Thank you so much for the opportunity. I want to thank the member for his question. Honestly, I wish this were the type of dialogue that we could have because we need to have a public park, a public space that is serving the people of this province, that is accessible, that won’t cost the people money and actually give profit to a private company that is not even Ontarian.

And not to mention, one of the things that’s really difficult for me is understanding—has the government actually done research on Therme? We’re giving $650 million to a luxury spa. Have we done—like, what their financial track record is? They have a very problematic track record in the UK. Have we done our research to see what they have done, what their track record looks like and what it will mean when we have a 95-year lease for Ontario? Because that’s a defective sale—

Interjection.

That means we need to make sure that people don’t go hungry, don’t go homeless. That is the most important part when we talk about budgets because then you’re prioritizing things like housing, you’re prioritizing things like the amount you need for ODSP and OW. We’re not keeping up with those things. We’re not keeping up with the inflation rate of any of these needs, and that’s what the result is. We’re seeing thousands of people lining up, and some people who have never gone to a food bank are now getting food at a food bank.

Thank you. Questions?

Thank you very much, Speaker. To the member who just did her best to squeeze all of the voices of Ontario into only 10 minutes, I wanted to ask her some of the things she’s hearing from people whose voices did not make it into this budget.

We’re hearing a lot across communities—and the Conservatives are as well, if they’re listening—from the folks who are dependent upon food banks. Unfortunately, those stats are growing and food banks are reporting that they are meeting new neighbours they’ve never met before, that they are serving people who have jobs, perhaps have a home and a mortgage and who aren’t typically the people they have seen. What is in this budget for them or what could have been a help for them?

The member from Scarborough Southwest brought up Ontario Place. This is something that I remember going to as a kid and being one of the coolest places to really, truly go in Toronto and get to experience a little bit of Ontario’s flavour. I don’t understand for the life of me why they want to continually try and block reinvestment and redevelopment in Ontario Place.

To the member from Scarborough Southwest: I certainly hope you don’t ever get caught at the spa there because you guys certainly talk about it a lot, and I just wonder what maybe her vision is. If our vision for Ontario Place isn’t good enough and not what the people want to see for Ontario Place, what does she want to see at Ontario Place? Because maybe it’s something that we can incorporate into it as well.

There’s no need to.

I’ve also looked at the budget and read the budget. One of the other things that I looked at was, during the pre-consultation, what people talked about, and after the budget was released, during the committee hearings. You know what? I agree with the member: When we talk about housing, we do need to build housing. We need to do it ASAP, and we’re so behind. I mentioned the fact that we have 85,000 people waiting for housing. But we also need to make sure that we address the type of housing that we’re building, that we address the way we’re doing that. First of all, we cannot be building it on the greenbelt.

If they’re not affordable, people are moving from this province. That’s what we’re seeing right now. We have health care workers who move away from the province because they don’t earn enough, first, and then they can’t keep up with their rent or they can’t keep up with their mortgage. Some don’t even have a mortgage because they can’t even imagine buying a home.

I actually had a few students who came to Queen’s Park to visit me, and they brought me a report. They brought me an actual report that they’d compiled about the gun violence, about the stabbings that we’re seeing. Guess what was one of the conversations that we talked about? We talked about the fact that kids are facing loneliness. They have felt isolated. They have mental health needs. A lot of people are facing poverty. Some don’t even have breakfast before they come to school. All of these things have an impact on the way they come to learn in their institutions. That impacts that as well.

The other thing is, we have to make sure that we have enough educators in our spaces, that we have enough staff in our schools to be able to be there. The fact that Birchmount Park Collegiate did not even have enough hall monitors is a problem. These are the people who can actually address what’s going on in our schools and make that environment safe and accessible—

Further questions?

Thank you for your presentation. You were talking about really shortchanging schools in terms of their funding. I know that the COVID funding was never replaced that they were supposed to have replaced and that the funding does not come close to matching inflation. We’re also hearing about increased violence in schools. I’m wondering if you can make the connection for us between the lack of funding and resources and what is actually happening in schools right now.

