“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Ontario has one of the most dedicated and highly trained health workforces in the world. Over 60,000 new nurses and 8,000 new doctors have registered to work in Ontario; and

“Whereas hiring more health care professionals is the most effective step to ensure Ontarians are able to see a health care provider where and when you need to; and

“Whereas starting in spring 2023, the government will expand the learn and stay grant and applications will open for eligible post-secondary students who enrol in priority programs, such as nursing, to work in underserved communities in the region where they studied after graduation. The program will provide up-front funding for tuition, books and other direct educational costs; and

“Whereas with the new as-of-right rules, Ontario will become the first province in Canada to allow health care workers registered in other provinces and territories to immediately start caring for you, without having to first register with one of Ontario’s health regulatory colleges. This change will help health care workers overcome excessive red tape that makes it difficult for them to practise in Ontario;

“Whereas we are investing an additional $15 million to temporarily cover the costs of examination, application, and registration fees for internationally trained and retired nurses, saving them up to $1,500 each. This will help up to 5,000 internationally educated nurses and up to 3,000 retired nurses begin working sooner to strengthen our front lines;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To urge all members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario continue to build on the progress of hiring and recruiting health care workers.”

Speaker, I endorse this petition and will give it to page Maya.

Resuming the debate adjourned on February 22, 2023, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 60, An Act to amend and enact various Acts with respect to the health system / Projet de loi 60, Loi visant à modifier et à édicter diverses lois en ce qui concerne le système de santé.

This petition is entitled “Stop Ford’s Health Care Privatization Plan.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Ontarians should get health care based on need—not the size of their wallet;

“Whereas Premier Doug Ford and Health Minister Sylvia Jones say they’re planning to privatize parts of health care;

“Whereas privatization will bleed nurses, doctors and PSWs out of their public hospitals, making the health care crisis worse;

“Whereas privatization always ends with patients getting a bill;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to immediately stop all plans to further privatize Ontario’s health care system, and fix the crisis in health care by:

“—repealing Bill 124 and recruiting, retaining and respecting doctors, nurses and PSWs with better pay and better working conditions;

“—licensing tens of thousands of internationally educated nurses and other health care professionals already in Ontario, who wait years and pay thousands to have their credentials certified;

“—making education and training free or low-cost for nurses, doctors and other health care professionals;

“—incentivizing doctors and nurses to choose to live and work in northern Ontario;

“—funding hospitals to have enough nurses on every shift, on every ward.”

I couldn’t agree with the petition more. I’ve affixed my signature to it and will hand it to Mary for the table.

Bill 60 is one huge step towards decimating a program that defines us as Canadians and Ontarians: medicare, a program that makes sure that care is based on your needs, not on your ability to pay. What we are doing right now will be almost impossible to undo. Once the private, for-profit, investor-owned corporations have set up shop in Ontario, they will not leave. It doesn’t matter what the needs will be. If the backlog—they will continue to be there. We are seeing, by the actions of this government, the beginning of the end of medicare. I’m really troubled by that.

When we talk about medicare, what we have here in Canada, in Ontario, is a single-payer, publicly funded health care system. The one payer is the government of Ontario, which pays for medically necessary care that we get in our hospitals with doctors, with physicians. This is what medicare is all about. Medicare is about, if you go to the hospital, it doesn’t cost you anything; if you go to see a physician, it doesn’t cost you anything. That’s all. Everything else—long-term care, home care—not part. Medicare is about hospitals and physicians.

Bill 60, the bill we’re debating this afternoon, is about to change all of this because it will change who delivers that care. Right now, surgeries are mainly done—99% of surgeries are done in our hospitals, where you don’t pay for care. They’re about to change this.

People often get a bit confused as to what’s public and private and all this. There are four types of providers in Ontario. The first one is the publicly owned facilities. If you think of a community health centre, an Aboriginal health access centre, a nurse practitioner-led clinic—those are publicly owned facilities. They deliver the care in a publicly owned facility.

The second one is what we call the privately owned, not-for-profit community. Those are all 152 hospitals in Ontario. There are four private hospitals that predate medicare. The rest of them are all not-for-profit facilities, and they are most of the hospitals that all of us know.

The third type is a physician-owned small business. This is what most doctors’ offices look like. They pay rent. They hire a secretary and maybe a nurse to work with them. They will look after 1,000 or 2,000 patients. They are a privately owned small business. The physician is the owner of the business, and the physician provides the care to the patient. And you will remember, Speaker, that because it is a physician’s service, it is free for us to use.

The fourth kind of delivery is what we call private, for-profit, investor-owned corporations. Once you bring in investor-owned corporations, you change everything, because—they don’t have any patients’ roster to them or anything—they are there for one reason: They are there to make money.

