Before I respond to the opposition: John, the wolf was Ralph and the sheepdog was Sam. I just figured you’re Ralph; I’m Sam. I’m protecting the herd, and you keep trying to go after the herd.

And to the Clerk, there are many attributes, but one of the most important things is that you’re an Etobicoke boy, so thank you.

I think I ran half my time out, but—the supplementary question.

Mr. Speaker, let’s look at our accomplishments just over the last year, just since January: We reached a record-low unemployment, the lowest since 1989. That’s 34-year record unemployment. We landed a historic Volkswagen deal to build the largest manufacturing plant in the history of Canada. We—I’ll go to supplementary.

Mr. Speaker, we expanded GO service to Niagara, bringing the total to 21 round trips per week.

Talking about health care, there’s no government in the entire country that has invested more in health care than we have: $81 billion. We’re building 50 new sites or upgrading 50 new sites to a tune of $50 billion. We had more nurses registered last year than in the history of this country, 12,000 of them—12,000. We added 3,100 beds. We’re going to be adding another 3,000 beds—more than, again, any time in the history of this province. We’re investing in our doctors and new doctors coming online with two medical schools—

Interjection: Tell us more, Premier.

As the Liberals and NDP chase these companies out of the country, out of the province, we’re attracting companies from all over the world to invest right here in Ontario, the best place to live, work and raise a family.

Thank you for the question. Actually, the facts are we’re building the largest transit project in North America—$30 billion with four new lines, getting people out of their cars into transit. There’s nowhere in North America that’s doing four subway lines. But thank you for that question.

In housing, we have a housing crisis. Last year, there were 27,427 housing starts in this province. That’s up 16% from the previous record year. Purpose-built rental starts across the province are up 143%—more than double than last year. Housing starts in Toronto are up 178% from last year. Housing starts in Brampton are up 65% from last year. Multi-unit construction in Ontario has increased 7.6% since February—the largest increase in the country. We saw a 25% increase in condo permits—also the largest in the country.

Mr. Speaker, let’s talk about education. This year, education spending is at an all-time high of $34.7 billion. Education—

Mr. Speaker, let’s go back to transit for just one second before I get to education. Over $70 billion is being spent on transit, $23 billion on roads, building the 413 and the Bradford Bypass, widening Highway 3 down to our great friends in Windsor. Let me tell you about Windsor. They’ve never seen more love from any government than they’ve seen from us, no matter if it’s a new hospital, Stellantis, job creation, Highway 3, schools—they’ve seen the love, and I felt it when I went down there.

Let’s just go back to education. As I said, education spending is at an all-time high of $34.7 billion. Education funding has seen a 27% increase since 2018. While the Liberals closed—remember those days, Mr. Speaker? They closed 600 schools. We’re investing $15 billion to build new schools and child care spaces, including an additional $600 million in this year’s budget. We’ve invested $30 million more to double the math coaches across Ontario—

My Minister of Economic Development sends me a list every single night of companies coming in from all over the world.

And when people are out at work, do you know what they need? They need child care. They need child care that we partnered up with the federal government for to a tune of $4.69 billion, 28% over last year alone, Mr. Speaker.

Then, when it comes to long-term care, we know that the Liberals and NDP built—what, 617 beds over 15 years? We’re building, through our great Minister of Long-Term Care, over 60,000 new homes for long-term care, 30,000 new ones and 28,000 renovated ones.

Mr. Speaker, I have an opportunity to speak to governors and ambassadors all over the world. They’re saying, “What are you doing in Ontario? You’re on fire. You’re leading the world.” We’re—

Interjections.

Speaker, thank you. It’s a government with the wrong priorities; it’s a government that’s become far too comfortable on the government gravy train.

Ontarians across the province are writing, they’re calling, they’re rallying because they see a government that’s out of touch. So I’d like to ask the Premier some more questions about his priorities, because after five years of this government’s transit policies, the Eglinton Crosstown project is completely off the rails, years behind schedule, way over budget—not so unlike the Ottawa LRT fiasco—all while people are waiting and businesses are shutting down.

Speaker, to the Premier: Will he prioritize getting the Eglinton Crosstown back on track so Ontarians aren’t left waiting any longer?

I want to talk again about the government’s priorities—

Interjections.

