This petition is entitled “Let’s Fix the Northern Health Travel Grant.” I will say that there have been improvements to the Northern Health Travel Grant, but there are also some gaps, and these petitions address those gaps.

The mileage fee is still at 41 cents, whereas our mileage fee as MPPs is around 60 cents a kilometre, so I think that needs to be changed. Also, the rates for hotels are far below what it actually costs, so people who are using the Northern Health Travel Grant are still going to be out of pocket.

For that reason, I support this petition and I will give it to Kai.

Thank you to the member from Ottawa Centre for your remarks. I want to go to the beginning of what you were talking about. You were talking about very precarious workers, racialized workers, immigrant workers working in very unsafe conditions that could be prevented.

I want to talk about commercial truck drivers. There are many, many immigrant commercial truck drivers and they are dying on the job. They are dying because they are not receiving any training. I know this because I’ve met with them. They are putting up as much as $40,000 for training they never receive. They have very precarious immigration status, which is why they can be pressured. They’re like indentured servants, really. Wage theft is rampant.

I see that higher fines are in this bill but I also know that those fines are rarely applied. It’s also a complaint-based process, which puts the entire burden on the workers, who are already vulnerable. I think they’re begging for inspections. So I’m just wondering if you see some way that we could be helping those workers in revisions to this bill.

I would like to thank the member from Algoma–Manitoulin for this bill. It’s a very important bill, and it certainly matters to people in Thunder Bay–Superior North, where I am. I think the problems with the inadequacy of the Northern Health Travel Grant keep the people in my office very, very busy.

The amount for kilometres is 41 cents a kilometre. It hasn’t been adjusted since 2007. I think the hotel amount was adjusted in 2017, but there are very few places—I believe the hotel amount is a $100 a night but only to a maximum of $500. We know it costs an awful lot more than that to stay in a hotel these days.

I’ve got a few specific examples. For seniors in Greenstone—Greenstone is 250 kilometres, I think, from Thunder Bay, and the cost of travelling to Thunder Bay for seniors is something that they worry about quite a bit.

I was actually just up in Greenstone and met with a group of seniors, and the Northern Health Travel Grant was the top of the list for their concerns. People can take a van from Greenstone or from Geraldton to Thunder Bay for $350, but the Northern Health Travel Grant only covers $184, not including hotel accommodation. Imagine if you have to travel regularly to Thunder Bay for dialysis; the cost is going to be in the thousands of dollars. In fact, a couple from Kenora—this was an issue a few months ago—had to stay in Thunder Bay over an extended period of time. Well, it was cheaper to actually rent an apartment than stay in a hotel, but it still cost them $9,000 to cover their dialysis treatments.

I recently heard from a constituent in my riding who is now out $20,000 because they had to travel from Thunder Bay to Toronto for a kidney transplant at the Toronto General Hospital. This required staying in a hotel from November 21 until checkout on January 6. They’re actually only eligible for $555 for accommodations. Then, there was of course the travel and so on, which was very high, partly because of the medical condition and having to sit in first class and so on to accommodate that condition.

The thing is that we are supposed to have equal access to the health care that we need where we live, and if we have to travel to get it, then the support needs to be there so that we can have equitable access to health care. The set-up of the Northern Health Travel Grant doesn’t meet those needs at this time, so I think the recommendation to have a table to actually really work out what’s going on and how people can be supported is important. I support the motion, and I would like to pass things over to my colleague from Sudbury to add.

The petition is entitled “Let’s Fix the Northern Health Travel Grant.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas people in the north are not getting the same access to health care because of the high cost of travel and accommodations;

“Whereas by refusing to raise the Northern Health Travel Grant (NHTG) rates, the Ford government is putting a massive burden on northern Ontarians who are already struggling with inflation and price gouging;

“Whereas gas prices continue to rise above $2 a litre in many parts of northern Ontario;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to strike a committee with a mandate to fix and improve the NHTG;

“This NHTG advisory committee would bring together health care providers in the north, as well as recipients of the ... grant to make recommendations to the Minister of Health that would improve access to health care in northern Ontario through reimbursement of travel costs.”

I agree with this petition, will affix my signature and hand it to Sachkaur.

In my riding of Thunder Bay–Superior North, parents of children with autism face years of uncertainty because they can’t access a diagnosis. Then they wait many more years because they can’t access treatment dollars—and that’s if they can find a service provider remotely close to where they live.

With not even a mention of the word “autism” in the budget, Minister, what will your government do to make diagnostic and clinical services available to parents in northwestern Ontario now, so that their children are not missing out on crucial early years of support?

When providers are not available locally, therapy dollars go to travel, leaving less money for treatment.

Adrianna had to quit her job in Manitouwadge and live with her son in Thunder Bay for months so that he could access essential therapy. Once completed, and Adrianna and her son moved back home, they had to travel back and forth, four hours each way, to continue receiving therapy in Thunder Bay.

Will the government provide incentives to bring practitioners to our region and, whenever distance is a factor, provide travel grants so that all autistic children can access timely diagnoses and treatments?

Some 60,000 older Canadians are the victims of neglect, financial, psychological, physical and institutional abuse. Elder Abuse Prevention Ontario works very hard to help older Canadians escape abuse. However, they have not received a funding increase in the 20 years of their existence, so they’re working on a shoestring. They’ve got a lot of volunteers. They are so burnt out.

Will the Premier ensure that the Elder Abuse Prevention Ontario organization receives an increase in their annual grant to at least match the rate of inflation?

Will the government live up to its obligations to older Ontarians and increase funding for the important work of preventing elder abuse?

I would like to say that I think this is a positive step forward.

The member spoke about quite a few other things during her talk, and I’d like to address one of them. Students, during COVID, received increased grants from the federal government through OSAP; however, if they were on ODSP—in other words, they were struggling to have enough money to go to university, and they had a disability—their money was clawed back. So students who didn’t have a disability were able to keep the entire amount of the grant, but students with a disability actually had to give some of that money back. I’m wondering if the member is able to speak to that at all, because it did put students with a disability at a further disadvantage.