The Ben Mulroney Show - Politics in Ontario -- an MPP ejected and connecting patients to doctors

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

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to help grow Canada's economy. Learn more at pathwaysalliance.ca. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Thanks so much for spending a little bit of your Tuesday with us. Yesterday was an odd day in provincial politics here in the province of Ontario. Our premier was walking to a, he was in a parking lot, and he was walking towards where he was going to be part of an announcement. And while he was in the parking lot,

he was given some information. about a member of his caucus, MPP Chris Scott. Apparently, according to the information given to Doug Ford in that moment, MPP Chris Scott was charged by the Sue St. Marie police force with spousal assault with a weapon. We'll get into all the details at a moment, but that's all Doug Ford needed to hear. He ejected him from the caucus in that moment while he was walking to the podium. and the story is confusing. The story is uncomfortable.

You never like to read anything like this. Even how it was released was uncomfortable because the suit police, they refused to say what the charges were. Yeah, yeah. And Ford's office didn't want to say what they were either. They said talk to the suit police. And they just said, yeah, no, he's been charged, but we're not going to say what the charges are,

which is they never say the names of the victims, but they do always say what they're. the charges are. I mean, it could have been jaywalking for all we know. It took a while. But eventually they said they charged him with a spousal assault with a weapon. What is the weapon you ask? It's a child's high chair.

I guess that's a weapon. It can be. I guess it's a weapon. And obviously that's spousal abuse, which is. Oh, he, listen, he could face up to 10 years in jail. And he was released yesterday on a 5.3. thousand dollar bail with strict no contact condition. So I guess his home that he shared with his wife is in Sue St. Marie, but he also has a condo in Toronto. So the rule is assuming

his wife is not at the condo in Toronto, he can stay there. But yeah, he faces charges of assault with a weapon and assault. Yeah, 10 years in prison. That's what he could be facing. So this guy is 35 years old. He is a, um, a rookie. MPP, and he was handpicked by the Premier to run in that riding, narrowly, and I mean by just I think less than 100 votes or just over 100 votes, 114 votes, narrowly winning Sue St. Marie by 114 votes. Here's where the politics start coming in, because the NDP wants him to be, to be fired completely.

They want him to leave the legislature. The liberals are stressing the presumption of innocence, but acknowledge that if he's convicted, his seat would have to be vacated. I think the premier did everything he needed to do, which was, okay, you are before the courts for a pretty, pretty bad crime. Any time a man expresses violence towards a woman, that is, in my mind, a bridge too far. and that person does not belong sitting with the political party of the premier so he he told him you can you can you we're no longer in our caucus so he can sit as an independent and look

he has not been convicted uh everything is alleged so why would he have to lose his job at this point if he is convicted he absolutely of course he's going to lose his job and he'll probably go to prison. But in the meantime, he was elected by the people of that area and he is going, I guess, going to do what he needs to do to quit himself of his responsibilities as well as he can. This change in the caucus does nothing to shift the balance of power in at Queens Park. The PCs still hold a huge majority with 79 seats. But it's not a twist. He, This guy was a longtime PC insider, formerly a top aide, chief of staff in multiple ministries. And I guess having been so well respected within the party and within the political machinery of the PC party,

he was asked to run and ran successfully. So basically he was well ingrained and well known within the party. He might not be a household name. In fact, his name created a little confusion yesterday because he's, his name is Chris Scott. but it's also Chris Van Scott. Yeah, Chris Van Scott. Yeah. So it's a very long name.

He's got multiple middle names and his last name is actually Van Scott. Van Scott is sort of Dutch. They put van in front of it, right? Yeah. Meanwhile, so, all right, so that's going on with the PC party. The leader of the opposition just survived a leadership review. She got, what, 68% of the vote. So from what I understand, she's sticking around.

She's not going anywhere. She's vowing to take down Doug Ford. Okay. Sure. Listen, I appreciate the optimism. I don't know when that's going to happen. It'll have to happen at the next election, barring some sort of scandal. This government ain't going anywhere. They ain't going anywhere. But that's, so she got 68% of the vote. And what was a week ago, Bonnie Cromby got 67, 57. And that she decided that was not enough to keep her job. But Merritt Stiles has decided that with 68% support at the leadership review. She is in a safe enough spot to continue on as a leader of the opposition, which I think absolutely. She's, you know, she maintained the position as the official opposition, even though, and

their vote, if you'll remember, they got, what was it? They got less vote than the liberals, but it was so much more efficient that they were able to get so many more seats and they take up the position. of the official opposition at Queens Park. So is this a good thing, do you think, for the NDP? Obviously, the conservatives have been in power for a while. The liberals are in disarray. The, and so the NDP, to be able to have to keep their leader and to say, no, we are steady.

