So the government, as I understand, in this bill—well, they move very quickly, so it’s hard to sometimes understand everything they want to do with this bill. But I want to begin on a charitable note and assume that the government, like the members of this opposition, care about the people who raised us; that we assume that every single part of this building, every single facet of this province, exists because elders have paid their taxes, they have gotten up in the morning and they have put one foot in front of the other and they have built our communities; and when the time comes that they get an opportunity to retire, they want to live with dignity.

And every single person I talk to from our community who talks about home care—it is not just a frill. Home care should be one of the most important things that the province of Ontario funds and cares about on a regular basis. And why? Because people want to live in the homes they have built for themselves and their families for as long as possible—that’s why. They deserve the right to live in the homes they have built for themselves and their families.

But what are we currently doing in the province of Ontario with home care? Absolutely clear, it’s on the record; the Auditor General previous to the current Auditor General issued two reports on the problems in home care in Ontario. We are losing, depending upon the agency hired by the Ministry of Health, between 27% to 32% of every taxpayer dollar we invest in home care to for-profit operators that care more about investors and the bottom line than the well-being of seniors and persons with disabilities.

It’s why it’s so hard for so many families to find appropriate home care. It’s why when persons with disabilities and seniors have some kind of a critical incident in their home—it could be a fall; it could be an injury of some kind—and they get admitted to hospital, they cannot be brought back to their home. Why? Because it’s unsafe for them to be there. So they get trapped in this awful cycle of emergency room admissions, being put into beds which emergency room staff need to deal with emergencies. But they get trapped into this cycle, and they get trapped into that cycle after a lifetime of caring for children, paying taxes, doing what everybody in this province says you have to do to lead a decent and meaningful life.

I’ve always thought, as someone middle-aged—I’m 51 now—that part of that social contract I have with elders in this province is to stand by them when they want to live in their own homes for as long as possible. But that’s not the case. We line the pockets of ParaMed, of CarePartners, of Bayshore. Linda Knight, a fantastic example of this: $140 million of contracts currently—CarePartners—with the Ministry of Health and the province of Ontario. We are losing 30% of every one of that $140 million we invest in CarePartners to profit, to investors.

There was a time in this province when there was an NDP government. We had a Minister of Health, and her name was Evelyn Gigantes, member of provincial Parliament for Ottawa Centre, someone I’m very proud to call a friend. Evelyn told me that when she stood in this esteemed House as the Minister of Health, 81% of the contracts signed with the Minister of Health for home care were with non-profit entities, by and large the Victorian Order of Nurses, a historic agency which now is called Carefor. Carefor still exists in Ottawa. It still plays a critical role in looking after people with disabilities and seniors, not just in my community. I see the member for Glengarry–Prescott–Russell over there, my friend east of where I serve. I know many seniors who benefit from home care services provided well outside of downtown Ottawa thanks to Carefor.

But what has happened over time when the Victorian Order of Nurses and non-profit care was 81% of home care? What has happened over time is the Conservative government of the mid-1990s introduced a market model for a competition for contracts for home care. That has driven down working conditions and it has driven down the standards of care, so seniors, people with disabilities and families cannot get the care they need.

Let me switch to the other critical part of this puzzle, and that is the largely women and men who work in this sector. If you can believe it, Speaker, their travel is not compensated when they work for a big company like Bayshore or ParaMed or CarePartners. Their travel is not compensated, so when they head out to Glengarry–Prescott–Russell and when they head out to Renfrew–Nipissing–Pembroke or when they head out to one of the rural areas of eastern Ontario, my neighbours, they are not compensated between destinations. Their compensation is between clients.

Just recently when I was at the grocery store, I had occasion to talk to a rural community care PSW who works for different agencies, piecing together a full-time employment. This gentleman called the care coordinator at Bayshore and said, “Do you know I’m being given 30 minutes to look in on somebody in Smiths Falls? I know the senior has not had a bath in a week, and I want to give that senior a bath, a very personal process—older lady.” The Bayshore care coordinator said back to the com-munity PSW, “Well, what can you do in half an hour, Paul?”

How revolting is that? Not only do you not pay Paul for his travel to Smiths Falls from Ottawa—he’s an Ottawa Centre resident; proud to call Paul a friend—you put the senior in the situation where they’re not bathed for a week—what is going to be, two weeks? Three weeks?

This government has a close relationship with for-profit home care agencies. They believe and they’ve said in this House for the five years that I have served here that they have to work with Linda Knight, with Bayshore, with ParaMed. We are losing 30% of investments in home care to for-profit agencies, and nowhere in Bill 135 is there a provision to deal with that—nowhere. People keep putting their Mercedes in the driveways and people keep dishing out dividends to shareholders, and people with disabilities and seniors continue to suffer. It’s not right.

Do you know what’s coming up soon? I’m proud to stand beside my friend from St. Catharines here. Remembrance Day is coming very soon. Everybody in this House is going to be putting on a red poppy because we honour the service of our veterans. But what about the veterans right now who need home care? What about them? Do we care about them when we get up and we hold our hand over our hearts, and we remember epic moments like D-Day or Vimy Ridge, or the sacrifices or the PTSD that veterans come home with after serving in the field in places like Afghanistan or elsewhere?

I know those celebrations by members in this House are heartfelt. I know we all share them, and we believe them. But it can’t end after Remembrance Day. We have to remember that the elders who built this province deserve every single cent that we can put in their hands to ensure dignified home care.

So if Bill 135 is about dignified home care, connected home care, but you are leaving intact a home care system that is bleeding out incredible amounts of money for profit, I believe you are failing seniors, persons with disabilities and caring members of families.

Speaker, I’ll never forget what it was like for me when I was a graduate student in this city and my grandparents, within five months of each other, both passed away—they went through that moment where they had to leave that family home and had to be in 24/7 assisted long-term care. They went to Maxville Manor, a wonderful, wonderful non-profit organization in Maxville with a social justice mandate that does incredible work. They looked after both of my grandparents, my grandmother who had dementia and my grandfather who had Lou Gehrig’s disease. They did the best they could to keep them together in that long-term-care facility, even though my grandma, who never met a bully she didn’t want to stare down in her entire life and wreaked fear and havoc in my town for any reason she believed was unjust—so when she was being asked to stay in the dementia ward for her own protection, she didn’t take kindly to that.

As a family caregiver, I ceased my studies and I went back home to live in Vankleek Hill with my mom for a bit and was in and out of Maxville, and I remember thinking, “How lucky is my family that there’s enough affluence in my family that I can just put my studies on hold and come down from Toronto and look after my grandparents, who spent their life looking after me?” But that’s our luck, our fortune. I was able to do that. My dad ran a very successful business. My mom was a music teacher. They both did whatever they could. But I came home. So did my brother. So did my mom’s second cousin. But not every family has that ability. Not every family can do that.

So many people in this province are struggling pay-cheque to paycheque to make ends meet today. It’s hard. Life out there is hard. So that’s where the province has to step up and offer consistent home care to every single person in this province who needs it. That’s our social contract with the elders who built this province. But instead, we’re lining the pockets of Linda Knight, we’re lining the pockets of Bayshore, we’re lining the pockets of CarePartners, and I think it’s a shame, Speaker.

I invite my friends in government to consider amending this bill to make sure we finally go back to the NDP legacy in this province where we had every or most of every dollar going directly into care and not into profit. That would be a proud day. I would love to work with this government to introduce them to organizations like Carefor, organizations back home like Hillel Lodge on the west end of the riding, a jewel in the crown of Jewish Family Services Ottawa that is there offering compassionate care—