Good morning, Speaker. My question is for the Premier. Ontario’s health care system is on the brink of collapse because of Bill 124. While jurisdictions around the world try to attract our health care workers, this government chose to freeze their pay and dock their wages and fight them in court. And then they lost again.

Now it’s time to pay up, at least $6 billion so far. The Financial Accountability Office is saying the government could owe workers more than $13 billion. To the Premier: How much money is this government currently withholding from working people?

Speaker, here’s the thing: The impact of Bill 124 was felt in communities right across this province. And now, even without Bill 124 hanging over us, hiring and retention has become nearly impossible. Without dedicated funding to incentivize workers to stay in hospitals and long-term-care homes, in home care and primary care, our public health care system will continue to suffer.

So back to the Premier: Will this government finally pay workers what they’re owed in the upcoming budget?

So back to the Premier: Why does this Premier have such contempt for the hard-working people of Ontario?

Interjections.

Maybe the Premier will answer this question. Back when his government announced that they were opening the doors to health care privatization, the NDP warned that people would be forced to use their credit card to get health care. The government said this would never happen—never. But here we are. We’re hearing from more and more people who have been charged $70, $90 for a single visit, and in some cases, several hundred dollars just to get an annual membership at a private clinic.

So to the Premier: Do you agree that these patients were not able to use their health card and did, in fact, have to pull out their credit card?

Speaker, this government is creating a two-tier health care system where you would only get care if you can afford it, and that’s the truth. It’s absolutely unacceptable. These private clinics are preying on the most vulnerable: 2.2 million Ontarians without a family doctor. Dozens more clinics are expected to open in the coming months.

So back to the Premier, I hope he answers this question: Why are you starving the public community-based primary care system in our province in favour of private clinics that are charging patients?

Interjections.

Our system is under enormous strain because of this government’s failures and their bad decisions. So back to the Premier of this province: When will he stop putting the private needs of for-profit providers ahead of the needs of patients?

Interjections.

Doctors, nurses, administrators, allied health professionals have all been very clear about the solution: funding a team-based approach to primary care. That’s why I tabled our motion today to get this government’s commitment to fully funded, integrated primary teams across the province, not just in some towns, in every town. Every Ontarian deserves that access.

So to the Premier: Will you support this motion?

Back to the Premier: Primary care providers and patients know that this is just a drop in the bucket; it’s not going far enough. And the government knows this too. They’re making a choice. They’re choosing to expand private, for-profit care in this province to line the pockets of private, for-profit corporate shareholders. That’s what this is all about.

Doctors in this province, on the other hand, are spending nearly half their time filling out forms and doing administrative follow-ups. Our motion would unlock thousands of hours of direct patient care by investing in new supports for health care providers. It’s about putting patients first instead of paperwork.

So back to the Premier: Is he content to govern a province where millions are going without basic care, or will he listen to the primary care providers and take this simple step to get people the care that they so desperately need?

Interjections.

I’m pleased to present the following motion on behalf of the official opposition:

Whereas 2.2 million Ontarians currently do not have a family physician and are not connected to primary care, which puts their health at imminent risk; and

Whereas access to primary health care keeps people out of emergency rooms; and

Whereas primary health care providers need sustainable resources in order to maintain capacity to deliver primary care, mental health care, chronic disease management, community supports, and innovative services that help end hallway health care; and

Whereas hiring additional staff support could free up Ontario’s primary care providers to take on an estimated additional two million patients;

Therefore, the Legislative Assembly calls on the Ontario government to urgently implement a strategy to increase the number of staff support for primary care providers so they can spend their time treating patients instead of doing paperwork.

There’s no denying, I think, that Ontario’s health care system is deeply frayed. More than—we often say 2.2 million, but the numbers are actually increasing daily; we’re now up to more than 2.3 million, in fact, since I introduced this motion, who are currently without a family doctor.

Primary care providers and community health centres across the province are overwhelmingly understaffed, and all of us here in this room know exactly what that has led to: crowded emergency rooms; excruciatingly long wait times; overworked, underpaid health care workers who are exiting the community health sector, exiting health care faster than we can ever recruit and retain them; seniors, kids, vulnerable Ontarians being left to wonder if they’re going to get the care they need when they need it.

