I’d like to thank the member from Nickel Belt for her excellent presentation about how it is wise and fiscally prudent to invest in community-based surgical centres. Not only did she highlight the safety and the continuity of care but also the better health outcomes. I would also like to thank the member for recognizing the great work of Dr. Abdel-Rahman Lawendy, the chief medical director of the Nazem Kadri Surgical Centre at London Health Sciences Centre.

Standard operating rooms are required for complex care, where there are six staff per room. They require a full set of sterilized instruments. It costs on average $469 per day, whereas these other ambulatory centres cost $172 per day. It’s 36% of the cost.

This government’s ideological adherence to the for-profit model—I wanted to ask the member, who is this government listening to, if it’s not listening to patients?

I’d like to thank my colleague from Hamilton Mountain for her comments and her concerns about privatization and profitization in our health care system. As well, I would like to thank you for mentioning the importance of publicly funded as well as publicly delivered health care.

Back in March 2022, the Deputy Premier and Health Minister Christine Elliott stated, “We are ... making sure that we can let independent health facilities operate private hospitals.” Then, the minister’s spokespeople jumped in and said, “The use ... of private hospitals and independent health facilities in Ontario is not being expanded or changed.”

My question to the member: Is this an example of the government being accountable or transparent, given that this privatization and profitization is exactly what Bill 60 is doing?

I’d like to thank my colleague from Oshawa for her wonderful presentation.

I want to take you back to March 2022, when Ontario’s former Patient Ombudsman and, at that time, the Conservative health minister, Christine Elliott, almost issued a warning—or, at the very least, let it slip. She stated: “We are ... making sure that we can let independent health facilities operate private hospitals.” Possibly, when they realized how foolish and wrong this was, the minister’s spokespeople said, of privatization, “The use or function of private hospitals and independent health facilities in Ontario is not being expanded or changed.”

Clearly, funding is being cut for publicly delivered health care, as we’ve seen in the FAO’s report—cutting $5 billion—and it’s being put into for-profit health care profiteers’ pockets.

My question to the member is, why did they flip-flop?

I’d like to thank the member from Oshawa for bringing up that really incredibly important question because I will always state that consent is key. Clearly Don was not provided with the opportunity to give consent.

I think as well about an individual from my riding who recently approached me, and they had said that their pharmacist, who happened to be from a Galen Weston chain—shocking; I know this government loves to support Galen Weston whenever they can—was asking about different medications. They were going through this list and, after about five, 10 minutes—I have to hand it to my constituent; she’s very savvy—she said, “Are you doing a meds check on me?” The pharmacist said, “Oh, well, I was going to tell you that at the end of the call,” and she was going to bill OHIP for that meds check without consent. I think it’s in the neighbourhood of $60, but they were doing that and it’s mercenary. Calling people on the phone, pretending to care, but it’s all about the money, isn’t it, with privatization?

I also wish this government would listen to solutions that have been brought forward in this very chamber, like embarking upon a health care human resources strategy and treating nurses with fairness, repealing Bill 124, levelling the playing field, stopping your ideological battle and your attack on health care workers and just letting them bargain.

Do the right thing. Do the fair thing. I know you have it within you. I’ll keep waiting for it.

We have seen again and again—these historic investments that they want to talk about? They’re talking giving yet more money to P3 infrastructure projects. We need to invest in people in our province. That means giving nurses a raise. You talk about this one-time funding, but let’s let them bargain fairly. Let’s bargain reasonably.

Like I said, young, small children understand the concept of fairness; I just wish it wasn’t so difficult for this government. I know you have it in you. I know you understand what’s fair and what’s unfair. So let’s be fair to nurses. Give up your battle on Bill 124.

But this government, when they first formed, started off without a land recognition in their throne speech, they cancelled the Indigenous curriculum writing sessions and they refused to acknowledge September 30 as a truth and reconciliation provincial holiday.

This is a crisis by design because they understand that if they cut and underfund, people will be so upset and so desperately in need of care that they will accept anything that is offered to them. They won’t acknowledge that somebody is skimming off the top, somebody is making a profit, because people are so desperate for care. That’s all on their watch, leaving people in pain.

They’re just leaving it up to chance.

