I beg to inform the House that, pursuant to standing order 89(a), the Clerk has received written request that Bill Pr25, An Act to revive Superior Corporate Services Limited, be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. The order for second reading of the bill is therefore discharged, and the bill is deemed referred to the committee.

Mr. Pirie, on behalf of Mr. Bethlenfalvy, moved third reading of the following bill:

Bill 85, An Act to implement Budget measures and to amend various statutes / Projet de loi 85, Loi visant à mettre en oeuvre les mesures budgétaires et à modifier diverses lois.

It’s my honour to present the petition entitled “Develop an Ontario Dementia Strategy.” It reads:

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas it currently takes on average 18 months for people in Ontario to get an official dementia diagnosis, with some patients often waiting years to complete diagnostic testing;

“Whereas more than half of patients suspected of having dementia in Ontario never get a full diagnosis; research confirms that early diagnosis saves lives and reduces care-partner stress;

“Whereas a PET scan test approved in Ontario in 2017 which can be key to detecting Alzheimer’s early, is still not covered under OHIP in 2022;

“Whereas the Ontario government must work together with the federal government to prepare for the approval and rollout of future disease-modifying therapies and research;

“Whereas the Alzheimer Society projects that one million Canadians will be caregivers for people with dementia, with families providing approximately 1.4 billion hours of care per year by 2050;

“Whereas research findings show that Ontario will spend $27.8 billion between 2023 and 2043 on alternate-level-of-care (ALC) and long-term-care (LTC) costs associated with people living with dementia;

“Whereas the government must follow through with its commitment to ensure Ontario’s health care system has the capacity to meet the current and future needs of people living with dementia and their care partners;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, call on the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to develop, commit and fund a comprehensive Ontario dementia strategy.”

I fully support this petition. I will affix my signature and deliver it with page Maya to the Clerks.

The member from Oakville.

Thank you to the member from Bruce–Grey–Owen Sound for speaking on the Building a Strong Ontario Act (Budget Measures), 2023.

It’s my sincere pleasure to be part of a team at the Ministry of Finance where we’ve been working under the minister’s leadership to get Ontario’s fiscal house in order and build a stronger province for future generations. I would certainly like to thank all of the staff members within the ministry who have worked to put together this budget. I know there’s a lot of work behind the scenes, and it’s a year’s work, really—we’re already preparing ahead now for the next budget a year from now.

Thank you to all the ministry staff for all the great work you do.

Speaker, everyone in this House would agree that Ontario is a great place to live. In fact, I see Ontario as the best place in the world to raise your family, start a business and plant your roots. Thanks to the leadership of our Premier, of our government, we are investing more in health care, in better education, in housing affordability, and in safer streets.

The Building a Strong Ontario Act, 2023, is a plan that takes a responsible and targeted approach to supporting people and businesses while outlining a path to balance the budget in the next year, so that future Ontarians can inherit a stronger Ontario. This plan is our blueprint for building a strong province during a time of global challenge and change, and our work to build Ontario starts now. These are the priorities and initiatives that the people of Ontario want to see their government focus on.

But it bears repeating that Ontario is part of the global economy, and today there are global economic challenges of various stripes. While the road ahead may have some uncertainties, we are ready as a government to take them on with flexibility and prudence.

Speaker, we’ve heard details about our plan to support people and businesses today while laying a strong fiscal foundation for the future. It is a truly comprehensive and connected plan, from harnessing the critical minerals in the north so they can be used in modern EV batteries produced in the manufacturing centres in the south, to new investments and creating more jobs, growing our economy and, in turn, building the modern highways, transit, hospitals, schools, broadband and other infrastructure needed for our growing communities—growth that will allow us to invest in connecting people to convenient care, housing affordability and safer streets, while staying on course for a balanced budget.

Behind all of this growth, all of this investment, are the workers of this province. The single greatest obstacle standing in our way is the shortage of skilled workers and workers in the province of Ontario. Whether it’s construction, the skilled trades or health care, Ontario needs more workers. And while the talent shortage is global, that is no excuse. Ontario must do more—and we are. It’s all hands on deck to build Ontario.

That starts with expanding training opportunities for workers. That is why, in budget 2023, our government is investing an additional $75 million over the next three years in the Skills Development Fund. The Skills Development Fund is a proven success, helping nearly 400,000 workers gain the skills they need for more stable careers. From a new pair of boots for the young construction worker, to the new Ukrainian refugee who now has a chance to start their new career in Ontario, this fund has been a life-changer.

For a career in the skilled trades, accessing training is the first step towards a better job and a bigger paycheque, and who better to provide that training than the boots on the ground, like those in private sector unions? We are also working with private sector unions and other partners to upgrade their training facilities, so that workers get the best possible training from the experts on the ground.

Our $224-million investment in the capital stream of the Skills Development Fund will leverage private sector expertise and expand training centres, including union training halls, so they can provide more accessible, flexible training opportunities for workers. There is no better trainer than someone with hands-on experience. Local 793 of the International Union of Operating Engineers has supported this move, adding that “skilled trades workers are at the front line of our economic recovery, with unions and businesses playing a crucial role in training our next generation of workers through apprenticeship programs. Financially supporting training institutes will help attract more people to the skilled trades and better prepare them.” The International Brotherhood of Boilermakers has said that they “are proud partners of this important skills development program, and we are excited to see the implementation of a stream dedicated for capital projects. Major investment is required to upgrade Ontario’s training capacity to match the needs of the next generation.” And LIUNA has expressed their full support, adding that “the first three rounds of the” Skills Development Fund “were tremendously successful and saw thousands of people receive skills for rewarding careers in industries such as the skilled trades. The newly announced ‘capital’ stream will ensure that training providers in Ontario have the necessary tools and resources to continue their great work.”

We’re not stopping there. We are continuing to prepare students for the jobs of the future by creating stronger links between classroom learning and good-paying careers. Over three years, we are investing $6.2 million in targeted supports for students with disabilities to pursue co-operative educational opportunities.

This is one of the next steps in our government’s plan to catch up, to help students develop skills in math and reading and get ready for their future career.

We want students to be set up for success in their future career, and for some students, that means getting a head start to help students get the training they need for in-demand jobs faster. Speaker, 27,000 students in 2023-24 will have the opportunity to earn credits towards their Ontario secondary school diploma and a post-secondary certificate, diploma, degree or certificate of apprenticeship. And we are now expanding dual credit to include health care courses so that students can get a head start in becoming nurses, personal support workers, paramedics, or medical laboratory technicians.

Speaker, there are lots of ambitious people out there, who are extremely dedicated and hard-working and want to be their own boss instead of working for someone else. That is why we are helping entrepreneurs aged 18 to 39 achieve their business goals by providing an additional $2 million in 2023-24 for Futurpreneur Canada. Entrepreneurs have the ambition and drive it takes to take an idea and build that into a business.

It also takes ambition and drive to move from one country to another. There are people from all around the world looking to move here and realize the Ontario dream—people looking to come to Canada, to Ontario, to get a good-paying job and earn a steady paycheque that puts a roof over their head and supports their family. We want to welcome them here in Ontario. As part of the 2023 budget, we are investing an additional $25 million over three years in Ontario’s flagship immigration program. This investment will support the doubling of the number of skilled immigrants the province can welcome and help tackle the labour shortage and help build Ontario.

The Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program allows the province to nominate individuals for permanent residence—people who have the skills and experience to contribute to Ontario’s economy in various industries, including the skilled trades and health care. Our government and the federal government have announced a doubling of the number of economic immigrants to the province to a historic high of 18,000 by 2025. The new investment in the 2023 budget will ensure those coming to Ontario can start their professional lives here quickly.

It’s also why we’re expanding the Ontario Bridge Training Program with an additional $3 million in 2023-24 to help internationally trained immigrants find employment in their fields here and get faster access to training and supports towards an Ontario licence or certificate.

Our government is continuing with our responsible, targeted approach that is training workers for the jobs of tomorrow and building an Ontario the people of this province can be proud of, not only today, but for the future.

We are also investing in growing and retaining the health care workforce. Since 2018, over 60,000 new nurses and nearly 8,000 new physicians have begun to work right here in the province of Ontario. But we know we need to build on this momentum. That is why our government is investing $80 million over the next three years to further expand enrolment for nursing programs.

We’re also investing $200 million this year so we can address immediate health care shortages and grow the workforce for years to come. For example, we are, with this budget, expanding the Ontario Learn and Stay Grant program in spring 2023 for eligible post-secondary students who will enrol in priority programs in northern Ontario, including in programs for nursing, paramedic and medical laboratory technologist/medical laboratory sciences for those who agree to work in underserved communities in the region where they studied after graduation. The grant provides full upfront funding for tuition, books and other educational costs to students. We are also expanding the program to include nursing in eastern and southwestern Ontario and for medical laboratory technologists in southwestern Ontario.

Speaker, Ontario is continuing to hire more health care workers to ensure everyone can see a trained professional when they need to.

We’re also addressing labour shortages in our rural and northern communities when it comes to veterinary care. Having easy access to a veterinarian is crucial for farmers and livestock owners.

Speaker, our government is investing more than $15 million to help address veterinary shortages in rural and northern communities. This funding will be used to launch the new collaborative doctor of veterinary medicine program with the University of Guelph and Lakehead University. The new program will enrol an additional 20 veterinary students per year, resulting in up to 80 new doctor of veterinary medicine seats in total by 2023, and focus on recruiting students from northern, rural and Indigenous communities.

Recent veterinary graduates will be encouraged to practise in underserviced and northern communities through the Veterinary Incentive Program. This new $900,000 investment over three years will provide program participants with annual grants totalling up to $50,000. The grants will be conditional on them continuing to practise on large animals in these communities.

Dr. Charlotte Yates, president and vice-chancellor, University of Guelph, said, “The University of Guelph applauds the Ontario government’s leadership role and bold action to address the veterinary crisis in Ontario. As Ontario’s only veterinary college and the top school in Canada, we are thrilled by this unprecedented investment.”

Dr. Moira McPherson, president of Lakehead University, added, “Working with our partners in government and the agri-food industry, we will be able to provide much-needed additional veterinary care to the vital and growing animal farming sector in northern, rural and Indigenous communities throughout Ontario.”

Speaker, we are building a strong Ontario for people, for families, for businesses, for workers, and for seniors. A hallmark of this government is keeping costs down, which is why we didn’t wait to act. We’ve continued to put more money back into the pockets of Ontarians, whether at the gas pumps, on their electricity bills, scrapping licence plate renewal fees, or getting rid of the unfair tolls on Highways 412 and 418 in Durham. We have also recently eliminated double fares for most local transit services in the greater Golden Horseshoe when commuters also use GO Transit, so that when commuters pay for their fare to get on the GO bus or train, they aren’t paying again on most local services. We’re expanding this initiative to include Toronto, so a commuter coming into the city only pays one fare per trip, saving them money each way.

Speaker, Ontario seniors are the people who have built our great province and made it the great province it is today. Rising inflation is hitting those on fixed incomes the hardest, like our vulnerable, low-income seniors. That is why our government is proposing changes to expand the guaranteed annual income program—or GAINS, as it’s known—starting in July 2024, to see 100,000 additional seniors eligible for the program, which would be adjusted annually to inflation. Our government will give a hand up to those that need it the most.

Sadly, many around us don’t have a roof over our head or a place to call home. Our government continues to be there for these neighbours.

Today, we are making a historic investment of an additional $202 million each year in support of housing and homelessness programs to provide not only a hand up, but hope for a better life for those who need it the most. Municipal councillors and municipal mayors throughout Ontario have spoken highly of this component of the budget bill.

Deputy Mayor Jennifer McKelvie of the city of Toronto has thanked the Premier and the Minister of Finance for this investment: “$48 million in this budget for wraparound services for 2,000 vulnerable residents in Toronto supportive homes. Deeply affordable rental housing with wraparound health and social support services is key to addressing the dual homelessness and overdose crises, and is the most effective, dignified and cost-effective solution to chronic homelessness. These investments result in significant cost savings for the provincial government by reducing pressure on emergency shelters, hospitals, prisons and long-term-care homes.”

We also have another quote, from Guelph mayor Cam Guthrie: “Today’s budget speaks directly to the homelessness, mental health and addictions issues our communities are facing. The government has listened to municipalities and stakeholders and responded by providing base funding increases to these programs and by committing $202 million in additional funds on these issues. Budgets are about helping Ontarians, and this budget will help dearly.”

I will remind the members of this House that we are doing all of this while balancing the budget three years earlier than projected. Our plan has a path to balance while growing the economy; building new infrastructure for growing communities; training the workers needed for today and tomorrow; keeping costs down, especially for the most vulnerable; providing better services, including convenient and connected health care; and protecting communities. Passing this bill is moving forward with our plan to build an Ontario the people of the province can be proud of, not only today but, critically, in the future.

When our government took office in June 2018, we inherited a province with the most sub-sovereign debt in the entire world, a massive annual deficit and a huge debt which burdened the people of Ontario, burdened economic growth, burdened future generations. That put pressure on health care, education and other social services that we so need. It is so critical that Ontario as a province be creating wealth and creating prosperity so that we have the financial resources to be able to pay the bills for these social services that we so need and so want and which make our province great.

This budget 2022-23 and going forward will be approximating $200 billion, and yet even with increased spending in health care, in education, skills development and homelessness, we are still able to balance the budget.

It is so critical that governments spend money in the right way, spend in a way to get a return on their investment so that it will continue to generate money for the economy, create jobs, create tax revenues so that we’re able to balance our budget.

As a government, we’ve always wanted to put the horse before the cart, unlike the previous Liberal government, which spent well beyond the means of the province of Ontario, further crippling businesses and individuals. Ontario lost many residents—the highest personal income tax rates in North America. Many business people, entrepreneurs, medical professionals left the province, burdened by high taxes and substandard services. Did the province have great hospitals, great education and great infrastructure after the years of Liberal mismanagement? No, it didn’t. The money was put down a black hole and spent and spent without accountability. Our government is focused on putting the money in the right spot, which will further encourage more investment, creating the right opportunities for businesses to come and flourish in Ontario.

Manufacturing is one of the most obvious examples of an area where the previous government gave up. In fact, they were entirely focused on moving Ontario to a service economy. They thought manufacturing was something of the past: “We don’t need manufacturing here in Ontario. We can focus on the service economy.” Nothing could be further from the truth. After 300,000 manufacturing jobs left the province in 10 years, we are now seeing manufacturing jobs come back to Ontario, in all different sectors, including the automobile sector, which was looking very, very weak and—as the Minister of Minister of Economic Development mentioned today in question period—was a sector that we had very little investment in. In fact, in the Bloomberg survey, in terms of the automobile manufacturing capacity for electric vehicles, Canada was ranked as zero just a year and a half, two years ago; we are now number two in the world.

