This year, the Special Olympics Canada Winter Games, les Jeux d’hiver d’Olympiques spéciaux Canada ont eu lieu à Calgary. These 2024 Winter Games were extra special because seven of the national athletes were from Sudbury and they brought home seven medals. Our Sudbury athletes participated in five-pin bowling and the snowshoeing competitions, and during the games, they demonstrated tenacity, courage and love for the sport. One of our athletes, Mathieu, is currently waiting to see if he will be advancing to the worlds in Italy in 2025.

It wasn’t just their skills that made an impression; Air Canada was so impressed, they asked for a group photo outside their plane with all the athletes in their plaid Team Ontario uniforms.

It was my absolute pleasure to meet with them and their coaches at my local office last week. I love hearing about all their great experiences, and I’d like to take this time to congratulate Eric and Mathieu and Lori and Amanda, Gabriel and Taylor for their achievements.

You’ve all made Sudbury incredibly proud. Félicitations pour toutes vos réussites.

I’d like to introduce some of my colleagues from OPSEU/SEFPO who are here: President JP Hornick, Kathleen Arnup, Geoffrey Cain, Sara Fraser and Shannon Morris. I look forward to seeing them and many more of their colleagues next week at the OPSEU convention.

My question is for the Premier. This week is National Medical Laboratory Week. Instead of celebrating their important work, the Conservative government is discussing the potential closure of six of the 11 Public Health Ontario labs. Those are labs in Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie, Orillia, Hamilton, Kingston and Peterborough.

The mission of Public Health Ontario is to enable informed decisions and get actions that protect and promote health and contribute to reducing health inequities. Closing six of 11 community-based PHO labs goes against that mission. Many of these labs are hundreds of kilometres and several hours from the next closest location.

Closing public labs will increase health inequities and will endanger northern and rural families. We deserve access to the free diagnostics and testing needed to be healthy.

Speaker, not everyone in Ontario knows where Walkerton is, but we all remember what Walkerton was. Seven people died, and 2,300 people became ill.

My question is, will the Premier learn from Walkerton and keep these labs open? Yes or no?

I have friends and family in the gallery I would like to introduce. I’m joined by my son Thomas, my daughter Ella, as well as Ella’s friend Emma Corcoran and her mom, Roxanne Corcoran. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Just as a summary of it, this is a real major concern. There are conversations about possibly closing six of the 11 public health labs in Ontario. The minister, obviously, today during question period, said that there’s no conversation about that at this moment. But it does make people nervous, especially in rural areas and northern Ontario. You would know the distances people have to travel.

The concerns people have are about medical testing as well as water testing. It’s what we swim in, what we drink, but also, just coming out of the pandemic, they do the testing for COVID; they do the testing for all medical procedures that come through. Having access or having the ability to get those samples to different labs and transportation, especially in the winter in northern Ontario, is a major concern for these members and what they’re doing.

As well, the consequences of closing down these labs if we hit another outbreak—you think of H1N1; you think of COVID-19; you think of measles rising recently. If we have a major outbreak and we’re unable to process the labs because they share work internally—because we’ll be cutting more than half of them if we close these down. That really is what their members are talking about and the concern they have and that access to lab testing especially in northern Ontario and rural areas.

I support this wholeheartedly. I’ll affix my signature and provide it to Duncan for the table.