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.