The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Election 2025: Diagnosing Ontario's Health Care Shortages

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Premier Doug Ford cited President Donald Trump's tariff threats as the reason for the early election call. But according to a recent Nanos survey for CTV News, the top concern for Ontarians is health care: 28.1 per cent said that's the issue that will influence how they'll vote. So what kinds of health-care challenges are we facing in the province, and what do the parties propose to do about them? To discuss, we'll be joined by: Dr. Sarah Newbery, a family physician in Marathon and the assistant dean of the Physician Workforce Strategy for the Northern Ontario School of Medicine Erin Ariss, provincial president of the Ontario Nurses'Association Dr. Dominik Nowak, president of the Ontario Medical Association and a family doctor at Women's College Hospital and Dr. Jobin Varughese, president of the Ontario College of Family Physicians and interim assistant dean of primary-care education for the School of Medicine at Toronto Metropolitan University.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Renew your 2.0 TVO with more thought-provoking documentaries, insightful current affairs coverage, and fun programs and learning experiences for kids. Regular contributions from people like you help us make a difference in the lives of Ontarians of all ages. Visit tvo.me slash 2025 donate to renew your support or make a first-time donation and continue to discover your two point TBO. Premier Doug Ford cited President Donald Trump's tariff threats as the reason for the early election call. But according to polls, voters rank health care as the top issue they say will influence how they'll vote. And with a doctor and nurse shortages, emergency room closures, and other pressing challenges,

what prescription do the parties have to fix our ailing health care system? Let's dig in with Erin Aris, Provincial President of Ontario's Nurses Association based in Toronto. In Northern British Columbia, Dr. Sarah Newberry, a family physician in Marathon, Ontario, and the assistant dean of the Physician Workforce Strategy for NAWZM, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. And with us in studio, Dr. Dominic Novak, president of the Ontario Medical Association and a family doctor at Women's College Hospital. And Dr. Jobin Barghese, President of the Ontario College of Family Physicians

and Interim Assistant Dean of Primary Care Education for the School of Medicine at Toronto Metropolitan University. Welcome to you both in studio and welcome to you both online and for joining us. Let's start off, I'm sure we all know the recent coverage in Walkerton, Ontario, hundreds of people lined up in the snow as early as 2 a.m. in the morning, chance to get a spot for a family doctor. Fortunately, as we know, they are not alone. Let's look at some data to see what the gaps look like.

So in 2023, 2.5 million Ontarians were without a doctor. In 2026, three years later, that number ballooned almost double to 4.4 million Ontarians without a doctor. And that's that's next expectation of course around 2025. All right. So according to the Ontario Medical Association, Ontario needs 3,500 family doctors and we need them now.

So I'm going to come to you Dominic, how do we go about doing that? Part of this is going to be making family practice attractive again for medical students and then also for existing doctors. I'm president at the OMA but also a teacher for medical students and residents. What I'm hearing is that they're seeing the reality of the unsustainable workload, the fact that family medicine is no longer seen as a viable career for many of our colleagues in this province. So let's make it attractive again to be a family doctor.

That'll bring family doctors in. But just as importantly, it'll keep the doctors that we already have in this province ready to work doing the practice of family medicine. All right. Jobin, I'm going to quote Dominic. He had mentioned, you know, it's sort of like a hunger games when it comes to recruiting doctors. And it's not, you know, we have the scene of people waiting in line but let's talk about the municipalities and the communities that are fighting to get

these doctors to come to that. With that, how do we go about, it's a big issue, but how do we go about doing that? I think it's scary. 2.5 million people is just not okay. There's too many people who are waiting to get a family doctor, and we need to get to the point where everyone has access. But like Dominic said, it's critically important that we get those family physicians supported by teams and having the right technology at their fingertips.

I'll use an example. If I am working with a patient who had a car accident and now has a concussion, I'm gonna have paperwork to do for their insurance company, for their work, to be able to get them back to work. Having things like an artificial intelligence scribe could allow me to document more effectively and be able to help get that person back to work

at a sooner rate. On top of that, if we had things like centralized referral systems, it would also allow us to more effectively pass through the health care system. All right. Dr. Sarah Newberry, we know you've been in this game trying to recruit when it comes to the north. This is not an issue. And here we have Joe been talking about AI. We're into a whole new world here. It's very interesting. But I'm curious with the fight that you guys have and what you guys need to do, what is sort of the solution in terms of fixing that shortage?

