I want to thank many of the internationally trained professionals who have been continuing to advocate for their ability to practise in Ontario, have been pushing this issue forward and have signed on this petition. It reads:

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Ontario’s health staffing crisis means people are waiting in pain for surgery and treatment because there aren’t enough doctors and nurses to care for us all;

“Whereas regulated health care professionals face a variety of barriers when entering their fields of practice, including lack of accessible processes to recognize international trainings and credentials;

“Whereas tens of thousands of highly trained internationally educated doctors and nurses are wading through Ontario’s complex, expensive and years-long program to be licensed in Ontario; and

“Whereas there are more than 10,000 internationally educated nurses in Ontario not yet allowed to work in the province and it has been reported that 1,200 internationally trained medical graduates have been unable to clear the hurdles needed to practise; and

“Whereas practice-ready assessment offers the most qualified internationally trained physicians a quicker route to being able to work in Ontario.

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to urgently work with colleges, regulators, and health care workers to implement pathways that allow internationally trained and educated health care workers to support our health care system.”

Speaker, I fully support this petition. I will affix my signature to it and give it to page Sophie to take to the Clerks.

I have a petition here for better staffing, better wages and better care in Ontario’s public hospitals. It reads:

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas registered nurses and health care professionals are the backbone of Ontario’s public health care system; and

“Whereas nurses and health care professionals are fighting for better staffing, better wages and better care in Ontario’s public hospitals; and

“Whereas the government has the power to direct the funding and priorities for the Ontario Hospital Association in this bargaining process;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“Support nurses and health care professionals represented by the Ontario Nurses’ Association in their collective bargaining with the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA) by demanding the OHA reach a negotiated agreement with nurses that results in better staffing, better wages and better care in Ontario’s public hospitals.”

Speaker, I fully support this petition, will affix my signature to it and give it to page Maya to take to the Clerks.

I want to thank the member for her presentation. You know when you have finished an hour and you run out of time talking about this that there are significant issues that need to be addressed. So I want to thank her for her presentation, which was informative.

My question is regarding the Premier’s recent comment just a little while ago, I believe, when he came to the children’s hospital in Ottawa. I’m sure everyone knows that CHEO had to recently call in the Red Cross to help, and the Premier said that he is glad that they’re thinking outside the box. Instead of taking responsibility and actually doing something, he is praising the hospital.

I have heard pediatricians talk about the crisis and talk about how we don’t just need beds but we need to have the human resources. We need to have the nurses, the doctors, the people who are in the hospital to support them.

So my question to the member is: What are some of the things that we could have seen in this budget that would have actually helped address our health care crisis?

I have a petition here to stop Premier Ford’s health care privatization plan.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Ontarians should get health care based on need—not the size of their wallet;

“Whereas Premier Doug Ford and Health Minister Sylvia Jones say they’re planning to privatize parts of health care;

“Whereas privatization will bleed nurses, doctors and PSWs out of our public hospitals, making the health care crisis worse;

“Whereas privatization always ends with patients getting a bill;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to immediately stop all plans to further privatize Ontario’s health care system, and fix the crisis in health care by:

“—repealing Bill 124 and recruiting, retaining and respecting doctors, nurses and PSWs with better pay and better working conditions;

“—licensing tens of thousands of internationally educated nurses and other health care professionals already in Ontario, who wait years and pay thousands to have their credentials certified;

“—making education and training free or low-cost for nurses, doctors and other health care professionals;

“—incentivizing doctors and nurses to choose to live and work in northern Ontario;

“—funding hospitals to have enough nurses on every shift, on every ward.”

Speaker, I fully support this petition. I will affix my signature to it and give it to page Scarlett to give to the Clerks.

“Petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas neighbourhoods across the GTA have been unfairly targeted by discriminatory practices in the auto insurance industry;

“Whereas people in marginalized neighbourhoods are penalized with crushing auto insurance rates merely because of their postal code;

“Whereas GTA drivers with clean insurance records continue to be gouged by this unfair practice; and

“Whereas Ontarians are facing skyrocketing costs of living, and auto insurance companies continue to make record profits;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to end postal code discrimination and price gouging in auto insurance and pass Bill 12, Ending Automobile Insurance Discrimination in the Greater Toronto Area Act, 2022.”

