Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Energy. Last fall, the federal Liberals finally recognized what our government has been saying for years: The carbon tax is raising the price of everything. After years of high energy costs, the Prime Minister announced a pause on the carbon tax, but only on home heating oil. For the more than 97% of Ontarians who rely on propane and natural gas to heat their homes, this measure provides no relief. And to make matters worse, on April 1, the Liberals are raising the carbon tax by 23%. This is ludicrous.

Our government must continue to call on the federal government to eliminate the carbon tax once and for all. Can the minister explain the impact this increase will have on Ontario families?

Unlike the opposition NDP and the independent Liberals, our government, led by Premier Ford, is focused on making life more affordable. We have been speaking against this regressive tax from day one, and we will continue to advocate for the people of Ontario. It’s time for the federal government to reconsider their approach and act in the best interest of Canadians by eliminating the carbon tax.

Speaker, can the minister please explain how our government is trying to stop this terrible federal carbon tax?

I am happy to rise today in the House to build on the remarks from my colleague the MPP for Eglinton–Lawrence, to share with this House how our government is leading the way to strengthen primary care in every corner of our province for years to come.

We greatly appreciate the leadership and dedication of Ontario’s primary care providers to improving the quality of life, health and well-being of Ontario families. The work of the primary care sector does not go unnoticed. Primary care is an integral part of our health care system, meeting the different needs of our diverse communities and populations, including in many northern and rural communities, and providing care to some of our most vulnerable residents. It helps to preserve the capacity of our emergency departments and hospitals, while also building important connections with other key services that Ontarians rely on, such as home and community care or mental health and addictions supports.

Now, unlike the NDP and the Liberals, our government, under the leadership of Premier Ford and Minister Jones, is working hard to support primary care across this great province of ours. And while progress has been made, we know there’s more to be done. That’s why, just last month, Minister Jones announced a record investment of $110 million to expand access to primary care in every corner of the province.

I would like to highlight that, of that $110 million, $20 million of that is for an increase to our existing primary care providers. I do know that the member from St. Catharines just made note in her speech that they have not received an increase. Speaker, I reiterate: $20 million of that $110 million is an increase for the existing primary care.

Now, this funding will connect up to 328,000 Ontarians to the care that they need closer to home. I was delighted to participate in the announcement in York–Simcoe that our government’s $1.4 million will support an additional 2,700 patients.

Speaker, I’d like to speak about that announcement that I had attended, because it was interesting, as my colleague the other parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Health noted. We were attending various round tables with primary care providers, starting back last May. My first round table was in my own community of Newmarket–Aurora—in fact, with the Aurora Newmarket Family Health Team. It was wonderful, sitting down and chatting with them about what they felt our government could perhaps help with so that they can spend more time with their patients. One of the things I heard was, obviously, the burden of paperwork. The other thing was about multidisciplinary teams: how well they work together by having the primary care provider, a nurse practitioner, nurses, social work, dietitians, physiotherapy. It was truly the multidisciplinary team that came together, that provided that great service to their patients.

I bring this up because when I attended the announcement for York–Simcoe, after the announcement, one of the members of the Aurora Newmarket Family Health Team came up to me and she thanked me. She said, “Thank you, Dawn. Your government is listening, and we appreciate this announcement. I said, “I am so happy that we are able to spend that time with our primary care providers, listening to them, because they are the ones who are providing that great care for the patients,” and that’s what we are doing, and that’s what this announcement was all about. I thank her for coming up to me after that announcement.

Now, as well, Speaker, we witnessed—I witnessed, and some of my colleagues witnessed—a great excitement in Brampton just this past Friday, when we announced their community expansion. WellFort CHS is receiving over $2.7 million, and they will be able to connect over 7,000 patients. As well—and I’m happy to say about this one; I was very excited—Homeless Health Peel is receiving over $1.6 million to connect more than 1,600.

Why I’d like to talk about Homeless Health Peel is because I met with the director, who’s a nurse practitioner, and he led this group that came out of COVID-19. I’m very excited about this program, because I remember approximately maybe a year ago—just under a year ago—I met with him a couple of times. Clinton is his name, and he does such great work. They are mobile. They are going into homes, dealing with our most vulnerable population, our homeless population, ensuring that they are cared for, and they started this journey in COVID-19.

Well, Speaker, I am proud of our government, because now, with that funding, they are going to be able to help connect more than 1,600 people. I’m proud of our government for doing that, and thank you, Clinton and your entire team, for what you’re doing for the great people of Peel region.

In Simcoe North, 20,000 people will be connected to primary care, over 8,700 in the Waterloo region and 5,000 in Parry Sound–Muskoka. Following our government’s announcement of an almost $6-million investment in northeastern Ontario communities like Timmins, Porcupine and James Bay, Katherine Harvey, the interim executive director and a registered nurse from the East End Family Health Team in Timmins, had this to say: “It gives us hope for a bright future for health care in Ontario. I actually could cry.”

