It’s a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill 85, Building a Stronger Ontario Act.

This budget is another missed opportunity by this government to address the main issues that are confronting Ontarians. In Niagara, we’re seeing more and more people struggling to find an affordable place to live as the cost of housing continues to rise. We’re seeing patients waiting months for medical tests and appointments, off-load delays worsening and hospital services being cut. This budget is a missed opportunity to address many of those issues. We’re seeing this government once again break their promise to municipalities after promising to make them whole after Bill 23. And we’ve been focusing, the last week, on some of those issues.

AMO has calculated that cities will see a $5-billion revenue shortfall from this government’s legislation, Bill 23. Municipalities are cancelling affordable housing projects. The city of Toronto says its entire housing capital plan will need to be scrapped if the minister doesn’t cover the shortfall of his failed legislation. We’ve heard, from Peel and Brampton, of huge property tax hikes that will have to happen—and service cuts—if they are not reimbursed as this government promised. There’s no money in the budget to make municipalities whole, and the government is cutting things like the Streamline Development Approval Fund by 25%, as I raised last week in a question, and the Municipal Modernization Program by 70%. These are the programs that fund initiatives to speed up housing development approvals and fund audits. If the minister is holding off on compensating municipalities for Bill 23 because he wants to speed up housing and perform audits, I ask the minister, why is he cutting the very programs that fund these initiatives instead of addressing them in the budget, and why is there no money in the budget to make municipalities whole as was promised? This is causing, obviously, a great deal of a stress and anxiety for municipalities as they struggle to meet targets that this government imposed but is not supporting with their budget.

Budgets are about choices, and it’s clear that this government is choosing to help the well-connected and wealthy few, because there’s very little in the budget to help out Ontarians with the cost of living or improving access to public services and the other issues that they care so much about.

Speaker, as you know, this is Niagara Week at Queen’s Park, and there are many local mayors, councils and representatives here from all different political backgrounds to advocate for Niagara. This year’s theme is “Growing Better, Together.”

I have to recognize folks who put on a really nice reception last night. I want to congratulate Niagara College, who provided the food and some refreshment, as well as 13th Street Winery. And of course, it was sponsored by the Greater Niagara Chamber of Commerce. I want to congratulate folks from Niagara for putting on a great reception.

I also have to recognize the team that came from Niagara, who came with some very focused asks of the government; some very well-researched, factual and strategic priorities. I understand that their meetings are going quite well with government ministers and they’ve made some headway. We’re grateful for that, but of course the budget was an opportunity to address these concerns, which is why municipalities are coming, hat in hand, to the government. I’d like to talk about some of those priorities.

There’s nothing in the budget that will attract the health care talent that we need to reverse the health care crisis. We know the health care crisis was created by legislation like Bill 124, which this government could have chosen to reverse and address the funding shortfalls that have resulted in wages that have been suppressed. We know that the health care crisis is a human resources crisis. Nurses and others are leaving the profession. This budget was an opportunity to address those problems.

For Niagara Week, the Niagara region is seeking reimbursement for local property tax dollars that were used to mitigate ambulance off-load delays. Niagara has been asking, for some time, for that issue to be addressed.

Between 2021 and 2022, Niagara experienced a 55% increase in off-load delays. It’s a tremendous problem in Niagara. In the latter half of 2022, a total of $1.7 million of the regional levy was spent to address the record number of EMS calls in Niagara. The region has pointed out that three of Niagara’s hospitals consistently rank near the bottom for off-load times. In 2022, EMS incurred 33,908 off-load delay hours. That’s equivalent to 24 paramedics working for 365 days. Yesterday, I directly asked the Minister of Health if the government would commit to reimbursing the region the $1.7 million and ensure that Niagara is funded for an additional health team to help address the underlying causes of our EMS crisis, as requested by municipal leaders. I hope that the government is seriously taking that request. Unfortunately, the answers that we’ve received from the government so far is to list other investments, as if everything is okay in Niagara. Let me tell you, Speaker, everything is not okay.

Back in April, all the parties in this House supported a motion that I put forward to keep full emergency department services and acute-care services at the Welland hospital. What has happened at the Welland hospital has created a great deal of stress in the community. Without warning, local Niagara Health decided that they would permanently remove after-hours and weekend emergency surgery. If you know Niagara, there is some distance between hospitals, and many of the hospitals in Niagara have shut down. We have urgent care centres where hospitals used to be. Shutting down those urgent care centres is being discussed in places like Port Colborne and Fort Erie.

Folks in Port Colborne—which is in my riding—have to travel to Welland, to the Welland hospital, if they’re seeking emergency services. Well, as of a couple of months ago, if somebody from Port Colborne comes to Welland and they need emergency surgery, for example, for an appendix, where it’s recommended within an hour, guess what they have to do? They have to wait for an ambulance to come and take them to another hospital. In a region where off-load delays are a huge problem, that is creating a huge amount of stress and anxiety for people in the community. Many front-line doctors, nurses and medical professionals have made clear to me that losing those services will almost certainly result in avoidable deaths for patients who need to be in an operating room within an hour.

