I respectfully thank the member opposite for his contribution. I found it very entertaining, and I enjoyed it.

I was going to ask a question that relates to the Hague Convention. In my past life, I would commonly deal with family law files—and for reference, the ratification of the Hague Convention would be an important step forward for the Family Responsibility Office. The Hague Convention would enforce orders. It would allow people to transcend Ontario or Canada to meet those orders. We expect everybody to meet their court obligations for child and spousal support, but we’re focusing on making things easier for families because they can make ends meet. Empowering the province to implement the 2007 Hague Convention in Ontario would give the province reciprocity to collect support payments with 34 more jurisdictions.

So my question to the member opposite—because I think this is a learning experience for some. It would also reduce the pressure on Ontario courts, saving a lot of people time and money, and reduce stress, which is such an important issue when you’re dealing with family law. It would help those relying upon support, most importantly. Will the member help our government ensure that families get the spousal and child support they need by supporting this?

Thank you very much to the member from Niagara West. I thank you very much for the clarification. We were both kind of right. It’s not in the act. It’s in the regulations. We’ve only had a day and a half to read the act. I haven’t gotten to the regulations yet. So thank you for that clarification.

I’m not opposed to more hybrid meetings, more accessibility. Hopefully, we will have true accessibility throughout the province. Often, hybrid meetings, virtual meetings—the people they’re meant to benefit most right now don’t have access to actually usable virtual links. So if we all do, at one point, have full access to usable and affordable broadband, I think it is a step in the right direction.

But to your points, we haven’t really seen that the government has actually recognized what’s happening to people on the ground. There are announcements made, but when I walk out of this place and I walk past people in misery—and that used to be just a Toronto thing. I’m from the country. But now I go home, and I see the same things—I see more. This government has been in power—they keep blaming things on the past government, but they have been in power for five years—

Thanks to the member for Timiskaming–Cochrane, as always, for his extemporaneous abilities. That was great.

I have a question, though, about schedule 27 here, and it comes from a previous job I used to have as a pension trustee. What I learned from pension funds is that they really don’t like members getting paper notices. They really don’t like it, and they’re trying to push folks online—which is fair, to encourage them. But as I read this schedule, what it says is that it changes the provision that would require the administrator of a pension plan to tell people that they have the right to request non-electronic notices of their pension plan. That concerns me, because I know for a fact that there are a lot of people who read those pension statements who don’t have Internet access at their homes, who are elderly folks.

Why would this government choose to discriminate against their right to know that they have a right to get those paper copies? I’m interested in your reaction. I think people should be able to get information about their pension plans that they worked hard to receive in retirement by whatever means they choose.

It was great to listen to the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane for the last hour. He’s always very thoughtful in the way he frames his arguments and his thoughts.

I wanted to just touch a little bit—there are some changes to the Occupational Health and Safety Act in regard to mining that are contained within this that will actually allow drones to be used to verify underground hazards, which will alleviate a lot of diesel emissions and different emissions underground. Obviously the member from Nickel Belt was speaking about this just the other day. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to have a look at those yet. I know we’re running out of time, but maybe some comments on it.

Questions?

I’ve been continually surprised in my nine months in this institution how frequently the government introduces legislation without consulting with stakeholders, or rushes legislation through without giving stakeholders time to see it. I can’t help but wonder, as I’m taking a look at this doorstop that was just given to us this morning, if one of the reasons might be because the government is hoping to slide some things by Ontarians, like changing the name of “private career colleges” to just “career colleges,” which seems to be a move just to take information away from Ontarians so that they don’t actually know whether they’re attending a public institution or a private institution.

I would like to ask the member from Carleton, wouldn’t it be better, if these were actually great changes for Ontarians, to give Ontarians the time to actually see, understand and debate the changes in this legislation?

Oh, that’s okay.

I’m not sure why the member is calling this a doorstop. I think that’s an insult to the people of Ontario. This is not a doorstop, Madam Speaker; this is feedback that we have received from Ontarians. I think the fact that the member referred to this as a doorstop is a clear indication of why we have 83 seats and they lost seats in the previous election. If they had done a better job, maybe I would be sitting on that side of the House. So maybe instead of calling this a doorstop, she should actually take the time to read through it, because I’ve had no issues reading through this and doing my job. Maybe she should do hers.

One thing I can say is that I have a really good relationship with all the farmers in my riding of Carleton. I really do appreciate them and I take time to listen to them. Just a few weeks ago, I actually had my farmer appreciation breakfast, and over 200 farmers came and attended, and it was just such a fantastic thing. In Carleton, and I’m sure across all the province—at least, I know, on this side of the House—we have a fantastic working relationship with our farmers.

