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?

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?

The member from Newmarket–Aurora.

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?

Question?

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

Question?

Thank you to the member for her presentation. In this Bill 91, we actually talked about updating the Services and Supports to Promote the Social Inclusion of Persons with Developmental Disabilities Act, 2008.

You just mentioned in your response to my colleague that you want to be focused on people and ODSP. So my question to you is, in reforming this plan, it will make Ontario’s developmental services system more responsive and directly linked to people’s needs. I would have to think the member would want to support that. Can we count on your vote?

Thank you for the comments from the member. I was particularly interested in your thoughts about housing and things that are missing and priorities that aren’t there, because we’ve had a lot of talk about housing. As people here know, since I was elected, I have been advocating for two shovel-ready projects of affordable housing, including rent-geared-to-income housing. And yet here we are nine months later and I’m still unable to find any kind of provincial support for this housing, so I’m wondering if the member has any thoughts on what’s here and what’s not here.