It gives me great pleasure to welcome Linda Squarzolo from Nickel Belt, representing the Catholic Women’s League of Canada. Thank you for coming, Linda.

Ma question est pour la ministre de la Santé.

In Sault Ste. Marie, 10,000 people will lose access to primary care at the end of next month. Some 280 emergency room closures; 1,200 hospital services closures: This is the reality of rural and northern Ontario.

We deserve access to care, Speaker. Why is this government ignoring the crisis in rural and northern Ontario?

It doesn’t have to be that way, Speaker. We have solutions sitting on the minister’s desk right now, collecting dust. Will the minister start listening to rural Ontario and fund these proposals right now?

I’m quite happy to present this petition. Marc Carroll, a disability rights activist from Sudbury, has collected over 200 names. Marc lives with a disability, and he feels that our society will need more supportive housing in order to be able to accommodate people who have disabilities, so he took it upon himself to write a petition and to go around and ask people to sign it. He’s asking us to make sure that the supportive housing sector in Ontario gets the funds they need so that we have enough supportive housing to meet the 2.6 million Ontarians who live with disabilities, who would benefit. I agree with him.

I will ask Duncan to bring those petitions to the Clerk.

I have a petition here that comes from Ostomy Canada Society. Basically, the Assistive Devices Program in Ontario should cover 75% of the cost of assistive devices. For people who wear an ostomy—believe me, nobody wears an ostomy if they don’t have to—the amount that they get has not been changed in many, many years, which means that right now, they get about $850 a year max, when most of them spend over $2,000 for their ostomy supplies. They would like us, as legislators, to make sure that the Assistive Devices Program is true to itself so that they get reimbursed 75% of the true cost of having to live with an ostomy and buying the ostomy supplies.

I think this is reasonable. I fully support their ask and will ask Duncan to bring that to the Clerks.

We know that the vaping industry really targets the kids. They target the kids with the flavours that they use. They target the kids with the way that they sell their products.

Mr. Taschereau is very worried. He knows that there are a number of public health agencies, such as public health Canada and Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, that are encouraging schools and others to do everything we can to keep vaping out of the hands of children. I think this is wise.

I would ask the House to consider passing my bill, the Vaping is not for Kids Act.

I support what the petition is trying to do. I will ask Nate to bring it to the Clerk.

Je crois que c’est une bonne idée. Je vais signer la pétition, et je demande à Nate de l’amener à la table des greffiers.

A lot of women have signed this petition. Because of intimate partner violence that is rampant in some areas of French River, they need the OPP stations to stay open.

I fully agree with them.

I will sign the petition and ask my good page Nate to bring it to the Clerk.

I would like to thank Carole et René Menard de Hanmer dans mon comté pour ces pétitions.

Ils veulent vraiment que l’on répare les subventions aux résidents du Nord pour les frais de transport à des fins médicales. Il y a beaucoup de services de santé qui ne sont pas disponible dans le nord de l’Ontario. Donc, les gens du Nord doivent voyager vers Toronto, vers Ottawa, vers London pour avoir ces services-là.

Le remboursement n’a pas été mis à jour depuis très longtemps, ce qui veut dire que pour plusieurs personnes, ils n’ont pas suffisamment les moyens de se rendre à Toronto, London ou Ottawa pour recevoir les soins dont ils ont besoin.

Ils voudraient que les frais de remboursement soient ajustés à la hausse pour permettre à tout le monde d’avoir accès à des soins spécialisés.

Je pense que c’est quelque chose d’important qui devrait être fait. Je n’ai aucun problème à appuyer cette pétition, et je vais demander à Emirson de l’amener à la table des greffiers.

There are hundreds and hundreds of people who would like to see a doubling of the social assistance rates. There are many parts of my riding where we have a higher concentration of people on social assistance. It is extremely difficult for them to make ends meet at $713, $730—I forgot the exact number—to pay rent, to pay for food, to pay for transportation. They would like a living wage so that what they receive in social assistance actually allows them to live. I agree. I support this petition and ask my good page Emirson to bring it to the Clerk.

I would like to ask my colleague—when it comes to children with special needs, we see that the demand for mental health services for children continues to increase, the demand for children that need to be taken into account to meet their needs continues to increase, if you look at the services that are available.

And now, I will direct you into the French schools because kids in Ontario have a constitutional right to go to French schools. Have you seen any improvement in the accessibility of services to support the children with special needs in our French schools?

I was really glad to hear the member from Barrie–Innisfil talk positively about nurse practitioner-led clinics and the fact that one of those clinics has been funded for the community of Innisfil, in her riding—just for interest, the very first one was created in Sudbury, and we worked really hard to get this up and running. I’m happy for her community.

