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.

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.

Thank you very much for the question. I actually just got a call from a constituent today who was sent to a private clinic that’s now doing some of the cataract work, like the government has asked them to do. He said, “Yes, I got there and they gave me two other options as the gold standard for the lenses that I needed.” If that’s not upselling, I don’t know what is.

But the thing that really concerns me is that in my riding, in the last two weeks, two clinics have opened that are charging a subscription or a membership fee so people can get access to primary care. I remember the Premier saying very clearly, like he did with the greenbelt, that you would never have to use your credit card; you’d only have to use your OHIP card. In the last two weeks, I can’t tell you how many families have had to pull out their credit card. That’s a concern. But also, that 2.2 million families don’t have access to primary care means they don’t have access to home care, because there’s no door in.

My question is for the member from Kanata. The member talks about increasing PSW wages, giving more care for our seniors, but my question is: Where was this member when her former boss Justin Trudeau was shortchanging all of the provinces in Canadian health care transfer dollars? It took all premiers from all political stripes to get together and advocate for over a year to the federal government which she was a part of, and public outcry, for the Prime Minister to finally increase those transfers.

Where was the member then, when now she is asking that we increase PSW wages? Well, guess what? The federal government has a role to play and it needs to stop shortchanging the provinces.

I thank the honourable member for her question. What the federal government was doing at that time was negotiating with the provinces to ensure, to guarantee, that money would be spent on health care. Too often, at the beginning of the pandemic, money was sent to the provinces with no strings attached, because they wanted to get the money out. They thought, “Okay, send it out to the provinces. Get it out there, so they can make the investments.” But they learned the hard way that that money was not being spent on health care, so they had to take the time to actually negotiate with the provinces and put guarantees in place, so that money would indeed be spent on health care. And we are spending that money on health care, and those agreements are doing what they were designed to do.

Kanata–Carleton.