SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
April 5, 2023 09:00AM
  • Apr/5/23 3:20:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

Speaker, through you, I would like to address a question to my colleague from Spadina–Fort York about schedule 29. We have all seen hardships of private colleges that sell students on the promise of a job, but then the actual degree lacks that accreditation and leaves students with mountains and mountains of debt. Why is it critical to not only address the accountability but also tackle the cost of tuition for students in Ontario who are struggling to pay their bills and go to school at the same time?

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  • Apr/5/23 3:20:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

Further questions?

Further questions?

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  • Apr/5/23 3:30:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

It was really Giles’s fault, not mine.

Anyway, I’m really pleased to be able to stand here and talk about Bill 91, the Less Red Tape, Stronger Economy Act. This bill is just another step in the right direction and is going to continue to build on our government’s strong track record of reducing red tape across Ontario.

As stated by my colleagues here this afternoon and earlier this morning by the minister himself, Bill 91 is going to pave the way for better services and help Ontario businesses grow and save people time and money.

Before we came into power—and I think this speaks to the grade we did get from the CFIB in 2019—Ontario was the most highly overregulated province in Canada. Many of these regulations were unnecessary, they were outdated—they were red tape. That’s one of the reasons why Ontario’s economy was plummeting at the time.

Madam Speaker, this will hit it home to you: I was the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade when we got that call in early November of 2018 that after over a hundred years of building cars in Oshawa, General Motors was closing its plant. The folks at General Motors said to me, “Minister, it’s not anything that you and the Premier have done; it’s just become so oppressive and costly to do business here in Ontario that we’re having to close that plant”—after a hundred years in Oshawa.

I remember having an emergency meeting in Oshawa that night with Mayor Dan Carter and my colleagues from the Legislature, going out there, saying we were going to support Oshawa, we were going to support the Durham region and we were going to make sure that we became a competitive jurisdiction again—one that reduced red tape, one that got electricity prices under control and back to being competitive—and that General Motors plant was going to be back. I’m proud to say that four years later, there are multi-billion dollar EV mandates going in not just at GM Oshawa but at OEMs right across this province, and a supply chain that’s going to support it. It’s an incredible accomplishment, and it’s been a whole-team-of-government effort to ensure that we’re back and competitive in this market.

I go into small businesses regularly in my home riding of Bay of Quinte. These local establishments are staples in their communities, and they have been for decades and really hold our riding’s economy together. I know they do so in other ridings right across Ontario. We’ve seen first-hand during COVID-19 just how we needed to support these small businesses, and we did that, Madam Speaker. We can’t stop supporting our small business. That’s why we’re coming forward with bills like Bill 91.

People think that red tape only affects businesses. It doesn’t. It affects all of us in our daily lives. This is why we set out on a mission to reduce red tape by the amount that we have. I’m honoured to be a part of a government that’s reduced Ontario’s total regulatory burden by 6.5%. That 6.5% is equivalent to $700 million in annual compliance costs for not-for-profit organizations, municipalities, school boards, colleges and universities and hospitals. Our government has eliminated that.

I recall, when I became the minister, our goal was to reduce red tape by 25% across the province and save businesses $400 million. Well, we just hit the $700-million mark, which is amazing and a credit to all of us for the work that we’re doing.

Let me touch on a couple of the pieces in the bill that affect my current portfolio. By reducing red tape within the energy sector, it’s honouring our commitment to ensure that there’s a reliable, affordable and clean electricity system to power the province, to continue to drive electrification and support our strong economic growth that we’re now seeing in Ontario. Within the energy sector, there still is some red tape that’s holding us back, and we’re looking to eliminate that here in Bill 91. If passed, it would mean that our government is reducing burdens on stakeholders and making life easier.

There are two measures that I’m really excited about as the Minister of Energy. First, we’re expanding the OEB’s, the Ontario Energy Board’s, authority to enable innovation. Innovation isn’t just a buzzword; it is happening in the energy sector at a rapid pace, Madam Speaker. This will exempt proponents of innovative projects which have future potential from certain licensing requirements.