How can she explain that a community like Capreol has been asking for one more nurse practitioner since 2021, and yet the government has not even had the courtesy to answer them back? They have written a number of times—they have submitted last June. They have sent their budget again last fall. They came to the budget consultation that took place.

I’m happy that her riding will be seeing more. But there are 40,000 people in Nickel Belt without access to primary care. What’s in the budget to help them?

My constituents, like all of our constituents, were curious to see what in the budget was going to help them, whether it helps them gain access to health care, whether it helps them with the cost of living, whether there was anything in there to help them with finding a place to live. Unfortunately, it’s pretty slim.

I would like to start with the mention in the budget about Highway 69. Highway 69 is the highway that goes from Toronto to Sudbury. For 69 kilometres of it—68, as my friend the MPP from Sudbury will say—we are on a two-lane highway with I don’t know how many million trucks there are on this highway, but many, many.

Every year, I write a letter to the Minister of Transportation to ask, “How is the four-laning of Highway 69 coming along?”

In the budget, it says that they will continue their work on Highway 69. That’s all that’s in the budget.

In 2023, I wrote to the Minister of Transportation and I asked, “How is it coming with the four-laning of Highway 69?” And I got a response: “The ministry is taking the steps necessary to secure the federal and provincial environmental approvals required to complete the highway expansion. Once all the approvals are in place, construction will commence to expand these remaining sections.

“In the interim, the ministry continues....”

This year, I wrote to the Minister of Transportation and asked the same questions I’ve asked every year for the last 17 years that I have been here, and this is the answer I got:

“Thank you for your email regarding the Highway 69 four-lane expansion. I appreciate the opportunity to respond on behalf of the Ministry of Transportation.”

This is Véronique Filion, communications coordinator, north operations, of the Ministry of Transportation, who answered me.

She went on to say, “The ministry is continuing to take the steps necessary to secure ... the federal and provincial environmental approvals required to complete the highway expansion”—the exact same answer I got last year.

She went on to say, “When there is new information, the ministry is committed to sharing the progress with our partners and stakeholders that have shown interest in the continued expansion of Highway 69.” I hope I’m part of this selected group. I can tell you that my constituents sure would like to know.

She went on to say, “The overall Highway 69 expansion project, from Parry Sound to Sudbury, remains a priority for the provincial government and the work has been proceeding using a phased approach.”

It is really hard to tell my constituents that year after year—every time when I ask, “How is it coming with Highway 69?” I get the exact same answer: that they are working on the federal and provincial environmental approval, and nothing has changed. Actually, I think I am going to ask for a danger pay upgrade to my pay, because I have to travel Highway 69 every Sunday night, and then Thursday night when I go back home, because this is a very dangerous highway. I cannot believe that a province as rich as Ontario, a province that has $23 billion in the budget for road construction, comes back and tells us the exact same thing year after year and nothing changes for Highway 69.

I just took a trip across Canada. The minute you hit the frontier between where Ontario ends and Manitoba begins, you have four-lane highway all the way to British Columbia. Coming back from out west, you will go through Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba—they all have four-lane highways. The minute you hit Ontario, you’re on a cow path with a million trucks, with closures pretty much every second day.

If we have snow, I guarantee you there will be closures on northern Ontario highways. It’s really bad—not to mention the number of serious accidents where people get hurt, not to mention the number of serious accidents where people die.

And yet, we have this huge amount—billions of dollars—in the budget, but all we get year after year for Highway 69 is that they are working to secure the federal and provincial environmental approvals. How many decades does it take to get those approvals, so that you can actually build a road? That’s actually going to be my question next year, when I write the exact same letter to the Ministry of Transportation to see if anything will move.

But I want to focus a little bit on health care. In the budget, if you look at how much has been spent in 2023-24, which ended on March 31, versus what’s going to be spent in health care starting on April 1, there’s over a $1-billion cut. There’s a $1-billion cut at the same time as 2.2 million Ontarians do not have access to primary care, and this number will double within the next few years.

The Minister of Health put out a show of interest. They got over $1 billion worth of ask. There are solutions that exist throughout Ontario to make sure that the 2.2 million Ontarians who do not have access to primary care gain access. Even in my riding—I represent small, rural, northern Ontario. We have solutions. The nurse practitioner clinic in Capreol has been asking for one more nurse practitioner since 2021. You figure with a budget of $85 billion, there would be money to help people. There are no physicians, but we have nurse practitioners.

Did they get any money? Absolutely not. They didn’t even get a response to the detailed budgets that they put forward. I take them; I bring them to the Minister of Health. I showed her: “You need to help those people. They have been without a family physician for a very long time. They need access to care.” We have underemployed nurse practitioners right in the city of Greater Sudbury who would love to come and work at the nurse practitioner-led clinic in Capreol, and not a penny goes to help them. We’re not asking for millions of dollars—a couple of hundred thousand dollars, not even a rounding error at the Ministry of Health, but yet no money comes, and we continue to have the problem with 40,000 people in Nickel Belt who do not have access to primary care. There are solutions that come from all over but that are not being funded.