Speaker, the Conservatives like to say that they’ve prioritized workers, but when push comes to shove, they let workers down every time. Exhibit A: They took away the three measly paid sick days that people fought for at the start of the pandemic. Exhibit B: They took away the constitutional rights of education workers. Exhibit C: The Conservative members from Windsor won’t lift a finger to help the striking workers at the Windsor Salt mine, out of work now for 111 days, where the company is bringing in scab labour. The list goes on and on, Speaker.

Back to the Premier: Will he prioritize workers and pass the NDP’s anti-scab legislation?

Interjections.

To wrap up: This is the state of Ontario now after five long years under this government’s watch. We’ve got a non-existent climate plan while communities are dealing with the most severe forest fire season we’ve ever experienced. We have emergency rooms closing while this government takes health care workers to court, a broken transit system held hostage by private contractors, and it’s harder than ever before to afford a safe place to live.

Ontario is a place that we are all proud to call home, but this Premier’s wrong priorities are hurting people now and, yes, they are threatening the economic prosperity and future of this province.

Speaker, back to the Premier: When will he change course? Will he change course today?

Interjections.

Order. Order. I have to be able to hear the member who has the floor; in this case, the Leader of the Opposition.

Restart the clock. The Leader of the Opposition has the floor.

The Leader of the Opposition legitimately has the floor. She has every right to ask questions. This is question period. I have to be able to hear her. If the government side continues to interject loudly, I will start calling you out by name.

Restart the clock. Leader of the Opposition.

Premier.

Final supplementary.

Start the clock. The Premier can reply.

Interjection.

Let’s start the clock again. Next question.

Thank you to the member opposite. Mr. Speaker, Infrastructure Ontario is an arm’s-length government agency that is responsible for government procurements. They have internal controls to ensure that there is accountability, fairness and competitive processes. They report to a board that also has accountability and transparency measures. And, of course, they work, like any other agency, with the FAO and the AG.

Mr. Speaker, we had a successful call for development where we had a lot of interest because a lot of people are excited about Ontario Place, as are we, and we will bring it back to life, just like we said back in 2019.

My question is to the Premier. Yesterday during committee hearings, we learned new information about the Ontario Place redevelopment procurement process. Unbelievably, we learned that there was no fairness monitor appointed to verify the integrity of the process.

We also learned that six days before the deadline for bid submissions, the deadline was suddenly extended by three weeks, even though Infrastructure Ontario had already received several bids. One bid that had not yet been received was the bid from Therme, which eventually won the redevelopment rights. So did that deadline extension give Therme an unfair advantage?

My question is for the Minister of Transportation. Like other regions across the province, communities in southwestern Ontario are experiencing population growth and business expansion. But traffic congestion and gridlocked highways through Leamington and Essex are extending travel times for all road users, while delaying vital goods and services from getting to our markets. Urgent action needs to be taken to build the necessary transportation infrastructure to keep our province moving.

Unfortunately, transportation needs in my areas were consistently ignored by the previous NDP-backing-the-Liberals government. The residents of Chatham-Kent–Leamington and people throughout southwestern Ontario deserve better when it comes to our transportation network.

Speaker, can the minister please explain what our government is doing to address the critical need for expanded transportation infrastructure?

My question is for the Premier. In 2018, the people of Ontario elected our government with a strong desire for change in order to clean up the mess created after 15 years of mismanagement by the previous Liberal government. Wrong choices and wrong decisions by the Liberal government, supported by the NDP, hurt all Ontarians.

Instead of a government that supported our province’s working women and men, elites and activists lectured the people of Ontario, insisting that they knew better. Instead of a government that worked with businesses and entrepreneurs, we witnessed companies leaving our province and, sadly, hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs. That’s why it is so critical for our government to continue making the right investments to ensure that Ontario remains on a path to prosperity.

Speaker, can the Premier please outline how our government is ensuring that we are getting it done for the people of Ontario by building a stronger province for everyone?

That is why our government must set clear priorities and focus on solutions that will demonstrate our respect for the people of Ontario. We must manage our resources well and implement measures that will continue to strengthen our economy while building up our workforce and ensuring that life is more convenient and affordable.

Speaker, as we look to the future, can the Premier please elaborate on where the people of Ontario can expect to see further leadership by our government that will help to make Ontario stronger?

Thank you. The supplementary question.

Minister of Education.

Thank you to the member for the question. First the member says the parking is for Therme; then the member says the parking is for the science centre. Do you know who the parking is for? It is for everyone. It is for all Ontarians—for the moms who have three kids from Scarborough and Brampton, for the people of northern Ontario who visit Toronto and want a wonderful place to go. That is who the parking is for.

