Thank you very much for the question. Obviously, a lot of this is still going to be spelled out in regulations, but the oversight is determined—we’re going to make sure that we have oversight. We have the Patient Ombudsman, of course, if people have a concern.

There’s also, of course, the Commitment to the Future of Medicare Act. We want to make sure that people are able, if there is some concern, to raise that concern to an appropriate person who will deal with it. In the legislation, each of the entities would have to have their own complaint mechanism.

All of this will be under the auspices of Ontario Health because it will be integrated into our health care system. That is the whole point of that part of the legislation: to integrate these community clinics into our broader health care system.

The important part of the announcement was that Georgian Bay General Hospital has never had an MRI there. We were able to provide the funding to continue operations and hire staff, etc., to have an MRI right there on the premises of the hospital. This is among 49 MRIs we’re putting in community hospitals. I know the other parliamentary assistant, PA Gallagher Murphy, has done some announcements as well in various venues.

I also went to the riding of Hastings–Lennox and Addington and announced an MRI in that hospital, which had never had one. This will make a huge difference for convenience for people to get services closer to home, and that’s part of the plan.

This is a rather sad day for me, Speaker. This is a day that I knew was coming, but this is not a day that I was looking forward to.

I come from the party of Tommy Douglas, a party that believes in medicare, a party that believes that care should be based on needs, not on ability to pay. With this bill today, this is about to go out the window. This government is taking a step that we’ll never be able to backtrack on; that will destroy a program that defines us as Canadians, a program that defines us as Ontarians—that we care for one another, that you don’t have to have money to receive the care you need. This is the Canadian way. This is something that we’ve built for decades, and today, we’re taking a huge step to destroy it.

I want to talk a little bit about clarifying the public and credit cards and health cards in all of this. Right now, in Ontario, we have publicly owned facilities. Publicly owned facilities are community health centres, public health units, that kind of stuff. We have privately owned not-for-profit facilities. Those are our hospitals. Our hospitals are owned by corporations, but they are not-for-profit. There are four of them that were granted when medicare came into place, but they play a very, very small role; 152 hospitals in Ontario are not-for-profit.

Then we have physician-owned small businesses. Those are most doctors’ offices. They care for 1,000 or 2,000 patients. They pay for their rent and the cleaning and the secretary and maybe a nurse, and they are the doctor’s office. They are physician-owned small businesses. That’s not what we’re talking about in this bill.

In this bill, we are talking about private, for-profit, investor-owned corporations. Those are corporations that have nothing to do with care. They are willing to invest the millions of dollars it will take to build surgical suites, to build MRIs and everything else that the government wants to privatize, to make for-profit. They are willing to invest that money. Why? Because there is a lot of money to be made off of the backs of sick people. How do they do this? Well, sure, the surgeons, the physicians will bill OHIP for their services, like they would in a hospital, like they would in their private clinic, but what those private, for-profit, investor-owned corporations do is that they use the power imbalance that exists between the physician, the specialist, who’s about to put a laser to your eye, who’s about to cut open your knee, your hip, your whatever—there is a real power imbalance between the person who provides the care and the person who needs the care. What those private, for-profit, investor-owned corporations do is they use this power imbalance to ask for money, and there’s no shame in asking for a ton of money from people who are sick, from people who need care.

Unfortunately, it is already happening a little wee bit in Ontario right now—more than a little wee bit; it’s already happening in Ontario. Now, we are about to open the door to those private, for-profit, investor-owned corporations that are just biting at the bit to come into Ontario, because Ontario is a very lucrative market where it doesn’t matter if they will have to put upfront millions of dollars to set up those surgical suites. They can guarantee their investors double-digit returns for years on end. And we are not talking 11% returns here; we are talking into the 25%, 30% returns. So if you have the money to invest in those million-dollar, private, for-profit, investor-owned corporations, they will guarantee you a huge payback. The payback will come from sick people, like you and I—I don’t wish harm upon anyone. I wish we could all be healthy all the time, but we know that this is not the reality. Some of us will get sick; some of us will need care. Then they will charge, and they will charge lots. This is where most of their profit will be made. Some will do double billing—not that many, I hope, but it will be there.