To build a surgical suite in Ontario is not cheap, have no doubt. It’s not something you and I could do—I don’t know about you, but it’s not something I could do. It takes millions of dollars to build a surgical suite.

I can tell you right now, there are private, for-profit, investor-owned corporations that are biting at the bit to come and invest those millions of dollars in surgical suites in Ontario. Why? Because they can guarantee their investors double-digit returns on their investment. We’re not talking about 11%, 12% returns; we are talking about returns in the 20% range and the 30% range every single year. They are willing to put up those millions of dollars ahead because they will make back those millions—and those hundreds of millions—really, really quickly. How do they do that? They do that by upselling. They do that by using the power differences in the relationship—when you go see somebody who’s about to do surgery, the surgeon has all the power and you have none. You are a person who is sick, you are a person in need of care, and you depend on the surgeon, on the physician, to make you better. I don’t wish harm upon anyone, but we all know that people do get sick, people do need care, people do need surgery at some point—and when you do, you are more or less at the mercy of the person who provides that care. Big, private, for-profit, investor-owned corporations know this power dynamic. They know full well that you depend on that person for your health, that you depend on that person for your life, and that you are willing to pay. And they will make you pay, have no doubt. They have you pay, first, by gaining access.

I can share the story of Mr. Dutton. Paul Dutton is a Toronto writer and musician. He needed surgery done. He saw a gastroenterologist who told him that it would take quite a bit of time to get his colonoscopy done in a hospital, and he could have it done faster in one of the private clinics that exists in Ontario right now, but he could only gain access to the colonoscopy if he had an appointment with the dietitian at the colonoscopy clinic. The appointment with the dietitian costs $495. The gastroenterologist acknowledged that he did not need any nutritional consultation, but in order to gain access to the colonoscopy within a few days—this is what this private clinic did. You did not get a colonoscopy unless you spoke to a dietitian, and the dietitian costs 495 bucks. He made a complaint to the Ontario college of physicians and surgeons, and he made a complaint to the complaint line that exists at the Ministry of Health, but nothing happened. Nothing happened because it was not the physician who charged him $495 to see a nutritionist, that dietitian he didn’t need to see; it was the business that charged him $495 to see a dietitian in order to gain access.

So this is happening right here, right now. The opportunity to make money is there. You have surgeons telling you that you need to have that test done, that your health is at risk, that there may be cancer and you need to get at it really quick if you want your chances of survival to increase, but it’s going to cost 495 bucks to gain access. What are you going to do? What are any of us going to do? We’re going to pay the 495 bucks because we don’t want to die of cancer. This is how it works. They prey on the vulnerability of people who are sick to make money, and the resources, the creativity they have to find ways to charge you is just out of this world. We already know that. It’s happening right here, right now in Ontario.

And what is this government doing? This government is opening the door wide open, inviting all of the US-based multinational corporations to come to Ontario and set up shop—

Interjection: Open for business.

The member for Nickel Belt.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas in the First and Second World Wars, over 7,000 First Nation members, as well as an unknown number of Métis, Inuit and other Indigenous recruits, voluntarily served in the Canadian Armed Forces; and

“Whereas countless Indigenous peoples bravely and selflessly served Canada at a time of great challenges for Canada; and

“Whereas this spirit of volunteerism and community marked the life of the late Murray Whetung, who volunteered to serve in the Second World War; and

“Whereas many First Nations individuals lost their status after serving in the wars off-reserve for a period of time; and

“Whereas despite this injustice, many continued to recognize the value in continuously giving back to their community; and

“Whereas the values of volunteerism and community are instilled in the army, air, and sea cadets across Ontario; and

“Whereas the Murray Whetung Community Service Award Act establishes an award for the cadets and tells the story of Indigenous veterans’ sacrifice and mistreatment;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To urge all members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to support the passage of the Murray Whetung Community Service Award Act, 2022.”

Speaker, I’ll sign the petition and provide it to page Nolan.

We are open for business, all right. We are open for business so that we can make millions of dollars off of the backs of sick people.

I cannot stand for this, Speaker. I’m from the party of Tommy Douglas. I believe in care based on needs, not on ability to pay. I believe in medicare—but not this government. This government is putting this to the trash because there is money to be made off of the backs of sick people.

