Over 1,000 emergency rooms closed last year. That is nothing to be proud of. Six years in, this is this government’s record.

While local hospitals are begging this government for funding to keep their doors open and help them retain staff, the government is far more focused on cutting deals for this Premier’s vanity projects that are going to cost Ontarians a billion dollars. Instead of dedicating funding to keep emergency rooms open, the government is spending millions and millions to break a contract with LCBO and the Beer Store just one year early.

So my question to the Premier again is, why is this government more focused on cutting a deal than getting health care for Ontarians?

Interjections.

People in the province of Ontario are struggling right now. They are making choices every day to put off spending decisions because they are in so much pain, because they can’t keep up with their bills, because they’re worried they’re going to lose the roof over their heads. That’s where people are in the province of Ontario six years after this government was elected—hospital rooms closed, emergency rooms closed, 2.4 million Ontarians without a family physician.

How many times does a parent have to show up at a closed emergency room with a sick kid before this government starts to put their needs ahead of this government’s and this Premier’s vanity projects?

Interjections.

Well, Madam Speaker, the member is right about that. We’ll keep voting against the privatization of health care every single time. You can be sure and you can count on that.

The government keeps repeating the same line over and over again—that people are paying with their health card and not their credit card—but it’s simply not the case. You will, as Ontarians, have to pay for this, and you’re already doing it—countless publicly reported examples of patients who are having to pay for upgrades before they’re eligible for OHIP-covered services in private clinics. Over and over again, it’s happening right now. It’s costing patients, it’s costing their families, and it’s happening at a time when the cost of living has become absolutely unbearable for most people.

So I’m going to ask the Premier again: Why is this Premier expanding pay-for-it health care?

I was in a school, last week, where I asked grade 4 and grade 5 kids what their dreams are for their school. I asked them, if they could have anything at all in this school, what would they want? Do you know what they said? They said, “Can you bring back the soap in the soap dispensers?” That’s what their dreams are right now.

That is the state of education in the province of Ontario right now—no soap; leaky roofs.

This government is failing the future of our province.

Can the Premier explain why his Minister of Education thinks the learning conditions of Ontario’s students are not his problem?

Meanwhile, Ontario is facing a whopping $16.8-billion school repair backlog. We know both Liberal and Conservative governments have left our schools crumbling. Students are left to learn under caved-in ceilings or in classrooms with garbage bins that are collecting the rain. We’ve all seen it on this side—boy, have we.

The minister can blame the school boards all he wants, but they at least are legally bound to balance their budgets. And it’s basic math—when the minister underfunds them by millions of dollars, they are forced to make cuts, and they are not going to be able to make repairs.

So I want to ask the minister again—and the Premier: When is this Premier going to make his minister take some responsibility—

The TDSB alone is facing a deficit of $26.5 million.

In Thames Valley, classroom supplies are scarce amidst an $18.5-million deficit, the largest they’ve ever seen.

Ottawa-Carleton is facing $70 million in deficits.

The minister says there’s historic education funding, but a budget that ignores inflation is a budget that ignores reality. The only thing historic is the fact that our kids are now lobbying us to fix the roofs of their classrooms, to bring back soap in the bathroom, and to keep the lights on in classrooms.

I want to ask the Premier, do we need to hire a lobbyist or reach out to you on Gmail to get some answers?

This question is for the Premier.

This afternoon, thousands of people from all across Ontario are coming to Queen’s Park to stand up for public health care. They’re standing up for seniors who are being charged thousands of dollars for cataract surgery, for patients who are being charged an annual fee just to get primary care. The minister knows that these practices are illegal under the Canada Health Act, but she refuses to investigate or take action. Instead, she’s blaming patients, saying that extra billing is their own “misunderstanding.”

So how many misunderstandings need to happen before this Premier finally stands up for patients?

There are busloads of people who are coming here to get answers from this Premier and this minister. At the same time, there are going to be rallies all across the province, in Ottawa, Cornwall, Sault Ste. Marie, North Bay, Dryden and Thunder Bay. I hope the government has some answers, because patients and families and our overworked and overburdened health care workers have had enough. Hospital departments—closed. Emergency rooms—closed. Urgent care clinics—closed. While this government enriches their shareholder friends, Ontarians are literally paying for it.