This is a tremendous opportunity for the people of Ontario. Whether it’s St. Thomas, whether it’s my community in Oakville, Oshawa, Ingersoll, Alliston, we have opportunities across this province to build very high-paid, skilled jobs which will build electric vehicles, automobiles for the future, right here in our province.

I can tell you, as a person who comes from the business world, there are a lot of different places to invest, not only in Canada and North America, but throughout the world. Companies look at friendly environments, where they know they have access to skilled labour; where they know there’s law, order and good government; where they know there’s access to the actual raw materials; where there’s good trade law; where’s there’s access to borders; and where there’s an environment for business to flourish with not excessive taxes, regulation burdens and high energy costs. These are what companies look for, and companies are now looking at Ontario. You can see all of that hard work reflected in the numbers in this budget; you can see it by the expected economic growth in Ontario over the next two, three, four years; you can see it by increasing revenues and increasing spending in health care and education, while at the same time balancing a budget. Some people didn’t think that was possible—that we could spend more on education, health care and other social services, and at the same time balance the budget.

This is not a budget of austerity. This is a budget that is the largest budget in the history of Ontario. We are spending more on social services than we’ve ever seen, but we’re also investing money in the right spots: in transportation, in highways, in infrastructure, in hospitals. Ontario, right now, is on a very, very good path.

Passing this bill is moving forward with our plan to build an Ontario for the people of this province that we can be proud of, not only today, but in the future. This is our plan to build an Ontario that will continue to have a resilient economy; an Ontario that has the best infrastructure in place.

Again, I want to emphasize, when we took office five years ago, we did not have the best infrastructure, the best hospitals, the best schools, the best highways, the best transit. In fact, nothing had been done in transit in any meaningful way in well over a decade.

We are investing, and we have the foresight to understand that there’s not just one way to expand transportation in the province of Ontario—it’s not either highways and roads or subways and GO trains; it’s all of the above. We need to expand all forms of transportation.

We need an Ontario that has skilled workers for the jobs of tomorrow.

We need an Ontario that connects you to the care that you need. And we will continue in our commitment to bring in and hire more nurses and doctors, and expand educational programs, Learn and Stay grant programs, to make sure they’re evenly spread throughout Ontario.

We need an Ontario that has a bright future for you, your family, and generations to come—an Ontario that is strong.

On this side of the House, here in the government benches, we are saying yes to supporting the people of Ontario today, while laying a strong fiscal foundation for future generations. We are saying yes to building an Ontario that is strong. And we welcome all members of the House to join us in supporting this bill and supporting the people of Ontario.

With that, Speaker, I’d like to end my presentation for now. The member for Bruce–Grey–Owen Sound and myself are open to questions.

I’m glad to be able to ask the member a question after his presentation on this year’s budget. The member from Oakville talked about the fact that the government has been listening when it comes to mental health and addictions, and so I wanted to cite a few numbers and get his response.

There were 539 confirmed opioid deaths in Ontario during the fourth quarter of 2022, with another 109 deaths likely linked to opioids. There has not been a community not affected by opioids, by the death and the trauma that’s connected. My question is, why are we not seeing across the province this being declared an epidemic? Why are we not seeing that strategy that would address this, and in the budget why do we not see what is needed in terms of safe consumption sites and the investment communities are begging for? Could he tell me, please, his thoughts on that?

Questions?

To the member opposite: I agree with you that there is a mental health crisis in Ontario, and the drugs and opioids that you touched on are certainly a part of that.

In terms of what we have been doing as a government, we have made major investments, and a major step forward is the investment we’ve put into homelessness: $202 million, which municipalities are absolutely thrilled about. We all know that, unfortunately, one of the side effects of drug addiction, which creates mental health problems, of course, is not being able to have a house and a roof over your head, so that is certainly one stride we are making to helping those people in need.

Thank you to the two members for your statements today. They were very interesting and very important, and I hope people out there were listening to what our two parliamentary assistants had to say today.

One thing that comes up often is ODSP. Over the years, no government really has done anything about the ODSP rates—you look at vulnerable citizens, and you look at people who just are really not making a lot of money.

ODSP is certainly not a job, but I’m wondering if you can elaborate on some of the work that is in this budget that touches on ODSP rates and the positive for the future.

I’d like to thank the members from Bruce–Grey–Owen Sound and Oakville for their presentation. I had the opportunity to travel for the pre-budget consultations with both of them.

Individuals living with disabilities have long been neglected by the Ontario government—and before I hear the speaking notes about a paltry 5% increase, let’s all admit that it’s not enough; indexing legislated poverty is not enough.

Individuals and organizations spoke at committee about the problems with the far-from-adequate housing benefit, as well as the fact that recipients can have benefits clawed back if they live with someone.

Can you imagine, Speaker? If you fall in love and live with someone who earns more money than you, then that person has to pay for you, according to the Ontario government.

So my question: Why does Ontario still police whom ODSP recipients love and live with?

I want to thank the members for their presentation.

Budget 2023 is one of the biggest budgets that we’ve seen in decades; I agree with the members on that. However, it is still one of the cruelest budgets, that fails to reach individuals, people, families or communities. In fact, we heard from so many people who came to present and talk about how this budget will actually increase suffering for so many people. One of those groups includes those who live on reserves.

My question to the members is, why is this government failing to spend or put any money, any investment, on infrastructure on reserves for services like clean drinking water?

It’s a pleasure to join all of you on this beautiful Monday afternoon to discuss Bill 85. I was trying to think of a different angle today, just for my own amusement, mostly. But I wanted to address the revenue that’s coming into the province—so I’m going to save at least 10 or 15 minutes, on where the revenue is coming from and where it’s not coming from and what’s happening with it.

You will know from our first hour on this speech that we found this budget to be an opportunity that was missed by the government. And it is so astounding to me, still, even after 11 years here, how we see the province so differently—perhaps it’s the people we’re listening to; perhaps it’s our communities and what kind of engagement we have with the people in those communities. Certainly, you could tell by the cross-section of questions that we asked today in question period that we have serious concerns around where health care is going, how this province is planning and overriding the planning of our municipal partners.

For us in Kitchener-Waterloo, it’s not necessarily a new issue, but certainly a growing concern is the lack of resources for those who’ve experienced sexual assault and sexual violence. To have a wait-list at the Sexual Assault Support Centre in Kitchener-Waterloo of 240 people, primarily young women, is devastating.

There is an impact from picking and choosing where you’re going to be investing, or who has your ear, or who’s in that backroom or who’s coming to your events, and who you actually, as government members, are listening to.

I can tell you that we share some of the concerns that were raised by the Toronto Star editorial board when they described this budget, Bill 85, as a “complacent mishmash. But if it was uninspired and unimaginative, it was also largely unmemorable.” I think the tone of the editorial here is that it indicated that this government is being safe, that you are parking money in places where—I’m going to actually address—the money is not getting there, which is a transparency and accountability issue which we share with the Financial Accountability Officer.