Of course, Paul is not the only one who came forward. Brenda Seaton said that her mother, who is 90 years old, needed cataract surgery. She went to the ophthalmologist and asked to have the cataract surgery done—she had had one done, but because the other was not done, it made her dizzy because she didn’t see well out of one eye and could see better out of the one that had had the surgery. The wait-list to have this done in a hospital where it would not cost anything was months long, but if she was willing to pay $1,000 for basic cataract surgery to be performed by Dr. Derek Lui of Woodstock, she could have it done right away. Since her mother was having a tough time at 90 years old—she didn’t want her mother to continue to be dizzy; the last thing you want is for her to fall and break a hip and ruin her health, ruin her ability to be independent—she came up with $1,000. She could not wait any longer. So they went to Woodstock. Ms. Seaton said that once they got to the private clinic in Woodstock, there were at least 10 people in the waiting room who she recognized from ophthalmologist Derek Lui’s practice, and all of those people had agreed to pay $1,000 so they would not have to wait months to get their cataract surgeries done in the hospital. Dr. Lui insists that that was not him charging $1,000; it was the clinic that kept those fees, that he received no financial benefit. He said, “I am just using their facilities. I am not an employee. I don’t have any shares in that clinic.... it makes no difference to me. I just bill OHIP.’” But it makes a difference to that family. Brenda did not have $1,000. It put her in financial distress to be able to gain access to the care she needed.

This is what medicare is all about—care based on your needs, not on your ability to pay.

I could go on and on with examples of other people who have had to pay to gain access to care, but I want to make sure that I save time to go through the whole bill.

The first thing that the government will have you believe, the first myth, is that if you have private clinics, they will alleviate wait times in the public system. There is a tremendous body of evidence that shows this is not true. This is a myth. The last jurisdiction to try this was Australia. In 1997, they brought in those private, for-profit corporations. What happened is, yes, the private corporations gave faster access to people who are able to pay for add-ons, but for the rest of the people in the system, the wait-lists got longer. We already have Australia that has this, and many other countries have what Ontario is about to do. And in all of those countries, the wait-lists for the publicly delivered services are longer, and in most of them the general wait-list is longer than in Ontario. So this is a myth. Bringing in for-profit delivery is not going to bring the wait-lists down in Ontario.

Myth number two is that private, for-profit ownership of health facilities leads to better health outcomes—“Let the private sector do things. They can do things better, faster, cheaper.” None of that is true, Speaker. Here again, you can look at the humongous body of evidence that exists. The truth is that the for-profit model does not incentivize high-quality care. In fact, for-profit delivery has been associated with increased mortality.

I would like to give a very sad example that happened right here in Ontario. You can look it up online. It’s the case of Levac v. James. Forever on end, pain clinics were only delivered in hospitals, where people would come and get injections to control their pain. Then, many pain clinics opened throughout—mainly, southern Ontario. As it is, independent health facilities have no oversight, no accountability. A physician opened up his pain clinic, saw thousands of people, billed OHIP for millions of dollars, but to try to cut costs, he did not follow best practices, infection prevention and control practices. Multiple people got infections. We’re talking about severe infections. When you get an infection in your spinal cord, it goes into meningitis, it goes into—some people got paralyzed from the waist down, from the injection site down, and a person died. All of this continued for two and a half years, because there is no oversight of independent health facilities in Ontario. If the same physician had done the same thing in a hospital—the first time somebody gets an infection, the hospital has mechanisms in place. It went on for two and a half years—same physician, same surgery. In a hospital, the first time somebody gets an infection, there is quality monitoring in place so they don’t get a second one—you change, you make sure that high quality is provided. With that private clinic, it went on for two and a half years, and it was only after three people got meningitis in the same week—meningitis is a reportable disease, so this disease had to be reported to Toronto Public Health. Toronto Public Health looked at three meningitis cases, started to do a bit of an investigation, realized that all three of them had dealt with Dr. James, and closed him down. Two and a half years—dozens of people with severe diseases, some of them incurable. They are paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of their lives, and a person is dead, because there is no oversight. This is happening right here, right now, in Ontario. To say that private clinics will have high-quality care—there is nothing in this bill to guarantee that.

Another myth is that private financing will make health care more efficient. This is also a myth. There is plenty of evidence that shows that health care is most efficient when it is delivered in the not-for-profit sector by a single payer, which we already have.

Myth number four: We can’t afford publicly funded health care. The truth is, we can’t afford privatized health care. Studies are there; I have dozens of them—it always costs more in the private, for-profit system because you have to make a profit. When it comes to private, for-profit, investor-owned corporations, the for-profit comes first. It will always be there before quality care, before safety, before anything else.

Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against community-based care. Some hospitals in Ontario already do this. They have opened up surgical suites where all they do is day surgery. Across the street, this way—go to Women’s College Hospital. They don’t have beds. All they do is day surgery. But they do this within the confines of a hospital, with all of the oversight and accountability to make sure that they provide quality care. We have many other great examples right here in our province, in order to do that—but that’s not what this government has chosen to do.

