Thank you to the Leader of the Opposition. Mr. Speaker, the public was very clear. Right now, we have an Ontario Place that is sitting there, that is not enjoyed by the public 365 days of the year. We are seeing a $500-million private capital investment into Ontario Place. We are seeing a brand new facility, 12 acres of public realm space on the west island itself and ongoing maintenance. Why is ongoing annual maintenance important? So that we don’t have an Ontario Place like we have today that is falling apart, that is being flooded. We will make sure that there will be a beautiful Ontario Place for generations and generations and families—

Again, back to the basics: Do we just leave Ontario Place as is so that it can continue to fall into disrepair and continue to be flooded, or do we bring it back to life and make it a wonderful place for families? I think the choice is very clear.

God forbid I have a friend at the wedding.

We’re going to build Ontario Place. Mark my words, Mr. Speaker, every single person over there, what they’re going to do when we’ve built a beautiful amphitheatre, when we’ve built a beautiful water park and we add beaches and we add parks—guess what? Every one of them is going to show up there to either a concert or to wander through or bring their friends. We aren’t a government that sits around. We’re a government that gets things done, unlike they did for 15 years that destroyed the province.

When it comes to your health, the status quo is no longer acceptable. Our government is taking bold action to eliminate surgical backlogs and reduce wait times for publicly funded surgeries and procedures. Ontario has a three-step plan that better integrates and uses community surgical diagnostic centres and their state-of-the-art facilities to speed up how quickly people are able to get surgeries and procedures using their health care card, never their credit card.

This plan will add more than 14,000 OHIP-insured cataract surgeries each year, expand community-based clinics, perform more surgeries such as cataract surgeries, MRI and CT scan imaging, and expand surgeries closer to home—more convenient for people.

If the NDP want more transparency and accountability, they should be supporting the changes brought forward in Bill 60.

These kinds of things are also supported and have been said by our Auditor General here in Ontario. Ontario needs to make changes to support patient care better, to make sure patients get access to care quickly, and that is what this government is going to do. We’re putting patients at the centre of care.

Let’s review what this government’s innovation agenda actually is for public health care in Ottawa: First, they allow a for-profit clinic to operate inside our public health care system. Every weekend, they’ve been bringing in surgical equipment from Toronto. Colleagues, do you call that innovation?

Interjection: No.

Interjection: No.

Interjection: Absolutely not.

It’s a real shame, hearing the two members from Ottawa criticizing their hospital, because that’s what they’re doing. They’re criticizing one of the best CEOs in the province, in my opinion: Cameron Love. I had a discussion with him, and Mr. Speaker, you see the increase of backlogged surgeries go up by 30%. This is about getting rid of the backlog, making sure we help people get well again. But to sit there and criticize their own hospital—and, by the way, we’re putting $9 billion into that hospital.

We’re fixing health care. We’re ending this hallway health care that you created, and we’re bringing health care back to the standards of a world-class health care system—the best in the world.

My constituent Lorrie’s best friend urgently needs an MRI, but hospital wait-lists are now months long. She called an advertised for-profit clinic and was told that for $795 she can get an MRI within 48 hours. This entirely contradicts the Premier’s promise to Ontarians, which is that they would never have to pay for health care with their credit card. Why did the Premier break his promise?

Blythe, a constituent and a health care professional, asks, “Why are we paying taxes for health care when the government consistently underspends by $1.6 billion? The Premier must stop giving his friends pay raises and fund our public health care system.”

Will the Premier listen, then take action, stop Bill 60 and finally stop privatizing the people’s public health care?

Interjections.

My question is for the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade. Ontario is home to the largest life sciences sector in Canada, which employs thousands of workers in a high-skilled job market. But with competition growing from south of the border and in other parts of the world, we need to remain competitive if we’re going to continue attracting these important life-saving investments.

Speaker, will the minister please provide an update on how the government is continuing to attract these critical investments in the life sciences sector while also ensuring that services that are made in Ontario benefit all Ontarians?

Speaker, will the minister please elaborate on what our government is doing to secure Ontario’s standing as a global pinnacle in the innovation of life sciences and health sectors?