Also, this is a government that—you have three full years ahead of you. There was a time and a place to be bold. Cost-of-living pressures are being experienced by everybody we serve, from the not-for-profit sector to the education sector to the health care sector, and we heard this loud and clear through our deputations. This finance committee travelled—we spent a lot of time together—and we heard the same thing, but what we heard wasn’t translated into action in this budget.

I think it’s also important to recognize that when the government says, “We are going to balance the budget in two or three years”—that that’s even foreseeable is because of inflation; it’s because goods and services are costing Ontarians so much money, because we’re not doing anything as a province to address the price gouging that is happening, particularly in the food and grocery sector. Those revenues are coming into this place, and there is a moral, ethical responsibility to pass on some of those savings to the people we serve, to acknowledge that they’re hurting. That is the approach that we would take. It is very, very different from the approach of this government. We see those upstream investments saving money for the province—being more compassionate to the people we serve and, actually, assisting in the long term of people finding their potential, which is what we should all want for every Ontarian in this service.

The Star article went on to say that our leader of His Majesty’s official opposition said that this budget fails to meet the moment, and we definitely feel that.

I do want to say, though, that we did try to make it a better budget at committee. Myself and my colleagues introduced several amendments to make this budget more reflective of what we actually heard when we were travelling around the province, and I’m going to get to some of those in a second. The quote that obviously sticks with us—and several of my colleagues have also raised it: “If this budget were a Christmas present, it would be a three-pack of white socks. Not entirely useless. But an exercise in going through the motions.” So I hope that this is not setting the tone for the remainder of this term.

The editorial went on to say, “Overall, there was clanging dissonance between the budget’s palpable self-satisfaction and the economic anxiety, rising interest rates, soaring prices, health care concerns that have hit Ontario residents hard.”

That’s exactly what we heard.

I just want to confirm: We heard from the not-for-profit sector that they’re having a very difficult time keeping staff because of inflationary costs, because their budgets have flatlined and you can’t stretch those dollars any more. We heard from health care professionals, both front-line nurses and doctors, that recruiting into this broken system is difficult.

So, yes, absolutely, focus on attracting new people into the health care sector, but also retain the people who are experienced and went through the storm of this pandemic. We all call them heroes. Why not actually respect them? Thoughts and prayers do not pay the bills.

When the Ontario Medical Association came before us—and the Ontario college of physicians—they said, “We want to spend more time with our patients. These are the solutions. These solutions cost a little bit of money, but they save the system down the line.” So there were opportunities, wide-open doors—the barn door was fully open—on this budget really being more than a pack of three tube socks. This could have been a turning point for so many people in this province.

If you believe that budgets are moral documents, that they speak to the priorities of the government, then the government is intentionally, knowingly leaving so many people behind.

What I said to the finance minister when he came to the committee was, “I don’t understand. You have the money.” The money is there. There’s actually an unallocated surplus now in the province of Ontario of $2.9 billion. The funds are there to do the work, but the choice was made somewhere along the lines not to do that work.

We now have a planned contingency fund of $4 billion, separate from a surplus, and the reason why the contingency fund is concerning—and I believe very strongly that in a Westminster democracy, budgets are supposed to be approved by the Legislature in full. But with the government’s habit of hoarding cash in massive contingency funds and making radical in-year changes to the spending plan, we increasingly, as lawmakers, cannot trust that the budget presented will be what the government actually spends, and the lack of transparency is bad for our democracy.

I have seen from this Premier a complete disregard and even disdain for our democracy. I’ve never seen this before. There are rules that this Premier randomly reveals in press conferences. Friday’s press conference felt like a bit of an SCTV act, actually. There was policy flying all over the place, laws being run over—really just a very disconcerting randomness to the answers that the Premier was giving. Regardless of the constitutional responsibilities that we have as legislators, the Premier is not concerned with the Constitution. He’s not concerned with the charter. He’s not concerned with these human rights. He’s not concerned with the law of the land. And this does not inspire confidence in our democracy—but also confidence in our economy and how these deals are being negotiated, how they’re being met, how they’re paying for them. There are some contractual agreements around here that are a little dicey, I have to say.

If you have nothing to hide, then please reveal the mandate letters that you’ve been fighting in court for your five full years. It has gone to court now four times, and the government has lost four times. These mandate letters need to be revealed to the people of this province because—and I’ll get into where the money is going—there is a creeping privatization into the government of Ontario, and the money is not going to where it should be. And one only has to look at the gambling file in Ontario to actually use that as a full example. I will get into that.

The FAO had some words to say to the finance minister. We were on The Agenda, the Steve Paikin show, and he said we have this expenditure monitor, so we can actually track where the funding is going and where the funding is not going, and it’s there for all of us to use. I will say, in his last report—and it really was his last report, because the FAO, Peter Weltman, is no longer in office. His last day of work was not last Friday but the Friday before. Apparently, based on the interview that he did with Colin D’Mello, there was very little notice from the government; there was not a “Here’s your hat; there’s the door.” He didn’t even get that.

So this government really is a little shy around the transparency and accountability piece. They don’t like to be called out when the expenditure monitor from the office of the FAO actually documents where the money is going and where the money is not going.

Certainly, we were very concerned last quarter when $6.4 billion didn’t get to where it was supposed to go. This does call into question the legitimacy of the budget. The government can announce that they’re going to release $1.1 billion to community services, as they did around nine months ago to huge fanfare, really. Speaker, $1.1 billion is a good chunk of change, and we all have community agencies in our ridings that require that funding. But when we learned through the expenditure monitor that only $300 million got out the door into our communities, this, obviously, is concerning, and it should be concerning for everybody, especially people who are fiscally conservative. This was a moniker of the government: “We want to make sure that the money is being spent appropriately and going to the right places.” Well, we now have a growing body of evidence that that is not happening. So you can’t call us out for questioning this practice, because where the money is going, where the investments are going absolutely matters.

COVID-19—this was an additional part of the budget that I think is really concerning. I do want to thank our health critic for raising the issue of long COVID. COVID is serious. It’s still here. People are still suffering. And the hospitals that have been cobbling together some kind of a support system, gathering research, gathering best practices, have notified the government and this Minister of Health that they don’t have the funds to string these dollars along to provide that support. So if you know somebody who has long COVID, if you’ve seen how unproductive and debilitating long COVID can be, have a plan for it; have a strategy; have the Minister of Health stand in her place and say, “This is what we are going to do for long COVID.” That has not happened. Apparently, everything is fine on that side of the House.

The other lack of transparency which is really concerning to us—because health care and housing definitely dominated in this whole process. Even when the government says, “We’re going to make municipalities whole after Bill 23,” the Minister of Municipal Affairs stood in his place, after really taking these municipalities by surprise by overriding many of their growth plans—years and years of planning and consultation around environmentally responsible housing, intensification within those boundaries—and this minister decided, “You know what? We’re going to overrule, and we’re going to reduce the development charges that municipalities can access through developers.” Because this has been a long-standing relationship between municipalities and those who build houses—because it’s all primarily private sector—that those development charges help with the infrastructure costs. Those infrastructure costs matter, because they actually provide the opportunity to build the houses: the stormwater, the wastewater, the green space, the schools, the libraries, the roads. I mean, it’s kind of important.

So when the Minister of Municipal Affairs said, “You know what? Don’t worry, don’t worry. We still value you and we’ll make you whole”—in the budget, many municipalities, AMO in particular, were looking at making up for that funding gap. And for good reason, because their only other recourse is to raise taxes. So this amounted to downloading this responsibility to municipalities, who need the money. We actually did see a major jump in taxation—property taxes—across this province. Some municipalities were able to hold it to three or four, but in Waterloo region, it was at 8.9, because we’re a growing area and we need that infrastructure.

