It was Mike Harris. Do you know what Mike Harris said about long-term care? “Care will be better, it will be faster and it will be cheaper.” So it’s not like we don’t have examples over a long period of time—and I’m talking years—where we can say, “Okay, we made a mistake.”

The government has admitted three or four times in the last year that they made a mistake on different bills, so why can’t you say you made a mistake here and we’re going to make sure that there’s no privatization anymore in home care? Because this bill opens it up even further. Say there’s going to be no privatization in long-term care—where, by the way, of that 6,000 who have passed away in long-term care, approximately 78% died in facilities that were for-profit. They died because they didn’t have the staffing—

Everything that we can do here, guys, we can fix. If you care about seniors—and I’m not going to tell you, standing up here—I don’t know if the party gets mad at you when I say something like this, but at the end of the day, I think we all care about our moms, our dads, our aunts, our uncles, and our brothers and sisters. What we don’t agree on is how we get there to make sure that when they’re in their senior years, they can live with respect and dignity, and enjoy their lives by maybe getting a little bit of exercise.

The reason why I mentioned Ontario Place today: Do you know one of the places where you can take your mom and dad who are in your home? You can take them to Ontario Place. Go look at the water. Go look at the trees, and hopefully—again, I’m telling your government—don’t cut the trees down at Ontario Place. Don’t build a spa. Leave it the way it is.

Interjection: You don’t want us to build anything.

But at the end of the day, think about what we could do. We could actually invest in Ontario Place. We could make sure it’s a place where seniors can go, so when they’re in home care, they can hop in a car and go with their moms and their dads and their brothers and their aunts and their uncles and their kids and their grandkids. That’s what we should be doing.

I’m going to finish by saying, on long-term care and home care—and I’ll apologize to Josh and Quinn that I didn’t get to their speech, but I’ll save it for another time—that we can fix this. I’m looking over there at a couple of the older guys who are here. There are some young guys here, but there are a couple of old guys there probably around my age. We have an obligation to make sure that if there’s going to be home care, that they have the staffing; that those staff are provided with real wages, real benefits and pensions; that they’re unionized. And then, we should do the same thing for home care—

Interjections.

To your point, you talked about last June? Let’s talk about last June. You got a majority government with 18% of those that chose to vote in the province of Ontario. I’m going to tell you: You know what? You don’t know this, I don’t think—

Interjections.

You know, I’ve been elected four times in the Niagara Falls riding. Do you know why? Because I supported long-term care, because I supported the hospitals, because I supported two-way GO all the way to Niagara. But do you know what else? The people in Niagara Falls didn’t vote 18% for me. They voted 50% because I do my job in Niagara Falls. Thank you very much.

Interjections.

Thank you.

Interjections.

Questions?

Questions?

Thank you to my colleague for his comments. Some of the other opposition members are saying that when we have votes in this place, it’s against democracy, but Speaker, that’s the great thing about democracy. We have elections and we had a great majority elected last June and we exercise that majority in votes in this place, and we can have these debates like we’re having today.

The member from Niagara Falls mentions that we know that people want home care faster and closer to their homes, and I know the member also, as he has mentioned ad nauseum, is a critic for long-term care. When the member opposite had the opportunity to vote for long-term care, what did he do? My colleagues, what did he do? He voted no. When the member opposite had an opportunity to vote for $1 billion over three years for home care, what did he do? He voted no. When he had an opportunity to bring that money forward in the last budget, what did he do? He voted no, Speaker.

Can the member for Niagara Falls please stand in his place and tell us: Does he support this great piece of legislation?

Harris.

I think health care has been on the chopping block for decades. Conservative governments love privatizing public services because then they can actually make profits off of our public services. We have examples of that. Mike Harris privatized home care. His wife has an agency called Nurse Next Door—cha-ching—making profits off of home care. Mike Harris privatized long-term care: cha-ching. He’s sitting on Chartwell’s board.

What does this government do? A member alluded to Bill 218, and I remember it very clearly. It was called the Supporting Ontario’s Recovery and Municipal Elections Act and there were three things to that bill: ranked ballots; letting long-term-care operators—privatization, mostly—off the hook for being responsible for atrocities with our seniors; and then also—they used this as a guise—volunteers, like coaches and things, could not be sued during COVID. And they locked that in.

