Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Energy. Last fall, the federal Liberals finally recognized what our government has been saying for years: The carbon tax is raising the price of everything. After years of high energy costs, the Prime Minister announced a pause on the carbon tax, but only on home heating oil. For the more than 97% of Ontarians who rely on propane and natural gas to heat their homes, this measure provides no relief. And to make matters worse, on April 1, the Liberals are raising the carbon tax by 23%. This is ludicrous.

Our government must continue to call on the federal government to eliminate the carbon tax once and for all. Can the minister explain the impact this increase will have on Ontario families?

Unlike the opposition NDP and the independent Liberals, our government, led by Premier Ford, is focused on making life more affordable. We have been speaking against this regressive tax from day one, and we will continue to advocate for the people of Ontario. It’s time for the federal government to reconsider their approach and act in the best interest of Canadians by eliminating the carbon tax.

Speaker, can the minister please explain how our government is trying to stop this terrible federal carbon tax?

My question is to the Minister of Health. Some 2.2 million Ontarians don’t have a family doctor, and that number is going to double in two years. According to the Ontario Medical Association, Toronto alone is short 305 family doctors. As a result, we’re seeing private family clinics charging annual subscription fees for care pop up across Ontario under this minister’s watch.

My question is, what should Ontarians in need of a family doctor but who cannot afford to pay out of pocket do?

The Conservatives will have an opportunity today to vote on an NDP motion which proposes a practical solution that will address the problem by freeing up time for family doctors to take on more patients. It is a solution proposed by doctors themselves.

Will you support this plan so we can close the gap for people in Ontario who desperately need a family doctor now?

My question is for the Associate Minister of Transportation. At a time of high costs and high interest rates, it’s never been more important to implement measures that make life more affordable for Ontarians. But, Speaker, the federal carbon tax continues to punish the hard-working people of this province.

I’ve heard from families and farmers in the two ridings of Thunder Bay about how much this unnecessary tax is costing them daily. They are looking to our government for solutions that will make life easier and keep costs down. That’s why we must continue to call on the federal Liberals to cut the carbon tax and provide real financial relief for Ontarians.

Speaker, can the associate minister highlight what this government is doing to make life more affordable for Ontario families?

Speaker, Ontarians need financial relief now more than ever. This punitive tax is making fuel and groceries more expensive, forcing Ontario families to stretch their household budgets. At a time when many people in this province are already struggling with inflation, they should not have to pay more taxes.

Unlike the opposition, our government will continue to advocate for Ontarians. That’s why we stand against the NDP and Liberals’ support of the carbon tax.

Speaker, can the associate minister highlight the negative effects the carbon tax has on rural and northern communities?

I’m delighted to rise in the House today to talk about our government’s plan and our continued work to improve primary care for all Ontarians.

This motion really highlights the differences between our government and the opposition. For one thing, the opposition is very late to the issue; they’re really coming in after the fact with this motion. Our government has already held consultations, spoken with primary care providers across the province, created a specific task force with the OMA focused on reducing the administrative burden, announced a plan, and taken many steps to address this specific issue. We’ve also implemented many other programs to address the broader challenges and improve primary care in Ontario.

While the Liberals and NDP, through this motion, are focused on hiring more administrative staff, our government is focused on improving patient care, hiring more doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, and all the allied health professionals. We are already taking action, listening to our health care partners and making historic investments in primary care and reducing red tape, including red tape in doctors’ offices.

Under the leadership of Premier Ford and Minister Jones, our government has been making record investments in health care.

Our system was neglected under 15 years of Liberal government, and our government knows that the status quo is not working.

Let’s look at what the state of Ontario’s health care system was after 15 years of failed Liberal government. For over a decade, the NDP propped up the Liberals as they cut medical residency positions, cut the number of physicians practising in family health teams, and created the longest health care wait times in Ontario’s history.

When they were in office, the NDP cut medical school enrolment by 10%, thinking that we had too many doctors. The impact of that decision—just using U of T medical school as an example—was a staggering drop in the number of doctors being trained. Just in one class at U of T medical school, they went down from 252 doctors being trained to 177. That’s a lot of doctors we do not have in Ontario today, due to bad decisions by the opposition.

And the Liberals, frankly, were just as bad, as the former Liberal Premier, in 2015, eliminated 50 medical residency spots, resulting in over 500 less doctors practising in Ontario today—100 less doctors by 2016, 250 less doctors by 2019, and a staggering 550 less doctors now practising in 2024 in Ontario, as a result of decisions made by the former Liberal government.

Do we wish they hadn’t made those decisions? Yes, we do. We really wish we had those doctors today because that would go a long way to meeting Ontario’s needs. But we can’t change the past. We can just make good decisions going forward. And that’s what this government is doing.

Let’s just contrast what the NDP, when they were in power, or the Liberals, when they were in power—sometimes supported by the NDP—did with what this government is doing. The Ford government is:

—reversing failed Liberal and NDP policies and growing our health care workforce, adding 12,500 new doctors across the province since 2018—12,500, that’s a lot;

—launching the largest medical school expansion since we were last in government, building a new medical school in Brampton and in Scarborough, and adding 260 more undergraduate and 449 residency spots at all of Ontario’s medical schools; and

—making a record investment recently, in February, of $110 million to create 78 new and expanded primary care teams, adding over 400 new primary care providers to help close the gap and connect some 328,000 Ontarians to primary care.

