Ma question est pour la ministre de la Santé.

Can the Minister of Health provide an update on how many hospital emergency rooms were closed over the long weekend due to staff shortages?

To quote one ER doctor, “We are playing a game of Russian roulette with people’s lives.” It is “an indictment of the Minister of Health” and her failure “to understand the breadth of the crisis.”

Does the minister admit it is a crisis and that her government’s response to date has failed us?

At a time when the government should be building our health care system, this government froze nurses’ wages. They threatened seniors with massive fees if they refused to move to substandard, for-profit facilities far away from their families. Doctors and health care executives have come forward to call this plan “morally wrong,” “deeply disturbing,” and likely to “worsen our health care crisis.”

Will the minister take action today—first, repeal Bill 124; then, Bill 7—and start respecting the nurses we so desperately need?

This is a great opportunity for me to once again highlight the plans that we have in place. Of course, we’ve already done a lot of things in terms of short-, medium- and long-term goals. First of all, we have 3,500 hospital beds that are operating in the province of Ontario that were not as short as three years ago. We have 10,900 new health care professionals working in the province of Ontario today.

We will continue to work with our hospital partners to make sure that when short-term emergency department closures happen, whether that is for an hour, four hours, a shift or a weekend—we ensure, with Ontario Health, that, when possible, locums come in. We make sure that those partners and the people in those communities have appropriate health care as quickly as we can.

I highlight 400 physicians in the province of Ontario who are practising and supporting workers in northern and rural Ontario, like the member opposite’s own communities. We’re working with the college of physicians and surgeons and we’re working with the college of nurses to make sure that those internationally educated graduates are able to practise in Ontario now, in our communities.

In fact, what Bill 7 seeks to do is improve the quality of care for our seniors who are in hospital. It is very, very clear that—

Interjection.

What the bill actually does is provide a better quality of care—the right care in the right place at the right time. I think we would all agree that, for our seniors, they deserve the best quality of care possible. That is why, in particular when he talks about the north, we have made so many investments in long-term care in the north, because we want to ensure that the discrepancies that existed for far too long between north and south, urban and rural, are no longer part of the fabric of the Ontario health care system. That is why we’ve also partnered with First Nations to ensure that there are bed allocations specifically for First Nation communities, and we will continue to do it.

Bill 7 is a positive step in helping us reform our health care system once and for all, and we’re on our way.

What we are doing with Bill 7 is ensuring that our seniors who are waiting for long-term care have access to that quality of care while they wait for their preferred home of choice.

I will let the opposition continue to fantasize about what we are doing in Bill 7, but what we are finally doing is putting our health care system, and ALC in particular, on the right path. It’s because of the investments that we’ve made; we’re improving health care and we’re getting it done for seniors in the north and the—

My question is to the Premier. Every day we hear more stories of a broken long-term-care system, more proof that Bill 7 will make a broken system worse. CTV News reported the story of Mona Chasin, an 80-year-old woman who had to go to the hospital after a stroke, and now she has been told she will lose her bed in a long-term-care facility.

Seniors should be treated with dignity and respect. Why is this woman being evicted from her home because of a hospital stay?

Mona’s family wants her to return to her home. Her home is where her husband lives and where she is comfortable. Her family fears that Bill 7 will force her into a new facility. Her niece told reporters: “It’s devastating.... I don’t think our elderly are being properly cared for.... I don’t know where she is going to end up.”

Why is the government forcing seniors like Mona into homes away from their loved ones and their families?

I just want to get this straight: So the member now is advocating in favour of the bill that we just passed, while at the same time advocating against it, all in one question?

That is what Bill 7 is all about: It is about improving care for our seniors, because nobody thinks that a senior who is in a hospital waiting for long-term care should be sitting in a hospital. Nobody believes that, because they don’t have access to the physical exercise that they need. They don’t have social opportunities. That is why we passed Bill 7, to ensure that our seniors who are waiting for long-term care can get into long-term care faster. That’s the whole point of it.

Only the NDP are suggesting that a hospital room is a better place for a senior waiting to be in long-term care. We disagree with that, and that is why Bill 7 allows us to get our seniors who are waiting in a hospital into long-term care.

I will remind the member opposite that Anthony Dale, the CEO of the Ontario Hospital Association, said: “Ontario’s hospitals are rapidly becoming the health care provider of last resort for thousands of people who actually need access to home care, long-term care and other services.”

Specifically regarding the example you raised, it is essential that all partners continue to work collaboratively together in a Team Ontario approach to seeking to overcome the underlying issues facing the health care system and ensure that patients are receiving access to the right kind of care in the right setting. I have faith in the hospital, in the long-term care, in the Ontario health team in that community to do the right thing for that family, for that husband and wife to be able to remain together. But, member, you need to understand that the system works together—with long-term care, with home care, with hospitals—to make sure that, in the example raised, that individual gets the most appropriate care in their community.

My question is for the Premier.

Last week, the government rammed through Bill 7, overriding a patient’s right to consent and leaving many questions in its wake, like how far patients can be sent away or how much they can be charged.

Last week, the member from Ottawa West–Nepean brought forward the story of Deana Henry, who, under the threat of Bill 7 and an $1,800-a-day hospital bill, was compelled to go where she didn’t want to go. “I feel like I am non-existent,” is what she said.

Last week I heard the Premier muse about $1,800-a-day hospital bills and how they weren’t right, without any concrete commitment to do something about it.

So will the Premier please let us know what he’s going to do to make sure that this doesn’t happen to any other Ontario family?

And, respectfully, saying you think something is not right and not taking action, especially when you have the power, doesn’t amount to much. It’s cold comfort to the families out there who are worried.

So I put forward a motion on the table today that will limit the maximum charge an alternate-level-of-care patient awaiting placement in a long-term-care home can be charged as equal to the copay in Ontario’s long-term-care homes. It’s the fair and reasonable thing to do. Allowing the threat of a huge hospital bill to hang over people’s heads is neither fair nor reasonable. It’s unjust and unfair.

And it’s within this government’s power, it’s within the Premier’s power to pass this motion and to amend the Public Hospitals Act. Will the Premier commit to doing just that?

Mr. Speaker, as I promised, the regulations will be out very, very soon, and people will undoubtedly see how the opposition’s fearmongering over this bill was uncalled for.

More importantly, what the member refuses to highlight is how important this policy change is to ensuring that our seniors who are in hospital, who have been discharged or are waiting to be discharged, who are on the long-term-care-home waiting list, get the appropriate level of care in a long-term-care home.

I will let the opposition argue why a senior wanting to be in a long-term-care home should be waiting in a hospital, should be without the social environment that comes with a long-term-care home and the physical activity that comes with a long-term-care home, should be subject to the disease that comes when somebody is in a hospital. These are our seniors who are waiting to be in long-term care, and the best care for them is in a long-term-care home. It is a home, not a hospital, and that is what we want our seniors to progress to.