I appreciate the opportunity to speak further about this critical priority of our government, and that is the proposed Your Health Act, 2023, an important piece of legislation to support better patient care. It will enable elements of the Your Health plan, which provides a very strong and comprehensive blueprint for improving our health care system.

We know that the sooner our fellow citizens have access to the care they need, the better the outcomes. That’s why the proposed legislation also supports another key pillar of our plan for connected and convenient care: hiring more health care workers.

Ontario has one of the most dedicated and highly trained health care workforces in the world. Day in and day out, well-trained and well-supported doctors, nurses, personal support workers and more keep Ontarians healthy and safe, and hiring more health care professionals is the most effective step toward ensuring individuals and families are able to see a health care provider where and when they need to.

One way we are supporting this is by expanding the Ontario Learn and Stay credit. We know that there are unique health care challenges in small, rural and remote communities, and that recruiting and retaining health care workers in these regions requires a dedicated approach. And so last spring, we launched the Ontario Learn and Stay Grant to help these communities build their own health care workforces. This program covers the costs of tuition, books and other direct educational costs for post-secondary students who enrol in high-priority programs in more than a dozen growing and underserved communities and commit to work in those communities when they graduate. That is the key to the program. This year, we are expanding the program, beginning in spring 2023, targeting approximately 2,500 eligible post-secondary students who enrol in high-priority programs. These include nursing, paramedic, medical laboratory technology or medical laboratory science.

We are also taking steps to help those who want to work here in Ontario. There are many health care workers from across the country, and indeed, across the world, who want to come here and work in the province of Ontario, so we are making innovative changes to make it easier and faster for them to begin working and providing care to our citizens right here in our province. With proposed new as-of-right rules, Ontario will become the first province in Canada to allow health care workers registered in other provinces and territories to immediately start providing care without having to first register with one of Ontario’s health regulatory colleges. This important change will help health care workers overcome excessive red tape that makes it difficult for them to practise in Ontario.

We will also help hospitals and other health organizations temporarily increase staffing when they need to fill very, very important positions, vacancies, or manage periods of high patient volume, such as during a flu surge.

We are continuing to make it easier for internationally trained health care professionals to use their expertise here in Ontario. And we are working closely with regulatory colleges to make it easier and faster for qualified health care professionals to work here as well—again, without facing unnecessary barriers and costs, including requiring colleges to comply with time limits to make registration decisions.

Our many initiatives to recruit, retain and optimize health care workers will ensure we have the right number, the right type and the proper distribution of health care resources and professionals in our province to meet the health care needs of all Ontarians.

Speaker, we know that reducing wait times for surgeries and procedures will ensure that Ontarians have faster access to care. Lengthy wait times for surgeries are one of the biggest challenges in our province. While Ontario leads the country in the number of people who receive the surgery they need for hip and knee replacements, we still are not yet meeting the right benchmarks. So we are doing more to make it easier and faster for Ontarians to get the publicly funded surgeries and procedures that they need. We are moving forward with innovation, because the status quo—the ways of the past—do not work and will not work. By further leveraging the support of community surgical and diagnostic centres, we will eliminate surgical backlogs and reduce wait times.

As a first step, we’re tackling the existing backlog for cataract surgeries, which has one of the longest waits for procedures in the province. Four existing community-based centres located in Windsor, Kitchener-Waterloo and Ottawa have been identified as successful applicants to a recent call for applications. These centres will be able to support an additional 14,000 publicly funded cataract surgeries each and every year. These additional volumes make up to 25% of the province’s current cataract wait list, which will help significantly reduce the number of people waiting outside appropriate wait times for this surgery. Our government isn’t just talking about it; our government is taking bold, innovative action and getting it done.

We are also investing more than $18 million in existing centres to cover care for thousand of patients, including more than 49,000 hours of MRI and CT; 4,800 cataract surgeries; 900 other ophthalmic surgeries; 1,000 minimally invasive gynecological surgeries; and 2,845 plastic surgeries.

And I would like to emphasize that this is all publicly funded. The cost of receiving these insured services in community surgical and diagnostic centres is covered by an Ontario health card, not a credit card. We are committed to universal, publicly funded health care.

In committee, the Ontario Medical Association reinforced that: “The Auditor General’s recent report on outpatient surgeries in Ontario emphasized the experience in other Canadian jurisdictions that community surgical centres can treat 20% to 30% more patients within the same amount of time.”

The status quo is not working. Bold, innovative action must be taken and is being taken under the leadership of Premier Ford and Deputy Premier Sylvia Jones. We do need to be bold, we do need to be creative, and we do need to be innovative. We need to build on the spirit of collaboration on display across the health care sector. We need to have the courage to look to other provinces and countries and borrow the best of what the world is already doing. We will do this by increasing access to services in health care settings near you, like in pharmacies, by increasing the number of assessments and treatments that can be provided by your local pharmacist without a doctor’s appointment; by expanding the number of community surgical and diagnostic centres; by cutting wait times for services like MRI and CT scans and cataract surgeries; and by expanding access to home and community care services so you can stay safely at home.