This government has chosen to open the door to private, for-profit, investor-owned corporations, which we already know will put profit ahead of care.

In the bill, there is very little about oversight, except to let us know that there will be some oversight; it’s yet to be determined as to what that will be. This is not how you build a strong and robust health care system—you put those oversights in place before anything else.

We have 10 independent health facilities right now that provide surgery. We have over 800 independent health facilities; 98% of them are for-profit. There are a few—Kensington Eye Institute is a not-for-profit. But that’s not the intention of this government. The intention of this government is to bring the for-profit system in.

The bill talks a bit about what will happen if people have complaints. Apparently, they will be able—I need a drink. Sorry about that, Speaker. It’s all my husband’s fault, I want you to know. He plays hockey. One guy gets a cold in the change room, then he gets a cold and brings it home. I blame hockey. But that’s an aside.

Complaints: In the bill, they talk about how people will be able to make complaints to the ombudsman. This already happens. With the independent health facilities, people can put a complaint to the Patient Ombudsman. The Patient Ombudsman reports on those complaints. I had the stats in front of me, but I have a bit of a mess, so I will go by memory: Of over 332 complaints, over 228 of them were found to be valid complaints. The Patient Ombudsman has no authority to carry out any changes. “Yes, your complaint is valid; yes, you were charged for an upsell; yes, you were told something that wasn’t true; you did not need to buy the different lens; you could have had the OHIP-covered lens”—and this is where it ends.

There’s also a line where you can call the ministry and complain about those overpayments. Same thing—you look at the number of complaints that have been received, and two thirds of them were found to be valid. Where people had been charged for something that was covered by OHIP and they should not have been charged, the physician or the clinic was made to pay back that one person who had complained, and they could continue to charge $1,000 an eye to the other 500 patients who came in—because unless they complain, nothing happens. And even for the physicians who were found guilty, there were no consequences, except for giving back the money that they should have never taken before. What kind of oversight is this, when you know the power imbalance, when you know that the physicians have all the power and the patients have none? They have been found guilty of charging for something they shouldn’t have, and all you ask of them is to give the money back; you don’t even look at the other 500 people who have been charged the same thing.

Make no mistake, most people don’t want to complain against their physician. Most people say, “The physician was a very nice guy. He did the surgery, and I see very well now. I don’t even need my glasses. I was able to keep my driver’s licence. Could you help me, because I don’t have the $2,000 to pay him. Do you figure there’s a government program that could help me pay the 2,000 bucks? But no, no, no, I won’t make a complaint against the physician”—because they have all the power, and you have none.

I went to a seniors fair organized by the YMCA and a seniors group in Sudbury. They had given me an opportunity to talk, and I talked about the different programs that were there to help seniors stay home safe. When I ended my talk, I said, “I’m curious to see: Have any of you ever been charged when you went and saw a physician?” I had 142 people in line to come and tell me their stories. About two hours into this, I realized that Dr. S charges about $500 an eye; the other one charges about $1,000 an eye. If you don’t pay, then you’re put on the hospital wait-list and you lose your driver’s licence. If you agree to pay, you get to keep your driver’s licence because you will be seen within a short period of time. If you don’t pay, you’re put on the long wait-list in the hospital and you lose your driver’s licence. The stories were all the same. After a while—I still listened to them all. Out of 140 people, I asked, “Can I bring your story forward? Would you be willing to make a complaint?” Zero. Not one of them felt that they wanted to put in a complaint. Many of them wanted me to help them find a way to get funding for this, but none of them were willing to put in a complaint.

If this happens in Nickel Belt, I am absolutely positive that it happens in every part of the province—but although the Auditor General’s report told them about this, Canadian Doctors for Medicare told them, the Ontario Health Coalition told them and Health Quality Ontario told them, the government didn’t think it was important enough to put it in the bill. How could you not think it was important enough to put it in the bill? But they did not.

Apparently, we will get some oversight at some point in the future in some kind of regulations; we don’t know when, we don’t know what it will look like. But I’m worried because we already know that this is happening, and once you open the door to the private, for-profit, investor-owned corporations, it will just increase exponentially.

Another concern that I have: We’ve talked about the complaint mechanism to the ombudsman. First of all, the Patient Ombudsman has less power than the ombudsman, and second, he has no way of implementing changes. We’ve talked about the complaint lines that happen at the Ministry of Health. By the way, we are all pretty good with computers in our jobs—try to find that complaint line. Use the last 20 minutes of my speech to try to find it by yourself; let me know if you do. I know the number by heart, but for you to find it by yourself and connect with it—good luck with that. That system fails more people than it helps, and even when you do get your money back, no consequences come of it.

