach out to us and say, “Please stop this. Please help us.”

We’ve heard the term “manufactured crisis,” and I’m going to use it again. This is from an article. The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario has found that Ontario’s per capita funding is the lowest in the country: “The report found that on the whole, Ontario’s total program spending in 2020 was the lowest in Canada.” And then, “Since 2008 when the data is first available, Ontario has consistently had among the lowest levels of per person health spending in the country.”

There are reasons for that—there’s all sorts of stuff—but this government has not changed that course. If you’re starving a system, chances are it’s going to be hungry. If you’re starving a system, chances are a lot of people aren’t going to be able to get what they need. And if you starve a system, you’re manufacturing a crisis.

We had an opposition day motion how many hours ago today, and the short version of that—I know that folks already heard that debate. They were saying, “Let’s utilize the resources that the taxpayers have already invested. Let’s utilize these surgical suites that already exist, the operating rooms that are already ready to go, with state-of-the-art technologies and whatever they need, that provide surgeries, that do the work, that do the surgeries”—the staff do them, excuse me, in these operating rooms. But then, as we heard our health critic say, around February or March, when the money runs out, when the government cap on “You’re only allowed to do this many surgeries. You’re only allowed to do this many cataracts or hip replacements”—once they have done that, there’s no more funding, so those operating rooms sit vacant.

Some of the members on the other side are kind of furrowing their brow, like, “That can’t be right.” Well, ask your government, because it is. The member from Nickel Belt and the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane talked eloquently about exactly how many operating rooms there are and how many basically have to go offline, not because people don’t need surgeries. So we said, “Let’s use those resources before you guys are making all these deals for the private clinics.” It’s like you don’t make eye contact over there. Like, “Oh, we’ve got resources and we’re not investing, and we can’t use what we’ve got? But I promised Frank at golf on Saturday that we’d help him build his clinic.”

Interjections.

Speaker, I withdraw. I don’t know that that happened, but—

Interjection: You can’t say that.

I’m going to continue along the lines here of the manufactured crisis. Bill 124—folks who are maybe just tuning in now and are like, “What is this Bill 124 I’ve heard of?” Well, specific to health care—and we could talk about all sorts of other sectors in Bill 124; ferry workers, for example. But the nurses are not able to be paid what they’re worth where they work, at the hospital. This is just a piece of it. When I had met with folks at the Lakeridge hospital, they’re basically being held hostage. Without Bill 124—with this foot on their head that they aren’t allowed to bargain fair wages—they would normally bargain a wage for their staff, whatever that is that is fair. But they’re not allowed; there’s a cap on that. Instead, they’re forced to pay less than 1% increases.

Then there’s the private agency world over here. The private agency world over here doesn’t have that foot on their head, doesn’t have that cap on wages, so they can pay more. A nurse might have to make that tough decision to walk away from benefits and union protections, because there’s so much money to be made over here that they leave. They’ve been leaving in droves, and the hospitals don’t have anyone to reach for. There’s no staffing because now they’re working at agencies. But they still require staff, because you, me and your neighbours, everybody sitting in emergency, sitting in waiting rooms needing help—they’re forced to go to the agencies, who can charge them whatever. The nurses are making more, and I don’t begrudge them making more. But I do begrudge the agencies and their profit margins. They’re fleecing our hospitals. The hospitals—that, weirdly, have to answer to the government—are allowed to pay those staffing costs, but they’re not allowed to pay their own nurses. And the government is like, “Shh, stop talking. We don’t want to hear this.” Because that’s business. That’s options. That’s—I don’t know—innovation.

I’m going to read something here, a letter from nurses who are quite concerned. They had said, “Expanding private health care and forcing seniors into long-term-care homes are false solutions. They won’t address the real problem, Ontario’s nurse and health care staffing crisis....

“Thousands of job vacancies remain unfilled because there aren’t enough skilled nurses available and willing to do the work under unfair working conditions. Unprecedented backlogs of surgeries and other procedures can’t be cleared without proper investment and publicly delivered health care.

“People with urgent care needs are waiting longer than ever, with some overstretched emergency rooms having to close their doors and send patients elsewhere.

