My question is for the member from Mushkegowuk–James Bay. I spent many years working in your community—Moose Factory, Moosonee and all of those James Bay communities. I struggle to understand how home care services will improve by centralizing them in a single monolithic institution. Does that make any sense to you?

The answer is no.

Because you touched on long-term care, in 2022, during the election, back home they announced a big announcement: 68 new beds and an improvement of another 60—Extendicare; it’s a private home. And we need these beds. You have to realize, back home, there is more than three years’ waiting time to get into long-term care. And guess what happened when they eliminated the ALC beds? This was like a pressure relief valve. For our people that needed a bed but there was none available, they could use an ALC bed. Then you passed a law eliminating ALC beds. Well, you’ve just created an even bigger problem. But you announced this in 2022. Eighteen months later—and these beds were welcomed. I was the first one to thank the government on this. But 18 months later, not even breaking ground. Zero. Zéro de fait. C’est radio-silence de votre gouvernement—radio silence from your government on these 18 months.

I passed a letter to the minister. I hope he’s got an answer for me shortly.

I’m happy, because you went and you saw it and you lived it. That’s why I keep telling this government, go up there and go see for yourself. Because once you’ve been there, your life will change. You won’t have the excuse of saying that you didn’t know. It’s a reality that all of you should get to see, because the lack of service—even “lack of service” is not the right word; absence of service. My colleague has spoken to it, but the reality is, we need to do better in this government.

I’d like to thank the member from Mushkegowuk–James Bay for his excellent presentation. I think every time this government turns their eye to a different part of health care, the province of Ontario shudders—workers and the people receiving the care—while people who make a profit off of health care in Ontario are very excited about it.

Before the pandemic, this government cut inspections to long-term care. During the pandemic, they passed legislation to protect the worst of the worst long-term-care operators, and they even passed legislation to protect themselves from legal liability—not something that generally happens when people are honest and upright.

They claim to respect seniors, and they claim to respect health care workers. My question to the member: Is this bill truly about care when there’s no way to prevent companies from overcharging and there are no consequences for providers who fail to meet service agreements?

My question will be to the member from Orléans.

I have to tell you, my mind is a bit boggled right now. Under the previous Liberal government, you were cutting nurses, you were leaving our hospitals lacking in infrastructure, in disarray.

These 14 separate home care organizations—it’s in fact the home care organizations that have been asking this government to make a change, to make it centralized. It’s this government that has been investing $80 billion this year in this health care system. So I have to say, instead of navigating 14 separate home care organizations and waiting for a call at home, now this at-home program will be a one-stop shop that provides people with easy access—

After five years of government, the government should actually take responsibility for the things the government is or is not doing, and one of those things is the provision of adequately funded home care.

The government member says that their administrative reorganization of home care will somehow make things easier. Well, I don’t recall the administration reorganization of how licence plates are done making anything easier in Ontario—or, frankly, any of the other administrative changes this government has tried to make. In fact, I think we’re seeing lots of problems with the administrative changes they made around the sale of cannabis in our communities. So if they think administrative changes are going to provide more home care, they need to spend less time here at Queen’s Park and more time out in their communities talking to people.

The member from Don Valley East.

Response?

This is something that’s very important, because our senior population is going to exponentially get bigger over the next 10 to 20 to 30 years, and home care is an essential piece. We know that when we speak to people who need care, their first preference—especially a senior wants to remain at home.

Under the Conservative government—home care used to be not-for-profit, and then a Mike Harris government changed all that and privatized it. And the Liberals, quite frankly, weren’t any better. They continued that privatization.

Would this member advocate and promote and actually make policy changes so that home care is not-for-profit and there’s not a profit extrapolated out of caring for vulnerable seniors at home and many other people at home? Would you support a not-for-profit policy in home care in this bill?

My question is to the member from Don Valley East. I know that member was not here under the previous Liberal government, and I wasn’t here in this place either. I find it rich, coming from the member opposite, talking about everything our government is doing for health care, when they did for 15 years—absolutely nothing. When they tried to reform home care, it was a bullet point in a press release.

Speaker, as was mentioned in the news release, the goal of this legislation is to create integrated service organizations with home care—the Ontario health teams, which have been well-received by stakeholders in the province.

I want to provide one more quote from a website, and it’s a bullet point: “Promote coordinated care by establishing an integrated model for continuity of care.” That bullet point is from Bonnie Crombie’s leadership website—who this member endorsed.

Will he support this bill?

I guess the Conservatives no longer choose to speak about their own legislation that they have before the House, which is unfortunate. We’ve definitely heard a lot on this side, just today alone, that the government members could have had a chance to rebut—or to tell their side of the story. But I think their silence is golden when it comes to our health care system and the privatization that they are full force ahead with here in the province of Ontario.