Then it’s the poaching of staff—you are about to open up a brand new, private, for-profit, investor-owned corporation—

Did you get an answer?

Yes, see how long before you get an answer.

Private, for-profit, investor-owned corporations are going to set up surgical suites, so if they decide to use nurses in their surgical suites—because they don’t have to. A physician can delegate any act they want to anyone, so it could very well be that the nurse who is in the operating room with the physician is not a nurse at all—she is the hairdresser of his wife, and she is the one who puts in your IV, takes your blood pressure and makes sure that everything goes well through the surgery.

If they decide to have surgical nurses—think about it, Speaker—they will offer a Monday-to-Friday day-shift job, with no night shifts, no evenings, no weekends, no statutory holidays. Hmm. If I’m a nurse, a single mom with two kids in school, I could work a day shift, drop my kids off at the daycare and be there to pick them up after, and never have to work a statutory holiday, a weekend, an evening or a night shift, or I could go work in the hospital, where for the first 10 years of my career I will be working weekends, night shifts and statutory holidays. Which one would you pick, Speaker? You can choose to work in a private, for-profit, investor-owned corporation that will only pick the healthy and the wealthy people to work on, where the surgeries will all be successes—unless they don’t follow IPAC procedures, or else. And somebody with mental health and addictions? You send those to the hospital. Somebody who doesn’t speak English? You send those to the hospital. Somebody who has other comorbidities, other problems? You send those to the hospital. All you have to do is the easy cases. The healthy and the wealthy will come and have surgery there.

As a nurse, what would you pick? Working weekends, night shifts and statutory holidays, or working steady days, Monday to Friday? Hmm. tough choice, isn’t it? We are all human beings; nurses are human beings also. When those jobs open up, they will go to the steady day jobs, not because they don’t care about the patients, not because they don’t care about the people they work with, not because they don’t care about our hospitals. It’s because they have kids to feed, they have daycare and they have responsibilities just like everybody else.

That’s why the Ontario Hospital Association made it really clear that those community-based surgical suites have to be linked to our hospitals. The physicians will have to have privileges in hospital—all good, but what about the rest of the staff? The rest of the staff will leave our hospitals in droves. There are fewer and fewer all the time who are still working in our hospitals, and once this opens, they will move.

The Ontario Hospital Association was really clear. Those surgical suites have to be under the purview, under the responsibility of a hospital so that you have quality control in place, you have infection protection and control in place and you make sure that the staff get some steady dayshifts, Monday to Friday, and some hospital work. They get to work with some of the healthy and wealthy patients that will go well, but they also get to help the persons who are just as deserving of having surgery but happen to have a comorbidity, happen to have a mental health issue or addiction, happen to not speak English, happen to have early signs of cognitive decline or whatever else that makes them a little bit more complex. This is what our hospitals tell us they want, but it’s not what the government is moving forward with. The government is moving forward with private, for-profit, investor-owned corporations.

When we asked them how many of those they plan on opening, it was a great big question mark.

Interjection: No limit.

No limit. You have enough US investors willing to put one of those in every municipality in Ontario—one, two, three of those in every municipality in Ontario; the door is wide open. Remember, we’re open for business. I’m sorry; health care is not a business. Health care should not be treated as a business. Health care is something that matters to each and every one of us, but apparently not to this government.

We have talked about the dangers of bringing the for-profit in. Could we at least agree that no one should be denied essential care because of an inability to pay? Could we agree that the tenets of medicare, which are based on need, not on ability to pay, will drive our health care system forward? Could we agree to that? Isn’t that part of who we are as Canadians? Isn’t that part of what differentiates us from our friends to the south: because we get care based on need? But this bill will do away with this.

I have a very hard time thinking that I was there when this bill was introduced and have not been able to change it, not been able to protect the people of Ontario. It weighs really heavily on me.

I would like to talk a bit about the Auditor General’s report. The Auditor General report did a value-for-money audit, which is what an auditor does, called Outpatient Surgeries. It was tabled in December 2021. Since December 2021, I have been on the committee for public accounts and I have been trying to get this audit in front of committee. It will finally come on March 7—a year and a half later. I can’t wait.

The Auditor General makes it clear—and I will quote from her. I’m on page 41, if you’re interested:

“(4.6) No provincial oversight to protect patients against inappropriate charges for publicly funded surgeries.

“(4.6.1) Surgery provider sales practices include providing misleading information and charging patients for unnecessary add-ons.”

You have the Auditor General of our province who tells the government that, who has shared her report with the government. The government even answered back to her recommendations and didn’t say much except that they will take disciplinary action against physicians and organizations found to have misinformed or failed to inform patients—sorry, that the College of Physicians and Surgeons will do that. But we all know, Speaker, that once it is a private corporation that owns it, they’re not covered by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario is there to supervise their members. They’re there to supervise physicians and surgeons, not private, for-profit corporations that decide to charge people money for tests and other procedures as an add-on.