Along with those critically low staffing levels, Ontario’s health care system is also seeing a wave of physicians retire. Currently, 1.7 million people in the province of Ontario are looked after by a doctor who is 65 or older. Let that sink in. How did the members across the aisle not see that one coming? Doctors are human too. New Democrats have been sounding the alarm on this for decades now—in the previous Liberal government, as well. But members across the aisle can’t see a storm coming for them until it’s knocking on their door.

Just on Thursday, I was in Kingston, where the shortage of doctors has left 30,000 people without access to primary care. The shortage is so dire that when four physicians at CDK Family Medicine and Walk-In Clinic announced that they would take on 4,000 new patients, hundreds of people lined up through the night, in the rain, to claim a spot. That’s desperation. If this doesn’t cry urgency to the Premier of this province, I don’t know what will.

Only two weeks ago, we had a few retired United Steelworkers workers here with us from Sault Ste. Marie. The members opposite will remember that they joined us here at Queen’s Park because they were asking this government to step up and do something about the almost 10,000 people, mostly seniors and retirees, who were de-rostered from the Group Health Centre in the Soo. It’s the only clinic in the area. They’ve lost physicians to retirements, to resignations, and there are no replacements available—and that is going to go up to another 6,000, to 16,000, in just a matter of months. By the end of the year, nearly 30% of the population in Sault Ste. Marie and Algoma could be left without a family doctor. That is going to be a sad day.

We are losing doctors. We are losing nurses. We are losing health care staff. People are stressed, and they are worried about whether they’re going to get the care they need. And where is Premier Ford? Where is this Conservative government? They’re too busy patting themselves on the back with these vanity ads instead of actually improving access to care for the people of Ontario.

The doctors and nurse practitioners who are still on the front lines are having to spend hours filling out insurance forms and coordinating referrals, and it’s cutting into quality time with patients. The Canadian Medical Association studied how many more hours doctors could be spending with their patients if they weren’t buried in paperwork, and that number is 19 hours a week. That’s 40% of their time. That’s up to five hours on administrative work per day. Any of us who have spoken to family physicians out there in our communities know this; they’ve been saying it for years. They’ve been saying, “Do something about this. That’s five hours that we could be spending seeing patients.” That’s 19 hours a week filling out forms when we have people sitting between 12 and 15 hours in waiting rooms just to see a doctor. If doctors are freed up from this administrative work, they could serve—get this—two million more patients. Do the math. That’s like adding 2,000 doctors to the system—so, 2,000 doctors to the system, or relieve the administrative work and see two million more patients.

Training and hiring new doctors—we know it’s going to take years. But funding and properly staffing primary care right now? That can happen right now. We could be doing this today. It’s a question of priorities.

The Ontario College of Family Physicians—by their research, 94% of family doctors say they are currently overwhelmed with administrative and clerical tasks. They are telling us what they need.

I want to share the words of one such expert—an actual, front-line health care provider, Dr. David Barber. He’s the OMA chair of general and family practice. Here is what he has to say about this issue: “Paperwork takes an average of 20 hours per week and includes burgeoning insurance forms, sick notes and requests for drugs.” Family doctors who didn’t go into medicine to do paperwork are doing that paperwork. “We want to see patients; this takes away from it.”

I want to just stop here for one moment and say that last week, when I was in Kingston, I had the great pleasure of meeting Dr. Dick Zoutman, who made the point, when we were talking about this issue, of saying, “Let’s be clear: These are not optional forms. This isn’t an option. This is what we have to do.”

Going back to the comments of Dr. Barber: “The government hasn’t sent any signals to family doctors on the ground that they know what is happening. When doctors aren’t hearing from the government that it has their backs, family doctors are just giving up. That is why we are seeing so many leaving.”

Those are the words of Dr. David Barber, the OMA chair of general and family practice.

This is time that doctors could be spending with patients, with people who are aging—our population is aging—with those new babies we see out there, with new moms and new families, with teenagers who are struggling. These are hours that could be devoted to them right now.

