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.

Barbara Savage is 84 years old and lives in London West. She recently received a sudden and shocking diagnosis of stage 4 breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy in February. With tubes dangling everywhere from her chest, she was discharged and told a nurse would come to her home the next day. Speaker, 11 days later, a nurse finally came. When the tubes filled with blood, Barbara’s daughter had to google how to drain them herself.

Does the Premier believe that this is an acceptable standard of home care?

When Barbara and her daughter frantically called ParaMed, they were told no nurses were available. Thankfully, Barbara did not develop complications, but many patients do, forcing them back into the hospital.

Will this government admit that its failure to address the home care worker shortage, its refusal to drop the unconstitutional Bill 124, is putting the health of Ontarians like Barbara at risk?

I’d like to thank all of the citizens of London West who signed a petition to stop the government’s health care privatization plan. It reads:

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Ontarians should get health care based on need—not the size of their wallet;

“Whereas” the Premier “and Health Minister ... say they’re planning to privatize parts of health care;

“Whereas privatization will bleed nurses, doctors and PSWs out of our public hospitals, making the health care crisis worse;

“Whereas privatization always ends with patients getting a bill;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to immediately stop all plans to further privatize Ontario’s health care system, and fix the crisis in health care by:

“—repealing Bill 124 and recruiting, retaining and respecting doctors, nurses and PSWs with better pay and better working conditions;

“—licensing tens of thousands of internationally educated nurses and other health care professionals already in Ontario, who wait years and pay thousands to have their credentials” recognized;

“—making education and training free or low-cost for nurses, doctors and other health care professionals;

“—incentivizing doctors and nurses to choose to live and work in northern Ontario;

“—funding hospitals to have enough nurses on every shift, on every ward.”

I fully support this petition. I will affix my signature and send it to the table with page Harry.

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?

I rise today to share the story of London West constituent Cathy Melo. Cathy has been waiting since 2019 for a knee replacement. She lives with a tremendous amount of pain. She can hardly walk. She’s unable to work. She contacted my office and told me that she has been put on strong painkillers, but she feels very uncomfortable taking opioids for the long-term basis. She’s seriously considering asking for assisted suicide if she doesn’t soon get relief from pain. She asked me about accessing knee surgery at the Nazem Kadri centre for ambulatory care, which is operated by London Health Sciences Centre. This is a model that solves the crisis that we are finding here in this province with people like Cathy, who are unable to get access to the surgeries they need.

The Nazem Kadri centre is a publicly delivered facility that operates under the auspices of the hospital. It has all the hospital safeguards and oversight in place. It opened in early 2020. It has performed 4,000 procedures—the first of its kind in Ontario. It currently has two operating rooms. It is in negotiations with the province to expand to six operating rooms so that they can do more of these procedures and they can expand from very low-complexity, minor procedures for foot and ankle into those hip and knee replacements that are so terribly backlogged in Ontario.

Instead of approving the funding for the Nazem Kadri centre to expand their ORs, this government is looking to shift public dollars to private, investor-owned corporations where shareholders will make the profits—and patients won’t get the relief that they need.

Speaker, investments in facilities like the Nazem Kadri centre actually save public dollars. There has been an evaluation done that says the costs of traditional operating rooms are about $469 per patient; in an ambulatory care centre like Nazem Kadri, under the London Health Sciences Centre, the costs are $172 per patient. So the province could invest in ambulatory care centres like Nazem Kadri at hospitals across the province, and they would save dollars on operating costs, and they would improve patient care.

The other findings that have come out of the Nazem Kadri centre are that patients spend less time in post-op recovery. There is better planning in those operating rooms, because they know the time that each procedure is going to require, so they are able to go through 10 to 15 procedures methodically each day in each of the two ORs.

That is the kind of solution that would really make a difference for people in this province like Cathy, who are struggling with the terrible pain of hip and knee replacements and are unable to get access to the surgeries they need.

That is the investment that this province should be looking at. That is why they should be supporting our motion today that calls on the government to fund and fully utilize public operating rooms instead of moving to further privatize hospital operating room services.

Last week, the member for London North Centre and I met with RNAO’s Middlesex-Elgin chapter, and we listened to the nurses who attended that meeting. These were nurses who worked in home care, long-term care. They worked in emergency and pediatric emergency. They worked in the ICU. They worked offloading patients from ambulances. They worked in public health. It was a mix of experienced nurses, student nurses, nurse educators. They told us that they are exhausted, they are burned-out, they are done, and they have no faith that anything the government is going to do will help make a difference. They saw the growth of hallway medicine under the Liberals, and they have seen the weaponization of Bill 124, legislation that directly targets a predominantly female workforce and tells health care workers, tells nurses, that this government does not value them, does not respect them and does not care about the demoralization they feel after almost three years of a pandemic and the workload pressures, the stress and the violence that they face every day on their job.

