It’s great to be back at Queen’s Park, and I’m excited to share this great news with everyone. On February 15, I was proud to stand alongside our local primary care teams to announce $4,074,398 in funding for the Seaway Valley Community Health Centre; Centre de santé communautaire de l’Estrie; Glengarry Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinic; and Rideau St. Lawrence Family Health Team. All four organizations are members of the Great River Ontario Health Team, who came together to collectively address the primary care needs of our area. Instead of each organization going alone and submitting individual proposals, they collaborated for the benefit of the whole region. This is excellent news for our community, my riding of Stormont–Dundas–South Glengarry. This will connect an estimated 19,340 people to a primary care doctor or nurse practitioner in Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry. This will connect children, parents, grandparents, friends and neighbours to care close to home.

This $4-million investment is part of a larger investment of $110 million to connect over 300,000 Ontarians with a primary health team.

Congratulations to these primary health teams, and thank you for all that you do.

I’d like to welcome Madeline Lovell from my riding of Stormont–Dundas–South Glengarry for the Model Parliament.