We have heard this government talk about the importance of primary care providers, and building medical schools to train more family doctors will help in the years ahead. But why aren’t they taking action now? There are 1.8 million Ontarians who do not have a family doctor right now, including many of my constituents in Don Valley West. We hear every day, especially over the holidays, about ERs closing.

The OMA provided recommendations to help solve the family doctor problem right now: for example, investing to build centralized referral lists, reducing admin burden on doctors by hiring medical scribes so they can see more patients, and implementing more family health teams.

My question to the Minister of Health: Why is this government not implementing the recommendations of the OMA and instead prioritizing the introduction of Bill 60. And what metrics will they put in place to show Ontarians that profits don’t come at the expense of taxpayers?

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—