And this good news is continuing in Niagara, Elgin county, Listowel-Wingham, Northumberland county and so many more communities.

In Ontario and around the world, health care systems are continuing to face challenges and our government continues to actively engage with our health care partners to identify solutions to respond to these challenges. Through our Your Health plan introduced last year, we are taking bold action and making health care more connected and convenient. This is to improve the health care experience for all Ontarians at every stage of life.

Speaker, I would like to highlight some of the funding and the number of patients that will be connected through this primary care funding that we announced in February. The member from the opposition spoke about First Nations. I’d like to highlight a few of the fundings for our First Nations:

—Weeneebayko Area Health Authority in Moosonee and James Bay coast: Over $900,000, and it will connect 2,275 patients;

—I’d also like to mention right here in Toronto, Anishnawbe Health Toronto: A mobile unit expansion; they will be connecting 570 patients;

—I’d also like to speak to the Wasauksing First Nation in Parry Sound: with their expansion, 400 more patients;

—I mentioned Weeneebayko Area Health Authority already, but it’s actually double the funding, so it’s actually well over a million dollars and 4,450 patients for care.

Speaker, I could go on:

—Six Nations of the Grand River Family Health Team, and that’s at Six Nations of the Grand River: more than $1,250,000; that will connect 2,275 patients;

—SOAHAC Newbury in the Newbury area: 800 patients;

—SOAHAC Chippewa in Muncey: 570 patients will be connected;

—Six Nations of the Grand River family health, with over $600,000 and 1,140 patients.

This is great to see these numbers.

Speaker, to improve the health care experience for all Ontarians at every stage of life, our government recognizes the need for an integrated approach—one that uses the knowledge, skill and expertise of many dedicated health care professionals. We are continuing to collaborate with partners to connect communities to the services they need close to home, no matter where they live.

Ensuring continued engagement with the primary care sector remains critically important to us to inform broader health system priorities from a primary care clinician’s perspective.

Our government is working with our health care partners to tackle the administrative burden on physicians through the bilateral Burnout Task Force, by improving the OMA-endorsed priority government forms. Our work has significantly accelerated work to simplify forms, and we look forward to sharing the improvements that have been made in the near future.

Our government has also launched an initiative called Patients Before Paperwork. This is to further tackle the administrative burden on physicians while reducing the risk of delays in diagnosis and treatment.

In our Your Health plan, we outlined our plan to axe the fax, replacing outdated fax machines with digital alternatives. Yes, it’s hard to believe that fax machines are still used, but they are. To give some perspective, a 2022 provincial survey of health care providers found that there are an estimated 152 million faxes across Ontario’s health care settings in a single year, including 71 million paper-based faxes and around 81 million e-faxes being sent between health care providers.

Other initiatives we have launched through Patients Before Paperwork include an e-referral service to allow the electronic referral of patients from primary care to specialty care.

Speaker, these are the things we heard about when we attended these primary care round tables. They talked about the need to ensure that they can reach out and get that referral for their patient. I heard it consistently through each of the round tables. One of the biggest stresses for a primary care provider is that they want to refer their patient to that specialty care sooner than later, because they know the faster the diagnosis, the better the outcome. These are the things that we’re working on to ensure that we answer the need of our primary care providers so that we can connect them to the right referral at the right time, so that patients can get that diagnosis sooner, because we know they will have better outcomes.

We’re also working on an e-referral service to allow primary care providers to send lab requisitions electronically, covering all labs in the province, compared to the current system in place, with a minority of labs connected.

The provincial health services directory is the development of a single-source directory for health care services in Ontario, so that health care providers and patients can have access to up-to-date, reliable and accurate information about the services provided by individual health care providers across the province. Our forms initiative further enhances provider access to administrative forms. They are standardized and available from point-of-care systems. Digitalization and standardization of forms streamlines form management and delivery while making the practice less burdensome for providers, while improving data quality and information-sharing. I think this point right there is extremely important because, again, this is something I heard throughout the round tables with our primary care providers. They really spoke about how we need to use advanced tools, that we are in the 21st century. Why are we using these faxes? How can we become more digitally inclined? Some are doing more than others, but we need consistency.

I want to reiterate this point: Digitalization and standardization of forms streamlines form management and delivery—that’s not so much with support staff; that’s using tools that people can use in this modern-age world while making the practice less burdensome for providers, while improving data quality. That is a critical component as well—the quality of that data that is being used and the information for sharing purposes. And why? For the benefit of that patient.

