Last week, the Minister of Health finally admitted what the people of Don Valley East have been saying for months, that the status quo in health care is unacceptable. What my constituents have meant is that ER wait times, when ERs are accessible at all, are unacceptable. Not having a family physician for 15% of us is unacceptable. And because of this government, there are too many foreign-trained health care workers in my riding who are not getting credentialed. This is unacceptable.

Now, the status quo that the Minister of Health opposes is our publicly funded, not-for-profit health care system. Though she asserts that Ontarians will be able to access health care with their OHIP card, make no mistake, the plan for private, for-profit delivery of health care will harm the people of this province.

We have already seen the harms from for-profit long-term-care homes in Ontario that had significantly higher mortality than not-for-profit. We have learned the harms from for-profit outsourcing of public health care in the United Kingdom, which led to significant preventable mortality, and we have learned the harms from for-profit dialysis centres in the United States. We have learned the harms from all around the world, as reported in Scotland, Australia, Italy, Ireland and even the World Health Organization.

The lesson in all of this is consistent and clear: Health care must always be about patients first and not profits.