With Ontario’s population and economy growing, expanding the OEB’s authority to grant temporary licensing exemptions to specific legislative requirements would better empower the OEB to facilitate innovation in the energy sector. By allowing the OEB to expand its innovation sandbox—and I’ve been out with the OEB at a number of these sandbox announcements over the years; the IESO also has a Grid Innovation Fund doing similar things, allowing for innovators in the province to showcase what they’ve been working on through pilot projects—participants are going to be able to continue to undertake innovative pilot projects such as exploring peer-to-peer energy trading, and that could result in benefits for the energy sector and economic development here in Ontario.

Our government has been working with the OEB since we took office, and we know that Ontario’s energy advantage is made possible by our many partners that we have in the sector.

The OEB is an independent regulatory body. Its core mandate is to protect the interests of families and businesses accessing energy with respect to the price, reliability and the quality of the electricity services that they are receiving.

Again, we’ve been working hard with the OEB to modernize their governance structure and make room for innovation.

So we took this action as we know that increased transparency, reduced regulatory burdens and greater efficiencies in the OEB are going to build trust and are going to benefit all electricity customers in Ontario. It also helps to ensure that our electricity system continues to be one of the cleanest and most reliable in the world, and that is what’s allowing us to see the type of multi-billion dollar investments that we have been seeing over the last number of months.

The next measure that is going to positively help the energy sector is the “keeping administrative monetary penalties off rates” measure. The proposal is part of our plan to keep energy affordable for all Ontarians. The government is proposing to amend the Ontario Energy Board Act to ensure that ratepayers aren’t subjected to additional costs as a result of administrative monetary penalties—those AMPs that, when they’re charged to energy utilities, won’t be passed on to electricity ratepayers and recovered through energy rates. It’s one more way that we’re helping to keep our rates predictable and low and not spiking at the double-digit percentage rates that we were seeing back in 2015, 2016 and 2017. We’ve brought those types of massive, massive spikes in our electricity bills under control.

Another part of our plan is to work with Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator to procure about 4,000 new megawatts of generation through competitive processes—not sole-sourced deals, not feed-in tariff programs that are driving up the cost of electricity massively. We’re doing this in a competitive, business-type approach that has already resulted in massive savings to electricity customers through the processes that we’ve undertaken so far through the IESO procurements, with competitive procurements through the RFPs that we have had out in the field and that we continue to have out in the field right now.

So more can still be done for ratepayers—and reducing the red tape in the sector is obviously going to do that.

On a more local note, as the MPP for Bay of Quinte, there are a number of measures in this bill, as well, that I fully endorse and am excited about. The first measure is going to be helping many constituents in my riding get broadband Internet service. The first measure that will help is the proposed amendment to the Building Broadband Faster Act, 2021. We’re proposing legislative amendments under that act that will ensure Internet service providers can plan, design and build high-speed Internet projects as quickly as possible. I’ve been working with my seatmate here, the Minister of Infrastructure, on this file for the last year and a half, just ensuring that when we are building broadband, we’re doing everything that we can to remove red tape, to make it quick and easy for Internet service providers, those ISPs, working with LDCs, the local distribution companies, to get cable in the ground, to get access to the poles that we need and to reduce the cost of getting access to those poles, so that the folks who are working on this can get broadband out there as fast as possible.

We remain committed to bringing high-speed Internet access to every community in Ontario, including Bay of Quinte, by the end of 2025. It was a major, major frustration for people in my riding since I was elected in 2011 that there were huge pockets in our area that, first of all, didn’t have cell service and didn’t have broadband Internet access. It was very frustrating. I would say over and over again, “We continue to push the government of the day, we continue to push the government of the day.” I’m happy to say the government of the day, the Doug Ford government, is actually the first to put $4 billion on the table to ensure that we’re getting high-speed broadband Internet to every corner of the province.

