As you know, this is Nursing Week. Happy Nursing Week to all the hard-working nurses out there.

I would like to introduce four of their leaders who are here today. Karen McKay-Eden, a registered nurse, is the region 3 vice-president of the Ontario Nurses’ Association. Dianne Martin, a registered practical nurse, is the CEO of the Registered Practical Nurses Association of Ontario, better known as WeRPN. Jackie Walker, a registered practical nurse, is the executive vice-president of SEIU Healthcare. And Lucy Morton, a registered practical nurse, is the chair of the OPSEU/SEFPO Community Health Care Professionals sector.

Welcome to Queen’s Park, ladies.

I want to wish the hundreds of thousands of nurses in Ontario a happy Nursing Week, including nurse Dianne Martin, CEO of WeRPN, and Karen McKay-Eden, VP of ONA. They are here today because our health care system is in disarray, with no relief in sight.

Patients, from sick babies to people needing palliative care, face long wait times in emergency rooms and overcrowded hospitals.

Minister, it does not have to be that way. This is not the new normal. BC is implementing mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios.

Will the minister commit to improving patient outcomes and nurse retention, and bring nurse-to-patient ratios in Ontario?

Let me tell you, Speaker, the state of California implemented nurse-to-patient ratios 25 years ago, and the numbers speak for themselves: better patient outcomes and less nurses burning out—two challenges that this Minister of Health and Premier continue to ignore as they rush forward with the for-profit delivery of our health care system.

It doesn’t have to be that way. If the government is interested at all in improving Ontario’s health care system, there’s a very easy first step they can do: Put in place nurse-to-patient ratios. Will the minister do it?

Interjections.

Yesterday, when the Premier, Minister Dunlop and I were at TMU to celebrate and mark the beginning of Nursing Week, I spoke to a nurse who trained and graduated under Bob Rae’s NDP government. Do you know what she told me? She told me that only three nurses in her graduating class stayed in Ontario, because there were no jobs. The NDP government was actually firing nurses.

I now look at the Liberal government of the day. Your previous leader, Kathleen Wynne, admitted and acknowledged in her exit interview with TVO that she wished she had invested more in the health care system.

Well, we’re doing it. We’re getting it done. We’re training more nurses. We’re retaining more nurses. We’re bringing international nurses to Ontario, who want to be here. We have two years running of historic highs of internationally trained clinicians licensing in the province of Ontario. We’re getting it done.

Last week, I was with Minister Piccini and I sat down with nursing students who are participating in an extern program. They told me how that extern program that was brought in under Premier Ford has made them more confident, has made them a better nurse. That’s the kind of initiatives we will continue—

Given the destructive effects of Bill 124, it is no surprise that senior health care workers have left their hospital positions and that even new nurses are being drawn into the nursing agency vortex—a situation that is pushing almost every hospital in Thunder Bay–Superior North into massive debt.

What is the government doing to attract nurses back into full-time positions and stop the flood of health care dollars going to shareholder profits?

When will the government address the wage gap identified in the Hay report and bring nurse practitioner wages up to levels appropriate to their skills and responsibilities?