Last week, with the Premier, we were thrilled to welcome Moderna’s multi-million-dollar partnership with Novocol Pharma in Cambridge. They will expand vaccine manufacturing in Cambridge and ensure faster, more reliable access to life-saving vaccines. Not only will this investment create good-paying jobs, it will provide our health care workers and families with more reliable access to life-saving vaccines, helping to ensure we no longer have to rely on other jurisdictions to keep us safe.

Speaker, with the $4-million investment through our Ontario Together Fund, Novocol will add to their 500-plus highly skilled workers. It’s hard to keep up with the billions in life science investments: Sanofi, Roche, OmniaBio, AstraZeneca, Novartis; this list goes on and on, Speaker. The momentum of investments by these companies is a vote of confidence in our life-saving sector.

Speaker, think of where we were when the pandemic struck. We had almost zero PPE being built in Ontario. Today, we’re at 74%, and tomorrow, when the nitrile gloves are built in London, we’ll be at 94% of all PPE manufactured.

Wait times for breast cancer surgeries in Ottawa have stretched so long that women have been driving to Quebec and paying out of pocket just to get surgery. And now, last week, we learned from the Ottawa Citizen that one of the Ottawa Hospital’s breast cancer surgeons was getting only two hours of operating time a month.

Why is this government pushing ahead with its privatization agenda when publicly funded operating rooms have been sitting unused while surgeons and patients have desperately needed access?

Interjections.

Members will please take their seats.

Member for Eglinton–Lawrence.

The Premier.

My question is to the Attorney General. The Ombudsman’s investigation into delays at the Landlord and Tenant Board was a damning indictment of this government’s failure to provide justice to tenants and landlords. The Conservatives have had five years to fix the Landlord and Tenant Board, yet this report shows that the government has made the problem worse. Delays at the LTB have increased, and the number of people waiting for hearings has doubled to 38,000 people.

This government has accepted all the Ombudsman’s 61 recommendations to fix the LTB. When do you plan to implement those recommendations?

The Landlord and Tenant Board is a mess. Tenants are waiting up to two years to get their landlords to do basic repairs, stop harassing them, to deal with vermin. Landlords are waiting for months—if not years—just for a hearing while they lose on rent or lose their homes because they cannot keep up with their mortgages. This system isn’t working for anybody, and they have had five years to fix that.

Speaker, my question is, can this government actually commit to making those changes that the Ombudsman has recommended? Because Ontarians deserve a Landlord and Tenant Board that actually is working right now for Ontarians.

I appreciate the opportunity to address the Ombudsman’s report, which is well received.

I’ll remind the member opposite that the Landlord and Tenant Board—the data that he is using was from a previous moment in time. But let me tell you this, and I’m going to quote the Ombudsman, where he says that a factor was the transition of government in 2018. The Landlord and Tenant Board should not have been in that precarious a situation before the 2018 election. So it was a mess when we got it.

What he’s recommending is that we add more adjudicators. Well, we’re doubling the number of adjudicators. That is done. The NDP did not support us.

The Ombudsman says we should add more resources to the back office staff. Well, when we brought that forward, the NDP opposed it. We did it anyway.

We are fixing the Landlord and Tenant Board for all Ontarians, and I wish the NDP would support us on one of the many things that the Ombudsman has highlighted that we’re already doing.

But let me be clear, Mr. Speaker: The member is asking, will we do the things the Ombudsman is saying we should do? Well, we’ve already done most of the things that he’s told us to do. We’ve doubled the number of adjudicators. We’ve supported back office staff. He said technology was failing when this government came to power. Well, this government spent $28.5 million on a new state-of-the-art system. It’s working very well, and they opposed it.

I want to thank the member from Newmarket–Aurora for her exceptional work in promoting health in the classroom. I’d be remiss to also give a message of gratitude, I think on behalf of all parliamentarians, to the member from Burlington for her leadership in this House, in this province and country, advancing mental health literacy for the next generation. We are inspired through her work, and because of her motion, we’re standing today proudly to advance the cause of mental health literacy, mandating it across the curriculum, including strengthening it in grades 7 and 8 for our teachers and for our students, as well as mandatory learning in grade 10. Connecting it with the real-life skills, young people can now use part of this curriculum in grade 10 careers as they start to give thought to higher learning post-secondary, skilled trades learning and to come up with a useful tool kit of ways by which they can manage stress and angst in their life.

