Last Friday, my riding, my team and I lost a good friend, Mr. Don Morin. Don advocated for workers’ rights before and after his retirement from the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

Don strongly believed in the NDP as the best choice for the working people of Ontario. Don was the president of the NDP Nickel Belt riding association in 2007, when I was first elected, and he continued as my president until 2015. We called him Best Prez Ever due to this constant involvement whenever and wherever he could help, whether it was putting up signs, bringing T-shirts, hats, snacks, tools. Whatever was needed, Don was always happy to help.

He also helped support my predecessor, Ms. Shelley Martel, while she was in office.

During the last election, he was really active with my team, pointing out all of the sign locations where NDPs had put up signs. He knew the size of it, the locations of it. He would grab the sledgehammer and start nailing the sign just like he had done for the last five decades. But that was against his wife’s instruction; there was supposed to be no sledgehammer for Don, because he was 81 years old at the time.

Don leaves behind his smiling wife, Diane, two sons and three grandkids. He was extremely proud of his family and what they have achieved.

Thank you for sharing Don with us. We’ve learned so much from him, and I can assure you his lessons will not be forgotten. I will miss you, Don.

Ma question est pour la ministre de la Santé.

The health care staffing shortage has reached crisis level. The government has the data that shows this, but they are actively hiding that information from the public. The government was elected six years ago, and what have they done, Speaker? They have been disrespectful and harmful to our health care workers.

Is the minister so ashamed of her work on health care that she is hiding the workforce numbers?

So can the minister explain to the people of Ontario why the government is pulling the wool over our eyes?

Interjections.

Interjections.

I would like to present this petition called “Improve Winter Road Maintenance.” I thank Jon Berube from my riding for these petitions.

The petition is quite simple, Speaker. The winter road maintenance in northern Ontario has been privatized by the previous government. The private contractors—some of them do good jobs; some of them do horrible jobs. I can tell you that, in my riding, I can tell you where one snow-clearing contractor ends and the other one starts, because where the other one starts, it’s perfect pavement, and before this, we’re in a foot of snow.

People are signing the petition to say: If you’re going to continue down the path of private contractors doing winter road maintenance in northern Ontario, then you have to have an oversight of it. If they don’t do a good job, they are putting northern Ontario drivers at risk. They should have an oversight, and if they don’t correct this, the government should take it over.

This is what they want. I want it also. I will sign it and ask Armaan to bring it to the Clerk.

I would like to thank Gisele Raymind from Hanmer in my riding for this petition. It’s called “Coverage for Take-Home Cancer Drugs.”

Basically, cancer drugs, if they are administered in a hospital, are covered with no out-of-pocket expenses. But for more and more cancer drugs, you don’t need to be in a hospital anymore; you can take them at home, which is great for patient care, but that means that you have to pay for them. For many people, that’s a huge barrier to care.

In other provinces, whether we look at British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba or Quebec, they all cover take-home cancer drugs so that you can focus on getting through your cancer treatment and getting better as fast as you can. The Canadian Cancer Society has called on the government to cover take-home cancer drugs. I think it is high time for Ontario to join other provinces in Canada and make sure that every patient facing cancer can put all of their energy into getting better, not into trying to get coverage for the drugs that will help them do better.

I am happy to add my name to this petition and I will ask my good page Aura to bring the petition to the Clerk.

Basically, medicare is a program that defines us as Canadians and as Ontarians, where the care we get is based on our needs, not on our ability to pay. Under this government, we have seen more and more of the publicly paid-for care being delivered by for-profit companies. The for-profit companies are there for one reason: to make money. It is really easy to make money off of the backs of sick people. Once you are sick, nothing else matters.

We have to make sure that our health care system is protected, that we do not want people to make money off of the backs of sick people, and people are signing this petition by the hundreds every single day. I get big stacks of it coming to my office to make sure that the services we get will be based on our needs, not on our ability to pay.

I support this petition and will ask Shiara to bring it to the Clerk.

Did you know, Speaker, that right now there are more than 1,742 people on the wait-list for an organ in Ontario? And that, of those people, every third day one of them will die waiting for an organ? It doesn’t have to be that way. Over 81% of Ontarians want to be a donor. If you ask 81% of us that want to be a donor, only a fraction of this—36%—have signed their donor card.

