I’ll be brief because we don’t have a lot of time. The autism wait-list has grown from 28,000 to 60,000. There’s not one word on autism in the budget. I’m just wondering why the Conservative government doesn’t think that’s important?

Being a Brampton boy, born and raised, being born in Peel Memorial Hospital and raised in our community, one of the frustrations we have in my community is that we always feel like our decisions are being made by somebody else. It felt like the powers that be in downtown Toronto decided they wanted to give everybody else a bypass highway, but when it came time for Brampton to go and get our own bypass highway, we were cast aside by the previous government.

Now, under this Premier’s leadership, we are investing in Highway 413, which is finally giving Brampton its own bypass highway—the downtown Toronto environmentalist critics be damned.

I know the member for Durham also had some of these decisions that didn’t really reflect his own local priorities around tolling on Highways 412 and 418. Just like in my community where drivers were getting shafted by downtown Toronto decisions that didn’t reflect the community, his area was getting shafted as well. I wonder if the member could talk about—I see in the budget a commitment around keeping those tolls away—

It’s my honour to rise today to speak to this budget bill on behalf of the good people of Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas. You put me in this place, you trusted me, and I work every day to make sure that I continue to earn that trust and be an MPP you can be proud of. So you can be sure that what I’m about to say about this budget today reflects everything I have been hearing from you, all your hopes, your dreams and your disappointment in this government with this budget.

It really is like we’re talking about two Ontarios. In this province of Ontario, if you are, let’s just say, an international corporation like Therme getting a 95-year lease on our public lands, you’re doing pretty well. If you’re a for-profit corporation that is profiting from the privatization of our health care system, if you are profiting from seniors’ knees, their eyes, their hips, those operations, you’re doing pretty well in this province. If you’re a developer that now has got your hands on the greenbelt—the government was supposed to be a steward of these lands in perpetuity—you’re doing pretty well in this province.

But do you know what? We just heard it here: If you have a child with autism, you’re struggling in this province. If you are a middle-class taxpayer, you are having a hard time making ends meet. A small business owner, barely recovering from COVID: It’s going to be difficult for you. A working single mom in this province, trying to feed her kids, put clothes on their backs, keep a roof over their heads: This bill does not speak to you at all. It’s like this government doesn’t understand what’s going on in the real main streets of all of our ridings and all of our communities.

There’s an affordability crisis happening out there. People can’t pay their bills. People are struggling to buy groceries. The cost of bread is something that gets talked about in our communities. That’s what people are facing, and this government has set their priorities, and it’s not those people. You are not serving those people. There really are two Ontarios. The people who have the ear of this government, the corporations, the wealthy: You were reflected in this budget. But if you’re an average working Ontarian, this budget does not speak to you.

Recently, there was a survey done—very recently—by Angus Reid, a reputable pollster. They polled Ontarians to see what are their priorities, their number-one priorities: 79% of Ontarians selected health care as a top priority if they were over the age of 55. Cost of living and inflation: 62% of Ontarians were concerned with those, followed by health care and housing affordability. Those are the top priorities of the people of the province of Ontario, and this budget that this government put forward is exactly in opposition to what people are concerned about—absolutely in opposition to this.

When we talk about cost of living and inflation, the government talks about the cost of living, about inflation and inflation and inflationary pressures, but let’s be perfectly frank: This government has seen a windfall when it comes to inflation. While the people of the province of Ontario are struggling because of inflation, because of the high cost of everything—gas, energy bills, food, housing—this government is seeing a windfall. Your revenue when it comes to sales tax in the province of Ontario has gone through the roof. Why? Because people have to pay sales tax on hugely inflated grocery bills. That’s why.

In fact, this is a government that highly benefits from land transfer tax. Why is land transfer tax so high now? Why are people struggling to pay that? Because of the skyrocketing cost of housing in this province. This is a government that is benefiting from the struggles of the people of the province of Ontario. You’ve made money because people are struggling.

