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?

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?

I would like to welcome members from the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, and in particular, Sarah Lynne Myllyaho, Tanis Banovsky and Duncan McWaters, who travelled here from Thunder Bay. I appreciate so much the effort you took to come. Thank you and welcome.

We have a profound staffing shortage in health care, and we know that for-profit health corporations will poach those health care workers from the public system. We also know that large corporate interests will set up shop where they can make the most money, where there is a critical mass of people, like in Toronto, London, or perhaps Ottawa.

We already have a drastic shortage of health care workers in northwestern Ontario, and I’m hearing from these workers daily about how burnt out they are from overwork and that their wages are not enough to keep up with the cost of living. I really wonder where the members opposite think we will be finding nurses and health care workers for remote regions. Yes, you’re offering some scholarships; that’s great. That will help for a while. But basically those nurses are going to be drawn to the easier places in southern Ontario where they have an easier workload. They are not going to be staying in remote communities.

So my question is, where do you think those health care workers are going to come from after they’ve been poached from the public system?

My question is to the Premier. This government spouts a lot of numbers about the thousands of new health care professionals they hired during their last term, but there is—

Interjections.

As I said, this government spouts a lot of numbers about the thousands of new health care professionals they hired during their last term, but there is no evidence whatsoever that any of these new professionals exist. They are nowhere to be seen in Thunder Bay–Superior North, and given the staffing crisis gripping every single health care setting in the province, they’re nowhere to be seen anywhere else.

Is your refusal to negotiate a fair wage with existing health care workers, thus sending them out of the profession in droves, part of your long-term plan to privatize health care, ultimately leading to low-waged and precarious work for all health care workers once you have destroyed the existing workforce?

The $5,000 bonus given to nurses but not other health care workers not only did not represent a permanent wage increase, it continues to cause division and resentment amongst all those health care workers who are not eligible for the bonus—an entirely predictable outcome in the government’s divide-and-conquer strategy.

I was called recently by a young nurse who was adamant he did not want their “damn $5,000.” He wanted to see across-the-board pay and benefit increases so that more health care workers would stay in the profession and they wouldn’t be working in a constant state of exhaustion.

Will this government admit it is deliberately driving existing health care workers out of the profession in order to gut the public system?

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?