From 2018 to 2020, the Welland hospital ran at over 100% capacity, as did all of the Niagara hospital sites.

We hear from the government constantly that a new hospital is being built in Niagara Falls, and that’s true, but it’s not supposed to be done until 2028-29, and we’re seeing a reduction in all of our hospital services now. Having a hospital being built four, five or eight years down the road is not helping folks who are spending time in ambulances in loading bays and not having their health taken care of. That’s something that this government could have chosen to address in this budget.

As a region, Niagara surpassed both national and provincial average growth rates, increasing its overall population by 6.7% from 2016 to 2021.

The city of Thorold, where I live, had an increase of 26.7%. It’s the eighth-fastest-growing community in all of Canada, and here we have emergency services being cut, reduced and completely removed from a local hospital.

I’ve requested to meet with this government and the Ministry of Health multiple times to come up with a plan to save these services at the Welland hospital; each time, this government has refused to even meet. I’ve asked the government during question period if they’re willing to leave the people of south Niagara without timely access to life-saving care; each time, they’ve avoided directly answering the question. If this government won’t listen to me, they should at least listen to the thousands of folks from various political backgrounds who have signed our petition to save the hospital.

In talking to people at the Seaway Mall, where I recently spent some time in Welland—talking with folks as they walked through the mall and having them sign our petition. Folks were absolutely shocked and dismayed with the direction that this government is taking our health care system in. They know that privatization will only allow the wealthy few to jump the line while the rest of us are stuck waiting even longer.

In our community, one of the examples that people are aware of of this government’s lack of priority—and we talked about this during the election campaign, actually—is their plans to expand the Garden City Skyway in Niagara, which is a bridge over the canal that goes from St. Catharines to Niagara-on-the-Lake, and the hundreds of millions of dollars that the government is planning to spend. I’m not against highways. I’m not against bridges. Fixing them, repairing them, expanding them creates jobs and can be good for the local economy. But what does it say when you’re losing life-saving emergency services in a hospital—an issue the government won’t address—but they will expand a bridge that is not terribly busy at the present time? That has been talked about on local radio shows, and it really shows that this government is completely out of touch with the priorities of people in Niagara.

Under this government, it has become even harder to find an affordable place to live. There’s nothing in the budget to actually build the houses we need. The province’s own budget shows that we’re moving in the wrong direction on housing. And the dismantling of the greenbelt isn’t doing what the government promised. The budget predicts fewer housing starts next year than this year, and they’re nowhere near on track to meet their stated goal of 1.5 million homes in 10 years. In 2022, 96,100 homes were started, with even less projected to start in the following years—in 2023, only 80,300 new homes, and another decrease in 2024 is projected. As reported recently by Global News, that means that over four of the 10 years set out in the province’s plan, just 23% of its total target of homes will be built. When I asked about the government’s ability to meet these targets, the Minister of Housing said that we will do “everything we can” and “there’s things out of my control.” Well, it’s within the minister’s control to make or not make commitments and to admit when a plan is not working.

It’s becoming clearer to the people of Ontario that their plan is not working. The government needs to change course if it’s to effectively address the housing crisis and meet any of its targets. They can only make excuses for so long.

For Niagara Week, the region’s representatives have made clear that they’re asking senior levels of government for co-investment in long-term capital funding for Niagara’s consolidated housing master plan, which will allow us to grow sustainable housing solutions. These are some of the local investments that could be made through a budget to help municipalities build more homes. This plan lists shovel-ready sites that are awaiting co-investment, and it will guide the development of new community housing units between 2022 and 2045. It includes unique opportunities to leverage investment in non-profit and co-operative housing—something that this government has completed ignored—as well as municipal housing. It identifies existing land assets that will support the development of approximately 11,000 new community units. So here’s a program that the government could choose to partner with municipalities on to build more of the kind of affordable units that people need and have asked for.

In addition to the low number of homes started, we know that many of the homes being built are not affordable.

In Niagara, we’re seeing people spend upwards of 60% of their take-home income on housing alone. According to the Niagara Association of Realtors, in March 2023, the average home sold was $699,913. It’s becoming more and more unaffordable for folks. And of course, that has a tremendous effect on rental prices.

We all agree that we need to build more homes, and we need to keep pointing out that you can’t just look at supply. We’ve talked about this many times. The government’s ideological bent is really just to look at supply. They’re not looking at demand—which is a demand for affordable homes.

The Niagara region recently created the attainable housing team to focus on building more of the missing middle, and I hope that the government listens carefully to the proposals that the region makes.

There’s no new funding in the budget to help struggling tenants afford skyrocketing rents. There’s no real rent control.

The 5% ODSP increase puts people even further from a livable income, following a year of skyrocketing rents and inflation in Niagara and across Ontario.

For Niagara Regional Housing, the wait-list for an affordable unit in Thorold, where I live, is 10 years; in Welland, you’re waiting seven to 12 years; in St. Catharines, eight to 19 years. And in Niagara Falls, you could be looking at anywhere from five to 20 years for an affordable housing unit.

