It is my pleasure today to rise to congratulate Home Hardware as they mark 60 years of serving communities across Canada. In fact, the Premier recently joined me to visit their headquarters in St. Jacob’s—after we picked up apple fritters from the farmers’ market, of course.

So how did that single store in St. Jacob’s grow to become a national symbol? Well, here’s how. They kept their commitment to help build their communities with helpful advice, quality products and great customer service.

“This milestone is a testament to over six decades of dedication and hard work by our dealers and team members across the country,” said Kevin Macnab, president and CEO of Home Hardware Stores Ltd.

Since opening in St. Jacob’s, they now have more than 1,000 stores providing good jobs across the country. It’s hard to picture small towns in Ontario without a Home Hardware. They have become a part of the fabric of our community and country. Home Hardware is consistently chosen as one of Canada’s top employers and received the honour from Forbes again in 2024.

Congratulations on 60 years and thank you for the positive contributions to our community, Ontario and Canada.

I’d like to welcome my intern, Winston Lee, who is here visiting with his mother, from Vancouver, Wini Yeung. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Good morning, Speaker. It gives me great pleasure to welcome some fantastic members of ACTRA Toronto who are here with us today in the gallery. I’m going to only name a couple here, but I know that my colleagues are going to name some others. I do want to make mention of Amy Matysio and Kate Ziegler, ACTRA Toronto vice-presidents, and Alistair Hepburn, executive director. It is wonderful to see so many of my former colleagues here with us today. Welcome to your House.

Mr. Speaker, it’s a great pleasure to introduce Harsimranjeet Bhatia from the Ontario Association of Naturopathic Doctors. Harsimranjeet practises in my riding, and I look forward to meeting with them and the association later today. Welcome to your House.

It’s my great pleasure to welcome Aranka Jones, a constituent of Simcoe–Grey and a member of the Ontario Association of Naturopathic Doctors, to the House.

I’m pleased to honour and introduce Melinda Chartrand, a trustee who is with us from the Centre Jules-Léger Consortium. Welcome to Queen’s Park. Bienvenue and thank you for leadership for francophone students.

I just want to welcome three of the most very important people in my life who I could not love more: my wife, Melissa; my mom, Barb Smith; and my sister Gwen Smales, in the Speaker’s gallery. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

We don’t permit political statements during introduction of visitors; I’ll remind the members.

The Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery.

The member for Stormont–Dundas–South Glengarry.

I, too, would like to welcome members of ACTRA in the galleries today.

It has been two years. It’s time to end the lockout.

I would like to welcome to the House today Trevor Appleton, a great and dedicated local community citizen from my riding of Durham. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I would like to welcome members of the Ontario Bioscience Innovation Organization. They will be putting on a health technology adaptation lunch today in 228.

Also, welcome to the Ontario Association of Naturopathic Doctors, who will be in the dining room at 5 o’clock.

Also, we have members of the Nurse Practitioners’ Association of Ontario here today.

Welcome to your House.

I want to introduce Mitchell Brum and Emily Carlucci, interns in my office who are visiting here today.

To use a scientific term, we’ve got a whole whack of visitors from the Niagara region here this week—far too many to name, but I want to welcome them all to Queen’s Park.

I encourage all members to come out this evening, from 5 to 7 p.m., for an amazing reception in honour of Niagara Week. You’re going to have some of the best that Niagara has to offer.

I especially want to acknowledge Melinda Chartrand, who is here with Csc MonAvenir; also, April Jeffs, who is joining us; as well as the regional chair, Jim Bradley.

Welcome to Queen’s Park, everyone.

How in the heck could I forget John Cleland, ACTRA member, ACTRA national councillor, executive committee member, and my friend. Thank you so much for being here, John.

I’d like to welcome Dr. Campbell from the Ontario Bioscience Innovation Organization and her team for their health tech adoption lunch today in 228-230. So please join.

Since 2018, we’ve registered over 12,500 new physicians in Ontario, with almost 10% of those being family physicians. We’ve also registered 80,000 new nurses and 2,400 new doctors last year alone.

Speaker, last year was a record-breaking year for nurses. We registered over 17,500 new nurses last year. We’ve registered over 33,000 new nurses in the last two years, and we have another 30,000 nurses that are enrolled and studying at a university or college in Ontario.

But we are not stopping there. We want this year to be another record year. We’re investing another $740 million to address the immediate staffing needs, supporting the expansion of over 3,000 new nursing seats at Ontario colleges and universities.

Speaker, we’ll continue to do what’s needed to ensure that the people of Ontario have the best publicly funded health care when and where they need it.

Just one year after our government launched our Your Health plan, we’re making steady progress to connect more people to convenient care. We started the year with an investment of $110 million to create 78 new and expanded interprofessional primary care teams. And in this year’s budget, we expanded that to $546 million over the next three years to ensure that 600,000 Ontarians have access to primary care.

We’ll continue to make the investments that are needed to ensure that all people of Ontario have access to the care that they need when they need it.

I apologize; I’m going up for the second time, but I noticed Daniel Grubb from Brock University came in with April Jeffs as well as Zach Dadson.

I just want to welcome you, as well, today. Thank you for coming.

And Niagara Week—come on down to the reception, 5 to 7, down in the legislative committee room, and enjoy some Niagara craft beer and wines.

Speaker, as I’m sitting here, I’m realizing there are so many familiar faces in the room, I can’t even keep up. But I would really be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the presence of the long-time national president of ACTRA, Ferne Downey, a dear friend of mine who’s in the room today too.

Stand up, Ferne.

A quarter of patients in Sault Ste. Marie without a family doctor—not a major concern? Thirty thousand patients in Kingston without access to primary care—not a major concern? These comments are not only insensitive, considering the 2.2 million people in this province without a family physician; they are dangerous.

I will ask the Premier, will he stand by the minister’s dangerous and insensitive comments?

Imagine—imagine—being in an emergency room. You go there because you’ve had these problems; you’ve been putting it off because you don’t have a family doctor. And then you sit there and you’re told not only do you have cancer but that it’s metastasized—in an emergency room.

I want to ask the Premier again to stand in this place and tell us whether he is going to continue to stand by his health minister’s insensitive comments.

Interjections.

This government, if they are recruiting any physicians, we can’t keep them. They are leaving faster than we can recruit them.

The Minister of Health said last week this is not a major concern for her government. I want to hear from the Premier himself, who is sitting right here today. I want to hear him speak to this. Do you stand by your comments? Do you stand by your minister’s comments, or are you going to remove her from her role? Are you going to remove this Minister of Health from her role for those insensitive comments?

Mr. Speaker, the opposition leader wants to hear from me; I’ll tell the opposition leader, as she sat in this House with the support of the Liberals, fired—let me repeat that: fired—1,700 people, and you support it: 1,700 nurses.

Again, as our great member said, we have put in over $300 million in investment for not only pediatric care but $546 million for 600,000 Ontarians, to match them up with primary care. But that’s not all we did. We’re making sure we’re building medical universities that, again, neither of your parties have ever built in 30 years. York University, they’re going to graduate primary care doctors. The Brampton university, they’re going to focus on primary care doctors. University of Toronto is going to focus on primary care doctors.

As our great member said, over 12,500 doctors have been hired and registered and working here in Ontario since we’ve been in office; 80,000 nurses—