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.

Good morning, Speaker. This question is for the Premier. People in this province should expect quality health care that’s available when they need it. But under this government, we’re seeing critical services disappearing from communities. Emergency department closures are happening more frequently, and they are staying closed longer. A new report from the Ontario Health Coalition reported a staggering 868 emergency department closures this year alone.

Speaker, through you to the Premier: What possible explanation can this government offer to Ontarians who lost over 30,000 hours of emergency care this year?

Folks in Huron, Perth and Wellington are experiencing multiple simultaneous closures. Durham had 51 closures this year alone. People in Clinton haven’t had reliable access to an ER since 2019.

The holiday season is one of the busiest times for local hospitals and emergency rooms. What is this Premier going to do to stop emergency department closures over the holidays?

The newly renovated Mindemoya Hospital had to close because this government didn’t fund the staff to keep it open. Hospitals and long-term-care homes are being gouged by private staffing agencies taking over our health care system. Perth and Smith’s Falls hospital was forced to spend a whopping $2.8 million this year on temporary staff through private agencies. I’ve talked to local hospitals in northern communities who are worried about making payroll.

Speaker, we need investment to finally address these staffing shortages. Will the Premier stand up and commit new hospital funding to ensure care is available when the patients of Ontario need it?

The official opposition NDP have unearthed yet another secret government document that’s called “Ontario Science Centre modernization relocation plans”—very interesting. But what’s really notable about this document is the date: August 27, 2021.

Speaker, why did the Premier keep his plans for the science centre a secret during the 2022 election?

Speaker, to the Premier: Why should the public trust a Premier who clearly believes in decision-based evidence-making instead of evidence-based decision-making?

Good morning, Speaker. Dozens of business owners from Minden are here at Queen’s Park today to continue to push this government to keep their emergency room open. Under this government’s leadership it’s set to close the day after tomorrow. It’s closing at a time when the seasonal population in the area soars with kids’ summer camps, cottagers and, of course, tourists. It means thousands of Ontarians will have to travel farther and farther away just to access emergency services. This creates a domino effect on the ERs in those communities, putting even more strain on an already strained system.

Speaker, will the Premier tell the business owners here today that he will keep their emergency room open?

It’s about responsibility. This government has been in office for five long years and they continue to skip out on their responsibilities to the people of this province.

Today, the Conservatives are turning their backs on Minden families, on cottagers, on kids in summer camps. They’re turning their backs on local business owners, some of whom closed up shop today just to be here. The Conservatives are choosing to help private health care companies, some of which are run by this Conservative Party’s donors, instead of local job creators who are here today.

Speaker, will the Premier take some responsibility and start putting the needs of Ontarians ahead of his profiteering insiders?

Interjections.

Cities like Kingston, Kitchener, Owen Sound, Windsor, Cornwall—it isn’t just rural areas that are suffering, either. They’re all facing alarming shortages of family physicians. This isn’t normal, Speaker, and it shouldn’t be normal. Shamefully, this government’s misguided actions are only going to make it worse, as doctors leave the public system to work at private for-profit clinics.

Speaker, to the Premier: Will he invest in the public system and get Ontarians the care they deserve instead of selling off their health to the highest bidder?

Interjections.

Yesterday, when I asked the minister why she ignored all those warnings, she blamed everybody else. How can the public expect things to get better when the minister refuses to take responsibility for the Eglinton Crosstown P3 fiasco?

Why is the minister still defending these costly and risky private contracts instead of restoring public delivery of transit infrastructure?

Good morning, Speaker. This government didn’t campaign on a plan to sell off our public health care system. At no point during the campaign did they say they were going to bring in two-tier health care. That’s why, on Friday and Saturday, hundreds of thousands of Ontarians voted in the Ontario Health Coalition’s citizen-run referendum to keep our health care system public. People are making their voices heard because of overwhelming evidence from many other provinces that the government’s plan will worsen services for patients and cost so much more.

Speaker, to the Premier: Will his government listen to the people of Ontario and reverse course on their plan to sell off our public health care system?

This government’s plans for health care are seeing emergency rooms in smaller and rural communities across the province close for hours, for days or even permanently. Last week, I joined residents in Minden as they rallied desperately to save their local emergency room—it’s set to close permanently this Wednesday. They’re worried, Speaker, as anyone would be if the emergency room they relied on was shut down and they were forced to leave their community in a time of crisis.

