Speaker, I have a petition here to “Develop an Ontario Dementia Strategy,” and I’m very pleased to read it to the House.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas it currently takes on average 18 months for people in Ontario to get an official dementia diagnosis, with some patients often waiting years to complete diagnostic testing;

“Whereas more than half of patients suspected of having dementia in Ontario never get a full diagnosis; research confirms that early diagnosis saves lives and reduces care-partner stress;

“Whereas a PET scan test approved in Ontario in 2017 which can be key to detecting Alzheimer’s early, is still not covered under OHIP in 2022;

“Whereas the Ontario government must work together with the federal government to prepare for the approval and rollout of future disease-modifying therapies and research;

“Whereas the Alzheimer Society projects that one million Canadians will be caregivers for people with dementia, with families providing approximately 1.4 billion hours of care per year by 2050;

“Whereas research findings show that Ontario will spend $27.8 billion between 2023 and 2043 on alternate-level-of-care (ALC) and long-term-care (LTC) costs associated with people living with dementia;

“Whereas the government must follow through with its commitment to ensure Ontario’s health care system has the capacity to meet the current and future needs of people living with dementia and their care partners;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, call on the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to develop, commit and fund a comprehensive Ontario dementia strategy.”

Speaker, I fully support this petition, will affix my signature to it and give it to page Ryan to take it to the Clerks.

Resuming the debate adjourned on April 6, 2023, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 91, An Act to enact two Acts, amend various Acts and revoke various regulations / Projet de loi 91, Loi visant à édicter deux lois, à modifier diverses lois et à abroger divers règlements.

My question is, would you agree that we have to make sure that we cater to or we are very careful about making it accessible to those who may not have everything electronic? A lot of people actually didn’t qualify for grants that were available to small businesses because they didn’t have that documentation or couldn’t meet the deadline to put in everything electronically and therefore qualify for a grant. What are your thoughts on that?

Quality of care.

I have a petition titled “Ontario Dementia Strategy.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas it currently takes on average 18 months for people in Ontario to get an official dementia diagnosis, with some patients often waiting years to complete diagnostic testing;

“Whereas more than half of patients suspected of having dementia in Ontario never get a full diagnosis; research confirms that early diagnosis saves lives and reduces care-partner stress;

“Whereas a PET scan test approved in Ontario in 2017 which can be key to detecting Alzheimer’s early, is still not covered under OHIP in 2022;

“Whereas the Ontario government must work together with the federal government to prepare for the approval and rollout of future disease-modifying therapies and research;

“Whereas the Alzheimer Society projects that one million Canadians will be caregivers for people with dementia, with families providing approximately 1.4 billion hours of care per year by 2050;

“Whereas research findings show that Ontario will spend $27.8 billion between 2023 and 2043 on alternate-level-of-care (ALC) and long-term-care (LTC) costs associated with people living with dementia;

“Whereas the government must follow through with its commitment to ensure Ontario’s health care system has the capacity to meet the current and future needs of people living with dementia and their care partners;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, call on the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to develop, commit and fund a comprehensive Ontario dementia strategy.”

I fully support this petition. I will affix my signature to it and give it to page Scarlett to give to the Clerks.

My question is to the Premier.

Last week, the Minister of Health said that primary care physicians should treat more children so they do not have to go to emergency rooms. However, the reality is that 1.8 million Ontarians don’t have a regular family physician to even go to in these situations. OHIP-covered virtual care has been one of the last resorts that parents and their sick children have had to find immediate medical help, which this government is gutting, leaving parents with a cost of about $29 a month.

Our government is allowing for private ventures like KixCare to charge for virtual pediatric visits.

Dr. Aviva Lowe, a pediatrician who consulted on KixCare, is urging the provincial government to maintain access to virtual care. She said, “Pediatricians ... will no longer be able to offer virtual visits for patients”—and she went on to talk about how it’s unequal for people who don’t have family doctors.

My question is, at a time when there is a crisis, why is our government gutting essential services like OHIP-covered virtual care?

Lionel, a parent in Scarborough Southwest, reached out to our office about his recent experience. After getting sick, the only way his family was able to get medical advice and a prescription was through virtual service.

Our government is allowing for profit to be made from essential services like health care and fundamentally taking away the right of Ontarians to publicly funded primary care.

