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?

Speaker, it’s pretty clear who can get it done under this government: anyone willing to fork over the cash. They started handing out licences to private health care companies after receiving thousands of dollars in donations from clinic owners and investors looking to set up private hospitals. And now, here we are. We can connect the dots again: massive donations to the PC Party, massive expansion of private colleges.

How can the Premier defend a return to the bad old days of Liberal cash-for-access culture, where policies are decided by how much you’re willing to hand over to the governing party?

Interjections.

My question is for the Premier. What exactly are attendees getting out of spending $1,000 to attend the minister’s mental health mixer?

To the Premier again, and I hope he answers this question: Why is this government and this minister playing a cash-for-access game with the mental health of Ontarians?

Interjections.

I think the government needs to wake up. Ontarians have caught on to this government’s backroom deals and their insider favours. There are communities all across this province that are waiting for an answer from this government about funding for critical services, and that minister is holding a mixer tonight—$1,000 a pop—to raise money for his own campaign coffers while the mayor of Belleville is so desperate they’re willing to go it alone.

Is this how people are supposed to finally get action on the mental health crisis facing their communities, or the education crisis, the university students? I mean, my goodness.

My question to the Premier is, what next? Are toddlers going to have to give up their toys for child care spaces? What is next? That’s my question to the Premier.

There have been no answers from the government—no transparency. Thank goodness we have some accountability, because this morning, the Patient Ombudsman released their annual report. They received more than 3,000 complaints last year with one common theme: a lack of staffing and a lack of access to care.

Hospitals are struggling under this government’s staffing crisis, and, worse, the ombudsman is warning that this government’s expensive, ideological push toward two-tier health care is only going to prolong the issue.

My question is to the Premier. Will you stop taking nurses to court, get the lights back on in public operating rooms and get Ontarians the health care they need?

Speaker, it gets worse. Yesterday, we heard from experts in the Ministry of Health and Ontario Health at public accounts committee. They acknowledged that the lights are off in public hospital operating rooms while this government hands million-dollar contracts to for-profit clinics.

As our health critic asked multiple times yesterday, I want to also ask the Premier: Why are you denying public hospitals the opportunity you’re giving to for-profit companies for additional surgeries and diagnostic imaging?

The thing is, Speaker, this government’s plan, this two-tier plan, is unnecessary, it’s time-consuming and it’s totally wasteful. We already have the infrastructure we need to shorten the wait times. But because of this government’s staffing crisis, one third of Ontario’s operating rooms aren’t running at full capacity.

Speaker, to the Premier again: Will this government fund public hospitals to properly use existing OR space instead of giving those funds to for-profit clinics?

I move that:

Whereas more than a third of operating rooms in Ontario’s public hospitals do not meet the 90% target for operating room use, mostly due to lack of funding and staff needed to run all the province’s operating rooms simultaneously;

Whereas the government permitted the crisis in our health care system to persist while billions of dollars in unspent public funds are allocated to contingency funds instead of Ontario hospitals that are struggling to maintain quality of care due to understaffing; and

Whereas the Ford government is appealing the Superior Court ruling, declaring Bill 124, Protecting a Sustainable Public Sector for Future Generations Act, 2019, unconstitutional, despite the minister being told about the devastating impact on hiring, recruitment and retention of health care workers;

Whereas the infrastructure to expand surgical capacity already exists and is sitting idle in public hospitals but the government is choosing to spend taxpayer funds on investor-owned, for-profit surgical suites; and

Whereas high-quality facilities across the province have idle operating room time, such as Health Sciences North, which is only funded to use 14 out of 17 state-of-the-art operating rooms and Toronto’s University Health Network, which is unable to simultaneously run all of their operating rooms because of understaffing;

Therefore, the Legislative Assembly calls on the government to fund and fully utilize public operating rooms instead of further privatizing hospital operating room services.

Make no mistake: Today’s health care crisis is a manufactured one. It is a staffing crisis caused by years of underfunding, exacerbated by the pandemic, and made worse by the Ford government’s ideological decision to suppress workers’ wages and then take them to court over it, rather than help Ontarians in pain.

Today’s motion, if passed, would represent a step forward to resolving this government’s health care crisis. By investing the money we already have—funds already earmarked for health care—we could increase capacity in publicly owned operating rooms we’ve already built to reduce wait times. We can get people the relief they need today.

