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.

Thank you to my colleague from Waterloo for her remarks on the budget. I know she spoke a lot about housing. I find it kind of perplexing. As the minister mentioned this morning in question period: over 27,000 new housing starts in 2023 and a 16% increase from last year, which was a historic year, as well, Speaker, so it looks really promising for 2023 so far. And she mentioned the Homelessness Prevention Program allocations. Our government made some changes around that. It was a new funding allocation model which was based on the Auditor General’s report from 2021, the value-for-money audit. The member for Waterloo mentioned the Auditor General many times.

Does the member for Waterloo support the Auditor General and her recommendations around that funding formula?

Thank you to the member from Waterloo. During her speech, she talked about autism. I remember, prior to the 2018 election, that the Premier had promised that families with children with autism would never have to protest outside on the Queen’s Park lawn. There have been many protests since then. I believe the number back then on the wait-list was 28,000; I could be wrong about that. But I do know what was trending last year was #50KIsNotOk, meaning the wait-list was now at 50,000. The member from Hamilton Mountain recently brought up just, I think, today in question period that it’s now at 60,000.

To the member from Waterloo: What is going wrong with their strategy with autism where this number keeps ballooning, even though the Premier had promised that families would be taken care of and not have to protest?