So I want to know, how can we really trust what this government is going to do under this bill and hold people accountable when they don’t deliver home care under a privatized system in this province?

If you’re going to say no, do it with that nice moustache.

It’s always a pleasure to be able to rise in the Legislature and to be able to have a few comments. I wish that I could answer the previous member’s questions about their abuse of legislative powers here in this Legislature that actually forced this bill on the member quicker than should have happened, and that’s what I believe the member was referring to, as we had an opposition day motion planned today talking about Ontario Place, but they shut down debate and forced us into this next bill.

My question to the member is about the privatization of our nursing system in the province and what that does to the profits that this government is dishing out to these nursing providers through third parties.

I was wondering if my colleague from Niagara Falls could explain to me why the government, after one year, has refused to do anything about health care temporary staffing agencies and is perfectly prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more than we need to to access the nurses, PSWs and other health care professionals that people need?

I want to thank the member from Niagara Falls. I’d like to say that he was warming you up for me, but he’s just a really hard act to follow. And I’m glad he’s got a lot of wind, and it’s good wind. I like the passion that he expresses his views with. He obviously cares a great deal.

So we’ll get into why I think this bill is the wrong thing to do, because it’s starting to take, again, away more of the local component in health care. But what is the problem you’re trying to solve? The problem the government is purportedly trying to solve is that we’ve got a problem in home care, and they’re right.

But why do we have a problem in home care? Well, is it because we don’t have the right agency? It might be because 2.2 million Ontarians don’t have a family doctor. Do you know how hard it is to get home care if you don’t have a family doctor or a nurse practitioner? It’s virtually impossible to find a way in. Even through an emergency department, it’s virtually impossible.

The government, well, they’re not really seized with this problem because, over the last five years, they have not added one brand new nurse-practitioner-led primary care clinic in this province—not since 2018.

What’s happening in my riding of Ottawa South is, because there’s this desperate need for primary care—which you need to get into home care—people are paying subscription fees. The Premier promised—like he did with the greenbelt—no one is ever going to have to use their credit card; they’re only going to have to use their OHIP card. Well, tell that to families in my riding who are having to pay $60 a month just to get access to a nurse practitioner. That’s a problem. And the solution to the primary care crisis is, “Let’s have the Wild West and if people have to pay, well, we just won’t worry about that. We won’t worry about that because they’re getting what they need,” instead of actually thinking about how they’re going to solve that problem, how they’re going to get everybody working to the top of their scope and working together.

But the OMA is here today. What’s their top ask? Primary care. Because they know. They know that people can’t get access to care that they need, like home care, unless they have a primary health care practitioner.

So we’re debating this new organization when, in actual fact, the underlying causes of what’s creating this problem right now aren’t being addressed. We’re not talking about how we get 2.2 million Ontarians a primary care provider. We’re not talking about that today. Although, if we don’t solve that, it doesn’t matter what you create, you’re not going to fix the problem.

What’s the second problem? Anybody guess? We don’t have enough people. Why don’t we have enough people? My colleague from Niagara Falls says, “Well, Bill 124 is a good start.” Right? You say to nurses and other health care workers and PSWs who have bargaining rights, “You don’t have bargaining rights, but if you’re over here, you do.” It’s a matter of—it’s not just money; it’s respect.

We talked about heroes and how important they were to us, but when it came to their wages? Not so much. Really, to be fair, not so much. They have a right to feel that way.

Then the question that I asked the member from Niagara Falls is that now we’ve got this challenge where we’ve allowed temporary health care staffing agencies to—another case of the Wild West—expand incredibly, and we’re spending two and three times what we need to spend on a nurse or a PSW or another health care professional. The government said, a year ago, “We’re going to do something about that.” And you know what they’ve done? The square root of nothing, zippo.

There’s a long-term-care group of homes out by Kitchener. They usually spent $300,000 a year, in all their homes, on temporary nurses. Do you know what they spent in the last fiscal year? Three million dollars. And you know what? That extra $2.7 million didn’t get anybody an extra hour of care.