You would think, if this government actually was concerned with the people of the province of Ontario and the struggles they face, that they would share that windfall. That would be the decent thing to do, right? You’re the government. You took their money, their taxes, and now they’re struggling. Now would be the time for you to step up and help them, but in fact, that is not the case.

This is a government that currently has underspent their planned spending when it comes to health care. Even your promised spending is underspent, and the FAO has been very, very clear, particularly when it comes to the health care sector, that this shortfall of underspending in health care means that we will not be able to continue to support existing health care sector programs and announced commitments. So you’re already failing when it comes to health care and your spending in the province of Ontario, when people, as we know when it comes to health care, are really concerned and we are facing a crisis in health care.

This is not normal behaviour, really, for a government. It’s not normal for a government to profit off the misery of the people of the province of Ontario and not share that wealth. You would expect a government to say, “Do you know what? We did pretty well. People are struggling, so let’s give that back to the people who have paid this.” But instead, as I said, who do we see profiting in this province? Well-connected developers, huge multinational corporations that are getting their access to public domain lands and developers, not the people who we hear from every single day in this province here.

I’m not sure how this government measures success. They seem to measure success by talking about—

Interjections.

Next question?

We’re going to move to the next question.

Thank you to my good colleague from Brantford–Brant for the kind introduction and kind words. Thank you for standing up for so many vulnerable and marginalized people in your riding, and for all your passion.

Madam Speaker, our government announced last year that we would increase the ODSP rate by 5%. When I got elected and appointed as a parliamentary assistant this term, dealing with the MCCSS, Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services, I was blessed to serve under Minister Michael Parsa and blessed to give my input on behalf of the vulnerable, marginalized people in Ontario. There are many in my riding of Scarborough. These are things that are very important to us and to our government: the increase of 5% for ODSP for the first time after a long time, but also the increased threshold from $200—we increased the limit to $1,000 without affecting their benefits.

I can’t imagine the member opposite is reading the same budget bill that I’ve been reading or listening to some of the comments from the Minister of Finance and others in support of the bill. Indigenous communities are very much a centrepiece of this budget bill. We’re investigating residential school burial sites. We are making investments in the Ring of Fire and continuing to work with First Nations and industry on key Ring of Fire projects. We’re supporting racialized and Indigenous communities and businesses by investing $50 million over three years in the RAISE Grant program. We’re providing rapid training through micro-credentials and addressing homelessness—and this was just addressed today—through supportive housing, and that is the Homelessness Prevention Program and Indigenous Supportive Housing Program.

I can’t even get all of the aspects of this that support Indigenous communities into this short answer, but I do encourage the member opposite to read the bill.

That toll-free approach is exactly why we also removed the tolls from 412 and 418—and in my riding, 418 in particular. It affects driver behaviour. It has reduced gridlock significantly because those tolls aren’t there anymore. That’s what it’s about, Speaker.

I can tell you that I hear about it in my own community. Autism Home Base is a hub for adult autistic young people, and they are very much applauding this budget and all of the measures that we’ve introduced to enhance support for autistic families, whether the children be under the age of 18 or over the age of 18. We have to focus on all of them because they have different needs at different ages, and I can speak from experience on behalf of my son, Jake.

I’m proud of this government’s record and its plan of action to support autistic citizens and their families.

The province is signatory to Treaty 9. Unfortunately, in this budget, we haven’t seen very much help for First Nations. Even though we have spoken about the water crisis, the housing crisis, communities being landlocked in their own reserves—and yet, silence; we haven’t seen anything helping them. We’ve seen First Nations come here and tell this government that they’re bringing this government to court because of the lack of help, of exchanging and trying to find solutions.

I ask this government: We are a signatory to Treaty 9—we all are. So why not fix the water crisis? Why not fix the home crisis and also the landlock that Attawapiskat is facing? Why not do this when we’ve brought this over and over and over again?

Yes, they seem to measure success by the number of—

Interjection.

