Thank you to the member opposite for the question. Unlike previous governments in Ontario, which were supported by the opposition NDP, our government has taken many steps to improve the physician supply, including expanding medical education, Ontario’s international medical graduate program, using other non-physician health care providers to provide team-based primary care, the northern and rural recruitment initiative and the northern Ontario physician retention initiative as well as locum programs.

I know you’re speaking about your situation in your community in the north. We’ve expanded education for medical students, as I said, including at Lakeridge hospital, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine as well. And we have those northern initiatives, as I indicated, that help provide physicians in the north. We’re certainly going to continue to work on improving the physician supply in northern communities and all other communities in Ontario.

Thank you again to the member opposite. I haven’t seen the letter that you referred to, but our government is responding. As I was saying, the things we’re doing in the north include the Northern and Rural Recruitment and Retention Initiative program, which began earlier but offers financial incentives to physicians to establish practices in rural and northern Ontario, and they grant about $80,000 to $117,000, paid out over four years, while a physician establishes a practice there. They’re available in any community defined as rural using the rurality index, and in all five of Ontario’s northern urban rural reference centres: Timmins, North Bay, Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay.

We have also got the Northern Physician Retention Initiative, which provides eligible physicians in northern Ontario with a $7,000 retention incentive paid at the end of the fiscal year if they continue to practise full-time in northern Ontario beyond an initial four years.

We are going to keep working on initiatives to make sure we have the physician supply we need in the north and elsewhere.