Welcome back, Doug! Did you miss us?

Nineteen weeks to be exact.  

In fact, the last time the Ontario legislature was sitting was way back in early June, not long after you called and won a snap election to get the mandate you technically already had to deal with President Trump’s tariffs.

So, while your MPPs were away from Queen’s Park for close to five months, we just wanted to let you know about a few things you might have missed.  

The staffing crisis you refuse to address isn’t getting any better. And without mandated staffing levels that exist in other provinces and jurisdictions throughout the world, patient care will suffer. The resulting stress and burnout have seen many nurses and health-care professionals leave their jobs, the province or the profession altogether, exacerbating this already dire situation.  

It's not surprising then that violence in the workplace is also at catastrophic levels in health care, with a recent national survey from the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions showing that six out of 10 participants experienced job-related violence or abuse at least one in the previous year, often with little to no accountability from their employers. No one should have to go to work to be verbally and physically abused – or worse – and yet it’s a constant reality for nurses and health-care professionals.  

It’s one of the critical issues our feisty Victorian Order of Nurses members are bringing to the forefront as they head into negotiations this fall with an employer that’s already refusing to proceed to arbitration should a settlement not be reached. They may be a small group, but they have the power of every one of ONA’s 68,000 members and 18,000 student affiliate members behind them.  

As do the dedicated nurses and health-care professionals from the North York Family Health Team, who have been forced to strike because the additional funding your government sent to their employer specifically for retention and recruitment (with no accountability) is instead being used to make up for their own financial mismanagement. These struggling health-care workers are left with nothing.  

And our hospital members? They received an appalling arbitration decision in September that not only provides insulting wage increases, comparing them to retail clerks and office workers and pushing them further behind, but fails to deliver on safe staffing ratios. This forced contract is a complete betrayal of collective bargaining. 

We know what you’re going to say, Doug. That these 19 weeks weren’t a holiday for MPPs. That they go back to their constituencies and do important work. And we know that many do. Nepean MPP Tyler Watt also travelled back to Toronto from Ottawa just to meet with ONA in person because as an RN himself, he understands that we have solutions for what ails public health care.  

Conservative MPPs though? Not so much. In fact, several ONA members tried throughout the summer to arrange meetings with their Conservative MPPs to discuss your government’s ill-advised decision to close supervised consumption sites, ignoring the overwhelming evidence that they save lives.   

In some cases, it took weeks to get a response. Isn’t that their job during their excessive time out of the legislature? Are they scared to meet with us? 

We aren’t fooled by your tactics to divert Ontarians’ attention from these serious issues and your government’s very obvious plans to further privatize our public health-care system by, among other things, promising to ban municipal speed cameras that the province’s mayors say save lives. 

But if any Ontarians are, ONA and our members are only too happy to tell them the brutal truth every chance we get, including right here on F-Word.  

After all, it’s only another few days until your next extended break.