What I was saying is that you would know, you would see that your members are struggling. People and businesses are struggling. People are finding it’s very, very difficult to pay their property tax, to pay their income tax, to afford their groceries and to afford everyday, basic necessities. But this is a government that is not sharing the windfall that they have seen from the increase in the sales tax revenue, the land transfer tax revenue, the gas tax revenue that this government gets. They’re not sharing that.

We would measure success by seeing that everyday Ontarians are doing better, but in fact, that’s not the case. People are doing much worse in this province. This government has been in power for five years and things have not gotten better; they’ve only gotten worse. Really, there’s no better example of that than people in this province not being able to afford baby formula. I mean, how is this in the province of Ontario, which has been described as the capital, the economic engine of Canada? How is it possible that families are unable to afford to pay for baby formula?

The MPP for Niagara Falls brought this up in the House, questioned the Premier about the increasing cost of baby formula. It needs to be said that the cost is rising by $5 to $10 per case, with cases that last mere days. That reaches about $75 a month for families trying to feed their babies. They’re trying to feed their babies. They’re struggling with the high cost of living, but there’s nothing more upsetting than to hear that people can’t afford to feed their babies. This budget does nothing to address the affordability crisis.

We’ve asked time and time again for this government to stand up to corporations that are price-gouging, corporations that are taking advantage of people who are desperate, but this government has done nothing. We ask you to stand up to corporate bullies. We measure our success by how we make life affordable for average people, for moms feeding their babies. That’s a measure of success that I would like to see this government stand up and talk about.

We have a number of reports coming from the FAO, which is an independent office of the Legislature that provides excellent information for us as legislators to do our job. I would say that the most recent report, which the FAO released today, about women in the labour force is really extremely disheartening, but it’s really not surprising. We see a report from the FAO that says that there continues to be a stalled gender wage gap in this province. Further to that, the FAO has said that while women have made progress, they still continue to earn, on average, about 84 cents to the dollar that men make. That’s a significant gap. That gap in wages would help women, mothers to be able to afford the rising cost of baby formula. What we see instead of a government that understands that women are major contributors to their household income is single moms who are raising a family. Women who have so many responsibilities inside the home and in the workplace are not in any way being protected by this government.

In fact, the FAO also finds that—what did he describe it as? A motherhood earnings penalty. This wage gap, this penalty that women face economically when they’re in the workforce, is only exacerbated when they do have children. Using this data, the FAO finds that after having a child, Ontario mothers’ earnings are cut in half and it can take up to four years to return to their pre-childbirth earnings level. This is unbelievable. This is the kind of stat that speaks to the poverty that we see in this province. It speaks to the fact that we have a child poverty rate in this province that we should all be ashamed of. It speaks to the fact that one of the highest users of food banks in this province are kids. It speaks to the fact that families and parents and teachers run—in schools, they have to run nutrition programs that aren’t funded by the government, that are funded by donors and are funded by fundraising to make up the shortfall for people’s ability in their household to feed their kids.

There is a wonderful program in Hamilton called Food4Kids. They also identify a gap. While there are nutrition programs or breakfast programs in schools, oftentimes kids go home on the weekend and they’re hungry. There isn’t food for them at home. This fantastic program makes sure that kids are sent home with backpacks with food so that while they’re not in school benefiting from nutrition programs, they do have food over the weekend. This is a program that is only run by donations, by people who step up and see the need, not by this government.

If this government were quite clear on the important role that women play in making sure that families are thriving and are able to meet the basic necessities, they wouldn’t actually have spent so much time attacking women-led working sectors. What we have seen from this government is a government that continues to attack health care workers and education workers. These are primarily women-led sectors.

First, we have a government that took midwives to court. I can’t think of a more women-led sector than midwives. This is a government that took them to court to fight their pay equity award. This is a government that, with Bill 124, has frozen the wages of public sector workers, including nurses and PSWs, primarily women-led industries. This is what this government has done.

