Good morning, Speaker. It is an honour to rise today to pay tribute to the remarkable life of Mayor Hazel McCallion. Everyone in this House knows of the no-nonsense Hurricane Hazel, who served as the mayor of Mississauga for 36 years, ushering the city into a new era. Indeed, under her tenure, Mississauga transformed into Canada’s sixth-largest city.

For 101—just short of 102—years, she lived a dynamic and colourful life. Born in Port Daniel, Quebec, Hazel McCallion moved to Montreal as a child. In the early 1940s, she played professional hockey, one of the first women ever to do so, and that spirit stayed with her. Into her eighties, she carried a hockey stick in her car trunk on the off chance she came across a game. Hazel’s passion for hockey led her to do great work with the Ontario Women’s Hockey Association, advocating to grow women’s hockey as a sport.

Hazel also supported politicians of all different stripes with her singular goal of bringing prosperity to the city she loved. She once joked that she never considered running provincially or federally, because she’d wear out the carpet crossing the floor—not a problem I have, Speaker, but it speaks to her ability to work with everyone, regardless of political stripe.

Her straightforward approach led her to being a sympathetic ear to Prime Ministers, Premiers and mayors alike, and no matter her age, Hazel burst with energy. She rarely missed a local event, and even in political retirement she was an adviser to the Ontario government, first chancellor of the Hazel McCallion Campus of Sheridan College, and oversaw the Greater Toronto Airports Authority.

While we in this House may not agree on everything, we can all agree that Hazel left behind an extraordinary legacy. She was a trailblazer, an innovator, and she inspired many women to enter politics. She was small in stature, but she was a giant.

On behalf of Ontario’s official opposition, we are profoundly grateful to her family for the sacrifices they made to share her with the people of Mississauga and with all of us. Mayor McCallion will never be forgotten.

Good morning, Speaker. I’d like to welcome three Western University students, Veronika, Maria and Sarah, from the Women In House program.

I would also like to welcome Josiane, who is my new executive assistant at the Ministry of Francophone Affairs. I look forward to working with her.

I would also like to welcome, from the Ontario model Parliament, from the beautiful riding of Mississauga Centre, Rishi Jarajapu.

Mr. Speaker, if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent to allow members to make statements in remembrance of the late Mayor Hazel McCallion, fifth mayor of Mississauga, with five minutes allotted to His Majesty’s loyal opposition, five minutes allotted to the independent members as a group and five minutes allotted to His Majesty’s government.

Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to pay tribute to Her Worship the late mayor of Mississauga, Hazel McCallion. The word that keeps coming to mind when people remember Hurricane Hazel is “one-of-a-kind.” It is well earned. There has never been a public figure quite like the long-serving mayor of Mississauga, and I doubt there ever will be.

She was a trailblazer, feisty and fearless, beloved by her constituents, respected and feared in equal measure by those she crossed swords with. No Premier had to bestow strong-mayor powers on Hazel McCallion; she simply assumed them through sheer force of will, and for 12 consecutive terms—36 years, into her 94th year—she used them to change the face of her city.

I last spoke with Mayor McCallion in November when our paths crossed at duelling events, and she was very clear about what she thought about my position on the greenbelt. Speaker, there is no doubt I took it squarely on the chin, but despite that, I join my fellow MPPs and countless others in Ontario and across Canada in paying tribute to a remarkable woman and the remarkable life she lived. May we all aspire to Hazel McCallion’s unparalleled commitment to public service and to her community.

She will be missed, but she will never be forgotten, the one-of-a-kind mayor of Mississauga. May she rest in peace.

It is truly an honour to rise today and pay tribute to Her Worship, Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion. Hurricane Hazel served as Mississauga’s mayor from 1978 to 2014. She was one of the longest-serving mayors in Canadian history, and a symbol of strength and inspiration to a great many through her decades of service.

