I want to thank my colleague for a very impassioned speech about home care and about the disparity of services that northern Ontario is experiencing. You can always tell when he’s really passionate, because his voice goes up three or four octaves, and it makes it entertaining for some of us.

However, the question on this voting thing—I’m going to go there—because once again, the government has brought forward a piece of legislation which does not solve the problem. They always say to us, “Why are you not voting with us?” We’re going to vote against legislation which does not address the needs of the people of this province, and that includes northern Ontario, to my colleague.

So when my colleague finds out that seniors who are not getting dignity in home care are now looking to medical assistance in dying—they’re looking to the MAID system, because they have no dignity—what can he tell the House about the level of desperation, based on this bill?

I’m going to be referencing the latest report that came out from Seniors for Social Action Ontario; it just came out on October 2. I want thank Margaret Coleman, Marcia Smellie and Rick Chambers for sharing that. This is an organization that surveyed seniors about home care.

What they found was shocking, Madam Speaker. They found that, in Ontario, six times as much funding has been invested in institutional care versus home care. That’s a problem. If you want to address home care then you have to resource it. They also found out that because of this funding inequity, seniors feel that they’re being forced into institutions instead of home care due to a lack of choice. They also said that the underfunding and under-resourcing by the provincial government, as well as the clumsy hand-over responsibilities from CCACs and LHINs to the HCCSS, has proven to be very problematic.

Bill 135 does not solve these core issues. How is the government going to address the crucial need for reinvestment for a stronger home care system in Ontario?

Thanks to the member for your comments on this home care bill.

He is quite right; we’ve been debating the model of home care in the province of Ontario since I came here 11 years ago. The Liberals, before the Conservatives, were dead set on regarding home care as a business.

There is a commercial quality to the services. It is not an extension of the health care system. And the people who are working within that broken home care system are continually disenfranchised, and they are mostly women. And they are mostly—in Waterloo region and across the province—racialized women. And they do not have a voice, even when they’re fighting for more hours so that their clients can get a bath or be fed with some dignity, or so that they can just sit in a moment of compassion with their senior.

My question to the member is, what do you think is actually driving another piece of legislation which doesn’t solve the home care problem in the province of Ontario?

Home care is such a key part of the health care system, and where governments past—I’m looking right now at what former Premier Mike Harris did. He went into full private delivery of home care. He said it would make it better, faster, cheaper. None of this, of course, came true.

Our home care system is broken right now. There is no question that it’s broken. We have a labour shortage within that arena; there’s inconsistent care for seniors; and this bill will essentially create an arm’s-length agency to oversee home care, with the board of director members appointed by the government. This is also somewhat problematic, given the appointments that this government has made in the past.

How will this bill prevent private companies from taking over public home care services without governance, without any public accountability structure and without public interest protections?