I think this is a really important question, Jayan. And I think one of the pieces that feels profoundly important is the creation of a rural and northern health workforce strategy. So I think what Dominic and Jobin have highlighted are a couple of tactics that are important that would make practice more manageable, but there is a whole swath of tools and opportunities that we have at every level from the federal government and tax incentives to the provincial government and how we create infrastructure supports like Dominic and Jobin have referenced, to recruitment and retention

incentives, to more robust team-based care. But part of what we need is to align all of those tactics in a coherent strategy that we can implement and drive over these next four years to achieve the target that's been laid out and that we can measure and evaluate as we move forward. All right, Sarah, I'm going to stick with you. The OMA also estimates that almost 40% of those practicing now are considering retirement in the next few years. I was in Wawa a few months ago and I was talking with Dr. Cotterill, someone who's been practicing

with his partner since 1998. And, you know, when you start thinking about succession plans and what's next, there's a lot of concern there. And I'm curious, should we be trying to convince them to stay? Is that part of the solution? Or is it trying to get new people in? How do we, what do we do with that sort of, the people that have been there who've made those connections, what should we be doing with them?

So I would say absolutely it is not an either or it is a both and. We have made some really important decisions as a province about the expansion of medical schools and postgraduate training programs. We've made some really important decisions about how we will welcome and support internationally trained physicians to the province. But we need to remember that medical education is not bums in seats in lecture halls. It is a shoulder to shoulder apprenticeship with clinicians, with doctors who have experience in the community. And so if we want our medical trainees to practice in communities that need them most,

our medical trainees to practice in communities that need them most, we absolutely need to be retaining the doctors Cotterill and Oberoi and Wawa and seasoned clinicians wherever they are so that they can do that training and apprenticeship of our medical learners so that they can mentor new grads at the transition to practice so that they can support those new grads as they enter and ideally help them to be retained in practice. Absolutely need to focus on recruitment, but without retaining our current clinicians, recruitment won't be as successful as it should be. All right, Dominic, I'll get your take, yeah.

You know what, as Sarah talks about this concept, gravity, when it comes to recruiting and retaining doctors. Those seasoned clinicians, the teachers, are oftentimes the ones that are actually pulling in other doctors into the community. So without that sense of gravity, it's actually really hard to recruit new docs, especially in rural and northern communities. What is the sales pitch to your friends then in that case? Yeah, that's one of the first things that doctors ask when I meet with docs across the province

in terms of their joy in work. And it means something like, is there a foundation for the healthcare system there? Is there a team that I could join? Are there other doctors there? And other health professionals that I can rely on for support. That's what doctors are looking for when they're looking for where to set up shop in Ontario.

All right, I'm going to open up the bullpen. I want to talk nurses. All right, Aaron. Data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information shows that in 2023, Ontario had 651 registered nurses per 100,000 people. The Ontario Nurses Association says that's the lowest staffing ratio in the country. And it's getting worse.

I kind of want to, before I ask you how we're going to attract and retain, how did we get here? And I know it's been a, there's a lot of things that have happened, but how did we get here? How did we get here? How did we get here? Since 2018, we've just seen failed policy after failed policy. We've seen underfunding of the health care system broadly, in particular, primary care, as everyone else has discussed

today. And when you have a shortage of 25,000 registered nurses in the system, you can imagine how this plays out for primary care and home care in particular. They're far worse off than other sectors. All right. So with that being said, how can Ontario attract nurses and retain more nurses. I think it's important to note that the the Ford government spends the least per person in the country on health care at just over $4,800 per person. And that would require a further investment from this government

of 15.5% just to bring us to the average. So what does this look like for primary care? Well, the answer is in primary care for nurses and health care professionals, that would require an additional $2 billion investment in wages just to bring them up to what hospital sector workers make, which is completely unacceptable. So when you look at working as a teen in primary care, it's very difficult to incentivize working in this sector when their wages are sometimes almost 30% less than the hospital sector. They're having a hard time providing for their families. So they go where where they can make the best wage

All right, and not where they would prefer to work. So you talked about money I want to show a little bit of some information of the four parties and the promises that they're making to boost numbers of GPs so the PCs are promising 305 primary care teams at a cost of 1.8 billion. The NDP, 3,500 doctors at $4 billion. The Liberal Party at 3,100 doctors at $3.1 billion. And then the Greens, 3,500 doctors at $3 billion. You can see there's a little bit of a difference in price there from the NDP and the Greens, same number of doctors.

