First and foremost, over the last two years, on average, our hospitals have seen a 4% increase in their operating budgets.

For a decade, under the Liberals, supported by the NDP, they underfunded the health care system, closing hospitals, closing hospital beds, creating lengthy wait times, firing nurses, and cutting medical school residency spots.

Under the leadership of Premier Ford, our government is making record investments in our health care to provide a system responsive to the needs of Ontarians. Since 2018, we’ve increased our health care budget by 30%, investing $85 billion into our publicly funded health care system this year alone.

Our bold and innovative action has seen Ontario have the shortest wait times for surgeries in Canada, with 80% of all Ontarians now receiving surgery within the target time.

In this year’s budget, we invested $743 million into health human resources, to be able to stabilize the resources of our hospitals.

Our plan is adding thousands of hours of MRI and CT scans and more procedures, including hip and knee replacements, closer to home, all accessible with your OHIP card, not your credit card. Our plan has already reduced the surgical backlog to pre-pandemic levels. We’ve added 14,000 additional OHIP-covered cataract surgeries annually and added 97,000 MRIs and 116,000 CT operating hours.

But we know more needs to be done.

That is why we’re expanding our community and surgical diagnostic centres to deliver more convenient care closer to home.

Speaker, the people can always go to protectpublichealthcare@ontario.ca and report any incidents of being overcharged for our publicly funded health care.

Ontario will continue to ensure that we have the best publicly funded health care when and where the people need it.