This Conservative government must support our Ontario NDP legislation and pass the Patient-to-Nurse Ratios for Hospitals Act. Thank you to our health critic from Nickel Belt. This act is a life-saving piece of legislation. There are simply not enough nurses in our hospitals to take care of patients with often complex needs.

As we once said, we need at least 22,000 more nurses here in this province. This government spoke of nurses as “health care heroes” during the pandemic, yet they didn’t even ensure they had the appropriate PPE to keep all of them alive. Some of our health care professionals died on this government’s watch. In fact, nurses were taken to court by this government. And I don’t need to reiterate the disaster that was this government’s Bill 124 on nurses—racialized and women, predominately, in that sector, I might add—and other public sector workers.

This government has sat idle while over a thousand emergency room closures last year happened. This is simply not good enough. Over 3,200 different studies have been conducted proving that a lower nurse-to-patient ratio is necessary to save lives and prevent burnout of our nurses. This piece of legislation is a win-win. It’s a win for the government, it’s a win for the official opposition, but most importantly, it’s a win for the nurses, their patients and their families.

One such report was WeRPN’s latest survey of over 1,300 registered practical nurses. The 2024 report found that “unsustainable workloads, wage compression, pressured working environments and a lack of support have continued to drive RPNs out” of the profession. The current nurse-to-patient ratio directly impacts patient care. Today, this government can turn the page and do something positive for a change that will directly impact all of our nurses, all of the nurses who have been advocating day in and day out over the last six years, begging this Premier to stop his privatization-of-health-care schemes.

I want to thank Joyce, my local community member and an RPN, for expressing her concerns to me via email. I echo every single one of them:

—introduce nurse-to-patient ratios to reverse deteriorating patient care and ensure workplace safety for nurses and patients;

—pay nurses what they’re worth;

—establish a fair and professional level of compensation for RPNs that reflects their knowledge; and, yes,

—reduce reliance on for-profit nursing agencies that are siphoning out our nurses, yet another way of prompting up this government’s privatization scheme.

So absolutely, we need this patients-to-nurses ratio legislation passed today.

It is my honour to stand in support of the member for Kiiwetinoong’s motion to adopt the recommendations of the official opposition’s report on the Indigenous determinants of health. Racism is a structural and social determinant of health. This will unequivocally improve the lives of indigenous peoples and their communities across the province.

As the critic for women’s social and economic opportunity, I want to pay special focus to what this motion means for Indigenous women. In Indigenous cultures, women are held in a special regard in many Indigenous teachings and traditions. For instance, “To the Ojibway, the earth is woman, the mother of the people, and her hair, the sweetgrass, is braided and used in ceremonies. The ... Sioux people of Manitoba and the Dakotas tell how a woman—White Buffalo Calf Woman—brought the pipe to their people. It is through the pipe that prayer is carried by its smoke upwards to the creator in their most sacred ceremonies.”

It was through colonialism that this was gravely disrupted, as we continue to witness today in Ontario, in our communities, and across our nation.

To quote Indigenous author Paula Gunn Allen, “Since the coming of the Anglo-Europeans beginning in the 15th century, the fragile web of identity that long held tribal people secure has gradually been weakened and torn.”

Gender and gender identity have now been listed as social determinants of health in this country, because to identify as a woman is to have barriers placed in front of you from birth because of a sexist world. These are not inevitable, but rather socially constructed. They are also not felt equally, and few are also impacted by the joint forces of colonialism and patriarchy as Indigenous communities are.

We have called on Ontario to recognize gender-based violence as an epidemic. We’ve called on this Conservative government to do so. Our calls are often unheard.

Indigenous women know all too much about gender-based violence, sadly. Indigenous women are at least three times more likely to experience violence, and at least six times more likely to be murdered. While just 4% of the Canadian population identifies as Indigenous and as women, they represent 24% of homicide victims. Many of them are never found, never even looked for, leaving their families shattered and without closure. No day of significance, no database, no event in our communities will bring their sisters, mothers, friends, partners and loved ones home.

