SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
October 25, 2022 10:15AM
  • Oct/25/22 11:30:00 a.m.

Thank you to the member opposite for telling us about Zoe and her mother. As the member opposite knows, we’ve made significant investments to try to clear the surgical backlog across the board as part of our $3.3-billion investment in the hospital sector. We’ve also dedicated $300 million to reduce surgical backlogs, part of the broader investment of $880 million to reduce surgical backlogs, and specifically we’ve made investments at pediatric hospitals like CHEO, as I’ve said before, because nothing is more important than the well-being of our children.

So I’m sorry to hear about Zoe’s wait and certainly we should make sure that Zoe gets care as quickly as possible. But that’s why we’re investing significantly to address the backlog that has come out as a result of COVID and why we’ve also had dedicated funding of $6.5 billion for pediatric hospitals specifically to address these types of concerns.

But as I said before, we’ve provided $4.6 million more in funding for those hospitals to add an additional nine acute-care beds at CHEO and 10 acute-care beds and three ICU beds at SickKids Hospital. Our government, as we work on addressing short-term stressors on the system, continues to advance meaningful reforms to build a more resilient, patient-centred and integrated system, and we really want to make sure that patients like Zoe do not have to wait in the future.

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