In a CBC article, Leah Littlepage, another Ontarian, talked about her 16-month-old daughter, who stayed out of the emergency room four times in the past year because of virtual care.

The system that you have come up with for virtual care is not working.

My question is, at a time when pediatric hospitals are overrun, especially for infants and babies, and we need to have virtual care service that actually covers these people, like these parents, why is this government taking away options that are available—that are available to save kids—

I am proud to rise on behalf of the good people of Scarborough Southwest and speak to this important bill that I know my colleague from London West has brought multiple times now. In fact, I myself have moved a motion in this House asking the government to do this, and I know many of my colleagues have in the previous term, especially in the midst of the pandemic when the pandemic was raging through and COVID was raging through and many lives were lost.

It’s very simple. Paid sick days save lives. Let me say this again: Paid sick days save lives. We could have saved so many lives if we’d had proper support for our workers, especially front-line workers, many of whom we all—on this side of the House as well—called heroes during this pandemic.

Essential workers across this province—the majority of them, when we talk about front-line workers, are women: hard-working women, low-income. A lot of them don’t have job security. A lot of them make minimum wage and missing a day of work means missing a day of pay, which means whether we’re talking about paying their bills, whether we’re talking about food on the table, rent support, sustaining their family, their kids—all of that depends on that day of pay. It’s very difficult for someone to decide, well, do I call in sick? Do I miss that pay? What am I risking? People risked their lives to go to work just so they could have enough income and to make sure they didn’t lose their jobs.

Throughout the pandemic, I have named individuals, hard-working heroes whom we lost, like Christine Mandegarian, like Sharon Roberts, like Maureen Ambersley, health care workers who were on the front lines, saving other lives and instead lost their lives. I’ve talked to family members who still feel like they haven’t gotten justice because they know there are so many others who end up going to work, risking their lives every single day.

When we have a pandemic like this, and if it ever happens again—and we’re still not done with COVID, Speaker, but are we taking the right measures to protect these workers? If we have an individual—and I have so many stories, and I wish I had enough time to talk about them. Just recently, one grocery worker wrote to me and she said, “I live with five others in my family and we live in a two-bedroom apartment, and, for us, there is no isolation or anything. For me to go and risk, and know that I’m not protected and come back, my kids are at risk.” There are kids who are ending up in the hospital right now with ventilators, and the fact that we are not providing the support to these mothers, these workers, is risking the entire population, risking the labour force.

But it’s also costing us money. I know that maybe the human argument, the emotional argument, doesn’t work for this government, but if we’re going to talk about the money, if we’re going to talk about our health care system, you could do so much by protecting these lives or protecting these workers through paid sick days, and you’ll actually be saving money as well.

The other thing I want to mention before I run out of time is that I had a really wonderful event with migrant workers at Access Alliance, just on the border of my riding in Scarborough Southwest. Access Alliance hosted them, and Deena Ladd from the Decent Work and Health Network was there. Along with her and members from the Decent Work and Health Network, we had the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change and the Workers’ Action Centre, and they presented these wonderful stories of people who are on the front lines, who are working hard, and what they’re going through. I just have to tell you, I wish I could take some of these members on the government side and share with them the heartbreaking stories of so many and what they went through during the pandemic: how people ended up in the ICU, what they have struggled with, especially when we’re talking about migrant workers—who, by the way, don’t even have job security in the type of work they go through.

In the last few seconds that I have, I want to also mention some specific professionals we actually never talk about in this House. When we talk about health care, we talk about nurses, doctors and PSWs, and they’re wonderful and I salute all of them, but today I want to take a moment to talk about the other burnt-out health care professionals who are also exiting the system, and those are laboratory technologists, technicians, radiation technologists, respiratory therapists, laboratory assistants, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and phlebotomists, amongst others. I believe there was a lobby group this afternoon who were here, who were radiation therapists who talked about this. I think it’s important to name them, because they did not get the pandemic pay or the support from the government, but they were also on the front line working hard.

So, please, I hope the government will consider and pass this bill once and for all.

Speaker, let’s talk about what this bill really means. It means that we’re giving up on those who took care of us, our seniors, the people with disabilities and the people who are most vulnerable, and the most vulnerable communities that some of my colleagues have pointed out. So in my short time, I just want to point out the fact that, when we’re talking about a health care crisis, this bill is essentially blaming those who are the most vulnerable people in our province.

