As I said, the government really needs to start to see physicians as humans. If there's one message I can bring to this committee, it's that doctors are humans. Start treating doctors as humans, and that means taking away a lot of these toxic policies that exist. There is no reason physicians should not have a fair due process. There is no reason physicians should not have the presumption of innocence. There is no reason physicians should not have protection for the freedom of conscience. There is no reason physicians should not have protection of free speech. There is no reason that physicians should not be treated like every other Canadian citizen.
Right now in Ontario, physicians are literally second-class citizens. Let that sink in. Physicians are second-class citizens in Ontario. The very people who are dealing with life-and-death situations, who have spent over 10 and for some nearly 20 years of formal education to be able to provide you with the care that you need at your most vulnerable time, are being treated as though they are subhuman. We have a serious problem.
If we don't start treating front-line physicians as humans, we are going to have a serious problem, because there will be no front-line physicians left, especially after the appalling Ontario court ruling that happened yesterday. It's unprecedented anywhere in the world for freedom of conscience of physicians to be removed. Doctors no longer have freedom of thought. Once that happens, there is a serious problem.
The court made it seem as though there was a dichotomy in terms of trying to pit physicians' rights against patients' rights, but that was a false dichotomy. Every other jurisdiction in Canada figured it out. Every other jurisdiction in the entire world figured it out, so clearly solutions exist. When governments become hostile towards front-line doctors, they leave the profession.