What is this government going to do to protect public health care—or are we going to see more pay-for-it health care?

Speaker, the fact is, this clinic is closing its doors to 10,000 people by the end of this month—10,000 more people in the Soo without health care, and this government has no plan.

Some 2.4 million Ontarians have no primary care right now, but for this government, for their health minister, that’s not a major concern.

We’re 350 physicians short in northern Ontario, including more than 200 family doctors. Many, many more—half of the physicians working in northern Ontario—are expected to retire in the next five years, and this government has no plan.

So I want to ask the Premier to stand in his place for once, stop making excuses, do something decisive and treat this issue like the crisis that it surely, surely is.

Interjections.

I’ll tell you, Speaker, no one is buying that. No one is buying what they’re selling, I’ll tell you. I cannot tell you how disappointing this is for everybody here.

Let’s talk about another disappointing issue. While the Minister of Health dismisses and minimizes the doctor shortage in this province, the CEO and president of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, CHEO, says that their hospital has lost dozens of pediatric physicians since this government took office. CHEO is struggling to provide the early intervention that our kids need, and we know that it makes a world of difference for our children.

Does the Premier agree with his minister who thinks vacancies at children’s hospitals are not a major concern?

Interjections.

Wait times for MRIs and ultrasounds at CHEO are now the longest in Ontario. We have sick little kids transported out of the region, even out of the province, to get care; parents taking time off work; brothers and sisters taking time off school; little kids separated from their families and their friends while they’re getting treatment. Why? Because of the doctor shortage that this government and that minister refuse to even acknowledge, let alone fix.

So back to the Premier: Is this a major enough concern for his minister yet?

Interjections.

All you need to do is look at their own numbers: 3,000 physician vacancies right now across the province; a growing population; more physicians leaving the province every single day.

Here’s the problem: A child is sick. They can’t get treated because there aren’t enough doctors. Listen to the CEO and president of CHEO, for goodness’ sake.

What I and parents across the entire province are hearing from this Minister of Health is that this is not a major concern—not a major concern. If the people of Ontario cannot trust this minister to acknowledge the extent of the crisis in our primary care system, how can the Premier trust her to solve it?

Speaker, I’m going to ask the member there, the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Health, to really think about this: people being diagnosed with cancer, not in the comfort and the safety of their family doctor’s office, but in an overcrowded emergency room, how did they get there? Because they don’t have a family doctor. So by the time they get there—just imagine for a moment, to the member opposite, being the emergency room physician who then has to tell that patient that not only do they have cancer, but it has metastasized, because they couldn’t get to see their family doctor. They couldn’t get screening. This is not a major concern?

So I want to ask the member opposite: They’re having you answer all the questions today. Is this not a major concern for you?

It is unimaginable, Speaker, that this minister doesn’t see this as a concern; that this Premier and this member don’t see this as a concern. We are losing doctors and nurses and health care workers faster than we can recruit them.

I want the members opposite for just a moment to imagine being the mother of a newborn. You have so many questions; you have nowhere to go for answers. Imagine you’re the parent of a sick child and you live in the Soo and you find out now you have no family doctor. Where are you going to go?

Take some responsibility, own up to it.

Will this government admit that they have a problem on their hands and that it is unimaginable that their minister, who was supposed to be responsible for this, refused to live up to her responsibility?

Interjections.

This question is for the Premier. Today, the Ontario Medical Association confirmed what we all suspected, that this government has no plans to address the primary care shortage. In fact, if they keep it up, they’re on track to make the crisis in health care worse.

Family doctors are concerned that this government—and I want to quote them here—will “further erode the ability of family doctors in Ontario to build viable practices, and continue to put access to family medicine out of reach for a growing number of Ontarians.”

Further, we know that the number of physicians that are retiring far exceeds the number of graduates into family practice.

So the people of Ontario want to know, does the Premier agree that a strong recruitment and retention plan is necessary to care for the more than 2.3 million Ontarians who do not have a family doctor?