A number of eForm approaches exist, including provincial administrative forms being integrated into EMRs, locally hosted forms in EMRs, and the SADIE portal that is used by providers to submit electronic forms to the Ministry of Health.

Patients Before Paperwork would develop an eForms governance model and form integration standards, identify a technical delivery platform that can be broadly leveraged across HSP point-of-care systems for consumption of eForms, and roll out eForms on the common platform so various point-of-care systems can consume, exchange and disseminate form content with intended partners, replacing the ad hoc paper forms. This is going to be amazing, and we know it’s going to solve a lot of the challenges with our primary care providers. This work will be aligned with the Ministry of Health and the OMA forms committee work to streamline and rationalize existing, high-volume, high-burden forms. Early priorities for form integration with EMRs and other front-line provider solutions will be directly informed by this work.

We look forward to continuing to connect with and engage our primary care partners as progress is made toward delivering more integrated and sustainable primary care services to all Ontarians.

Speaker, before I continue, I thought this would be a good point to talk a bit more about the announcement I attended in Brampton this past Friday. Listening to the words of the executive director as she informed me about some of the work that they are doing with their primary care, how they’re working, thinking outside of the box, and how they’re supporting their community members—not just there at the CHS, but going out into the community. I think this is where the Homeless Health Peel also came in—because they are right there, out at different shelters, going in there to provide the primary care.

I also think back to the announcement I attended in Georgina for that care expansion. It was so exciting to see all the people who participated. You had the paramedics. There was the region. You had the primary care providers. You had Southlake health attending. You had CMHA participating, from the mental health and addictions perspective. You had the nurse practitioners there as well. There are so many different parts because they knew—they said, “This is exciting. This is what we need, because we know the primary team approach is exactly what we need.” And that, as I said earlier—connecting more than 2,700 patients right there in the Keswick and Georgina area.

Speaker, back to the health report manager: This sub-work stream would introduce service improvements to the HRM, which sends reports from acute-care hospitals to community providers like primary care to inform care transitions.

A number of issues have been raised, particularly by receiving facilities—that how reports are received can be a fragmented and administratively overwhelming experience. Ontario Health has conducted a third-party assessment of HRM and has identified key areas of improvements to the HRM so that the noise in the receiving EMR can be eliminated.

Patients Before Paperwork would bring focus to these areas, including standardization of reports from sending facilities, a more stringent approach to how EMR and other point-of-care systems present reports to the clinical user, and migration of the service to the clinical data foundations platform at Ontario Health to better serve the clinical communities by enabling capability to choose what reports are relevant and to be received via publication and subscription.

I would also like to speak to—parce que je sais bien que notre collègue a mentionné les patients francophones, je voudrais bien remarquer le Centre de Santé Univi Health Centre qui est à Sudbury district, French River. Ils ont reçu plus de 617 000 $, et il y aura 2 275 patients qui vont recevoir des soins.

Aussi, encore, le Centre de santé communautaire de Kapuskasing et région—c’est le Kapuskasing Family Health Team. Il y a une nouvelle équipe maintenant là. Ils sont à Kapuskasing et ils ont reçu plus de 355 000 $ et il y aura 2 600 patients qui vont recevoir des soins aussi.

Une autre expansion, c’est, encore, le Centre de Santé Univi Health Centre, qui est à French River : plus que 300 000 $. Il y aura 2 400 patients qui vont recevoir des soins là-bas.

Aussi, à Chapleau, le Chapleau and District Family Health Team : il y a une expansion là-bas. Je suis tellement contente de vous dire, madame la Présidente, qu’ils vont recevoir 180 000 $ et il y aura 2 200 patients qui vont recevoir des soins.

Alors, je suis tellement contente qu’on a des expansions pour nos gens francophones, parce qu’on sait bien qu’on a une grande population francophone ici en Ontario. Donc, je suis tellement fière de notre gouvernement de faire ces expansions-là.

To ensure our government’s exciting work to strengthen primary care can continue, I trust all members in this House will be voting to support the upcoming budget—

Thank you—to signal their support to this very, very important sector, if not the most important sector, our health care sector, and to all Ontarians that primary care is a top priority in the province.

All Ontarians deserve to receive health care that is responsive to their needs, regardless of where they live or who they are. And our government will continue to support better, more connected, and inclusive patient-centred care for everyone. This is why I hope that the opposition will indeed show their support for our primary care investments. I just spoke about so many from my riding, to a variety of ridings—Brampton to all over northern Ontario, other locations, even downtown Toronto, mobile expansions. This is why I hope the opposition will show their support for our primary care investments—because those who were at these announcements are expressing their appreciation for these expansions, because they know these expansions and these investments are making and will make a difference.

If the opposition members truly believe in investing in our primary care, then they should show their support by voting for the upcoming budget.