If you seek it, you will find unanimous consent for the House to observe a moment of silence in remembrance of Morgan Russell and Devon Northrup of the South Simcoe Police Service, who were tragically killed in the line of duty on October 11.

I will take one second, as a member of the class of 2006, to welcome back the member from Nepean. Welcome back, sister—courage.

Speaker, since the beginning of this year, Ontario’s ERs have been closed more than 100 times. Those closures are happening in rural areas, places like Chesley. Their ER is closed until the end of November because of a shortage of nurses. Just a few weeks ago, most of Chesley’s residents packed into a meeting to fight for their community hospital. This government has left Ontarians with no credible plan of action to address the crisis in our health care system.

For the Premier: Why has the Minister of Health neglected her duty during this difficult period?

There are consequences when health care isn’t there when people need it. Recently, Eleanor wrote to me about the passing of her daughter, Amelia. Amelia was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer, and she was diagnosed late, with her screening pushed from November to February. By then, her cancer was so advanced, the only thing doctors could do was palliative chemotherapy.

Eleanor is a retired nurse. She knew that Amelia’s diagnosis was likely fatal, but with earlier screening and better access to care, Eleanor believes Amelia would have lived more than the five short months from diagnosis.

Speaker, these are real-life impacts of the government’s inaction on health care. Will the Premier and minister commit to meaningfully invest in our health care workers so there are no more stories like Amelia’s?

In September, a four-year-old child with a broken arm was left waiting more than four days for minor surgery at McMaster Children’s Hospital. These types of delays can have dramatic impacts on growing kids.

Speaker, these tragic stories are driven by staffing shortages that are now commonplace. How much worse does the crisis in our health care system have to get before the minister and the Premier give nurses and front-line health care workers the support that they need?

From the beautiful riding of Essex, please welcome Mr. Daniel Allen, who just yesterday was invested with the Order of Ontario, and his wife, Pamela Allen.

After decades of underfunding, this government has made unprecedented investments in our health care system. Health care funding has increased 6.2% year over year, the largest increase on record, including over $5 billion in base funding, which is an 8.9% increase. No previous government has increased base funding by such a high amount year over year.

We have added over 3,500 new hospital beds, and we are adding an additional 3,000. We’re in the process of building and upgrading 58,000 long-term-care beds. And we’ve got a $40-billion investment in 52 new hospitals and additions, and $1 billion for home and community care expansions.

We’re investing in our health care system. We’re going to make sure that Ontarians have the resources they need in hospitals and other health care facilities so Ontarians get the care that they deserve.

Our government has been focused on ensuring that Ontarians have the care that they need, where they need it. Ontario Health—Cancer Care Ontario is the government’s adviser on cancer and the renal system and flows more than $2 billion to hospitals to support direct patient care every year.

We’re working very hard with Ontario Health, which oversees our overall cancer strategy, to make sure that we have the critical programs we need and the services we need to make sure that Ontarians, like Amelia, get the care that they need in a timely way.

Certainly, we’re making significant investments to address the province’s surgical backlog. We’ve also dedicated $6.5 million to pediatric hospitals to support them to ramp up surgeries. We’ve also provided $4.6 million in more funding for hospitals to add additional acute care beds: nine at CHEO—10 acute care beds there as well—and three ICU beds at Sick Children’s Hospital.

The member for Barrie–Innisfil has informed me she has a point of order.

I’ll ask members to please rise.

The House observed a moment’s silence.

I am delighted to welcome Dr. Collin Clarke, who is here today from London West. He is the proud father of today’s page captain, Pearl Clarke. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I want to wish a warm welcome to my nephew Marshall, who is part of our current page contingent. Thank you for being here, Marshall. I also want to acknowledge his mom, Sarah, and brother Bryce, who are watching from the gallery upstairs.

My guests are not here yet but I’m going to introduce them anyways because they are on their way. I want to welcome Chief Mary Duckworth of Caldwell First Nation, Larry Sault and Ian Duckworth and Doug Heil, who are councillors with Caldwell First Nation. When they come, welcome to Queen’s Park.

