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.