Yeah. And otherwise, I mean, the conservatives are looking at a couple of parties. There are two main opposition parties, which are, have no chance of uprooting him in the next election. Well, yeah, the next election is a long. a long ways away. But in the meantime, I mean, they, they are strong and united at Queens Park as the official opposition. The liberals are going to be searching and trying to figure out what to do next. I mean, this is their third leader in five years, something like that. It's, it's a little bit crazy. But what do any of them have to do to take down forward?

Well, I mean. They have to offer something different. Yep. But sometimes after a certain amount of time, governments just, they get to the end of their life, you know, it's, there's, it's just the people have decided, all right, you've had your kick at the can and it's time to go. I'm not suggesting that that's going to happen to Doug Ford, but that does tend to happen after this is three majorities in a row, that that's pretty significant for this party and pretty significant for this leader. And so, you know, if he wants to run again, I'm sure he's got complete control over that party. And if he wants to remain the Premier of Ontario

and the leader of the PC party, I do not know that anybody there is going to say you don't have the right to do that because he's the guy who took them to the promise line. As they said about Justin Trudeau, Justin Trudeau took that party from third place to first place and therefore he didn't owe anybody anything, which was one of the reasons it was so hard to dislodge him.

And Doug Ford has built the progressive conservative of party back into the dominant force in provincial politics in the largest province in this country. So Ford has been, he's been in office seven years, three months right now. I mean, it seems like, it seems a lot longer than that. You're talking about eventually people work their way through. But that's not even top five. I can't, I can't believe some of these numbers. So Dalton McGinty was there just over nine years. John Robarts, years, four months. So about the same amount of time as Dalton McGinty. That was in the 60s.

Yeah. Leslie Frost from 49 to 61, 12 years and six months. Bill Davis, 13 years and 11 months. So almost 14 years. And then here's the winner, Sir Oliver Moet, 23 years, 11 months from 1872 to 1896. I don't believe anybody is going to break that record. No, I don't think so. I don't even think you would consider Bill Davis back because that was in the 70s to mid-85, the modern era. Because I think we're in a different era now than we were back then. Oh, of course.

Absolutely. We absolutely are. There's a different political era going on. And, yeah, so for, I mean, Ford, what he has accomplished is pretty remarkable. All right, well, we are going to stay on the provincial tip coming up how Ontario's Minister of Health plans on connecting you to a family doctor. Don't go anywhere. by BetterHelp. Let's be honest. We've all shared our problems in some pretty funny places,

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In the 70s, four young women were found dead. For nearly 50 years, their cases went cold. I'm Nancy Hicks, a senior crime reporter for global news. In the season finale of crime beat, I share how investigators uncovered shocking evidence of a serial killer. and hear exclusive interviews with the killer's family. Listen to the full season of Crime Beat early and ad-free on Amazon music by asking Alexa to play the podcast Crime Beat. Welcome back to the show and yesterday on this very show, we had a discussion about some very troubling numbers around people availing themselves of Ontario emergency rooms.

The numbers were that 300,000 Ontarians left ERs last year without ever getting treatment. And one of the reasons so many people were going to ERs was because they do not have access to family doctors. As a matter of fact, right now we're living in a world where roughly 2.3 million Ontarians don't have a family doctor. Well, our next guest is looking to fix that, improve that, tweak the system and make it a lot better. for as many Ontarians as she can. Please welcome the Honorable Sylvia Jones, Deputy, Premier, and Minister of Health. Thank you so much for being here, Minister.

Great to be with you, then. Okay, so the numbers are troubling, and it seems like things are not going in the right direction. Talk to me about what your government is planning to do to stem the tide and reverse course. Well, I'm not quite sure how much time you have because there are so many programs that we put in place. First of all, of course, we are offering more opportunities

for young people to train in medical fields. You will be aware that we want to have more physicians, more family doctors practicing in Ontario, and one of the ways we're doing that is expanding the number of available medical seats in every single medical school across Ontario, including two brand-new medical schools, one in the city of Brampton that's already taken on new students and are training them as we speak. And, Minister, how do we make sure that the doctors that are trained in Ontario stay in Ontario?