It’s not like we don’t know what works. That’s what I find so frustrating after 20-odd years of looking at this issue in health care policy. We’ve seen how effective our solution is through the community health centre model, where primary care providers like doctors and nurse practitioners have a fully staffed and resourced team so they can focus on providing care, not filling out paperwork. But rather than support those centres, what does this government do? Cut funding, so they’re forced to reduce services, see less patients.

And let me say, on behalf of all of those community health centres that I have visited over the last few weeks alone, my goodness, don’t those workers deserve to be paid the same as those folks in our hospitals? They’re paid 20% less.

I know the minister tries to minimize how important that administrative work is that health care providers are doing. She belittled this, this morning, in her responses to our questions.

Our solution can be life-saving. That’s why we’re putting this forward.

How short are we of family doctors? This is based on current numbers: Windsor, short 36; London, 68; Hamilton, 114; Barrie and Muskoka region, 118. Toronto—can you imagine? Nobody can imagine that there’s a family physician shortage in Toronto, but boy, 305—let alone trying to get a physician who actually speaks your language. Peterborough, 40; Kingston, 23; Ottawa, 171; Sudbury, 33; Thunder Bay, 50; St. Catharines, 51.

As I travel across this province and I listen to people, I hear this every day.

In Alvinston, I was at the Maple Syrup Festival the other day. I was standing in line with a bunch of folks waiting for the school bus to take us to the Maple Syrup Festival. That was fun. Those seniors were talking with me about how none of them have a family physician. These are folks with walkers, with chronic health conditions. Where do they go?

Nursing home residents I met with last week in Nepean and Orléans are stuck in a situation with a bad-actor nursing home company, and they can’t afford to leave it because they can’t afford to lose their nurse practitioner. They’re putting themselves and their families at risk.

Here in Toronto, I met a young man just the other day in my riding, in downtown west end Toronto, who moved there from Brampton and has never in his life had a family physician—can’t get on a list.

This government could start clearing that patient backlog by putting out job postings today for health care team members to support doctors and get people of this province the health care they need right now.

I’m going to end by just referring to one other thing: When I came to the province of Ontario, what, 30 years ago from Newfoundland, one of the reasons that I stayed here was because you could imagine raising your family here on a working-class salary. You could imagine having a good public school for your kids. Do you know what else? You could get a family doctor—not something we had a lot of in Newfoundland, even back then. But you could imagine getting—

Interjection.

No, actually, it was before Mike Harris. It was under the NDP government. Thank you very much to the Minister of Education for that lesson.

I want to tell you, Speaker, the good news is, New Democrats have been laser-focused on putting forward solutions that are practical to the problems that are facing hard-working people in the province of Ontario today. In Ontario today, under this Conservative government—and under the Liberal government before them—things are not good. Things are getting worse and not better. But we’re focused on solutions.

One of those solutions: Support this motion today. Let’s get our doctors seeing patients, not doing paperwork. Pass this motion, and let’s move this province forward.

Thank you so much to my colleagues from the official opposition. Our proposal is the equivalent of introducing 2,000 new doctors in the province of Ontario tomorrow to see two million more patients. What could possibly be wrong with this?

Listening to the government members opposite address this motion, I felt a little bit like Alice down the rabbit hole. But there’s no waking up from this nightmare. We’ve listened to Liberal and Conservative governments over so many years—the last 20, 30 years—with half measures and cuts. Let’s just call the Liberal and Conservative governments Tweedledee and Tweedledum for the purposes of this argument. Nothing has been adequate and the writing has been on the wall all of that time.

Six years into this government’s mandate I would urge them to do something for the people of Ontario, listen to the 2.2 million Ontarians who do not have a family doctor, listen to the voices of Ontarians who are saying, “Please, do something right now.” We are serving you up a solution. You are not approaching this with the urgency that it requires.

If this motion were to pass—and we are forcing a vote on this this afternoon—again, 2,000 more doctors—the equivalent—two million more Ontarians could actually see primary care delivered immediately. It would relieve the administrative burden on family physicians. It will get patients the access they need and then relieve the pressure on our emergency rooms. You have a choice to make. Make the right one today. Vote in favour of this motion.