A business person, an athlete, a politician and a force of nature in all that she did, very few people have or will ever come close to what Hazel McCallion achieved in her lifetime, and she lived to be 101 years old, passing away just a couple of days shy of her 102nd birthday, which is February 14, Hazel McCallion Day. Her accomplishments are reflected in the honours that she received, which include the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario, the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee and Diamond Jubilee Medals, and an honorary doctorate of law degree from the University of Toronto and Ryerson University.

Hazel’s story is closely connected to the village of Streetsville, where she put down roots and settled with her husband, Sam McCallion, in 1951 to raise their three children, Peter, Linda and Paul. This was also where her remarkable political career began to take shape.

Beginning in 1964, she served the community on the Streetsville Planning Board and was later elected as mayor of Streetsville in 1970. Hazel was a true public servant and a mayor of the people, who dedicated her life to tirelessly and selflessly serving her community and her city.

Her first act of courage, in 1979, was to evacuate safely the residents of Mississauga with the Mississauga train derailment. Over 200,000 residents were saved from this explosion.

Throughout a period that spanned 36 years, she oversaw a process of amalgamation and growth, and not only put Mississauga on the map, but transformed the place from a small city just west of Toronto to Canada’s seventh-largest city.

I want to say a few words now about the significance of what Hazel McCallion meant to generations of women, and so many are in the gallery today for this tribute. To say that she was a mentor or an exemplar would be a considerable understatement. I got to meet Hurricane Hazel very early in my career in business while at Bell Canada, and she left an impression. Hazel had a rare drive that could be seen early on in her passion for hockey, which she played from the time when she was a young girl. This was a space where she challenged the status quo of male dominance, and for that, she will always be remembered as a trailblazer in the world of Canadian women’s hockey. Unwavering in her belief that having more women in leadership roles would make an important difference in our communities, she went on to become a force that helped propel women all across Canada into politics. She was a champion of the people, a true inspiration and a catalyst for change.

As anyone who spent any significant time around her knows, you never had to guess what Hazel was thinking. She spoke her mind. She did her homework, and it became well known that she expected everyone she worked with to do theirs. Hazel McCallion was a voice that demanded to be heard, and she made sure that she was heard. But far beyond that, she also earned the respect that won the admiration of political leaders from all levels of Canadian politics. She left an enduring mark on her community and the city of Mississauga, and she will be greatly missed by all who had the privilege of knowing her.

My deepest condolences to Hazel’s family, especially her children Peter, Linda and Paul, and her granddaughter Erika. Her legacy will remain with us and be an inspiration to all for many generations to come.

J’ai une question pour la députée de Mississauga-Centre. J’aimerais dire, premièrement, que c’est un plaisir de servir dans la législature avec elle, avec toute son expérience, parce que c’est très important pour nous.

J’ai déjà posé cette question à une autre députée; j’aimerais poser la même question à la députée de Mississauga-Centre. Dans ma circonscription il y a deux docteurs qui s’appellent Tayfour et Emara. Ils sont bien respectés. Ce sont des médecins qui pratiquent la chirurgie de la cataracte. Le projet de loi devant nous offre la chirurgie de la cataracte avec le D^r Tayfour et le D^r Emara, et les patients paient avec leur carte OHIP et non pas avec une carte de crédit. La députée de Mississauga-Centre soutient-elle cela? Votera-t-elle pour cela?

I am sharing my time with the member from Mississauga–Malton.

Thank you to the Minister of Health for introducing the Your Health Act, 2023. We’re moving in the right direction to improve medical care in our province. I am privileged to rise for the second reading of the Your Health Act, 2023, and to speak on behalf of my constituents in Richmond Hill.

The legislation represents a significant step forward for Ontario, building on our government’s commitment to breaking down barriers and ensuring that every Ontarian has access to quality health care and services when and where they need them. We have to provide the right care at the right time.

As I’m sitting here listening to the presentation just now, I feel that there are a lot of misunderstandings. I agree with the member for Eglinton–Lawrence saying that it doesn’t seem that they really read the legislation clearly. There’s a lot of information in here, and they were trying to say something which was totally different.

