My question is to the Minister of Health. The Minister of Health has risen in this House countless times over the past few weeks saying that the government had “prepared” for the surge in respiratory illnesses. And yet, just this past weekend, CHEO in Ottawa has had to call in the Red Cross to help. That is not what a well-resourced and prepared health care system looks like, Speaker.

Does the minister think it’s acceptable for a hospital to have to call in the Red Cross?

Ontarians deserve a health care system that provides the care they need when they need it. CHEO has already had to cancel surgeries, open a second pediatric ICU and transfer teenage patients to adult hospitals. It’s now clear that this government hasn’t done enough.

Why didn’t the minister do more to ensure that the province was prepared for the respiratory season?

The FAO has shown that in the first half of the year, the government underspent in health care by nearly a billion dollars. To add insult to injury, the government plans to appeal the ruling on Bill 124, which has already driven countless health care workers out of our system. The government continues to underfund and degrade our publicly funded health care system.

Why is the minister letting the situation in our hospitals get so bad?

Why is the minister betraying the public’s trust by removing these farmland protections and giving away this immensely valuable public investment to powerful land speculators like the De Gasperis family?

The Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve Act was passed in 2005 to reverse this betrayal of public trust. Why is the minister repealing the act and once again betraying the public trust?

The minister is about to remove protections from the preserve, giving billions of dollars’ worth of public wealth to private interests. Why is the minister enabling this betrayal of the public trust?

Thanks to the member opposite for the question. I appreciate the opportunity to respond to some of the information that is not accurate in the member opposite’s statement.

We know the importance of ensuring that investments continue, the types of investments that we’ve seen, including in three new hospitals in the Niagara region: the West Lincoln Memorial Hospital, the new Niagara south hospital and the Hotel Dieu Shaver hospital. We’ve seen two new palliative care expansions, 20 new palliative care beds being brought into our area. We’ve seen a new nursing program launch at Niagara College, as well as an expanded nursing program doubling the amount of nursing graduates from Brock University.

These are the types of investments that, under the leadership of Premier Ford and this team, we are making in Niagara to ensure that each and every patient in our region has access to the world-class care that they deserve. The opposition had years to make that happen with the Liberals and they didn’t—

Interjections.

I want to thank the member for her presentation. You know when you have finished an hour and you run out of time talking about this that there are significant issues that need to be addressed. So I want to thank her for her presentation, which was informative.

My question is regarding the Premier’s recent comment just a little while ago, I believe, when he came to the children’s hospital in Ottawa. I’m sure everyone knows that CHEO had to recently call in the Red Cross to help, and the Premier said that he is glad that they’re thinking outside the box. Instead of taking responsibility and actually doing something, he is praising the hospital.

I have heard pediatricians talk about the crisis and talk about how we don’t just need beds but we need to have the human resources. We need to have the nurses, the doctors, the people who are in the hospital to support them.

So my question to the member is: What are some of the things that we could have seen in this budget that would have actually helped address our health care crisis?

I want to thank the member opposite for the question. I think it’s critical that we all understand what a challenging time we’ve had, not just over the past two years. I served for six years on the board of Credit Valley Hospital, from 2006 to 2012, and I saw day in and day out the challenges that they faced, whether it was in the ER—often always clogged up—right through to what’s happening on the floor of, and in, the ORs and the struggles that we had to face to find the right human resources for the right positions.

We’ve had many years, even decades, of a lack of the right type of investments in our health care system. But we’re making it right. We’re getting it done by making sure that we get more people into nursing, more people as PSWs, so that as we go forward, we don’t have to face this crisis—ongoing—forever because it’s been an issue for many, many years in the past.

I know the member opposite cares about not just her community but communities across this province. But you know what? This government, this Premier, this Minister of Health and everybody here is making sure we have a lot more people that are qualified. We’ll bring more immigrants here. We’ll have more people trained. We’ll teach them right in the schools that this is a great career.

But she raises a very important issue: Retention, or finding nurses, physicians and other health care workers to be in remote areas or rural areas has been difficult, all the time. Many of them come from those communities, but they have to come to learn about nursing perhaps in the city of Toronto, and many of them don’t go back because, as she said, sometimes they will find their partner right here in the GTA. So then they stay here, and then their communities are without those health care professionals they desperately need.

This program is a great way to counter that. Tuition costs, cost of books, costs for accommodation will be covered by this government, so that we can help retain those nurses in those areas where they so desperately need people, as we’re hearing. The members opposite are the ones who are often saying this: Where they don’t have the health care professionals, they have to come to the GTA to get the health care needs that they require. We will make that difference. We’ll get nurses up there into rural and northern communities, so that they have—