Speaker, London West parents are worried. One mother wrote to me: “Parents are looking for guidance from our leadership right now and we are getting nothing. As a parent to a three-year-old son, I am terrified when I see the news about pediatric ICU beds.” Another said, “The state of our health care system, particularly pediatrics, is horrifying. As the mom of a toddler who has been sick with COVID, hand foot and mouth, and pink eye in the past six weeks, I am terrified.... While we have been lucky to not have to go to the ER yet, I am fearful of what we will experience when we arrive.” What she will experience at London’s Children’s Hospital is a stressful hours-long wait in a crowded emergency room that was built to handle about 100 visits per day but is being overwhelmed by 200 or more sick children—double the usual volume.

Parents of teens admitted to ICU now face the prospect of admission to an adult ICU bed, which has ICU nurses concerned about taking on teen ICU patients without specialized pediatric training.

Children’s Hospital emergency room director Dr. Rod Lim warned, “It may get worse before it gets better. I think November and December are going to be tough.”

Speaker, London parents are asking me, “What is this government doing about this crisis?” From the budget that was tabled yesterday, my answer is, clearly, “Not enough.”

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.

My question is to the Minister of Health. Children’s hospitals are in crisis. At SickKids, care departments are running at 127% to 145% above capacity. And it’s not just SickKids; across Ontario, pediatric hospitals and care units have reached maximum capacity. What is this government’s plan to help children’s hospitals meet the increased demand for care?

My question is for the Premier. My constituent Lindsay’s youngest son, who is three years old, recently had to be admitted to an ICU for respiratory distress, requiring high-level BiPAP support. A few days after her son was discharged, Lindsay had to take him back to the hospital again for assistance with his breathing. In both instances, she was told by the overworked health care staff that they would like to keep him for observation, but there were no beds. They were sent home and told to come back if it got worse.

Mr. Speaker, this is a nightmare for parents. One ER doctor has asked this Minister of Health, “Did you know that we’re resuscitating three to four kids at a time now?” We are seeing a wave of respiratory illness in young children, with limited capacity to properly treat patients, and yet there is no new funding for health care in the fall economic statement.

How can the government justify this, after everything that children and parents have endured during this pandemic? Why will you not acknowledge that six months past their first budget, additional funding is needed to address this crisis, because the crisis is real?

Adding more pediatric ICU beds means investing in training and retaining—this is the missing part from your fall economic statement—and paying health care workers a fair wage. When will you repeal Bill 124, which is a wage-suppression piece of legislation? It is driving people out of this province. At the very least, Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Health needs to address the repealing of Bill 124. It should have been in the fall economic statement.