We’re saying that we are not going to do the status quo. Basically, we have to find the solutions to give the best health care for Ontarians. We are caring for all the patients, the people that need our support in health care.

The Your Health Act, 2023, is a bold and innovative piece of legislation that aims to address the long-standing challenges of our health care system. It recognizes that Ontario’s health care system must be more responsive and flexible to meet the changing needs of our communities, including an aging population and a growing demand for surgeries.

The Your Health Act, 2023, focuses on several key objectives, including making it easier and faster for people to connect to the convenient care closer to home, enhancing quality standards and oversight and protecting the stability of the health care workforce in public hospitals and other health care settings.

One of the most important aspects of the Your Health Act, 2023, is integration of community surgical and diagnostic centres into our health care system. These centres will help reduce wait times and improve patient experiences, allowing people to access the surgeries they need to maintain a high quality of life.

I have a friend who has been calling me and telling me that her mother has been suffering from knee and hip pain, and she has been waiting for three months and still cannot get on to having the surgery that they aim at or are planning to have. Part of that is because of the pandemic and part of that is because the surgeries have been lined up for so long. The same way, I have somebody, a constituent from my riding, also writing to me that she was diagnosed by the family doctor and she’s waiting for the MRI and CT scan. Can you imagine? The MRI and CT scan can really diagnose what she will have and the treatment that she needs. Not only will she be suffering—all her family members have been suffering.

If we would be able to move up all these things faster, not only will they relieve the pain faster, they will have the results of what they need to take care of the problem. Hospitals will also have the room to take care of other surgeries and more severe treatments that we need for our Ontarians.

The Your Health Act, 2023, will also mandate that every community surgical and diagnostic centre must have a process for receiving and responding to the patient complaints. This process will include the documentation of all complaints. That’s why I don’t know why the opposition party is so concerned, because it’s made very clear: If patients are not able to have their complaints addressed through the centre, they will be able to seek help from the Patient Ombudsman.

The act includes community surgical and diagnostic centres under the oversight of Ontario’s Patient Ombudsman, who will report on any patient complaints and will adjust quality and oversight controls as needed to be responsive to these concerns. This will ensure that patients are always heard and their feedback is taken seriously.

Madam Speaker, another critical component of the Your Health Act, 2023, is protecting the stability of doctors, nurses and other health care workers. The act will mandate several components of a proposed centre’s application to protect the stability of health care workers at the public hospitals and other health care settings. This includes the requirement to submit a detailed staffing model, including evidence of its sustainability.

Consistent with the Canada Health Act, the Your Health Act, 2023, will put into place strong measures to ensure that Ontarians will always receive insured services using their OHIP card and never their credit card. These measures mean that all insured services must be provided without extra charge to the patient. Under Premier Ford, this will not happen. We will only pay by the OHIP card and never by the credit card.

The Your Health Act, 2023, will also strengthen protections for personal health information and data. The act will require community surgical and diagnostic centres to implement strong privacy and security protocols to protect patient information. This will help to ensure that patient privacy is respected and that their personal health information is protected from unauthorized access or disclosure.

I might have a lot more to say, but I will leave that with my great member to continue with the following presentation.

Madam Speaker, before I start, I want to acknowledge that my good seatmate Daisy Wai is doing an incredible job. She deserves a big round of applause.

Madam Speaker, before I present my remarks about the bill, I just want to acknowledge that today is Pink Shirt Day, aimed at showing empathy and understanding towards children facing bullying. I’m wearing pink to stand in solidarity against bullying, with a dream of a world where everyone supports each other.

In my riding of Mississauga–Malton, I want to acknowledge that we have a great organization, the Naseeha youth helpline, that provides a safe space to youngsters facing challenges like bullying in their day to day, and I’m grateful to them for their hard work.

