Ms. Lisa MacLeod (Nepean–Carleton): As the mother of an 18-month-old, I have recent first-hand experience getting a birth certificate. As I’m sure the honourable minister will know, it was not an easy process, and I’m someone who is quite familiar with this government’s red tape.

While I think that on the surface this announcement is great news for parents, immigrants to Ontario, families of recently deceased, and any Ontarian who needs these documents or their replacements, when you dig a little deeper past the usual Liberal huff and fluff, you will find this is just another example of these Liberals saying anything and doing anything to get elected.

The Premier and the Minister of Government Services were at Women’s College Hospital this morning to announce a rejig of the government’s website, yet in the rush to recover from a month-long public relations nightmare, not a single dollar of new funding was announced for any of our overcrowded hospital emergency rooms, for our overbooked pediatric operating rooms or for help to ease the process to certify foreign-trained doctors—no, not a single new dollar to improve our gutted health care system.

Going to Women’s College Hospital was—pure and simple—another phony photo op from this Premier Personality. In fact, this Liberal government under this Premier will say anything, take any picture, and show up at any location just to get elected.

What’s next? Will the Premier and one of his band of merry ministers show up at a pet store, stand among the puppies and announce the redesign of the logo of yet another provincial corporation?

The fact of the matter is that this lazy Liberal government fails to act over and over again. Just ask the chief of surgery at CHEO in my great city of Ottawa, Dr. Baxter Willis, who was quoted in last Saturday’s Ottawa Citizen regarding the utter lack of focus this government has for improving wait times for pediatric surgery: “There are some services where the waits do appear to be particularly long and the psychological trauma of having to wait six, 10 or 12 months wears on both the child and family, especially a child who is going to have a major spine operation.”

Interjections.

Ms. MacLeod: Mr. Speaker, we’ve touched a nerve.

One of the last things any parent wants to hear is that their young child needs surgery. It is shameful that parents and children in eastern Ontario, and in fact all of Ontario, have to wait up to 12 months for ear, nose and throat, spine, and dental surgery.

This Premier seems to think that streamlining the process to get your child’s birth certificate somehow trumps getting these suffering children into the operating rooms and on the road to recovery. As a parent, I can speak with authority when I say that if I had a choice between getting my daughter’s birth certificate 30 days sooner or getting my daughter’s spine, nose, ears or throat operated on, I would choose the health of my daughter over the Premier’s bureaucracy in a heartbeat.

In closing, I would just like to say this: I, and people all over the great province of Ontario, hope that in the design of this new website the government services minister and the Premier were thoughtful enough to include a check box so they can get the retroactive death certificate for this sorry Liberal government.