Given the destructive effects of Bill 124, it is no surprise that senior health care workers have left their hospital positions and that even new nurses are being drawn into the nursing agency vortex—a situation that is pushing almost every hospital in Thunder Bay–Superior North into massive debt.

What is the government doing to attract nurses back into full-time positions and stop the flood of health care dollars going to shareholder profits?

When will the government address the wage gap identified in the Hay report and bring nurse practitioner wages up to levels appropriate to their skills and responsibilities?

My question is to the Minister of Health. In the entire area from the Manitoba border to White River all the way up to Hudson’s Bay, anyone needing dialysis treatment must move to Thunder Bay, because we have the only hospital that currently has dialysis capacity. After nine months of living in Thunder Bay to receive treatment, Carol Davis has already spent $17,000 in expenses. It’s not only incredibly costly; it is also cruel that people who are sick have to move away from their homes, friends and families.

Minister, when will you be adding capacity to the three hospitals that already have dialysis units, and when will you be opening more dialysis units throughout the region?

Over a year ago, I learned that nursing students were quitting the profession immediately after their hospital placements because of the relentlessly exhausting workload they both experienced and witnessed during their placements.

Fortunately, there are still a few new nurses entering the profession, but this week I was told about entire hospital units that are being staffed entirely by new nursing graduates because there are no senior nurses left to supervise or mentor them. Surely this is a health and safety risk for patients and for the new nurses.

The mass exodus of experienced nurses is surely a direct consequence of this government’s continued attacks on public health care workers.

What I would like to know is—

What is this government doing to attract experienced nurses back to our public health care system?

At one hospital, 66 nursing graduates were just hired who did a significant amount of their clinical training online. You heard that correctly: new nursing graduates with next to no hands-on experience. Again, this calls patient safety into question.

How long do you think new nurses will stay in the profession when what few mentors they have had leave the profession out of compassion fatigue and exhaustion?

Again, this situation is a direct result of the government’s strategy to undermine public health care.

Will the government stop wasting public dollars on its appeal of the unconstitutional Bill 124, revive the late career initiative, and create a strategy to attract experienced nurses back into our hospitals?

While in Thunder Bay this weekend, I learned that our hospital is already overflowing with COVID and flu cases and that RSV, the virus that threatens young children, is spreading rapidly. This is concerning.

Between the deliberate underfunding of health care and the calculated imposition of Bill 124, our hospitals and clinics are losing staff in droves and, as a result, we are losing the experience of those most qualified to mentor the next generation of health care workers. The health care crisis will continue until the Ford government decides to value those already working in the system.

Sadly, today, we are again seeing this government’s callous disregard for workers. For months, our lowest-paid education workers have been trying to negotiate a living wage, and now, rather than negotiating in good faith, the Ford government is set to crush education workers by again taking away their bargaining rights and imposing an unfair settlement.

To health care workers, education workers and all workers keeping our province operating: Thank you for your care, compassion and dogged persistence. We see you, we appreciate you and we stand with you.

I’m pleased to speak further to the misleadingly titled More Beds, Better Care Act that looks to free up hospital beds by forcing seniors and those disabled into long-term-care homes not of their choice. Since the bill was introduced I, along with my colleagues, have raised urgent concerns with this bill, and in fact it seems the population of Ontario is also alarmed and outraged. The government’s heavy-handed move to bypass committee and thus public consultations is an affront to democracy.

First and foremost with this bill, we are bypassing the Patients’ Bill of Rights, and in this province, or indeed anywhere in civilized society, the government should never, ever use force or coercion by putting someone into a facility without their informed consent.

Speaker, hospital discharge coordinators have long had the authority to have conversations with patients regarding the discharge process. We also know that patients or their designated caregivers have been required to submit a list of their top five long-term-care home destinations. But this bill bypasses the discharge conversation, and instead patients are told where they’re going, to places that could be up to 300 kilometres away from their families.

This side of the House had their own public consultations yesterday morning, and we continue to hear from a frustrated and frightened public. For example, I was contacted yesterday by Michelle from Thunder Bay, who wanted to tell me about her experience looking for long-term care for her mother. Her mother wound up in hospital due to failing cognition and physical decline, and it was clear she needed to be moved into long-term care. In keeping with the rules at the time, Michelle chose five long-term-care homes, but none of these were available at the time.

She was then told to check out a home not on her list that had space available. Sadly, this privately owned long-term-care home was chaotic, dirty and understaffed, and Michelle swore she would never let her mother go to this home. Fortunately, she had the choice to wait until a home of her choosing was available, and her mother was well cared for in her final years.

In addition, the PSW named Susan I referred to last week also said she would never allow her own mother to become a resident in the privately owned long-term-care home where she currently works, and we know that is because there is no staff there.

Time and again, we have tried to tell the government that the health care crisis is a direct result of low staffing levels. These low staffing levels come from front-line workers exhausted by COVID, tired of working short handed and demoralized by the wage and bargaining hammer of Bill 124. Add the many for-profit agencies making record profits from public dollars, and you get front-line health care workers who have had enough and are leaving the vocation in droves.

The government’s choice to ignore the many voices calling for the repeal of Bill 124 demonstrates a government determined to bust unions and to privatize health care. We have heard eloquently from the member from Nickle Belt about solutions, about how easily this government could end the health care crisis. With good pay, benefits, paid sick days and mileage compensation so that PSWs can afford to do the work they love, we could solve this crisis now, but the government chooses not to.

Bill 7 is cruel, punitive and sets the stage for real harm to elders and those disabled. There are much better options that would show respect for workers and respect for seniors and people with disabilities, without stripping them of their rights and their humanity. I beg this government to withdraw this cruel and punitive bill. Please, we must stop Bill 7.

We know how bad things were in long-term care during the pandemic, with people, frankly, left to rot in their beds without care. We also know that the government refused to spend $1.8 billion of money allotted to health care during the pandemic, during the worst health crisis of a generation.

What I see is that you are pinning the blame on seniors instead of improving the retention and respect of health care staff by rescinding Bill 124. The government has announced that hospitals can blackmail seniors with high fees if they don’t agree to wherever they’re being shipped off to. How is this not coercion?

I think this brings me back to the basic math that I referred to earlier. We move people out of hospitals into for-profit long-term care, and that solves the profitability problem for those long-term-care homes. But it does not address the fundamental needs of dignity for our seniors.

My question is to the Premier.

I have been contacted by nurses in my riding of Thunder Bay–Superior North expressing frustration with working in hospitals, continually short-staffed, while nurses from for-profit agencies are working next to them earning two and sometimes three times their wages.

How is it the Ministry of Health can justify limiting public sector nurses to a 1% increase with inflation near 8% while staff from for-profit agencies performing the same duties receive so much more?

Will this government remove wage caps and end the health care crisis by ensuring we have full-time jobs with benefits instead of temporary and costly agency work?