Speaker, over the weekend I listened to the story of Nathan Gilson and his family on CBC Radio. They live in Waterloo. In the fall of 2021, Nathan was just 14 when he was diagnosed with scoliosis in his spine. Left untreated, it can cause a variety of health issues, and at 14 Nathan was already experiencing pain in his ankles and knees. His surgery was scheduled for April. Nathan and his family were ready, but shortly before, they received some bad news: His surgery had to be postponed due to capacity. His mom, Shelley, said it was like having the rug pulled out from under them.

Speaker, I have two children, and there’s no worse feeling in the whole world than watching your child experience pain and not being able to do anything about it, so I can only imagine what it felt like when Nathan’s surgery was delayed a second time, then a third, then a fourth.

The long wait was taking a toll on Nathan. His spine shifted by 10 degrees over just three months. Delay after delay made it feel as though he missed a chunk of growing up. Just hours before his fifth—fifth—surgery date, Nathan was told he’d have to wait longer again. His mom, Shelley, said the most heartbreaking thing was hearing him say, “They don’t care about me, Mom.”

Finally, more than a year after his diagnosis, Nathan had the surgery he needed, and the 14-hour procedure was a success, thankfully.

But Nathan’s story is just one of hundreds we’ve heard from every corner of this province, of people waiting years for surgeries while operating rooms sit with lights off because there aren’t enough staff to run them.

Nathan could have had the procedure he needed much sooner had Ontario’s top-notch public operating rooms been allowed to operate at full capacity. Nathan could have spent more time hanging out with his friends and more time in school and less time in pain.

We need to reduce wait times for people like Nathan, and we need to reduce those wait times now, and we can by funding and fully utilizing public operating rooms instead of further privatizing our system.

When hospitals compete for staff with these new private, for-profit surgical centres that the government is planning, it’s our emergency rooms and urgent care centres that are going to suffer the most. Ontario already has more than 42,000 health care job vacancies—42,000—a fourfold increase in less than a decade.

Let’s be clear: Under the government’s plan, the staffing problem in emergency rooms will worsen. Hospital workers we do have will be incentivized to go to work in the for-profit clinics on the promise of higher wages, shorter hours and better working conditions. It will mean that we may see even more hospitals close their emergency rooms, and even more often, to manage a yet worsening staffing crisis. Communities will have an even harder time accessing services close to home because for-profit centres won’t be as profitable there. And the few health care workers we have in northern Ontario will be even further incentivized to leave.

I’m proud to support today’s motion to prioritize public operating rooms because it will reduce wait times right now and retain the health care workers we need in the public system.

Speaker, we know that spending public money on private procedure clinics also winds up being considerably more expensive, both for the government and for individual patients. For-profit clinics cost the public system more because of facility fees that cover overhead, the cost of technicians, the equipment, the supplies and the infrastructure.

Let’s look at cataract surgeries as an example. OHIP pays a flat flee of $500 per patient to public hospitals for these procedures. If it costs less, the remaining money is reinvested back into public patient care. With for-profit clinics, OHIP pays a flat fee of $605 per patient for a single cataract surgery—$1,015 for both eyes. And if the clinic’s actual costs are lower—which is, of course, always their goal—the money lines the shareholders’ pockets. It doesn’t go back into patient care.

This wasted public money adds up. About 150,000 cataract surgeries are performed in Ontario every year. That’s $90 million in public money that could be redirected to for-profit clinics if we’re not careful. That’s going to cost patients more out of pocket, too—and we heard about this earlier today—through the upselling and additional user fees.

In fact, in 2021, Ontario’s Auditor General found private clinics already deliberately misleading patients for unnecessary add-ons. Patients were coerced into buying expensive lenses—as much as $5,000 per eye—to qualify for surgery. This compromises patient choice and quality of care. Patients are often worried that if they don’t pay, they won’t be able to get the appointments, or that they could receive worse or even unsafe care. And let’s not forget, this is at a very vulnerable moment.

Speaker, I want to say again that I am proud to support today’s motion to prioritize public operating rooms because it will save the government and patients a great deal of money and will result in better care.