All right, Jobin, the PC pledge is a bit different. 305 primary care teams. Why the distinction? Well, I can't speak to why the distinction, and I don't really think rating one or another is going to be worthwhile. What I do think is important is that it's clear everyone sees this as a clear need to speak about.

And now implementation is the important part. So significant problems require significant investments. We need to get to the point where these numbers start actually working towards seeing the boots on the ground and getting to the people that need to get the care. If I were to use the example of diabetes, the complexity that can occur means that it's not enough

to just say we're gonna put a nurse here and a pharmacist here and they're not gonna integrate with family medicine. We need to actually integrate them and allow family docs and communities to decide how those teams will best work. So the money is important and it will need to go to many parts including compensation especially given the fact that family docs have been below inflation in terms of their compensation rate and I know that the Ontario Medical Association is working with the government on that.

But I think that this is where having family physicians supported by teams that they can co-create with their community, integrate and work together and have those technologies work together as well. All right, Dominic, I'll get your take on that as well. Does it make sense with sort of those numbers that they're laying out? Is there a distinction between those 305 primary care teams versus just single numbers in terms

of doctors? Yeah, what I will highlight here is that I think it's possibly historic that all the parties are talking about connecting everyone to a family doctor. And that's the start, the foundation of our healthcare system. If you have a family doctor, getting preventions, cancer screening done on time, you end up using the emergency room less often, save hospitals for the people who need them. You live longer and at a lower cost

of the health care system. So that's potentially historic with the right leadership. And voters should decide who do they trust to bring our health care system to that future state of a family doctor for everybody? What I will say in addition to that is we also need to look at how do we offload pressure from our emergency departments and then also how do we get our waitlists under control? I'm not hearing a lot about that even though I'm really glad that we're talking about a

family doctor for everybody in this province. Alright, we'll talk about ERs shortly but but I'm going to stick with you, Dominic, because I want to ask, a Nick Nano survey asked, which party they trust to most deal with a doctor shortage? 28% for the Liberals, 26% for the PCs, 21% for the NDP. Those numbers, let's put them aside. I'm just curious, which party do you think has the most comprehensive plan? Yeah, what I will say is that this is a problem that's actually resulted from successive governments

over years and decades. And what we need is a comprehensive, ambitious plan across party lines to get our health care system back on track. And that means a family doctor for everybody, emergency departments that are open, and then wait lists that are under control. That's what we're talking about. And that's where voters need to make the call. And I think for those of us in healthcare leadership, we're ready to work with anybody who assumes office in next week. All right, Sarah, I'll get your take on that as well. Yeah, I think what Dominic and Jobin have spoken to is really important. I think the

only thing that I would add is that sometimes those numbers, like $3 billion, can seem big and overwhelming. But when we're talking about investing in primary care, we are talking about money that will be saved downstream. So if we can provide really good primary care, prevent serious illness, support people in the community. We will save money in the hospital sector and in other spaces where we are spending a lot of money now.

So this three or $4 billion, whatever the number is, that we invest now in primary care is an investment, not a cost, and I think it's really important that we're clear about that. The other thing that I would say is as we focus on the health of the economy, we need to remember that, and we learned this well during COVID,

that our robust and vibrant economy depends on having a healthy population who can engage in the workforce. And so as we think about that investment in primary care, those dollars will also pay off in a vibrant economy for this province. All right, Erin, for-profit nursing agencies. We have spent the province more than 1.5 billion dollars a year on them. And I know Dr. Newberry just said, $3 billion sounds like a lot of money,

1.5 sounds like a lot of money. But should we be changing that? Should we be looking at how much we're spending on these for-profit nursing agencies? Absolutely. Really, again, I could point to why nursing agencies cropped up, but I won't go into that. That's a history lesson and more time than we have today. But what you see is primary care isn't

exempt from using nursing agency. In fact, there's a celebrated report, the ECHLR report that describes that nurses working who are agency nurses in primary care are making 41% more per hour than a regular unionized or non-unionized nurse or nurse practitioner in the sector. So it would be better invested in the nurses who work in this sector, in the health care professionals that work in this sector, and the healthcare professionals that work in this sector, and not spending as much to private agencies to fund. Chobhaphand, I'll get your take on that as well. Well, I think privatization actually, in general, pulls away people from the public sector and

unfortunately goes to people who are usually more healthy and pulls away from people who need the help more. I think we need to use the investments we have to really strengthen our public system and ensure we get equitable access for all. Private nurse practitioner clinics popping up across the province, could this be part of the answer in terms of our primary care challenges?