This, together with expanding all those medical school spots, will result in 98% of Ontarians having access to a primary care provider. But we’re not stopping there.

As a result of the failed Liberal and NDP policies, too many Ontarians were having to wait too long for appointments or surgery, having to travel too far to access care, or spending too much time navigating the health care system.

One year ago, our government introduced Your Health, a comprehensive plan to make bold and innovative, creative changes to strengthen all aspects of our health care system, making it easier and more convenient for Ontarians to connect to care closer to home. We’re already starting to see the results.

Ontario has the shortest surgical wait times in all of Canada.

Almost 18,000 people have received their cataract surgery at community surgical centres just between April and December of last year, 2023. That’s 18,000 people who can get back to work, can read to their grandchildren, can go about their daily lives, who otherwise would be on a wait-list.

The pandemic backlog for cervical cancer screening was eliminated by last August.

We’re continuing to make progress in improving mental health care, opening eight new youth wellness hubs over the past year, with 22 hubs launched since 2020, that are connecting more than 43,000 youth and families to mental health services, primary care and more.

We’re getting shovels in the ground for over 50 hospital developments that will add over 3,000 new hospital beds to the 3,500 beds that we have built since 2020—building more beds in just four years than the Liberals did in 14.

While the NDP sat idly by as the Liberals fired 1,600 nurses, this government has added more than 80,000 nurses in Ontario since 2018. In fact, 2023 was another record year for nurses, with more than 17,000 nurses registering to work in Ontario and another 30,000 nursing students studying at Ontario’s colleges and universities.

We’ve also added over 12,500 new doctors since 2018, and we are listening to our front-line doctors—our family doctors—about the challenges that they are facing. That’s why we’re working very closely with the Ontario Medical Association to eliminate duplicate and outdated forms so that doctors can focus more time on their patients and less time on needless paperwork. In fact, my colleague and parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Health MPP Gallagher Murphy and I already toured the province—I think that was almost a year ago now—meeting with primary care providers across the province to hear from them about the administrative burden that they are dealing with and to discuss proposed solutions.

But we’ve done even more. We’ve allowed pharmacists to treat and prescribe medications for 19 common medical ailments, and this program has been an enormous success. Last year, pharmacists completed over 800,000 assessments at over 4,500 pharmacies across all of Ontario. That initiative alone has resulted in hundreds of thousands of fewer visits to doctors’ offices, which also relieves pressures on family doctors and our entire health care system.

We currently lead the country with 90% of people connected to a regular primary care provider, and we have added hundreds of medical residency positions specifically for family doctors across the province.

But while we’re pleased with the progress, we know that there’s a lot more work to do to close the gap for people in Ontario not connected to primary care.

Just last month, we made a historic announcement. Minister Jones was joined by Dr. Jane Philpott, the Ontario College of Family Physicians, the Ontario Medical Association, the Ontario Hospital Association, the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, and the Alliance for Healthier Communities—all of them came together for this historic announcement of $110 million connecting more than 300,000 people to primary care teams, the very kind of teams that the member for Nickel Belt said are the best kind of primary care. That’s the kind of teams we announced, adding over 400 new primary care providers—by the way, the job postings for those are up—as part of our 78 new and expanded interprofessional primary care teams. These teams consist of family doctors, nurse practitioners, registered and practical nurses and more—dietitians, social workers; whatever is useful for that community, they will have in their allied interprofessional primary care team, and they’ll be able to get better service that way. And that’s what I was talking about—about focusing on delivering more patient care by hiring more care providers, and less on the other stuff. These teams, as I said, have all of this stuff in them.

In Peterborough, which was one of the places I visited for consultations with primary care doctors, they got new funding, and it will allow the newly established Peterborough Community Health Centre to connect more than 11,000 people to primary care.

This announcement also included the innovative proposal in Kingston, the Periwinkle proposal, where an investment of $4 million will help up to 10,000 people connect to team-based primary care.

And I had the great pleasure of joining my colleague the member from Brantford–Brant to announce the government’s investment of over $3.8 million to connect approximately 14,000 patients in Brantford, Brant, Six Nations and surrounding communities to a primary health care provider.

Almost daily, our government has been announcing investments in communities across the province to connect more people to primary care:

—in Lanark–Frontenac–Kingston, more than 13,000 people will be connected to primary care;

—an additional 4,000 in Bruce–Grey–Owen Sound;

—6,600 residents in Leeds-Grenville; and

—many more people in Thunder Bay and Essex and across the province; I’ve got a whole list of them here, which we could go through one by one. Let’s see—

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?

Thank you—to signal their support to this very, very important sector, if not the most important sector, our health care sector, and to all Ontarians that primary care is a top priority in the province.

All Ontarians deserve to receive health care that is responsive to their needs, regardless of where they live or who they are. And our government will continue to support better, more connected, and inclusive patient-centred care for everyone. This is why I hope that the opposition will indeed show their support for our primary care investments. I just spoke about so many from my riding, to a variety of ridings—Brampton to all over northern Ontario, other locations, even downtown Toronto, mobile expansions. This is why I hope the opposition will show their support for our primary care investments—because those who were at these announcements are expressing their appreciation for these expansions, because they know these expansions and these investments are making and will make a difference.

If the opposition members truly believe in investing in our primary care, then they should show their support by voting for the upcoming budget.