Madam Speaker, to answer the member’s question, the way that these changes will benefit farmers is that updates to the financial protection programs will help to strengthen protection for Ontario farmers, level the playing field for grain and livestock dealers and elevators, and support the current and future risk management needs of the agricultural sector. In fact, we have the largest grain elevator in eastern Ontario in my riding of Carleton.

Ultimately, what this legislation does is it’s streamlining processes. One of the things that I know the parliamentary assistant was speaking about earlier today is how we need to allow people to use technology to become more involved in their community and to become more engaged in the civic process. So by allowing the use of technology to engage in, let’s say, condo meetings or board meetings, this is allowing for civic engagement. I hope the member will support this important piece of legislation.

That not-for-profit—what we do is we raise money for a school that was built in rural Somalia to provide education to young children, usually orphans or from very poor families. I joined that board back in 2019, and one of the challenges we faced during the pandemic was not being able to conduct as many meetings as we wanted to, because the way that the bylaws or amendments or whatever were written out, it just wasn’t really conducive to electronic meetings. I think that’s something a lot of not-for-profits faced during the pandemic.

And so, Madam Speaker, what the amendments here to the Not-for-Profit Corporations Act do in schedule 22 is they would “provide that meetings of directors may be held entirely by one or more telephonic or electronic means” or in any hybrid format. I think this is a fantastic way to support Ontario’s not-for-profit corporations, like the Somali Hope Foundation.

I’d like to thank the member for his question. I’ll find it here. There we go—no. I can’t even find it; I don’t know where it went. You’ll have to give me a moment. I have all my notes here. See, this is the problem, Madam Speaker, when you over-prepare and you’re a lawyer and just have a huge binder with notes everywhere. All I would say is that—oh, there we go; I found my notes.

With respect to the Pension Benefits Act, it’s removing the requirement for the administrator of a pension plan to send notices to members upon retirement reminding them that they may request non-electronic written communications. It says “may,” Madam Speaker, not “shall,” so I’m not quite sure why the member is so opposed to electronic communication, especially since the member seems to think that he is a huge advocate for the environment, and yet for some reason he wants everything to be on paper.

I’m just going to follow up with the member for Carleton a question I raised earlier in debate. It concerns schedule 23, which—just having a closer look at it now—does indeed take away the obligation of a pension administrator to inform a pension plan member that they have the right to receive written copies and no compulsion to receive electronic copies. I’m just wondering, because I’m sure the member’s riding has pensioners in it, if you think those pensioners do indeed have the right to continue to receive their pension notices in paper form. And should they be compelled to take the electronic form?

I very much enjoyed the comments from the member for Carleton, especially on schedule 30, and I really enjoyed the comments this morning from the minister on the same schedule, and also the comments from the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane on that. I come from a farming background, even though I’m currently a city slicker, living in Toronto for many years. He explained a lot. The member from Timiskaming–Cochrane said that farmers don’t like politicians and lawyers—which I’ve been both of—and engineers, and that’s what my father was. Also, I think he mentioned that he only has nine and a half fingers, which is a common farming injury, which I share in our family. I have my 10 fingers, but my cousin is missing a half.

Anyway, I know that farming is a financially very risky business, and the member was talking about schedule 30. Could she tell us how it will improve, if passed, farming in her community and how it will help the farmers?

I want to thank the member from Carleton for speaking today, and I really want to thank the member from Timiskaming. It’s always a pleasure to listen to the member from Timiskaming. I’ve got to say, he’s one of the most entertaining speakers in the house, and he brings a northern perspective and a farmer’s perspective to this House. I think those are two perspectives that we need to hear more often.

One thing he said, though, was that we don’t have unorganized territories in southern Ontario. So far as I know, we may have some, but we do have—even in downtown Toronto here—unclaimed roads. There’s an unclaimed lane behind my office that is not maintained. The city doesn’t own it and no private owner owns it; it’s just a laneway behind my office, and it’s not maintained. The potholes kept getting bigger and bigger, and you needed a four-by-four to get into the parking lot of my office. We actually had to organize a few people to pay for a load of gravel. So we don’t have unorganized territories, but we do, strangely enough, have unclaimed lanes right in downtown Toronto.

Interjection.

But anyway, I’m going to talk today about this Legislature, about some lessons that have been learned in this House.

