I’d like to present this on behalf of the Ontario Nurses’ Association. The petition is entitled “Petition for Better Staffing, Better Wages and Better Care in Ontario’s Public Hospitals.” It reads:

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas registered nurses and health care professionals are the backbone of Ontario’s public health care system; and

“Whereas nurses and health care professionals are fighting for better staffing, better wages and better care in Ontario’s public hospitals; and

“Whereas the government has the power to direct the funding and priorities for the Ontario Hospital Association in this bargaining process;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“Support nurses and health care professionals represented by the Ontario Nurses’ Association in their collective bargaining with the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA) by demanding the OHA reach a negotiated agreement with nurses that results in better staffing, better wages and better care in Ontario’s public hospitals.”

I fully support this petition. I will affix my signature and deliver it with page Sophie to the Clerks.

Resuming the debate adjourned on May 16, 2023, on the motion for third reading of the following bill:

Bill 85, An Act to implement Budget measures and to amend various statutes / Projet de loi 85, Loi visant à mettre en oeuvre les mesures budgétaires et à modifier diverses lois.

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?

Speaker, I rise today to support this motion. My colleagues have explained some of the many reasons why this is necessary.

We have operating rooms that are sitting empty because we don’t have the workers needed to staff them. At best, this is incredibly problematic, fiscal mismanagement on the part of this government.

In Ontario, when you look at our operating rooms—it’s like a person who has a beautiful, high-end car and decides to go and park it out in a field so they can get into somebody else’s tired old limousine that won’t take them where they want to go and will charge them extra once they get there.

Bernie Robinson, ONA’s interim president, said it best: “There is no health care without the dedicated care from nurses and health care professionals. A bed is just a bed without the staffing and support to ensure the patient is receiving quality care.”

It’s clear that this government has no plan to actually address the health care crisis. Look at what happened in Walkerton. Look at what happened in Chesley. Look at what happened in Listowel. They are shortchanging rural and small hospitals, and they’re shortchanging health care. Look at the 80 ER closures over the summer.

Across the province, we heard during the pre-budget consultation that Ontarians want this government to invest in a health care human resources strategy. We have the lowest nurse-to-patient ratio per capita in the entire country.

Shortly after I was elected, I was approached by seniors who had been waiting years—years—in pain for joint replacement surgeries. They were left languishing on that wait-list as a result of the Liberal government, who put those arbitrary caps on the amount of time that they could spend in those ORs. And this government is going down the same path. It’s not the answer.

This government could say yes today—they could say yes to a plan that can be implemented immediately—but they keep saying no. They want people to settle for a system that’s less effective and that will cost them more. They want to waste money. It’s wasteful to underuse our public health care infrastructure. We on the official opposition side want people to expect more. Let’s not go backwards.

I urge my friends across the aisle to protect our values, protect Ontario’s integrity, protect our health. Let’s build a province where companies want to invest. What is required is a publicly funded, publicly delivered health care system so companies know they have a healthy workforce, so they don’t have to pay for that extra—an educated workforce, so they don’t have to always retrain.

Support this motion today. Say yes.

I rise today in support of our opposition day motion because it’s clear that Ontario is in the midst of an unmitigated health care crisis. Recently, the member for London West and I had the opportunity to meet with the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario at their event Queen’s Park on the Road. I’d like to share some of the information that we gleaned from that evening, because it’s important that we listen to the front-line workers who are dealing with this crisis day in and day out, and who are not affected by this government’s spin.

We heard stories about a fourth-year nursing student who was paired with a nurse as their mentor who had just two months of experience. Asking nurses who barely know how to be a nurse to perform as an educator—that’s the staffing crisis that we are in.

This government has introduced legislation that has had a dramatic and drastic impact on nursing morale and the amount of people who have decided to leave the profession altogether. In fact, RNAO shares that 69% of nurses, of respondents, are choosing to leave the profession entirely, and 95% want to go into another field somewhere else.

There are stories about people who had been on a wait-list for seven days in home and community care. Another example is of a patient who needed daily wound care and had to wait 28 days to get their care. In fact, they had to turn to an emergency room.

Because there is a lack of a health human resources strategy from this government, it’s no wonder we’re in the crisis that we are in. People who are waiting for home care are left in no position but to go to an ER because they’re simply waiting far too long.

We talked to emergency room nurses who shared that they had upwards of 46 patients by 5 p.m. and they had nowhere to put people. We’re talking that the hallways were full; the closets were full. There were people who were waiting for care and there was simply no place to put them, because ERs, unfortunately, cannot turn people away from the health care they need. When they’re not able to get the home care in their community, they simply turn to an ER.

They also mentioned that the London Health Sciences Centre had recently posted that there was a 20-hour wait for people to be seen in emergency rooms, and, unfortunately, that’s not an accurate portrayal. They shared with us that it was up to 48 to 72 hours before people received the care they needed.

I urge this government to support this motion because we need a health human resources strategy to make sure that we’re responding to the health care needs of Ontarians immediately.