Very quickly, I would just like to invite everybody to Diabetes Canada. They’re in 230 today and they would like to see as many of you as possible.

As you know, Speaker, people, students, businesses rely on the Internet to go about our day, whether it’s for your business to conduct your business, for students to study, for people to communicate with their community.

Unfortunately, the program that the government has put into place is a program that is 100% privately delivered. The government gives the private sector a lot of money to build infrastructure and run Internet. This does not work in many parts of northern Ontario, where there are no providers who want to set up shop. It doesn’t matter how much money the government wants to give them; they do not want to set up shop in northern Ontario because there is no money to be made. But the people of northern Ontario, we need Internet access, just like everybody else. We want it to be affordable and we want it to be high-speed. We want to be part of the connection that the Internet brings.

So I fully support this petition. I think it’s very much needed, and I will ask my good page Myah to bring it to the Clerk.

I would like to thank Louise Laplante from Hanmer in my riding for this petition. It is called “Blood and Plasma Donations Not for Sale.”

Speaker, you will remember, in the 1980s, 30,000 Canadians got infected by HIV and hepatitis through blood products; 8,000 Canadians died. There was a Royal Commission of Inquiry led by Justice Krever, who made recommendations. His number 2 recommendation was to make sure that we never pay for blood and blood product donations.

In Ontario, we passed the Voluntary Blood Donations Act that forbids the privatization of blood product collection and payment. But right now, Grifols has a contract and is opening up pay-for-plasma donations in Ontario, which will not only supposedly help with our supply, but they also sell Canadian plasma, Ontario plasma, back to the States. I think this goes completely against the Voluntary Blood Donations Act of Ontario, and so do the people who have signed the petition asking us to respect our own laws.

I fully agree with this petition, and I ask my good page Sophia to bring it to the Clerk.

Comme vous savez, monsieur le Président, les francophones de l’Ontario ont le droit constitutionnel à une éducation dans la langue française. La demande pour des écoles françaises continue d’augmenter et ça fait qu’on a besoin de près de 1 000 nouveaux enseignants et enseignantes à chaque année. Malheureusement, le système en Ontario n’en éduque que 500 par année.

Il y a une étude qui a été faite et un rapport qui a été rendu au gouvernement pour aider avec ces défis. Donc, ils demandent au gouvernement de financer le rapport du groupe de travail sur la pénurie des enseignants et enseignantes dans le système d’éducation de langue française, et de travailler en partenariat avec eux pour résoudre le problème pour que tous les enfants francophones de la province aient accès à une éducation de langue française de qualité.

J’appuie cette pétition. Je vais la signer, et je demande à Farhan de l’amener à l’amener à la table des greffiers.

Thank you, Speaker. And I just want you to know that I will be sharing my time with the member from Humber River–Black Creek.

I cannot tell you how happy the people of Nickel Belt were when the Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act was announced. They actually promoted it. There was a clip on the local television to talk about it, and everybody thought, “Yes, finally, we will be able to get more homes.” Because, you see, Speaker, the demand for homes in my riding is really, really high.

I was really proud, last Wednesday morning, to attend the grand opening of the Iamgold Côté Lake gold mine, which was just across the street from the community of Gogama in my riding. The Minister of Mines was there, and many dignitaries from all over. People from Japan, people from all over were there. There are over 1,800 workers who come and work at this mine and all of them are looking for housing. Right now, they sleep in bunkers. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure to sleep in bunkers; it’s not exactly desirable. But they go to Gogama, and they see that there are many, many beautiful homes that nobody lives in. I have pictures here. I’m aware that I’m not allowed to show you those pictures, but I can talk to you about some of those properties.

There’s the home at 52 Conrad Crescent that has been there. It has a beautifully treed backyard. There is the home at 8 Low Avenue—a beautiful white home kind of up on a hill—that is available, that is empty. There’s the home at 56 Conrad Crescent, a nice little bungalow with huge parking. There’s about a dozen or so—one at 11 Low Avenue, a very nice home with a nice balcony. We have 34 McGowan Street. We have many, many empty houses.

You know, Speaker, that those houses are empty because there used to be a huge Ministry of Natural Resources office in Gogama, so they had houses for their employees to live in. They also had lots of garages and lots of infrastructure for them to do their work. The ministry comes with big trucks and a place to fix them and all of this. And all of this sits empty and belongs to the province.

