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.