Speaker, I also want to affirm that part of this announcement is the expansion of funding. Under our Premier’s leadership, we’ve increased funding by 550%, a positive step forward as we help to ensure the success and the health of children—

When you compare the former Liberal government peak of spending in mental health in schools, we were around $18 million per year. Today, under our government’s leadership, we’ve increased funding to $114 million, a 550% increase in mental health. I accept fully that we have to keep going, keep investing, keep lifting standards and keep supporting these kids, because demands are rising—the member is absolutely right.

As part of the announcement we made last week, and thanks to the leadership of the member from Burlington, we are going to be funding summer learning to create an annualized experience, access 12 months a year. The system wasn’t designed for kids. Kids would have access to a psychologist, a psychotherapist till June and then have to pivot to community in the summer. We’re going to expand capacity this year, add $14 million next year and $16 million the year after to ensure kids have dependable access to mental health in every community across Ontario.

For the Premier: Bill 60 is reckless, incomplete and poorly conceived. It ignores the root causes of the problems in our health care system and fails to prioritize patient health over private wealth. Bill 60 could have been salvaged, but of 45 amendments I proposed, all were thrown out. When the government was asked to ensure that the bill allow Indigenous consultation, they said no. When they were asked to establish conflict-of-interest rules for directors who issue licences, they said no. They said no to protections against upselling, up-charging, profiteering and cycling of health workers out of the public hospitals.

Ontarians are outraged. I know this. I know government members are hearing it from their constituents, because when their constituents don’t hear back from them, they reach out to me instead.

So to every government member: Who will have the courage to listen to the people of Ontario and vote against Bill 60?

And to the Premier: Since this government isn’t serving the interests of Ontarians, whose interest is it actually serving?

Thank you. Supplementary question?

My question is for the Minister of Education. When students feel safe, welcome and included, they are more likely to be actively engaged in classroom learning and participation. However, many children and youth are struggling with mental health challenges which make school and other aspects of their life difficult. To help our students thrive, they need to be equipped with knowledge about mental health and know where they can get help when they need it.

It is vital that the mental health and well-being of our students continues to be the top priority of our government. The need for more support is greater than ever. Can the minister please explain what our government is doing to expand mental health literacy for our students?

Our government understands that students need access to consistent and reliable mental health supports in our schools. Previous investments made by our government into student mental health initiatives have been significant and well received. Just this past Friday, I met with the co-founders of the Bully Free Community Alliance of York region in my constituency office to discuss mental health supports for students, and this initiative was very well received.

But we all know that more needs to be done and should be done to help and support students and their families beyond the school year. Can the minister please explain how our government is delivering on the commitment to expand access to mental health professionals and services?

Thank you to the member opposite for the question. Although, I have to say, I get back to all my constituents—I know my colleagues do the same thing—and I haven’t really heard what you’re suggesting.

In fact, Bill 60 actually expands oversight and patient protections, when it comes to Your Health. As you know, we’ve had 800 community clinics operating in Ontario for many, many years. Bill 60 brings them into the health care system and integrates them with all of the other parts of the health care system, which will enable more of that oversight.

But lots of things in there also protect people from the kinds of things you’re suggesting, like upselling. You now have to post any uninsured charges both online and in person. Every surgical and diagnostic centre must have a process for receiving and responding to patient complaints. Patients cannot be denied access to treatment if they don’t purchase uninsured services. We’re expanding the oversight of the Patient Ombudsman to include integrated community health services.

These safeguards are in place to ensure that no one has to pay—

Thank you. And the supplementary question.

I’d like to thank the member from Carleton for her question. This government has been given a strong mandate to ensure that Ontarians have access to safe and secure housing. We’re taking action to deliver on our mandate by encouraging innovative approaches to home ownership and housing supply, including tiny homes, second units and laneway suites.

We regularly update our building code to take advantage of technological advances, innovative new solutions and expert research, all while reducing red tape and making it easier and faster to build new homes. Through our Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act, we are also proposing to continue streamlining developments and approvals while making it easier to train and recruit building inspectors.

Our government is committed to keeping Ontarians safe while also laying a solid foundation to address Ontario’s housing supply crisis over the long term.