That answer had nothing about PSWs, nothing about nurses and nothing about the shortage of physicians in our province.

This government has allowed our health care system to fall into such dire straits that a little transparency would threaten our economic prosperity. This government is terrified that public sector workers will have more bargaining power than they will. They’re terrified that even the private sector, flourishing under their protection, could soon be holding them over a barrel, demanding higher rates.

Why? Because this government’s mismanagement has resulted in the highest demand for health care workers in our province’s history. If it sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same trademark mismanagement that’s got the demand for housing—pardon the pun—through the roof. This government can’t make progress on housing, and they can’t make progress on health care. All they can do is hide from the damage they’ve done and try to save their own skin.

Mr. Speaker, will the Premier give Ontarians a straight answer and tell them how many front-line physicians, nurses and PSWs our health care system is missing?

I rise to recognize that today in Canada is national Doctors’ Day. So to all the physicians who have been on the front lines of the pandemic, who continue to fight for us, I want to say that we see your efforts, we thank you and we salute you.

I sincerely appreciate the question from the minister, and I’ll begin by saying as a physician that every member has a right to patient-physician confidentiality. I admire you for acknowledging me publicly, but it is my pleasure to serve both in a political capacity and, of course, if my services are ever required, in a clinical capacity as well.

One of the things that I hope to bring forward as a physician in this Legislature is the fact that I have a unique privilege: When serving in the emergency department, my patients tell me things that they don’t necessarily feel comfortable sharing with other people, because of stigma, because of things that have happened to them in the past. I hope that when I rise in this chamber, I can amplify those voices and tell those stories, and I would humbly ask if you would join me in listening, in helping me to amplify those voices as well, so that we can fight for every single person in this province, not just the ones who can be the most vocal. For me, that is one thing I would hope for.

A close friend of mine shared with me an account just last week of a young woman who had passed out, and so she came to the emergency department. It costs hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars just to register someone in the emergency department, to ensure that it’s adequately staffed and to pay for the services that are provided. Ultimately, after the consultation was complete, the reason that she had passed out was because she hadn’t been able to eat that morning. She couldn’t afford to do it.

Stories like this remind me that up-front investment in things like—sir, you spoke about food insecurity earlier. Investments in things like housing, in food, in making sure that disabled people can access the services that they need, can have profound and massive impacts on their long-term quality of—

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.