Good morning, Speaker. My question is for the Premier. Ontario’s health care system is on the brink of collapse because of Bill 124. While jurisdictions around the world try to attract our health care workers, this government chose to freeze their pay and dock their wages and fight them in court. And then they lost again.

Now it’s time to pay up, at least $6 billion so far. The Financial Accountability Office is saying the government could owe workers more than $13 billion. To the Premier: How much money is this government currently withholding from working people?

Speaker, here’s the thing: The impact of Bill 124 was felt in communities right across this province. And now, even without Bill 124 hanging over us, hiring and retention has become nearly impossible. Without dedicated funding to incentivize workers to stay in hospitals and long-term-care homes, in home care and primary care, our public health care system will continue to suffer.

So back to the Premier: Will this government finally pay workers what they’re owed in the upcoming budget?

So back to the Premier: Why does this Premier have such contempt for the hard-working people of Ontario?

Interjections.

Maybe the Premier will answer this question. Back when his government announced that they were opening the doors to health care privatization, the NDP warned that people would be forced to use their credit card to get health care. The government said this would never happen—never. But here we are. We’re hearing from more and more people who have been charged $70, $90 for a single visit, and in some cases, several hundred dollars just to get an annual membership at a private clinic.

So to the Premier: Do you agree that these patients were not able to use their health card and did, in fact, have to pull out their credit card?

Speaker, this government is creating a two-tier health care system where you would only get care if you can afford it, and that’s the truth. It’s absolutely unacceptable. These private clinics are preying on the most vulnerable: 2.2 million Ontarians without a family doctor. Dozens more clinics are expected to open in the coming months.

So back to the Premier, I hope he answers this question: Why are you starving the public community-based primary care system in our province in favour of private clinics that are charging patients?

Interjections.

Our system is under enormous strain because of this government’s failures and their bad decisions. So back to the Premier of this province: When will he stop putting the private needs of for-profit providers ahead of the needs of patients?

Interjections.

Doctors, nurses, administrators, allied health professionals have all been very clear about the solution: funding a team-based approach to primary care. That’s why I tabled our motion today to get this government’s commitment to fully funded, integrated primary teams across the province, not just in some towns, in every town. Every Ontarian deserves that access.

So to the Premier: Will you support this motion?

There’s no denying, I think, that Ontario’s health care system is deeply frayed. More than—we often say 2.2 million, but the numbers are actually increasing daily; we’re now up to more than 2.3 million, in fact, since I introduced this motion, who are currently without a family doctor.

Primary care providers and community health centres across the province are overwhelmingly understaffed, and all of us here in this room know exactly what that has led to: crowded emergency rooms; excruciatingly long wait times; overworked, underpaid health care workers who are exiting the community health sector, exiting health care faster than we can ever recruit and retain them; seniors, kids, vulnerable Ontarians being left to wonder if they’re going to get the care they need when they need it.

Along with those critically low staffing levels, Ontario’s health care system is also seeing a wave of physicians retire. Currently, 1.7 million people in the province of Ontario are looked after by a doctor who is 65 or older. Let that sink in. How did the members across the aisle not see that one coming? Doctors are human too. New Democrats have been sounding the alarm on this for decades now—in the previous Liberal government, as well. But members across the aisle can’t see a storm coming for them until it’s knocking on their door.

Just on Thursday, I was in Kingston, where the shortage of doctors has left 30,000 people without access to primary care. The shortage is so dire that when four physicians at CDK Family Medicine and Walk-In Clinic announced that they would take on 4,000 new patients, hundreds of people lined up through the night, in the rain, to claim a spot. That’s desperation. If this doesn’t cry urgency to the Premier of this province, I don’t know what will.

Only two weeks ago, we had a few retired United Steelworkers workers here with us from Sault Ste. Marie. The members opposite will remember that they joined us here at Queen’s Park because they were asking this government to step up and do something about the almost 10,000 people, mostly seniors and retirees, who were de-rostered from the Group Health Centre in the Soo. It’s the only clinic in the area. They’ve lost physicians to retirements, to resignations, and there are no replacements available—and that is going to go up to another 6,000, to 16,000, in just a matter of months. By the end of the year, nearly 30% of the population in Sault Ste. Marie and Algoma could be left without a family doctor. That is going to be a sad day.

We are losing doctors. We are losing nurses. We are losing health care staff. People are stressed, and they are worried about whether they’re going to get the care they need. And where is Premier Ford? Where is this Conservative government? They’re too busy patting themselves on the back with these vanity ads instead of actually improving access to care for the people of Ontario.