I think the member opposite would agree that this is certainly a policing matter and not a political matter. This is a federal commission which is looking into the federal government’s invocation of the federal Emergencies Act. We are providing assistance to the commission by submitting key cabinet documents and of course ensuring that witnesses are available to the commission.

Thank you to the member opposite for the question. As I said before, nothing is more important than protecting the health and well-being of all Ontarians, especially our children. That’s why, as part of our significant investment to address the province’s surgical backlog of $880 million, we also dedicated $6.5 million to pediatric hospitals to support them in the ramp-up of surgeries. We’ve also provided $4.6 million more in funding to hospitals to add nine additional acute-care beds at CHEO and 10 acute-care beds, as well as three ICU beds, at Sick Children’s Hospital.

This government will spare no expense to make sure the people of this province, especially our children, continue to have access to the high-quality care that they need and expect.

And I just want to quote from a Toronto Star article by Megan Ogilvie. Dr. Ronald Cohn, the CEO of Sick Children’s Hospital said that the “hospital will always have capacity for the most critically ill children in the province who need the specialized care” that only Sick Children’s Hospital can offer.

So, according to Dr. Cohn, the resources are there. We’re going to make sure the resources are there because we want to make sure that our children in Ontario and all other Ontarians have the support they need.

My question is to the Minister of Health. In August, I asked your government to help SickKids hospital address their staffing shortages, their $45-million funding shortfall and their growing surgery wait-list. SickKids has a surgery wait-list that has over 3,400 children waiting beyond the clinically acceptable time for their necessary surgery, putting their long-term health at risk.

Minister, three months later, the crisis is getting worse. On Thanksgiving weekend, SickKids ICUs were at full capacity. My question is, why is your government failing to help SickKids meet the demand for care?

Minister, this is my question: What is your government going to do—concretely do—to ensure that all departments, including the ER and the ICUs, have the funding to fully staff their departments so that the health care needs of children can be met?

This mission was an opportunity to re-engage with trusted partners in South Korea and Japan. It was great to meet with LG Energy Solution in Korea to personally thank them for their $5-billion investment in Windsor. In fact, we were in Windsor last week and saw the massive site, as their 4.5-million-square-foot building is under way. Thousands are working there during construction, and 2,500 men and women will go to work there for the very first time at that plant.

We also used the opportunity to engage with a number of other Korean suppliers for the historic LG investment in Japan. We met with Toyota and Honda where we personally thanked Honda for their $1.4-billion investment in Alliston.

We’re continuing to build on the $16 billion of Ontario auto investments in the last 20 months, and now even more companies know that if they’re in the EV business, they need to be in Ontario.

To reply, the government House leader.

Government House leader.

Government House leader.

The parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Health to reply.

The member for Eglinton–Lawrence to reply.

My question is for the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade. The minister was recently in Japan and South Korea to meet with international investors in the automotive and EV battery sector. Ontario already has a number of Japanese and Korean manufacturers employing thousands of people across the province. Speaker, two of these manufacturers are in the riding of Simcoe–Grey—Honda and Nippon Sheet Glass—employing hundreds of residents.

Can the minister please provide us with an update on those business meetings?

Can the minister please tell us more about what these Japanese and South Korean companies had to say about investing in Ontario?

My question is for the Premier. Good morning, Premier.

On September 19, the federal Public Order Emergency Commission requested an interview with the Premier and Minister Jones on the use of the federal Emergencies Act this past winter. But the Premier and minister have refused this request, and all subsequent requests, to be interviewed or testify before the commission. Speaker, why did the Premier and minister refuse the commission’s request?

That’s not leadership. We had a crisis in our community, the federal Emergencies Act was declared, and this government is content to shunt this as a policing matter or put forward its senior public officials to testify. The Premier and the minister responsible—then-Solicitor General—are absent.

