I would like to introduce two guests from my riding today: Jenna Craig and Anniston Deleary. They are grade 12 students from Chippewas of Rama First Nation and youth council members. Thank you for being here today and joining me.

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.