I’m excited about broadband Internet making its way into Bay of Quinte because a lot of people have moved out of the GTA over the last couple of years thanks to the pandemic. They’re living on Sheba’s Island or they’re living on West Lake or they’re living up in Hastings county on a lake up there, and they want to work from there. We’re ensuring that they’re going to have the Internet that they need.

I know my good friend who sits behind me here, Minister Thompson, the Minister of Agriculture, is excited about a couple of things impacting the agriculture, agri-food and farming communities. We have a big farming community in Bay of Quinte. So the amendments to the Milk Act are going to be warmly received, not that we drink our milk warm in Quinte; we like our milk cold. But these are welcome changes to the Milk Act. Then there’s also streamlining the farm financial protection programs, which are great. We have a very, very active agricultural community. This is going to impact all sectors in the ag community, from dairy, obviously, to the grain farmers. We’ve got some great grain farmers in my region as well and the beef farmers, which I love. We get out to some great twilights in the summer.

For those city folk, they probably don’t know what a twilight is, but it’s where you go out to one of the local farms. The entire community is invited out there, and it’s just a whole lot of fun. You get a chance to see the animals and see the great work that they’re doing on the farm. I’m looking forward to twilight season coming up a little bit later on this summer.

In conclusion, here this afternoon, I’d like to thank the Legislature for providing me with the time to speak to the Less Red Tape, Stronger Economy Act, 2023, which, if passed, would allow ratepayers across the country, the people of Ontario, to save money on bills, which follows our government’s commitment to ensuring a reliable and affordable and clean electricity system to power Ontario. Personally, I am really excited about the Building Broadband Faster Act amendments. I know full well just how badly that type of work is needed.

This is going to positively impact the people of Bay of Quinte. It’s going to positively impact the people of Ontario.

I just want to close by saying this: There’s a lot of work that goes into these red tape bills. I’ll go back to where I started with commending Minister Gill and also PA Oosterhoff and their team at this new ministry, the Ministry of Red Tape Reduction, for the work that they’re doing, because it’s a bit like herding cats. All of these great ideas come into your office on how you can reduce red tape. And it sounds really easy, but it’s not, because when those ideas come in, you then have to go to every single line minister and make sure the due diligence is done to ensure that the red tape that you are cutting is in fact red tape, that it’s overregulation, that it is having an impact on businesses or impacting the people or not-for-profits in our province. It is a heck of a lot of work.

The commitment that we have as a government not just to do this every now and then but to do it twice a year is a major undertaking. It’s a thick document. It’s going to make a huge difference in our open-for-business policies here in Ontario.

I look forward to seeing more multi-billion dollar investments in Ontario because of Minister Gill’s Bill 91.

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  • Apr/5/23 3:40:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

I’m glad to be able to ask a question of the Minister of Energy. I’m glad to hear his enthusiasm for broadband. I wish that we saw that the government was actually investing in that enthusiasm at more than the rate of 2% of what they’ve budgeted.

Specifically, I wanted to raise something that’s sticking in my craw from the other day. The member from Nickel Belt thoughtfully raised a concern from her neck of the woods about the lack of broadband investment and hope—the lack of hope, I think, because in northern and rural communities like the riding of Nickel Belt, businesses are not going to put in broadband; there’s no money in it for them. She asked if the government would take responsibility, a public solution, and she was mercilessly mocked for suggesting such a thing.

I would ask the Minister of Energy, who’s excited about broadband going across the province, how is this government going to ensure that when companies will not put it in because there’s no money for them—how are they going to get that broadband? Or are they just up a creek?

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  • Apr/5/23 3:50:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

Speaker, through you to the member for Bay of Quinte: At a time when life is unaffordable, we have a series of technical measures for remote meetings. These priorities are way out of touch.

My question: Yesterday the housing minister said that meeting Ontario’s housing targets was out of his control. What is in the government’s control is prioritizing purpose-built housing and grants to make houses more affordable. Why, instead, are we prioritizing technical legislation?