While this government is ignoring the crisis in primary care, we are seeing private, for-profit clinics popping up all over this province. They’re promising 24/7 access to primary care. But the catch is patients have to pay hundreds, even thousands, of dollars. This is all about making money off of very sick people, Speaker. It is shameful. There is something very seriously wrong with that.

The government is doing nothing to stop these so-called executive health clinics from gouging patients. So my question to the Premier is, is this government eroding the public health care system to help line the pockets of private clinic operators?

Interjections.

Physicians have been warning successive Liberal and Conservative governments for years about the consequences of not investing in primary care. So, Speaker, back to the Premier of this province, why is this government ignoring the solutions that are being proposed by family doctors?

Interjections.

Okay, I’m going to make this a supplementary. I’ll make this question to the House leader. This is outrageous that we are seeing one of our members removed from—

Other provinces have tried private clinics and have been forced to walk it back as wait times got longer and the quality of care got worse.

Opening up more for-profit facilities will mean fewer nurses and health care workers for public hospitals, where we have emergency rooms and the capacity to do the most complex procedures.

Why is this minister ignoring the lessons from BC and Alberta, who saw their health systems worsen with privatization?

When businesses, which are motivated by profits, enter the health care system, it’s patients who have to pay the price. We’ve already seen this happen with cataract surgeries that cost two and three times more in for-profit surgical clinics than in the public hospital.

Back to the Minister of Health: Does the minister like corporations making money off of sick people?

Interjections.

Speaker, my question is for the Premier. Will the Premier stand behind his words and compel his caucus to support the freedom to wear cultural attire here at Queen’s Park?

I have never seen a government more willing to divide than this government here today, and we’ve seen it for months and months. At a time when we should be bringing people together, they want to remove people.

So will the Premier support the freedom of cultural expression and stand with thousands of Ontarians who want to see the reversal of this kaffiyeh ban?

I am going to say, I am absolutely—

Interjections.

I will say, I wish the Premier was here to answer this question—

Interjections.

This question is for the Minister of Health.

Yesterday, the Minister of Health announced a further expansion of for-profit clinics, sealing the deal for a two-tiered health care system in Ontario. Hospitals all over Ontario are being starved, with funding slashed, deficits rising, and operating rooms left empty. The Minister knows the expansion of private clinics is draining resources and staff from our public hospitals, so my question is, is this deliberate?

Interjection.

Good morning, Speaker. This question is for the Premier. There has been an alarming trend of for-profit primary care clinics popping up all across this province. When Ottawa’s South Keys Health Center started charging $400 membership fees, the minister said she would investigate, but we haven’t seen any action from this government. They just shrug it off and blame it on the feds.

My question is to the Premier. Why won’t you uphold the values of universal health care and stop these for-profit clinics from charging hundreds of dollars for people to access primary care?

Since the minister has clearly taken the side of private companies charging these illegal fees, will the Premier stand up for the protection of patients or not?

Interjections.

There are countless publicly reported examples of patients who are receiving surgeries in private clinics who are told they have to pay for upgrades for already eligible services. At a time when 2.3 million Ontarians don’t have a primary care physician, at a time when the cost of living has become completely unbearable and they can’t find a family doctor, why is this Premier expanding for-profit health care that hurts patients and only benefits private shareholders?

Interjections.

This question is for the Premier. Last week, the federal government offered Ontario $5 billion in funding to help pay for housing-related infrastructure. All the Premier needs to do is legalize fourplexes and other missing middle homes. That’s the kind of action that we in the NDP have been pushing for, and it was even recommended in the province’s own Housing Affordability Task Force.

Why is the Premier saying no to legalizing fourplexes and putting billions of federal funding at risk?

We want innovation too. We just want it in the public health care system, not something that you have to pay for through your credit card.

Speaker, everybody in this province should have access to a family doctor, period. But under the Conservatives, 2.3 million people in Ontario do not. And that number is expected to rise to 4.4 million—that’s a quarter of Ontario’s population—by 2026. That means more people without regular checkups, more people missing a chance for early diagnosis or just putting up with pain and discomfort.

Instead of dealing with this, this government said no to our proposal to fund health teams and shared administrative support to get more people in front of a doctor.

So my question to the Premier is, will we see a change in approach in today’s budget or will it just offer more of the same?

