I’m sure we can all remember Peter Kormos, MPP from Welland—an incredible human being. It’s the 10th anniversary of his passing, so I just wanted to make sure that I mentioned that and that we’re all thinking of Peter. I saw that Jeff Burch put a nice post up for him this morning.

My question on Working for Workers—I’m going to ask you what’s not in the bill. This isn’t our first Working for Workers bill; we’ve had three. Deeming is not in the bill. Anti-scab legislation is not in the bill. Maybe you can elaborate on why it wouldn’t be, as our labour critic.

My question for the member opposite is based on this premise, in terms of the proposed Working for Workers Act: We know that the men and women who serve our country in the reserve forces are heroes. When they are abroad or serving domestically, the last thing they need to worry about while keeping our country safe is whether or not their day jobs will be there when they get back. So why does the opposition not support expanding reservist leave for the brave men and women in uniform who serve our country in the reserve forces?

The member and I both remember the strike of 2009-10 in Sudbury by USW 6500. The strike lasted one full year. One of the reasons that it was one of the longest-lasting strikes in Sudbury is because replacement workers were brought in. Replacement workers, since then, have had a really tough time.

There was a very nice man in my community who had a sick child, and he needed $5,000 a month to keep his child in therapy. He decided to cross the picket line. He was also a coach for soccer in my community. All the families pulled out their kids from soccer, and the kids never played soccer that summer, until the coach was replaced. Real hardship was put on this family, on my community, because of replacement workers.

Do you think that replacement workers could be added into this bill to protect further families from the hardship that has happened in my community?

Thank you to my colleague from Niagara Falls.

You spoke about Peter Kormos this morning. Peter Kormos had tabled anti-scab legislation to prevent replacement workers from crossing picket lines, ever since Mike Harris had repealed it—when the previous NDP government had put anti-scab legislation in place, which actually strengthened negotiating ability.

We all know that more than 98% of negotiations are settled at the bargaining table; of the remaining 2%, there are very few of them that actually use replacement workers. Literally, when they use them, the employer uses these workers. They divide community. They break friendships. They leave long-lasting scars. It’s not only bad for the community; it’s bad for negotiations. We all know the best place to negotiate is the bargaining table, but artificially lengthening labour disputes with replacement workers just harms community and harms the finances of everyone involved.

This is a bill that workers have been asking for for a long time. It’s a bill that the Conservative Party took away with Mike Harris, and it’s a bill that the Liberal Party promised to bring forward. I remember sitting in the gallery over here, as a worker on strike, and, when they called for the vote, watching Liberals go into the back lobby to hide from the vote so that the Conservatives could vote it down. It’s a bill that we need today. It’s a bill that should be in a bill that’s called Working for Workers.

So there are things in here that are great, but really, this is a bill that seems more important to the Conservatives as a headline bill—to do multiple press conferences, talk about multiple things in the bill. Some of the stuff that they talked about in the press conference didn’t make it in the bill. Clean washrooms wasn’t in the bill, WSIB for firefighters wasn’t in the bill—it was in the press conference, but not in the bill.

The stuff you’re talking about—to the member opposite—these are things that are enshrined in collective bargaining agreements all the time, so I’m glad that they’re going to be further enhanced in the Employment Standards Act.

What we’re saying on this side is that there is much more we can do than just have a title—Working for Workers 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8—and actually have substance, like paid sick days, in a bill called Working for Workers.

The thing that stood out to me, when speaking to these workers—because you have the opportunity to speak with them as they’re going past the picket line—is that they were scared and they were worried, and they felt like they had no other option. When you dangle a carrot of a lot of money in front of a worker who is having a hard time putting food on the table or affording rent, and this is the only option, the only work they can find, they are desperate, and they get used by the company and left behind. So it’s really important that we have legislation like this that prevents these workers from being used.

Good morning. Let us pray.

Prières / Prayers.

Resuming the debate adjourned on March 29, 2023, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 79, An Act to amend various statutes with respect to employment and labour and other matters / Projet de loi 79, Loi modifiant diverses lois en ce qui concerne l’emploi, le travail et d’autres questions.