I’m going to talk about two former Conservative members of this House over the last 100 years who really were groundbreaking in the policies that they advocated for: Adam Beck and Bill Davis. I know it may sound odd for an NDPer to be praising the work of former Conservative members of this House—but I think it speaks to how far the ideological shift has happened in this province. The policies that were pursued by Adam Beck to create public hydro 100 years ago and the policies of Bill Davis to create our public colleges and universities are now considered on the left end of the spectrum. The spectrum has moved so far to the right that—

The member from Eglinton–Lawrence.

Speaker, through you to the member from Carleton, that was an excellent presentation that she just made.

Section 22, Speaker, talks about the Not-for-Profit Corporations Act, and you’ll know from the hard work you do in your own riding that not-for-profit corporations play a significant role in our communities and lifting up certain aspects of our communities. I’d like the member from Carleton—through you, Speaker—to speak about the importance she sees of this particular section in her own riding, because I know she has a very diverse riding.

Thank you to the member for Carleton. I want to refer specifically to schedule 7. In 2020, the Auditor General released a scathing investigation report into this sector. She concluded that the sector is “poorly regulated and there is inadequate ... oversight over developers ... managers and condo boards,” and “condo residents have little recourse if they encounter” any “problems.”

We brought forward a private member’s bill that you voted down. You voted no to providing governance and oversight to the 1.3 million condo owners in the province of Ontario.

So specifically, schedule 7, subsection 4: If you were going to open the act, why did you not open the act and provide the kind of protection that condo owners have been asking for? This is what you say you’re here to do, help people. This act is open, and you’ve done nothing to help people with the complaints that they have about living in condos in Ontario.

Yes, absolutely, and your government is a big part of it. This is part of what the member from—Glanbrook?

Interjection.

One of the things that really bothers me and that I think makes the bad policies—one of the major ideological shifts that this government is pursuing is the privatization of our public services and the sell-off of our public assets, and we’re seeing that again and again. We’ve seen it over the years.

I’ll start with two sections of this bill. I mentioned Adam Beck. I’m going to start with broadband rollout.

Broadband is the 21st-century electricity. Everybody needs broadband. I think everybody in this House agrees that every community, every resident in this province needs access to broadband, because if you don’t have it, you’re cut off from all kinds of educational and work opportunities.

This government is rolling out broadband. They’re spending $4 billion. The initial standard that they set when we met in committee last year was 50/10—so 50 megabits a second upload and 10 megabits a second download—and at the time, at the committee, I told the minister, “That’s simply not adequate. That’s an old standard. It will mean that the communities that you’re providing this to are already behind the curve. If you’re going to roll out broadband and you’re going to be rolling out fibre—the cost is not in the cost of the fibre cable. The cost is in the poles and the tunnels and the conduit—everything that you need to actually roll out the broadband. So you might as well roll out 1 gigabit symmetrical.”

I can give you an example of why that’s so important. A friend of mine, Charles Taylor, is a VFX artist. He’s a compositor. He has worked on some big movies that many of you will know: Shazam!, The Shape of Water. He lives in downtown Toronto, in my riding of Spadina–Fort York. He’s from Haliburton. The company he works for is in Montreal. He actually wouldn’t mind living in Haliburton, where he has a lot of relatives. But he lives in downtown Toronto because he needs 1 gigabit symmetrical broadband in order to do the work that he does. If the government is rolling out broadband that isn’t 1 gigabit symmetrical, with this $4 billion that you’re spending, then you’re cutting off people like him from the opportunity to work in Haliburton. You’re cutting off other communities.

I’ve got a committee that I work with—I’m the tech and innovation critic, so I’ve got a committee. I asked them, “Give me a list of the careers and the jobs that you need 1 gigabit symmetrical for,” and the list I got was computer animation, cloud services, artificial intelligence, machine learning, agri-tech.

Agri-tech now is really fast-developing, and it relies on image capture and processing online for decision-making around processing and sorting. In addition, the latest machinery is embedded with real-time error and fault management. So the modern farms that we have across this province need 1 gigabit symmetrical just to operate the equipment in the most efficient way possible.

People think of farms being a southern Ontario thing, and I used to think that, too, until I moved up to Geraldton, Ontario, a number of years ago. When you drive north of Toronto on the 400 or Highway 11, you get up to Orillia, and there are very few farms—you get into the Canadian Shield; you see all forests. And then you get north of North Bay, and you get to the Clay Belt, and all of a sudden, the land opens up again. There’s this huge area of farming in northern Ontario. That’s actually where the member from Timiskaming is from, and that’s where he farmed.

The farmers up there need—if you’re going to be rolling out broadband to the community, and we absolutely should, then you should be rolling out 1 gigabit symmetrical broadband to those communities so the farmers will be able to use the most modern equipment and operate in the most efficient way possible.