I want to know if this is how the Premier sees the future of this province. Is it going to be like Netflix for health care? Are we going to have to subscribe to have basic health care needs met?

Speaker, people deserve to get health care that’s close to home and available when they need it. Instead, they are seeing their rural emergency rooms close; 600,000 women can’t get mammograms. It is not the reality in Ontario anymore.

The Liberals opened the door to privatization of health care in this province. We watched it, we saw what was happening and we fought it. But this Conservative government is doubling down and throwing the doors wide open.

So Ontarians want to know: Today, in this budget, is it going to be more of the same or can they count on this government to protect their public, not-for-profit health care system in the province of Ontario?

Interjections.

Let me start by extending my condolences as well. Thank you to MPP Daryl Kramp’s family who are here with us today.

I’d also like to start by congratulating our deputy leader, the MPP from Kiiwetinoong, on a truly historic change to the standing orders. I look forward to hearing him speak in his language more often in this place.

My question is for the Premier. Today, Ontarians will be watching as this government lays out its priorities for the upcoming year. People are looking for hope, for a commitment that things are going to get better. One thing they don’t want to see is more of their hard-earned dollars going towards private, for-profit health care.

Last year, the government doubled funding for private, for-profit clinics while public operating rooms were collecting dust. To the Premier: Will you finally properly fund our existing public operating rooms, or are we going to be seeing the government handing over more contracts to for-profit clinics?

People are looking for reliable health care; for accessible mental health supports; safe, comfortable long-term and home care. How can people trust this government to deliver on their health care when they’ve clearly prioritized private profits over public needs?

So my question to the Premier is: Does he understand that Ontario’s economic prosperity depends on a strong public health care system? And can he commit today that not a single health care dollar in the budget is going to go to for-profit health care?

Interjections.

Speaker, the minister needs to get out of the backrooms and start listening to Ontarians. If she thinks that we’re doing well in the province of Ontario, boy—2.2 million Ontarians without access to primary care; operating rooms collecting dust. We have some of the best health care workers in the world, but we can’t retain them. They’re leaving faster than we can recruit them.

This government has no strategy to recruit and retain and return nurses to our hospitals and our long-term-care homes. Our long-term-care homes, our hospitals are relying increasingly on staffing, on private agency nurses that are bleeding the system dry.

I want to go back to the Premier again. How many more emergency rooms, how many more urgent care centres have to close before this government implements solutions that actually work in the province of Ontario?

Interjections.

Speaker, my question is for the Premier. The Information and Privacy Commissioner’s office has ordered the Ministry of the Solicitor General to turn over records of which OPP officers worked at the Premier’s family stag-and-doe event. We know these are the records that the government has refused to share with journalists through freedom-of-information requests. We know the RCMP is also investigating this matter. The Premier has denied there were extra officers on the site, but he’s going to great lengths to withhold the details.

So to the Premier: Can he confirm how many OPP officers were assigned to work at his family’s stag and doe event?

I want to remind the Premier that he’s not above the law, that the police don’t work for him and that they work for the people of Ontario.

We’ve already seen two explosive reports about this Premier’s family’s stag and doe. The reports revealed a deeply troubling pattern of a government that continues to help a select few of their friends at the expense of everybody else, and now we’re waiting for the results of an RCMP criminal investigation into this government’s conduct.

So my question is to the Premier: Did the RCMP have to step in because of concerns about the Premier’s close relationship with the OPP?

Good morning, Speaker. My question is for the Premier.

Yesterday, this government had a chance to show their commitment to ensuring that primary care for everyone is a priority, by supporting our motion to put patients first. They voted against it. Instead of working with health care professionals, they are making weaker funding announcements that amount to a drop in the bucket, and it is a leaky bucket. Doctors and health care workers say it shows the government doesn’t understand the scale or urgency of the problem.

So my question is to the Premier: Why are you refusing to listen to the clear demands of patients and doctors?

Back to the Premier: We gave you the solution. So to the Premier: Why did you vote against the solution that everyone else supports?

Interjections.

Back to the Premier: How many more emergency rooms and urgent care clinics need to close before this government takes this health care staffing crisis seriously?

