You will know that the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion will be marked on June 6. All Canadians should remember that 14,000 Canadian soldiers landed at Juno Beach in France on June 6, 1944, as part of a massive Allied invasion. The invasion led to the liberation of German-occupied France and was pivotal in ending the Second World War.

Victory in the Normandy campaign, however, came at a terrible cost. Canadians suffered the most casualties of any division, more than 5,000 Canadian troops dying in the invasion and the Battle of Normandy that followed. We all owe these brave men and women an immeasurable debt of gratitude.

As the years pass, sadly, the number of veterans who fought in the campaign declines. They are from a resilient generation who endured many hardships and experienced the unimaginable horrors of war.

We recently were able to celebrate Hamiltonian Jack Frederick Finan, a 104-year-old Canadian veteran who served with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Many dignitaries were on hand, including the Governor General, when the French ambassador awarded Jack France’s highest military honour, the French Legion of Honour.

I’d like to remark that hundreds of Canadian aircraft were in the air on D-Day, including the legendary Lancaster bomber, and that Mr. Finan is Canada’s oldest living pilot of the Lancaster bomber.

There are many celebrations across Canada to help commemorate the 80th anniversary of the pivotal D-Day invasion. In Hamilton, you can visit the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum that has one of the last flying Lancaster bombers.

I encourage all of us—let’s take a moment to pause and pay tribute. We will remember them.

This afternoon, I’m presenting, yet again, a petition entitled “To Raise Social Assistance Rates.”

We know, as all of the people in Ontario are struggling to afford to put groceries on their table, the people that are living on OW and ODSP are struggling even more. They are living well below the poverty line. Those rates have been frozen in time, and it’s well beyond time that we address the kind of suffering that those people and families that rely on this income are struggling—

This petition to raise social assistance rates has been signed by thousands and thousands of people across Ontario. We have been presenting them here. They’re the hard work of the Hamilton Social Work Action Committee and Dr. Sally Palmer.

We think that these rates that have been frozen in time are unfair. People are struggling, living well below the poverty line, so I agree wholeheartedly that we need to address this injustice. We need to raise the rates and we need to help people that are struggling, including children living on social assistance and ODSP.

Thank you very much. I’m going to give it to page Victoria to take to the table.

Thank you very much to the member from Kitchener Centre. Really, this all begs the question: Who’s in charge of planning in this province? Because we know it’s not the planning departments of municipalities across the province, it’s most likely developers that are leading planning. It’s most likely the OLT that’s going to make the decision on planning. It’s not going to be the people who live in communities, who have no say now because they do not have any longer a third-party right to appeal any decisions that are made on land that could be theirs, in fact.

So my question to you is, do you think that the chaos you’re talking about is simply a function of the fact that this government has taken planning out of the hands of expert planners and put it into the hands of speculators, land speculators and developers and their OLT that they are stacking with their friends and—

I’m more than honoured to rise today in support of my colleague from Nickel Belt’s bill, a bill to improve patient-to-nurse ratios in hospitals in Ontario.

Speaker, our health care system is in crisis. You know it. I know it. Everyone in Ontario, apparently except the government, knows it. And do you know who knows it more than anyone? It is the nurses that are working currently in Ontario.

Things aren’t getting better, despite the words that were just read to us. There are longer waits in emergency hallways. We have more code zeros, which means that the ambulances aren’t available at any given time. There are 2.4 million people who don’t have a doctor in Ontario, and there are hospital closures. We have Minden, now Durham—permanent hospital closures, and this year Ontario saw over 1,200 emergency departments shutting down, in large part because of a lack of nurses.

So, Speaker, and to my colleagues, what comes to mind when you think of a nurse?

Interjection: Burnout.

Interjection: Exhausted.

There’s an organization called WeRPN that represents 59,000 regulated health professionals, and they identified that 48% are considering leaving the profession—no wonder—and 72% identified patient-to-nurse ratios as the key issue.

So if this government is actually concerned or is actually listening, here’s your solution, because the first step in any problem is admitting that you have a problem, which we do in Ontario: better patient-to-nurse ratios. It’s a win for nurses, it’s a win for patients and it’s a win for hospitals. Improving patient-to-nurse ratios will benefit nurses because they won’t be overloaded, it reduces stress levels, and it makes them less likely to be sick or go on long-term disability.

I can only imagine the anguish experienced by urgent care nurses when they’re expected to go from caring for one patient to handling up to five very sick patients simultaneously. It’s a win for patients who receive treatment with better care and have a better chance of recovery. It’s also a win for hospitals because not only will they have better patient outcomes, there is compelling data to say that they will reduce costs. A recent study revealed that a nurse-to-patient ratio of 1 to 4 would prevent over 1,500 deaths yearly while saving hospitals $117 million per year.

It doesn’t matter how many beds you say are open or how many hospitals are open. Without nurses, a hospital or long-term-care beds are just furniture; they’re just buildings. And don’t say we don’t have the money. We’re spending a billion dollars on beer in this province. We need to spend it on our health care.

I’m hoping this government will finally listen to the stories we’re telling you and finally admit that there is a problem in health care, in nursing, and here is your solution.