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.