I don't think we have a stance necessarily on that. But what I will say is that nurse practitioners, nurses, all play an important part of the team that we would want to build. And as we've talked about, implementation is critical. So ensuring that when we have nurses, nurse practitioners working together with family medicines that can lead those teams,

that's where we're gonna see a lot of benefit and allowing our teams to strengthen and allow them to really help the most amount of Ontarians. Tell me. What I will say is when I'm meeting with doctors across the province, one of the strongest recruitment tools is actually having a team there to support family practices.

That means doctors working together with nurses, pharmacists, social workers, all sorts of health professionals working together for people's care. And that's actually another form of gravity that pulls in doctors into the communities that really need those docs. All right. Hospitals. Let's talk about it. 2024 was apparently the province's worst year for emergency room closures. One out of every five hospitals with an ER or urgent care center had unplanned shutdowns.

Sarah, why is the situation getting worse? Yeah, I think this is a really important question and I think it largely has to do with staffing challenges, both physician staffing challenges, but nursing staffing challenges were actually the cause of more of the closures of emerged departments across the province. I would highlight as well that this is particularly a rural issue. Almost all of the service closures were in rural communities. Most of them were in southern Ontario, but some of them were in northern Ontario, where the distances to the next nearest Emerge department can be frighteningly long. And so I think, again,

to the point of the conversation that we had early on in this conversation, we need a strategy that is going to focus on the whole of the health workforce that is going to help us to understand what we need to provide the care that Ontarians expect not only in primary care, but in their nearest emergency department and hospital setting across the province.

Alright, Erin, I'll get your take on that because we mentioned nurses as well who are part of that issue. Yeah. Until the end of 2021, I worked full-time as a registered nurse in an emergency department. So, for 20 years, in fact. I can tell you that at that time when I left, it was chaos, chaos and near closures frequently. So you can imagine over 200 closures of emergency departments last year in Ontario, I would really be frightened to see how many times emergency departments almost closed due to nursing and

physician shortages without an investment in staffing. There's no end in sight to this either. Dominic, do the parties have a plan to fix this? I'm waiting to see details on on those those plans, but I will say this has a severe impact on people. Some time ago I was meeting with a family who's taking their grandfather with signs of a stroke to the local rural emergency department that's close to home for them. They got there saw a sign on the door that said emergency department closed with the next one hours away and we know in

weather like right now in in Canada they're not getting there at the same day. Right. And when you're having a stroke, if you're a loved one, every minute matters. That's what we're dealing with. This is a matter of life and death for many communities. And we're talking about rebuilding those foundations.

Family doctor for everybody, an emergency department close by that's open. And then wait lists that are under control. That's the standard that everybody in Ontario should expect of the healthcare system. We can get there, but it'll take the political will to do that. I'm a little curious about in terms of the parties,

have we gotten any details on hospitals? Is there a little trickling of some hope from parties in terms of what they're offering in terms of aid for hospitals? You know what, I'd leave that up to the political leaders to answer. What I will say is that in Ontario we actually do have a lot to be proud of, of our health care system. If you can get through the wait, if you could get a family doctor, if you could get into

that hospital emergency room, you get world-class care from world-class doctors and nurses and other health professionals, world-class hospitals, some of the best in the world, and you get world-class outcomes as well. So actually we have a strong foundation. It's the people behind the scenes that make that foundation strong, but we need the political will

to get our healthcare system back on track, starting with the weights and access, and those are the types of foundations that we're talking about here. All right, Chet, I'm gonna go to you. And I think the biggest thing is, is that without having a clear foundational support of primary care, family medicine,

we're gonna continue to see these problems. And the ERs are a major symptom. By having a strong foundation and putting the investment into family medicine, we're gonna see a lot of that wait list come down. We're not going to see people having to go to the ER because they don't have a family doctor. 2.5 million Ontarians without a family doctor

means that they have to go to the ER, and those closures are lives lost. So I think this is a critical situation. I think the significant investments that we've heard about are extremely important, but the implementation is really where it comes from. We need to be seeing that not only our family doctors the significant investments that we've heard about are extremely important. But the implementation is really where it comes from. We need to be seeing that not only are family doctors

going to be brought in, both retained and recruited, but they're gonna be supported by a team, the right team that's gonna work best for the patients around them, and they're gonna be surrounded by the right technology that allows them to best work in a way that helps patients and improves the efficiency of the healthcare system. All right.