Questions?

Further debate? Further debate?

Mr. McNaughton has moved second reading of Bill 79, An Act to amend various statutes with respect to employment and labour and other matters.

Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? I heard some noes.

All those in favour of the motion will please say “aye.”

All those opposed will please say “nay.”

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

A recorded vote being required, it will be deferred until the next instance of deferred votes.

Second reading vote deferred.

Resuming the debate adjourned on March 23, 2023, on the motion that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government.

Thank you very much, Speaker—and good morning to my colleagues, from across the floor. I want to preface my comments by saying I’ll be sharing my time with the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane this morning.

The budget was released a week ago. I think it’s safe to say that as the information contained within that budget, or not contained within that budget, is hitting our communities, as you peel back the layers on budget 2023, we’re learning all sorts of things that weren’t in the speech that was given last Thursday by the finance minister as he went on his road show across the province of Ontario—his virtual road show, if you will.

One of those things really just came to our attention yesterday morning—and I am going to start off my comments by giving this a bit of a theme. For us, this is a budget that’s “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Unfortunately, sometimes, in these circumstances, even when you’re trying to do something good, you’re so stubbornly attached to the bad that it turns very ugly for the people of the province that we serve.

Yesterday morning, we found out that doctors across Waterloo region were receiving notices from public health informing them that it was now their responsibility—these are family doctors in Niagara, in Hamilton, in London, in Timiskaming–Cochrane who were told that it is now their responsibility to arrange the courier and the transfer of vaccines from public health to doctors’ offices. Yesterday was March 29. For some reason, this became the news of the day yesterday for medical doctors.

The doctors who came to us through the Ontario Medical Association, during finance committee, were so frustrated, and they did make some proposals around streamlining their work, reducing the administrative burden that they face on a day-to-day basis, in the interest of ensuring that they could see more patients. This was actually in Windsor—when the Ontario Medical Association came to speak and proposed a solution around ensuring that the administrative overhead could be lightened for doctors so that they could see more patients. This is actually in the interest of all Ontarians. They came to that table in good faith, I think.

There are 2.1 million people in this province who do not have a family doctor, and the family doctor is still the gateway into the health care system—you need those referrals to see specialists, for instance. Family doctors ensure continuity of care. Family doctors are trusted people in their communities.

And this is not just COVID vaccines—I want to make sure people know this; this is childhood vaccines, MMR, influenza, shingles, for those of us who are in our fifties.

Usually, what has happened in the past is that because vaccines needed to be carefully transported, they needed to be refrigerated. There’s an audit on those vaccines. Someone is keeping track, one hopes, of the dates and expiry dates on those vaccines, and you need a central place to take care of that information. Usually, a courier would deliver through cold chain transfer from public health into doctors’ offices, where people who need vaccines would happily go and get their vaccines.

This trickle-down downloading of health care costs on to family physicians makes zero sense. We should have learned during this pandemic that people need access to vaccines. We should be reducing all barriers to vaccines. I hope that this is a non-partisan issue people are facing.

This particular doctor let me know that the burnout level for family doctors is already at a breaking point. This is also something that the finance minister heard during his separate consultation processes, and that we heard as a committee, loud and clear—that doctors want to do more, they can’t do more, and you shouldn’t be asking them to do any more. And now they have to arrange for vaccines to be couriered and managed from public health down to the local office. He said, “I think what this government should be afraid of ... as a physician base we are already frayed and barely holding on. So more and more physicians will be leaving the profession. The frustrating part is lack of consultation, which is a pattern”—with this government. This came out of nowhere. It caught people by surprise. It makes zero sense. The cost savings for the government are nominal at best. He said, “How does this make sense?” It doesn’t.

One of the other issues that came to the fore, and we’ve been questioning the health minister this week on it, is those people in this province who do not have insurance for health care. That health care piece is really determined by having identification, having an address, having a health card.