I have a bill in the name of one of my colleagues, Peter Kormos, who would change this. We would basically copy what has been done in Nova Scotia, where we would assume consent, give people many, many chances to opt out, all the way until after death—their loved ones will have an opportunity to opt out—but I can guarantee you that that will increase the number of organs available for people who need them and would bring a lot of relief to our health care system at the same time.

This is something that I strongly support. Peter Kormos started it, and I would be very happy to see it become a reality. So I’ll be happy to add my name to it and give it to page Simon to bring to the Clerk.

Il y a plusieurs programmes du système de santé qui n’existent pas dans le nord de l’Ontario. On doit se déplacer, soit à Toronto, Ottawa, London, pour les recevoir. Le gouvernement nous rembourse les frais de transport, les frais d’hébergement, étant donné que les services ne sont pas disponibles dans le Nord. Par contre, les frais n’ont pas été mis à jour depuis très longtemps.

Et là, je vais faire un petit paragraphe, parce que dans le budget qui vient d’être déposé, il y aura une augmentation des frais d’hébergement, qui passeront de 100 $ par nuit à 175 $ par nuit. Mais les frais de transport, les autres frais, n’ont pas changé depuis les années 1990. On a besoin de mettre ce programme-là à jour, parce qu’il y a des gens qui vont choisir de ne pas avoir de traitements parce qu’ils ne peuvent pas payer pour se rendre dans le sud de l’Ontario.

Je suis d’accord avec cette pétition. Je vais la signer et je demande à Simon de l’amener à la table des greffiers.

Resuming the debate adjourned on April 24, 2024, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 188, An Act to amend the Child, Youth and Family Services Act, 2017 and various other Acts / Projet de loi 188, Loi modifiant la Loi de 2017 sur les services à l’enfance, à la jeunesse et à la famille et diverses autres lois.

I’m happy to have a few minutes to talk to Bill 188, An Act to amend the Child, Youth and Family Services Act, 2017 and various other Acts.

It has been a long time coming, Speaker. We have known of horrific situations in the child welfare system for a long time. The children’s aid societies have come forward, telling us, asking us, begging us to make changes, and I’m happy to see that some of those changes have been incorporated into this bill. But there are other big asks that have been there for a long time that are not in the bill, and I’m sorry that they are not there.

When you look at child protection, you have to look at the continuum of it. You start with: How do you protect them? How do you make sure that they do not end up in care? How do you make sure that they do not end up having to be cared for by the children’s aid society and cared for in residential care in different parts of the province?

I can tell you that in Nickel Belt, for the people who I represent, the number one reason why the children’s aid society goes in and takes the child away from the family for the protection of the child is the lack of mental health services. In my community, first of all, 40,000 people do not have access to primary care, so they cannot go see their family physician or their nurse practitioners because they are on the wait-list for Health Care Connect for years on end.

Their child that they love, that they want to support—they are good people who want to do good for their children—develops a mental illness. The child will be admitted into the hospital. After you wait for 36 hours in the emergency room, your child will finally be seen. He or she may be admitted and then get discharged, and they say he needs or she needs to have follow-up in the community. The average wait time for community-based mental health services for children in my community is 18 months. It used to be 12 months, which was way too long; 18 months is a lifetime when you’re a child facing mental illness. During that 18 months, Speaker, the family will fall apart.

We are not mental health experts. They don’t know what’s good to do for the child. One parent will say, “We should do this”; the other one will say something else. Then the child starts to act up in school, and the school sends the child back home and calls the children’s aid society because they can see that there’s something going on. Those are good families who want to care for their kids; they just don’t know what’s the right thing to do when the kid starts to act out, when the kid starts to be sick and there’s no way for them to access care, so the kid eventually will fall into the protection of children’s aid.

The good thing, if there’s ever a good thing when a child is taken away, is that the children’s aid will have access to intensive children’s mental health services and the kid will gain access. That access will not be in our community; that access will be hundreds of kilometres away, where the child will be sent.

For the family, it is extremely difficult. They will continue to have visiting access to their child, but it’s not obvious to drive 400 kilometres away for a two-hour visit in person with the child. It becomes really, really difficult. The family will fall apart; most of them will end up in divorce.