But when you follow the money, even more importantly, I would have to say—through estimates, our critic found this out—there’s actually a 25% Streamline Development Approval Fund for municipalities and there is a 70% Municipal Modernization Program, which is a reduction, which is a cut. So the Minister of Municipal Affairs says that he values municipalities, but when you follow where the money is going, he’s actually cutting the resources, one, to prove that the assets exist, because there’s a very patriarchal relationship in this House, with the Premier and with the minister and how they view municipalities—which is surprising, given the fact that they were both municipal councillors. And what the Premier said last week is that they just like to spend and spend and spend. Municipalities have the most accountability at any level, more so than federal, provincial. Local municipalities are held to a totally different level of account. So this discourse that the minister has and the Premier has with municipalities is not helpful to building new housing or even renovating new housing. So that’s where we are with that. There is a genuine growing distrust, and when you have that lack of trust, this undermines even good initiatives that the government may have.

When I was pressed to say what is good in this budget, I had to go through it a few times. The $202 million for affordable housing is a good investment. It’s a good step in the right direction. But when you look where that money is going, who’s getting the money and how little it actually adds to the value of housing initiatives in local organizations—I’m thinking of the city of Ottawa, whose top-up, based on this $202 million, is only $845,000. Our members from the Ottawa area said, “Listen, two houses”—this is not bold or ambitious housing development, not at all. There are some great inconsistencies, huge inconsistencies, between the language that the government is using about how great this budget is, and then the actual reality of what is happening in Ontario, the lived experience of Ontarians.

Thank goodness we have the Auditor General’s office as well. Who knows what’s going to happen with the FAO. This is a valuable part of our democracy. I’m hoping that this government will follow through and make sure that we go through the hiring process, but the Auditor General is also up for review, and I want to thank Bonnie Lysyk for the work that she’s done, particularly in the last report that came out. Her work on public-private relationships has been groundbreaking for Ontario and, really, Canada.

This is what she said around the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. and the entire gambling sector. She was particularly critical of the process that was used to select private casino operators for eight gaming regions within Ontario, resulting in 20-year contracts for the winning bidders. But among the criticisms were the facts that contracts were rewarded based on unrealistic financial projections, that the amount of capital investment included in the bid wasn’t included in the evaluation criteria, and that the capital investment which was included in the bids wasn’t included as a commitment in the final contract even when it was used to support revenue projections.

This is the important part: These contracts—because contract law used to be actually a thing in Ontario. These errors in the process have resulted in three of the eight regions needing to renegotiate what was supposed to be guaranteed revenue commitments and other missed opportunities for economic development, with direct losses to the province projected at billions of dollars over the length of the contracts.

So to say that the gambling file in Ontario is going well would be a huge stretch; it is messy right now, even with the regulator for gambling in Ontario going into the gambling business with iGaming. It’s unheard of.

She goes on to say, “Based on updated revenue projections for the eight gaming regions”—and this was as of March 2022—“total casino gaming revenue projections for the first 10 years of operations were reduced by $9.1 billion....”

Now, I’m not a gambler. I’m too Scottish, perhaps, to be gambling. I work very hard, and I don’t like losing money, and I have some charities that I’m very dedicated to, so I’m not a gambler, but gambling is here. The province of Ontario used to have this philosophy that if gambling is here, if people are going to gamble, then let’s make sure it is done in a safe manner, it is regulated, and that the funding that comes into the province goes to our schools, it goes to our hospitals, it goes to agencies that are actually doing really good work and protecting people—sometimes against themselves, because gambling is also very addictive.

The OLG’s share of these projected revenues was reduced by $3.3 billion—I’m sure the Minister of Education could use that money for education—reducing the projected net profit to the province by $320 million annually on average for 2024. So we are losing money. The government is gambling and the government is losing, and it seems intentional because this is actually by design, Madam Speaker. I’d like to know who got the contract to design such a terrible system.

But you know who else it’s hurting? It’s hurting Indigenous communities and nations. This is actually a growing theme here at Queen’s Park, when the government doesn’t take into account their responsibilities to negotiate in good faith with First Nations. This is from a recent article: “A First Nation community says they plan to challenge the Ford government’s decision to move ahead with online gambling, claiming it violates a constitutional right to consultation with Indigenous leaders.

“The Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation ... calls the Ontario government’s iGaming plans ‘deeply flawed’ and a move that will financially devastate their economy while setting back decades of community development efforts.”

It goes on to say that “most internet gambling by Ontarians currently takes place on websites not managed by the province, the new legal market will ensure integrity, fairness and player protections.” This is actually kind of comical right now.

“Kelly LaRocca, chief of MSIFN, called the announcement a ‘slap in the face of First Nations, and reduces their promises of reconciliation to a joke.’

“The First Nation says the provincial government has ignored section 35 of Canada’s Constitution, claiming the Ford government utterly failed to hold formal consultations with Indigenous governments—a violation of its duty to consult and accommodate impacted Indigenous groups.”

This is another quote from the chief: “‘The Ford government has recklessly ignored our concerns and has not offered any strategies to address the impact that their inadequate plan will have on our First Nation, our culture and our ability to provide services to our community.... We intend to challenge the province’s iGaming scheme in court.’”

And that seems like this is now the practice of this government, right? You know what the law is—the Premier, I assume, knows what the laws are. He may not have a respectful relationship, or even an understanding, that these dealings should be nation to nation. They should happen prior to announcements; they should happen prior to plans being rolled out to economies being interfered with. But he also seems very content to go to court. I’ve said this before in this House: The lawyers are doing very well in Ontario. This government has kept them very, very busy. I’ve even had to file an FOI to try to find out how many court cases this government has already engaged in. It’s easy to keep track of the ones you’ve lost because it’s actually almost all of them.

This is everything from stickers on gas tanks to—what’s another one? There are so many of them it’s hard to choose.

Question?

Further debate?

Thank you to both of my colleagues for your comments this afternoon.

To the member from Bruce–Grey–Owen Sound: I know you talked about some particular pages of the budget that you really enjoyed—obviously, for me, I have a certain section with the investments in training, specifically in the health care area.

You also mentioned Learn and Stay—we’re going to be together with the Minister of Health tomorrow; tomorrow is the actual kickoff day to Learn and Stay. Can you tell me what you’re hearing from students in your area, or even from the hospitals and long-term-care homes, about what it’s going to mean for the Owen Sound area?

I thank the member for the question. I very much agree with her about this program, ODSP, and how important it is and, more particularly, the changes that we have made to make it a much more effective program, particularly three: number one, having increased the overall amount, which hadn’t been increased in a decade or so; number two, pegging it to inflation, starting next year—that is a fundamental change to the program; instead of year-by-year arbitrary changes, we’re pegging it to inflation, so when CPI is rising, that program matches; and number three, a fundamental change to the income test, raising that threshold from $200 to $1,000 a month—it’s such an important structural change to the program; we’ve heard first-hand from employers what a big change that makes.

So there are many, many important and fundamental changes to make this program better.