With so many people in this province—now a growing number of evictions, a growing number of homeless people. We have encampments in Peterborough. We have encampments in Sudbury. We have encampments here in Toronto. In Waterloo region, in downtown Kitchener, there is a tent city. It is Canada. People in this province, in the winter, should not be living in tents.

It was really interesting to hear the Minister of Health talk about this because she said, “This was a plan that the Liberals put in, and we are going to go back to that Liberal plan,” essentially. That Liberal plan, which does not fund the full health care package for those who are homeless or who don’t have identification, was the status quo prior to the pandemic. Because of the pandemic, some dollars came in, and people realized that if we don’t take care of those who are homeless, who need those extra wraparound supports in their community, there actually is an extra cost down the line. Also, it’s the compassionate thing to do, one would say, maybe; the humane thing to do. What we heard is the health minister say, “No, we’re not cancelling it. We’re just going back to what the Liberals had brought in.” Well, what the Liberals had brought in wasn’t good enough then, and it’s not good enough now for those who are uninsured.

I sense some defensiveness on behalf of the government members.

Yesterday, a member got up and did a statement on the virtual health care resources for those who are uninsured and homeless. Well, let me tell you: You don’t get very good WiFi in a tent in an encampment.

This is something that has frustrated me now, going into five years—that there is a level of privilege that determines how policy and legislation is made in this place. It’s a disconnect between this Pink Palace, this fortress of so-called democracy, when the transparency in our dollars is seriously undermined through the budgeting process. That dissonance was actually really well captured in the Toronto Star editorial about the budget. This is a direct quote from the editorial: “Overall, there was clanging dissonance between the budget’s palpable self-satisfaction and the economic anxiety, rising interest rates, soaring prices, health care concerns that have hit Ontario residents hard.”

This is why my comments on budget day a week ago were, “I’ve never seen a government so gleefully celebrating mediocrity.” When you have the funding, when the funding is there in an unallocated contingency fund; when you have higher, increased revenue coming into this place—sure, you didn’t plan for the high revenue, but that high revenue is generated through high inflationary costs of services, and that is generated by the people of this province. The least that this government could do in budget 2023 is alleviate some of those cost-of-living pressures that Ontarians are facing around housing, around food and—as you’ll hear later on—around health care costs that are going up, private health care costs.

While I’m on the editorial, I think it warrants a second round. This is what the editorial said:

“Thursday was a complacent mishmash.

“But if it was uninspired and unimaginative, it was also largely unmemorable....

“The Premier—who often empathizes with the many serious problems facing Ontarians—seems to have been sufficiently comfy with things as they are that he and Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy proposed to do nothing particularly dramatic” to address them.

At finance committee, we heard from people who are at the breaking point. They have hit that tipping point. We heard about people saying they just can’t do it anymore. We heard it from doctors. We heard it from nurses. We heard it from educators. We heard it from child care folks, who are saying, “Come on, how are you ever going to achieve $10-a-day child care if you don’t have the people to actually take care of the children?”

Bill 124, the unconstitutional piece of legislation that this government brought forward, which caps workers’ raise of pay at 1% per year, is driving very good people out of this province. Out-migration is a huge issue for the province of Ontario. It doesn’t seem to be on the government’s radar. They sometimes talk about getting people back and getting those nurses back into our health care system, while Bill 124 is still being fought in the courts. The courts have deemed it unconstitutional. They have said it’s a violation of charter rights. It should never have come to the floor of this Legislature. This was, I think, the 15th court case that this government has had to be dealing with, and yet the government is still fighting Bill 124 in the courts.

If this was House of Cards, people would say, “No, even this is too much.” Maybe another show, like—anyway, I’m not going to go there, because I’m trying to be polite today.

Obviously, our leader and our team feel that this budget does not meet the moment. It doesn’t recognize the urgency, the need to address the cost of living. It doesn’t address the cost pressures that folks are experiencing. It doesn’t even address the number one issue—other than housing—that we heard during finance committee, which is health care. You’ve created this parallel health care program that is for-profit, which will actually further undermine the public health system that we care about and that we think is worth fighting for.