Sarah, all these issues, as you mentioned, are more acute in Northern Ontario. In Sault Ste. Marie, a new nurse practitioner run outpatient clinic had opened, providing care for roughly 10,000 people who lost their family doctors. People are driving hours, as we had mentioned, to see a GP in some areas without pediatric care. Women are actually temporarily relocating in the last weeks of practice.

I think there's sometimes always a disconnect here in southern Ontario to what the issues are in northern Ontario when it comes to, you know, there's a lot of praise and thanks to rural generalists. They are the Swiss Army knives of the medical field. We know that very well and the teams that are there. I'm curious, I had asked the gentleman here, in terms of the parties,

but what parties have we seen anything? Are they saying anything that will be useful? That gives you some hope on this topic. Yeah, I think this is a really important question. And I think maybe because you've raised the issue about, sort of recognizing that the North is different, I will just remind the TVO audience that Northern Ontario is massive. It is the size of France and Germany combined. It is 25% larger than the state of Texas. And yet across that huge geography, we have a population that is less than the population of the city of Ottawa.

So less than a million people over 850,000 square kilometres. And that geography creates some of the complexities that you've touched on, women having to relocate to be able to birth their babies, and a variety of other challenges. I think when I think about what political parties can and should be doing, I think Dominic has touched on it, this needs to be a commitment from all parties. Northern Ontario needs specific attention because the reality of Northern Ontario is different, not only in terms of our geography, but also in terms of the complexity

of the population. People in Northern Ontario on the whole are older, poorer and sicker than the rest of the population in the province. And so the needs for healthcare services and the needs for those services to be delivered locally are particularly significant. And I would love to see each party create a specific northern and rural health workforce strategy and health strategy. At one point, we did have a northern health equity strategy that has sort of quietly slipped away pre-COVID and we haven't brought that back and I think it's time to do that before Northern Ontario falls farther behind than it currently is. I also am going to just pick up on one other point because it is specific to rural and that is it's not entirely specific to rural but is is predominantly a rural issue. When we're bringing a family doctor to our rural community

we are also through that family doctor often staffing the emergency department. Because rural generalists, the Swiss army knives of healthcare, do work in the office and they work in the hospital and they're in the emergency department and they're in long-term care and they're doing palliative care at home and they're often providing obstetrical services. So the magnitude of impact when we lose a family doctor, like Dr. Cotterall or Dr. Oberai from Wawa, is not only on patients in primary care, but is on the risk to the emergency services to that community. And using Wawa as an example, their next nearest emergency department is two hours south of them in Sault Ste. Marie or two hours west of them in my community in Marathon.

So the impact of family physicians in our small communities, both in primary care and the hospital sector, can not be underestimated. All right, Dominic, I think, did you wanna add in on there? I was smiling because I was just in Sault Ste. Marie, and I saw exactly this phenomenon play out where the entire community relies on a handful of doctors.

There are docs that are staffing family practice clinics because they're often family doctors, but also working in the emergency room, delivering babies, doing end-of-life care, all these sorts of things. And they're so deeply committed to their communities that they're filling their community needs, just like doctors do, especially family doctors do, all across the province, especially in those rural and northern places. All right, we're going to talk a little politics.

I know you guys have been really good, avoiding a little bit. But I'm going to ask, Erin, I'm going to start with you. The PCs have been in power since 2018. Based on their health record, do they deserve re-election? No. No, they don't. I'm supposed to be nonpartisan, but I need to be truthful.

From a nursing and health care professional standpoint, they do not deserve re-election. And Ontarians deserve better. And that includes the workforce that we represent. So we're at a scary time and I would like to see some change for the better. Otherwise, I don't know where we'll go from here. Sarah?

I am excited about the commitment to primary care by all parties. I am excited about the decision to have launched the primary care action table with Jane Philpott. I will trust that whoever is re-elected will continue that profoundly important work in service to all Ontarians. And I am really hopeful that whichever party is elected will continue that commitment and stop making healthcare a partisan issue. Dominic. Yeah, look, the challenges that we're seeing in healthcare have been over years, decades, successive governments.