I want to thank the member opposite for the question. As we conclude the session, we can reflect back on this past year as one of progress when it comes to affordability.

Putting party interests aside, this Parliament enacted a bill and a budget that has allowed us to cut child care fees by 50% for the families we represent—$8,000 to $10,000 in savings per year—and we will go further.

Of course, we need qualified ECEs. We need to recruit them and to retain the ones who work with our kids. It’s why in the program we signed with the federal government an additional dollar per hour has been committed per year—a commitment to install a wage floor for the first time and a clear commitment by the government to go even further.

Mr. Speaker, in addition to increasing access to the ECEs, increasing affordable child care options, we’re building 86,000 spaces. This is a monumental step forward for financial relief for the people of Ontario.

We’ll continue to work with the sector, with our workforce and our operators to make life more affordable for families across—

We’ve also committed to expand access to 86,000 spaces by announcing a $213-million start-up grant, where we literally help incentivize the marketplace—more spaces and therefore more workers in the communities that have a disproportionately under-represented amount of child care spaces to their population.

We’re going to get this right. We’re going to work together. We are going to make life affordable for moms and dads across this province.

Again to the Premier: This government not only gave Therme a last-minute deadline extension, it’s also giving Therme a $450-million, give or take, parking facility that was not offered to the other Ontario Place bidders. Yesterday, we learned that the government wants to build the relocated Ontario Science Centre on top of this new parking facility. The minister told the CBC she had a business case showing that building a new science centre would be cheaper than making repairs. But yesterday, the minister said she has no idea how much the new parking facility would cost. So, Speaker, it stands to reason she has no idea how much it would cost with a new science centre as the cherry on top.

Will the minister release the business case to the public or admit that she doesn’t have one?

I want to thank our all-star member from Brantford–Brant. You’re doing an incredible job. Thank you.

Friends, our government just took a simple approach when we came into office, when the previous government had the largest sub-sovereign debt in the world, the highest hydro rates, and companies were leaving. We remember those days, Mr. Speaker: high unemployment.

We believe in giving back to the people, putting money back in their pockets, no matter if it was getting rid of the tolls on the 412 or 418 or getting rid of the licence sticker fee or dropping the gas tax by 10 cents. Just imagine if there were 10 cents on top of the buck sixty that everyone is paying already. We believe in putting money back into people’s pockets until they can stir the economy. They can go out there and buy a piece of furniture, maybe go out for dinner, maybe go on a trip somewhere in Ontario.

Other than doing what they did for 15 years—taking money out of people’s pockets, chasing companies out of this province. We have cut the burden of businesses by $8 billion to attract more companies to come here, to create more jobs—

We have more cranes than LA, Chicago, New York, Washington, Boston combined. There’s a reason why people are investing in Ontario; there are reasons why pension funds are investing here—because they know they have a business-friendly government that they haven’t seen in 15 years.

As much as the world is large when it comes to sectors across the world, it’s very small. We’re leading the tech industry in North America. We’re employing—

Thank you to the member for the question. When our government took office, we committed to the people of this province that we would rebuild Ontario. Unlike the previous Liberal government, who left southwestern Ontario behind, our government is investing in this region. Why, Speaker? It’s because we know that when southwestern Ontario is strong, the entire province is strong.

I was proud to have recently joined the Premier and my colleagues to announce our government is moving forward with the widening of Highway 3. We have awarded the contract to design, build and finance the widening of Highway 3 between Essex and Leamington. This investment will improve road safety and will keep people and goods moving.

Speaker, our government is making historic investments in roads and in highways to tackle gridlock, connect communities and build our economy.

Speaker, not only are we moving forward with the widening of Highway 3; our government will also support the city of Windsor to build a new interchange connecting Highway 401 to the Lauzon Parkway. This critical investment will not only support economic development, but it will also help increase trade opportunities across Ontario’s borders.

Mr. Speaker, we’re moving forward with the largest transit expansion plan anywhere in North America, and while we’re building subways and LRTs, we’re also building a strong regional network that is going to bring two-way, all-day service across our entire network, and that is despite the opposition voting against it.

Kitchener-Waterloo is a growing area. That’s why Metrolinx is constantly monitoring service and ridership levels, and that is why, just recently, we announced an increased bus service. While the demand was greater than we even thought, the next day, we added double-decker buses to meet the demand in Kitchener-Waterloo.

