I would also like to recognize the Ontario Medical Association and the many doctors in our galleries today who have come from across Ontario to meet with members of the Legislature.

As the member opposite referenced, as part of their Queen’s Park day, the OMA is hosting a luncheon reception in room 230 of the Legislative Building beginning at 11:30.

I’d also like to recognize specifically and introduce the leaders of the OMA who are in the member’s gallery: Dr. Andrew Park, president of the OMA; Dr. Cathy Faulds, chair of the OMA board; Kim Moran, current chair of the Ontario College of Family Physicians and incoming CEO of the OMA; and, of course, members of the OMA executive. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I’d like to welcome the medical officer of health for the city of Toronto, Dr. Eileen de Villa. I look forward to speaking with you and the OMA colleagues this afternoon.

Thank you to the member opposite for her comments. I listened intently and the strangest thing is that we were in the Ontario Medical Association thing at lunch and the member was talking about how important team-based care is; the OMA was talking about how important team-based care is, and what this bill is about is moving home care into Ontario health teams, which are team-based care.

The member seems to think that this does nothing to improve home care, but Sue VanderBent, for example, and Matthew Anderson say it will help transform the delivery of home care by making home care part of team-based care through Ontario health teams. This bill is getting us to that point.

Will the member not stand up and support this? Or does she love the status quo, which she says isn’t working, so much that she won’t support us improving the system?

The member opposite talked about how there’s no money in this bill. I think she said $122 million, but it’s actually $128.2 million, and that won’t provide a single bath for a single senior. Does the member want to perhaps elaborate about the $1 billion that was in budget 2022 over three years, including $569 million brought up to the beginning, that she neglected to mention that will provide baths for seniors?

The Ontario Medical Association is at Queen’s Park today and they want more interdisciplinary primary health care teams; that is, a physician who works with a nurse practitioner, with a nurse, with a social worker, with a dietitian, with a physiotherapist, with a psychotherapist, with a health promoter, with a community development worker as part of a community health centre, as part of a family health team. They were talking specifically about primary care.

So, primary care of interdisciplinary care teams? Yes, absolutely. We need those, the sooner, the better. This is but one little component of Ontario health teams. Ontario health teams look at hospitals, look at long-term care, mental health and addictions, palliative care, primary care and home and community care. The physicians were not talking about Ontario health teams.

Ontario welcomes the for-profit company in long-term care. The for-profit companies are able to give hundreds of millions of dollars to their shareholders at the expense of quality care. The pandemic showed us how bad that was: people dying of starvation, people dying of dehydration, people dying because they’re covered in bedsores because they haven’t been changed.

Ontario knows better than that, and that’s no more for-profit in long-term care.

Pendant l’heure que je viens de passer, j’ai lu extrait après extrait de lettres des résidents de Nickel Belt qui démontrent que, dans les petites communautés, c’est Bayshore qui a le contrat; dans les petites communautés, ils ne sont pas bien desservis parce que celui qui a le contrat, Bayshore, n’est pas capable de recruter du personnel pour aller y travailler.

D’avoir maintenant un organisme provincial pour s’occuper des services à domicile va rendre ça pire, pas mieux, que ce qu’on a là.

I quoted the minister who had quoted $128.2 million over three years at $2.2 million per team to help the teams work together. That’s the comment that I had made.

I also made the comment that home and community care have not seen a base budget increase in the last 12 years; that is the five and a half years that this government has been in power as well as when the Liberals were in power. This is a very long time where the needs of residents have increased, the demand for those services have increased but those little, mainly community-based not-for-profit agencies have not seen a base budget increase.