Today, we’re speaking—for folks who are listening in at home and may not have had an opportunity to hear, this is Bill 135, Convenient Care at Home Act. Again, it’s a fancy title—not quite fancy legislation to meet up to those expectations, as we’re actually just seeing more bureaucracy being created within the health care system.

We know, and I can pretty much bet on the fact that the government members, if they’re listening to their communities, are hearing the same things that I hear in my community of Hamilton Mountain, and that is the lack of services and availability to people who need home care in the province of Ontario. This encompasses seniors, people with disabilities, children with complex needs. So many folks, for whatever reasons, look to the home care services to be able to keep them home and safe in their homes and, hopefully, prevent long-term care, hopefully prevent them going back into the emergency rooms and then needing a bed in the hospital, to fix the things that were created due to the lack of home care.

We hear from people on a regular basis that are not able to get a bath—they’re not able to get a bath. They’re not able to get their toenails cleaned. Think of people with diabetes and the foot care that goes with that and the health care crisis that that creates. These are proactive measures that our home care system is supposed to be able to prevent. They’re supposed to keep people healthier, in their homes, keep them out of hospitals, keep them out of long-term care to stop the bottlenecks that we see throughout the system.

If this government truly cared about the people of this province, they would ensure that the home care system is robust, that it is strong, that it serves our most vulnerable residents in their homes, but that’s not what we see. We definitely are not seeing legislation coming forward to protect the citizens of Ontario.

We hear on a regular basis from folks, again, who are struggling within the health care system. And like I said, there are so many things that folks are looking for from home care, and it’s not in this bill.

SEIU was here last week. They talked about how one of their biggest challenges in the home care system is retention of staff. We know we have a severe shortage of PSWs in the province of Ontario that is mainly due to poor working conditions, poor wages, not being compensated for their travel time between clients, not being respected for the work that they do. So the government decided to put out an education program that was free to PSWs, to be able to encourage more folks into that education field and hopefully into the PSW system. But what we’re seeing is people who took the education and are PSWs for a day or two and they’re quitting, because they’re just not the folks who were meant for those jobs. Not everybody can do every job, and we know this.

I know, personally, I could never be a PSW; that is not within my realm. It’s not within my heart, to be able to provide those critical private services to so many folks. It’s just not. And I’m sure if people are honest with themselves they would say the same thing—that it’s not an easy job. Not everybody has it within themselves to be a doctor or a nurse, and a PSW is really doing those very private things, like bathing and toileting and things like that. Not all of us are built to do that.

So the government is offering free education to people who are finding, after they’ve taken the education, that they’re just not up for this work. And it’s far from glamorous work, and without glamorous pay to encourage it, it’s just not working for folks. They’re seeing that it’s actually costing them money or costing them whatever it is to do that work, and so they’re leaving as quickly as they’re getting in. So the retention of PSWs is still a great concern.

The other piece that I want to make sure that I talk about today is critical care nursing. I’ve met with families from the Ontario Disability Coalition who have brought their stories forward of their children who are in critical complex care and need around-the-clock nursing at home and not able to get that because they don’t have enough money to be able to pay the nurses that are now being hired through temp agencies. So that has increased the cost of nursing to the homes that—and these families who have been made bosses and contractors over their own children’s health care are left without enough money to be able to cover the number of hours that are needed for those children and families who are burning out and struggling. So if the government truly wanted to bring forward good legislation, maybe that should have been something that they considered, instead of creating more bureaucracy that I’m sure will take more money out of our health care dollars that are so desperate in our communities.

I see here within the bill, Speaker, that the bill creates an arm’s-length agency of a board of directors who are appointed by the minister, which to me is very concerning because we have definitely seen so many political appointments happening under the Ford government with really no resumé for those folks to be able to fit the need of whatever agency or appointment it has been. So when I see that it is the minister who appoints—the board must consist of the following members: up to six members appointed by the minister and up to three members appointed by the minister on the recommendation of Ontario Health, who are already appointed by the minister.

It’s just a continuous push towards privatization in our health care system. We know that the privatization, in the first place, of our health care system began under the Harris government, which was Conservatives also, and created the spiral of what we have seen to date. We have seen, under Harris, nurses laid off, hospitals closed, and the privatization of our long-term care and home care began. Unfortunately, it’s mind-blowing, but that also led to a very fruitful future for the Harris family, because Mike Harris became the chair of the board of directors of Chartwell, making a very wonderful pay with also millions of dollars in holdings throughout the Chartwell system. And then his wife and he created a home care system; it was the Nurse Next Door, providing private nurse services into the community, which is now the Care Company. That is temp agency that provides nursing at a very high, hefty cost to the community or to whatever services those nurses are needed in. And the profit that they’re making is actually being siphoned from the patient care that is needed within our health care system. Now I know there are billions of dollars that go into our health care system, but I would love to see the numbers of how much of that is now actually going to for-profit services that really should be instead funding these critical services to keep people out of hospital and healthy in their home.

