Mr. Speaker, I have an update on all of the fantastic building that’s going on in Essex county. In Belle River, we’re building a 160-unit seniors’ home. It’s a state-of-the-art home. It’s going to allow people to age in place.

In Kingsville, we’re building a JK-to-grade-12 school. When it opens up, it’s going to welcome hundreds of happy students.

In Amherstburg, they’re building lots of residential units—not one, not two, not three but four brand new residential complexes that are going to make it possible for people to retire in Amherstburg and also for people to start a family in Amherstburg.

And in Essex, we’re expanding Highway 3 from two lanes to four lanes. That’s going to help commuters get from one part of Essex county to the other safer and faster. It’s going to help our greenhouse growers get their product to market faster and help grow our industry.

There’s so much building going on in Essex county, Mr. Speaker. I can’t remember a time when so much excellent progress was being made.

I want to thank the Premier for his policies and for investing in Essex county. Let’s keep it going.

I take what my friend has said to heart. I think people do want to live at home. They want to be at home. They don’t want to be in hospitals. A number of persons with disabilities and seniors I’ve spoken to don’t want to be admitted into long-term care. That is a personal choice they’ve made.

But what you’ve said and what the government has introduced to date has not done anything about the fact that we are losing 30% on the dollar of every—there’s a billion dollars contemplated with this bill, as I understand it. We are losing a third of every dollar we’re spending because we’re lining the pockets of the for-profit companies. So all the good work that you’re going to do to take those thousand people and bring them back home into the community—if they can’t get a care worker to show up on time, if those care workers are double-booked, if their travel isn’t covered, if they’re not making decent salaries, if they have no pensions and no benefits, then I believe your bill is set up to fail.

What I’m going to do just to punctuate the point for my friend from Oshawa is to say this: Can you imagine an Ontario where there was an agreed-upon minimum standard of compensation for all PSWs? The government, through Ontario Health, could do it right now. That is what Denmark does. There is one standard of pay, one standard of benefits, one standard of travel being covered. Can you imagine that?

I can tell you, for any lawyer working for this government right now—you better believe there’s a minimum standard that they expect to be paid. Any deputy minister? Oh, there’s a minimum standard of what they expect to be paid. And they work hard. Why can’t we do the same for PSWs? Why do we have to watch them be gouged by greedy companies that have been ripping off the public purse for too long? That, I believe, my friend, is what’s hurting Cindy, and we need a government that’s going to stop that and stop it right now.

What I would say to all of those homes that are being built that are culturally appropriate homes—I want the workers who are going to work in those buildings to know that they have the right to join a union. We had SEIU Healthcare in this building not long ago. They should sign up to SEIU Healthcare, because right now there’s no government that’s willing to guarantee a standard of living and wages.

The member is a nurse, and I respect the work that she has done in the province of Ontario. The member benefited from that work done by the associations representing her profession.

I want to see PSWs valued more and paid more. That is the missing piece, honestly. Back to my friend: We can build homes. Homes and beds are great infrastructure. But what makes them come alive are the people who work in them. So that is the thing we need a government to do. And if this government isn’t prepared to do it, believe me, in 2026, there will be a government prepared to pass laws to ensure PSWs are paid appropriately, their travel is covered, they have pensions and benefits just like all of us in this building.

I say distinctly to my friend over there that I will vote against any bill this government brings before the House that puts the interests of CarePartners executives, Bayshore executives and ParaMed executives over the interest of seniors and workers. They are all going to be voted against, because we know on this side who we work for. We don’t work for the executives who come into this building and put on open bar receptions and try to cozy up to politicians so they can line their pockets. We work for the seniors, we work for the persons with disabilities, we work for the PSWs, and we won’t apologize for it. That’s who we are. That’s who the NDP is.

I’m going to be referencing the latest report that came out from Seniors for Social Action Ontario; it just came out on October 2. I want thank Margaret Coleman, Marcia Smellie and Rick Chambers for sharing that. This is an organization that surveyed seniors about home care.

What they found was shocking, Madam Speaker. They found that, in Ontario, six times as much funding has been invested in institutional care versus home care. That’s a problem. If you want to address home care then you have to resource it. They also found out that because of this funding inequity, seniors feel that they’re being forced into institutions instead of home care due to a lack of choice. They also said that the underfunding and under-resourcing by the provincial government, as well as the clumsy hand-over responsibilities from CCACs and LHINs to the HCCSS, has proven to be very problematic.

Bill 135 does not solve these core issues. How is the government going to address the crucial need for reinvestment for a stronger home care system in Ontario?

Thank you to the member from Niagara Falls. I said in my statement today that this was created by Mike Harris, and we’re seeing, just in that family alone, the money that is being made. The people across the long-term-care system, the for-profit—we’re seeing the money that is being made and what that does to the seniors’ care, and every little thing that’s extra, the seniors are paying for once again. I don’t know where the government thinks that seniors who are living—and so many of them below the poverty line are expected to be able to pay for services without the support necessary.

So it’s for-profit. It’s making a lot of people very rich. But it’s not helping the people it’s supposed to serve.

So there are so many challenges that people who need these PSW services face that are just not taken into consideration by this government. When you have a for-profit system, the shareholders and the stakeholders are only there for profit. At the end of the day, they want their return and it doesn’t matter, by the looks of it, what system is given to the province of Ontario. Patients and seniors and people with disabilities in our province deserve so much better than to be put at the end of the line and profit at the beginning.

So I’m not sure where it is confusing that we don’t trust them to put forward legislation that actually benefits the people of this province. We have serious concerns with pretty much every piece of legislation that they put forward, and that’s not just because it’s theirs, it’s because of what it’s written in: It’s written in the people of Ontario’s blood. It’s a mess. It is a mess, and we have seen it time and time again.

The government needs to get off the privatization track and actually invest in public health care instead of breaking it.