It is obviously deeply disturbing for all of us to hear stories about parents who have to wait with their children as they get admitted, as they are waiting for that bed to open up in the hospitals, but I also think it’s important for us to understand and appreciate that these are not new issues and not new problems. We were left, frankly, with a health system that was in dire need of investments. Our government has made those investments, and we continue to make those investments.

We are the first government since the last previous Conservative government to open up two new medical schools in the province of Ontario.

We will continue to do what is right and what is needed.

But, yes, I do find it disturbing when we hear stories about how parents have to wait for that bed to become available and the child to ultimately be in a hospital room.

We have put in place with our partners, including Ontario Health, constant contact with pediatric hospitals, Ontario Health, primary care practitioners, community health centres to make sure that everyone is working at full capacity so that we have access to the care we need.

I understand this is very challenging—when we see these surges, when we see increases in viruses such as RSV, when we see increases in influenza. What I would ask, respectfully, is that all of us make sure we are part of the solution by encouraging our constituents to get that flu vaccine. If you haven’t yet received your booster shot for COVID-19, do it. That will make a difference in our hospitals, in our primary care facilities, and it will ultimately protect our children.

As I said, our best defence is to make sure that people get that flu vaccine, that we have sufficient investments in place at pediatric hospitals and, frankly, in community hospitals.

I want to highlight some of the partnerships that have happened. We often talk about the highly skilled, exceptional workers who are in our pediatric hospitals, but we also have highly skilled, caring, compassionate health care workers in our community hospitals. Now we have partnerships where SickKids nurses are training community hospital nurses on what to expect and how to deal with patients with, for example, RSV. It’s working. We will continue to do that work.

When we talk about investments in the health care system, we are talking about true dollars. In terms of our most recent budget, in August, which this member opposite chose not to support, we invested an additional $5 billion in our health care system. We have already added 3,500 new hospital beds in the province of Ontario.

We will continue to work with all of our partners in hospitals, in primary care, in public health units.

Let me assure the member opposite and the people of Ontario that our government is making the investments that, bluntly, the Liberal government and the NDP government before did not do.

I respectfully have to disagree. There are some things that we have done and can do quickly. One of those things is through the College of Nurses of Ontario—directing them to, say, when people have applied who are internationally trained, get those assessments done and get them into the system quickly. We’ve seen that historic numbers are already practising in our province.

The member opposite talked about SickKids and a pediatric nurse—absolutely incredible work that SickKids are doing. Do you know what they’re doing right now? Those SickKids nurses are training other community health nurses. SickKids doctors are training and explaining how to deal with RSV so that community hospitals will have that same depth of experience, care and compassion that we see every single day in our hospitals across Ontario.

As I said, I’m not going to presuppose this afternoon’s debate. I look forward to it.

What I hear from the people of Ontario is, “How do we make sure that we have a publicly funded health care system that continues to provide exceptional care to the people of Ontario? How do we make sure that those individuals who, perhaps, do not have to have that operation in a hospital—for example, cataract surgery—can do that seamlessly in their own community?”

We’ll continue to do that work. We’ll continue to find those innovative solutions that will make sure that surgery backlogs, when they occur, are able to ultimately be dealt with in an appropriate manner, using your OHIP card.