In many parts of the north, we have no municipalities. We have what is called a local services board or a local road board, but they do not have the power of a municipality. So when a property such as a house sits empty—people don’t pay their taxes; it just sits there—then the property, if you were in a municipality, would go back to the municipality. But given that you’re in northern Ontario and we have no municipality, the property goes back to the province.

In September 2020, I was really proud when we did the sod-turning ceremony for the Côté gold mine. The Premier was there, the Minister of Government and Consumer Services, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Northern Development and Mines—anyway, the names of the ministries have changed since, but there were, like, six or seven ministers from the Ford government who came to the sod-turning ceremony.

Understand that this gold mine was being developed, that it would create hundreds and hundreds—really, thousands—of jobs to mine that gold that they had found at Côté Lake, that it was just across the street from Gogama, that there were lots of empty buildings that belonged to the provincial government in Gogama that people could buy. I made sure that I mentioned all of this to all of the ministers who were there, to make sure that they would quickly be up for sale. I guarantee you, if you put them up for sale today, they will be sold by the weekend. But nothing happened. So on January 6, 2021, I wrote a letter to Premier Doug Ford and to his chief of staff—that was Jamie Wallace at the time—to tell him:

“I am writing to you about the economic potentials of Côté gold mine for my constituents and for the community of Gogama. Gogama is a beautiful, small, isolated northern community in my riding of Nickel Belt. It was once home to 1,200 residents.” There are now many empty homes, and I named the homes, and I gave them the pictures and explained to them how those homes became the property of the provincial government and asked him if he could quickly put those homes up for sale.

This government says that they are for police, but not in northern Ontario. They closed the police forces, two of them, in my riding. The OPP does not have an office in Gogama anymore, so the police station is closed, and the homes where the police officers used to live just next to the police station are beautiful, beautiful homes with a stone fireplace and nice big trees—anyway, beautiful homes. They also sit empty since the Ford government closed the OPP station in that community. I explained all of that to the minister and said, “People need homes. Please put those homes up for sale.”

That was on January 6, 2021. But I also—on January 7; it took me one more day—wrote to the Minister of Government and Consumer Services, basically telling her more or less the same thing. I also wrote to the Minister of Finance, because apparently, when the houses are first repossessed, they could belong to the Ministry of Finance. But people didn’t know for sure, so I also wrote to the Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry. I also wrote to the Minister of Infrastructure, because I figured those are infrastructure and it will be the Minister of Infrastructure who will eventually put those houses up for sale. I wanted to make sure that everybody knew.

The grand opening was in September 2020. I wrote to all of those people in 2021, and it took a year and a half before I got an answer back. The answer back came to say, “Estimated timeline is a minimum of 12 to 24 months, due to the complication with resolving” the issue of who owns what property.

So I had written in January 2021. They’re telling me it’s going take 12 to 24 months, so 12 months later, I wrote back to all of those good people and heard nothing. Twenty-four months later, I wrote back to all of those ministers and said, “Are those homes going to be up for sale?” And on August 11, 2023—so you’re talking three years after the sod-turning, two and half years after I had written to everybody, followed up 12 months later, followed up again 24 months later—I got a letter from the Ministry of Infrastructure, signed by the Minister of Infrastructure, telling me that the “Estimated timeline is a minimum 12 to 24 months” to put those homes up for sale. We are now in June 2024 and none of those homes have been put up for sale.

How much red tape exists in government? It is so hard to understand. The government owns those properties. Some of those properties, like the property that the Minister of Natural Resources used to use, have not been used for 11 years. The OPP station has been closed for four years. The rest of the homes that people have abandoned, they were abandoned in, I would say, early 2012. They’ve all been empty for 12 years.

Don’t get me wrong, the government pays to maintain them. They pay people to come and cut the grass and trim the trees. They pay people to come and shovel the driveways. They pay people to make sure that the home, the water pipes and all this are taken care of.

The government knows that they own these properties, they pay to maintain them, and yet, after writing to all of those people, after there are 1,800 people across the street that are looking for a home, there is too much red tape to put those homes up for sale.