And the reality is that as Canadians, we want to be proud of our healthcare system. But over the years, we've neglected our health care system. And that includes, in the last few years, under this government's watch, what I will say is that there's a tide of change right now across parties and the recognition of the importance of a connection

to a family doctor and then rebuilding confidence in our health care system. And that's what we need to continue to focus on if we're going to restore confidence in a health care system that And that's what we need to continue to focus on if we're gonna restore confidence in a health care system that we can be proud of again as Canadians. Jim. I think it's pretty clear that we need, every party has talked about how important it is

for family medicine to be top of mind. And the fact that we're there means that we're in a really good place. I'm really hopeful that the dominoes have been set up. It's about getting to the point where we can push them through. I think the idea of the primary care action table is a great step.

I think whichever party comes into power, it's gonna be critically important that we keep family medicine at top of mind. The Ontarians have already made healthcare the top issue in this election. And I think that means that we're in a place that we can't afford to wait any more. There's no more years, no more decades to wait. We need urgent issue now. People are hurting now. We need to see the change. And I'm hopeful to see that because this has become such an

important nonpartisan issue. It's pretty clear that we need to get to the point where every Ontarian has access to a family physician, that family physician needs to have a good, the right size team around them, and the right technology around them. All right, I want to pick up on a note actually that Dominic had mentioned. He said, restore confidence.

But I'm curious on a personal level, how do you restore joy? For you guys, it is clearly what we've talked about. There's a lot of burnout. There is a lot of potential dark clouds that are floating. And there is hope. But how do we get joy back for you guys as care doctors? One of the Ontario College of Family Physicians' main things

is to bring back the joy and have family physicians thriving. And the way they can do that is actually be able to spend more time with their family, more time with their patients, more time not necessarily doing the day-to-day, the 19 hours of administrative paperwork that they have to currently per week. These are the things that are driving that down and why family physicians are constantly saying, I love my work. I don't love the work associated with my work.

And so we have technology, we have tools and tactics that can be used now. And the way that we're going to bring that joy is to allow people to really turn away from the computer screen and turn back towards their patient. Because that's where that joy is, is being able to be the highs and the lows with that patient and be able to really bring that forward. So allowing physicians to do what they trained for

and not be a clerk, not do things that they haven't trained for. All right. Erin, I want to get your take on that. How do we bring back to joy? Well, I couldn't agree more from a nursing perspective, from a healthcare professional perspective. We want to be able to spend time with our patients, safe time with our patients. We want to also go home and do the same thing as our colleagues in medicine are doing. We want to be able to go home and spend more time with our families. But be present in the moment. Be present when we're giving care. Have everything manageable, our family life and our professional life.

And that would bring joy back. All right, we have a couple minutes left. I have one question. I'm going to start with Sarah. What would you say to Ontarians who are making health care their ballot issue? Which party should earn their vote? I think they're going to have to look at each of the party platforms and consider those strongly for people in Northern Ontario. I think there are some differences in the party platforms that

focus on the North and those will need to be considered by them. I think looking at the parties and their commitment to moving forward with both hope and courage to make the changes that we need to make urgently is going to be really important. And each citizen voter will develop their own sense of that from the political party platforms that they review. But I hope that they'll review them and look at the sense of urgency, the sense of commitment to healthcare in each platform and make their informed decision based on that. Erin?

Oh, I would like to say make an informed decision. Make your decision based on recent history. Look at what policies have been enacted. Ask yourself how you feel today. Do you have better access? Do you have better care than you had in 2018? And look at each party, individual. Look at every platform, every individual leader, and see. And make an informed decision. Dominic?

What I'll say is that there's no room for denialism in what the state of our healthcare system is. And our political leaders need to actually accept what's going on on the ground in our healthcare system to move beyond that. And we can build to a better place. We can get to a world where we're proud of our health care system again in Ontario and as Canadians. I wonder who got the last word. Well, thanks for that. And honestly, I think Ontarians, you've made this the health care issue.

You've made this issue the election issue. So choose the party that's going to help you get to the point where implementing having every Ontarian with a family physician that's supported by the right team and the right technology is the reality. Look at the platforms and go from there. All right, Aaron, Sarah, Dominic, Jobin, thank you so much for joining us online as well as in studio for this important conversation.

Thank you for having us. Thank you. Thank you so much.