Opportunities, for sure, and to make sure that we have the system in place that people want to train and practice and live in. So one of the things that we know is new graduates love to be able to work in teams. We call them multidisciplinary teams. It might be a family physician with a nurse practitioner, perhaps a mental health worker, or a dietitian, because they can better serve their patients. And so what we have done is with this week's expansion, we are going to see another 75 primary care teams that will be able to connect a half a million people more to primary care clinicians. So they're going to be half, so of that 2.3 million Ontarians who,

who don't have access to a family doctor, you're going to cut that by half a million. But keep in mind, Ben, that this is the third time that we have opened up applications and ensured that people can expand their primary care teams or form new ones. So we've committed $2.1 billion in a primary care action plan team, and this means that individuals who first want to be connected

with a primary care practitioner have an operational. opportunity to do so across all of Ontario. And keep in mind, Ontario does lead Canada. We are at a 90% attachment rate, which means 90% of Ontario residents have a regular attachment to a primary care clinician. We're working on that last 10%. Minister, how did we get to the point that so many Ontarians found themselves without a doctor? Oh, well, I mean, one of the ways, frankly, frankly, was many, many years ago when a NDP government of the day cut the number of medical seats that were available in our post-secondary medical schools. Those have repercussions.

We had a growing community. We had a growing... This goes all the way back to the 90s, Minister? Yes. Wow. But think about that. When the government of the day cut 50 medical seats, Do the multiplication.

We're talking about literally thousands of physicians who were not able to train in the province of Ontario. Some would have gone elsewhere to different jurisdictions. And frankly, some of them didn't come back because they didn't have the opportunities here. So our government under Premier Ford's leadership has made sure that not only are we offering more seats and more opportunities for students to train,

but we're also making sure that when they are fully trained, we have opportunities for them wherever they want to practice in Ontario. Minister, in your estimation, how long, how many more months, how many more years before every Ontario has access in one way or another to a primary care physician? So our goal is by 2029, every Ontario resident who wants to be connected to a primary care clinician will have an opportunity to do so. And one of the things that we have, yes, 2029. And one of the things that we've been doing is today, right now, if you are looking for a primary care doctor, you would sign up with Health Care Connect.

In the last, less than a year, since January, we've been able to decrease, remove people from that Health Care Connect wait list by over 42%. almost 98,000 people who were waiting for a family physician now have been connected with one close to where they live or where they work. Well, today's news is good news, a lot more work to come, so we will be keeping an eye on that until 2029. Minister, before I let you go, I really want to talk to you about something that's important to us here at the show, and it's the sort of the dumbfounding, ideologically driven policies of a city like Toronto, where they seem hell-bent on keeping people who are wrestling with drug addiction on drugs. And your government came out and wanted to change that paradigm,

come out with the heart hubs. And then Toronto turns around and sort of tries to reverse engineer, even though they don't have the power to be handing this stuff out anymore. They're still handing out this paraphernalia. They're handing out drug paraphernalia in in places where there's supposed to be no consumption of drugs and I'm wondering what you think of that because I always thought the heart hubs

were a great idea but it seems like a city like Toronto is trying to stymie those efforts well listen then there's always going to be individuals who philosophically are opposed and want to continue to offer illicit drugs to users

what we have been very clear as a government is to say we want pathway out, we want pathway to hope. And that's what the whole Heart Hub model is about, those transitioning away from just offering more illicit, frankly, deadly drugs to people and actually giving them an opportunity to get treatment, to get help.

And it's not just about treatment. It's about housing. It's about supportive housing. The wraparound supports that happen, whether it's with primary care, addiction treatment, supportive housing, ultimately pathways to jobs and employment opportunities. We need to make sure that people have a choice. And when you continue to just offer the use of drugs, that's not a choice.

Well, Minister, how do you fight the city on something like this? I mean, are they legally allowed to run counter to the province's wishes? So we've been very clear that any facility that offers within 200 meters of a school or a daycare has been absolutely prohibited from doing so. We will continue to work with our partners at the city who are prepared and understand the value of offering pathways to treatment. And if it gets to a point where we see that they're a – they are – are flaunting our goals as a province, as a government, then escalation will have to happen.

A minister, we've talked about it on this show. We know of shelters where drugs are prohibited and the city's offering needles and crack pipes. It was quite shocking when we learned that on this show. So my humble suggestion is you got to watch these people. You've got to watch them because they've got a plan and that plan has nothing to do with your plan. And I think one is going to cancel out the other if we're not careful.

But I thank you for answering those questions for me. And thank you for coming to the Ben Mulroney show to share this good news for 500,000 Ontarians who will now have access to a family doctor. Deputy Premier, Minister of Health, the Honorable Sylvia Jones. Thank you very, very much.

Thanks, Ben. Stay well. We're renovating a hotel, expanding our resort, and breathing some life back into the lakehouse. All while raising a family. It's messy, it's real, and it's all us. Exciting. I can't tell if that's your exciting face. This isn't just consistent. This is our life.

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