So, to the Premier: When will this government implement safe staffing ratios in Ontario, like the NDP government in BC has done?

In BC, they’re taking action and they’re getting results. They’ve seen improvement in recruitment and retention among health care workers. They are only the second jurisdiction in North America that has implemented these same staffing ratios, but here in Ontario, it’s pretty clear that this government is not taking this staffing crisis seriously at all. That is not only having an impact on those overworked health care workers, but it’s having an impact on the patients that they serve.

I want to go back to the Premier again: Will Ontario join BC and become a leader in health care by implementing staffing ratios, or is he content with the status quo?

Thank you so much to my colleagues from the official opposition. Our proposal is the equivalent of introducing 2,000 new doctors in the province of Ontario tomorrow to see two million more patients. What could possibly be wrong with this?

Listening to the government members opposite address this motion, I felt a little bit like Alice down the rabbit hole. But there’s no waking up from this nightmare. We’ve listened to Liberal and Conservative governments over so many years—the last 20, 30 years—with half measures and cuts. Let’s just call the Liberal and Conservative governments Tweedledee and Tweedledum for the purposes of this argument. Nothing has been adequate and the writing has been on the wall all of that time.

Six years into this government’s mandate I would urge them to do something for the people of Ontario, listen to the 2.2 million Ontarians who do not have a family doctor, listen to the voices of Ontarians who are saying, “Please, do something right now.” We are serving you up a solution. You are not approaching this with the urgency that it requires.

If this motion were to pass—and we are forcing a vote on this this afternoon—again, 2,000 more doctors—the equivalent—two million more Ontarians could actually see primary care delivered immediately. It would relieve the administrative burden on family physicians. It will get patients the access they need and then relieve the pressure on our emergency rooms. You have a choice to make. Make the right one today. Vote in favour of this motion.

No, actually, it was before Mike Harris. It was under the NDP government. Thank you very much to the Minister of Education for that lesson.

I want to tell you, Speaker, the good news is, New Democrats have been laser-focused on putting forward solutions that are practical to the problems that are facing hard-working people in the province of Ontario today. In Ontario today, under this Conservative government—and under the Liberal government before them—things are not good. Things are getting worse and not better. But we’re focused on solutions.

One of those solutions: Support this motion today. Let’s get our doctors seeing patients, not doing paperwork. Pass this motion, and let’s move this province forward.

There’s no denying, I think, that Ontario’s health care system is deeply frayed. More than—we often say 2.2 million, but the numbers are actually increasing daily; we’re now up to more than 2.3 million, in fact, since I introduced this motion, who are currently without a family doctor.

Primary care providers and community health centres across the province are overwhelmingly understaffed, and all of us here in this room know exactly what that has led to: crowded emergency rooms; excruciatingly long wait times; overworked, underpaid health care workers who are exiting the community health sector, exiting health care faster than we can ever recruit and retain them; seniors, kids, vulnerable Ontarians being left to wonder if they’re going to get the care they need when they need it.

Along with those critically low staffing levels, Ontario’s health care system is also seeing a wave of physicians retire. Currently, 1.7 million people in the province of Ontario are looked after by a doctor who is 65 or older. Let that sink in. How did the members across the aisle not see that one coming? Doctors are human too. New Democrats have been sounding the alarm on this for decades now—in the previous Liberal government, as well. But members across the aisle can’t see a storm coming for them until it’s knocking on their door.

Just on Thursday, I was in Kingston, where the shortage of doctors has left 30,000 people without access to primary care. The shortage is so dire that when four physicians at CDK Family Medicine and Walk-In Clinic announced that they would take on 4,000 new patients, hundreds of people lined up through the night, in the rain, to claim a spot. That’s desperation. If this doesn’t cry urgency to the Premier of this province, I don’t know what will.

Only two weeks ago, we had a few retired United Steelworkers workers here with us from Sault Ste. Marie. The members opposite will remember that they joined us here at Queen’s Park because they were asking this government to step up and do something about the almost 10,000 people, mostly seniors and retirees, who were de-rostered from the Group Health Centre in the Soo. It’s the only clinic in the area. They’ve lost physicians to retirements, to resignations, and there are no replacements available—and that is going to go up to another 6,000, to 16,000, in just a matter of months. By the end of the year, nearly 30% of the population in Sault Ste. Marie and Algoma could be left without a family doctor. That is going to be a sad day.