It has been very clearly stated that there is a limited pool of talented, trained health care workers, that there’s a limited pool of nurses. Many have left the profession, and this opening up of these private, for-profit—predatory, quite frankly—clinics will drain yet more resources from the public system. That also should be a tremendous concern, but yet it seems to be this crisis by design. It seems to be as though that is exactly what the government wants. They want the public system to fail, because they want their insiders, the people who are talking to them in the backrooms, the people who want to skim off the system and want to make money—apparently, this government wants them to have their pockets filled. That’s not fair. Our public health care system is the definition of democracy, it’s the definition of fairness, because it ensures that people are going to get the care they need regardless of their ability to pay. Just like education, it’s a democratizing force, and this is completely undermining it.

I wonder as well, is this an attempt to change the channel from recent news? I can’t be sure.

As I begin to close my remarks, I think it’s important that we recognize that we cannot go backwards in terms of public health care. We can’t sit and watch government after government undermining and strangling—it’s like this government is strangling the health care system and then asking it why it’s not able to breathe. It needs to be funded properly.

Let’s look for solutions. Let’s repeal Bill 124. Let’s have a health care human resources strategy, like has been recommended across the province, to recruit, to retain and to return nurses. Treat them with respect, treat them with fairness, and hopefully they will come back. But that’s on you. You need to listen to Ontarians.

I want to conclude my final remarks by again quoting Tommy Douglas. He stated: “Health services ought not to have a price tag on them, and ... people should be able to get whatever health services they require irrespective of their individual capacity to pay.” I could not agree more, Speaker.

I hope that this government will change course. I hope it will listen to Ontarians, who want to see nurses treated well, and embark upon a comprehensive plan to have a health care human resources strategy to recruit, retain and return nurses and fund the system properly.

Don’t maintain your status quo of cuts. Don’t maintain your status quo of not keeping up with inflation. Take that $20 billion you’re hiding and spend it where people need it the most.

What we have here is a question of oversight. There is no reason to think that these different surgical suites could not be within the hospital’s purview. In London, there are operating rooms which are able to operate at this capacity—but the key difference here, and one that I wish you could understand, is that it’s publicly funded and publicly delivered. Nobody is skimming money off the top and putting it in their pocket. I know that’s what you love, but that’s something that is wrong. It’s care or profit—you stand for profit, we stand for care.

And perhaps they’ll stay.

As a result of Bill 124, we heard from multiple delegations and we’ve heard from many different organizations that nurses have left in droves because they feel insulted. For many years, as I’ve said, as the past Liberal government strangled and underfunded the health care system, they have been holding up that system by the virtue of their good nature, by the virtue of their hard work. That’s absolutely wrong. Ten years to go without a raise? It’s unconscionable. It’s an honourable profession. It’s a caring profession. It takes a strong and a capable person—but I don’t think that anyone deserves to be treated the way that this government has. Bill 60 could have taken the opportunity to rectify that, to admit that mistake—it’s not.

We also heard from multiple delegations about the wage disparity between home care, long-term care and acute care within hospital settings. This does nothing to do that—in fact, as I’ll get to in my comments if I have time, it actually makes it yet worse.

In terms of profit-making, no one should look forward to or hope for somebody else to become ill because that will line their pockets. That’s disgraceful. I think we should all be able to agree with that. But this bill opens the door for these profiteers, people who will be doing just that. It’s almost worse than ambulance-chasing. When someone is sick, our health care system pays for that care. These are people who want to skim off the top. When they skim these public dollars off the top to put in their own pockets, that means yet less care. They latch on to the public system, and they’re going to slowly bleed it of resources.

We saw this with home care and long-term care. When privatization was suggested as a model for that, it was touted as the greatest thing since sliced bread. They said, “There’s going to be choice. There is going to be competition, and prices will stay down.” Well, we know that the exact opposite is true. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed what has been going on for many years. The Wettlaufer crisis exposed what has been going on for many years. And yet, this government refuses to treat seniors with respect.

Conservatives and Liberals have always been very comfortable bedfellows. There has long been a Liberal-Conservative consortium when it comes to this for-profit care model.

