Yesterday, we had an opportunity to choose primary care multidisciplinary clinicians and health care professionals. You chose administrative staff. We are going to stand with our clinicians, with our primary care providers, to ensure that across Ontario, we continue to expand primary care in the province of Ontario.

While the NDP cut by 10% the number of physicians who were able to train in the province of Ontario, while the Liberal government of the day cut physician services and seats by 50 per year, we are making the expansions necessary to get it done.

That was the day that I stood with the member from Peterborough and made the announcement of 78 primary care announcements, and since that day, we have had community health care, family health teams and CHCs standing with us and saying, “Thank you for making a commitment to primary care. Thank you on behalf of the patients in Ontario, the clinicians in Ontario and, ultimately, the health care system in Ontario.”

The OMA, the OHA, the family doctors of Ontario understand what significant investment this means to the people of Ontario. It is sorely disappointing that the NDP and the Liberals don’t seem to get it.

We have absolutely made those investments, whether it is in colleges and universities, with the Minister of Colleges and Universities expanding the number of health care physicians available; whether it is for nurse practitioners, for family physicians, for primary care paramedics in northern Ontario. These are significant investments that are going to make an impact in the decades to come—

Ontario is leading Canada in our wait times. Now, can we do better? Absolutely, which is why I am happy to put our record of increasing access to training to internationally educated primary care practitioners and clinicians against any other jurisdiction, because we are leading Canada.

We now have 1,235 more nurses reporting for employment and registered with the CNO than we did previously. Why? Because we are making the changes necessary to make sure that people have access to good employment, good jobs in the province of Ontario, in our health care system, and we’ve made those changes—

At the risk of stating the obvious, expanding primary care multidisciplinary teams by 78 teams in the province of Ontario—three times the amount that we initially committed, because we know that there is need.

We now have, because of investments that our government has made with the Minister of Colleges and Universities, 300 new student paramedics training in the province of Ontario, including in northern Ontario where there is a Learn and Stay program available for them to get their training for free in exchange for staying in communities that are underserved.

We will continue to make these investments while the member opposite, their party, continue to oppose them every time we vote on these investments. But we’re getting the job done, Speaker.

We have had conversations with the federal Minister of Health saying if there is an opportunity, if there is a wedge that is allowing these clinics to happen, then perhaps the member opposite could pick up the phone and call their federal counterparts, because that’s what I’ve been doing. And I’m making the case that if the Canada Health Act allows these for-profits, then we will be shutting them down with the changes to the Canada Health Act and federal government involvement.

When I sent a directive to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario in August of 2022, less than two months after starting my role as Minister of Health, the CPSO was able to assess, review and ultimately license—when appropriate—the historic highest number of internationally educated primary care physicians in the province of Ontario. So actions do make a difference. We did the same thing with the minister’s directive for the College of Nurses of Ontario. Again, two years running, Speaker, we have had historic high numbers of internationally educated nurses wanting to live, practise in the province of Ontario. Those are concrete changes that we are making to impact people’s lives and increase access to publicly funded health care.