We are losing doctors. We are losing nurses. We are losing health care staff. People are stressed, and they are worried about whether they’re going to get the care they need. And where is Premier Ford? Where is this Conservative government? They’re too busy patting themselves on the back with these vanity ads instead of actually improving access to care for the people of Ontario.

The doctors and nurse practitioners who are still on the front lines are having to spend hours filling out insurance forms and coordinating referrals, and it’s cutting into quality time with patients. The Canadian Medical Association studied how many more hours doctors could be spending with their patients if they weren’t buried in paperwork, and that number is 19 hours a week. That’s 40% of their time. That’s up to five hours on administrative work per day. Any of us who have spoken to family physicians out there in our communities know this; they’ve been saying it for years. They’ve been saying, “Do something about this. That’s five hours that we could be spending seeing patients.” That’s 19 hours a week filling out forms when we have people sitting between 12 and 15 hours in waiting rooms just to see a doctor. If doctors are freed up from this administrative work, they could serve—get this—two million more patients. Do the math. That’s like adding 2,000 doctors to the system—so, 2,000 doctors to the system, or relieve the administrative work and see two million more patients.

Training and hiring new doctors—we know it’s going to take years. But funding and properly staffing primary care right now? That can happen right now. We could be doing this today. It’s a question of priorities.

The Ontario College of Family Physicians—by their research, 94% of family doctors say they are currently overwhelmed with administrative and clerical tasks. They are telling us what they need.

I want to share the words of one such expert—an actual, front-line health care provider, Dr. David Barber. He’s the OMA chair of general and family practice. Here is what he has to say about this issue: “Paperwork takes an average of 20 hours per week and includes burgeoning insurance forms, sick notes and requests for drugs.” Family doctors who didn’t go into medicine to do paperwork are doing that paperwork. “We want to see patients; this takes away from it.”

I want to just stop here for one moment and say that last week, when I was in Kingston, I had the great pleasure of meeting Dr. Dick Zoutman, who made the point, when we were talking about this issue, of saying, “Let’s be clear: These are not optional forms. This isn’t an option. This is what we have to do.”

Going back to the comments of Dr. Barber: “The government hasn’t sent any signals to family doctors on the ground that they know what is happening. When doctors aren’t hearing from the government that it has their backs, family doctors are just giving up. That is why we are seeing so many leaving.”

Those are the words of Dr. David Barber, the OMA chair of general and family practice.

This is time that doctors could be spending with patients, with people who are aging—our population is aging—with those new babies we see out there, with new moms and new families, with teenagers who are struggling. These are hours that could be devoted to them right now.

It’s not like we don’t know what works. That’s what I find so frustrating after 20-odd years of looking at this issue in health care policy. We’ve seen how effective our solution is through the community health centre model, where primary care providers like doctors and nurse practitioners have a fully staffed and resourced team so they can focus on providing care, not filling out paperwork. But rather than support those centres, what does this government do? Cut funding, so they’re forced to reduce services, see less patients.

And let me say, on behalf of all of those community health centres that I have visited over the last few weeks alone, my goodness, don’t those workers deserve to be paid the same as those folks in our hospitals? They’re paid 20% less.

I know the minister tries to minimize how important that administrative work is that health care providers are doing. She belittled this, this morning, in her responses to our questions.

Our solution can be life-saving. That’s why we’re putting this forward.

How short are we of family doctors? This is based on current numbers: Windsor, short 36; London, 68; Hamilton, 114; Barrie and Muskoka region, 118. Toronto—can you imagine? Nobody can imagine that there’s a family physician shortage in Toronto, but boy, 305—let alone trying to get a physician who actually speaks your language. Peterborough, 40; Kingston, 23; Ottawa, 171; Sudbury, 33; Thunder Bay, 50; St. Catharines, 51.

As I travel across this province and I listen to people, I hear this every day.

In Alvinston, I was at the Maple Syrup Festival the other day. I was standing in line with a bunch of folks waiting for the school bus to take us to the Maple Syrup Festival. That was fun. Those seniors were talking with me about how none of them have a family physician. These are folks with walkers, with chronic health conditions. Where do they go?