Back to the Premier: How many communities will see emergency rooms close this summer because of this government’s failure to act?

While you’re busy trying to take more staff out of our system and move them into private, for-profit clinics, the solution is simple: Invest in the staff we need to keep those emergency rooms open.

To the Premier: What will he do today to make sure that this closure in Thessalon is the last ER closure Ontarians will see this summer?

Interjections.

In fact, the problems had gotten even worse. The P3 contractor was “building at risk,” which means the safety of these designs had not been confirmed. It suggests that the deficiencies with the Eglinton Crosstown could be much more serious than the public is being told.

Speaker, why did the minister ignore the problems with the Eglinton Crosstown?

Speaker, it’s not just virtual emergency rooms either. Hundreds of people gathered in Chesley in a town hall held by the local health coalition to talk about their fears around Bill 60, as their local ER again continues to have unexpected temporary closures.

Back to the Minister of Health: What do you have to say to the people of Chesley and the 158 other communities experiencing temporary ER closures due to staffing shortages?

You want affordable housing? Don’t build luxury urban sprawl. Let’s start there.

Speaker, the government doesn’t like it because they know that their integrity is in question, and the Premier doesn’t like to answer questions because he knows where it leads.

On Friday, the Public Order Emergency Commission published their report on the use of the Emergencies Act, and the findings are very distressing. When Ottawa residents were being harassed in their communities last February, while small businesses were being forced to close, the Premier, the Solicitor General and the Minister of Transportation all chose not to help. In fact, it was only when protests moved to other parts of this province that they were forced to do something.

What does the Premier have to say to Ottawa residents now that we know the extent of his government’s failure to act?

Speaker, witnesses told the commission that this government was “trying to avoid responsibility for a crisis within its borders.” While federal and municipal officials were meeting regularly to try to navigate this crisis, Ontario’s Premier and the ministers responsible ghosted the people of Ottawa. The report’s chapter on the provincial response is actually titled, “Ontario’s Absence.”

Why was the Premier absent? I really hope the Premier will answer this question for the people of Ontario and the people of Ottawa. Why was the Premier absent when the people of Ottawa needed his help?

When the people of Ottawa needed help, the Premier sat on his hands. But when wealthy developers wanted to turn a profit on protected greenbelt land, suddenly the law was changed, like that. Is this how our province works now: one set of rules for the Premier’s friends and associates and another for everyone else? That’s how it is?

Good morning. I have about seven and a half minutes to complete my response to the throne speech of about two weeks ago. I just want to start by reflecting back. I won’t repeat what I said in the first part of my response to the throne speech, but I was noting when I was reviewing what I said last time that, in the moment, when this throne speech was first presented, the government was using that opportunity to reassure Ontarians about the state of our hospitals and the crisis in emergency rooms. They were saying things like, “High-urgency patients are finishing their emergency visits within target times,” which is not what we’re hearing, of course, from hospitals, and continue to hear. So we were commenting on the fact that the government was seeing this all through rose-coloured glasses.

In the meantime, since that throne speech was first presented, the government has used this opportunity to actually leverage what I think is a crisis in our emergency rooms and in health care as an opportunity to further privatize health care in this province and to push patients—vulnerable people—out of hospitals and into long-term-care facilities without their consent, which is another bill which we will be continuing to debate, although apparently which won’t be appearing before committee where anybody else in this province will have a chance to comment.

I wanted to start there because I think that’s important context, because what the government has gone from in the last few weeks is to take a situation in this province that is very, very dire, which is frightening for so many people in my community and across this province, and then use that and exploit that opportunity to, at the end of the day, pad the coffers of shareholders and exploit the opportunity to further privatize health care in this province.

One of the things I meant to do the last time I was responding to this is reflect on something that one of my constituents shared with me, because in the first question period of this government, of this session, I asked the Premier and the health minister about whether or not this was the kind of level of care that Ontarians could expect from this government. I had a constituent call me very distraught about the state of our health care system. They brought their son to SickKids after he broke his finger and faced a five-hour wait after being examined in a hallway. When they complained, the staff told them, “Call your MPP. We’re exhausted here.” And I suspect that people are calling. I think they’re calling the members opposite; they’re certainly calling us. The government, again, is using this opportunity to take a path toward privatization instead of doing what really needs to be done, which is addressing the staffing crisis.

