Mr. Speaker, I stand before you with a grim realization: Our children are being let down by this government.

It has been said that “the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” All of us bore witness to this government’s failure of our elders in long-term-care homes during the pandemic. Most recently, this government took aim at our lowest-paid education workers by trying to trample on their charter rights. And now it is our children who our government is failing, and they don’t have a voice to advocate for themselves.

We’re grappling with over-capacity pediatric ICUs, ERs and critical care that are overwhelmed, kids in adult ICUs, and surgeries being delayed. This summer, when this government was nowhere to be found, I called for the government to take measures to prepare for the upcoming respiratory season. And yet the fall vaccination campaign was non-existent and the plan to stay open has not eased the emergency care crisis in the slightest.

I would be remiss if I did not address the current state of the Ontario Autism Program. Under this government, the OAP’s wait-list for core services has more than doubled, skyrocketing from 28,000 in 2018 to 57,000 in 2022. That is enough children to fill the Rogers Centre and then some. This government needs to be transparent with families. How many children are registered? How many are wait-listed? And how many are receiving core services? I eagerly wait for those answers.

Look, the member will know full well that this government has been taking leadership right from the beginning of the pandemic, even in instances where the members opposite refused to work with the government to ensure that Ontarians’ health and safety was put first. Every single time that we put a measure in place to improve health care in the province of Ontario, they have voted against it. Bringing on new nurses: They voted against it. When we brought on significant funding for our small and medium-sized hospitals, they voted against it. The most rapid buildout of long-term care in the history of this province, if not the entire country: They have voted against it, Mr. Speaker. We have brought forward incredible vaccinations in this province. We have led North America in terms of vaccinations. We have led the entire North America in terms of our battling of COVID, and in every single instance, they have voted against it.

We will continue to work hard, working with the Chief Medical Officer of Health to ensure the health and safety of all the people in the province of Ontario, regardless of whether the Leader of the Opposition wants to work with us or not.

Since the beginning of this pandemic, there is nothing that the Premier hasn’t done to protect our children and our most vulnerable. From the very beginning, when we had no vaccines in the province of Ontario or worldwide, we made sure that the initiatives that we did, the programs that we put in place protected our most vulnerable, protected our most senior, protected our children. We will continue to do that as a government because we understand that when you make investments in people, you make investments in community. We’ve done that from the start.

As the House leader mentioned, the investments that we have made in health care in the province of Ontario are truly historic, and yet when we asked members of the opposition to stand with us and work with us, they refused and they voted against our initiatives.

We’ll make the investments. We’ll continue to do what the Chief Medical Officer of Health recommends, because we know it’s the right thing—

When we make the investments, when we make sure that vaccines are available, we see results, and we have. We have seen the numbers of people who stepped up and said, “I want to protect my elderly,” “I want to go visit my senior in a long-term-care home,” “I want to be part of the solution.” Part of the solution, frankly, is making sure that your vaccines are up to date. We’ve done that, we’ve made those investments, and results prove that they have made a difference.

As I said, we will continue to make those investments to ensure that the people of Ontario have vaccines, have boosters, have flu shots when they need them. We’ll do that work. I’m not going to take any lessons from the member opposite, who refuses to support—

Our early efforts—of course, we anticipated a surge in pediatric and took early steps to support the challenging fall virus season. We’ve already done early operational guidance. We’ve provided support fall and winter surge preparedness in pediatric capacity. We saw that in CHEO. We see now SickKids nurses who are doing education to ensure that nurses in other community hospitals know, anticipate and are prepared for an uptake that we have anticipated and we are working towards.

Speaker, I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: We planned for this expected surge. We have worked with our clinicians, with our hospital leaders, to make sure that they have the resources to properly assess where children and adults need to be in our health care system when they need that care.

That work is ongoing. Those investments in emergency departments, in over 11,900 new health human resources—these are people who are working in our systems today in the province of Ontario who did not have a job in health care before the pandemic. We’ve made sure that those investments translate into ensuring that when we see surges, whether they are for RSV, flu or other COVID-related pandemic issues, we have the capacity and will continue to serve those parents and children.