This editorial from the Toronto Star went on to say, “With ... plenty of runway until his next appointment with voters,” the Premier “might have been expected to use this window for bold initiatives.” We agree.

“But there was no such sense of urgency that the crunch facing Ontarians was more than they should be expected to bear.”

And then this is the good quote: “If this budget were a Christmas present, it would be a three-pack of white socks. Not entirely useless. But an exercise in going through the motions.” I know my colleague from finance committee was defending the white socks. Socks are very usable. Everybody needs them. But if there’s a flood outside, socks are not helpful. I would invest in some rubber boots, if I had to make a comparison.

Clearly, for many regular Ontarians, this budget fell flat, and also for seniors, I would say. Aside from picking fights with the nurses, the PSWs, the ECEs across the province—I suspect you’ll have the doctors discussing this whole downloading of vaccine transfer very soon. We’re putting out a call to the OMA to find out how widespread this is.

This is actually a lesson in how not to design a budget and how having a press release and having various media announcements—as we saw through some other pieces of legislation, around the presumptive coverage for firefighters for instance. That’s not in one of the—what bill? Bill 79?

Interjection.

Bill 79. That’s not there, but you talk about it.

This is another pattern of behaviour. I’m going to get to transparency. I remember—because the Conservatives were opposition for 15 years of Liberal rule, as well.

Certainly, we brought forward the presumptive coverage for firefighters through our past leader, Andrea Horwath. There were a lot of games played on that particular day. I happened to be here. I was job-shadowing Andrea at the time. I’ll never forget being in this place, sitting in the members’ gallery with fire chiefs from across the province. She had introduced her private member’s bill. It had lots of political support, lots of community support, but the Liberals were not going to give it to her—they weren’t, because that’s who they are, and we’ve actually seen a piece of legislation play itself out this week in a similar manner. So I was sitting there, and I had never seen this happen before—first reading, second reading, third reading all happened in the course of half an hour. I was sitting between two massive fire chiefs, and they were just crying, they were just bawling, because of course, they know people—actually, in all of our communities, we know firefighters who have contracted secondary and third cancers from exposure in the course of their job. So when the government says, “Why don’t you support this?”—we were already there 15 years ago. I have to say, Adam Overgaard, who is the firefighter union president in Waterloo, already knows where we are. Firefighters know New Democrats, and they know where their support is. Just because you introduce a little motion like that or a little regulatory change in a piece of legislation like that—they know where our hearts are and where our energy goes.

Actually, it was really good this morning—I started off my day by watching the speech from Peter Kormos. My colleague from Niagara Falls mentioned it earlier. It was one of those just-in-time moments, where you hear the right thing at the right time and it gives you some energy and some hope, because his message was the same to the Liberals at the time. We know who we are, the people who support us know who we are, and we know why we’re here and we know why we’re fighting.

That’s why this budget is so problematic for us—because regardless of the press releases, regardless of the communications strategy and the round tables and the outreach, what really matters is where the money is going.

This leads me to a very concerning pattern with this government around transparency.

Fortunately, in the province of Ontario, we do have the Financial Accountability Officer. This is a non-partisan position. The office itself is engaged in monitoring expenditures. That is what the FAO does—he does it, and his office does this in relatively real time. They report quarterly. You can go on the website. You can look at these numbers. You can track. If you have a particular ministry that you’re concerned about, you can see what the government promised to spend and what the government actually spent.

Increasingly, with this government, there’s a disconnect between the budgeted number and the number that actually gets out the door. Increasingly, that funding is going into what we now call a contingency fund, which very few governments have ever had, but it’s otherwise known as a slush fund. The reason why that slush fund is so important is that—in a democracy, especially in Westminster democracies, budgets are supposed to be approved by the Legislature. But with the government’s habit of hoarding the cash in massive contingency funds and making radical in-year changes to the spending plan, this Legislature increasingly cannot trust that the budget presented will be what the government actually spends. So we would argue, and I think Peter Kormos, if he was here, would argue that that lack of transparency is actually bad for democracy.