Speaker, I fully support this petition, will affix my signature to it and give it to page Alex to give to the Clerks.

I want to thank the member for her question, because it allows me to share another bit that I didn’t have enough time to, which is that when we talk about freeing up beds, when we talk about freeing about the ability for staffing, when we talk about clearing ALC beds, this legislation actually does not free up nurses and specialized staff.

We need to talk a little bit about the types of alternate care and, when people in the hospital are in this situation, what kind of care they receive. In long-term-care homes, for example, will that actually allow for nurses and PSWs to be freed up?

And the fact that we need thousands—Speaker, thousands—of PSWs and nurses: One of the things that we could have done is to allow for internationally trained professionals and so many others who want to be nurses and PSWs in this province to become certified, and allow them to be paid better. Repeal Bill 124, so that we can retain and recruit more health care workers in our province.

If we walk back a little bit and actually talk about what happens when someone ends up in the hospital—first, no one ever wants to go to a hospital. You’re not going to a fancy hotel to stay. Let’s be clear; let’s be honest: You’re ill. You’re not well.

I have so many seniors and I know so many people who don’t want to go to the hospital even when they’re not well, especially in the crisis that we’re facing right now. So the fact that these people, when they refuse, for example, to go to the designated long-term-care home—if they refuse, then they will be charged. There is a financial hammer on this, and that means that people will feel that financial coercion in order to go to that long-term-care home.

So one of the things I would urge this member, as well as all the other members in the government—if you really care about Scarborough, show us. Come to Scarborough and provide the funding that we need, because our hospitals are some of the oldest hospitals in the province.

Nothing the minister says actually removes the barriers that internationally educated health care workers face in this province. The government says that they’re doing everything they can to work with internationally trained doctors and nurses to address the staffing shortage in health care. And, yet, data from the CPSO shows that only 739 applicants became members in 2020, compared to the 2,074 in 2019.

My question is, why was there a decrease when we’re in the middle of the pandemic and we’re facing a health care crisis?

The practice-ready assessment program, which was standardized, that this government cancelled in 2018, is actually working very well in seven other provinces. The model could have been used to implement a similar or even improved assessment process for doctors and nurses in Ontario. We could have had thousands of health care workers added to the system in as little as 12 weeks. I want everyone in Ontario to listen: In as little as 12 weeks, we could have had more health care workers in this province.

Will this government reverse its cuts? And why is this government dragging their feet in bringing in the solutions that can save lives in Ontario?

Speaker, more than a million Ontarians don’t have access to a doctor or a nurse practitioner. People are waiting for hours and hours in pain in emergency rooms, waiting for months and years for surgeries, and more than 1,400 died last year while waiting.

There are over 12,000 internationally trained doctors and thousands more internationally trained nurses in Ontario ready to help fill the gap in primary care.

Why has this government failed to remove the unfair barriers for these doctors and nurses?

“‘Expeditiously.’” Pardon my English.

You’re telling them, “You have two weeks to come up with a plan,” when we on this side—I know that the member from Nickel Belt and I have worked together on this. We have worked together with stakeholders. We have worked together with nurses, with the internationally trained professionals’ network, with so many different stakeholders and colleges, and have asked them, “What do you need? How do we do this together?”

That’s exactly what Bill 98 asked for, as well, Speaker. It said, “Here are the types of people who are included, who are involved in this. Let’s come up with a solution and make sure that we can provide the exact steps that they need. Let’s give them practice-ready assessments. Let’s make sure that they’re able to get some real training and experience that they need in order to work. Let’s make sure that we get rid of the financial barriers they have.”

Instead of providing any of those, here you are, making announcements and telling the colleges to come up with something overnight, when again and again you’re hearing about ER closures across this province. In Toronto, there’s Michael Garron Hospital and SickKids hospital. We have heard from the University Health Network. We have heard from other parts of the province who have gone through this. We heard it in Ottawa. It is just continuously happening, and here we are, not even recognizing that it’s a crisis, let alone coming up with the solutions or implementing any of the solutions we have proposed.

Unfortunately, I don’t have enough time, but I wanted to talk more about the fact that this throne speech didn’t even touch on the climate crisis, the fact that it didn’t even have the words “climate crisis,” and the reality that we’re facing across this province. There are countries that have flooded, there are provinces that have flooded, and the reality that we are facing—