Potential buyers across Ontario are poised to receive a significant tax discount on newly-built homes, but only for a limited time, Global News has learned, as the Ford government looks to boost a sector struggling with a slump in sales.

As part of his spring budget, Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy is expected to announce that the provincial portion of the harmonized sales tax will be removed for anyone buying a newly-constructed home, rewriting a policy the government introduced just months ago.

The original version of the plan, introduced during the fall economic statement, allocated $470 million over three years to give first-time Ontario homebuyers a tax break on new homes.

Ontario’s pledge to waive its portion of the HST came shortly after a similar announcement by the federal government — allowing first-time homebuyers to save up to $130,000 on a new home under $1 million, and lower rebates for homes costing up to $1.5 million.

But the offer failed to ignite the market, forcing the government to take a second pass at the policy, and offer the discount to a wider swath of purchasers.

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Sources told Global News there has been an internal struggle over the details of the revised policy. While the premier wanted the discount to run for a three-year period, the government had concerns that buyers could wait on the sidelines, effectively watering down the urgency of the plan.

Instead, sources said, the government is expected to offer a full discount on the provincial portion of the HST for all homebuyers for a one-year period, creating instant demand in the market.

Neither the Finance Minister, Housing Minister or Premier would confirm or deny the plan — but acknowledged they were looking to invigorate the sector.

“We’re going to give a real boost to the building and construction trade and put in more opportunity for people to buy a home,” Ford indicated before heading into caucus meeting Tuesday.

His finance minister, Peter Bethlenfalvy, would not be drawn on the details but emphasized the need to boost housing.

“I think affordability is an important issue for many people in Ontario who dream  of owning a home,” he said on Tuesday.

“It’s also important for the construction industry — when nothing’s getting built, particularly three or four years from now — that there’s some stimulus to the market to support our construction workers and the industry.”

Asked about the one-year limit on the plan, Housing Minister Rob Flack said Global News knows “more about it than me, it appears.”

Ford said people should wait to “see how our announcement goes.”

Ontario’s efforts to build 1.5 million homes by 2031 have fallen flat — there were just 62,561 housing starts in 2025 — leading to calls for additional government intervention to stimulate the market.

Development industry sources told Global News the government had indicated to them that waiving tax for all new homes could cost the treasury $2 billion, substantially more than the $470 million for limiting it to first-time homebuyers.

The additional cost would come at a time when the finance minister’s budget has ballooned to a record $236 billion, with a $13.4-billion deficit and a provincial debt that’s set to cross the half-a-trillion-dollar threshold in 2027.

The finance minister will table the budget on March 26.

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford is accusing the province’s transparency watchdog of “politicizing” his government’s crackdown on freedom of information laws, claiming he has “nothing to hide” but that he doesn’t want to risk publishing personal records.

The government is facing major pushback, including from the Information and Privacy Commissioner, over its plan to give political staff and government ministers near-total immunity from transparency requests.

Information and Privacy Commissioner Patricia Kosseim, whose office oversees transparency and privacy laws in Ontario, has said the government announced its new policy without consulting her.

If they did, Kosseim said, the province would have received pragmatic advice on alternative options that would have been “far preferred” to the final decision.

The plan will exclude the premier, his cabinet, parliamentary assistants and their staff from freedom of information laws.

Asked about the criticism, Ford said the head of the civil service had spoken to the commissioner, although he didn’t say when.

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The premier then accused Kosseim of playing politics with the issue.

“I know the secretary of cabinet sat down and had a very good conversation,” Ford told Global News on Tuesday.

“I’ve never seen a privacy commissioner go out and do media; it’s very politically driven, in my opinion. It’s very unfortunate we have a privacy commissioner that wants to politicize this.”

Meanwhile, Minister for Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement Stephen Crawford suggested the transparency watchdog, who was appointed by the legislature in 2025, shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

“In terms of the IPC, the privacy commissioner, I mean, her word is not gospel,” he said in a brief interview with Global News.

“As you’re probably aware, she lost a case in court in 2024 when she basically challenged the government on cabinet confidentiality, so I wouldn’t place too much emphasis on her words.”

The government also lost several court cases, including a recent defeat in which a panel of three judges sided with the Information and Privacy Commissioner and ordered Premier Ford to release his cellphone records.

The premier’s office had planned to file an appeal to that decision, before introducing the retroactive changes to freedom of information, which will essentially void that defeat.

