It’s always an honour to rise in the House—and today, specifically, in support of the leader of the NDP’s motion. I’d like to read the last “therefore” into the record once again: “Therefore, the Legislative Assembly calls on the government to fund and fully utilize public operating rooms instead of further privatizing hospital operating room services.”

In my part of the world, in northern Ontario, Health Sciences North is the hub hospital. They have 17 modern operating rooms, and they’re using 14. The question I have for the government is, why wouldn’t the focus be on using all 17? They’re there. They’re built. The need is there. We all agree—everyone on all sides of the spectrum agrees—that there is a backlog of surgeries. I’m going to focus on these three operating rooms: We have those operating rooms in place. They’re modern. What’s the holdup? Staff and funding. Who provides the funding? The Ministry of Health, through the provincial government. Yet that seems to be not the focus, and the focus is now providing surgical suites through the private sector.

You have to ask yourself—and I pride myself; I’m fairly business-minded. From the business perspective of the province, the smart thing to do would be to use the facilities that you already own and control. That would be—I hate to say this—the small-c conservative thing to do.

Interjections.

This government is focusing on someone else’s business model—and that is the question that needs to be asked: Why does this government not use the facilities that we already own and control? All they have to do is fund them. Put the same focus on funding those facilities as they are putting on funding the private sector facilities, and also put the focus on making sure that they keep staff in the public sector by not capping their wages, knowing full well—and I don’t blame the individual staff people, the nurses, for moving to the private side. They’re being forced to the private side. The government knows this is happening, and they’re either turning a blind eye or they know full well and have a reason to do it.