You’re right; we did hear from committee members across as we were doing our travelling in the lovely months of the winter. One thing that struck me—I think there are two points in response to your question. Again, I get back to the structural change to raise the income threshold from $200 to $1,000. No, that doesn’t affect everybody, but for those who are impacted, it was a fundamental change. But more importantly, on the broader program, ODSP is not the only program, typically, that applies, and we have made so many other changes to the tax system for low-income seniors, for a working tax credit—on and on and on—so that these programs work together.

On the household income point, I take the member’s point. That may be an area we want to look at and see whether we can adjust the program going forward.

I look forward to being in Owen Sound tomorrow and talking about the importance of Georgian College and the role it’s having in the community.

So many of the educational measures begin on page 93 in the budget, and for the health care—it’s too many pages to mention.

What is great, I’d say, and what struck me most when the Georgian College program opened—I mentioned this in my remarks in passing—is the fact that it is attracting local students. One of the biggest challenges we’ve had in rural Ontario for many, many years is that people had to go away to get their education and often they didn’t come back. It was then a hunt to track down these doctors, nurses and PSWs. What’s great about this is that we have local students who will get educated in our community and stay in our community. It’s very, very exciting.

I’ll start with the overall comprehensiveness of the infrastructure spending. As I mentioned in my remarks, sector by sector, it’s a major, major investment, and not only in the near term but in the long term, because this kind of commitment anchors a government’s thinking for many budgets to come. And that’s the perspective I very much like.

I acknowledge the point that the member is making about investments on-reserve.

I think the other thing that I like about how this funding is designed is that we will be listening to communities in the future and sectors in the future to identify their priorities and look forward to dealing with them. So, hopefully, that addresses the member’s comment at some point in time.

The programs and the impact we’re seeing in the community is absolutely extraordinary. Bruce Power management made the—

Oh, gosh. Bill 124, again.

Bill 124: so Bill 124—this is exciting. I think there are 34 more days until this government loses in court again on Bill 124. I will want to say, the fact that you already lost Bill 124 and then you’re using more tax dollars to fight it is really—you know, there are some truly Progressive Conservative people who are not very happy with this. In fact, a lot of them do live in K-W and they have very strong opinions on it. But when you lose in court again on Bill 124, you will have to make up for lost time, for lost wages and the impact this has had on workers. Certainly, this is what we heard going community to community across this province.

But just to finish off with OLG, because I’m really just starting on OLG: The Internet gaming revenue grew by $139 million and $511 million in 2021-22. That’s a growth of 70% per quarter. There are so many people gambling in Ontario today, including when those hockey stars or those football stars start saying, “Get out there and gamble”—it really is such a dangerous precedent. We would never have these professional sports stars advocating for smoking or more drinking—actually, the drinking does happen, but the smoking doesn’t happen anymore. But the gambling in this province right now is certainly out of control, and the government has even undermined its own initial goal of generating some revenue around addictions and around supports for those who are addicted to gambling.

Meanwhile, private competitors saw growth of 65%, so introducing private competitors has cannibalized the OLG’s growth. What kind of smart business person creates a competitiveness, a competitor, to compete against themselves to generate revenue? It has gone according to plan. I’m totally in agreement with Chief LaRocca: If you had consulted with First Nations, who have a lot of experience in this sector, you would have found that there are many barriers, many loopholes and certainly a lot of risk that the province has taken on, and you didn’t have to. You didn’t have to do this. But for us, it has also encouraged less responsible practices, providing a far smaller share of its revenue for the province. That’s less money for schools, less money for hospitals, less money for child care—the things that we should be actually investing in.

I do want to say that it does appear that colonialism is alive and well in 2023, with the government saying, “Do you know what? We know best,” and the House leader and the minister responsible for mining saying, “Get out of the way if you’re not with us.” The only place that this government is going on these constitutional challenges is court. The law still matters in Ontario, as does the Constitution and as does the charter. Ironically, especially—we saw a real lack of respect, I think, this morning on the mining question—really disappointing.

However, what the government does not acknowledge and what our critic has made very clear is that we should have learned from the past. Some of us remember Ipper-wash. Some of us listen when Indigenous leaders and nations say to us, “This is our land. By law, you need our permission, our informed consent, to come onto this land,” and it is not helpful when this Premier says, “I’m going to get on my bulldozer and just go up there, and it’s going to happen regardless.” It’s irresponsible.

Actually, this is one of the major findings from the Ipperwash review, that it could have completely been avoided if there was respect—even a little bit of respect, Madam Speaker. So the Ring of Fire will be a ring of smoke, because this government is going to be in court. If you really care about mining, if you care about northern jobs, if you care about northern infrastructure, then don’t spend your time in court.

And so it does feel a little bit like déjà vu. Certainly in one of my first elections, we talked a lot about Dudley George over the course of that election, and I’m genuinely sad about this: We are going to be talking about these conflicts when the conflicts were completely avoidable if respect was on the table and if the law was followed. That would be a win-win-win for northern communities, for mining and for Indigenous communities, as well. This budget certainly reflects poorly on that.

The other thing that I did get to ask the finance minister in committee was about Ontario Place. Ontario Place also feels a bit like déjà vu in many respects. It does feel like the 407. The people of this province are in a 99-year lease for the 407. We paid for it, we built it, and we keep paying and paying over and over again. I will say that this 95-year lease for Ontario Place feels very similar to that.

The finance minister is a successful businessman, by all accounts, but I asked him some basic questions about this lease, because smart business people don’t sign 95-year leases. They also don’t sign 99-year leases. They also don’t sell off good portions of—because this is a de facto sale. A 95-year lease is a de facto sale, right? We’re not going to see what happens in 95 years, but it is about legacy, because we should be setting the tone from an environmental perspective, from an inclusion perspective, from an accessibility perspective for Ontario Place.

The entire narrative that the Minister of Infrastructure has created is that Ontario Place is not used and it’s falling apart and it’s a write-off. That is not true of Ontario Place. For those of us who go there and use it and spend time there, it’s a treasure.

Just to recap here, we did hear in 2021 that the government announced their friends at Therme were building an elite luxury spa on public parkland. I just want to tell you, there’s no huge call to our offices for huge public spas. People want food prices to be controlled. They don’t want to get evicted. They’re looking for child care. Their special-needs children—they want them included and accommodated in the public education system. These are what people are asking for. No one is calling MPPs and saying, “We want a spa.” It is just not happening.

You cut to March of this year; a city report shows a long list of problems with this plan. The spa is too big. The $450-million taxpayer-funded parking garage—or $350 million; it goes back and forth—violates even this government’s own policies.

The Minister of Infrastructure pressed on, and they told us that they signed a standard commercial lease for the spa that just happened to be for 95 years but—not so standard—that it must be kept secret. There’s no business case for a 95-year lease. Let’s be really clear about that. That is the seed of distrust. There’s no reason for this government to sign on to a 95-year lease—none at all. Ontarians already feel cheated on the 407, and this was the last time you signed a 99-year lease. So to draw parallels is very natural for so many of us. The lease is obviously not a standard commercial lease because if it was, then they could share it with us.

And then there are a number of issues around the transparency of this lease that I really do want to get onto the record. First of all, what we don’t know about this 95-year secret lease: Is the Therme parent company or a locally incorporated, ring-fence subsidiary—who’s financing this? Who has designed this lease? Is the guarantor Therme Austria, Therme’s bank or Republic of Austria? These are good questions. People want to know. Is there a break-free clause? Could we get out of this? Because that was the point I was pressuring the finance minister on in committee.