Speaker, I hear daily from Londoners who contact my office who can’t find a family doctor, whose routine screening tests were cancelled, whose surgeries were postponed. I hear from worried parents who are reaching out to my office, asking me what is going to happen if their child becomes seriously ill and they have to take that child to a children’s hospital in London where there are waits of hours—hours-long—with a desperately ill child. Imagine how you would feel as a parent, knowing that if that child had to be admitted to an ICU bed and they’re over 14 years of age, it may be to an adult ICU bed or it may be to an ICU bed in another community altogether.

Speaker, we have heard the Minister of Health say that this surge was expected, that the overwhelming of pediatric emergency rooms is not a surprise to this government, that the number of children being ventilated is nothing to worry about, that they have a plan, and that plan, this government claims, is so good that no additional resources or measures were necessary in the fall economic statement.

We just heard the parliamentary assistant talk about the recruitment programs that this government has put in place. But I have news for this government: Investing public dollars to recruit workers who don’t stay in the health care profession won’t do a thing to shore up the health care workforce.

What we need to do is compensate them fairly. We need to improve their working conditions. We need to support them with appropriate mentorship programs, training programs, other programs. We need to repeal Bill 124. These are the measures that would really make a difference.

I call on this government to support the motion before us today, to consult with unions and health sector stakeholders to develop a multi-layer health care worker recruitment and retention incentive package that includes short-, medium- and long-term solutions. We need to do everything possible to recruit, retain and return health care workers.

Speaker, London West parents are worried. One mother wrote to me: “Parents are looking for guidance from our leadership right now and we are getting nothing. As a parent to a three-year-old son, I am terrified when I see the news about pediatric ICU beds.” Another said, “The state of our health care system, particularly pediatrics, is horrifying. As the mom of a toddler who has been sick with COVID, hand foot and mouth, and pink eye in the past six weeks, I am terrified.... While we have been lucky to not have to go to the ER yet, I am fearful of what we will experience when we arrive.” What she will experience at London’s Children’s Hospital is a stressful hours-long wait in a crowded emergency room that was built to handle about 100 visits per day but is being overwhelmed by 200 or more sick children—double the usual volume.

Parents of teens admitted to ICU now face the prospect of admission to an adult ICU bed, which has ICU nurses concerned about taking on teen ICU patients without specialized pediatric training.

Children’s Hospital emergency room director Dr. Rod Lim warned, “It may get worse before it gets better. I think November and December are going to be tough.”

Speaker, London parents are asking me, “What is this government doing about this crisis?” From the budget that was tabled yesterday, my answer is, clearly, “Not enough.”

My question is to the Premier.

Amanda Molnar’s 20-year-old son is blind and non-verbal and has complex medical needs. He has had serious pneumonia three times since June. About a week ago, Amanda had to call an ambulance for him and was told that a backlog at the ER would mean at least a 15-hour wait at the hospital.

Does the Premier believe that a 15-hour wait for emergency health care is acceptable?

Does the Premier believe that his government’s failure to deal with ER wait times is risking the health of patients like Amanda’s son?

My question is to the Premier. This government’s failure to deal with the health care crisis is not just affecting hospitals; it’s hurting patients who rely on home care as well.

This month, Robin Floyd’s son, who is vision-impaired and has a heart condition, went for surgery at London Health Sciences Centre. After being discharged with a drainage tube, he was told that a home care nurse would come the next day to check the incision and drain the tube. After countless phone calls and endless frustration, Robin finally managed to get a home care appointment nine days after her son had his surgery.

Does this government believe that that is an appropriate standard of care?

Kim’s story is not new and not unique. The VON told me they can’t meet 50% of the referrals they get. Why is this government completely ignoring the long-standing problems in home and community care?

I appreciate the comment from my colleague because he is exactly right. What this bill does is allow a long list of actions that can now be taken without the consent of a patient that will coerce or pressure alternate-level-of-care patients to feel that they have to leave the hospital and move to a long-term-care home, and the only restriction is that they cannot be forcibly handcuffed, physically restrained and physically transferred from the hospital to a long-term-care home.

So I understand why seniors are terrified of this bill, and I understand why experts and advocates also have raised those concerns.

Health care workers are leaving. They’re leaving because of this government’s low-wage suppression policies that are driving them to retire early or leave the province.

I don’t think there’s any question that hospitals, alternate-level-of-care beds, are not the greatest place for people to be, but neither is a long-term-care home that is not of the patient’s choosing—a long-term-care home that likely has availability because no one wants to go there. We all know of those long-term-care homes that became notorious during COVID-19 because of their abject failure to protect the residents who lived in those homes.

Unless this bill is accompanied by a huge effort to improve PSW wages, to make those jobs good jobs, to improve supports for seniors in long-term-care homes, moving vulnerable people from one situation of crisis in a hospital to another situation of crisis in a long-term-care home will do nothing to solve the problem.

Clearly, I do not think it is okay to allow the provision of personal health information to any entity without the consent of the person whose information is being shared.

I did want to comment on the fact that private sector long-term-care homes are very likely to be the biggest beneficiaries of this bill, because many of the long-term-care homes that have the shortest waiting lists, that will be able to accommodate these alternate-level-of-care patients, are those private sector homes that other people don’t want to go to. They are the homes that were exposed as having the worst protections in place for seniors during COVID-19.