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.