In 2017, Liberals tried to pass legislation to allow for community health facilities, and guess who supported them? The Conservatives. Of course they did, because they have always been in it together when it comes to wresting public dollars from our health care system into private pockets. Fortunately, this bill died at committee. That was 2017. Here we are, in 2023. Oh, they’re not called “community health facilities”; they’re now called “independent health facilities.” It’s old wine in new bottles, but it’s the same program, isn’t it?

There has been an ideological blind adherence to this for-profit model, and I want to point out in my remaining time some of the myths about private health care that have been put forward, because this government has been relying on some very deep misunderstandings.

Our Premier said, “We just can’t as a province keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result.” Well, “doing the same thing” was underfunding health care and strangling it of resources. Of course, it’s not going to have a different result from the Liberals, but this is the result that he wanted.

Funding health care properly and ensuring health care would be different, ensuring that money was spent on front-line care, ensuring it was spent on those nurses would be different from the status quo. But you’ve maintained the Liberal status quo, so congratulations on that.

Myth number two: Private clinics are needed to clear the backlog. This implies by its very nature that publicly funded surgeries are at full capacity, but we know that hospital hallways are not full of people waiting for a knee replacement or a hip replacement. In fact, there is a complexity of care, but this government won’t fund that care properly.

I also want to point out some concerns that I have with this legislation.

Schedule 2 attempts to deregulate health care settings. It expands the definition of “regulated health professionals” to include those who are not part of a regulatory college. Just when you thought that this government could not attack, insult, degrade, demean and humiliate health care workers more, they’re trying to take away their titles. They’re actually making it so that, according to schedule 2, this definition of “physician” becomes nebulous; this definition of “registered nurse” becomes something different. Does that mean, by this, that anyone can be deemed to be this role within these settings? It will be interesting, because, quite frankly, the oversight isn’t going to be here, because that is something that is also not included properly within Bill 60.

It’s an honour for me to rise today to add the voices of the great people of London North Centre to this incredibly important debate. You see, people in London take their health care very seriously. We have wonderful institutions; we have wonderful education programs that bring people into the health care system.

I want to also thank the member from Nickel Belt for her remarks in clearly stating for this House that the NDP, His Majesty’s official opposition, is the party of Tommy Douglas, and it is the party that brought medicare to Canada and to Ontario. It seems most appropriate that I should begin my remarks with a quotation from Tommy Douglas. It reads, “I felt that no” child “should have to depend either for” their “leg or” their “life upon the ability of” their “parents to raise enough money to bring a first-class surgeon to” their “bedside”—and I could not agree more.

You see, Speaker, over the last number of years, both with this government and the government prior, we have seen an overt and deliberate destruction of medicare, but nothing like we’re seeing in Bill 60. This is taking it to the next level. This was not an election promise; this was not even an election threat by this government. This has been a crisis of Conservative design. This has been wrought by a staged process. And the COVID-19 pandemic has been often used and trotted out in this chamber as a convenient excuse to explain why they’re doing what they’re doing, to justify why they’re doing what they’re doing, to excuse why they’re doing what they’re doing. But nobody believes these lines.

What we’ve seen are cuts, year over year, to the health care system. In the second stage, we’ve seen a weakening of the workers: the people who provide that excellence of care, the people who have held up a system that has been cut and eroded and neglected year over year, leaving that in a situation where the only option is private, independent health facilities where people will profit off someone’s ill health.

Let me state here for the chamber: Publicly funded and publicly delivered health care is not a profit-making business, nor should it ever be.

In terms of the cuts to our system of care that we’ve seen, Ontario’s spending on health care is the lowest among all the provinces, despite the fact that we are the richest province. A solution, an antidote to this would be for this government to properly fund health care, like the other provinces—to not be the last, to not be bringing up the rear, to not be making it over the finish line after every single other province. Ontario could do better—but it’s not under this government and certainly not under the last government.

We also have the lowest number of health care workers per capita in Canada. The solution to that would be things like repealing Bill 124, treating nurses with fairness, treating nurses with respect, letting them have the opportunity of free collective bargaining, which is their charter right. Imagine that: being fair to nurses.

We hear a lot of words, but we don’t see the actions. We hear a lot of words from this government saying how they respect health care workers, and they ought to, but their actions tell an entirely different story, and when actions and words don’t match up, that should make everyone concerned.

