We saw after the Mike Harris government privatized long-term care that conditions for workers and people in long-term care have been disastrous, but enormously profitable to the former Premier himself.

Given the terrible wages and working conditions of PSWs in home care at this time, are you worried that those working conditions and the quality of care will decline even more in order to provide profits to investors?

I think we can all agree that home care done well is what seniors want, and we certainly support that. But home care done well is not by any means going to come out of this bill. We have seen the effects of privatized long-term care brought in first by the Mike Harris government and entrenched further with this government, and with this plan we see up to 30% of tax dollars going into shareholder profits from that large amount of money.

My question is, why should taxpayers be paying for shareholders profits when that money could be going to support pay for PSWs and quality care for our seniors?

My question is to the Premier. I am very concerned about this government’s plan to further privatize home and community care services. In Thunder Bay and across the province we have seen the devastating consequences of turning over critical services to private corporations: missed appointments, staffing shortages and, ultimately, worse outcomes for Ontarians.

To the Premier: Will you ensure there is publicly available home and community care for all Ontarians?

To the Premier: Will you listen to home and community care workers and clients and stop the privatization of essential services for seniors and people with disabilities?

Preventive care keeps older Ontarians out of hospitals and emergency rooms. Currently, seniors can access an eye exam every 12 months, but under this government’s new rules, they will have to wait 18 months to get an exam covered by OHIP. This is a move to push seniors into using privatized services that many seniors cannot afford, nor should they have to.

To the Premier: Why is this government jeopardizing seniors’ health by reducing access to OHIP-covered eye care?

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?