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, and welcome back. It’s good to be back here, I think.

This question is for the Premier. Throughout the break, I was travelling all around this province. It’s pretty clear that people all across this province are hurting right now. They’re feeling the rising cost of everything from utilities to mortgage payments, groceries, rent. For workers in our hospitals, in our schools, in the broader public sector, they’ve also had to contend with their own government fighting to suppress their wages with Bill 124 and then with the costly legal battle and campaign to defend that bill. But the workers won, and the courts have ruled once again that Bill 124 was unconstitutional. It was an unconstitutional attack on the rights of working people and their paycheques.

So my question to the Premier is: Will he apologize to Ontario’s hard-working nurses, PSWs, teachers, educational assistants and all the public sector workers for suppressing their wages with Bill 124?

Interjections.

I’ll tell you, Premier, that did not sound like an apology to me. The government not only used their power to cut the wages of health care and education workers during a pandemic, they spent untold amounts of dollars fighting those workers in court for years, only to be told what we already all knew: The bill is and always was unconstitutional.

Speaker, through you again to the Premier—do-over—how much did this government spend on legal costs to keep down workers’ wages on Bill 124?

Interjections.

Bill 124 deteriorated conditions in hospitals, in long-term-care facilities, at the worst possible time. We were already struggling with rampant hallway medicine when this government came into power, and they managed to make things even worse. Burned-out nurses, health care workers have been leaving the sector in droves. They can’t get out of here fast enough with this government in power. And guess what, Speaker? Private nursing agencies, the friends of this government, have been ready to jump in and fill the gap, bleeding our hospitals dry at the same time, and demanding exorbitant fees for exactly the same work.

Speaker, back to the Premier: Will he admit his choices worsened the crisis facing our health care system and, once and for all, please, apologize to Ontarians for Bill 124.

Interjections.