The other areas: Virtual reality—you also need 1 gigabit symmetrical, and supply chain inventory and fleet management. The latest supply chain technologies use blockchain for identification and security, and blockchains require heavy storage and processing powers to pack and unpack. And poor infrastructure will directly impact the rollout of the latest supply chain technology. So I’m asking the government to change the standard of these contracts for the last mile of broadband so that they’re 1 gigabit symmetrical. That’s what you should be rolling out. If you’re not, people will be happy because you’re replacing a horse and buggy, but you’re replacing it with a Model T, and really what they need is a modern vehicle.

The reason I mention Adam Beck in this is, 120 years ago, at the turn of the 20th century electricity was a new thing. They were just starting to put power generation stations on Niagara Falls, and they created, in 1906—Adam Beck, who was a member of this House, created Ontario Hydro to roll out hydro, and they actually ended up nationalizing our hydroelectric system. It ended up costing four cents a kilowatt hour from the 1920s until 1995. That’s how much we were paying for electricity. Our electricity rate, because it was delivered at cost through a public utility, was one of our biggest competitive advantages.

And then the Conservatives, in 1995, started to break up Ontario Hydro and sell it off, and then the Liberals finished off—

Interjection.

So when you look at the lesson from Adam Beck, if we had learned the lesson in 1995 and the early 2000s, we would have created a public broadband network or given it to Ontario Hydro to roll out broadband, and then every community—the advantage of Ontario Hydro was that they rolled out electricity to everyone in the province, because they recognized that everybody needed access to electricity. So that’s one of the lessons.

The other lesson—and this is from this bill as well. This bill is 37 schedules, 150-odd pages. We just got it recently, but the other thing that really piqued my interest in this is, they’re changing the name of private career colleges to career colleges. They’re taking away the term “private.” This means that people, when they’re registering or when they’re applying, won’t know whether they’re applying to a public college or a private college. The distinction is really important, although it’s a distinction that this government and the last Liberal government have been blurring for decades.

We used to have—and I mentioned Bill Davis. In the 1960s, Bill Davis created our CAAT colleges, our community arts and applied technology colleges, and they were delivered at cost. He also expanded our public university system. He created many public universities and expanded the universities that we had, so that Ontario became one of the best-educated jurisdictions in the world. It’s one of our biggest competitive advantages.

The other big competitive advantage of our public colleges and universities: Every one of them has an innovation centre, and those innovation centres partner with local businesses and researchers. Those businesses benefit from the research that’s being done in those colleges and universities, and the students get hands-on experience developing and doing that kind of research with real-world applications. So Ontario is the fastest-growing tech ecosystem in North America. We’re growing faster than Silicon Valley. We’re not as big as Silicon Valley yet, but we could possibly overtake Silicon Valley one day if the trajectory continues.

But this government is privatizing our public colleges and universities. You’re undermining one of our biggest competitive advantages. This is a real concern and it’s being done just like the Liberal government.

I’ve got a bit of time here, so I’ll just backtrack a little bit. Until 1995, our university tuition fees were about $2,500 per student per year. That was for all programs. That was undergrads, that was med school, that was grad school, that was engineering, that was dentistry, that was veterinary. Whatever program you wanted at university, it was about $2,500 a year, and college was about $1,200 a year.

The Conservatives—and those were created, the colleges and universities, as I mentioned, by Bill Davis, who in the 1960s was the Minister of Education. Then he became the Premier through the 1970s until 1984. He was incredibly proud of the work that those public colleges and universities were doing and he was proud of the contribution they were making to the economic development of this province.

But since then, in 1995, the then Conservative government got into power and they began privatizing our public colleges and universities. They doubled tuition for undergrads from $2,500. By the time they left, in 2003, it was over $5,000 for undergrad tuition.

They delisted professional program tuition fees, so they went from $2,500 in 1995, for law school and med school at the University of Toronto in 2003, to $12,000. The Liberals got in and they doubled tuition fees again. By the time they left—their last election was in 2018—our undergrad tuition fees were about $8,000 or $9,000 a year. Law school and medical school at the University of Toronto were $28,000 a year. An MBA at the University of Toronto, when the NDP was in power, was $2,500 per person per year. Under the Conservative-Liberal regime, working hand in hand—the Liberals and the Conservatives always supporting each other—it’s now $54,000 per year. It’s a two-year program, so it’s $108,000 to get an MBA in Ontario.

That’s part of the privatization. What it means is that in our public colleges and universities, 85% of the funding used to come from our taxes. The tuition that people were paying until 1995 was about 15% of the operating costs of the colleges and universities. Now the students are paying, through their tuition fees, more than 50% of the operating costs of those colleges and universities.