We know the Ford government’s move toward an investor-driven model will also put Ontarians’ safety at risk. Evidence from all over the world shows that profit-driven health care results in poorer outcomes. This makes sense when you consider that a for-profit clinic will always put its shareholders’ interests first.

We are already seeing the impact of this in Ontario. A 2012 report from CPSO noted that nearly a third of all out-of-hospital clinics fell far short of safety standards. That same year, the Toronto Star found nine patients of the for-profit Rothbart Centre for Pain Care who developed serious infections. Further investigations found there were 170 infection-control deficiencies there. They even found 11 patients who contracted hepatitis C at for-profit colonoscopy clinics over three years.

In a private clinic, if a patient experiences a complication, they have to be transported—guess where?—to an emergency room. That costs precious time and puts further strain on the system—while those in a public operating room receive care faster.

Ontarians are demanding that we not go further down the road of privatization of public care.

Today’s motion to prioritize public operating rooms will better ensure patient safety. It will lead to better health outcomes. It will help fix the staffing crisis right now. It will shorten wait times to get Ontarians the care they need faster. It will cost the government less and deliver more. And it will help ensure all Ontarians have better access to safe, quality care from our province’s trusted health care heroes. We already have the money to do it. It has already been earmarked for health care, and the infrastructure is already in place.

I want to urge all my colleagues in the Legislature today to prioritize public operating rooms. Let’s get the lights back on, fill those available shifts, and get patients like Nathan the relief they need now so no one has to wait any longer.

My question is to the Premier.

There’s no question that Ontario’s health care system is in crisis, but make no mistake, this crisis is by design. This government has underfunded our hospitals, held down the wages of our health care workers, and now, after years and years of neglect, the government has tabled a new bill that uses this crisis as an excuse to expand for-profit health care in Ontario.

Hospitals and long-term-care homes are already desperately fighting to retain nurses and doctors in what is really a staffing crisis across the system, and they’re now going to face competition from new two-tier investor-driven clinics. Nothing in this bill prevents that from happening.

Can the Premier guarantee today that these for-profit clinics will not poach staff from our publicly funded hospitals and long-term-care homes?

I want to go back to the Premier again: This bill also includes no actual oversight mechanism to ensure patient safety. The Minister of Health yesterday couldn’t even say which body would be overseeing these clinics to ensure that procedures are done safely—couldn’t even say that.

What concrete guarantees can the Premier make today regarding people’s safety in these for-profit clinics?

And the fact is, Speaker, the government is asking Ontarians to just trust them. But the minister said yesterday that they wouldn’t be able to share some details because of the—and I want to quote her—“business-model nature” of these new clinics. The minister says there are guardrails, but beyond saying people can complain to the Ombudsman, the bill doesn’t guarantee oversight for public funds or public safety.

So again: How will this government ensure that the interest of patients takes precedence over people who just want to make a buck?

It’s a real pleasure to speak to this very important motion that would launch a massive recruitment and retention plan to address the health care staffing shortage in our province, a shortage that has resulted in the worst health care crisis in generations.

For the last few months, I’ve been travelling around Ontario, from North Bay to Nepean, from Fort Erie to Whitby, from Brampton to Sault Ste. Marie, and just last weekend to Kingston. A few weeks back, I was up near Chesley. We’ve heard Chesley talked about a lot in this place. Back in October, they announced that they were going to be closing their ER until December. And if it wasn’t already bad enough, that situation—for this government to take some kind of urgent action, surely the desperate pleas of parents whose children are stacked up in overcapacity children’s ICUs should be enough, you’d think, but no, Speaker. In the midst of this, this government chose not to spend a single new dollar to address this situation—absolutely shameful.

From March 2020 to March of this year, nursing vacancies increased by 300%. Health care professionals are clear about what’s happening—the terrible working conditions; overworked, stressed, underpaid, underappreciated; unable to provide the quality of care that they know their patients deserve; hospitals forced to close emergency rooms and ICUs. Speaker, I know that many people out there have been told by this government and governments before them that this is the best they can expect, but I can tell you one thing: Waiting in an emergency room for 14 or 20 hours, that’s not normal, and we should not be forced to accept that in this province.

This government wants to tell you that’s as good as it gets, but the answers are right here in this motion. Get rid of Bill 124—there’s a start. Get rid of Bill 124. Restore health care workers’ rights to bargain for wages that reflect their worth. Work with us. Work with health care stakeholders to develop an incentive package. This government needs to do better and they need to do it urgently.

