As a Canadian, I’m proud to call this country home, and our universal health care system is one of the main reasons. Because of great Canadians like Tommy Douglas, residents use their OHIP card for health care—not their credit card.

But this government seems determined to destroy that system by underfunding it. Ignore and underfund our health care system, watch it buckle under the pressure of COVID, and then say the only solution is to find innovative approaches to fix the mess they created.

Unfortunately, those innovative approaches are really just new ways to give health care services to private corporations, whose main focus is to make more and more profit. But there are more problems with this approach. It’s been proven time and time again that it costs us more.

The Toronto Star reported yesterday that temp nursing agencies are skyrocketing health care costs. In fact, they’re paying as much as $110 an hour to temp agencies. Front-line health care workers like our great nurses at ONA have said this is already a form of privatization. Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital has spent $8.2 million this year on temp agencies.

We literally can’t afford to continue down this road. Not only will the quality of our health care suffer; costs will become unsustainable. We must stop all forms of privatization, invest in our public system, repeal Bill 124 and start reminding the world why it’s so great to be a Canadian: It’s our publicly funded health care.

I want to thank the opposition for the question. The facts are, with recruiting and retaining, we added 14,500 new nurses. That’s on top of the 10,500 health care workers, which included nurses and PSWs.

We invested over $40 billion in 52 projects that were neglected under your government. Under their government, propped up by the Liberals and NDP, they fired 1,600 nurses.

I’ll tell you, Mr. Speaker, the opposition voted against historic funding, which went from $61 billion when we came into office in 2018 up to over $75 billion. That’s an over $14-billion increase. They voted no, against it, for the historic funding. They voted no, against the people of Ontario. They voted no, against the health care system. That’s their solution.

And by the way, the backlogged surgeries? We put $300 million into backlogged surgeries to make sure we get caught up, and we’re doing exactly that.

We’re building a new medical school that’s going to create more doctors in the system—as we did last year: Over 720 new doctors are coming into the system, Mr. Speaker. We are investing in health care like no other government in the history of this country.

But the opposition? Their answer is the status quo, the status quo that destroyed this health care system under 15 years of their rule, the NDP and the Liberals, that crumbled the health care system. We’re fixing the health care system. We’re putting in historic funding. We’re making sure that we put through processes that are going to make sure that people aren’t in emergency rooms for hours on top of hours. We’re fixing the health care system, the same system that they destroyed for 15 years, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we added 3,500 beds, and with a historic $40-billion investment, with 52 regions around Ontario that are either getting a new hospital or a new addition, we’re adding another 3,000 beds.

We’re working with the College of Nurses, working with the College of Physicians and Surgeons as well to make sure we speed up the process. As we saw, over 720 internationally trained nurses are now coming into the system. We need a lot more. We’re going to continue asking the College of Nurses to speed up the process to bring all these qualified nurses right here to Ontario.

Mr. Speaker, we are fixing a broken system we inherited and will continue to have a thriving system moving forward.

I’m pleased to introduce Angela Preocanin, the first vice-president of the Ontario Nurses’ Association, as well as Nour Alideeb from the ONA. Welcome to Queen’s Park, ladies.

Beds don’t equal surgeries, Speaker. A bed without a nurse is just furniture.

At the Ottawa Hospital, we’re seeing the many serious consequences of not having enough nurses. Patients are waiting days to be admitted even though beds are available because there’s no nurse to staff the bed. Surgeries are being cancelled even as patients are entering the operating room because there’s no nurse. And recently, a patient who showed up for chemo was sent home without it because there was no nurse to administer it.

Will the government act swiftly to fill these nursing shortages so that every patient in Ontario gets the care they need?

The Ottawa Hospital is short more than 500 nurses, and this government’s actions to date are a drop in the bucket compared to the scale of the crisis. There are nurses in Ottawa who are working 16-hour shifts, 12 out of 14 days, just to fill nursing shortages. Just imagine trying to provide good care while working that many hours, not to mention the risk of mistakes. No wonder nurses are leaving the profession.

Will the government repeal Bill 124 and address working conditions so that we keep nurses instead of driving them away?

Last week, I had the chance to sit down with nurses from ONA Local 83 and they told me that every day they go to work feeling scared. They wonder, who will I not get to today, and what will the consequences be? It is only a matter of time until the consequences for someone are deadly. This is an unfair burden to put on our hard-working health care heroes and terrifying to patients across Ontario.

Will this government finally listen to nurses and implement the solutions they are calling for, starting with repeal of Bill 124?

Thank you for that question. And by the way, I spoke to Cam Love. What a great CEO—probably one of the best in the province. He assured me as well that they’re going to make sure that they have the proper staffing.

How we’re helping the hospitals across the province is the Learn and Stay program—that we’re going to pay for the tuition of the nurses. We’re going to make sure that they’re taken care of—any expenses they have—as long as they serve in underserved areas.

With Ottawa—I’ve got to tell you, I think the world of Cam Love. He drives an efficient hospital. But, again, as he said, and every other CEO that are feeding us information to help the system—every one of them said the same thing: You can’t stay with the status quo under the Liberals and the NDP that destroyed the system for 15 years, Mr. Speaker. We’re going to continue investing into the hospitals, into nurses.

And, again, I just want to remind people of the numbers: We added 14,500 nurses since 2018. Those are staggering numbers.

Mr. Speaker, we’re going to continue to invest in health care. We’re going to continue making sure that as long as our government’s here, people are going to be using their OHIP card instead of their credit card. But guess what? We can’t do the same, status quo. The status quo has been broken. We’re going to fix it. We’re going to deliver health care in a different fashion through the sector’s advice—not through our government’s advice—through the experts’ advice: the docs, the nurses, anyone involved in taking care of the great health care system that we do have in Ontario.

But this is a broader conversation we need. All Premiers across the provinces and territories all have a common voice, and the common voice is: This is not going to be sustainable—making sure that the feds pay their fair share. You know something? They’re paying 22%. We’re asking for 35%. It will not be sustainable without the federal government stepping up to the plate, making sure that they give us our fair amount to sustain the health care system. This isn’t unique to Ontario. I talk to the Premiers every single day. They’re facing the same problems. They’re facing the same problems down in the US. But we need the federal government to give us our fair share of funding for health care across this country.

The member is quite correct: There has been a great burden on health care providers for a long time in the province of Ontario. I know the member referenced the fact that she wasn’t here, but the reality is that the NDP and the Liberals did work together for many years, and the changes that they refused to make put us in a very difficult situation.

Now, the Premier, of course, highlighted many of the investments that we’re making, but it didn’t just start recently. We started with the transition to Ontario health teams because a lot of people told us the quality of care that they were getting is good if they could get into the system. So we started the transition to Ontario health teams. We brought on new nurses. We brought on more medical professionals, a medical school in Brampton, a medical school in Scarborough, so that we could educate more doctors right here in the province of Ontario, keep them here, working in communities across the province. We had a low ICU capacity. The Premier said that had to be changed, so we’ve increased ICU capacity across the province of Ontario. We’re educating more nurses. We’re fixing long-term care. It is about building an integrated system that works for all of the people in the province of Ontario, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.

The member knows full well, Mr. Speaker, that it is our responsibility—the responsibility of the government of Ontario and all parliamentarians—to make sure that everybody has access to the top-notch quality health care service that they pay for through their taxes. We will continue to ensure that all parts of this province have the best, highest quality of care regardless of whether they’re north, south, east, west, remote or urban.