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.