So why are we doing it? Why is the government allowing temporary staffing agencies to be out there like the Wild West on the public dime? I thought you guys were really good at watching that. Obviously not.

I am concerned about what’s going to happen here when we further take away the local component of health care.

The problem is, you’re not addressing the underlying root: 2.2 million Ontarians don’t have access to primary care, and when you don’t have access to primary care, you can’t get into home care. It just doesn’t work. There’s no way in.

Interjection.

There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how people get into the home care system. I have been, through four family members, through home care, through long-term care, through retirement homes, so I know how it works. And it’s not going to work if you don’t have a family doc or nurse practitioner. So unless you get serious about solving that problem and stop saying, “You know, it’s okay for people to pull out their credit cards because they can access primary care that way”—which is against what the Premier said, which is not really a surprise, given all the things that we’ve seen recently.

Lastly, you’ve got to solve the staffing problem. If you were creating an agency to hire people and pay them decent wages and manage them and manage the health care system, I would say “great.” That’s not what you’re doing here. You’re creating another agency to hire another agency—which is what we’re doing right now—to bring people in and pay a premium on top of what we normally pay so that agency can make some money. How is that going to get home care to Mrs. Smith in my riding? I don’t think it is. She needs a family doc. She needs to make sure there can be somebody there in her home, and you’re not doing anything about that with this bill.

Thank you very much, and I’ll turn the floor over to my colleague.

I don’t think you can ever trust not only the government; I don’t think you can trust some of the private corporations that are running the retirement homes and long-term care. Until they get into a position where it’s about care, and not profit; it’s about the residents, and not profit; it’s about our grandparents and our aunts and our uncles and our brothers and sisters, not about profit, I don’t think you can ever trust them.

And as far as the government goes, as we saw with the greenbelt fiasco, I think they’ve broken the trust of the residents of the province of Ontario on that particular issue. And do you know who enjoys the greenbelt? Anybody know? It’s seniors. They love to be out in the open space and go for walks on the trails and all that kind of stuff, as they want to plow it and get rid of it. I know you’re bringing up a bill, but—

And I’m going to tell you—I’m going to say it again. I’m going to say it until I’m blue in the face, or until I’m long-winded, I think is what I was accused of. At my age, I’m just glad I’ve got wind. I’ll just leave it at that. I’m just saying.

I think get rid of Bill 124. I think that’s fair. That’s reasonable. You’ve been told enough. You lost in the courts four, five, six—I don’t know how many times you lost in the court. You’re spending taxpayers’ money on lawyers—wrong thing to do. That’s the one thing that we could do to fix those two issues.

Get rid of the agency employees. Why we have agency nurses makes absolutely no sense to me, at $150 an hour—

Thank you. Questions?

I’m delighted to rise today to speak to Bill 135 on behalf of my constituents on the importance of providing first-rate quality care and key services to our vulnerable seniors.

Madam Speaker, as far as I can tell, the only thing the Convenient Care at Home Act does is to administratively combine the management of 14 local health unit locations across the communities. I don’t see how this new agency improves the lives of seniors, provides more funding to enhance their quality of life or improves the services that are currently provided to them. Furthermore, it does nothing to provide oversight into the quality of care that they receive.

It took the pandemic to shine a spotlight on the abysmal support this government provided to our seniors. There was no meaningful oversight, no regulators, no inspections, no insistence on compliance, and I can’t see how this bill makes any improvements on all of that.

I’m struggling to find how this administrative change will make people’s lives better. As with any new bill or regulation, the devil is always in the details, and the details I am struggling to find are the enhanced oversight we so badly need, the improvements in primary care and the respect and rewards due our health care workers.

This bill fails to make the changes that are really needed. It doesn’t address the working conditions and pay of our PSWs, it does nothing to improve the standards of home care delivery and it fails to address that which could really improve the lives of our seniors.

