I’m rising this morning to pay great thanks to Dr. Danielle Brown-Shreves, who is a family physician in our community who has just been recognized by the Ontario College of Family Physicians as being a regional family physician of the year. She just won a Dr. Reg L. Perkin Ontario Family Physician of the Year award from her colleagues, and let me tell you why, according to her colleagues.

Dr. Brown-Shreves leads the only Black-led team-based family physician clinic in our city. Dr. Brown-Shreves opens up “wellness day” opportunities for people in our city who do not have health coverage because of their citizenship status. Dr. Brown-Shreves spends her own time meeting directly with settlement agencies in our city, above and beyond what we would expect health practitioners in our province to do.

That’s what leadership looks like to me, Speaker. That’s why I want to thank Dr. Brown-Shreves and her team from the bottom of my heart for all you do to keep our city healthy. Our city is living in a context where at least 150,000 do not have attachment to a nurse practitioner or to a family doctor. This government has only allocated $30 million in the next two years—that’s two bucks per Ontarian—to expand primary health care. They should sit down with Dr. Brown-Shreves, they should sit down with the Restore clinic and they should listen to other initiatives from Ottawa Centre I’ll be talking about in this House in the next two weeks to put us back on track.

Dr. Brown-Shreves, thank you for your service.