Over the past month, I’ve been visiting communities across the province to support our local champions who are running in municipal elections. From North Bay to Nepean, from Fort Erie to Sault Ste. Marie I had some great conversations with people about what they care about, and, let me tell you, Speaker, one thing I’m hearing very clearly from everyone is concern about the state of our health care system. Hallway medicine is commonplace again, as are 12- to 20-hour wait times to see a doctor in emergency.

People are worried that this government’s plans to sell off more of our health care system to for-profit companies looking to make a buck will be paid for by their loved ones or themselves. People are worried that the government’s disrespect for nurses and other health care workers is creating a massive staffing crisis.

Chesley hospital emergency room is closing until December—December. Why? Because of a critical nursing shortage.

Every single dollar moved out of public health care into the pockets of corporations is a dollar less for working people, for local hospitals and for strained emergency rooms. It’s time for this government to reverse course on its sell-off of public health care to respect and properly compensate the people who provide that care and to ensure that local care is there when people need it.

I’ve been listening to the member from Kitchener–Conestoga’s comments. The member wants the official opposition to support this legislation. Earlier today, the interim leader of the official opposition asked the Minister of Long-Term Care in this place if he would ban hospitals from billing for hospital beds for people who continue to stay there. And the member opposite talked about if people prefer to stay, they won’t—the long-term-care minister refused to answer that question. It was very notable.

Afterwards, in scrums—and I want to just share this with everybody here, because it’s coming out in the news reports as we sit here—the minister has been quoted as saying now, “If they refuse to move into their home of preferred choice, then yes, absolutely,” the hospital will charge them, “because we need those spaces for patients who need acute care.” The Minister of Long-Term Care has confirmed that those patients will be billed if they don’t take the spaces that are immediately offered to them. I’d like to know the member’s response. Please, give me a reason to support this terrible piece of legislation.

Absolutely, there were.

While low-paid PSWs and other care workers got sick or were forced off the job, we remember the army had to be called in to help. Their report—which these members don’t even talk about; they don’t even want to talk about it—identified absolute—

Interjection.

Their report—and I encourage you, if you haven’t done it, to read it. Please read their report, because it identified absolutely horrifying examples of neglect happening—and let’s be very clear—predominantly in for-profit long-term-care homes. Those report findings: What did this government do with them? They ignored them, and they went even further: They blocked our calls and the calls of those families for a full public inquiry into long-term care—shameful.

Throughout the pandemic, there was a—and I just want to say, because the other interesting thing that was going on here—

Interjection.

Despite the death and the neglect that was so evident in the for-profit sector, many of those same corporations—again, let’s not fool ourselves that this has nothing to do with the fact that so many of those Conservative staffers have moved into lobbying for those homes. Many of those same corporations were granted 30-year licence renewals—shame.

Of the 30,486 beds announced by this government, more than half of them—16,304—were in the process of being allocated to for-profit corporations as of November of last year. This is this government’s record. It’s the record of a government that applies arbitrary caps on salaries of our front-line heroes. It’s the record of a government that gifts shareholders of corporations that have failed our seniors—and that’s why the chorus of criticism is growing across this province. That’s why this government is working so hard to spin this a different way.

I want to be completely clear: This bill is going to be an absolute boon for the for-profit long-term-care sector. And I want to add as well that I think we can expect that, due to those worse outcomes for residents in those homes, they will have much shorter wait-lists than non-profit and municipal homes. People don’t really want to go to them, and they are more likely where those seniors are actually coerced to go. I think that’s the saddest part of all this: As people have found that those for-profit long-term-care homes had such a terrible track record during the pandemic, folks don’t want their parents to go there. They don’t want their loved ones going there. But this government wants to send those seniors there so badly that they’re willing to put in place legislation that will result in the coercing of those seniors to go into those homes. This is about dollars and cents. This is about profits. This isn’t about patients. This isn’t about creating more opportunities for other patients to move into those hospital beds.

This government’s position has been that this bill is going to address hospital capacity, even if it’s at the expense of the rights of patients. But this, like their plan to expand the use of private services in the health care sector, absolutely ignores the fact—and I mentioned this in my question to one of the members opposite previously—that this is a staffing crisis. This is about staffing.

