Ma question est pour la ministre de la Santé. According to ministry data, Ontario is presently short 13,000 nurses; in a few short years, this number will rise to 33,000 nurses. The number one reason for this shortage is the workload that nurses face on each and every shift. What is this government doing to improve the workload of our nurses?

I would like to thank Joffre Labelle from Hanmer in my riding for these petitions. The petitions are called “Make PSW a Career.”

As the document that we received from the ministry showed us, Ontario is short 38,000 PSWs right now. Every year, we will add 10,000 more PSWs to this shortage list. Why? Because the working conditions of PSWs are not adequate. A quarter of them leave their profession every single year. They love what they do. They want to care for us. They’re good at what they do. But if they work as a PSW, they can’t feed their kids and pay the rent. It’s as simple as that.

Thousands and thousands of people have signed the petition, and they ask Premier Ford to make PSW a career; make sure that they have a permanent, full-time job that is well-paid; make sure that those jobs have sick days and vacation days and benefits and maybe a dream of a pension plan. We did this for nurses, way back in the 1970s. We mandated that 70% of jobs for nurses had to be permanent, full-time, well-paid. We can do this for PSWs. We can change the shortage of 50,000 PSWs to care for our loved ones in home care, in long-term care, in hospitals. We can change this today by passing this petition.

I fully support it. I’ll affix my name to it and ask Victoria to bring it to the Clerk.