The bill amends the Commitment to the Future of Medicare Act, 2004. The amendments prohibit nurse practitioners from accepting certain private payments or benefits for providing services to an insured person that would normally be provided as insured services in specified settings. Payments or benefits for these services may still be accepted from specified public sources or in accordance with the regulations.

The penalties for contraventions of the act are increased, and a new regulation-making power permits regulations providing for and governing reimbursements of payments or benefits made for these services within six months after the day this act receives royal assent.

It recognizes the fact that we are in a drug-poisoning epidemic across the province and that consumption and treatment sites and safe consumption, supervised consumption sites have been an essential method of keeping people alive.

The members who have signed this—representing many nurses and people who have been impacted by the drug-poisoning crisis—call for immediate funding to reopen consumption and treatment sites, supervised consumption sites in Windsor, Sudbury, Timmins and in any community that requires it to stop the deaths.

I support this petition and am pleased to submit it to page Jessica.