I won’t pretend that hasn’t been a long-standing issue. We’ve seen government after government—certainly in the last 20 years—dealing with a staffing crisis in our hospitals and our long-term-care facilities. But that was without question made worse by the pandemic. And what was this government’s response? To put in place some kind of arbitrary cap on the salaries of the very same people they call heroes, and then wonder why in these conditions they would be fleeing, desperate to get out of this sector. They’re treated with such deep, deep disrespect.

The crisis has reached, without question, a breaking point. We’ve all talked about that in here. We’ve all heard it in our communities. The government here, though, is still refusing to address the root of the problem. I think that’s what’s so shameful about this legislation. Because you would think that in this moment the government would be looking for real solutions, not just solutions to footing the bills and padding the pockets of the shareholders of long-term-care corporations, no, but actually finding solutions that will mean that our loved ones get the care they need and, yes, are moved into the most appropriate care.

Their only solution, ever—and it’s really mind-boggling—seems to be to look to the private sector, even knowing that it’s going to drain money from a public system, exacerbate a staffing crisis and ultimately pad a system that we know failed Ontarians so badly in the pandemic.

I want to speak in the remaining moments that I have here about a better way, because this government could use the lessons of the pandemic to make historic changes to the way we deliver seniors’ care. Ninety per cent of seniors would prefer to stay home. Providing publicly funded, quality, dependable home care would go a long way toward keeping people healthy in their homes and keeping hospital beds and workers free to care for folks who are in need. But this bill doesn’t mention home care, not even once, and it doesn’t put forward a single idea to expand it.

Perhaps the most effective way, I want to add as well, to improve seniors’ care would be getting the profit out of long-term care. The government could have chosen to meet the growing demand and reduce the wait-list and wait times by expanding the not-for-profit and municipal sector, where funding goes to patient care instead of padding the dividends of those wealthy shareholders I’ve spoken about.

I wanted to add: There’s a new culturally sensitive long-term-care home and affordable housing development that’s being planned to be built in my community for Portuguese-speaking seniors. It’s been in development for years, but we need it built yesterday. Under the current system that’s in place, they can’t access provincial funding until the building is completed. They’re continuing to work. They’re spending so much time—the community has been working on this for years, fundraising like crazy, while seniors in our community wait. And now what this government is telling us with this legislation is that those seniors might not end up even in Toronto. Gosh knows where they could end up if this bill is passed. And their families could be coerced into that, based on what this government decides to put in those regulations. Again, do we trust this government to put the interests of those seniors and vulnerable people ahead of padding the shareholder pockets? No, we do not. It’s really unacceptable.

I spoke in my response to the throne speech recently about the need for humility from this government instead of hubris. This is an opportunity to get this right. What this government has presented in this legislation is a lost opportunity. It’s very unfortunate.

Listen to seniors. Listen to advocacy groups. Listen to the health care workers who are telling you that this legislation will harm people, not help them. Bring some transparency forward instead of hiding the changes in your still-to-be-announced regulations; how about that?

Seniors in Ontario deserve dignity, respect and agency. This bill is going to affect some of the most vulnerable seniors out there, especially those with dementia—

Good afternoon. I am really pleased to rise today to join the debate on this new bill, the so-called More Beds, Better Care Act, or, as it’s been called by experts, health care workers and seniors’ advocates: “morally repugnant,” “shameful,” and “a violation of patient rights.” It seems the government is feeling this negative response to this move as well, as they enter into—and we’ve seen it all week this week—serious damage-control mode here in the Legislature and in the press.

What I would like to start with, Speaker, is explaining and trying to understand a little bit about why there has been such a negative response out there to this legislation. Let me start by explaining that this bill seeks to amend the Fixing Long-Term Care Act, 2021, to include a provision that would allow hospitals to discharge patients determined to need what they call alternate levels of care, or ALC, without their consent—and I underline that: without their consent—to increase, allegedly, hospital capacity. It’s part of the ministry’s stated plan, and this is what they’ve said they’re trying to achieve, to move 200 people who have been in hospital for six months waiting for long-term-care beds, within the next three months, to a total of about 1,000 more by March 2023. By amending the Health Care Consent Act, this bill will provide authority for clinicians and placement coordinators to determine the eligibility for a patient to be transferred into long-term care, and that could be a location far, far away from their loved ones, from their caregivers, or it could be—and I think this is increasingly likely under this government—to a private care home. It could be, as we have all discovered, unfortunately, in the great tragedy that overtook this province during the COVID pandemic, to a private care home that could offer substandard care.

