Hope Air provides free flights and services for patients living in underserved and remote communities in northern Ontario, and without it, a lot of northerners wouldn’t be able to access essential medical care. Darlene Sargent from my riding said, “When I needed help getting to medical appointments, Hope Air arranged everything, free of charge. What would I have done without them?

Speaker, tomorrow is Hope Air Day in Sudbury. My question is, instead of funding for-profit clinics, will the Premier provide sustainable funding to Hope Air?

When will the Conservative government finally fix the Northern Health Travel Grant?

I am very familiar with Hope Air and completely appreciate and understand the very valuable service they provide, offering free-of-charge flights for families and young people who need to have access. But we as a government have made a commitment to enhance the northern Ontario travel grant, and those enhancements are going to greatly assist when individuals need to travel further than 100 kilometres. They are going to get additional service through a number of pathways and the mileage, of course, starting at kilometre 1 instead of 100 and expansion of the program, including simplifying some of the forms that have to be filled out as part of the program.

We’re going to invest, but we’re also going to invest in community services so that people don’t have to travel as far.

We will continue to make enhancements, but the fact that this NDP party continues to speak against enhancements for local community diagnostic and surgical centres speaks to their interest in keeping the status quo while we do the improvements that are necessary and needed.