The patients from three of the closed emergency departments were diverted to the Queensway Carleton Hospital in Ottawa. The Queensway Carleton is already short-staffed and already experiencing incredibly long wait times, so these closures resulted in serious strain for the Queensway Carleton this weekend, including almost as many patients in the ER admitted and waiting for a bed as there are stretchers in the ER.

Will the Premier address the crisis in emergency care before someone dies because of it?

This weekend, four hospitals in eastern Ontario were forced to close their emergency departments. Patients in Kemptville, Carleton Place, Alexandria and Almonte were all forced to drive 30 to 45 minutes further than usual to reach the nearest emergency room while experiencing a health emergency.

Does the Premier believe that a 45-minute drive for patients in an emergency is good health care?

Beds don’t equal surgeries, Speaker. A bed without a nurse is just furniture.

At the Ottawa Hospital, we’re seeing the many serious consequences of not having enough nurses. Patients are waiting days to be admitted even though beds are available because there’s no nurse to staff the bed. Surgeries are being cancelled even as patients are entering the operating room because there’s no nurse. And recently, a patient who showed up for chemo was sent home without it because there was no nurse to administer it.

Will the government act swiftly to fill these nursing shortages so that every patient in Ontario gets the care they need?

The Ottawa Hospital is short more than 500 nurses, and this government’s actions to date are a drop in the bucket compared to the scale of the crisis. There are nurses in Ottawa who are working 16-hour shifts, 12 out of 14 days, just to fill nursing shortages. Just imagine trying to provide good care while working that many hours, not to mention the risk of mistakes. No wonder nurses are leaving the profession.

Will the government repeal Bill 124 and address working conditions so that we keep nurses instead of driving them away?

Last week, I had the chance to sit down with nurses from ONA Local 83 and they told me that every day they go to work feeling scared. They wonder, who will I not get to today, and what will the consequences be? It is only a matter of time until the consequences for someone are deadly. This is an unfair burden to put on our hard-working health care heroes and terrifying to patients across Ontario.

Will this government finally listen to nurses and implement the solutions they are calling for, starting with repeal of Bill 124?

I would invite the minister to have that conversation with my constituents, who are waiting 12 hours for care.

With health care in Ottawa already teetering on the brink, the Pinecrest-Queensway Community Health Centre in my riding of Ottawa West–Nepean is laying off health care workers with years of experience and good performance reviews. This is a tumultuous situation in which one-third of staff have been laid off or have left over the past three years. Community health centres serve some of our most vulnerable members. Now these patients are contacting my office to say they have nowhere to turn.

Will the Minister of Health launch an immediate investigation into the Pinecrest-Queensway Community Health Centre to ensure that funding and staffing decisions are being made in the best interests of patients?

It’s our health care workers who are putting forward solutions, and it’s the government that’s refusing to implement any of the solutions that they’re asking for.

This past weekend, Montfort and Carleton Place hospitals needed to close their emergency departments due to lack of staff. The Queensway Carleton Hospital, which has only been able to keep their ER open because of some creative staffing arrangements, has patients waiting up to 12 hours to be seen.

These wait times and closures are unacceptable in Ottawa and across the province. What is the government’s plan to ensure that Ottawa-area hospitals have the resources they need to keep ERs open and to provide patients with care in a reasonable amount of time?