There were thousands of people at Queen’s Park to welcome us back on our first day of this session. They were out in force, covering the lawns, and they were here with the Ontario Health Coalition to defend public health care and public delivery of health services.

Public health care is worth defending. This government finds billions for the things and fancy friends that matter to them, but they won’t put the money into health care. This government can spin it, but they know we are under-funding our hospitals. We’re losing nurses to private agen-cies and across the border because Bill 124 wouldn’t allow hospitals and the public sector to pay their staff and health care heroes what was fair. Instead, hospitals were made to watch as private, for-profit nursing agencies bribed their nurses away. The hospitals have been held hostage and made to pay agency rates, all the while forbidden by this government from paying their own staff what they would want to.

Despite the government nonsense, people are paying with their credit cards for health care. They’re getting hit with surprise fees and charges and getting stuck with the bill. This government isn’t preventing or remedying these unfair, often predatory, situations.

This government has friends and family making bucketloads of money from privatization. More and more of our public health care dollars are flying out the door, and they aren’t going to better patient outcomes. The profit margins aren’t shortening wait times, they aren’t opening the Minden emergency room back up, and they aren’t helping seniors cover their dental that this government refuses to cover anymore.

I was proud to stand with health care defenders yesterday—and every day. And I invite the government members to take their hands out of people’s pockets, their heads out of their offices and come outside to meet real people when they come to see us.