Let me tell you, and I think we’re all hearing it—I know we’re all hearing it, and that explains, in part, why the government has been in damage-control mode this week. We’ve been hearing a great deal of fear out there from families with loved ones in this situation. I think many of us here at some point in our lives have experienced this, have had somebody in our families who were in long-term care. I certainly have. If we haven’t, then we will. You can be sure of that. It’s almost a given: At some point, you’ll probably go through this with your family, if not yourself, right? We’re hearing from so many of these families who have people in this situation right now. We’re also hearing from seniors and others in long-term care themselves or in hospitals right now who are terrified, absolutely terrified, that they could end up separated from their families, from their support networks.

Rainer Pethke, who cares for his 95-year-old mother while looking after his own kids—and this is the other piece of this; it’s often people who are sandwiched between those generations. He told CBC this week that his heart absolutely sank when he heard about the changes that were being made in this bill. And I wanted to quote him, because it really touched me: “My fear is they’ll move her into some location, Lord knows where, where I can’t support my son, I can’t support her” and “eventually, I wouldn’t be able to support even myself.” And that is reflective in a lot of what I’ve heard from people in my community—similar concerns.

The Advocacy Centre for the Elderly issued a statement on this bill, and I want to quote it as well: “We oppose today’s proposed amendments to the” legislation “revoking the right of seniors in hospital to consent to #LTC which will result in them being moved far from supportive family & community, again attempting to ‘fix’ health care to the detriment of #seniors.”

The Minister of Long-Term Care has been working really hard to walk back this element of this bill this week, spinning that this power has already existed. So why include the change in the legislation then, Speaker? That’s what I want to know. If this was already there, if they already—what is this all about? Really, I’ve been struggling all week to understand that spin. I cannot for the life of me get my head around it, because the fact in this bill is that most of the requirements, the criteria, the restrictions—even the geographic boundaries from within which ALC patients could be transferred into long-term-care homes is going to be determined in regulation. And what does that mean for those watching? That means behind closed doors, that’s what that means. Everything in here that really matters is going to be determined in the regulations. That’s my read on this bill.

Many, many people—I will say, as well, as I find it very concerning, although it’s definitely been a trademark of this government over the last few years—are just hearing about what’s happening, what’s going to happen here. And the reason that they’re just hearing about it is because, hey, it’s summer. A lot of people are hopefully taking vacations or spending time with their families, maybe not paying attention to the news every second of every day. And the other piece of it is that the government is actually, once again, trying to rush this legislation through. And you’ll know, anybody who’s been watching what’s been going on over the last few years, that this government has used every tool in the toolbox to try to limit the ability of opposition and the public to have their voices heard on debate and in discussion and to actually provide the time and the opportunity for real, fulsome debate and discussion and amendment of legislation, which is what we should all be here to do. We are legislators, right?

Ontarians who want to have their say on this bill won’t even have time to participate in the legislative process in any kind of fulsome way because the minister has already publicly stated he wants the bill passed by September 1. So, Speaker, here we are once again faced with significant changes to our long-term-care system, to our hospitals, being rushed through the House with little review, little oversight and with most details, again, to be determined after it has passed. This Premier and this minister are asking vulnerable seniors and their loved ones to simply trust them to respect their rights, their health, their autonomy. Well, Speaker, I can tell you that we don’t trust this government. I think most people do not trust this government. And, I tell you, where they really don’t trust this government? They don’t trust this government when it comes to long-term care because 5,000 vulnerable seniors died under this government’s watch. This “just trust me” approach isn’t going to fly.

This is a government and a Premier who claim to be building an iron ring—do we remember that? We remember that. They claimed to be building an iron ring around long-term care, while over 4,000 seniors died. They cut comprehensive inspections to a pitiful nine out of 626 long-term-care homes in 2019. Remember that? I remember that. They were cutting millions of dollars from long-term care even before the pandemic began.

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?