“These challenges are the result of underfunding and unfair legislation like Bill 124 making it harder than ever for our public health care system to retain and recruit nurses and health care professionals.

“This situation isn’t sustainable.” And it goes on.

The court said Bill 124 was unconstitutional, and this government is fighting them. But we’ve heard today we’re not allowed to discuss it because it’s before the courts. This speaks to the government’s priorities: Don’t do right by the nurses; don’t do right by the health care workers; don’t fix the staffing problem; don’t address the backlogs when we have empty operating rooms because the hospitals aren’t allowed to ask for more money for certain types of surgeries because there’s a cap. All of this is manufactured.

The Ontario Health Coalition has been doing fantastic work, and they’ve been doing town halls across our community. I was proud to join in on one of the Zoom town halls to hear from people about what their concerns are, what their fears are, but also what their plans are. I’m proud to be a medicare defender; I’ll say it. There were also Liberals on some of those calls, which I thought was fun. I say “fun” because everybody is talking about publicly funded health care. Even this government talks about publicly funded health care. I’m not challenging publicly funded health care. Your tax dollars, my tax dollars—folks pay into the system, right? Health care is supposed to be one of the things that comes out of it.

So for publicly funded health care, the money goes into the health care bucket. Picture a big bucket; that’s where our health care dollars go. My concern is about “publicly delivered,” because if you’ve got this big bucket of money that’s meant to go to health care and then you’ve got all these for-profit companies that come along and say, “Oh, I can do it better, faster, cheaper”—no, they can’t. In fact, the evidence is that they can’t. But right now they say they can. These private companies come along and they drill holes in that bucket and that money goes to profit margins, goes to shareholders, so the money doesn’t go as far because that level goes down and down when it goes to profit instead of being reinvested in the system. So with publicly delivered, those holes don’t exist because we don’t have to pay profit margins. It’s patient care instead of profit margins. That’s the difference between publicly funded and publicly delivered.

The official opposition, New Democrats, understand that. The Ontario Health Coalition and medicare champions across this province understand that. And for the government that jumps up and down and says, “You will never have to pay with your credit card, and how dare you suggest such a thing”—you’re going to have to pay fees with your credit card, and you’re not actually arguing that. But you’re talking about health care services that will never have to be paid for with a credit card and always paid for with the OHIP card. Okay, fine, but your OHIP card ain’t going to go as far with all that money leaking out of your profit bucket, so how you pay for it is part of the conversation. How far that money goes in making decisions in the best interests of public health and care—that’s the conversation I wish this government was capable of having.

Speaker, I have a stack of letters, and I am running out of time. I would actually invite folks to go online—and I know a lot of the government members are Googling the facts of the world the last couple of days. The Ontario Health Coalition has a whole bunch of fact sheets about the Canada Health Act, facts about two-tiered medicare, a lot of the myths that are out there, so take a look. Do some homework; learn a couple of things.

But I have a letter here that was sent in the mail from Judy in Oshawa, and I want to read this. She says, “It’s easy to make privatization look appealing. There would be promises of low premiums from insurance companies from the beginning. But eventually rates would explode like they have in the USA. There are people there paying thousands of dollars per month for health care. How many of us make thousands of dollars a month that they could pay towards health care? And let’s be honest ... private health care doesn’t really want to pay out, especially on anything major. Their goal is to not pay out, like all insurance companies.”

She goes on and on. She says, “Health care is expensive, but privatizing it would make it more expensive for individuals because of uncontrollable corporate greed. A proper government should be acting on behalf of the public, the individuals who live and work in this province. Not the rich (and often multi-national) corporations that Premier Ford appears to work for.”

Judy also remembers. She says, “Our health care is something I remember my parents being so proud of. Universal health care came about when I was a young child. It sets Canada apart from many nations. We used to be a shining example that other nations looked to with envy.” She talks about what they see in the States: “People can lose their homes and more if they have a very serious medical issue; many die. It’s a system that discriminates against anyone who is not rich. We should never allow this to happen here.” Thank you, Judy.