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  • Apr/5/23 3:50:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

I appreciate the question from the member opposite. It’s very important, first of all, and our job here in the province is to ensure that we get the infrastructure to the doorstep of the individuals across the province so that they can access high-speed Internet service for their businesses, so their kids can do their homework, all of those important things so they can do their business from home. We put $4 billion out there, and the Minister of Infrastructure has been working extremely hard to ensure that happens by 2025. The reverse-auction that she has run has been successful in ensuring that we have the ISPs, those Internet service providers, that are going to do the work to get it to the door.

I’m not exactly sure what the question is that the member is asking, because it’s still going to be up to individuals to sign up with that ISP to get the Internet service so that they can run their business, and it will be up to them to make that decision, but the Internet service will be available to each and every home and business across Ontario.

For an example, there are companies and manufacturers in our province that are operating battery storage facilities. They would be able to share, peer to peer, the energy that they’re producing and storing in their facilities, and potentially making that electricity available to their local distribution companies. So if it’s in Ajax, they would be sharing the electricity they’re producing, with a fee, to Elexicon, which is the local distribution company, which will then make our grid even that much more stable.

These are some of the ideas that we’re looking at, and there’s lots of innovation opportunities in the sector.

Every time we bring forward a piece of legislation, you know what you’re going to get out of the New Democratic Party: You’re always going to get a no. But I think it’s pretty rich to allege that this government hasn’t done anything on housing. We’ve done more on housing than any government in our province’s history.

Interjections.

Red tape is suffocating businesses in this province, but not as bad as it was five years ago because of all of the legislation we’ve brought forward to reduce red tape. The red tape bills that we have brought forward have had an impact on just about every sector.

One of the blessings, I guess, of being a new member back in 2011 and given this portfolio was going out and seeing just where red tape was impacting people across the province, and it wasn’t just small businesses. Certainly it was impacting small businesses, but it was impacting our delivery of health care. It was impacting our delivery of education. It was impacting our delivery of social services. It was impacting all of the ministries that deliver very, very important services to the province.

So we set out on a mission to reduce that red tape and we have surpassed our goals, but we’re not stopping there. Minister Gill is still charging forward like a bull at a red flag in front of him to remove red tape.

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  • Apr/5/23 3:50:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

It’s such a pleasure to join this debate on G91 this afternoon. I did catch the one-hour lead by our critic on this bill, and I think the way he started the conversation on the nature of red tape and the importance of having regulations for health and safety really resonated with me.

I’ve heard some members saying that the number one issue they hear in their riding is reducing red tape. The number one issue that I hear in Waterloo, and I’m sure our other members in the official opposition too, is housing. It’s cost of living; it’s affordability; it’s climate change; it’s health care—accessing health care, accessing mental health services. So I just want to preface that, because I’m going to present some examples of streamlining and reducing regulatory burdens, which would be beneficial for the people of this province. Also, I’m really hopeful that the door is still open, and I’m glad that the minister did his opening speech this morning on Bill 91. We have some specific examples where regulatory burdens couldn’t be reduced which actually benefit the people that we are elected to serve, and that’s sort of the focus that we are coming to in this debate on this piece of legislation.

It is worth noting, as our critic mentioned, that we only got a hard copy of the bill this morning. It’s a fast-moving bill, and so we’re still peeling back the layers on it, and of course, doing some stakeholder consultation, which I think is our duty to do and also an important part of holding the government to account.

Now, it will surprise some of the members over there, but we have already heard from some folks that are very concerned with where you are choosing to place regulatory burdens and then where you’re sort of ignoring or setting aside red tape and regulations. My friend and colleague from Oshawa, she just happened to share an economic and development services department planning services report that’s going to Oshawa city council, and as you can expect, municipalities are reeling from Bill 23. The government is actively changing the rules of engagement, and honestly, the relationship that the provincial government has with municipalities in Ontario, and you’ve done it in such a way that it is only breeding discontent and genuine concerns. And I just want to say, 444 municipalities are not wrong on Bill 23.

