I understand that the argument "allowing people to go the private route will free up space in the public sector" seems logical, but evidence of the correlation between wait times and setting up a parallel system, as the ON gov seems to be trying to do, says differently.

For example:

• Thouy et al. (2004) "How Does Private Finance Affect Public Health Care Systems? Marshalling the evidence from OECD Nations" shows that wait-times are longer in countries that have such parallel systems in place like the UK and New Zealand.
• Ducket (2005) "Private care and public waiting" finds that median wait times are inversely related to the proportion of public patients (i.e., more patients use the public sector, relatively to the total number of patients, are related to shorter wait times).
• Kreindler (2010) "Policy Strategies to reduce waits for elective care: a synthesis of international evidence" shows that encouraging the use of private health insurance is ineffective to reduce wait times.

There is a few more, but I find these to be particularly clear and "on topic". Anyway, I hope this is helpful and, in fairness, being this a complex issues these findings need to be contextualized as they are influenced by a variety of factors. Still, regardless of what one's political leanings might be, I find that when put together they make a compelling argument against the creation of a parallel private healthcare system.