We need action, and we demand that action today: action like committing to enacting every one of the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls report’s 231 individual calls; action like saying yes to my colleague’s motion, a systemic approach to doing better by placing Indigenous self-determination at the centre and by recognizing Indigeneity and colonialism as overarching—I want to say it again—overarching and intersectional determinants of health across government ministries and across every political group. These need to be recognized as the facts that they are.

Thank you, Sol. Thank you for this motion. I support it wholeheartedly.

Just before I started, I want to express to anyone watching or to those who aren’t familiar with the government’s Bill 60, the profitization and privatization of health care, which the member from Eglinton–Lawrence spoke so proudly of: Make no mistake, the excess service that this bill claims to provide Ontarians is only provided to those who have the pockets, the money, the finances to purchase. It’s very, very problematic when procedures that should be covered and are covered by your OHIP are all of a sudden being covered by credit cards, courtesy of Bill 60. I just wanted to clear that up so that folks got the reality check of what Bill 60 is.

Anyone with a prostate can get prostate cancer, and this includes cisgender men, trans women and nonbinary people. I wholeheartedly support this motion, and I’m calling on the Ford government to follow the lead of eight other provinces and fully cover the prostate-specific antigen PSA test under OHIP when prescribed by a doctor.

I must also note that this motion, put forth by our outstanding member from Niagara Falls, is a fiscally responsible piece of legislation that calls for investing now to help save lives, as opposed to not covering the PSA test, which has been known to act as a deterrent for those who may have limited financial means. A cost for diagnostic tests will deter people from seeking answers early, and with prostate cancer, early detection is key. If prostate cancer is left undiagnosed and unchecked, the cost to our health care system would be tenfold. As the saying goes, prevention is better—or, I might add, cheaper—than the cure.

The cost of a test should never be a prohibitive factor, especially for groups in society who have felt the disproportionate impact of health inequities. This is especially true for many Black men, who are disproportionately impacted by prostate cancer. Black men, as we have heard, have almost double the risk of developing prostate cancer compared to non-Black men. They’re also more likely to have prostate tumours that grow and spread quickly. Black men are also more likely to die from prostate cancer compared to other men.

I want to read into the Hansard a quote from Mr. Ken Noel, the president of the Walnut Foundation: “Prostate cancer disproportionately impacts Black men in this province, according to a recent study co-authored by the Walnut Foundation and published in the Canadian Medical Association open journal. The Walnut Foundation, a prostate cancer awareness and support non-profit organization targeting the Black community, encourages Black men to be more involved in their personal health, get the facts, ‘know your numbers’ and that ‘early detection saves lives.’ However, men are thwarted by having to pay for a simple blood test in Ontario. We need to minimize barriers to early diagnosis and getting the PSA test funded by OHIP will improve outcomes for those most impacted by this disease. Remember Black men are 76% more likely to be diagnosed and 2.2 times more likely to die from prostate cancer.”

The name of that study, and I would encourage everyone to read it—it is a study that was led by Dr. Aisha Lofters. It is titled Prostate Cancer Incidence among Immigrant Men in Ontario, Canada: A Population-Based Retrospective Cohort Study.

I of course also want to give a shout-out to Mr. Henry as well. Thank you for your leadership and your advocacy—and your research, at that.

The Walnut Foundation’s annual Walk the Path Walkathon to help raise awareness about prostate cancer is taking place on June 3 this year. I also want to give a shout-out to Ivan Dawns, who has been named the honorary campaign chairperson of this year’s walk. Ivan Dawns is the first Black union representative with the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, and recently received the Ontario Black History Society Dr. Anderson Abbott Award for his leadership and advocacy. Dr. Abbott, born in 1837 in Toronto, Upper Canada, was Canada’s first Canadian-born Black person to be licensed as a doctor.

The Ontario NDP has long called for the collection of race-based socio-demographic data in health to prevent worse health outcomes for racialized Ontarians. If we see where the disparities are, we can address health inequities through a full systems approach. According to the Black Health Alliance, “Although there are some conditions that are inherited at greater rates in some ethnic groups, such as sickle cell disease”—which we’ve also raised legislation for in this House—“the majority of chronic illnesses have many different contributing factors including—social determinants of health such as access to health care, support networks, education and stress.”