The improvement for the site—and this is interesting: the $350 million for 65,000 square feet. Now you do the math on this. It’s $5,400 per square foot for this parking garage versus, as a comparator, $1,000 per square foot for medical buildings and $1,200 for theatres.

What is the actual goal here? Is this a spa or a water park?

The parking garage: Is this even practical to build 2,000 spaces under Lake Ontario? Is that going to last? Is that doable? Is that a good investment to build all these parking spots close to or under the water?

The rental payments: They’re level for 95 years or they’re adjusted, either by CPI or predetermined adjustments. Is this tied to inflation? Is this a fixed amount?

These are damn good questions, I have to say. I would ask these questions when I was in business. I would look at a lease very carefully. I would say, “What is the intent here?”

I think the biggest question that people have about Ontario Place these days is, “What is the intended purpose?” What is the real goal here? Because if you don’t have trust, then you have incredible questions like, “Will this end up as a casino or a nightclub?” Because I don’t think the average life term of a spa is 95 years, and if it is, I don’t want to go to it. So these are some of the questions.

I put these questions to the finance minister, and he said “Well, call the Minister of Infrastructure to committee.” And so I moved a motion in public, and I said, “Listen, I do want to invite the Minister of Infrastructure.” She seems very keen on the plan. She’s very enthusiastic. If she’s really that proud of it, come to committee and show us the money, show us the numbers for sure, because there are lots of outstanding questions.

And if you look at the value of what this province has lost even with the 407, if you’re doing a comparator, okay: The government has signed the secret lease for 95 years with Therme. We don’t know who has written it, who is financing it—the financing of this is going to be very interesting—but we do know from past experience that in 1999 the Conservative government handed over a 99-year lease for Highway 407 for $3.1 billion. That’s about $4.4 billion in today’s dollars. What is the 407 worth today? Really, it is worth $40 billion, nearly a 1,200% increase in just 24 years. Do you think that the previous Conservative government sold off this highway in our best interest? Absolutely not. Was that ever the intent? Absolutely not. As I recall, this was to try to clear the way to get rid of the operational deficit. And what are we doing? We are paying so much money. If anybody was paying attention to what people are experiencing in Ontario, it is a true cost-of-living crisis. There’s so much pressure on people in this province. So we called on the government to release the lease. They’ve not yet chosen to do that.

Okay. For some reason, it’s going really fast.

I want to talk about autism, because autism was not mentioned in this budget. And this also led, I believe, to the minister resigning. I’m happy to hear that she is healthy and that she has moved on, but I have to say that it was a very sudden resignation. Merrilee Fullerton took a lot of heat on the long-term-care file. I do believe one of the stories that was shared about this particular minister, when she was with long-term care: that she did go to cabinet and she asked for money. And I do believe that looking at this budget on budget day and not seeing autism mentioned once would be a tipping point—not to speculate too much. I’m glad that she’s healthy and spending more time with her family, but I’m really, really concerned about the autism file.

In addition to introducing these amendments to try to make the bill stronger, which is our responsibility to do—we take that duty and responsibility very seriously. The autism file—to say it’s a mess doesn’t even do it justice, really. Given the increasing wait-list to access core clinical services, providing interim funding to everyone on the wait-list would be a way to provide immediate relief and support to families. We’ve made some recommendations in consultation with our critic on this file. We want the government to make interim funding available to everyone on the wait-list. That should happen right now, because the wait-list is huge.

We want the government to address the structural administrative model of the OAP. This is something that the government can do. I like the minister who is responsible for this file. I wish him well. I wish this minister strength and courage. When he first got the file, I said, “This ministry and these responsibilities have left more experienced ministers looking for the door.”

The third thing is to re-evaluate the determination-of-needs process. This letter that I sent to Minister Parsa back on May 9 was really a reach across the aisle: “Let’s figure this out.” But the fact that the budget did not address this backlog—this obviously was an intentional decision that the government made. I can’t see why you thought that was the ethical or responsible model.

This is what Bruce McIntosh, who came to committee, said to us—and this is exactly from Hansard: “The calls that the parents get—and I see this daily ... make them think that something is actually happening.” Actually, this is validated by our critic, because she explained this to the minister before the minister moved on.

This is what parents do: “They open up an account on a server to get correspondence back and forth with the new program, and then they wait for that invitation to services. That wait ... is years long. The government stopped publishing the number of registered children in December. At that point, it was 60,411” children. “Four months later, I suspect it’s approaching 65,000 and they missed their target at the end of the year to bring kids into the program. You know, the kids that they do bring into the program are faced with more waiting and the kids that they fail to bring into the program to meet their targets are—you guessed it—faced with more waiting.

“This program needs to be made more efficient. The bureaucrats have to get out of the way of the clinicians. The red tape and delay in reconciling a group of—we had a mom whose entire submission of invoices was rejected because she uses a post office box for correspondence and as a billing address”—can you imagine how broken the system is, that because a mom uses a post office box, she was denied the funding? This is all in Hansard—“and the people at the ministry took issue with the fact that she was apparently presenting herself as living at the post office”—well, there is a housing crisis, but I want to say that people do not live at the post office; it’s ridiculous—“seriously. They sent it back to her. It added another three weeks to getting a new block of funding. This is just one in 100,000 of these sorts of incidents.

“This government has a minister for red tape reduction”—this is his recommendation, and I actually love it—“for heaven’s sake, what is that fellow doing?” That would be a wonderful amendment. So we’re going to introduce an amendment, because there’s a common sense solution: Let’s put the minister of red tape in charge of the autism file, and make sure that those bureaucrats actually are streamlining those services.

Yes.

In essence, everyone who is connected in any way, shape or form to the autism file believes that this is an unethical process that has been set up. It’s hurting families, and it’s actually causing financial ruin for so many people.

We can do better. This budget could be better. We tried to make it better. One day—I don’t know—I’d like to introduce one, because let me tell you, it would be focused on people. That’s where our focus is.

The education folks also came to finance committee as we were trying to review Bill 85.

This is what OSSTF said:

“In its current format, Ontario’s 2023 budget falls short of what is needed to ensure all students are set up to succeed. Neither the budget nor the 2023-24 Grants for Student Needs will cover increased inflationary increases on costs in a wide variety of budget lines, let alone the rising, complex needs of students following the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s time for true investments. It’s time the Ford government stop shortchanging the students of this province.

“As the representative of over 60,000 front-line education workers and teachers, we hope the government will finally begin working with us in earnest so our schools can have the necessary resources and support that our students need to succeed.”

This is consistent from all education advocates, actually.

I have to say, the pandemic did leave many school boards shortchanged.

I did ask my local school board if the Waterloo Region District School Board had to use reserves to cover COVID costs over the last two years; the answer was unequivocally yes. They incurred $5.7 million in unfunded COVID expenses, and total COVID expenses were $27.7 million—$22 million of that was funded by the ministry, so there was a gap around addressing COVID in our schools. That gap has not gone anywhere. It is very real.

