It’s my pleasure to table a petition regarding organ donation. Many people in the province of Ontario don’t understand how this program is in crisis. Our health critic has been gathering signatures from all over Ontario, but there are currently 1,600 people waiting for a life-saving organ transplant in Ontario. It’s a shocking number, Speaker. Every three days, someone in Ontario actually dies because they can’t get a transplant in time. We know that we need to be more proactive around organ donation, so our health critic, the member from Nickel Belt, has a petition that would allow a donor system based on presumed consent, which means that you would have to opt out instead of ensuring that organs are available for donation.

It’s a worthwhile program, built on many years of advocacy across the province. This is something we can do together. It should not be a partisan issue. With that, I will table this petition on behalf of the member from Nickel Belt. Thank you very much.

It’s interesting listening to the energy minister talk about the past and the history. I will say that when the Liberals were in power, the PCs used to criticize their politicization of the electricity planning and their disregard for evidence and professional independent analysis. And yet here we are, 2024, the first time ever overruling an Ontario Energy Board decision designed to protect homeowners and ratepayers in order to benefit a fossil fuel giant.

Kent Elson, a lawyer from Environmental Defence says that this legislation, and the choice of the title of this bill, is “Orwellian.

“It should be called the keeping Enbridge profits and energy bills high act....

“The OEB decision would have cut capital costs covered by gas customers by approximately $600 per customer.... Reversing the decision will certainly raise energy bills.”

Why did you not title this bill the pushing energy costs up act in Ontario?

Great plan to level the playing field.

My question is to the Premier.

Yesterday, the Financial Accountability Office made it abundantly clear: This government has not allocated sufficient funds to support health care programs to get Ontarians the care that they need.

We are already seeing the worst emergency room wait times in over a decade. Without additional investment, Ontarians can expect those wait times to get even longer. We had 145 unplanned emergency room closures just last year.

This Premier promised to end hallway medicine. There are people in this province who would be happy to get into a hallway just to access some medicine.

To the Premier: Will the government commit to covering this $21.3-billion shortfall in health care? Your plan is designed to fail. You can course-correct.

The Financial Accountability Officer—who is independent, who is non-partisan and who is following the money—projects that Ontario will have less hospital capacity, less long-term-care capacity in 2028 than it did in 2018, and basically the status quo in home care capacity. This is an important report that the government should be paying attention to.

So my question is to the Premier: Will the upcoming budget fully fund your own health care plans? Put the money in your own plan.