This harmful legislation—not only legislation but attacking them in court—is something that this government needs to really acknowledge. You need to understand that you are hurting children. When women can’t earn a decent living in this province, when families go hungry, it’s the children who suffer the most. That’s how we would measure success. We would measure a successful budget that made sure that children were front and centre, that their well-being was the first thing that we ensured.

Interjections.

We just have a point of order: the government House leader.

I apologize to the member. The member for Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas has the floor.

Through you, Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member opposite for their submissions. She touched on a few issues that are very strong in my heart. So in a previous life, literally a year ago, I dealt with matters under the child protection act. It was important work. It was necessary work, and I valued that work because I knew I was making a difference. One of the things that really spoke to me in the budget was proposed measures to improve outcomes for the youth leaving the child welfare system by investing over $170 million over three years to set them up on a path of independence, which is so important when you’re talking about children.

Will the member opposite support these strong initiatives that will help our children?

Thank you and good afternoon, Madam Speaker, and I want to correct what I believe is information that isn’t necessarily accurate when it comes to—

We’re going to move to questions, and I’ll recognize the member for Flamborough–Glanbrook.

I’m going to move to the next question. Member for Thornhill.

Thank you. The other priority that I read out for the people of the province of Ontario is housing affordability. We know that we have a housing crisis in this province. We’ve been saying it for quite a long time. We are talking about the entire spectrum of housing, from single-family homes to rental units to social housing. All of that needs to be addressed by this government.

This government’s idea that they can hand over the greenbelt to developers, that developers will build these large homes on wetlands and protected lands and that that will magically trickle down to allow there to be housing in other areas is magical thinking. It’s not borne out by economics, and it really is just another way that this government has a cover story for how they are making sure that their friends, their donors and their connected folks benefit without any protections, any assurances that what they’re doing will allow everyone to benefit.

We need look no further than the homelessness crisis that we’re facing in all of our communities and the costs, both the financial and the social cost that the homelessness crisis is causing in the province of Ontario. The government introduced Bill 23. The most significant thing about Bill 23, this housing bill that they put forward, is that it basically takes away revenue from municipalities and gives a break to developers. It is simply a taxpayer-funded gift to developers. This revenue hole at the municipal level is absolutely going to cost taxpayers.

The government also promised that when they took away the development charges, they would make municipalities whole. It’s not in the bill. I don’t see it in the bill. Municipalities are left holding the bag. You gave developers a gift, but you gave it with somebody else’s money. And you know what? The Association of Municipalities of Ontario was very, very, very clear on this—very clear that what you are doing would, in fact, cost municipalities.

But it’s not just municipalities. When I talk about municipalities, I’m talking about the things that municipalities provide. They build our roads. They provide the water and the waste water infrastructure. They collect our garbage and our recycling. They build roads, and they build schools. And municipalities are now in crisis, and they have to do one of two things. They have to raise property taxes—which they are doing all across the province of Ontario. This government has created a chaos in municipal budgets by dumping costs on them which they are unable to support, unless they cut services or raise taxes.

There’s only one taxpayers’ pocket, and this is a government that doesn’t care whose pocket it comes out of as long as the changes they make benefit their friends and benefit their insider developers. It’s such a narrow-minded, short-sighted approach to housing, with absolutely no guarantee that what you are doing will result in housing that people can afford or housing that will address not only just the homelessness crisis but the fact that tenants can’t pay their rent. Tenants are being renovicted with absolutely no protections by this government.

The municipalities have been begging you not to do this, to make them whole, but you’ve turned your backs on them, including turning your backs on taxpayers and people who live in municipalities. All 444 municipalities across the province of Ontario are going to struggle because of your actions and your lack of investments in this budget.

