SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
May 15, 2023 10:15AM
  • May/15/23 4:50:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 85 

I actually have a 20-minute speech that I could do for you. I think the key issues that I didn’t get to are the things I talked about, in St. Catharines and Niagara Falls, in my area—and I’m not blaming anybody, but mental health is a huge issue in Niagara. The opioid crisis that we’re all facing in every one of our communities—I don’t think there’s anybody over there who isn’t facing an opioid crisis in the province of Ontario. These are two things that I think we have got to do better on. That’s for sure.

And Bill 60—I didn’t get to tell you what happened to the Americans. Do you know, today, in the United States of America, because of the cost of health care—45 million people today claimed bankruptcy because of health care costs in the United States, and people died, particularly those who are on the lower scale. They die earlier because of the cost of health care. We can’t go down that road.

You want to talk about Oshawa? They had 21,000 working in that Oshawa plant when I was president of the local union in 1999. Do you know what they’re down to now? A few thousand.

What about Brampton?

Do you want me to go on? Do you want me to talk to the parts sector?

I can talk about every sector—and it was because of the high Canadian dollar. The reason why they’re coming back is because of the dollar. There’s no doubt about that. You can’t argue—

Your second question was about—what was it? Help me out here.

Think about it: Every new build since 2018 can charge whatever they want.

We’ve already said as a party—I’ve said it many times here—we should have rent control on all units—

Interjection: And when people move out?

Why did it change? Because they made sure that they helped their corporations and developer friends—that they could make money, to a point that they can’t wait to build rental units because they’re going to make more money on the rental units, because they’re charging $3,200, $3,500. And it won’t be long before it will be $4,000 to get a rental in Toronto.

I know the Speaker is from Toronto. Your area is probably one to talk about, quite frankly, when you get a chance to talk over here.

We need rent controls. We need to make sure we take them off new builds from 2018. And we’ve got to make sure that we take care and get rid of renovictions, which is really, really—

I’m going to tell you that when I was the president of the local union, I was arguing for incentives for small businesses, quite frankly, and small manufacturers. As a matter of fact, when we got our V6 plant in 1997 bargaining, it came with incentives. The same way that you’re doing with the Chrysler plant now in Windsor, where you’re giving them X number of dollars to invest here—well, we did the same thing at the bargaining table in 1997. It’s one of the reasons why the Big Three stayed in Canada.

Even though, in 1997, we bargained the collective agreement—no, sorry; it was 1999—and we were number three in the world of manufacturing of auto parts and auto assembly; we dropped to 21. A lot of it had to do with the cost of the dollar and some of the bad policies that were brought forward by the Liberals—I’m not blaming it all on one. The Liberals were not very good at handling that, as well, when it came to jobs.

So I appreciate that, and I agree with you. Check the date. Write it down. We agree on it.

664 words
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