“It’s not just about the cellphone,” Ford insisted on Tuesday, before pivoting to discuss privacy concerns that are already covered under existing legislation. “I have nothing to hide.”

Critics say the premier’s cellphone records — and who he talks to — are the driving force behind the legislation, which they suggest the government has introduced to keep all his conversations secret.

“This government is focused on hiding the premier’s cellphone records,” Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said. “And we know that there must be something pretty damning in those records if they’re taking these kinds of measures to hide those cell phone records.”

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Queen’s Park is bracing for another major protest over the Ford government’s unpopular changes to the Ontario Student Assistant Program on Tuesday — a demonstration that’s being met with fresh warnings that vandalism and threats will not be tolerated.

In February, the Ford government said the province’s OSAP policy was projected to grow to an unsustainable $4.1 billion per year, requiring an overhaul to ensure the program was available for students in the future.

While students were previously entitled to receive a grant for up to 85 per cent of their support payment, the government changed the ratio, meaning students looking for help with education costs will now be forced to pay back 75 per cent of their OSAP loan.

The changes have sparked fierce protests from high school, university and college students who claim the province is burdening students with decades of debt — a hardship, they say, that’s exacerbated by low job prospects for young workers in Ontario.

An initial protest, however, eventually ended in a police confrontation, arrests and left the statue of George Brown vandalized, causing $5,000 in damage.

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In response, Speaker Donna Skelly ordered the rest of the statues at Queen’s Park to be wrapped with a protective tarp and warned the “thousands” of protesters expected on Tuesday to remain peaceful.

“They are more than welcome to attend and to come to Queen’s Park. I am just asking that please, please respect the law, respect the rules that are in place,” Skelly said.

“Don’t harm anybody on the property and don’t damage anything.”

Skelly said while the legislature has an “agreement” with Toronto Police to offer additional security during large-scale demonstrations, she rejected the notion that a police presence might heighten tensions.

“I mean, we’re dealing with adults and you know what the rules are. No one has the right to spit on someone, assault another person or damage property,” Skelly said.

During Question Period, opposition parties accused the government of “piling on” young people and called the Progressive Conservatives to reverse the changes.

“The debt of young people and their families who are trying to get a degree, a diploma or a trade. And that’s because that guy over there decided that he was going to break OSAP,” said interim Liberal leader John Fraser.

Ford defended his government’s position and touted the tuition freeze in 2018.

“When we came into office we knocked 10 per cent off tuition. We kept that tuition down for eight years,” Ford said.

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The question of who Ontario Premier Doug Ford calls, and why he is changing the law to shield his phone records from scrutiny, was front and centre as the government returned to Queen’s Park Monday.

Shortly before returning from an extended, 14-week winter break, the Progressive Conservatives announced they would retroactively change transparency laws in Ontario to give government staff and cabinet ministers near blanket immunity from freedom of information requests.

The proposals, which will be included in the budget, will exclude the premier, his cabinet, their parliamentary assistants and staff from access to information requests.

It will also exclude them from transparency oversight and privacy protections put in place to protect personal data and sensitive government documents.

Because the law is retroactive, it is likely to nullify a court decision that recently went against Ford and the government over how he uses his cellphone.

For years, Global News has been involved in a transparency battle over Premier Ford’s personal cellphone call logs.

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Government lawyers have acknowledged Ford doesn’t use his work phone and makes government calls on his personal device, but have refused to divulge who he speaks to.

The Information and Privacy Commissioner ordered Ford to prepare his cellphone records for disclosure at the end of 2024, before the government sought a judicial review. It lost that case in less than three weeks and was seeking leave to appeal before moving to change the law.

In an attempt to circumvent the legal change, the Ontario NDP sought a Speaker’s warrant on Monday.

The rarely used parliamentary tool would ask Speaker Donna Skelly to use her powers to compel Ford to hand over his cellphone records. The motion the NDP tabled, however, would need government support to pass and is, in itself, non-binding.

Still, NDP Leader Marit Stiles said her party would keep trying to slow the government’s changes.

“I would say, once again, that we will try everything and anything to protect the rights of the people of this province, to know how their tax dollars are being used,” she told reporters.

Ontario Liberal interim leader John Fraser said it was the function of opposition parties and the legislature as a whole to challenge and prosecute government legislation.

He said Skelly, who was elected as a Progressive Conservative, must consider the request on its merits — not her previous political association.

“She’s in a tight spot; her job is to be neutral. That’s her job,” Fraser said. “It’ll be up to her. I can’t say what she’s going to do. The reality is the premier is avoiding accountability and scrutiny because he has something to hide and this place we have here is all about shining a light on stuff.”

Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner echoed the sentiment.

“I think we need to use all the tools at our disposal to have the premier be honest with the people of Ontario,” he told reporters.

But Skelly said she cannot act on non-binding motions.

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As MPPs return to the legislature after an extended, 14-week winter break, new polling suggests a majority of the population believes the government is failing in its promise to “protect Ontario” across a series of key areas.

A survey conducted by Ipsos exclusively for Global News’ Focus Ontario asked people how well they thought Premier Doug Ford was protecting Ontario on a number of files.

A majority believed he was doing a very poor or somewhat poor job on all categories except for increasing interprovincial trade.

The poll asked: “How well do you feel Doug Ford is protecting Ontario when it comes to each of the following issues:”

• Increasing inter-provincial trade
• Tariffs being imposed by President Trump
• The economy and jobs
• Education
• Healthcare
• Corruption in government
• The provincial debt level/deficit
• Making things more affordable
• Housing

While the province’s response to international and intergovernmental issues is viewed relatively favourably, its scores for housing, health care, education and the economy all make for bleak reading.

“Dealing with Donald Trump, dealing with interprovincial trade, Doug Ford does as well as anybody,” Ipsos’ Darrell Bricker explained. “But when it comes to what is actually happening in people’s individual lives, that’s where the numbers get troubling.”

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Just 26 per cent of those polled said Ford was doing a good job of protecting Ontario when it comes to the issue of housing and only 27 per cent thought he was doing very well or somewhat well at making things more affordable.

A mere 32 per cent thought Ford and his government were doing a good job at handling debt, and 34 per cent said they had a good record on corruption.

On education, 37 per cent of people think the government is doing a good job, one point higher than the 36 per cent who believe Ford is handling health care well.

“No one in this province believes the health-care system is doing well and feels optimistic about its future,” political strategist Jamie Ellerton said. “Talk to parents across the province, they feel frustrated with the state of the education system.”

The government scores relatively well on its handling of United States President Donald Trump (49 per cent approve) and interprovincial trade (53 per cent) — but those are the two issue-specific bright spots.

The issue-by-issue analysis comes as part of a broader poll that found a majority of Ontarians believe the province is heading in the wrong direction, but — if an election were held tomorrow — Ford would likely win another majority.

Forty-two per cent of those polled said they would vote for the Progressive Conservatives if an election were to be held tomorrow, with 35 per cent decided or leaning Liberal. Another 18 per cent would cast their vote for the NDP and seven per cent would select another party, including the Greens.

That’s very close to the 2025 snap election, when the Progressive Conservatives pulled 43 per cent of the vote, the Liberals took 30 per cent and the NDP managed 19. The Greens scored five per cent last year.

The vast majority of respondents — 69 per cent — do not think Ford will step down as premier before the next election, which can be called anytime before 2029.

Methodology: A sample of 801 residents of Ontario aged 18+ was interviewed online. Quotas and weighting were employed to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the population of Ontario according to census parameters. The poll is accurate to within ± 4.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Ontarians aged 18+ been polled. 

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Ontario’s transparency watchdog is pouring cold water on some of the Ford government’s central justifications for clamping down on freedom of information, saying the changes will actually make the province more secretive and less secure.

The province recently announced it would rewrite its access to information laws to retroactively exclude all records belonging to the premier, cabinet ministers, parliamentary assistants and their staff.

The sweeping changes — which will effectively shield all calls to and from the premier and nullify a recent legal defeat — were explained by the government as a long-overdue update.

“I think we need to recognize this is 40-year-old legislation, almost 40 years old, so updating it was well overdue,” Stephen Crawford, the minister for public and business service delivery and procurement, said when he unveiled the changes.

“We’re going to be in line with the majority of the rest of the Canadian provinces and the federal government.”

Premier Ford has echoed that argument, suggesting his government isn’t “pulling a rabbit out of your hat.”

But that claim, Information and Privacy Commissioner Patricia Kosseim told Global News, isn’t entirely accurate.

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“This proposal would put Ontario offside,” Kosseim said in an interview. “Certainly, by our analysis, this would put Ontario in the minority of provinces and jurisdictions in Canada that would take such an extreme approach.”

The key change Ontario is making is that its law would look to exclude — rather than exempt — political records from transparency and privacy rules.

That means that neither civil servants nor the Information and Privacy Commissioner would have any jurisdiction over how premiers, cabinet ministers or their staff handle sensitive government records.