One of the things that has been created with this privatization of our public colleges and universities is that we’ve got a student debt industry. It’s difficult to get a clear estimate, but there is at least $25 billion in student debt in Canada. That is mostly held by private banks and the banks are now charging prime plus 2%, so somewhere around 6.5%, in interest on that $25 billion. This is a major revenue generator for those banks.

If you look at the big picture of it, what this privatization and the increase in tuition fees mean is that the Conservative government—this Conservative government and the last Conservative government—and the Liberal government have actually created a system that transfers wealth from the lowest-income students in the province to the investors in the banks, some of the wealthiest people in the province. It’s robbing from the poor and giving to the rich.

What this government is doing now with this bill is, they’re taking away the distinction between public colleges and private colleges. What used to be called private career colleges are just going to be called career colleges, so that people won’t even know the distinction between the one and the other.

Part of the reason for this is, it’s part of a bigger trend. The public colleges have been so grossly underfunded by this government and the last government—in the post-secondary sector, the funding from the government has been frozen for at least a decade, which means at least a $1-billion inflationary cut. The colleges and universities have to make up for that somehow. One way that this government has conveniently created is this government has created a policy to create partnerships between our public colleges and private colleges, so private colleges can use the curriculum that’s developed by the public colleges and they can give degrees and diplomas in the name of the public college. So they’re blurring the distinction. This step in this bill of removing the term “private” from career colleges is a further blurring of that distinction between our public colleges and private colleges.

The reason this matters is that the privatization of our public services ultimately means that we pay far more and we get far less, that students will be paying far more in these privatized colleges and universities—they already are. They have to take on more debt in order to get their degree or diploma, and they’re also facing, because of the funding cuts, larger class sizes and less support than they would have had 10, 20, 30 years ago.

And this is just one schedule of 37 in this bill, but this schedule is a really important indication of the ideological bent of this government. This government does not believe in public services. They are trying to privatize public services as fast as they possibly can. It’s like the last Conservative government. They privatized long-term care, they privatized home care—

Interjection: The 407.

Questions?

For the House, I don’t mind a little bit of activity, but we need to be able to hear each other, please.

Continue. Start the clock.

The 407. Oh, my God, the 407. The Conservatives keep boasting about how they won 84 seats, and, I’ve got to say, I don’t know how you won it, because you won most of the seats in the 905, and the 407 goes right across the 905.

When the NDP started building the 407, it was going to be a toll highway, but it was publicly controlled, and after 20 years, the tolls would come off because it would have been paid for. The Conservatives sold it to a private Spanish conglomerate for $3 billion and gave them a 100-year lease. So people in the whole 905, who for some reason are electing Conservative MPPs, are paying these outrageous fees. If the NDP had stayed in power, there would be no tolls anymore on the 407 because the drivers already paid for it. The drivers already paid for it. But, because of the Conservatives, they’re going to be paying for it for another 70 years.

The Conservative government of the day sold the 407 for $3 billion, and the Premier at the time, Premier Harris, said, “Oh, well, we can regulate how much they’re going to charge.” Then it went to court and it turns out we can’t regulate how much they’re going to charge. And so, the 407, which was initially supposed to be a public highway and eventually, after 20 years, was going to be free, became this privatized highway that people are going to be paying for for 100 years.

The value to the investors—and this is what it’s really about—is that highway is now worth $45 billion. The Conservatives sold it for $3 billion, it’s now worth $45 billion, and somehow, you get elected in the 905 by all those poor people who have to pay those outrageous fees on the 407. I don’t know how you do it.

That has to be one of the most ideological speeches I have ever heard in this place, and I have been here for 12 years. No wonder the member opposite doesn’t understand how their caucus was cut in half in the last election and ours grew, because people don’t want a socialist government in this province, and that’s what they would get if that member was successful in winning the election last time. Thank God for the future of Ontario they didn’t win.

Madam Speaker, why does the member believe that we have attracted $17 billion in new EV platforms in Ontario? Why does the member believe that’s happening, and does the member opposite support—

Interjections.

Earlier in his remarks, I heard the member opposite talk about expanding broadband services. For 15 years, I never heard anything from the NDP talking about expanding broadband services. Our government is stepping up. We’re removing red tape around streamlining processes related to infrastructure to help expedite the delivery of broadband projects across Ontario. We’re reducing delays, paving the way for faster access to high-speed Internet for homes and businesses, helping them grow.

Connected communities attract significant and lasting investments, boosting the local and provincial economies. Can the member opposite tell me what he has done to expand broadband and high-speed Internet to all Ontarians?