Specifically, around regulations, this is in 5.3 of the staff report: “The province is proposing that municipalities report planning-approval information quarterly. Staff do not support reporting on a quarterly basis as it is onerous, time-consuming and may overlap with the subsequent quarter’s data collection. This may also prove onerous for the province to disseminate the data on a quarterly basis.... As a result, there is typically a delay recurring on an annual basis when activity that would otherwise would have occurred during the third quarter can only be dealt with in the fourth quarter.”

These are the people who are actually doing the real work in the community to facilitate housing, right? So what is this government doing? They’re providing more hoops for them to jump through, Madam Speaker. The “implementation of the regulation” that is contained in Bill 23 “will take already constrained staff resources away from actually processing planning applications.” If you want to fast-track housing, why would you put another roadblock for staff to facilitate and streamline that process? They say, “This will cause delays in planning approvals and may require the hiring of additional staff to help offset the need for staff to spend more time recording data.” Is that what you want? You want municipal staff to spend more time recording data than approving housing development?

And this also, they point out, would result “in further costs to the city in an already cost-constrained environment.” We are already seeing tax hikes across the province due to Bill 23. Bill 23 is having a cooling effect on housing. It is already happening in Waterloo with the delay of 800 homes because they don’t have the money to plan the community infrastructure that subdivision requires. This report from Oshawa goes on to say, “It is requested that the province provide information on the consequences of not having the data available to provide to the province in the manner proposed.”

And then, finally, “The pace of planning applications is often in the hands of developers”—I just want you to sit with that for a little bit. “The pace of planning applications is often in the hands of developers and their consultants. If a developer decides to not advance their application or decides to alter it substantially it will cause delay.”

This is actually happening in Waterloo region, and I know that my colleague from Kitchener–Conestoga knows this. Applications have been approved. All the i’s are dotted, the t’s are crossed, but the developer is not moving ahead. They’re waiting for the cost of the homes to increase, they’re waiting for the profit margins to increase, and this, then, is outside of the purview of those municipalities.

“The province should develop a reciprocal regulation for the development industry”—this is coming from the planners in Oshawa, which is a very fast-growing community which actually needs housing. This is the feedback on the regulatory burden that the government is placing on municipalities, all the while going through the motions of reducing red tape.

I just want to say, the regulations that are contained within Bill 23, it goes on to say, “do not appear to require information concerning approvals of housing units related to community planning permit systems. Without such information, it is not clear how the province can reliably compare planning approval processes across all municipalities.”

When the minister talked this morning, he was saying that there was a lot of collaboration and communication between ministries. I would urge the minister responsible for red tape to sit down with the Minister of Municipal Affairs and say, “Listen, housing is in a crisis. Bill 23 will slow down that planning process.” We do not need more red tape around housing, Madam Speaker. What we do need is direct investment.

This sort of leads me to this conversation around what is driving the red tape priorities. I was watching the news earlier today, and I’m sure people have heard about a senior couple who were scammed by cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin are a huge issue in the province of Ontario. I did write to the Minister of Finance back on September 8 of last year—it does feel like a very long time ago, I just want to say for the record; we haven’t even finished one year of this term. But the fact that this couple was able to be scammed out of $400,000—and just so the House knows, fraud reports in the province of Ontario have skyrocketed over the last decade. Crypto is problematic in that there are not enough regulatory protections around this new sector. In fact, the Ontario Securities Commission is chasing the sector, I would say.

I did meet with a group called the Canadian Web3 Council. I sat down with them. They are a group of folks who are asking the government to establish responsible public policy around crypto, and they’re actually asking for a trust framework to unlock the development—because there’s lots of potential. I’m not going to pretend that I understand everything about it; I don’t think anybody in this House understands everything about Bitcoin, but it is here. It is here in Ontario.

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  • Apr/5/23 3:50:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

Thank you to the Minister of Energy. I would just suggest that what’s suffocating people in this province is not red tape but their inability to pay basic bills, like their rent and their hydro bills. You came to power saying you’re going to clean up the hydro mess; you’ve made it messier, in my opinion. You have said in fact that you were going to reduce hydro bills—I don’t know; for residents, was it 14%—a moving target. You haven’t done any of it. In addition, taxpayers are still on the hook for $7 billion of taxpayer money to subsidize the mess you said you would clean up.

