My question is to the Premier. Seniors in hospital are being fined $400 a day if they refuse to be sent to a long-term-care home they didn’t choose, even if it’s up to 150 kilometres away from their families.

This government repeatedly denied the use of this cruel practice under Bill 7. The Conservatives claim that Bill 7 gives hospitals the authority to charge seniors $400 a day in order to force them out to clear out beds and create hospital capacity. But we know wait times in hospitals remain historically high, and one senior recently was slapped with—listen to this—a $5,200 bill.

Was the Premier actually unaware of the charges being billed to seniors, or did he purposely withhold that information from the media?

Minister, a senior had to pay $5,200 to a hospital, as your party continues to ask question after question over affordability. There are not a lot of seniors in the province of Ontario who can afford a $5,200 bill. I don’t care if it’s one or 10, they shouldn’t have to pay that kind of money.

We’ve learned the minister has allowed nearly 300 seniors to be bullied and forced to move to a long-term-care home without their consent—think about that; without your parents’ or your grandparents’ consent—and he chooses to hide the information or is completely unaware that seniors are being fined $400 a day under his legislation. And he still refuses to apologize to the seniors and their families they have hurt and intimidated, including the thousands of seniors that died of COVID in long-term-care homes under the government’s watch.

Speaker, are the seniors simply cash cows, dispensable to this government, or will the Premier repeal Bill 7?