We also know that the government underspent our health care system by $1.2 billion—again, more dollars that could have kept people safely in their homes, making sure they had baths, making sure that someone was cleaning their toilets and helping them keep their homes clean to prevent infection. We see PSWs running in and out of people’s homes within a half hour and not really, truly providing the service that they need to keep them safe and healthy. It’s very, very concerning.

I can tell you, the seniors in my community that I talk to, they’re scared. They’re terrified about the system that they may find themselves in in not that many few years away. These are still healthy-bodied seniors, but they know that once they start getting sick or start having health conditions, they’re going to be put into a system that they don’t want to be in.

Literally yesterday, as I went into my local pub to pick up some takeout dinner for my family before coming in last night, I came across a group of seniors sitting at a table. I had never met them before. They noticed who I was. They called me over to the table, and they said, “Monique, please stick up for the seniors.” And they said to me, “The next time you get up, we need you to say”—and that was yesterday—that they’re terrified. And the cost of living that they are seeing, they are so concerned about that. The cost of eye exams—I heard it from them at the table, and yet I was on the phone with my father earlier in the day, who was telling me he had to pay $75 for an eye exam to be able to go through his driver’s license. It’s a snowball effect that this government is creating, and the fight that they had with the optometrists has created this also.

From my mom the other day, I get that she’s—the HCHC Family Health Organization, the service guide for uninsured service fees that doctors are now charging for: back-to-school notes, children’s aid society medical certificates, sick notes, death certificates, prescription renewals, administrative costs for vaccines and shots, transfer of drivers’ medical examination reports—all of these costs on this uninsured service guide are now being filtered to the people of Ontario, and seniors are having to eat up these costs. She had to buy into an insurance program because the actual costs aren’t as high as the cost if you’re not insured. So for her, as a senior, she had to pay another $90 to her doctor so that when she needs a prescription referral or when she comes up on her driver’s medical exam, she’s covered for it.

In the letter, this is what it said: “This is not a decision we came to lightly. It’s frankly not something we have any desire to undertake. The situation is such that we simply have no choice. The financial landscape in the country is one of heavy inflation. The cost of running a medical practice has skyrocketed, and the government has refused to even come close to helping us meet these inflationary demands.” You’re the government, over there on that side. This is you that they’re talking about. “We are at the point where the choices were to close the practice, to significantly cut back on services to patients (i.e., hours, clinic, staffing) or to begin collecting payment for uninsured services. So, we have collectively made the difficult decision to do the latter.” It’s very, very disturbing that this is the privatization schedule of this government.

I have heard the Premier say over and over and over again that you’re going to be pulling out your OHIP card, not your credit card. Well, let me tell you, my mom had to send over her credit card, and my mom is not alone; I just happen to have her forms with me. A credit card to pay for services that this government is refusing to pay for in our health care system: That is not the health care system that was dreamt of so many years ago in Canada. Ontario is blowing it up.

I came across—somebody actually sent me an Instagram of Tommy Douglas, and it was one I hadn’t seen before. It was really cool to watch Tommy. It’s in black and white, and we all know this is back in the 1950s, 1960s, when he introduced medicare into Canada. I’ve got the actual transcript of what was said, and I would like read some of that, just for historical purposes, into Hansard.

Tommy says, “I would propose in the act that we say the federal government will enter into a 50/50 arrangement”—I agree, because the members are going to say the federal government is not paying 50/50, that they should be, because that’s what’s coming—“with the provinces to institute nursing care, home nursing care, Meals on Wheels, that we would share 50% of the cost of setting up community health clinics that would start a program of dental care among school children.” This is back in the 1950s that the vision of health care was happening, and this was Tommy Douglas.

And the interviewer said, “But in other words, we should dictate the services that we are going to pay for?”

And Tommy said, “No, we dictate the ones we are going to pay for. We would say, ‘These are the programs we are prepared to share with you on a 50/50 basis.’ Now, there is no way by which the federal government can dictate to. The problem is that they must undertake those programs. But they can say to the provinces, ‘If you want to institute these programs, we will pay 50% of the cost.’ I think what most people miss is the essential point, mainly, that the provinces are even more interested than the federal government is in cutting costs down because the provincial governments are much less able to finance their half of the cost than the federal government is. So if the federal government is worried about escalating costs, just imagine what little provinces like New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Nova Scotia feel about rising health care.”

You know, it goes on, but I just wanted to put it out there that back in the 1950s he was talking about nursing care, home nursing care, Meals on Wheels, community health clinics, a dental program They’re the same things the New Democrats continue to fight for today. They’re the things that we know keep people healthy in their homes.