When we look at some of the myths that they are putting forward, the first one is that those new private, for-profit, investor-owned corporations will alleviate wait times in the public system. There is tons of evidence that shows that this is not the case. Australia was the last one to introduce a parallel system, in 1997, and we’ve seen what happened. Basically what happened was they made the wait times worse for most of us. A few rich people will pay for the extra and will get faster care, but most Ontarians won’t. For most of us, it will mean longer wait times.

Myth number two: Private, for-profit ownership of health care facilities leads to better health outcomes. This has been studied to death also. The body of evidence is really strong. I can name you study after study that shows that the profit model does not incentivize high-quality care. In fact, for-profit delivery has been associated with an increased mortality.

There are some who will have you believe that private, for-profit, investor-owned corporations will make health care more efficient. All of those have been studied. All of those have been looked at. None of those pull through. They are not more efficient, and the list goes on.

Today, with this bill, we are opening up the door to private, for-profit, investor-owned corporations who will deliver the care. The single payer will stay in place. The Ontario government will continue to pay for medically necessary care, for medically necessary surgery. They will continue to pay. What will change is that those corporations will find hundreds of ways to make you pay.

I have the example of Mr. Dutton, who—I need to wrap up—

Ma question est pour la ministre de la Santé.

Yesterday, the minister took a huge step towards the destruction of medicare. The Auditor General, Canadian Doctors for Medicare, the Ontario Health Coalition, Health Quality Ontario, the Canadian Medical Association and Ontarians are all saying the same thing: The minister’s bill will allow corporations to make big profits off the backs of sick people. Yet there is no oversight to protect patients in her bill. Why not?

Why is the minister destroying medicare?

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.

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—

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.

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.

It’s an honour for me to rise today to add the voices of the great people of London North Centre to this incredibly important debate. You see, people in London take their health care very seriously. We have wonderful institutions; we have wonderful education programs that bring people into the health care system.

I want to also thank the member from Nickel Belt for her remarks in clearly stating for this House that the NDP, His Majesty’s official opposition, is the party of Tommy Douglas, and it is the party that brought medicare to Canada and to Ontario. It seems most appropriate that I should begin my remarks with a quotation from Tommy Douglas. It reads, “I felt that no” child “should have to depend either for” their “leg or” their “life upon the ability of” their “parents to raise enough money to bring a first-class surgeon to” their “bedside”—and I could not agree more.

You see, Speaker, over the last number of years, both with this government and the government prior, we have seen an overt and deliberate destruction of medicare, but nothing like we’re seeing in Bill 60. This is taking it to the next level. This was not an election promise; this was not even an election threat by this government. This has been a crisis of Conservative design. This has been wrought by a staged process. And the COVID-19 pandemic has been often used and trotted out in this chamber as a convenient excuse to explain why they’re doing what they’re doing, to justify why they’re doing what they’re doing, to excuse why they’re doing what they’re doing. But nobody believes these lines.

What we’ve seen are cuts, year over year, to the health care system. In the second stage, we’ve seen a weakening of the workers: the people who provide that excellence of care, the people who have held up a system that has been cut and eroded and neglected year over year, leaving that in a situation where the only option is private, independent health facilities where people will profit off someone’s ill health.

Let me state here for the chamber: Publicly funded and publicly delivered health care is not a profit-making business, nor should it ever be.

In terms of the cuts to our system of care that we’ve seen, Ontario’s spending on health care is the lowest among all the provinces, despite the fact that we are the richest province. A solution, an antidote to this would be for this government to properly fund health care, like the other provinces—to not be the last, to not be bringing up the rear, to not be making it over the finish line after every single other province. Ontario could do better—but it’s not under this government and certainly not under the last government.

We also have the lowest number of health care workers per capita in Canada. The solution to that would be things like repealing Bill 124, treating nurses with fairness, treating nurses with respect, letting them have the opportunity of free collective bargaining, which is their charter right. Imagine that: being fair to nurses.