We heard, for many years, this talk of hallway medicine, and this was very much a Liberal invention. We saw cuts year after year—not keeping up with inflation and not making sure people were getting the surgeries they needed. I remember, when I was first elected, people and seniors coming to my office, living in pain, waiting years and years for knee replacements and hip replacements, and they told me—and we could clearly see—it was a result of Liberal underfunding. It was a result of them placing arbitrary caps on the number of joint replacement surgeries that could be performed in operating rooms. Surgeons were ready, willing and able to do it. But they chose to let these people languish in pain. Pain changes a person. Pain makes you less than yourself. It affects everyone around you, and not only just that—not just the social, not just the emotional, but also the health impacts. If you’re not moving in the way that you should, if you are overcompensating, then it has a dramatic result on the rest of your body, and so your health gets worse and worse and worse. And that was all on the Liberal watch. But this government, after they took power, did not fix that. They maintained that status quo. They are responsible for that status quo. We hear a lot of talk about them saying the status quo is not working; they have upheld it. They have kept it the exact way it was under the Liberals and made it yet worse.

Back when the Liberals were in power, they would blame situations—they would blame the increasingly older demographic; they would say there’s a complexity of care. They would say that medicine is getting better, people are living longer—and all of these things are true, but those are not things you should blame. Those are wonderful things, but you should fund accordingly. You should make sure that people who have raised our families, built our communities, have the care they deserve when and where they need it—because they deserve it the most.

It’s ironic, too, that they’re actually blaming the medical system, which has helped these people live longer, and then not funding it. It’s a very strange situation.

Recently, the Financial Accountability Officer, an independent officer of this Legislature with whom I’m sure you’re all familiar, released a report showing that this government is going to underspend on health care by $5 billion over the next three years; they’re going to underspend on education by $1.1 billion over the next three years; they’re going to underspend on justice by $0.8 billion over the next three years. They’re going to be hoarding money. They’re going to be hiding money. They probably wouldn’t have admitted this had the officer not mentioned this—almost $20 billion in an unallocated contingency fund, so that it’s not subject to public scrutiny and they can spend it like drunken sailors wherever they wish, but obviously not on education, obviously not on health care. And yet we have their solution in Bill 60. They’ve maintained the status quo of cuts and underfunding and disrespect for workers, and their only solution is privatization.

This is all going according to plan, and that is very much my concern. This government has been responsible, over the last four and a half years, for maintaining a health care system that has been on its knees, and now this government is effectively kicking it in the stomach. It’s really disgraceful that the health care workers who have worked so incredibly hard throughout the pandemic, who have sacrificed, who have kept time away from their families, were living in fear, were absolutely working hour upon hour upon hour to make sure that we were healthy—and then they deliver them Bill 124. COVID-19 was a one-two punch, but this government made it yet worse. It’s almost impossible to think that this government could take a crisis that enveloped the entire world and make it yet worse with Bill 124.

I had the opportunity to travel with the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs across this province, and we heard from multiple delegations across many different industries, with many perspectives. I can tell you, Speaker, that not one delegation supported Bill 124—not one. Nobody said it was a good thing. Nobody was even agnostic. I think the words that are most apt and will always stick with me were that Bill 124 was “demeaning,” Bill 124 was “degrading”—but more than anything else, Bill 124 was “humiliating.” Nurses feel humiliated by this government.

Across all of these delegations, people want nurses and health care workers to be treated fairly. It should be easy. It should be a knee-jerk reaction. Small children understand the concept of fairness; it should not be difficult for this government. Yet this wage restraint, this targeted attack still is on the books. Even though the Supreme Court has struck it down, they still continue to appeal it. They’re wasting money on this ideological battle. It’s ridiculous.

Pay people what they’re worth. Treat them with respect. And be fair.

Thank you for the presentation.

The Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs just finished travelling the province for pre-budget consultations. We heard from many delegations who are deeply concerned about the impacts of Bill 124 and the health care human resources crisis that has been created by such. Not once did the committee hear any support for Bill 124. Not one delegation supported this demeaning, degrading and, as one delegation called it, humiliating piece of legislation. We heard about the nurses who left and the health care human resources crisis that needs to be addressed. There’s an opportunity here for this government to undo the damage through Bill 60 that they have created with Bill 124.

My question is: Why is this government more concerned about health care profiteers, instead of people who need care from highly skilled nurses?