We’re not talking million-dollar homes here. In my riding, most of those homes would go for, I don’t know, $250,000. How could it be that they can make decisions about billion-dollar greenbelt homes in three weeks’ time, and they cannot make a decision to put 12 homes that they own, that they maintain in Gogama, up for sale in four years? If that’s not red tape, I don’t know what to call this—that they don’t care about northern Ontario? I think they do.

I was at the grand opening of the gold mine. I got to try to lift the first gold nugget that came out of the mine. Did you know, Speaker, that a gold nugget about that big—I couldn’t even lift it. It is very heavy. I was pretending that I was going to lift it and put it in my pocket—you know, gold. I couldn’t even lift it. I had to ask the member from Sudbury to come and help me lift it so I could take a picture pretending.

Anyway, that being said, the Minister of Mines was there; he gave a beautiful speech. He knows about this situation. Anybody I talk to on the other side knows that those homes should be put up for sale, and yet, four years later—I stopped counting the number of letters that I have written, but we are over 30 letters that I have written about this, pictures that I have sent. How many times have I spoken about this in the House, and yet nothing has been done?

So my view of the Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act is that people have to realize that the province is not only southern Ontario. Northern Ontario is beautiful. Northern Ontario is part of Ontario. When you put a piece of legislation forward that talks to something that is really, really pertinent to northern Ontario, you have to make sure that we are included in this.

But I would say the present legislation, Bill 185, Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act, the way it is written right now, it’s not going to help northern Ontario. We face housing issues the same way that everybody else does. As I said, when you open up a new mine, when 1,800 new workers move to a new mine, they move their family. They need a place to stay. They need a place for their spouses and their kids to go to school, and all of this is available right there, belongs to the provincial government, and I cannot get them to put it up for sale. All I get is more or less the very same letter that was sent to me in 2021, 2022 and 2023, but there has been a change of minister—I mean, it’s still the Minister of Infrastructure. There’s a new Minister of Infrastructure on the different answers that I get, but it is the same answer—copy and paste from one year to the next. How could it be, Speaker? Those people matter.

They fully agree that mining is important to northern Ontario. Well, mining means that when you open up a new mine—were there a lot of people at Côté Lake before? No. There were five camps, one of them in pretty poor shape. There were a few people with trailers around Côté Lake. That was it; that was all. Now it is a fantastic facility. You wouldn’t believe it.

There are trucks that are—how can I explain? Bigger than—oh, I don’t know how many feet up, but they are huge, huge, huge trucks that you have never seen. I got a picture of myself beside the tire. I’m not even 25% of the size of the tire, never mind the truck. All of those are self-driving. They go 50 kilometres an hour down to the drilling. The drilling, again, is directed off-line. There are no workers there. Everything is done remotely. It is a fantastic gold mine.

They still need workers. Workers still need a place to live. Don’t get me wrong; many of them live in Timmins, many of them live in Sudbury and travel, but many of them come from Gogama, come from Mattagami First Nation, from Biscotasing, Westree, Shining Tree, areas around there. They want to be able to rent those homes. They want to be able to buy those homes, and the government has so much red tape that they cannot put them up for sale.

I know that I was sharing my time with my good colleague, and I’m sorry I took too much of my time, but I’ll sit down now.

The direct answer to your question is: no. There is nothing in this bill that will protect anybody from illegal evictions. There is nothing in this bill that will make it more affordable to rent a place. There is nothing in this bill to help renters.

The situation you describe is very similar to the situation in my community, where there will be encampments this summer—everywhere.

The number of people facing homelessness is increasing. Many of them have mental health and addictions issues. The number one step to be able to help them is to be able to house them. All of this is becoming out of reach. It is a crisis. It should be recognized as a crisis, but it is not even mentioned in that bill.

Je parlais d’une mine qui vient d’ouvrir. Comment tu fais pour attirer des travailleurs? Les travailleurs viennent. Ils sont intéressés dans l’emploi. Ils savent comment faire ça. Mais ils ont un conjoint, une conjointe; ils ont des enfants. Ils ont des besoins, et il n’y a pas de logements.

Il n’y a rien dans le projet de loi qui a été présenté qui va aider les petites communautés du Nord à faire face à la pénurie de logements à laquelle on fait face en ce moment.