The Auditor General goes on to say, “However, there is no provincial oversight of surgery providers (the surgeons and/or the clinics they work for) who may have provided misleading information to patients who are unfamiliar with their right to publicly funded surgeries and who may be misinformed about these added charges.”

She goes on to give an example—and, please, read the report; there are many, many examples: “Common add-on fees specifically relate to cataract surgeries, which represent the highest volume of outpatient surgeries in Ontario.... Patients with a cataract are able to receive cataract surgery that is paid for fully by OHIP. However, patients do have the option to pay—out of pocket or through private health insurance—for a modified eye lens that is not covered through OHIP”—all good. The problem is that “the add-on charges for a modified lens and additional testing vary by provider but could range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.” There are no regulations on this. I have seen up to $5,000 values from the people who have come and talked to me, but I’m sure that there is more.

In theory, “ophthalmologists must discuss all uninsured services with cataract surgery patients and must inform these patients of the option of receiving medically necessary tests and lenses without paying any additional charge.” But she noted, “There is no mandatory documentation.” There is no oversight from the government. And she goes on that a “person complained about having to pay for cataract surgery because the surgeon did not inform them that they were entitled to receive standard surgery free of charge through OHIP.”

The Canadian Medical Association did the same: “Patients who misunderstand the optional nature of non-insured services may make substantial sacrifices to pay for” their “surgery. Alternatively, they may decide to postpone or forgo surgery until they can afford the non-insured costs, which will leave them to suffer unnecessarily for longer with” things that could be corrected by surgery. That comes from the Canadian Medical Association Journal, a peer-reviewed general medical journal here in Canada.

I am putting this on the record to show that all of this is known to the government. They know that this is the path that they are taking. This is their choice. They are choosing to dismantle medicare so that a few wealthy for-profit investors can benefit off the backs of sick people. How sad is that? How sad is that?

The Auditor General hired some mystery shoppers to go into some of the existing clinics in Ontario, and they basically were told that cataract surgery using a specialty lens cost the patient anywhere between $450 to almost $5,000 per eye. “Some clinics indicated that specialty lenses are or may be mandatory depending on the surgeon’s assessment. As noted earlier, specialty lenses are considered an add-on and should never be mandatory, meaning these clinics were providing misleading information to the mystery shoppers” that were hired by the Auditor General.

The clinics are misleading patients by indicating that OHIP-covered testing is inferior. Some clinics said that there will be additional costs that patients will have to pay out of pocket: “Some clinics indicated that the standard eye testing covered by OHIP is of inferior quality and that add-on tests provide more thorough and accurate results. While there may be benefits to undergoing add-on tests, specifically when opting for a specialty lens, these clinics are misleading patients by indicating that the OHIP-covered testing is inferior.”

We also have the Ontario Health Coalition, who phoned thousands of private clinics and found that the great majority of them extra-bill patients.

The “ministry does not proactively monitor the practices of surgeons and clinics to confirm that patients are being adequately informed about their right to receive a fully covered surgery without the need to pay out of pocket,” and it goes on and on.

I see that my time is running short. The path that we are on is not a healthy one.

Other parts of the bill talk about health care providers from other provinces having the right to practise in Ontario. At the 40,000-foot level, this is something that could work. To become a nurse, to become most health care professionals, you have to write a Canadian-wide test. You write the same test whether you’re a nurse in Ontario or a nurse in Alberta. Once you register with your college—let’s say you register with the college of nurses of Alberta—it will take you a very long time to be able to go into the College of Nurses of Ontario. To make that easier has value.

But again, the bill stays silent as to how long people, without being members of a college, are going to be allowed to practise in Ontario—until their practice certificate is up for review? Everybody has to renew their licence every year. So if your licence is due for renewal on April 1, then we’ll let them into Ontario on their Alberta licence until April 1, and on April 1, they have to register in Ontario—or you don’t have right to practise? The bill doesn’t say any of that. All the bill says is that we will welcome people with licences from other provinces, and then what? The people of Ontario have a right to be able to make complaints to the colleges if they’re not happy with the services received by a regulated health professional. But all of this falls in limbo because the bill only talks about one little part and doesn’t talk about the rest of it.

