Thank you to the member for that question. It’s always a privilege to tour your riding and meet with the schools in your areas as well. I think you can see my excitement about the Ontario Learn and Stay Grant, as well as the Premier’s and the Minister of Health’s, but the excitement for students who are looking to go into that field. Imagine considering nursing and to find out that you could have your education paid for if you were open to living in a different area, spending two years there. Like I said, it’s likely that you spend some time there, you start to love that community and hopefully stay in that area.

But looking at how you ensure that we have more nurses and doctors, it’s innovative programs like this, and I think—this is just the beginning of this program. We announced last March, we’ve already expanded it. It was nursing in the beginning; now we’ve expanded to lab technologists and paramedics. I think there’s so much more we can look at doing as this progresses, but we’re already seeing that there’s a huge interest in the program so there will be more to come on that and I think great opportunities to look at other communities—

We are making investments into our hospitals, our long-term-care centres. Under this government, we saw the increase of care to clients in long-term care up to four hours. We’ve also seen the investments, the 60,000 new long-term-care spaces. I’ve seen the investments in long-term-care homes in my area as well, which I know we’re all very excited about, to ensure that seniors have access to long-term care in their communities.

Thank you to the member from Etobicoke–Lakeshore for that important and timely question. I say “timely” because, just last week, I was excited to announce that our government is providing over $10 million to help Mitacs, an organization that builds research partnerships between post-secondary institutions and industry, to create 2,700 paid internships for post-secondary students. We are so pleased to be supporting post-secondary students and partners through experiential learning programs like Mitacs that prepare students with skills and training needed for jobs in an innovative economy. They will not only help prepare students for the workforce through on-the-job learning but will also help to remove the stress of worrying about financial compensation.

Even further, Speaker, these internships allow employers to connect with emerging leaders in their fields, nurture talent and develop their industry.

Investing in skills training opportunities for students and recent graduates is part of our government’s plan to work for workers—supporting Ontario’s economic growth for positioning students and businesses for success.

We have made tremendous strides towards connecting students to work online or in person, part-time and full-time, across disciplines, across Ontario. In the last five years, Ontario has spent over $57 million to support Mitacs to create over 14,000 research internships, and over the next 10 years, we will be investing $500 million to support research opportunities across Ontario.

We will continue to invest in training our post-secondary students to prepare for the jobs of tomorrow, because when students succeed, Ontario succeeds.

Thank you to the member for the question.

As we work to create a strong health care system, we are relying on strong health human resources as well. That’s why we are taking strong measures, specifically in my ministry, to ensure that we are training more doctors and nurses.

For example, the Learn and Stay program will pay for all educational components of a nurse’s education—in order to qualify, and to commit to two years in an underserved area. This will be starting in 2023. This will allow up to 3,000 nurses as part of this program, so it’s a great opportunity for young people to serve in some of those underserved, rural, northern areas.

As well, we’ve now allowed colleges across Ontario to offer stand-alone programs in nursing. Fourteen colleges now offer this program in areas like my own—in Georgian College, Lambton College, Loyalist—great opportunities for young people to be entering into rewarding careers, where we know we need more nurses.

As I mentioned, we have so many opportunities for young people to join the nursing profession. We are offering opportunities for students as well as opportunities for bridging in some of the work that I’ve been doing with the Minister of Long-Term Care, where we’ve invested over $100 million to support students who are moving from being a PSW to a registered practical nurse to a registered nurse, all while working in these careers while we need them in the workforce.

We’re offering opportunities for young people in their own communities—as I mentioned, the opportunity for students to learn in a college and to complete their four-year degree there, close to home. These are opportunities—I know in my own area, where students were at one time leaving to go to a university to finish their two-year degree, usually in a city, and not coming back to our rural communities. So there are great opportunities for colleges across Ontario to accept students, to be able to offer the nursing degree programs.