The doctors and nurse practitioners who are still on the front lines are having to spend hours filling out insurance forms and coordinating referrals, and it’s cutting into quality time with patients. The Canadian Medical Association studied how many more hours doctors could be spending with their patients if they weren’t buried in paperwork, and that number is 19 hours a week. That’s 40% of their time. That’s up to five hours on administrative work per day. Any of us who have spoken to family physicians out there in our communities know this; they’ve been saying it for years. They’ve been saying, “Do something about this. That’s five hours that we could be spending seeing patients.” That’s 19 hours a week filling out forms when we have people sitting between 12 and 15 hours in waiting rooms just to see a doctor. If doctors are freed up from this administrative work, they could serve—get this—two million more patients. Do the math. That’s like adding 2,000 doctors to the system—so, 2,000 doctors to the system, or relieve the administrative work and see two million more patients.

Training and hiring new doctors—we know it’s going to take years. But funding and properly staffing primary care right now? That can happen right now. We could be doing this today. It’s a question of priorities.

The Ontario College of Family Physicians—by their research, 94% of family doctors say they are currently overwhelmed with administrative and clerical tasks. They are telling us what they need.

I want to share the words of one such expert—an actual, front-line health care provider, Dr. David Barber. He’s the OMA chair of general and family practice. Here is what he has to say about this issue: “Paperwork takes an average of 20 hours per week and includes burgeoning insurance forms, sick notes and requests for drugs.” Family doctors who didn’t go into medicine to do paperwork are doing that paperwork. “We want to see patients; this takes away from it.”

I want to just stop here for one moment and say that last week, when I was in Kingston, I had the great pleasure of meeting Dr. Dick Zoutman, who made the point, when we were talking about this issue, of saying, “Let’s be clear: These are not optional forms. This isn’t an option. This is what we have to do.”

Going back to the comments of Dr. Barber: “The government hasn’t sent any signals to family doctors on the ground that they know what is happening. When doctors aren’t hearing from the government that it has their backs, family doctors are just giving up. That is why we are seeing so many leaving.”

Those are the words of Dr. David Barber, the OMA chair of general and family practice.

This is time that doctors could be spending with patients, with people who are aging—our population is aging—with those new babies we see out there, with new moms and new families, with teenagers who are struggling. These are hours that could be devoted to them right now.

It’s not like we don’t know what works. That’s what I find so frustrating after 20-odd years of looking at this issue in health care policy. We’ve seen how effective our solution is through the community health centre model, where primary care providers like doctors and nurse practitioners have a fully staffed and resourced team so they can focus on providing care, not filling out paperwork. But rather than support those centres, what does this government do? Cut funding, so they’re forced to reduce services, see less patients.

And let me say, on behalf of all of those community health centres that I have visited over the last few weeks alone, my goodness, don’t those workers deserve to be paid the same as those folks in our hospitals? They’re paid 20% less.

I know the minister tries to minimize how important that administrative work is that health care providers are doing. She belittled this, this morning, in her responses to our questions.

Our solution can be life-saving. That’s why we’re putting this forward.

How short are we of family doctors? This is based on current numbers: Windsor, short 36; London, 68; Hamilton, 114; Barrie and Muskoka region, 118. Toronto—can you imagine? Nobody can imagine that there’s a family physician shortage in Toronto, but boy, 305—let alone trying to get a physician who actually speaks your language. Peterborough, 40; Kingston, 23; Ottawa, 171; Sudbury, 33; Thunder Bay, 50; St. Catharines, 51.

As I travel across this province and I listen to people, I hear this every day.

In Alvinston, I was at the Maple Syrup Festival the other day. I was standing in line with a bunch of folks waiting for the school bus to take us to the Maple Syrup Festival. That was fun. Those seniors were talking with me about how none of them have a family physician. These are folks with walkers, with chronic health conditions. Where do they go?

Nursing home residents I met with last week in Nepean and Orléans are stuck in a situation with a bad-actor nursing home company, and they can’t afford to leave it because they can’t afford to lose their nurse practitioner. They’re putting themselves and their families at risk.

Here in Toronto, I met a young man just the other day in my riding, in downtown west end Toronto, who moved there from Brampton and has never in his life had a family physician—can’t get on a list.

This government could start clearing that patient backlog by putting out job postings today for health care team members to support doctors and get people of this province the health care they need right now.

I’m going to end by just referring to one other thing: When I came to the province of Ontario, what, 30 years ago from Newfoundland, one of the reasons that I stayed here was because you could imagine raising your family here on a working-class salary. You could imagine having a good public school for your kids. Do you know what else? You could get a family doctor—not something we had a lot of in Newfoundland, even back then. But you could imagine getting—

Interjection.

Speaker, 2.3 million people in Ontario do not have a family doctor. That’s 2.3 million Ontarians who cannot access the basic humane right of seeing someone whose expertise is in taking care of sick people. Many of those 2.3 million people have ended up on the doorsteps of our already understaffed, underfunded and overburdened emergency rooms—some of which have experienced shutdowns under this Conservative government due to its ongoing health care privatization scheme.