Same thing about giving non-regulated health providers the right to give medications; the right to give serious medication, intravenous medication; the right to give very addictive medications. There is a reason why nurses do that: It’s because they know that sometimes a milligram change in the dosage of a medication could kill someone. We will all remember the sad story of the nurse who killed seven of her long-term-care patients by giving them diabetes medications that were not for them, and they died. The idea that this could be done safely when there is so little oversight—I know that the private for-profit long-term-care homes very much want the PSWs to be giving out medication, because you will only have to give them 16 bucks an hour rather than paying a nurse what she is worth to do that important job. The bill allows them to do that.

The private for-profit long-term-care corporations are really happy that they will be able to save even more money by putting peoples’ lives at risk, but they have shown us clearly through the last pandemic that they are willing to do this when it means maximizing profits for their shareholders rather than looking after the people of Ontario. There is way more in that bill I could go on about.

I can guarantee you that there is no way that I could ever support the dismantling of medicare—never. This is a program that defines us. This is a program that makes us Canadian. This is a program that makes us who we are. We care for one another. We make sure that you have access to care no matter who you are. I am not willing to change this. I am Canadian. I’m Ontarian. I believe in those principles. I believe in caring for one another, and this bill is to make sure that the rich get richer, that the rich get to make money off of the backs of sick people at the expense of all of us who will wait longer, who will have less quality care, who will put peoples’ life and health at risk. I hope all of you will vote that down.

Thank you very much to the member from Nickel Belt for clearly outlining all the risks that are associated with Bill 60. Expanding for-profit health care will cost us more, and it will deliver less.

And we should be looking at other jurisdictions that have made the same mistake. In fact, the Saskatchewan Health Authority just bought back five Extendicare homes with gruesome track records during the pandemic. They paid $13.1 million for these homes, just to stop avoidable deaths.

My question for the member from Nickel Belt: What is at stake going down the line—both on a financial and economic impact but also on the health outcomes for Ontarians?

Questions?

The member is right that under Dr. Day and others in British Columbia, a lot of private for-profit investor-owned corporations were developed to provide care. It was not good. It was brought in front of the Supreme Court, and they lost. The NDP government in British Columbia is spending millions of dollars buying back those private clinics and bringing them back into the not-for-profit sector, because they want to ensure quality, they want to ensure equity and they want to ensure that medicare will continue to be there for generations to come.

Yes, they went down this path when previous governments were in British Columbia. They saw the errors, and they are bringing it back into the not-for-profit.

Do you know what? Usually, I would stand up and say, “Listen, I appreciate the member from Nickel Belt’s remarks,” but today it’s a bit of a different story. I can’t believe she would stand up for an hour and tell, quite frankly—if she wants to use the term “myths”—myths to the people of Ontario—

I’m a proud Canadian myself, Madam Speaker. And you know what? When we talk about places—when we talk about being Canadian, when we talk about making sure we have a strong, publicly funded health care system here in Ontario—Alberta, BC, Quebec already use this model.

I don’t understand how it can be so confusing to members of the opposition. They want to stand up here and they want to fearmonger and they want to say, “Oh, my God, the sky is falling.” But there are multiple other provinces here in Canada that are already doing this—including in the UK, including in Germany, including in other parts of Scandinavia—including in Waterloo region, where TLC laser centres is already performing cataract surgeries in partnership with St. Mary’s hospital—

I want to talk about something a little different, because it’s always a good idea to go back over history. Let’s go back into the Mike Harris history. When we had this same debate in this very House about long-term care and how much better it was than—if we had private long-term care, how it would be better for our moms, our dads, our aunts, our uncles, our brothers and our sisters. Guess what happened? It wasn’t true. That whole debate was a lie. It wasn’t about care; it was about profit. Shareholders got rich. Do you know what happened to our moms and dads, our aunts, our uncles during COVID in these long-term-care facilities? They died—5,400 of them died, most of them in for-profit long-term care.

My question—she did a great presentation, by the way—is, why would anyone want to privatize, for profit, our publicly funded, publicly delivered health care system after what we’ve seen and have gone through for the last three years in long-term-care facilities?

The member opposite and I can probably agree on one point, and that point is that the status quo is simply not working.

It is an honour to rise today to speak to the bill introduced by our Deputy Premier and Minister of Health entitled Your Health Act, 2023. I will be sharing my time today with the member from Thunder Bay–Atikokan.

I would like to congratulate the minister and parliamentary assistants for their hard work, resolve and courage in bringing bold and innovative solutions to challenge the status quo in our health care system.

The bold and innovative plan is based on three pillars: the right care in the right place; faster access to care; and hiring more health care workers.

Before I get into the three pillars and their importance, I would like to highlight some of the foundational work this government has done in the last Parliament to lay the foundation for today’s legislation.

Speaker, under our government, we have 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. These are historical investments into our health care system.