Nursing home residents I met with last week in Nepean and Orléans are stuck in a situation with a bad-actor nursing home company, and they can’t afford to leave it because they can’t afford to lose their nurse practitioner. They’re putting themselves and their families at risk.

Here in Toronto, I met a young man just the other day in my riding, in downtown west end Toronto, who moved there from Brampton and has never in his life had a family physician—can’t get on a list.

This government could start clearing that patient backlog by putting out job postings today for health care team members to support doctors and get people of this province the health care they need right now.

I’m going to end by just referring to one other thing: When I came to the province of Ontario, what, 30 years ago from Newfoundland, one of the reasons that I stayed here was because you could imagine raising your family here on a working-class salary. You could imagine having a good public school for your kids. Do you know what else? You could get a family doctor—not something we had a lot of in Newfoundland, even back then. But you could imagine getting—

Interjection.

I’m pleased to present the following motion on behalf of the official opposition:

Whereas 2.2 million Ontarians currently do not have a family physician and are not connected to primary care, which puts their health at imminent risk; and

Whereas access to primary health care keeps people out of emergency rooms; and

Whereas primary health care providers need sustainable resources in order to maintain capacity to deliver primary care, mental health care, chronic disease management, community supports, and innovative services that help end hallway health care; and

Whereas hiring additional staff support could free up Ontario’s primary care providers to take on an estimated additional two million patients;

Therefore, the Legislative Assembly calls on the Ontario government to urgently implement a strategy to increase the number of staff support for primary care providers so they can spend their time treating patients instead of doing paperwork.

Back to the Premier: Primary care providers and patients know that this is just a drop in the bucket; it’s not going far enough. And the government knows this too. They’re making a choice. They’re choosing to expand private, for-profit care in this province to line the pockets of private, for-profit corporate shareholders. That’s what this is all about.

Doctors in this province, on the other hand, are spending nearly half their time filling out forms and doing administrative follow-ups. Our motion would unlock thousands of hours of direct patient care by investing in new supports for health care providers. It’s about putting patients first instead of paperwork.

So back to the Premier: Is he content to govern a province where millions are going without basic care, or will he listen to the primary care providers and take this simple step to get people the care that they so desperately need?

Interjections.

Speaker, here’s the thing: The impact of Bill 124 was felt in communities right across this province. And now, even without Bill 124 hanging over us, hiring and retention has become nearly impossible. Without dedicated funding to incentivize workers to stay in hospitals and long-term-care homes, in home care and primary care, our public health care system will continue to suffer.

So back to the Premier: Will this government finally pay workers what they’re owed in the upcoming budget?

So back to the Premier: Why does this Premier have such contempt for the hard-working people of Ontario?

Interjections.

Maybe the Premier will answer this question. Back when his government announced that they were opening the doors to health care privatization, the NDP warned that people would be forced to use their credit card to get health care. The government said this would never happen—never. But here we are. We’re hearing from more and more people who have been charged $70, $90 for a single visit, and in some cases, several hundred dollars just to get an annual membership at a private clinic.

So to the Premier: Do you agree that these patients were not able to use their health card and did, in fact, have to pull out their credit card?

Speaker, this government is creating a two-tier health care system where you would only get care if you can afford it, and that’s the truth. It’s absolutely unacceptable. These private clinics are preying on the most vulnerable: 2.2 million Ontarians without a family doctor. Dozens more clinics are expected to open in the coming months.

So back to the Premier, I hope he answers this question: Why are you starving the public community-based primary care system in our province in favour of private clinics that are charging patients?

Interjections.

Our system is under enormous strain because of this government’s failures and their bad decisions. So back to the Premier of this province: When will he stop putting the private needs of for-profit providers ahead of the needs of patients?

Interjections.

Doctors, nurses, administrators, allied health professionals have all been very clear about the solution: funding a team-based approach to primary care. That’s why I tabled our motion today to get this government’s commitment to fully funded, integrated primary teams across the province, not just in some towns, in every town. Every Ontarian deserves that access.

So to the Premier: Will you support this motion?