Lastly, “One ongoing stressor is anti-Black racism, which we believe is a major contributing factor to many of the disparities in health that Black people experience.” Experiencing everyday systemic and even internalized racism intersecting with class or socio-economic barriers and disparities, according to evidence-based research, has been shown to worsen illness and health outcomes for many within Black, Indigenous and racialized communities.

I couldn’t support the member for Niagara Falls’ legislation more, and I hope that this government passes it and saves lives.

I rise today to say thank you and to also add my support to the motion from the other member: intimate partner violence continuing education in Family Court. We absolutely need to continue education for everyone who is within an inch’s length of being associated with intimate partner violence, gender-based violence etc.

What I want to start by saying is, violence against women and children is about a power imbalance. It’s about someone wanting to use their power to diminish another. I think what we have to do is use legislation to build up women and children so they can feel safe, so they can feel empowered to get help, to be able to access help to get out of the situation. Now, it can’t just be on the women’s and children’s shoulders. It has to be on the system’s shoulders. We have to address this systemically.

I had a conversation with many members—a couple of dozen members, it felt like—from OAITH, staff members and board members, and it stuck out to me when one member of OAITH said that in their organization, there is one Family Court worker for 260 clients—one Family Court worker. Another person in this group of warriors who are doing Herculean work on a shoestring budget said they had lost funding for their child care respite worker, which creates a huge barrier for women, whether they’re trying to get to a job interview or if they have to get to court. The bottom line is, we have to fund the selfless people, the organizations, the community-based resources that are literally helping women and children out of intimate partner violence, out of gender-based violence.

And I will say this to the government: I understand that there have been years where there has been a bit of latitude that’s been given to shelters and organizations to use their budget as they see fit. I want to stand here and say that that worked and that allowed organizations to be able to use the money where it was necessary: an extra staff person, not having to pay for transportation if that’s not what they need. What they need is important and they are the experts of what they need in their sector, and of course the lived experience of survivors—they are the ultimate experts, as well.

So we need to ensure that there’s annualized funding to support organizations. We need to ensure that this government isn’t cutting any more from legal aid, as they have in the last recent years. But most importantly, we need to listen to survivors.

I want to share with you some excerpts from N.M. She gave me permission to read it, but I’m just going to keep her name confidential. N.M.’s story: “I have an 11-year-old boy now, and I spent about 10 years of his life in court. Just this week, I received yet another threat from his dad.

“I’m honestly not sure how many court orders I have at this point, but I can say for certain that none of them have been particularly useful, and all it does is cost me money. The courts only recognize overt physical abuse as abuse. Anything else is insignificant, which is hugely problematic.

“Time and time again I was told that my experience of abuse is ‘irrelevant’ and that I need to put that behind me and put my child’s interest first.

“Continuing on the above point, as a woman who left an abusive relationship, having authorities ... push that message continuously is very demeaning/diminishing ... I have put my child first by leaving the relationship, and from my perspective, exercising caution with an abusive man is another way of putting my child first....

“I have several court orders demanding him to release his financial disclosure, and not once did he release his financial disclosure....

“There is no way for me to enforce him paying child support, without paying additional legal fees, and even if I do go that route, there’s still no promise that he’ll have to pay....

“If I get upset in court (and what kind of emotionless monster wouldn’t feel emotion when talking about the fate of their child)”—when one is escaping violence—“I’m seen as irrational and weak, while the ... ‘cool as a cucumber’ dad can smirk at me from across the courtroom and win the judge’s favour.”

We need “gender sensitivity training for all Family Court staff, lawyers, and judges, domestic abuse training for all of the above, as well as children’s aid workers and police.

“I have ideas on what can be done to address this massive systematic and invisible problem, and they include ... more awareness of narcissistic abuse” and emotional abuse as abuse.

The last thing I want to say: These organizations need more staff. They need more angels to do this work, because, as one member said, they don’t want to have to call the police. That is a last resort. It’s about having the counsellors. It’s about having the mental health supports and the staff there who can take a trauma-informed approach. That is the way to go, but all of that requires funding. You all are in power. You all have the dollars. Spend them where it counts: on women and children’s lives.