Mr. Garfield Dunlop (Simcoe North): My question today is for the Premier. On September 9, 2004, your former Minister of Community and Social Services announced that three regional centres in Ontario would be closed by March 2009. She indicated that the facilities were institutions and that all residents of the three regional centres would move into small units of five, six, seven or eight people and they would receive the same level of care that they have been accustomed to in the regional centres. I'd like to also inform this House that the county of Simcoe has the longest waiting list for long-term-care beds in the province.

Now we are told that a desperately needed new long-term-care facility in Orillia, with beds that have been transferred from other areas -- not new beds added to the provincial total -- is about to receive approximately 18 Huronia Regional Centre residents who now have comfortable, apartment-style homes in the Huronia Regional Centre. Premier, the families of the HRC residents were promised smaller units, with the same level of care and service. Why are you breaking that promise by moving them now into institutions?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty (Premier, Minister of Research and Innovation): I know that the Conservative Party and the NDP fully support our government and our move to build more inclusive communities and to remove patients from these long-term institutions. I know we have their complete support in that regard, and we're building on the foundation that they themselves developed.

We have a $272-million, four-year plan to transform and revitalize the development services sector, and that is underway. Transformation of developmental services in Ontario began in the 1980s and has been supported, as I say, by all three parties over the decades. We look forward to proceeding with that plan, knowing that we will continue to have the support of all parties.

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Mr. Dunlop: I actually asked you why you were allowing them to be moved into the institutions. You're moving them out of one institution into another. You're closing the doors on good apartment-style living. Can you tell me then today what I am to say to families who have had their loved ones on long-term-care waiting lists now that their spaces are now being displaced by residents of the Huronia Regional Centre, who already have comfortable homes? What am I to tell them, Premier?

Hon. Mr. McGuinty: I say to the member opposite that he can tell his constituents that we will continue to work with them. We will continue to work with the developmental services sector and all people who are committed to ensuring that residents who are finding themselves out of the original institutions have a comfortable place that is in keeping with their needs and that assures their safety and security.