“There wouldn’t be even a conversation about whether these records are legitimately (excluded) and should be in the public domain, whether there’s a public interest in releasing them,” Kosseim said.

The government has also argued that changing the freedom of information and privacy laws in Ontario is key to combatting foreign threats.

“We’ve got to protect ourselves against the communist Chinese that are infiltrating our country, Canada, the U.S., everything into our education system, into high-tech companies,” Ford tried to explain at the start of the week.

“That’s who we have to protect from, too. So it’s serious.”

Despite Premier Ford’s claim, the commissioner said excluding the records would actually make them less secure.

By taking away oversight and tacitly endorsing the use of personal devices, there are concerns about whether sensitive records will be digitally protected or returned when staff or politicians leave government.

“They’re excluding it not only from the freedom of information parts of the act but also the protection of privacy parts of the act. And so there’s a, I think, a very concerning issue there of what happens to this information when it’s not subject to the same privacy and security requirements as other government-related information,” Kosseim said.

“What happens to all of these mobile devices, personal devices, computers, emails, texts, not only for the persons and individuals who are in and hold these positions currently. But what happens to those when they move on, change positions or leave government?”

Kosseim said she’s worried that excluding political records from privacy and transparency legislation would actually make them more vulnerable.

“I would say they would be less protected because they would not be subject to the privacy and security legal requirements under the act,” she said.

“And they would not be subjected to oversight by my office, which is also concerning.”

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The majority of Ontarians believe Doug Ford — who remains the number one pick for premier — is taking the province in the wrong direction, according to a new poll which still has the Progressive Conservatives comfortably ahead of opposition parties.

Polling conducted by Ipsos exclusively for Global News’ Focus Ontario reveals Ford and his party have broadly maintained the same popularity as they did during last year’s snap election.

The Progressive Conservatives’ support remains strong, even as the underlying numbers begin to soften.

Forty-two per cent of those polled said they would vote for the Progressive Conservatives if an election were to be held tomorrow, with 35 per cent decided or leaning Liberal. Another 18 per cent would cast their vote for the NDP and seven per cent would select another party, including the Greens.

That’s very close to the 2025 snap election, when the Progressive Conservatives pulled 43 per cent of the vote, the Liberals took 30 per cent and the NDP managed 19. The Greens scored five per cent last year.

The vast majority — 69 per cent — do not think Ford will step down as premier before the next election, which can be called anytime before 2029.

“The Liberals are up a little bit, but not really enough to affect who’s going to form the government, but maybe would affect who would form the official Opposition,” said Ipsos’ Global Public Affairs Global CEO Darrell Bricker.

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Approval ratings for party leaders tell a similar story. Forty-two per cent of people approve of Premier Ford, while 32 per cent approve of NDP Leader Marit Stiles, a significantly higher number than her overall party support.

Twenty-four per cent approve of interim Liberal leader John Fraser, and the Green Party’s Mike Schreiner has a 27 per cent approval rate.

“At the moment, people don’t really see an alternative,” Bricker said.

“If somebody’s able to start articulating this well on the opposition side of the house and … they’re seen as having a plan that would be better than the one the government has, that’s when the government starts running into trouble. But at the moment, that’s not the case.”

But it is the numbers that measure the province’s mood which could spell trouble for Ford and his Progressive Conservatives.

Ipsos found that 40 per cent of people believe the Ford government has done a good job and deserves re-election, compared to 60 per cent who believe it is time for another party to take over.

That reflects a seven per cent increase in the “time for change” metric since the February 2025 snap election.

“The important part is the 40 per cent that approve,” Bricker said.

“If you look at how that lines up with Doug Ford’s own personal approval and how people say they would vote if there were an election held tomorrow, it’s about the same number of 40. That’s the Doug Ford coalition, and it’s held pretty steadily since the election last year.”

Polling across a number of issues — from housing to the cost of living — also found the government is seen to be failing in its mission to “Protect Ontario.”

Bricker said dissatisfaction on individual topics, or even an increasing feeling there’s a need for change, don’t matter as much until there’s a clear opponent who could beat the premier.

“The gap closes if the opposition voters decide to unite behind one single party,” he said. “The other thing that we haven’t mentioned is the vote splitting is the thing that really benefits Doug Ford in any election scenario that you run into.”

Focus Ontario airs at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, March 21, at 5:30 p.m.