Speaker, we know the only thing better than having care close to home is having care in your home. We have heard loud and clear that you and your family want better and faster access to home care services. Last year, we dedicated over $1 billion to expand access to home care services over the next three years. This funding will benefit nearly 700,000 families who rely on home care annually by expanding home care services while recruiting and training more home care workers. I can say with pride, Speaker, that for my late mother-in-law and my late mother, whom we lost at the end of last year, in 2022—we saw the improvements that our government’s policy made in the first term, and I know that many, like my late mother-in-law and my late mother, will benefit and their families will benefit by this $1-billion investment that will affect as many as 700,000 families. That is making a difference. That’s getting it done for our fellow citizens. That’s the innovative, bold action in publicly funded health care that Ontarians expect and need. That is moving beyond the status quo. It is the right thing to do, and it is the right time to do it.

This investment and this expansion in home care and home care workers will help prevent unnecessary hospital and long-term-care admissions and therefore shorten hospital stays, because there’s a ripple effect in each measure and each investment that we make, and that is a positive ripple effect across the entire health care system. Most importantly, it will provide families with the choice to have their loved one stay with them longer or to facilitate their loved one staying in their home longer. That is an important choice, and it’s a choice that respects dignity and love for our fellow citizens.

We are also working with Ontario health teams and home and community care providers to establish new home and community care programs. Your home care plan should and will start as soon as you set foot in the hospital or other health care setting. Connecting home and community care through these teams will expand the reach of health care professionals all the way to your front door and will ensure that you start to receive these important services sooner.

These investments and initiatives are only part of the solution. We know we need to do more to expand and improve home care services across the province, particularly in rural and remote areas.

We will continue to make investments to ensure you and your family are able connect to home care more quickly and easily when you need support.

Sue VanderBent, the CEO of Home Care Ontario, said, “Home Care Ontario applauds the government for recognizing the critical role home care plays in Ontario’s health system. Today’s plan says it best: ‘The only thing better than having care close to home, is having care in your home.’ Now is the time to put those words into action. The government can capitalize on its historic investments by fast-tracking funding to home care in order to stabilize and grow the sector.”

That is quite an endorsement from Sue VanderBent, the CEO of Home Care Ontario. That is an important recognition of the impact that our government is making with these bold, innovative investments.

Faster access to emergency care, Speaker, is another key priority as I move into this area. We continue to find innovative ways to reduce wait times and make it faster and easier for Ontarians to access timely care. Part of that solution in that regard is to divert individuals from emergency rooms, when it’s safe to do so, and then provide them care and treatment in the community. This takes pressure off the emergency care departments of hospitals, it supports our health care workers on the front line, and it makes a difference—literally a life-saving difference—for our fellow citizens in acute and emergency care.

In more than 40 communities across the province, we have approved 911 patient care models for mental health and addictions and palliative care patients that provide paramedics more flexibility to treat certain patients who call 911 at home or on-scene in the community rather than in emergency rooms. And we are having success: Patients diverted from emergency rooms through one model received the care they needed up to 17 times faster, with 94% of patients avoiding the emergency room in the days following treatment—that is radical and important and positive change. Based on the proven success of the program, we are now working with key partners to expand these models to different patient groups, such as people with diabetes and epilepsy. These initiatives are helping to divert patients from emergency rooms and are reducing repeat hospital visits, which helps reduce patient wait times and ensures these hospital beds are available for those who need them the most.

This is innovation. This is positive change. This is making publicly funded health care better for all. It’s a shared treasure among us all, and we need government to lead the kind of change that this government is leading to make sure we get it right.

We are also helping to reduce ambulance off-load times at hospitals through investments to support dedicated off-load nurses and other health care workers, to allow paramedics to drop off patients more quickly and be available to get to their next call faster; building new hospitals and adding more beds; relieving pediatric pressures on hospitals; improving and expanding long-term care; supporting end-of-life care; and expanding access to mental health and addiction services in our communities—I’ve seen those investments make an incredible difference for the better in my riding of Durham and in Durham region generally. We know that there was a record new investment in Oak Ridges Hospice, and the positive ripple effect upon that for end-of-life patients and their families is quite remarkable. And our government has been repeatedly applauded by our community for that investment and for the investment in expanding access to mental health and addictions, because of the many challenges our fellow citizens face who are burdened with that challenge.

These are the priorities under Your Health plan, Speaker, which will ensure Ontarians have faster access to the care they need. We know that, this year alone, we have close to $80 billion in total new investments in our publicly funded health care system. This government doesn’t just say it; this government gets it done.

And to ensure that we are building a system that works for all Ontarians, the province will continuously measure our progress, including tracking the ability of people to access services like primary care and mental health care and diagnostic tests, and to also track the time spent waiting in the emergency room. We can and will expect improvement in all facets of our health care system. We will also track how we are expanding our health care workforce to ensure it grows as our population in Ontario grows and ages.

Speaker, as we continue to roll out the Your Health plan, which is supported by the proposed legislation introduced this week—oh, not introduced today or this week, but this is third reading, of course. As we continue to roll out the Your Health plan, we remain focused on one fundamental goal: to provide Ontarians with more connected and convenient access to health care when they need it and where they need it.

Thank you, Speaker, for the allotted time today.