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.

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?

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.

This government is committed to unlocking Ontario’s full economic potential by bringing jobs back to this province. Ontarians need opportunities to participate in our growing economy and ensure a prosperous future for themselves and their families. We know that Indigenous businesses have a lot to offer and can support critical supply chains across different sectors.

Can the Minister of Indigenous Affairs and Northern Development please inform the House on how our government plans to increase economic prosperity for Indigenous people in Ontario?

Can the minister please explain to this House why it is so important for the rollout of this critical funding to be an Indigenous-led process?

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.