So what in this bill helps people pay their electrical bills?

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  • Apr/5/23 3:50:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

Me?

I’d like to congratulate—actually you, Speaker; it’s nice to see you in the chair. Congratulations. It’s always good to see a strong woman in the chair.

I also want to congratulate my colleague the Minister of Energy. He and I have been working on this type of file for the past number of years—me, 17; him, I believe it’s now 11, 12 or something like that. I do take his point about all of the red tape that was incurred during the last Liberal government. It does take time in order to responsibly, ethically and morally reduce red tape while taking your time, but, at the same time, understanding the sense of urgency.

A week ago, I held a round table in the constituency on Ottawa investment. One of the things I heard that makes Ottawa a unique place to invest is our stability and paycheques because of the federal government. We have a good strong base of high-tech. We’re bilingual; we’re diverse; we have lots of land and we have low costs.

That said, what is still a problem is inflation. We still have labour shortages like everywhere else. The supply chain has impacted us, but today and every day the business owners of Nepean and the rest of Ottawa tell me red tape is the number one concern and it’s costing business.

I ask the minister—he did refer to $700 million worth of cutting red tape. Could he elaborate on that?

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  • Apr/5/23 3:50:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

Thank you to the minister for his presentation—very dynamic. I appreciate your comments regarding the OEB’s authority and how this bill will allow innovation. I also loved your comment about the cleanest technology in the world. I think that’s so important, and we should be really marketing that, so to speak.

My question to you, Minister: Can you provide an example of how giving the OEB the authority to waive licensing requirements for pilot projects could encourage greater customer participation in the energy sector?

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  • Apr/5/23 4:00:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

Oh, maybe you do know everything, but then surely you must have some concerns around people being scammed of $400,000.

When I wrote the minister, I said specifically, “CW3 voiced their desire for the government to launch a public consultation to create a new framework specific to crypto assets. The last round of government consultation happened three years ago,” according to this letter, but now we’re at four years. With a sector like crypto, which is changing fast-paced—changing daily, some would say—why would the government not be bringing forward some regulatory guidelines around this specific issue?

I have to also say, “Ontario is falling behind other jurisdictions and this format lacks transparency and results in unclear regulatory expectations”—hold on. Ahem. I have a cough.

Interjections.

Interjection: Do you want a cough drop?

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  • Apr/5/23 4:10:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

I do want a cough drop. I mean, what does a girl have to do around here to get a cough drop?

So the answer we got back from the finance minister is that we should reach out to the Ontario Securities Commission. Of course, we are going to do that, but I do think it’s worth noting that the council—this is not something that should be driven by the sector, Madam Speaker. Cryptocurrency is here. There are concerns about it. There’s no consumer protection plan around it. Why is this government not doing something around regulating this sector with consumers and citizens in mind?

Going back to my theme of where the energy is going around red tape, it should be also noted that some changes have happened around ODSP and the reporting around ODSP. If I have to say—and I did write the former minister about this as well: “As of February 4, 2023, recipients of ODSP are now required to log into their MyBenefits app to declare that they have not been out of Ontario for 30 consecutive days.”

When this issue first came to my attention, as many issues do come through our constituency—there was a lady who said, “Listen, why do I have to prove that I haven’t left Ontario? Why do I have to do this on a monthly basis? I can’t even get down to the grocery store.” So there is a disconnect here around the overregulation in certain sectors and then the under-regulation in emerging issues like crypto.

In the letter, I said, “We are hearing from constituents who feel they are being over-monitored by the government when they are already exhausted by having to prove they are disabled enough to receive support.” This is a direct quote from a constituent: “Enough of our lives are controlled by reporting into the program.” Our offices have reached out to the MPP liaison to clarify the full impact of this change. To date, we did not receive any response.