Now over to the amazing bill that I’ll be talking about, Madam Speaker. Before I get into the debate and talk about what this great bill is going to be doing, I want to share with you something that we all in the caucus on this side believe in: that the health care sector is vital to the health and well-being of everyone in Ontario. With the introduction of the Your Health Act, 2023, we’re continuing our journey to bring down wait times in our hospitals and improve our excellent health care system, something we heard in 2018 and something we heard in 2022 again. We will continue to make sure that we will continue to work on this. We can’t wait to break the status quo, as we already know.

Let’s take a look at some of the data. The medium wait time for a specialist appointment in the province of Ontario is 8.8 weeks. The wait time for a CT scan is 5.5 weeks. For having an MRI, it’s 11.5 weeks. Anyone needing cancer surgery has to wait for four weeks. The wait time for radiation therapy is four and a half weeks. It’s 193 days for hip replacement surgery and 209 days for knee replacement surgery. Madam Speaker, when you have pain, you want to get rid of pain. You want to make sure the system is in place to make sure that the system can take care of you.

On the other side, we know we have a labour shortage. We need health care workers. If you really look at what we need—and we talk about this—we have a problem where we know that the people of Ontario are suffering. And when we know there is a shortage of people and the labour shortage is there in the health care sector, the obvious solution is not to keep it as the status quo but to work and break that. That is exactly what this bill is doing.

We don’t need to wait; we need to take action and we need to take this challenge head-on. That is why—again, obviously the other side is talking about what we’ve done, so let’s talk about what we have done. We are on the way to building 30,000 new long-term-care beds by 2029 while growing our health care workforce by 60,000 new nurses and 8,000 new physicians since 2018. We need to fill up our health care workforce and help those with credentials get into jobs faster than ever before.

I’ll give you an example, Madam Speaker. I always talk about it. I am a first-generation immigrant. Before coming, when I was talking to my family and my wife and she was talking about Ontario and Canada—this is the land of opportunities. You want to come here and build a career, and when you have those credentials, when you have experience back home, you want to make sure you continue serving the community with the asset that God has gifted you and you have achieved through your hard work. That is what we’re doing here in this province. We are making sure through this bill, Your Health Act, if passed, that people across Canada, the people who move into different provinces from across the globe who are trained in the health care sector, can begin working the day after they move to Ontario.

I’ll give you a small example. I know a resident from Mississauga–Malton who moved into my riding of Malton with her husband, who is an incredible IT professional. She was working in Alberta as a nurse for over three years. All of a sudden we hear that there is a need for health care professionals. She has all that is required, including the Canadian experience, but she’s in Ontario now, and she has to wait.

What is this bill doing? It’s giving a hope and a dream to those people who have the ability to work and give back to this community. This bill will make sure they will be able to do it.

This game-changing move will help address the labour shortage in our hospitals and health care services. Madam Speaker, as you know, 2022 was a record-breaking year for new nurses in Ontario, with over 12,000 new nurses registered and another 30,000 nurses studying at an Ontario college or university.

Our government is also working with the College of Nurses of Ontario to break down the barriers to train up to 5,000 internationally educated nurses so that they can register and practise in Ontario and give back to the community.

With this new as-of-right rule, Ontario will become the first province in Canada to allow health care workers registered in other provinces and territories to start working in their field immediately. And Madam Speaker, I can guarantee you that when we are going to do this, other provinces are going to follow our lead, and they will do the needful the same way.

Not only this, but we have invested nearly $5 million in the Michener Institute for nurses wanting to upskill to work in critical care areas of hospitals. By spring 2023, close to 600 registered nurses will have completed their upskilling education and will be able and ready to give back.

Our government has also made the most significant investment in expanding medical education in 15 years by adding 160 undergrad and 295 postgrad positions and creating a new medical school, which, as my colleague from Mississauga Centre talked about, is going to be in the region of Peel and is going to serve the whole of Ontario.

Every time we talk about the labour shortage, of course I have to talk about the Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development, a champion for workers who is doing an incredible job.’

Interjections.

The member for Mississauga–Malton.