The bill is quite simple. It gives the number of patients that a nurse can be responsible for for one shift. To give you an example, if a patient is in intensive care on a ventilator, the law would say you need one nurse to one patient. On the flipside, if patients are admitted to the rehab unit on a nightshift, then you would have one nurse to seven patients, and there is a list that is given for people in ICUs, specialist care, in-patient, palliative care, rehab etc. that are listed in the bill.

I brought this bill forward because our health care system is in crisis. From Chesley to Wingham, from Marathon to Hawkesbury, from Red Lake to Carleton Place, we have seen over 1,000 emergency room closures in our province. Ontario has never, never seen that before.

If you look at the reason behind the closure of emergency rooms, the closure of important hospital services in different hospitals, up to permanent closures of hospitals, the number one reason why this is happening is always a lack of staff, and the number one reason why we have nursing shortages is burnout. Our nurses are burnt out.

I want to quote quite a few nurses. The nurses are watching right now. They know that I’m bringing this bill forward, and many of them are hoping that things will change, so they sent me quotes.

First: “I believe a legislated ratio is the single most important factor that would improve my own willingness to remain at bedside and within the nursing profession.”

Another quote: “I left a direct-care role in the hospital due to poor patient-to-nurse ratios and constant understaffing. Many times I felt unsafe and overwhelmed due to the short-staffing and increased patient needs.”

Third quote: “Higher wages would attract more nurses and better ratios would stop burnout and address nurses leaving the profession.”

Another quote: “I think wages and better staffing ratios would keep RPNs in Ontario.”

Another quote: “We should be implementing standard ratios. Education has them. Why not health care?”

Another quote: “I left direct patient care due to increase in violence ... and increased patient ratios.”

Another quote: “It’s increasingly difficult to provide quality care for patients when your patient ratio keeps growing.”

Another nurse: “We’re still working in unsafe nurse-patient ratios so often. Our workplace environment impacts the care that the people in the province receive.”

Another nurse: “It’s disappointing, stressful and exhausting. Nurses deserve better than what we have been provided for staffing and for patient ratios currently.”

I could go on, but I know I only have 12 minutes.

I would like to quote from WeRPN. They did a review called The State of Nursing in Ontario. They found out that nearly 48% of their members intend or are considering leaving the profession. When they asked what would sway them to remain, 72% of them said better nurse-to-patient ratios.

It’s not only nurses and RPNs; nurse practitioners also are watching this bill. They said, “The introduction of improved patient-to-nurse ratios is an important step towards addressing the deepening crisis in our health care system, acknowledging the overwhelming evidence seen first-hand by nurse practitioners in the field. Simply put, proper nurse-to-patient ratios improve patient outcomes and reduce nurses’ burnout.” I fully agree with them. Research is showing us that between 34% and 54% of nursing personnel are showing signs of burnout. The number one reason? Workload.

I was able to identify thousands of peer-reviewed publications dealing with the nursing ratios and how they can help address the burnout in our nurses. You do not have to take my word for it, Speaker. Go on your phone. Any of you, go on your phone right now and google articles dealing with nursing ratios in peer-reviewed medical journals, and you will see over 3,000 articles will come up. Let me quote from a few of those.

The National Academy of Medicine—this is a USA journal—looked at nurses’ well-being and found that 54% of nurses exhibited substantial burnout symptoms. The report from the National Academy of Medicine cites higher nurse-to-patient ratios as a factor associated with nursing burnout.

I then looked at some of the reports from Australia. Why not? They published this: Effects of Nurse-to-Patient Ratio Legislation on Nurse Staffing and Patient Mortality, Readmissions, and Length of Stay. Just so you know, Speaker, in 2016, Queensland, which is in Australia, implemented minimum nurse-to-patient ratios in their hospitals. After a few years, they did a study. They looked at 231,902 patients and found that the ratio that they had implemented—in addition to producing better outcomes, the costs avoided due to fewer readmissions and shortened lengths of stay were more than twice the costs of the additional nurse staffing.

The hospitals in Queensland implemented the very same ratios that I have in my bill. In 2016, they did a study. They reviewed 231,000 patients, which was basically every patient who came through, and found that they produced better outcomes, fewer readmissions and shorter lengths of stay—length of stay is how long you stay in the hospital—and it cost them half as much as the cost of having those extra nurses. “Minimum nurse-to-patient ratio policies are a feasible approach to improve nurse staffing and patient outcomes with good return on investment.”