Mr. Speaker, we are there to meet the demands of Ontarians. The greater Golden Horseshoe is growing, and we will make sure that our transportation network keeps up and meets that demand.

And with respect to two-way, all-day GO and more frequent service on weekends, we are building towards that. We are working closely with our rail partner CN to make sure that we can deliver the service that we have told Ontarians we will deliver.

Mr. Speaker, we put forward a great plan to get Ontarians home and get Ontarians to work in an easier, more frequent way. But when we do so, the NDP vote against it. The member opposite stands in this House and says she speaks for her constituents. Well, do her constituents know that when we put forward a plan that will actually deliver on the promise of two-way, all-day GO, she votes against it?

I will say that not only are we stepping up, but we have stepped up. We had a top-up of funding directly to Ottawa of $2.6 million through the Dedicated Offload Nurses Program. The member opposite knows that I’ve spoken about this program many times because it is something that paramedics and the hospital clinicians see as a real game-changer, ensuring that paramedics can get back out into community and make sure that they have appropriate care within the emergency department.

We’ve done that work. I met with the mayor of Ottawa on Monday, spoke to him again yesterday. I meet regularly and talk regularly to the Ottawa hospitals. We know that they are using effectively the 911 model of care, where paramedics, with the patient’s approval, can take individuals somewhere else other than the emergency department. These are real changes on the ground that are making a difference in the lives of the people of Ontario.

My question is to the Premier. The people of Kitchener and Waterloo are getting left behind by this government. I don’t mean figuratively; I mean literally. There is so much demand for GO service on weekends, when GO trains don’t run, that buses are completely packed with people, especially students, and they are being left behind in Brampton. On Tuesday of this week, Waterloo regional council voted to send a letter to the government urging it to address exactly this.

The people of Waterloo region need and deserve two-way, all-day GO service, including on weekends. When can Kitchener expect a weekend train to get to Kitchener on the Kitchener line?

The level of frustration has reached a tipping point. I was speaking with Justin Fan, a University of Waterloo student, who told the CBC “he wants to use GO Transit regularly, but he gets frustrated when he can’t get on a bus.”

Ian McLean, president and CEO of the KW chamber of commerce, has said that more trains will “deliver, by some estimates, up to 170,000 new jobs, billions in new investment from the private sector.”

Trains are good for business, good for people and good for the environment. Why doesn’t Kitchener-Waterloo deserve a train on the weekend? This is a direct question to the minister: When can they expect it? Because the buses are not getting the people where they need to go.

Interjections.

Thank you to the minister for her genuine leadership. While recent announcements made by our government will certainly address this long-standing and urgent need, these communities look forward to seeing construction get under way as soon as possible. This Highway 3 expansion will dramatically reduce commute times, increase road safety and improve the movement of people and goods.

But a further expansion of this infrastructure is still urgently needed. We’re seeing tremendous growth in the industrial, agricultural, manufacturing and health care sectors in Windsor and throughout Essex county. Population growth, job creation and other major investments are driving the urgency for an expanded transportation network. This is why our government must continue to invest in this infrastructure, to better support increased opportunities for trade through the busy Detroit-Windsor border.

Speaker, can the minister please elaborate on how our investments in critical highway infrastructure and projects throughout southwestern Ontario will support our economy?

My question is for the Premier. Last year, paramedics in Ottawa set a new record, but it’s not a good one: 1,806 times the Ottawa paramedics hit level zero. There were no paramedics available to respond to calls for more than 73,000 minutes. Paramedics spent 93,000 hours at emergency rooms in off-load delay.

The city is requesting provincial funding to help alleviate the off-load delay problem at Ottawa’s backlogged emergency rooms in our hospitals. Will the government step up and provide the funding Ottawa needs to keep more ambulances on the road?

The off-load delay at the Ottawa Hospital means that paramedics are waiting two and a half hours at the emergency room to get back on the road. For two consecutive years now, the Ottawa Paramedic Service has failed to meet the legislated response time of six minutes for sudden cardiac arrest. Last year, they only hit their legislated requirement 48% of the time.

Mr. Speaker, imagine watching your loved one die of a heart attack right in front of you because there’s no ambulance available to come.

Will the government do the right thing and get Ottawa the resources it needs to keep paramedics on the road responding to 911 calls?

The supplementary question.

Minister of Transportation.