The government could, right now—and I called for this yesterday in my comments on Bill 7—stop their low-wage policy, stop this arbitrary cap on health care workers and other public sector worker salaries and repeal Bill 124—easy. Just do it.

I want to talk for a few more minutes though and use the opportunity I have now to talk about another area which I think is very important to many Ontarians. When we talk about this government’s attempt to privatize public health care—and we’ve put this government on notice that we will not stand for that and the people of this province will not stand for that. But I wanted to also talk about another area which people in this province care very deeply about, which this government has opened up the door to privatization, and that is education.

Tacked on to this throne speech was the offer of another direct payment program. The finance minister and the education minister continue to have few-to-no details about what’s going to happen here, but when we do the math, it really works out to a payment directly to parents of about $50 per student or per family to cover private tutoring costs. I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that I have received nothing but outrage from families about this as they face another September with classrooms packed to the rafters and kids who are struggling. What they want to see is actually what their taxes pay for, which is an investment in public education. They know that every dollar that you put into that public education system, you’re going to get so much more out of it, and kids are going to benefit so much more from that than from any dollar that’s put into a pocket, which is going to pay for, what—$50? You might get an hour of tutoring, if you’re lucky, and most tutoring programs are going to cost a lot more than that.

The other part of it that I think is really frustrating for families is it puts the onus on parents to go out and supplement their kids’ education because this government has let them down again. I’ve got to tell you, my youngest is now heading into university this year, and so I’m out of that part of the education system to some extent, but the years as a working parent that my partner and I spent trying to support our kids while juggling full-time jobs—this is the reality for so many families, and many more who struggle more and have to juggle multiple jobs. And then to have to think, “Okay, I put my child in this school. I know that their teachers and other education workers care for them and are looking out for them”—but my gosh, the added stress of having to seek out additional support for them, that’s something that only very few people have the privilege to do. It’s not just a money issue, it’s a time issue. It’s really difficult for so many families who are already struggling with that.

I wanted to say, Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, that the government thinks they can throw 70 bucks or 50 bucks at a family and that that’s going to cover up the growing class sizes or the growing mental health and anxiety issues our kids are experiencing. This stripped-down, bare-bones approach to education that denies our children the quality of education they could be getting in so many other countries, frankly, and putting our province and those families at a huge disadvantage is really, very—not just unfortunate; it’s really deeply disappointing.

I want to imagine for a moment a future where kids go to school hungry to learn, not hungry for food—it really shouldn’t be too much to ask—a future where kids go to school and get the supports they need; where teachers and other education workers aren’t exhausted; where you can have one educational assistant maybe per class. Imagine that, instead of one per school or two per school. Imagine a future like that.

But this is where we’re at with this government. They had a chance to lay out a plan with solutions to address the crises we face in education and health care and cost of living, and they chose not to. But it’s not too late to do the right thing. People aren’t looking for business as usual, because that has not been working for them. They want to see all of us here in this place get to work and deliver for them, so I invite the government to work with us, to listen to the voices of front-line workers, to invest in the public services and solutions that will help lift all Ontarians and chart a better, greener future for all of us.

This question is for the Premier.In July, I shared an internal memo from Toronto Western Hospital, frantically trying to keep their emergency department open. They narrowly avoided that closure that time, but they were just one of 25 hospitals across this province facing emergency room closures on a single weekend. From our smallest community health centres to our busiest urban hospitals, our system is being pushed to the breaking point while this government’s budget remains status quo. Speaker, to the Premier: How many more ERs and urgent care centres have to close before he finally admits this is a crisis?

Speaker, can the minister explain what she considers acceptable for a child to get emergency care? Is it 19 hours? Is it 11 hours? How is that even remotely acceptable?

I had an ER nurse from my community tell me just yesterday that the ICU they work in is at full capacity with only half the staff to care for a full roster of patients.

How can the Premier look our exhausted and demoralized nurses in the eye—those health care workers who are desperately ringing the alarm on staffing shortages—and tell them that Bill 124 is here to stay?