When the child gets the treatment he or she needs, comes back to northern Ontario, their life will be completely different. There’s no more mom and dad. There’s no more family. The family has fallen apart.

None of those working up front to support children, to support families so that we don’t end up needing children’s aid services are addressed in the bill. What is addressed in the bill is residential, group and foster homes, and believe me, Speaker, there is a lot of room for improvement at that end.

There are quite a few First Nations families in my riding. I’m proud to say that Wahnapitae First Nation, Atikameksheng Anishnawbek and Mattagami First Nation are all in my riding. There are quite a few First Nations around Bisco, Westree, Shining Tree etc.

You will have seen in the news a report that was done about children from First Nations who are in care. This report was really hard to read. There was a most serious allegation involving one of the biggest for-profit residential care providers, Hatts Off. The investigation showed that the privately run group home had, as a profit model, First Nations kids from northern Ontario communities. Those kids are called “cash cows.” They’re called “bread and butter.” One of the children who was in one of those homes asked a First Nations social worker if she had come to rescue him—this is how poorly.

I can also talk about Connor Homes in eastern Ontario, which were kept in a state of disrepair. The kids in care were left with few resources, while the owner amassed a personal fortune in real estate holdings. Some of the people who worked there would tell you that you knew that the owner had money, but it wasn’t the kids who saw that money or saw the care that should have come with it. The homes frequently used physical restraints on the kids in their care. And the story goes on—that goes from bad to worse.

There are steps in this bill that would help. One of the big ones is that every child in care will know that they can call upon the Ombudsman. Don’t get me wrong; I, like every member on this side in my caucus, in the NDP—we want the child and youth advocate to come back. The child and youth advocate was the one telling us where the complaints are coming from, and of the—I forgot the numbers—roughly 19,000 serious occurrence reports, a quarter of them were produced from group residential homes. We’ve known about this for quite a few years. The special task force on residential care is several years old. The time to act was years ago. But I’m happy that some steps are being taken so that every child who is in a residential, group or foster home will know that if they feel something is wrong, they will be able to call the Ombudsman. This is one part of the bill that I support—make it readily available so that children can call out for help.

I would have liked to see more protection for whistle-blowers. Everybody who holds a health professional licence in Ontario—we have a mandate to call a children’s aid society the minute that we suspect that a child is in need. We don’t have to have any proof. If we suspect that a child is in need, everybody who holds a licence in Ontario has a mandatory obligation to call. This mandatory obligation to call will now be for people who work in our schools; it should have been there way before, because every kid in Ontario goes to school. They are our eyes and ears as to what’s going on with the children, and they should not have to amass a proof big enough to get a police officer to look at the case. If they suspect something, call the children’s aid society and let them do the investigation to make sure that the child is safe rather than amassing enough proof to show that the child has been abused. This is something else in the bill that I’m more than willing to support.

Well, I’m happy to share that for children who are crown wards who are transitioning out, Laurentian University in Sudbury has a program where they offer free tuition. My colleague the MPP for Sudbury as well as my colleague the MPP from London North Centre have worked with the university around London. We have worked with Laurentian University where children who are aging out, who are crown wards, get free tuition, and they get supported while they go to university. That has been life-changing for every single one of them who has been able to take advantage of this program.

We are talking 25 young people in London and—

Le plus de transparence, le plus d’imputabilité que tu as avec ceux qui s’occupent des enfants, ceux qui s’occupent—de continuer leur accès, c’est toujours important. C’est quelque chose de bien. C’est quelque chose qui aurait dû être fait avant, mais, je te dirais, j’aimerais amener ça une étape plus loin, où on est certain que c’est seulement des compagnies à but non lucratif qui s’occupent de nos enfants.

This government has been in power for six years, and the previous government six years, the Liberals—no base budget increase. Think of everything that has changed. It is almost impossible for those agencies to give the people who work there a pay increase because the cost of heating, the cost of electricity, the cost of Internet, the cost of cellphones, the cost of everything has gone up, but their base budget has not. They cannot recruit and retain a stable workforce because they cannot offer good jobs.

All of this could change instantly if we had pay parity, if we realized the importance of community-based children’s mental health workers and paid them what they are worth. It would attract more people to the profession, keep them in the children’s mental health system for the good of all kids.