There is money in the budget for more primary care. It will come in a three-year period when there’s 2.2 million people that need help right now, and there’s no guarantee that it will come to rural areas. There’s no guarantee that it will come to northern areas, which deserve equitable access to care. Mind you, there are many people in Toronto also who do not have a primary care provider.

Then, there’s home care. I want to share the story of Tina Senior. Tina has a severely disabled, beautiful little boy named Alex. Alex goes to school. He is J-tube fed, needs to have home care to come and feed him. Just like every other kid, he gets hungry. So Bayshore has the contract to come and feed Alex at school five days a week when the school is in session. They are paid for an hour and a half to come and feed him, because you have to hook up the J-tube, let him get fed, unhook the machine etc. Well, Bayshore comes for 15 minutes, they get him hooked up and then they go. They get paid for an hour and a half, but they get to stay for 15 minutes. Most of the time, the machine will start to beep, beep, beep. Nobody in the school knows how to handle a J-tube feed. They phone the mom.

The mom is an intensive care nurse at our local hospital. The mom is no longer—after 10 years at the intensive care at Health Sciences North, she had to quit her job because home care fails her son so many times a week that—she’s not going to let her son starve. When your children are sick, nothing else matters. When her son needed her, she did what needed to be done, but that means we lost an intensive care nurse at Health Sciences North, and Bayshore gets paid for services they don’t provide. Bayshore is the home care company. That happens all over.

I have Chantale in Capreol. The same thing: a cute little girl, Valérie, who has special needs—the same thing, needs home care. The home care fails her so many times—Chantale worked in home care for many, many years. She had to quit her job to make sure that her child will get the support that they need. Why is it that we continue to pay for-profit home care companies millions of dollars in profit every single year yet we cannot enforce the contract that they have? You’re paid for an hour and a half, why are you only there for 15 minutes? You’re supposed to show up to help Valérie in school. Why is it that you don’t show up? And yet there are no repercussions. It just keeps on—and the mom who has been a very good home care worker for a very long time has to quit her job because the home care system fails her.

Tina has to quit her job as an intensive care nurse because the home care system failed her. And it goes on and on like this, yet we are quite happy to continue to give private, for-profit home care companies billions of dollars in profits, but we can’t pay the PSWs who work home care more than 20 bucks an hour.

Do you know how you fix the problem in home care and long-term care? You make PSW jobs good jobs—75% of them should be full-time jobs, well-paid, with benefits, with sick days, with a pension plan, with holidays, and problem solved. There are many, many very dedicated PSWs even in northern Ontario who would love to do what they do best, care for others, but if they do this, they can’t pay the rent and feed their kids, so they have to find other jobs.

When the hospital puts out one job, they will have hundreds of applicants. When Bayshore puts out one job, they have no applicants. Why? Because Bayshore won’t give you a full-time job, won’t give you benefits, won’t give you decent pay—any of that. We could legislate that tomorrow morning, like we did way back for nurses working in hospitals. None of that is in the budget.

When we look at the Northern Health Travel Grant—the Northern Health Travel Grant is mentioned in the budget and we see right now, for people in my riding and all over the north that have to come to Toronto that you get $100 to pay for your accommodations. If you can find a hotel room in Toronto for $100, please let us know right now, because none of us have been able to find this. It will now be bumped up to $175 a night. I will tell you that for most people on low income, coming to Toronto and having to manage a budget of $175 a night is still impossible. It will mean, for people in northern Ontario, that they will go without care because they haven’t got the money to pay for the transport and to pay for the hotel in order to get equitable access to care. This is wrong. The Northern Health Travel Grant needs to be reviewed. It hasn’t been reviewed in decades—100 bucks made sense in 1983, it does not make any sense in 2024. Do we see a commitment in the budget or money in the budget to do this? Absolutely not.

There are many services that could come to the north. Multiple sclerosis in northern Ontario—northern Ontario has the highest percentage of population with multiple sclerosis, and yet we have no clinic dedicated to multiple sclerosis in northern Ontario. People have to travel to the south in order to do this.

We had the one and only supervised consumption site in Sudbury that has saved many, many lives. Sudbury—like Timmins, like Sault Ste. Marie, like many communities in the north—sees a three-times death rate from opioid overdoses compared to southern Ontario, and yet there was no money in the budget for supervised consumption sites. Our site closed last Friday, and I can assure you that there were many, many people crying.