No one wants ALC patients to end up in hospitals. No one here does. I don’t, and I know ALC patients themselves certainly don’t. Out of the 6,000 patients who need ALC, only about 1,800 are the ones who actually need long-term care. That means we need to build capacity for long-term care. We need to improve long-term care, and we need to make sure that we have things like inspections, things like staffing. What impact will this bill actually have on the crisis that we’re facing in our long-term care or our health care? It does not solve that problem.

The capacity issue that we face in our long-term care: Donna Duncan, the CEO of Ontario Long Term Care Association, said the following in the Toronto Star. She said that the nursing homes themselves actually do not have the capacity to take up the patients who might end up in these homes as a result of this bill because we’re not addressing the fundamental problem, which is staffing, which is the issue of these homes and which is what’s happening in our health care system.

So what we’re asking for is, withdraw Bill 7. All patients have the right to consent, especially our elders. They’re the people who built this province. These are the people who are the most vulnerable and these are the people who should not be blamed for the crisis that many of the past governments—including this government, because they were in power for the past four years—have created, this health care crisis. We really need to do better by everybody, especially those who are waiting for us to make the right decision.

The fact that there are so many advocates across this province talking about this bill and the fact that we did not have committee hearings—and we actually heard from more than, I think, a dozen people who joined our meeting yesterday, which was a mock hearing just so we could get an understanding of what people are saying. We heard from so many people who talked about the fact that we need to withdraw Bill 7. We need to fix the health care crisis, and the way to do that is to retain and recruit staff. We need to make sure we recognize internationally trained professionals who want to contribute to this province. We need to make sure that we actually help the health care system by investing in our health care system, and we need to invest in our home care. That’s where these seniors and these people want to be. They want to be in their homes, with the care they need.

We are in a health care crisis. Emergency rooms are closing. Hundreds of health care jobs are vacant. The fundamental problem with this bill is that it’s blaming the patient—the most vulnerable, the seniors—for a problem that’s not their fault. Instead of solving the issue, it’s blaming the patient, the seniors. Patients, experts and front-line workers have offered this government solutions. Instead of listening, this government has ignored them all.

Repeal Bill 124. Give them paid sick days. Hire more nurses. Hire more PSWs. You can do so many things. Get internationally trained professionals recognized. These are real solutions to address this problem, not Bill 7.

This government has put a cruel plan forward that threatens seniors with huge fees if they refuse to move hundreds of kilometres from friends and families. My question is, why is this government being so cruel to the most vulnerable people of our province?

I want to thank the members from Mississauga–Lakeshore as well as Mississauga Centre for both of your remarks, and also thank the member from Mississauga Centre for her work in the health care sector and the dedication that she has shown, especially during the pandemic, going back to it. It’s incredible.

I do have a few questions. I know that the things you’ve highlighted are what we’re facing in our province right now in our health care sector. My question to the members opposite—and mainly, I guess, this goes to the member for Mississauga–Lakeshore because I want to quote one of the words that he’s pointed out, which was that they will “ensure” that people will, for example, be placed near their homes, and if there is a payment that someone’s asked for, this bill will “ensure” that that’s not the case. But we know that there are a lot of things that are up to the regulations, for example. How will you ensure that they are within the region of their homes or that they are liking the home that they’re placed in? And how will you ensure that there is no extra payment made?

Ontarians and people across my riding of Scarborough Southwest are anxious. Our health care system is in a crisis. Staffing levels are at an all-time low. We are seeing a mass exodus of health care workers who have been on the front lines since 2020, protecting our province in the face of COVID-19. We’re hearing about ERs closing their doors, patients waiting up to 24 hours. And now, this government is forcing for-profit, private solutions to public problems that people have entrusted us to solve. This is unacceptable.

Every single one of us in this chamber, regardless of party lines, have been entrusted with a responsibility to represent hard-working, tax-paying Ontarians, many of whom have come from across the world with skills and experience and want to contribute to the health care sector. Free access to health care—universal health care—is at the core of who we are as a province and as a nation. It is universal health care that made sure that when my family faced an unimaginable tragedy, we did not fall through the cracks. I know my story is not unique; many share this, many rely on our universal health care.

It is a big part of why I am here today. We all carry an immense responsibility in this chamber to protect the people of Ontario and protect the values that make our province great. And today, I plead. I am calling on the government to protect our universal health care system that makes sure people get the care they need when they need it, and not only when they can afford it.