So, left with no other choice, yesterday the commission issued the Premier and the health minister an official summons to testify. I’m going to quote from the summons: The commission believes that “Premier Ford and Minister Jones would have evidence, particularly within their knowledge, that would be relevant to the commission’s mandate.” That’s the end of the quote, Speaker. But this Premier and that minister are intent instead on refusing to testify before the commission, calling instead for a judicial review of their summons. I have a simple question, through you: What are you trying to hide?

I want to remind this House that this House is responsible, and they need to be aware of what happened to people in our community in Ottawa—

So it is in the public interest for this Premier and that minister to appear before the commission. We have a lot of healing to do as a country to make sure we can prevent anything like this from ever happening again. But accountability starts at the top. Will the Premier and minister stop hiding, come to Ottawa, and testify before the commission?

Interjections.

Here’s what we heard from the EV sector in Japan and South Korea: They told us that in this world filled with turmoil, they view Ontario as a sea of calm—a stable, a reliable, a trusted jurisdiction. They also said Ontario is viewed as a safe place—safe for their employees, safe for their families. They know that Ontario has everything they need for success: a full EV value chain. That includes critical minerals and refining, resources traditionally they rely on from China and Russia; 94% clean energy, very different from making a battery in Kentucky, where there is 6% clean energy. We have skilled trades, 65,000 STEM grads, AI and quantum computing, and public health—end to end, everything an EV company needs to be successful. That’s the reputation Ontario now has around the world.

I want to thank the member opposite and welcome her as the new education critic for the official opposition.

Mr. Speaker, our government will not waver from keeping kids in class. We believe that is the most consequential action we can take to support the very children the member opposite speaks of today. How we do that, Speaker, is through Ontario’s Plan to Catch Up, a $600-million net investment this year, compared to last year, of increased spending to support publicly funded schools; the largest tutoring expansion of its kind, which our government just extended into the next year of $175 million, benefiting over 170,000 students in this province as we speak.

We recognize, as every parent knows, that there has been real learning loss, a phenomenon that has been seen in every region of the western world. That’s why we feel so strongly that we need to increase investments in public education, part of that with the hiring of 5,000 more staff this year, in addition to helping parents through this economic difficulty. Our Premier and our government will do both: invest in families and invest in our publicly funded education system.

I appreciate the question from the member. The member will know, in particular with respect to Bill 7, we had had acute-care facilities across this country for many, many, many years asking that in particular long-term care become a partner in helping to address ALC issues. For many years we could not do that because the investments were not made in long-term care. But that changed in 2018 when the government made significant investments—over $13 billion—in long-term care. We’re doing them across the province, in urban, rural and remote communities.

I was up in Kenora with the Minister of Indigenous Affairs and Northern Development. We were reviewing the potential allocation of a new long-term-care home there.

But at the same time, Bill 7 helps ensure better care for people closer to home. I think that the honourable member would agree that it is in our best interest to work to ensure that people who are in hospital get the best quality of care possible—

Thank you to the member from Flamborough–Glanbrook for the question. Under Premier Ford’s leadership, our government is getting shovels in the ground to build more transit in Hamilton and across the province.

Just a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of joining the Premier and my colleagues from Hamilton to announce that we are moving ahead with building the new Confederation GO station. The new station will connect Hamilton with the GO train network, eventually offering two-way, all-day GO service along the Lakeshore West line to Toronto and Niagara Falls. It will also provide better connections to existing transit and GO bus services in these communities.

Speaker, with projects like the Confederation GO station and the Hamilton LRT already under way, our PC government has a plan to get the people of Hamilton connected, and we are getting it done.

Speaker, this government is focused on an agenda of prosperity, and we are moving full steam ahead with our historic plans to build and expand public transit, because now is not the time for inaction. Our unprecedented investments to get critical infrastructure projects like the Confederation GO station built will stimulate future growth and job creation. By 2041, over 100,000 people and 63,000 jobs will be located within five kilometres of this new station. Under Premier Ford’s leadership, we are connecting more people to jobs, housing and transit in one of the fastest-growing regions of the province. This will unlock access to Ontario’s full potential and set the foundation for long-term economic growth in our province.