Methodology: A sample of 801 residents of Ontario aged 18+ was interviewed online. Quotas and weighting were employed to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the population of Ontario according to census parameters. The poll is accurate to within ± 4.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Ontarians aged 18+ been polled. 

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Ontario will not have a policy in place to publicly fund all medically necessary services from nurse practitioners by April 1, as ordered by the federal government, leaving some patients paying out of pocket for primary care.

Health Minister Sylvia Jones pushed the federal government years ago to close what she called a loophole in the Canada Health Act that allowed some nurse practitioner clinics in the province to charge patients fees for primary care.

The government has done that, clarifying that nurse practitioner services equivalent to what physicians provide are covered by the Act’s requirement that medically necessary services are publicly funded. It has given provinces and territories the April 1 deadline — but Ontario won’t be ready.

“The Ministry of Health is actively reviewing and engaged in ongoing discussions with provincial and territorial partners and the federal government regarding implementation expectations of the federal government’s direction,” spokesperson Ema Popovic wrote in a statement.

Provinces won’t start incurring penalties for non-compliance until April 2027. Critics and nurse practitioners say Ontario should not wait.

“The (federal government’s) letter really underscores the importance of the provincial government’s immediate implementation of a robust, sustainable funding mechanism to support nurse practitioners as key members of health-care workforce,” said Michelle Acorn, CEO of the Nurse Practitioners Association of Ontario. “The lack of easily accessible funding models has historically limited the number of public positions and practice settings for nurse practitioners in Ontario.

“Flexible funding mechanisms will support nurse practitioners in delivering the timely, high-quality, accessible care that Ontarians deserve where and when they need it.”

Nurse practitioners in Ontario can assess patients, order and interpret tests, and prescribe medication and treatment. They work in a variety of settings, including family health teams and community health teams, hospitals and long-term care homes, as well as in more than two dozen publicly funded nurse practitioner-led clinics.

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Two years ago, a proliferation of private subscription fee-based nurse practitioner clinics made headlines. Jones responded to opposition and media questions by putting the onus on the federal government to close a “loophole” that allowed them to operate.

“If there is a wedge that is allowing these clinics to happen, then perhaps the member opposite could pick up the phone and call their federal counterparts, because that’s what I’ve been doing,” she said in question period in March 2024.

“I’m making the case that if the Canada Health Act allows these for-profits, then we will be shutting them down with the changes to the Canada Health Act and federal government involvement.”

Ontario Liberal health critic Dr. Adil Shamji said it is “hypocritical” for Jones to now delay the implementation of what she so strongly urged two years ago.

“To me it suggests that it has always been more convenient for this government to allow patients to pay out of pocket than to fund it within our public medicare,” he said.

“We know that exceptional primary care can be delivered by nurse practitioners, and there is no reason that, if they are providing a service that would otherwise be covered if delivered by a physician, there’s no reason that it shouldn’t be covered under our public health-care system as well.”

Nurse practitioner Maryanne Green, along with two nurse practitioner colleagues, operates one of the subscription-based clinics Jones had threatened to shut down.

She applied to run a publicly funded clinic in 2023, when the government put out an expression of interest for new primary care teams, but was turned down. Green decided to open a clinic anyway, given the high need for primary care she saw in her community of Kingston, Ont.

“It’s frustrating,” Green said. “I am not charging because I want to. It’s because this is the only way to move forward.

“From the point where I put that proposal in and recognizing that OK, I’m not going to get funding, the options are to sit back and wait until either I get (Ontario Health Insurance Plan), continue trying for funding, or I move forward with the private business plan.”

Green’s clinic has urgent care services, as well as an annual membership of $1,800 for primary care. She hopes that when Ontario comes out with its plan for funding nurse practitioners, it is at an adequate level.

“I absolutely want public funding, and want to be able to provide patients with hopefully free access to health care,” she said.

“I am concerned that we’re not going to get enough funding to run a clinic like this properly. We know that there’s inherent issues within the existing models where you’ve already heard family physicians complain that they’re not making enough money with the OHIP billing process as it is, that they feel their administrative burden is too high.”

Currently in most settings, nurse practitioners are paid a salary, though rates tend to be higher in hospitals, for example, which can make recruiting and retaining nurse practitioners in existing publicly funded primary care settings challenging, Acorn said.

In addition to seeing better compensation for the nurse practitioner positions that are already publicly funded, the association wants to see flexible funding models, such as those for family doctors, who can bill OHIP on a fee-for-service basis or who are paid per patient enrolled.