Speaker, the government is going to get up and say, “Well, that’s not happening,” and I will say, “Yet.” Because Bill 60—this is a dark day in Ontario. No matter what they tell you at the caucus table, government, this is a dark day, because you’re not going to be able to come back from this easily. Once you’ve got the sharks in there, once you’ve got the profit margins, once you’ve got all that profitization of health care, they ain’t giving that back.

Let’s look at long-term care. At Orchard Villa in my neck of the woods, in Durham region, instead of holding them to account, instead of at the time shutting them down, instead of saying that that was not okay that those people died, this government rallied so fast to protect them from being sued. And now we wait with bated breath: Will they or won’t they get their 30-year licence extension and additional beds? That’s what you do. That’s what this government has done when it comes to profit and for-profit companies, with their death grip on our health care system—in that case, long-term care.

Speaker, I have so many letters. Here’s one. Kelly said, “I am writing with a truly burdened heart over the status” of “the health care system in both Ontario and Canada. The provincial and federal governments must do more to address the crisis in our hospitals. I wish that I could come up with the words to articulate how difficult the last week has been.”

She wrote about her father, who was sent by ambulance to the hospital with a suspected stroke—and of course time is of the essence in that case. She said, “My father spent seven hours in a hard chair in the emergency ward and was sent home with the message that he had not had a stroke, and there was no treatment.” However, it was later confirmed by his eye doctor that he had indeed had a TIA.

She says, “It is truly incredibly scary that in an emergency, our health care system is not equipped to respond in a timely or thorough manner. I know that there is a crisis in the system.... There is no excuse for not being able to provide proper emergency care where lives depend on it....

“Please do your part to advocate to the provincial government that there must be more done. This is Ontario, and this is Canada.”

There’s a lot at stake right now. Bill 60 is a terrible mistake. It is unnecessary. Our opposition day motion earlier made the case—and it is a legit case, and you know it—that there are resources that we are not using, that we have operating rooms that could be utilized to clear the backlog, but you won’t fund the staffing. We have a staffing crisis and shortage, and you won’t allow hospitals to pay their staff what they’re worth—won’t allow.

We’re talking about medicare, and people who are writing in about the fee that they’re having to pay—we’re just going to see more of that. In this bill there isn’t sufficient oversight, and anyone who says there is cannot point to it in this bill. When it comes to oversight, it should be rigorous. Anything you do with health care should be about patient protection. There is not anything in this bill about oversight. If you’re going to move it into a for-profit, investor-driven corporate clinic, you’re taking it out from under the CPSO, because it’s no longer under physicians that these surgeries will be done; it will be done under a company. And if CPSO no longer has oversight, well, then what? Because patient complaints—do you want to spend some time talking about that? Your patient complaint system is insufficient today, before we do this. You are doing the wrong thing, and Ontarians deserve better.

Questions?

My thanks to the member for Oshawa for participating in debate this afternoon and for contributing her comments and remarks about the legislation. I think we have deep differences of perspective on how this bill will impact the people of Ontario.

I believe very firmly that the legislation before this House is going to have an immense impact, in a positive way, by reducing the wait times and ensuring that people in my riding are able to access the care that they expect and deserve when and where they need it.

My question to the member opposite is—I know she obviously supports the work that her former colleague Mr. Jagmeet Singh is doing in Ottawa. I’m just wondering if she would support, if she were a federal MP, the federal expansion of dental health benefits. And if she supports the federal expansion of dental health benefits, does she support the fact that that will be provided through private dentists?

Just last week, I had a town hall in Niagara Falls, and we had over 200 people there. It was a full house. They were very passionate about protecting our publicly funded, publicly delivered health care. The health coalition was there, who we all know and have talked about in this House. We had an ER doctor. We had mental health organizations, paramedics who are saying that they’re stuck at hospitals. So I believe that Ontarians are going to fight tooth and nail to protect their publicly funded health care system.

It’s interesting today, because it’s the first time I’ve heard it—for the last three years, we’ve been raising Bill 124 in this House, and today they’re now saying, “It’s before the courts. We can’t comment.” I want to ask my colleague, why do you think they’re saying that?