We hear a lot of words, but we don’t see the actions. We hear a lot of words from this government saying how they respect health care workers, and they ought to, but their actions tell an entirely different story, and when actions and words don’t match up, that should make everyone concerned.

We heard, for many years, this talk of hallway medicine, and this was very much a Liberal invention. We saw cuts year after year—not keeping up with inflation and not making sure people were getting the surgeries they needed. I remember, when I was first elected, people and seniors coming to my office, living in pain, waiting years and years for knee replacements and hip replacements, and they told me—and we could clearly see—it was a result of Liberal underfunding. It was a result of them placing arbitrary caps on the number of joint replacement surgeries that could be performed in operating rooms. Surgeons were ready, willing and able to do it. But they chose to let these people languish in pain. Pain changes a person. Pain makes you less than yourself. It affects everyone around you, and not only just that—not just the social, not just the emotional, but also the health impacts. If you’re not moving in the way that you should, if you are overcompensating, then it has a dramatic result on the rest of your body, and so your health gets worse and worse and worse. And that was all on the Liberal watch. But this government, after they took power, did not fix that. They maintained that status quo. They are responsible for that status quo. We hear a lot of talk about them saying the status quo is not working; they have upheld it. They have kept it the exact way it was under the Liberals and made it yet worse.

Back when the Liberals were in power, they would blame situations—they would blame the increasingly older demographic; they would say there’s a complexity of care. They would say that medicine is getting better, people are living longer—and all of these things are true, but those are not things you should blame. Those are wonderful things, but you should fund accordingly. You should make sure that people who have raised our families, built our communities, have the care they deserve when and where they need it—because they deserve it the most.

It’s ironic, too, that they’re actually blaming the medical system, which has helped these people live longer, and then not funding it. It’s a very strange situation.

Recently, the Financial Accountability Officer, an independent officer of this Legislature with whom I’m sure you’re all familiar, released a report showing that this government is going to underspend on health care by $5 billion over the next three years; they’re going to underspend on education by $1.1 billion over the next three years; they’re going to underspend on justice by $0.8 billion over the next three years. They’re going to be hoarding money. They’re going to be hiding money. They probably wouldn’t have admitted this had the officer not mentioned this—almost $20 billion in an unallocated contingency fund, so that it’s not subject to public scrutiny and they can spend it like drunken sailors wherever they wish, but obviously not on education, obviously not on health care. And yet we have their solution in Bill 60. They’ve maintained the status quo of cuts and underfunding and disrespect for workers, and their only solution is privatization.

This is all going according to plan, and that is very much my concern. This government has been responsible, over the last four and a half years, for maintaining a health care system that has been on its knees, and now this government is effectively kicking it in the stomach. It’s really disgraceful that the health care workers who have worked so incredibly hard throughout the pandemic, who have sacrificed, who have kept time away from their families, were living in fear, were absolutely working hour upon hour upon hour to make sure that we were healthy—and then they deliver them Bill 124. COVID-19 was a one-two punch, but this government made it yet worse. It’s almost impossible to think that this government could take a crisis that enveloped the entire world and make it yet worse with Bill 124.

I had the opportunity to travel with the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs across this province, and we heard from multiple delegations across many different industries, with many perspectives. I can tell you, Speaker, that not one delegation supported Bill 124—not one. Nobody said it was a good thing. Nobody was even agnostic. I think the words that are most apt and will always stick with me were that Bill 124 was “demeaning,” Bill 124 was “degrading”—but more than anything else, Bill 124 was “humiliating.” Nurses feel humiliated by this government.

Across all of these delegations, people want nurses and health care workers to be treated fairly. It should be easy. It should be a knee-jerk reaction. Small children understand the concept of fairness; it should not be difficult for this government. Yet this wage restraint, this targeted attack still is on the books. Even though the Supreme Court has struck it down, they still continue to appeal it. They’re wasting money on this ideological battle. It’s ridiculous.

Pay people what they’re worth. Treat them with respect. And be fair.