Madame la Présidente, le plan audacieux et innovant repose sur trois piliers : les bons soins au bon endroit, l’accès plus rapide aux soins, et l’embauche de plus de travailleurs de la santé.

Avant d’aborder les trois piliers et leur importance, j’aimerais souligner certains des travaux fondamentaux que ce gouvernement a accomplis au cours de la dernière législature jusqu’aux fondements de la législation d’aujourd’hui.

Sous notre gouvernement, nous avons augmenté les dépenses en santé de 14 milliards de dollars depuis 2018. Pour mettre les choses en perspective, en 2015 le budget de la santé était de 50 milliards de dollars. Aujourd’hui le budget de la santé est de 75 milliards de dollars, une augmentation de 50 % en huit ans. Ce sont des investissements historiques dans notre système de soins de santé public.

And Speaker, I call these “investments” and not simply “spending,” because our government believes in fiscal responsibility, respecting taxpayer dollars and not simply throwing money at a problem.

Let me outline some of these investments and some of the monumental foundations we have laid to enable this ambitious work.

Over the last four and a half years, we have built 3,500 acute hospital beds, including pediatric critical care beds—the equivalent of about six to seven community hospitals in four years.

We currently have shovels in the ground on 50 new major hospital projects, including the expansion of Mississauga’s Trillium Health Partners. In total, it’s a historical infrastructure investment of $40 billion over 10 years.

We have also provided operational funding for 49 new MRI machines in hospitals since 2021 to help us address some of the diagnostic imaging backlogs.

We are on track to building 30,000 new long-term-care beds by 2029, including culturally and linguistically appropriate beds for francophone, Muslim, Coptic, Arabic, Punjabi and many other diverse communities living and thriving in Ontario.

We have 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 our colleges and universities, and I am excited to say that one of them, Maria, is here today as part of Western University’s Women in House program. I’m so happy—

Interjections.

The member from Carleton.

Speaker, when it comes to your health, the status quo is no longer acceptable.

I appreciate that the member for Nickel Belt is speaking about this in a very calm and collected manner, but that does not solve the problem. That does not negate the fact that the member from Nickel Belt and the entire opposition party has ignored the needs of the people of Ontario.

My question to the member is, will you actually focus on supporting the people of Ontario? Will you stop the fearmongering? Will you stop making people think that they will have to pay with their credit card, and make them stop thinking that privatization is a bad thing? The reality is, our family doctors are privatized, our labs are privatized, our eye clinics are privatized. Privatization doesn’t mean spending money out of your pocket. Privatization means making sure that anyone can get access to health care by paying with their OHIP card, not with their credit card.

We all got a glimpse as to what for-profit delivery of care looks like through the pandemic, when we saw the number of deaths in for-profit long-term-care homes that was five times higher than in not-for-profit homes.

The Conservative government of Saskatchewan bought back every single long-term-care home from Extendicare. They kicked all of their for-profit long-term-care homes to the curb, and they brought them back into not-for-profit. Why? Because not-for-profit delivery is the only way to make sure that quality patient care is always priority number one, not making a profit.

Do we have a crisis in our health human resources? Yes, absolutely. There are hundreds of nurses who leave the hospitals every single day. Why? Because they feel discouraged and they feel disrespected by this government. Show them respect. How do you do this? You don’t take them to court about Bill 124. You let them bargain. They have always been reasonable. Look at the last 50 years of collective agreement of nurses. They have always been reasonable. Why are you doing that to them? Why are you disrespecting them?

The status quo has to change. Respect health care workers if you want better care.

Who in this House right here, right now, would say, “I’m proud of our home care system that fails more people than it helps every single day because they cannot recruit and retain a stable workforce because those jobs don’t pay and don’t pay the bills”? This is what the private sector does—they get lots of money for their shareholders, but no money for the people who actually deliver the care.

We’ve seen the disaster in long-term care, in home care, and now we are about to see it in surgical care. They are opening the door like they did before.

On aurait voulu voir le projet de loi s’assurer qu’il y a des mesures en place pour protéger les patients contre les surcharges, et il n’y rien de ça dans le projet de loi. Non, on ne l’appuiera pas.

J’ai bien écouté le discours offert par la députée de Nickel Belt. Elle a fait référence à la chirurgie de la cataracte, et j’aimerais faire la même chose. Mes citoyens d’Essex ont beaucoup de confiance en le D^r Tayfour et le D^r Emara. Ce sont des médecins qui pratiquent la chirurgie de la cataracte.

Ce projet de loi devant nous offre la chirurgie de la cataracte avec le D^r Tayfour et le D^r Emara. Les patients vont payer avec leur carte OHIP, non pas avec leur carte de crédit.

La députée de Nickel Belt soutient-elle cela? Votera-t-elle pour cela?