NDP primary care critic Dr. Robin Lennox said the government should work to fully integrate nurse practitioners into the primary care system, as it works toward a goal of attaching all Ontarians to primary care by 2029.

“I would like to see enough flexibility in the funding model that our nurse practitioners are able to function as they have been trained, which is as independent primary care providers, particularly in, you know, our rural and remote regions where access to primary care is more limited,” she said.

“This is a really huge opportunity to prevent nurse practitioners from having to enter into essentially a private-payer system just to be able to provide the primary care they’re trained to deliver.”

The mayor of an Ontario town, which once hosted a Crown Royal bottling plant, says international drinks maker Diageo appeared to lose any urgency trying to sell the facility after Premier Doug Ford ended his threat to ban its whisky.

Ford threatened for months to remove Crown Royal from the shelves of the LCBO if Diageo didn’t find a way to save some 160 jobs in Amherstburg, Ont.

But at the 11th hour, as pressure from other provinces mounted, he backed down in exchange for $23 million in spending commitments from Diageo for other parts of Ontario.

Amherstburg Mayor Michael Prue said the moment the deal was agreed, he felt Diageo lost interest in trying to quickly find a buyer for their facility.

“They had a meeting scheduled with us two weeks ago, which they cancelled, and this came out shortly after the deal came out,” he told Global News in early March.

“We have no idea. We’re waiting for them to call back and schedule another one, but I’m not holding my breath.”

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The agreement Diageo signed with the Ford government was released without fanfare on a Friday afternoon, lauding $23 million the company had promised to spend across Ontario.

Some of the money was for bulk orders of spirits, advertising and packaging. Only $500,000 was to be spent directly in Amherstburg.

The bottling plant was officially closed in February and currently sits idle.

Prue said Ford’s threat to ban Crown Royal — which was first surfaced after he poured out a bottle of the whisky — was making a difference before it was stood down.

“Our best card was the premier. That was our best card. And that card has now been played,” he said. “We don’t have any independent cards. We can’t force them to sell. We can beg them, we can ask them, we can fall on our knees.”

The premier’s office did not address questions from Global News.

Diageo officially put its plant on the market in December. Prue suggested he had heard from bidders keen to quickly take it and its workforce over, but responses from the drinks maker were slowing the process down.

A spokesperson for the town itself said they remained “hopeful there will be a buyer (who) will reactivate the plant.” They said offers had been made through the formal process.

Diageo explained it had identified qualified bidders to take on the plant and was at the stage of officially soliciting bids. They said no qualified buyers had come forward before it was put on the market.

The ball, Prue said, is now squarely in the drink maker’s hands.

“They totally own the property. They own it lock, stock and barrel,” he said. “Nobody else can move in unless they sell it and that’s the roadblock.”

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The Ford government is beginning work to create a central, electronic system to manage medical records, a move it says is part of its broader plan to connect everyone with a primary care practitioner by 2029.

The policy is in its early stages, with officials reaching out to businesses and providers in Ontario to understand who might be interested in bidding on the proposal in the future and how much capacity they would have.

“We want to get rid of those cursed forms that you have to fill out every time you go to a different clinician,” Health Minister Sylvia Jones explained.

“[We want to] make sure we have a system that can communicate regardless of where we are. So, lab tests, hospitals, primary care providers, we need to make sure that all of those pieces together work. And that work will be ongoing with Supply Ontario.”

She said the key to the new system would be allowing information and documents to be seamlessly shared between different health-care systems and providers. If realized, it would allow hospitals, doctors, home care and other providers to all merge records for continuity of care.

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Jones said the system would be voluntary for patients to opt into.

The government said it is currently seeking vendors who can help manage its new electronic system. Jones said a “number of businesses” would be interested in bidding on the contract, but wouldn’t comment on the cost.

The announcement comes some 20-plus years after the government launched a system called eHealth, which mutated into a scandal.

Ontario began trying to create integrated electronic medical records for patients in the early 2000s, but in 2009, the then-Liberal health minister was forced to resign after the auditor general said the eHealth agency had spent $1 billion but had little to show for it. A followup report from the auditor general in 2016 said $8 billion had been spent to that point on various electronic health record initiatives.

Jones said her new plan would not suffer the same fate, pointing to work she said will take place with the integrity commissioner and the information and privacy commissioner in drafting the plan.

Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy also announced Thursday that next week’s provincial budget will include another $325 million for primary care, as Jones said the government is so far on track toward its goal of attaching everyone in the province to a primary care provider by 2029.

— with files from The Canadian Press

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