This government has ignored the advice of its own experts and its own Housing Affordability Task Force by not ending exclusionary zoning. The minister is failing to enable missing middle housing to make it easier for people of all incomes, ages, family sizes and abilities to access affordable housing options in the neighbourhoods and communities that they live in.

Governments used to play an important role in building new, affordable and non-market housing and stabilizing the housing markets, but starting back in the 1990s, successive Liberal and PC governments abandoned any meaningful public role in the delivery of new non-market housing, and it’s being completely abandoned in this budget as well. That’s what set the stage for the housing crisis we’re facing today.

I want to talk for a few minutes about modernizing municipal services.

For the first time in the Niagara region’s 53-year history, we have dedicated resources through a new council-approved office with a mandate to accelerate shared service opportunities across the region. This is an ask that our team from Niagara is making of the government, and the reason that we need to come forward with this request is because nothing was provided in the budget. There was no new funding for municipal transit operations in the budget, and that is creating quite a bit of stress on municipal budgets as well.

The government promised to make municipalities whole, as I’ve mentioned, and there’s nothing to make up for Bill 23 municipal deficits which will result in service cuts and higher taxes. Municipalities have cancelled affordable housing projects, as I’ve mentioned. The government is cutting the very programs that municipalities use to try to speed up the construction of more housing.

When I asked the Premier about this in question period, his response was, “When I went down to city hall, I heard the same song and dance. First meeting with the CAO—’We’ve got to raise taxes 30%.’ ... We found a billion dollars, did a 0% tax increase, never went once to the province hat in hand.” I was amazed by that answer, because it’s like asking a mugging victim why they want their wallet back. The Premier has taken $5 billion in infrastructure revenue away from municipalities, then promised to reimburse them, and when municipalities asked for that promise to be fulfilled, the Premier accuses them of acting like beggars and going hat in hand to the province. They’re the ones who took the revenue away. They’re the ones who promised to return it.

This is a situation that is going to become more and more acute as municipalities struggle with their budgets. We’ve heard of some enormous tax increases and service cuts that are going to happen. That’s something that could have been addressed in this budget—treating municipalities like partners rather than creatures of the province or beggars.

My time is just about up, Speaker.

Clearly, we are disappointed with a budget that is full of missed opportunities. We hope the government will take a good look and listen to municipalities and many Ontarians who believe, as we do, that we can do a whole lot better.

Thank you to the honourable member for the question.

The point I was trying to make is that the government, with Bill 23, took away $5 billion in infrastructure revenue, and then, when municipalities complained how it would actually hurt their ability to build more housing, the government promised to reimburse to make those municipalities whole; and then, when municipalities said, “Well, are you going to keep your promise?”, the government turned around and compared them to beggars going hat in hand to the province. That is the kind of doublespeak I was talking about, that I believe the government is guilty of.

I used to be a budget chair of a large municipal organization. You can’t run deficits municipally. There are very few choices when you lose a huge chunk of revenue. You’re either going to raise taxes, or you have to cut services. That’s the situation that municipalities are being put in. So when you hear the government promising to make them whole, that’s a huge commitment, and when they go back on that commitment, what happens is, you have municipalities like Brampton that are saying, in order to cover that shortfall, they have to raise property taxes 80%. That’s backed up by numbers. They’re not making that up. So that revenue has to be replaced somehow or we’ll end up with huge tax hikes and cuts to services, which will then hurt the municipality’s ability to participate in the kind of partnerships that build more housing in that municipality.

What I can tell you is that I have very few people in Niagara who are concerned about hospital services, who are concerned about finding affordable housing, who call my office and say, “Do you know what we really need? We really need a luxury spa near Lake Ontario. That’s what I need. Don’t worry about the emergency services that are being taken out of the hospital. Don’t worry about finding an affordable place to live. I would really like for the government to facilitate a luxury spa near Lake Ontario in Toronto.” I don’t hear that at all.

So I think we need to really look at what our priorities are when we put a budget like this forward—and I doubt that this party will support those kinds of priorities.

This is probably the biggest issue in Niagara in terms of stress for folks. We have one of the oldest populations, not only in Ontario, but in Canada, and it’s also a growing population. In my riding, it’s the part of the region which is growing most rapidly, and yet they’re losing hospital services, losing emergency services. When you shut down an emergency department in one city, it puts stress on the entire system.

The government did not provide any kind of money in the budget to facilitate one emergency department closing by making another one in another city bigger. They just had to take on that stress, and so we’re seeing ridiculous ambulance delays of eight to 10 hours, of people sitting in an emergency bay when they really need to get into an emergency room. It’s a situation that’s getting worse, and it’s a real shame the government didn’t look in their budget—

I thank the member for the question.

What we have a problem with is a government that completely ignores the affordability issue. What’s happening here is that they’re taking money away from municipalities and giving it to developers. They promised to reimburse municipalities, and they’re not doing that.

Money doesn’t just fall from the sky. You have $5 billion of revenue shortfalls created by the government’s housing legislation, and that money has to come from somewhere. It’s going to result in steep property tax increases and cuts to services that people need. That’s the result of the government’s decisions and their priorities in this budget.