The member from Sudbury has brought many examples of members in his community that depend on the supervised consumption site to stay alive long enough to wait your turn on the never-ending wait-list for mental health and addiction. In my area, it used to be 12 months to gain access to children’s mental health; we are now at 18 months to gain access to children’s mental health. Do you know how many things go wrong during those 18 months? When your child is sick enough, has been to the hospital many times and been told, “He needs to start mental health therapy. We will put them on the waitlist”—and you phone every week and you are told that you still have 12 months to wait, 11 months to wait? Ten months? That’s wrong. Do we see money in the budget for this? Very, very little.

There’s many more. The ambulance services in Foleyet—Foleyet is a community in the north of my riding, about an hour away from Timmins, an hour away from Chapleau, the two closest hospitals. The DSSAB, which provides ambulance services for the people of Foleyet, doesn’t have enough money to keep all of their sites open. There is a good chance that the site in Foleyet will be closed, which means that, in case of an emergency, when you phone to get an ambulance, the ambulance will have to leave from Timmins and drive for an hour before they get to you in Foleyet. Why is there no money in the budget for the DSSAB?

Things that would be easy to fix: 911 everywhere in Ontario. Did you know, Speaker, that Ontario is the only province that doesn’t have 911 everywhere? We are the only one. Every other province has an agreement with Bell to make sure that 911 is available everywhere. In my riding, there are about six different 1-800 numbers that you have to remember to be able to call. The services will be there, but the 911 won’t. Is there money in the budget to do that little, wee change? No, absolutely not.

There are many, many other things that I would have liked to see. I would have liked to see money in this budget for a French university in Sudbury.

La population francophone parle d’une seule voix : on veut une université francophone à l’Université de Sudbury.

The francophone community speaks with one voice: We want a francophone university in Sudbury, by the University of Sudbury. Is there any money in the budget to make that happen? No, absolutely not.

I could go on. Internet and broadband: I have met with every Internet and broadband provider. None of them want to come in to Nickel Belt because there is no money to be made. It doesn’t matter if you pay for all of their infrastructure, they do not want to set up shop. There is no money to be made. You have to look at another way of moving things forward in northern and rural Ontario, because having a for-profit provider won’t work. You have lots of money available that stays there every year for this.

And it just goes on and on. Cleaning of arsenic leaking into Long Lake in my riding: This has been happening since 2007. Having a stable workforce at the ministry so that we get that done and stop the leaching of arsenic into Long Lake—I could go on and on.

None of that is in the budget, but all of that were priorities that the people of the north wanted to see in the budget.

I appreciate the member singing me a song. I’ve never had anybody sing me a song before so thank you for that. It was kind of cool.

I live in northern Ontario so I want you to understand that in all the little communities—I have 33 little communities—you either have no gas station or you have one gas station.

That one gas station sells gas at whatever the market can bear. They don’t give a damn—am I allowed to say that?—they don’t care how much tax, they just sell it at how much they can. On a long weekend, when we have a lot of tourists, you pay over two bucks a litre for gas in many parts of my riding. It was just Easter and the price went up to $1.87 in my riding.

It has to do with regulating the price of gas. Do what many other provinces and states have done: Regulate the price of gas so that you set a cap so they cannot go over this. That would really help the people of northern Ontario.

Quand tu as une population comme Hearst, où plus de 65 % n’ont pas accès aux soins et qu’ils mettent des demandes de l’avant—il y a des façons de régler ça. Il y a des façons de donner l’accès. Ils font des demandes de financement au ministère de la Santé et n’entendent rien en retour.

Ces gens-là ont droit aux soins. C’est un droit fondamental de tous les Ontariens et Ontariennes, même quand tu vis dans le nord de l’Ontario, comme moi et le membre.

Mais je ne veux pas lui donner de faux espoirs : non, il n’y a pas grand-chose dans ce budget-là qui va aider les gens de Hearst.

We are very fortunate to have some really dedicated workers who work within community living. There’s about eight group homes that exist in Sudbury and Nickel Belt. All of them are always packed to full capacity, and I have many families like the Rodgers, who care for a child with a developmental disability who is now an adult, who is now a 60-year-old adult, and they see themselves as, “We need to prepare for the next phase, when we cannot look after”—and there is no money in the budget to open up new group homes. There is no money in the budget to allow the group homes that exist to put on a few more beds and take on a few more residents. But there are many, many people with developmental handicaps who would love to know that, if their support’s not there, they would have access, but there’s nothing in the budget for that.

I can tell you that, in the community of Cartier, the community hall had to close. They don’t have a place to gather anymore. I have many of the little communities that I serve where the hall where they used to meet together is in such poor shape that they cannot offer recreation anymore. They cannot offer a place for the community to gather.

I hope that this money will be available to them, but I know that the demand will be way bigger than what the budget offers.