Thank you very much to my friend for his presentation. I’m just wondering if he has any reflections on the fact that at the rate that I’m seeing, with the evidence we have, we have a situation where, with every week, we have a few kids who are passing away in one way or another in care. He’s lived it. I’ve grown up with friends who have had a similar experience. While I acknowledge the positive things in this bill, we have youth in our province we’re losing. So how could this bill be amended to make sure that we get the services and the supports, as my friend from Hamilton Mountain was saying, into these homes to make sure that the kids who are in crisis get the help they need?

My question is for the Premier: 134,000 people in the Ottawa region don’t have a nurse practitioner or family doctor. They’re part of the 2.3 million people in Ontario that don’t have that coverage. These neighbours rely on unsuitable walk-in clinics or crammed hospital emergency rooms to get basic health care needs.

For weeks, I’ve heard the government talk about plans to open 78 primary care practices, but we don’t have any details. Will the government today commit to providing a public list of these 78 clinics?

So, again, Speaker—very clear, yes or no: Will the people of Ontario get this list of 78 clinics today?

I say distinctly to my friend over there that I will vote against any bill this government brings before the House that puts the interests of CarePartners executives, Bayshore executives and ParaMed executives over the interest of seniors and workers. They are all going to be voted against, because we know on this side who we work for. We don’t work for the executives who come into this building and put on open bar receptions and try to cozy up to politicians so they can line their pockets. We work for the seniors, we work for the persons with disabilities, we work for the PSWs, and we won’t apologize for it. That’s who we are. That’s who the NDP is.

I take what my friend has said to heart. I think people do want to live at home. They want to be at home. They don’t want to be in hospitals. A number of persons with disabilities and seniors I’ve spoken to don’t want to be admitted into long-term care. That is a personal choice they’ve made.

But what you’ve said and what the government has introduced to date has not done anything about the fact that we are losing 30% on the dollar of every—there’s a billion dollars contemplated with this bill, as I understand it. We are losing a third of every dollar we’re spending because we’re lining the pockets of the for-profit companies. So all the good work that you’re going to do to take those thousand people and bring them back home into the community—if they can’t get a care worker to show up on time, if those care workers are double-booked, if their travel isn’t covered, if they’re not making decent salaries, if they have no pensions and no benefits, then I believe your bill is set up to fail.

What I’m going to do just to punctuate the point for my friend from Oshawa is to say this: Can you imagine an Ontario where there was an agreed-upon minimum standard of compensation for all PSWs? The government, through Ontario Health, could do it right now. That is what Denmark does. There is one standard of pay, one standard of benefits, one standard of travel being covered. Can you imagine that?

I can tell you, for any lawyer working for this government right now—you better believe there’s a minimum standard that they expect to be paid. Any deputy minister? Oh, there’s a minimum standard of what they expect to be paid. And they work hard. Why can’t we do the same for PSWs? Why do we have to watch them be gouged by greedy companies that have been ripping off the public purse for too long? That, I believe, my friend, is what’s hurting Cindy, and we need a government that’s going to stop that and stop it right now.

What I would say to all of those homes that are being built that are culturally appropriate homes—I want the workers who are going to work in those buildings to know that they have the right to join a union. We had SEIU Healthcare in this building not long ago. They should sign up to SEIU Healthcare, because right now there’s no government that’s willing to guarantee a standard of living and wages.

The member is a nurse, and I respect the work that she has done in the province of Ontario. The member benefited from that work done by the associations representing her profession.

I want to see PSWs valued more and paid more. That is the missing piece, honestly. Back to my friend: We can build homes. Homes and beds are great infrastructure. But what makes them come alive are the people who work in them. So that is the thing we need a government to do. And if this government isn’t prepared to do it, believe me, in 2026, there will be a government prepared to pass laws to ensure PSWs are paid appropriately, their travel is covered, they have pensions and benefits just like all of us in this building.

I listened to the member’s comments closely, and I’m going to ask her, through you, Speaker: Given that the government is proposing this billion-dollar expansion in home care, how does the member feel about the fact that we have an Auditor General report that tells us that we lose as much as 32% of every dollar we invest in home care when we do it through for-profit agencies? And what is the government’s answer to a guy like Paul, a home care attendant I met in a grocery store the other day who tells me that when he travels around the city of Ottawa—he doesn’t have a car; he uses transit—travel is not covered?

As the member from Nickel Belt said, in three different pieces of home care legislation offered by this government, no one is covering Paul’s travel. He is looking in on neighbours; he’s looking in on people with disabilities and seniors. My question to the member: Why are you allowing 30% of the government funding to be lost to for-profit agencies, and why aren’t we covering Paul’s travel? Doesn’t that matter to you?

I usually get up and say I’m happy to rise to speak in this House, but this is a subject that hits close to my heart because I’m married to someone back home who is one of those health care professionals at CHEO dealing with kids who are struggling to breathe—struggling to breathe. This is Canada—struggling to breathe.

We have flu season every year. We don’t have seven kids over a weekend having to be resuscitated. We don’t have little kids like the one I talked about this morning, Chloe, fighting to breathe—fighting to breathe, and our friends in government are saying, “Crisis? What crisis? There is nothing happening here to be concerned about. We’re giving the system more money than we ever have before.” Chloe’s fine. My partner working her tail off back at CHEO is fine. Everything’s great. Shouldn’t we applaud them for how innovative they’re being in this moment?

I just want to appeal to the hearts of the government members opposite and ask them to truly consider the gravity and ethical implications of making comments like that, because it is one thing to ask first responders and health care workers to sacrifice, which is what they signed up to do every single day—it’s one thing to do that, but it’s another thing to tell us a story about how there’s no significant problem here and how we’re investing more money than ever before and we’re just fantastic, because it doesn’t correspond to the reality of the nurse or the doctor or the orderly or the custodian holding the hand of the mom with the breathing tube in the kid’s face. There is a disconnect. I want my friends in government to understand that disconnect. It hurts.

What also hurts is when they see government in July give 44 members of this government caucus a parliamentary assistantship—the greatest percentage of parliamentary assistantships in Ontario history. That’s a $16,000 raise while you’re giving 1% to people in hospitals keeping kids alive, a $16,000 raise while you’re telling people that you’re doing the best you can and it’s the best it has ever been.

I just want to appeal, through you, Speaker, to the government to acknowledge that we are in the middle of an unprecedented crisis. I asked the Premier this morning to lead by example and wear a mask in this place. The Premier would not stand and answer my question. He deserves the opportunity to honour the office he holds for the province of Ontario, to wear a mask and to actually be on the ground in communities across this province, repealing Bill 124 and the other legislation which is not only hurting health care workers but it’s insulting their everyday reality.

Stop the insult. Fund the health care that we need. Fix it right now.