When we are providing proactive services, it keeps people out of emergency rooms, which we know are the high costs. Keeping people in hospitals, keeping people in long-term care—that’s where the expense is. Providing home care keeps people at home safely for much cheaper cost and a much bigger return.

I see I’m out of time already; that went very fast. I just want to see if I had anything else here.

Home and Community Care Support Services: A big report has come out from them because of the crisis in the system and what people are saying and how “All of these issues are creating anxiety and despair and placing elders at risk of hospitalization and institutionalization.”

Folks across this province are speaking out. They know that we need a health care system that works. This bill is not going to provide that. It’s creating more bureaucracy that, again, will end up for-profit and in people’s pockets instead of in our health system.

My question is to the member for Don Valley East.

I would say there’s one business power word that I would respectfully submit, and that is the word “accountability.” For the first time in about 15 years, this government is accountable. We’re trying to make changes. We believe that home care is the best.

What part of this bill do you support—instead of being against it?

In fact, in the last election, we proposed a dramatic change to home care that would ensure that it was not-for-profit and based on a more centred-in-community-based model. I think if there is government funding available, that funding should go to helping people directly by hiring PSWs, nurses, other support workers—the things that they need. If you have a profit centre involved in that, obviously, those people are skimming off the top and there’s less money available to support people where they live.

Question?

I always like to stand up here and tell the truth, and I’m not really sticking up for the Liberals, but the reality is, under Mike Harris, you laid off 6,000 nurses—let’s be clear on that—and you closed multiple hospitals. So let’s at least be accurate and tell the truth on that particular issue.

I see the labour minister is here, so I’m going to ask this question to the Liberal, hoping that he hears me. This bill does not guarantee that the Ontario Health atHome workers will be unionized or full-time positions with real wages, real benefits and pensions. So my question to the Liberal—either one; it doesn’t matter who answers: Do you believe that people who work in home care should be unionized, should have full-time jobs, should be respected, should have pensions and belong to a union? If you want to improve wages, you need to join a union in this province.

Well, that’s a bullet point on a leadership commitment; that is not a full-out bill.

When I asked ministry officials to explain how they were going to deliver on those business power words, they couldn’t tell me.

And while we’re talking about the things that have or not been done, let’s talk about what this government has accomplished. It has accomplished 2.2 million Ontarians without a family doctor. It has accomplished a backlog of medical services that exceeds 22 million. It has accomplished rampant ER closures in almost every community across this province, including in the Minister of Health’s own riding. That’s not a track record to be proud of.

Madam Speaker, through you: I would invite members of the government to tell me exactly how they propose to actually deliver integrated connected care, apart from just listing bullet points and finding things off websites.

I would like to direct my question to the member from Don Valley East. I understand that he’s a doctor, and his question was about what this government did to extend primary care, or how many millions of Ontarians don’t have doctors—and I would like to put the question back to him. I am one victim of this. My wife took seven years outside the province to be able to get her licence here. She is a doctor. It took her 10-plus years to be a doctor in Ontario. When we connected to the Minister of Health at the time, who was a Liberal, he said, “We can’t do anything. We don’t have the spots.” Not only that, all the IMGs across the country had 24 spots—to get an internship in this country, during the Liberals’ time.

Questions?

Response?

Mountain.

But she did talk about creating another team, and we’ve heard already in the House—we see the access to OAP and what that’s doing, and it’s really not creating any help within the system. There is no assistance to ensure that people are getting the services they need when they need them.

Also, she’s not thinking about the diversity across this province. We heard from the member from Mushkegowuk–James Bay that the services out there are completely different. People need doctors; they need family health care. Instead, they’re creating bureaucracy.

Now, we’re moving from 14 organizations to a single-organization model, and this is going to provide a strong and centralized foundation to support the stability of the home care services now and into the future.

The Ontario Health Teams—they’re going to be taking on the responsibility. The organization would provide ongoing operational supports and care coordination to those teams. This is not a layer, but a support partner for OHTs, and planning and delivery.

This being said, in the past, the opposition has voted against our government’s proposals to make health care delivery quicker and more reliable now for constituents in your community.

So I ask the member from Hamilton—

In my riding, in Essex, we have lots of people entering the career of PSW because of the steps taken by this government, and the member opposite made reference to the number of PSWs available in the marketplace and available to deliver the services required. I can tell you that I went to Anderson College and talked to the trainees there and they were very happy to have received free tuition and free books from this government to get their training, to get more PSWs. I know that that program is being taken up very well by the people in the riding of Essex.

My question to the member is, is she aware of how many people in her riding are benefiting from the remarkable program introduced by this government to pay the tuition and pay the books for PSWs entering that profession?