But don’t take it from me. Let’s return to the Angus Reid poll that said “the majority of those who voted for the Progressive Conservatives”—so your voters, people who voted for you in 2022—“believe the government has done a bad job ... on the cost of living.” Seventy per cent said you did a bad job on the cost of living, 65% are saying you’re doing a bad job on health care, and 70% said that you’re doing a bad job on housing affordability. These are your voters, and do you know what? For once, I agree with them. This is a budget that fails to meet the moment, and it is a budget that is a disgrace when people in this province are struggling.

I would say when it comes to crown wards, there’s a lot that this government could do. I would say that I work with a group that has worked with universities, including McMaster University in my riding, to make sure that anyone that was a crown ward at any point in their life, even if they’re now adults, is able to access free post-secondary education. So anything that we can do to improve the outcomes for crown wards is something that I would support.

I want to thank my colleague for her remarks. Last week, we had a constituency week and I took the opportunity to visit a number of community service agencies in the London area. I visited staff at Community Living London, Thames Valley Addiction and Mental Health Services, L’Arche, Meals on Wheels etc. One of the things I heard repeatedly was that there has been no increase at all in base funding for many of these vital community support agencies for a decade or more. They are already dealing with wages in that sector that are far below the wages that are paid to similar workers in the institutional sector.

I wondered if the member would like to comment on whether there was any funding in this budget to help stabilize and ensure the sustainability of that vital community support sector.

Thank you very much to the member for the question. We stand up all the time and read a petition from Sally Palmer and the work she does to help us understand that the ODSP and OW rates in this province are legislated poverty. We need to understand that not everyone can work, and people go through very difficult periods of their lives. In fact, this motherhood earning penalty, as I described it, says that when women have babies, they plunge into poverty and it takes them many, many years to recover.

So looking at the social assistance rates and the ODSP rates that are punishing and that ensure people live in poverty—it’s something that this government should do. The first thing they did when they came to office was cut in half the increases to OW and ODSP. It’s my feeling that it would just be the humane thing to do to understand that families and children live in homes where they’re suffering under these rates.

In fact, the chief planner of the city of Hamilton, Steve Robichaud, told city councillors: “Will the purchaser or tenant actually benefit from that?” Speaking to the development charge waivers, he said, “The developer keeps those profits and prices stay the same.”

So in fact, the evidence, even from the chief planner from the city of Hamilton, is clear that waiving these development charges does not benefit young families that want a home. They benefit developers, and it costs taxpayers more money.

I just have to say, this is a government that has had the biggest spending budget in the history of Ontario. They still have the second-largest debt-to-GDP, but let’s just say this: They have the lowest per capita spending in all of Canada on the kinds of social services that we all rely on. And who’s picking up the slack? Those not-for-profit agencies that are seeing their doors bulging with people there looking for the help that they’re not getting from this government.

Interjections.

For 31 years I was the mayor of my community, 10 years of which I sat on the district social services administration board. Through 15 years of the previous government, we lobbied for increases in funding to help those most vulnerable and at risk of homelessness. We never received anything.

I’ve sat here and I’ve listened to the members opposite talk about how there’s nothing in the budget for the most vulnerable. Do you not think a 40% increase for homelessness prevention programming, nearly $202 million more, bringing the total to $700 million for homelessness prevention programming—that represents a tripling of funding in Thunder Bay for the Thunder Bay DSSAB. How can you sit there and say there aren’t supports in this budget for those most vulnerable in our community? Do you not think that an increase of 40% for homelessness prevention programming is a benefit?

I want to clarify what I believe is incorrect information regarding development charges in the province of Ontario. Madam Speaker, the member opposite was talking about affordable housing and not-for-profit housing. Our government is giving organizations, not-for-profits like End Well—one of the best not-for-profit organizations in Ontario. They’re waiving development charges so that they can build more units. They’re waiving development charges so that people can build more rental units, purpose-built rental units.

The opposition says we need more units for people across Ontario. We’re incentivizing builders to build more of these rental units. They are freezing—not taking away, but freezing DCs, development charges, on new builds so that young families can finally realize the dream of home ownership.