The goal should be to keep people out of ERs as much as possible, for as long as possible, but to do that, people need access to family doctors, so they can manage their physical and mental health needs. Statistics show that those without access to primary care are more likely to receive late diagnoses, which directly impacts both short- and long-term health outcomes. Without family doctors, if you need a specialist appointment, good luck on that journey, because you’re out of luck.

Every Ontarian deserves access to care. I say this as an MPP representing my community of St. Paul’s, I say this as a family member of folks in my own family who don’t have family doctors, and for many in this community—and many are racialized, let me tell you that. Many are in communities that are already underserved; many are rural; many are northern.

Today, we, the Ontario NDP official opposition, are giving this government yet another opportunity to help patients, to put them first. We are giving this Conservative government a solution to help our doctors get back to what they do best, that is, seeing patients, not having to fill out 19 hours a week of necessary, critical administrative work and paperwork. Help patients access more doctors by reducing the amount of time doctors spend on administrative work. That’s what we’re asking, Speaker. Help patients access more doctors by reducing the amount of time doctors spend on administrative work.

We are calling on this government to invest in administrative support staff and integrated health teams. By doing so today, we can add the equivalent of 2,000 more family doctors here in Ontario and help up to two million additional Ontarians get the help they need.

This should not be a partisan issue, Speaker. Saving lives should be about humanity. The NDP has put forth a solution. The government has the opportunity today to save people’s lives. Will the government accept our proposal today? Yes or no?

High-quality primary care is the foundation of a health care system. Primary care through family doctors is the first point of access and interaction with our health care system for the majority of people. Having access to primary care through a family doctor consistently leads to improved health outcomes. It prevents minor ailments from turning serious. It can prevent and manage chronic problems, as one of the main functions of primary care is disease prevention and health promotion. Through that it reduces the burden on hospitals, as it results in fewer emergency department visits and hospitalizations.

Having a family doctor also allows for follow-up care once a patient has been discharged from a hospital. Primary care is the first line of defence and we cannot underestimate how essential primary care is to ensuring that the rest of the health care system works.

Investing in primary care provides substantial savings to the province’s finances. Some 2.2 million Ontarians do not have a family doctor right now and according to the Ontario Medical Association, that is going to increase to 4.4 million people in just two years, of course unless significant action is taken.

What action can be taken? It’s not that hard to figure out. Family doctors will tell you exactly what needs to be done. Listen to the practitioners. There are several changes that need to be made. The NDP motion today is one step and it’s an important one, because it is a solution that results in help quickly while we also work on longer-term solutions.

The Ontario College of Family Physicians estimates almost half of a family doctor’s work week is taken up by paperwork. By providing the appropriate administrative supports, we can increase a doctor’s capacity for patient care. This is a simple solution. It frees up time for current doctors to take on more people as their patients, simply by hiring staff to take on the administrative portion of the doctor’s work.

We’re calling on the Conservatives to support this proposal that can and will make a difference in the lives of millions of Ontarians without a family doctor.

This government is bankrupting our hospitals and they’re creating a crisis in our public health care system in order to privatize it. If you want to see a health care professional in Ontario, well, you can see a nurse practitioner at the South Keys Health Center in Ottawa and just pay $400 for the first visit. Or you can go online to Maple, a virtual care app that charges $70 for a visit.

This government is undermining our public health care system and creating a two-tier system, and the victims of this are the 2.3 million Ontarians who do not have a family doctor. That number is growing; by 2026, it will be four million patients who do not have a family doctor.

This government refuses to take simple measures so, today, our leader Marit Stiles has proposed a simple solution to address some of this problem. I’ve met with family physicians, I’ve met with medical students, and they say the reason that people don’t want to go into family practice is because they end up spending 20 hours a week—40% of their work time—filling out paperwork.

The solution proposed by Marit Stiles that we’ll be voting on today and which the government has said that they’re going to be voting against is simply to hire administrators to do the paperwork so that doctors can see patients. This simple solution would free up the equivalent of adding an additional 2,000 doctors to our system.

In my riding of Spadina–Fort York, we’ve lost two walk-in clinics and seven doctors in Chinatown, and thousands and thousands of patients are affected. I’ll give you just a couple of examples:

Ye is an elderly woman in the riding. She was dizzy and could not sleep for four days, so she went to a pharmacy and asked for meds, but there were no more refills. Then she went to the emergency. She waited in emergency room for seven hours, but she couldn’t get the prescription because she doesn’t speak English.

Amanjeev, another resident, says, “I have experienced US health care, and there is nothing amazing about it. Public health is needed to make sure there is equitable health care access for everyone. And funding this public health care system means that nurses and doctors who got into this profession to help actually” can do it without burning out.

The simple solution that we are proposing today and that I’m asking the government to support is to hire administrators so that family physicians can see patients.