Now, considering that ODSP payments are barely enough to survive on—okay? So you’re leaving, like, the Wild West of crypto and Bitcoin just to figure things out and not protecting consumers, but for folks who are on ODSP, they have to prove that they are disabled year after year after year. Now they have to also go into the MyBenefits app and prove that they haven’t gone anywhere. How could they go anywhere, Madam Speaker? And why is this government implementing further administrative and financial hoops for recipients to jump through? We’re concerned about the cost of this added oversight with the addition of red tape that that creates.

It is ironic that the government can bring forward a very hefty red tape bill but then, on the other hand, create more red tape for the most vulnerable people who don’t have that support system in their lives. ODSP is already punitive even without this change. We ask you, are the benefits of this change worth further demoralizing and marginalizing ODSP recipients?

I raise that issue again because Bill 91, which is a huge bill, delves into some of these areas where you’ve decided—you’re picking and choosing certain areas and prioritizing them. There honestly doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why you’ve decided that.

There are some red flags for us, though, with this bill. I just had this really great meeting with the University of Guelph, an amazing institution, and I really learned a lot about how expansive their program is, how they’ve modernized as a university. But they are going to be running a $33-million deficit this year, like many of our public institutions that have gone through a hard time, and these things ebb and flow. One of the areas, though, that they struggle with is around international students, and the fact that private colleges are making promises to those students and providing—I have to be careful about my language, but some of those international students are fast-tracked over to those private colleges.

And then, of course, we see in Bill 91 who you actually are listening to. Schedule 29 of the bill changes the name of the act to the Ontario Career Colleges Act; it removes “private,” which is ironic because they are still businesses, and one could say that calling something a career college has a different connotation, I think, quite honestly. And then, also, the fact that this change in the definition and the request to change the name has actually come from the sector because “operators have raised concerns that the word ‘private’ has a negative connotation and unfairly stigmatizes them and their students”—this was reported in the Trillium. So here you have a piece of legislation and a government that clearly has the ear of some people, and then you have a whole segment, like workers, where safety in the province of Ontario—we’ve never seen so many injuries and accidents on our sites. This is a huge concern for me, especially around the use of accredited tradespeople, because my son is a tradesperson. He’s an electrician. If you have one unqualified person on that work site, that then becomes, in my opinion—not just as a mother, but as someone who follows workplace health and safety regulations—a very unsafe workplace.

So we have some concerns about schedule 29, and I think that the former comments by our critic on schedule 29 warrant some consideration by the minister.

Finally, I want to say that we did hear some really good examples—and I do want to thank the minister who is responsible for red tape for appearing before budget committee when we were up in Kenora. The story goes like this: We heard from some forestry leaders, not surprisingly, up north. They commented that they are really struggling with finding drivers, and perhaps you’ll remember this. Erik Holmstrom and Tom Ratz were really trying to hire a Ukrainian driver. A driver and his family came to the north, came to the Kenora area. This Ukrainian driver had 20 years of experience. He did apply at Resolute, but it took nine months for a licence, so instead, he got a job in Manitoba.

So when you can streamline some red tape and fast-track some licensing requirements for qualified people, you can actually have a competitive edge as an economy. I think that warrants some attention. As I said at the beginning of my comments, which have been cough-ridden, this is something that we should consider doing, especially if we want to capitalize as a province on the talent that is coming into the province.

While we’re at it, let’s reduce the regulatory burden on municipalities so that when those new immigrants come in, when those skilled workers come into the province of Ontario, they actually have a place to live—because I just want to be really clear with this government: They’re not going to be living in the greenbelt. That’s not the destination for new immigrants who are coming to Ontario. And the great irony that I want to point out is that we are actually making the case for intensification of housing within urban boundaries, where the infrastructure is—where the parks are, the hospitals, the educational resources. That’s what we want. We want people to come into our communities, be welcomed in those communities—and then not further add burden to the current tax base by having to increase the taxes to facilitate sprawl. So that’s what the people of Waterloo region want me to really try to get through to this government—that we are arguing for intensification, not sprawl, especially when your own affordable housing task force recommended that you have enough land within the urban boundary to accommodate those immigrants.

