This morning I shared the stories of Gloria and Susan, just two of the more than 65,000 Londoners who do not have access to primary care. In her response, the minister talked about the expanded family health team in Elgin, which will help about 1,200 of those 65,000 patients. This is completely inadequate to deal with the scale of the problem and frankly insulting to people in my community, who deserve to see a family doctor in London.

My office gets calls daily from people desperate to find a family doctor or nurse practitioner. Often, they haven’t seen a primary care provider in years. The only solution this government offers is to register with Health Care Connect and then wait indefinitely without ever hearing back about a doctor accepting new patients.

With burnout the number one issue facing family doctors in Ontario, more and more doctors are retiring without a replacement, leaving more and more people without care. When people don’t get the care they need, they are forced to rely on walk-in clinics that book up as soon as they open. They wait hours at St. Joe’s urgent care or have to go to one of our overwhelmed emergency rooms.

Speaker, this government’s tiny expansion of team-based care was described by one family doctor as about as helpful as an umbrella in a hurricane.

This is an all-hands-on-deck situation, which is why the NDP has put forward this motion. We are calling on the government to invest in the number of family health teams we actually need in Ontario. We are urging an investment in administrative staff to help reduce the paperwork burden that consumes about 40% of a family doctor’s time—time that could be spent seeing patients instead. Support this motion.

My question is to the Premier. Gloria moved to London West in 2021 and has an autoimmune disease. For the last three years, she has been registered with Health Care Connect, all while desperately searching for a doctor to help her manage her condition. She told me, “It shocks everyone I know when I tell them I don’t have a doctor.”

What advice does the Premier have for the more than 65,000 Londoners like Gloria who feel hopeless about ever being able to access primary care?

Susan also has a rare autoimmune disease. She lives in London West, and she was informed three months ago that her family doctor was closing his practice at the end of March. Without another doctor to take over, he advised his patients to contact Health Care Connect. When Susan called to register, she was told she must first de-roster with her current doctor, even though he was still practising for three months. Forcing Susan to leave her doctor early, then go potentially years without another doctor, has Susan feeling angry, helpless and very, very worried about her health.

What advice does the Premier have for Londoners like Susan?

I listened to the remarks from my colleague the member for Thunder Bay–Superior North and want to thank her for the issues that she raised and the concerns that she identified with this budget.

One of the issues that we face in my community, in the London area, is a dire shortage of family physicians, primary care providers. We’re short 65,000 family doctors in the London area, which has a huge impact on people’s ability to access the preventive programs and services they need.

I wondered if the member would comment on whether there was anything in the budget to deal with that significant shortage of family physicians across the province and what the people in her community are facing in terms of access to primary care.

My question is to the Premier. More than 65,000 people in the London area do not have a family doctor, including almost one quarter of the patients who go to St. Joseph’s Hospital urgent care, a significant increase since just last year.

Ruqqaiya lives in London West and she has been listed with Health Care Connect for almost two years. She was diagnosed with cancer after an ER visit last year and was treated with surgery. Without a family doctor, she has no choice but to keep going to the ER for all monitoring and follow-up care.

Speaker, whatever this government is doing is not working. How much longer do Londoners have to wait before they will be able to find a family doctor?

Mo Olajide is a nurse and has been looking for a doctor for her family since she moved to London in September 2021. Another constituent emailed me on Friday; she’s pregnant and needs regular care.

Speaker, does this Premier understand that forcing people to go to urgent care or the ER after a serious problem develops is not only costly to the system, but bad for patient health?

My question is to the Minister of Health.

Chris Hodgins lives in London West and had to take his 84-year-old mother to University Hospital ER for severe hip pain. She waited 16½ hours before being seen and then waited two hours more in the treatment room. Another patient with acute appendicitis waited five hours longer than Chris’s mother.

Speaker, how many hours will Londoners have to wait before this government finally acknowledges that our health care system is in crisis? Or does the entire ER have to shut down?

Like many Londoners, a constituent told me that she and her husband have been unable to find a new family doctor. After being turned away from overwhelmed walk-in clinics, they felt they had no other option than to pay to join a private medical service in order to access basic medical care. They have the means to pay but feel that this is fundamentally wrong.

Why is this government more interested in promoting privatized two-tier health care than in making the urgent investments that our public health care system and our exhausted health care workers so desperately need?