My question to the member opposite: Why are you against giving not-for-profits, people who want to rent and young families a break in getting into the housing market?

It’s an honour to rise to participate in the third reading debate on Bill 85, the budget bill. You know, Speaker, you can oftentimes talk about your values, but you really have the opportunity to show your values when you put a budget forward because it really shows the priorities that a government has. Right now, when you look around Ontario, there seems to be a crisis kind of everywhere: the health and education systems; the housing affordability and cost-of-living crisis; the climate crisis; the crisis of poverty that so many people are feeling in our communities. I want to talk about what could be in this budget to address those crises but are not.

I’ll start with health care, mental health and education. According to Ontario’s Financial Accountability Officer, over the next five years, looking at how this budget lays things out, the province of Ontario is going to underspend on health care, long-term care and community care by $21.8 billion, when you take into account population growth, inflation and what the government has said they want to accomplish. That is going to continue a crisis in our health care system, a crisis that’s going to have profound additional costs to our communities: emergency room closures; surgical and wait time backlogs; the continuing loss of front-line staff in our health care system, who are overworked, underpaid and undervalued.

We just saw a report yesterday coming out in our education system on the rising levels of violence. I just met with Catholic educators a few hours ago in my office, talking about this issue. So much of it stems from the fact that we don’t have sufficient resources for educational assistants and other staff to support students in our classrooms, especially students with special needs. That’s why it’s so distressing when the FAO projects—again, looking at inflation and population growth—that the government will underspend what our education system needs by $6 billion.

Speaker, the values of the Ontario I want to live in are values that are centred in building caring communities and investing in the future. That’s why it distresses me to see this budget underfund education and health care and, finally, mental health services.

Mental health service organizations in this province said they needed a minimum 8% increase just to maintain existing services. The government will talk about the 5% increase that’s in this budget for mental health, and that is welcome—there’s no doubt about it—but it’s insufficient to actually maintain existing service levels, which to me is unacceptable when we have 28,000 young people on a wait-list to access mental health services that can be as long as two and a half years.

Think about young people on suicide watch. Think about young people with complex eating disorders and other complex mental health crises having to wait 18 months to two and a half years to access services. To me, that’s not the Ontario I want to live in.

Let’s talk about the housing affordability crisis. This government’s solution to the housing affordability crisis is “pave at all costs”: pave over the farmland that feeds us; pave over the wetlands and green space that protect us, clean our drinking water. It’s especially troubling when you think about the climate crisis that we’re experiencing right now. Look at the hazy skies you see outside this building right now from the forest fires in Alberta. Think of the people experiencing flooding in the Ottawa River valley—once again, a 100-year flood; it seems like we have one every couple of years. Yet this government wants to pave over the wetlands and green space that protect us at a cost that is fiscally irresponsible.

Think about this: It costs 2.5 times more money to service a sprawl household versus a home built within an existing urban boundary. The city of Ottawa did a study determining that it cost them $465 per person every year—that’s property taxpayers—to service a home through sprawl. They make $600 a year—they bring in more tax revenue—for one built within the existing urban boundary. That’s $1,000 per taxpayer per household per year if we decide to build homes in communities that people can afford, in the communities they want to live in, instead of sprawling out and paving over our greenbelt.

This budget wants to expand highway construction. We already owe $52 billion in unfunded infrastructure costs because of the sprawl developments of the past. Then on top of that, according to the Financial Accountability Officer, we’re going to pay an extra $26.2 billion this decade alone for infrastructure costs due to the climate crisis.

At some point, we have to ask ourselves, when are we going to start building communities we can actually afford, with houses where people want to live in close to where they work, not imposing the costs of sprawl on them and protecting them from the climate crisis?

Speaker, I want to close, and I only have a couple of minutes left. Poverty costs this province $33 billion a year, and yet this budget maintains legislated poverty for people on ODSP and Ontario Works. That’s not the Ontario I want to live in.

Next question?