The amalgamation of the 14 individual units opens the door for large for-profit corporations to dominate the health care industry. How does this improve the lives of our seniors? I also fear how the amalgamation of the 14 area networks into a single centralized organization will affect the health care provided outside of urban centres. Who will protect those in more rural parts of the province? What safeguards will be put in place so that funding is equally distributed to serve all Ontarians, not just the large urban centres?

When you’re trying to design a solution to improve the lives of seniors, I can’t see how you can do this at the higher strategic level—focused on large, for-profit corporations trying to enrich their shareholders. I question what they could possibly know about what seniors in the less populated parts of this province require. How could the focus be on anything but money-making?

What we need is more tactical, low-level decision-making—local autonomy. We need those who know best how to serve seniors in their own communities to have the ability to provide this service.

How does this bill improve the pay and benefits of the local PSWs? What is happening at the local levels? What is happening in long-term-care facilities? Are we addressing any of this?

It seems to me that we’re creating a bureaucracy that couldn’t possibly help address the local needs of individual health units and the patients and clients they serve. How could this enormous supervisory body with a tremendous span of control adequately address the individual needs of people in all of these 14 regions?

I think it’s time that this government and this bill change its focus to care for those who need it the most. Take care of our PSWs. Take care of the needs of the local organizations that serve seniors. Take care of our seniors. Put people first. They all deserve nothing less.

Absolutely, if we want first-class, quality care for our senior citizens, we’re going to have to respect and reward our PSWs better.

My question is to the member from Ottawa South. I enjoyed listening to his remarks, but I found it kind of rich, considering he was the PA to health under the former Liberal government—

Speaker, our government is also making $30 million available for front-line primary care with nurse practitioners and family health teams, and I know that that has been very well received in my riding. Will the member from Ottawa South finally get on board and help us improve the mess he left?

For four years.

I’d gladly help you, but you never listen to a word I say.

Here’s the thing: You’re talking about this great administrative body, this lovely new model of car you’re going to build, but you’ve got no gas to put in it, because 2.2 million people don’t have a family doctor. We can’t get enough people to help the people who need health and home care because we don’t pay them enough and we don’t treat them with respect, but we’re happy to pay a temporary staffing agency three times as much to get the same care. At that home in Kitchener, that group of homes, it was $2.7 million of everybody’s tax dollars to get how much extra care? Zippo, zero, nothing.

I loved what you had to say, you guys. You don’t even measure wait times. You don’t respect them. So I’m not going to take any lessons from the member on the other side about health care, because what has happened so far in this province to the nurses and to the PSWs and to families who need front-line primary care providers has not been good.

I think we all agree on this side of the House—we all agree throughout the House, actually—that our home care system needs to better meet the needs of Ontarians. I would be interested to have the view of the speaker: Do you feel that making sure that PSWs have permanent, full-time jobs, well paid, with benefits, with sick days, with a pension plan—to get paid in between clients; not just the mileage, but actually the time between clients—would that help with the recruitment and retention issues that home care agencies are facing right now?

My question is to the member from Kanata–Carleton. I listened intently, and you kind of contradicted yourself, I think, because you said there’s no enhanced oversight in this bill, but there’s an enormous supervisory body. I don’t know how you can have both.

The bill is about a home care system which is siloed, inefficient and disconnected from other parts of our health care system, such as primary care, acute care and long-term care. Through Ontario health teams and bringing it under the oversight of Ontario Health, we’re going to have aligned services, strategic direction from Ontario Health and oversight, which you seem to think is a good idea. We’re going to have that. That’s what this bill is about. It’s about local health care, which I think you also said was something we need, and local decision-making at 58 Ontario health teams around the province, much more localized than what was established under the former Liberal government. Why wouldn’t you support this bill? Because it’s doing all the things you said you want.

The member from Kanata–Carleton.

To the members: I listened intently to what you have said. I don’t see legislated measures to fully prevent upselling in a previous health care privatization bill, Bill 60. The results are the many stories about residents across Ontario, stories that I’m sure our colleagues, the members, have heard from their residents facing unexpected health care fees.

Do the members feel that the government will ensure that Ontario Health atHome prevents overcharging and protects our seniors, who have built this country, from misleading upselling?

Questions?

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

The House adjourned at 1755.