Finally, on the social services piece, which this budget misses entirely, is the privatized foster care that this province has. Many people don’t really understand this: When children come into the care system—the previous Liberal government decided that they would outsource that care. This used to happen through family and children’s services. These agencies—and one of them the member from Windsor West has brought to the floor of this Legislature; it’s called Hatts Off. We had a delegation come, through the OFL, who talked about what these kids are experiencing in these settings where care is not prioritized. The care component is not the first item. The first item is “How much money can we make off of these kids?” There’s a per diem, and there’s a funding formula. But do you know who doesn’t get picked up by these agencies? It’s the most complex, high-needs children, because they cost too much money, and that digs into the profit margins of these organizations like Hatts Off. This is happening in Ontario. It has been happening since the Liberals privatized it. This government has had several cases now where we’ve seen the death of children in these private care options. They’ve died from neglect. It needs to be said that these are children who have already experienced trauma, and then they get sent to a place that is not caring, that sometimes overmedicates and sometimes uses restraining orders to a degree that is not based on facts, on the best interest. So this was an opportunity for this government to address that, especially because we did have family and children’s services here lobbying us at Queen’s Park not that long ago. Because these private care companies don’t want to take care of medically complex children, they’ve had to start their own homes at their own cost. So family and children’s services are actually running deficits because they don’t have the funding, because the government hasn’t acknowledged that this is a big issue.

Finally, I want to wind up a little bit with the housing, because I cannot emphasize enough how Bill 23 is cooling the market in Ontario. In Waterloo, for instance, there was a subdivision planned of about 800 homes, but when you factored in the loss of development charges, city council did the responsible thing and said, “We don’t have the money for the infrastructure.” You can’t build homes without waste water, without water, without roads. The fact that the minister has not made these municipalities whole, not addressed this gap from a planning perspective, is downright irresponsible; it’s irresponsible when municipalities want to build the houses. In fact, there are so many municipalities that have already made approvals for housing, but the housing isn’t getting built. The minister has, in his tool box, a way to hold those developers to account. If developers are receiving the approvals to build houses and then they’re sitting on those approvals for 20 years, that’s not how you accelerate the building of homes.

The intensification is something that we are completely and utterly supportive of. It is ridiculous that we get this NIMBYism back. This is exactly where we want the housing. We want the housing to be built where the infrastructure is, but it’s not going to happen if the municipalities don’t have the funding to actually upgrade and modernize the infrastructure. I think for Waterloo region, it kind of feels a little bit like ground zero. The region of Waterloo has done an extensive job of highlighting within the urban boundary where we can build housing, and this includes the missing middle housing. This is the housing that is accessible, that is close to transit, that is in the core. This is what needs to happen.

I was really pleased to see that last week the city of Toronto passed a motion to end exclusionary zoning, essentially. They’re going to build housing wherever, whenever they possibly can, within the urban boundary.

So this narrative the government has created that we must build on the greenbelt; that the greenbelt, according to the Premier, is just a piece of fiction, that somebody took a crayon and developed the greenbelt—the studies, the scientists, the communities, the ministry that was involved in developing the greenbelt, they must be watching this Premier. As I said, it was a bizarre press conference last week. There was singing. There was some dancing. No bees were harmed in that particular press conference.

I do want to say the greenbelt is real. The ecosystem is real. The wetlands are real. The farmland is real. We need that greenbelt. In fact, there is a call to action from every community across this great province, because people are not buying what this government is selling. They don’t like the narrative that the greenbelt is some form of fiction. There’s a cost to the entire province when people are so irresponsible with their language and with their words.

The Premier did come to KW. We’re going to have a by-election there, so there’s a lot of interest in KW these days. I think that the response, by and large, from the community is that they are very concerned with this Premier and with this minister and with this government unilaterally rewriting the local official plan, moving urban boundaries, violating the countryside line to open previously protected lands to development. At that particular occasion, the Premier said that this was a no-brainer. I would agree that brains were not used in this decision. The people of Ontario and the people of Waterloo region feel insulted that this is happening. They feel insulted that the government is also, for some reason, gaslighting new immigrants.

We’re totally receptive to new immigrants in Ontario, from the skilled trades to all sectors. But when those new immigrants are coming into this province, they are not likely moving to a McMansion up in the greenbelt. New immigrants have said to us—we’ve sat down with several groups that said, “We want to be close to transit. We want to be close to schools. We want to be close to hospitals.” This social infrastructure matters to new immigrants. Certainly, the employment piece is very key, as well.

The other thing that seems to be completely missing from this budget, especially around conservation—the damage to our conservation authorities will be hard. It keeps me up at night a little bit, actually, because I keep thinking about the damage that is happening and how we’re going to have to undo that damage—because you can’t transport a wetland. That’s not really how it works. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Waterloo region relies heavily on an aquifer. We rely on source water protection, and that is built into our regional plan. Now the government has said, “We don’t need that plan. It’s just an arbitrary line around our area”—it’s not; it’s based on where the aquifer is and where we have access to clean drinking water.

Do you know what’s bad for the economy and what’s bad for business, Madam Speaker? When a whole community loses their source of water. That’s pretty much it. That’s pretty much done. It doesn’t matter where you build the houses. We’ve had examples of this in this province. We should have learned from Walkerton. There are so many examples of people saying, “We have lots of water”—water is life, as MPP Mamakwa always says—but there were no hydrological studies done.

So this budget has its own agenda. That’s where I would take it.

What missed opportunities—just to circle back to the whole theme that this was a budget that missed the moment, that failed to listen to the very people who came to us in good faith.

And this is another thing: Why have budget consultations if you’re going to ignore the lived experience, the expertise, the data that we heard on this budget round?

The Alzheimer Society, when they came to us—and the statement today around the tsunami on dementia and Alzheimer’s. That is real. When the Alzheimer Society came to us and said, “You promised us in 2021-22 that you would invest $5 million, but that money never flowed”—they came again to finance committee and said, “It’s 2023; it’s never the wrong time to do the right thing.” So really, really hoping—and we’ll be tracking it, of course, through expenditures and the monitoring of that. But we heard in finance committee that if this government does not take aggressive action and invest in the solutions that exist on dementia, every hospital up and down University Avenue, just to the south of this building, will be filled with dementia patients.

The smart thing is to partner with the Alzheimer Society of Ontario. They have great community connections. They are doing amazing work with very little money. Think of the potential that they could do if you actually invested the money that you said you were going to invest.

The other thing is for hospice—I met with Hospice Waterloo. Hospice Ontario came here from Ottawa and they said, “We need you to fund 100% of our clinical services.” I didn’t know that hospices were not fully funded for clinical services. They have to fundraise for basic medical health care, because palliative care is health care. And then they’re still fundraising for operational costs. We actually had a hospice that went to a food bank—a food bank. The research is really clear: Hospices provide a very important role in the health care system. They keep people out of emergency rooms. They provide a compassionate end of life for folks. Nobody wants to die in a hallway in a hospital, and if there’s not an option for a home arrangement, hospices are very special places, I just want to say.

Finally, I want to end on community support services. In what world is a 40% reduction to community social services acceptable? These community support services are Meals on Wheels—Meals on Wheels provide eyes on seniors and on vulnerable Ontarians. We know from the pandemic that isolation kills, and it’s a painful, painful way to die. Being lonely—we can do so much better in Ontario. The 40% reduction is really quite cruel.

So despite our best efforts to make this budget more responsive on rent, on the environment, on housing, on health care, on mental health and addictions—we really fought hard at committee and even through conversations during committee, but this is not a budget that can be supported by us. There may be some good things in this budget, but overall, it does not address, from a moral perspective, from an ethical perspective, the needs that we heard very clearly from Ontarians, and we feel that this government could do so much better.

Thank you very much for your time.

I’ll support that.

Questions?