I also looked at The Lancet. How can you look at health care and not look at The Lancet? They have been there since 1832. It is a leading journal in the medical field. They have a landmark study showing that a patient’s risk of dying after surgery varied by the number of patients for whom each nurse had responsibility. They looked at over a million patients in nine European countries. They found that each additional patient added to a nurse’s average workload was associated with 7% higher odds of the patient dying. The evidence showed that better hospital nurse staffing is associated with better patient outcomes, including fewer hospital-acquired infections, shorter lengths of stay, fewer readmissions, higher patient satisfaction and lower nurse burnout. That comes from The Lancet.

Another study, this one for the International Council of Nurses, representing national nursing associations worldwide, “issued their position statement on evidence-based nurse staffing, concluding that plenty of evidence supports taking action now to improve hospital nurse staffing, echoing Nightingale’s”—you all remember Nightingale, one of the first nurses—“call to action over 150 years ago, that if we have evidence and fail to act, we are going backwards.”

Two minutes left; I still have many, many reviews, some of them from the US, where they have staffing ratios. I want to name that Connecticut, Illinois, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Texas and Washington have staffing committees. They publicly report in Illinois, in New Jersey, in Rhode Island, in Vermont. Staffing ratios are not new to the States, not new to Australia, not new to the UK.

I have a study here from India, who also implemented staffing ratios, and I want to quickly read their conclusion: “Considering Indian resources”—that’s from India—“best international norms and Indian research evidence, we recommend following nurse-to-patient ratio in each shift for Indian hospitals.”

Same thing with the British journal that’s in the UK—but I won’t have time to share that.

The European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing says the same thing: If you want to recruit and retain a healthy workforce, the easiest way to do that is to implement nursing ratios.

Anybody who follows health care will know that the NDP in British Columbia is in the process of implementing staffing ratios in the hospital. So yes, I was partly inspired by our colleagues in British Columbia, but also by the hundreds of thousands of nurses here in Ontario who are burnt out, who are on sick leave, who are on long-term disability because they cannot cope with their workload anymore.

The body of evidence is there. It’s a win-win. It is safer for patient outcomes, number of deaths, number of long-term stays. It is better for nurses if you look at the overburden and the burnout of nurses and it is better for hospital budgets. They will actually save money. So it’s a win-win-win: hospitals supported, our nurses supported.

It is time that Ontario takes a serious look at putting in place nursing ratios. It exists throughout the world. There are over 3,000 peer-reviewed papers that looked at the effect of nursing ratios. They all say the same thing: better for patients, better for nurses, better for hospital budgets. I hope people will see fit to support this bill.

Caring.

The bill is quite simple. I have shared with you testimonies from many, many nurses. Our nurses are burnt out. Many of them are out on sick leave. Many of them are out on long-term disability. Many of them are choosing to stay home. And 35,000 of them actually are choosing to not work in nursing. The number one reason for that is burnout.

We have an opportunity to help those nurses right now. This is something they have been asking for for a very long time. This is something they are telling us: “I will come out of retirement. I will go back to bedside nursing if you put in nurse-to-patient ratios.”

It exists throughout the world, from Australia to the US to the UK to India. It has been proven it works. It exists in Canada. Go out west. The NDP government put it in place in British Columbia, and it works. Nurses appreciate it, patient care improves, length of stay improves, the number of deaths decreases, and it’s cheaper for our hospitals. It’s a win-win-win.

On a l’opportunité aujourd’hui de faire un grand changement. On a l’opportunité d’écouter les infirmières et de s’assurer qu’on répond à leurs besoins. En répondant à leurs besoins, on va s’assurer que les patients reçoivent des soins de meilleure qualité. On va s’assurer que les infirmières et infirmiers se sentent appuyés et ont une charge de travail décente. Et on va s’assurer, en même temps, que les hôpitaux épargnent de l’argent. C’est gagnant-gagnant-gagnant. J’espère que tout le monde va appuyer nos infirmières.

I hope that everybody realizes that there are hundreds of thousands of nurses that are watching how we’re going to vote on this. They need the boost. Vote yes.