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  • Apr/5/23 4:20:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

To my friend from Waterloo: I’m always amazed to hear the government talk about cutting red tape when we see—I don’t think there’s any government in the history of Ontario that spent as much money fighting in the courts to justify their own bad legislation. I’m wondering if the member can tell me: Isn’t that a form of red tape? If you look at Bill 124, creating artificial legislation to suppress workers’ wages, and then when you’re told that it’s not legal, to go to court and fight that, isn’t that a form of red tape in itself?

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  • Apr/5/23 4:20:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

We all remember 15 years of this previous Liberal government’s legacy: crippling deficits, crushing debt, systemic dismantling of our manufacturing sector, 300,000 jobs leaving the province, unaffordable electricity costs for families and businesses alike. Now the changes we are proposing would ultimately ensure that ratepayers are not subject to additional costs that are not directly related to their usage of electricity and not directly related to their use of gas.

I realize it wasn’t an NDP government, but for three of those 15 years the NDP was propping them up. Can you make up for that, I ask the member, by supporting this bill and its proposed amendments on correcting record-high energy costs—make up for the failures of that three-year period of support?

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  • Apr/5/23 4:20:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

I’m glad to be able to ask a question of our critic for finance after her thoughtful speech as we are again talking about red tape reduction. I appreciate that she raised the issues shared by the folks who do the planning, the staff at the city of Oshawa who were raising issues with this government about a proposed minister’s regulation under the Planning Act. While that may be separate and apart from this particular bill, this is a bill that is undertaking to reduce red tape, and yet here’s a brand new regulation the government is proposing and asking for feedback on, and the folks in Oshawa have said it is onerous and will require additional temporary staffing or overtime. They are seeking clarification on even some of the terms in the regulation because it’s not intuitive. They’re asking for the government to approach this differently or to re-approach it and answer their comments. Should they have any hope that that will happen?

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  • Apr/5/23 4:20:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

Well, it’s really interesting to get a question like that from my colleague, because if you heard my original comments, the entire theme is about what you prioritize over what you don’t prioritize, and that inconsistency in policy application is problematic for us—and also making the case that we support streamlining some regulations, but not when they compromise the health and safety of workers in Ontario.

We would like to see a stronger application of addressing those who are vulnerable in Ontario, like the ODSP example that I gave you. When people are on ODSP, they shouldn’t have to prove every single month or every single year that they still are an amputee. That’s ridiculous. So for us, we are looking at this legislation through a different lens.

As I said at the beginning, we really just got this bill in this morning in hard copy. We’re still doing that stakeholder consultation, and as we peel back the layers, we hope that the government will be amenable to some changes. Certainly on the housing front, we should be doing everything that we can to support municipalities in true partnership, including making them whole, as the minister promised to.

This is exactly one of the examples that I was giving, that in order for us to really see how this plays itself out in the community with the underfunded sector, how this will improve the lives of those who have developmental disabilities—and the entire section for me is actually highlighted, so I think that it warrants further attention.

When you don’t do proper consultation, I’ve often said, then you have a flawed product, and that’s what Bill 23 is. Bill 23 is not working, will not work, in fact, will undermine the goals the government has said they want to see happen, which is more housing. We challenged the government on the assertion that that housing must happen on the greenbelt. That, in fact, is very problematic for the province of Ontario.

I also would like to say to the member, respectfully, that the Conservative Party of Ontario, under several leaders, was the official opposition during those years. You had the opportunity to hold that government to account, just as we did. When it was a minority government, we were able to secure the Financial Accountability Office to increase financial transparency for Ontarians, which I think was time well spent and was worth our energy to fight for.

But we are very focused on solutions to the issues on energy, and $6.5 billion in subsidies is not a sustainable amount of money that this province can afford to address energy costs.

Report continues in volume B.

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  • Apr/5/23 4:20:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

I caught about the last maybe seven or eight minutes of the member from Waterloo’s debate. I didn’t really hear her talk much about what was in the bill. I heard her talk about a lot of things that she wishes she maybe saw in the bill, but I’m just curious if there’s anything in here that she can actually stand up and support.

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