One of the things that I talked about yesterday in my little 10 minutes of debate—and you’re right; it’s hard to fit in 200, 300 pages of budget into 10 minutes—was manufacturing jobs. We lost about 300,000 manufacturing jobs under the previous government. Roughly 20,000 of those were in Waterloo region, where I live. It’s really great to see a lot of that come back. A lot of that is coming back because of the government’s investment in the auto sector, specifically around electric vehicles.

The member opposite has several tier-1 and tier-2 auto parts manufacturers in and around her general area. I’m just wondering if I can get her thoughts on what she thinks of those investments and how we’re bringing those jobs back to the province.

As the member may know, I have a particular interest in this budget, which I have been concentrating on for quite a while. It’s $13.4 million that has been dedicated to the guns, gangs and violence strategy, which I think is a very good strategy which will keep drugs out of high schools and away from teenagers by breaking up the drug supply chain.

My question to the member is this: Will she support the $13.4 million for the anti-guns, gangs and violence strategy, or will she support the NDP defund-the-police policy?

Thank you. Questions?

I think I’ve given a lot of reasons here today why this budget is not supportable by me or my constituents, whether it’s a lack of transparency on what the government is spending, spending money on parking lots instead of housing or not fixing our opioid crisis. We see the problems in front of us, Speaker, and this government knows that those problems are not being addressed by this budget.

I’d like to thank the member from Don Valley West for her presentation. At the pre-budget consultations, we had the opportunity to hear from the Ontario Library Association, and they talked about the incredible value that public libraries provide. They also almost were a stand-in for MPP offices during COVID. They offer things like job training, small business support; they have access to broadband as well as children’s programming; access to physical resources as well as digital resources.

One thing that is a grave concern is that over the past 25 years, Ontario’s public library systems have not seen an increase in their base funding. I wonder if the member would like to comment about the need to fund public libraries appropriately.

I’d like to say to the opposition member here, based on her presentation, I would have to assume you would want to support our very ambitious plan to invest over $180 billion in building capital for this province, unlike 15 years under the Liberals, where you closed over 600 schools. How many hospitals did you build? I don’t know. We’ve got 50 that are planned. Never mind long-term-care homes; you only built—how many was it, 600? In my riding alone, we have over 700 in the works right now. So my question to the member is: Will you not support this ambitious plan?

The member from Don Valley West and I both listened at finance committee—and I just heard the member from Essex talk about defunding the police. What does she make of the fact that this Conservative government actually is defunding the police? They’ve lost the OPP detachments in Gogama, Foleyet, and the OPP is now fighting for the French River area.

So the great irony is that you are defunding police services in northern Ontario, and you should be ashamed of yourselves for that.

There are lots of problems in Ontario that can still be blamed on Mike Harris. That’s how bad his reign here in Ontario was, Madam Speaker. But for the debater and my colleague, the government is planning a half-billion-dollar expenditure on a parking lot to service their plans for Ontario Place. I’m wondering if she could tell us and the people of Ontario how $500 million could better be spent.

Further questions?

Thank you to the member from Don Valley West for her comments. This government has been in power for five years, and things are getting worse and worse for the average Ontarian on housing, on health care, on affordability. When do you think would be a good time for the government to realize that they’re actually the past government and stop blaming everyone else for the issues that they create?

I listened to the member opposite, the independent member, talking about this, and she talked about our laissez-faire attitude. But for 15 years, we had a Liberal government who did nothing but run this province into the ground.

For example, she mentioned health care and said there was some problem. We’re trying to fix the mess created by 15 years of Liberal government. We have added more beds for hospital capacity in this province in four years than the previous Liberal government did in 14. We’re upgrading 28,000 long-term-care beds, and an additional 30,000 long-term-care beds are now being built. In seven or eight years your government built 611 beds. There was a 36,000-person wait-list to get into long-term care as a result of your government, the previous Liberal government, doing absolutely nothing on those factors.

Yes, we gave a 5% increase for mental health funding for the Canadian Mental Health Association, for which they were grateful, because we recognized the needs in mental health. Your government has a shameful record, frankly, for addressing Ontarians’ concerns—