I really appreciate the time to talk about this issue today. Not many people know what desflurane is, so I totally understand why this circumstance came about, but I look forward to the opportunity of talking a bit about it and why it is the lowest of low-hanging fruit in terms of reducing emissions and saving money for our health care system.

The World Health Organization says that climate change is the biggest health threat facing humanity, and what we’re noticing is that people don’t always understand the impacts of climate change on their day-to-day lives, but we see more and more how it’s affecting our health with increased emergency room visits from slips and falls, extreme heat days, smoke inhalation, increasing rise in asthma and other health consequences.

I’m sad that the member from Cambridge—he’s interested in this topic. There is a glacier called the Doomsday Glacier. It is enormous and it’s sitting on the edge of a bowl, ready to go into that bowl, which will lead to a massive sea level rise across the planet. So I’ll look forward to hearing what he has to say about that.

Desflurane is not commonly known outside of medical circles, but more and more, the health sector has been moving away from this gas. I know the minister was curious what experts had to say, so I am here to share that today.

The Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society recommends not using it. Ontario’s Anesthesiologists also support eliminating des from our hospitals. It’s also being banned in the European Union, Scotland and other jurisdictions around the world. So we know that experts in this field recommend banning des from our operating rooms. Why? Well, it costs more; it costs a lot more. In Health Sciences North, the hospital in Sudbury, they saved $250,000 by banning desflurane. In Mississauga, Trillium Health Partners saved $125,000 by banning it.

Not only is it good financially for hospitals to ban this, but it’s also a good way to reduce emissions. Des makes up about 5% of the carbon emissions of our hospitals, and if hospitals were a country, they would be the fifth-largest emitter worldwide. So that’s a benefit not only financially but also environmentally. So I hope that we can look forward to the government banning this anaesthetic gas.

Environmentally speaking, for example, the carbon emissions saved by Health Sciences North equated to driving to the moon and back four times. This is how much carbon emissions were reduced simply by banning desflurane.

One might ask: Well, why aren’t we banning it already? Good question, because there is an alternative, sevoflurane, which is 26.8 times less carbon emissions, and it’s cheaper. So we already have anaesthesiologists using the alternative. The companies who produce desflurane also produce the sevoflurane. It won’t have a negative impact on our economy. And so it makes a lot of sense. So if we don’t do it based on the reduction in carbon emissions, we should do it just based on the reduction of our budget to hospitals, the savings that they would see.

It’s part of a bigger work, though. I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that the Ontario Medical Association is looking for changes as part of a bigger work, like creating an office of sustainability. Yes, banning desflurane is a first step in reducing emissions in hospitals and saving money, but the OMA is looking to create a bigger, more holistic approach to reducing waste, reducing emissions in hospitals and saving more money in our hospitals sector.

We’ve seen since COVID the rise of single-use plastics and single-use apparatuses. Some of the stories are quite alarming of just throwing things out. A lot of newcomers who work in our hospitals sector are aghast at the amount of waste that we create, and I think if any of us has spent time in hospitals, we’re alarmed at the amount of garbage that’s going out the backdoor.

To say a few more words about that, at the Trillium health network, for example, using inter-surgical circuits saved $37,000 in one year; bring-your-own reusable bags saved $19,000; using Stryker sustainability services, they reduced their budget by $145,000; using reusable gowns—they don’t have a number, but they saved 15 tonnes of waste; and addressing the HVAC optimization saved $4,400.

I haven’t even mentioned a lot of the other types of waste and CO₂ reductions—

To answer the member’s question: The use of desflurane is a clinical decision that should be best left with the clinicians, experts and the hospital leaderships, and our government will continue to trust medical experts on the best clinical tools to be used for patient safety.

But, Speaker, if the member opposite is interested in climate change and the environment, I am more than happy to talk about our government’s initiatives and actions of our health care partners.

Let me first tell you about Niagara Health System and the steps they have taken to be more energy efficient. The innovative design features at the St. Catharines site and recent investments across their other sites aim to lessen the footprint on the environment and lower long-term operating costs. The St. Catharines site is one of the first hospitals in Ontario designed to achieve certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, classification, the green building rating system.

Niagara Health also invested approximately $10 million across all sites through an energy retrofit project that reduces energy use and operating costs. These improvements will save substantial amounts of natural gas and electricity for years to come.

Speaker, let me tell you about another great example at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. Sunnybrook has five key environmental programs: energy conservation, waste management, sustainable transportation, procurement, and an awareness and education campaign. Their green initiatives include the Harry Taylor Solar Energy Wall; gas scavenging in the operating rooms; composting and biodegradable food containers in the cafeteria; the Honeywell Energy and Facility Renewal Program; and the Green Task Force.

According to the hospital, their energy improvements will save $2.6 million and reduce CO₂ emissions by 8,965 tonnes annually. That’s the equivalent of taking 1,410 cars off the road.

Speaker, I am not quite done yet. The medical imaging team at the Toronto General Hospital provides high-quality care, diagnosis and image-guided intervention. The hospital actively works on energy efficiency and sustainability initiatives.

Additionally, Haliburton Highlands Health Services has implemented a geothermal upgrade to improve energy efficiency.

As the government of Canada is set to miss one of its own climate targets, under the premiership of Premier Ford, Ontario is on track to meet our Paris agreement and is responsible for 86% of Canada’s total emissions reductions. This achievement is only possible because of our government’s efforts, alongside my colleague the Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks, to build Ontario. This includes:

—making Ontario the global leader in electric vehicle production;

—working with the industry instead of against them, such as our government’s investments in green steel at AM Dofasco in Hamilton, which will see the equivalent emissions reduction of taking one million cars off the road;

—our historic investments in conservation through the Greenlands Conservation Partnership, which already has protected over 420,000 acres of land, an area two and a half times the footprint of the city of Toronto;

—holding polluters accountable by introducing new fines and tough emissions performance standards for large industrial emitters; as well as

—historic investments in the critical infrastructure to get Ontarians to where they need to be, such as the Ontario Line, which takes 28,000 cars off the road every day.

Again, Speaker, to answer the member’s question, these are clinical decisions that should be left with the clinicians and medical experts. Under the leadership of Premier Ford and Minister Jones, our government will continue to ensure a strong and robust public health system for all Ontarians for years to come.