I know that this government is not particularly concerned with democracy, because we haven’t seen, for instance, your mandate letters for your cabinet members. Why does this matter? Because of the people we serve, the electorate, who voted in the last election—and who didn’t vote. Only 17.8% of the people of this province voted in the last election. It does not instill a lot of confidence, but it also speaks to a lack of trust and a level of cynicism in how people feel about government and how they feel about politicians, quite honestly.

That lack of transparency not only is bad for democracy, but it’s also very concerning around the reduction of trust in budgets. That’s so important. If the finance minister stands up and delivers a budget with great pomp and ceremony but then nobody really believes what actually is in that document, that isn’t good for anybody, I would argue.

When we follow the money, there is a pattern of this government not getting that money out the door. One of the examples that I often quote, because now it’s still in place, is the services for community and social services—this is those programs like Meals on Wheels, for instance. The government, a year ago, made a huge, huge announcement—a kind of a hopeful announcement, I would have to say—that they were going to invest $1 billion in these community agencies. We were saying, “That’s a lot of money, and that’s a long time coming, and good on you for doing it.” Unfortunately, only $130 million of that promised $1 billion got out. So when Meals on Wheels came to present, they said, “We’re going to be reducing our coverage and our services by 30%.” That’s 30% less seniors who are going to get a visit. That’s 30% less vulnerable people who are going to have eyes on them; who are going to say, “This person is obviously in distress.” Those programs are more than about nutrition; they’re about connection. And that is going in the wrong direction, because if you don’t have eyes on vulnerable people, if you’re not making those connections with community, if isolation is becoming a serious issue—we now know that loneliness kills and those folks end up in the hospital. They end up in one of the emergency rooms in our hospitals, unless it’s one of the 435 that were closed—435?

Interjection.

How many?

Yes, 435 over the course of this year reduced hours or closed altogether. Never have we seen emergency room closures to this degree. An emergency room is supposed to be there for you when you’re in an emergency.

So what does this government do? Even when the paramedics have been sounding the alarm—code red, code white—

So what does the government do? Instead of addressing the core issue, which is having the appropriate resources for nurses and having the appropriate staff in hospitals, Bill 124 is compounding that problem, because you cannot recruit into a broken system. You can throw some money at some of those nurses—they’re not going to go back into that workplace because it is an unhealthy workplace and they’re very aware of how unhealthy it is. So what they will do is alleviate the wait-list for the ambulances—so they will give you a hallway nurse. Again, this was a program that the Liberals brought in. The only reason we found out about it at the time is because I was in a hospital with my husband and one of his former students was the hallway nurse. He said, “What are you doing here?” She said, “I’m the hallway nurse.” There’s a separate nursing category. It came out in committee, and the government said, “We didn’t create that position”—but actually, it was a funded line. At least I could track that money, as the finance critic. There are only two recognized parties in this place, and I take my job very seriously. Finding those lines and identifying where those resources are going or not going is obviously really important for us because it’s how we try to hold the government to account.

Anyway, now we’ve got more hallway nurses, but you still haven’t addressed the core issue of why the backlog is happening with the paramedics and the ambulances. But you’re quick to put a Band-Aid on it. It is a flashy little funding announcement—$500 million across the province to address this issue—but you haven’t addressed the issue. You’ve just bought yourself some time, and people are still hurting throughout that process.

In the last quarter, this government also failed to address the $570 million in cash that had been budgeted for health, education, and children’s and social services.

And the education funding in this particular budget is a bit of a shell game, I have to say, because the government has incorporated the federal dollars for the $10-a-day national child care plan. That $2.3 billion that the government says they are investing in schools is not going to elementary schools, it’s not going to secondary schools—it’s parked there because it looks good. Even that $2.3 billion that’s allocated for child care—because child care falls under the Ministry of Education—is not going to get out there too. Do you know why? Because people are not entering the early learning and care sector. They’re not entering that child care sector because it pays so poorly. When the government says, “We value you, but you’re only worth $19 an hour”—to take care of our children in those first five years, no less, when brain development is a key factor, when you’re dealing with two- and three-year-olds who were born into the pandemic and whose language acquisition was seriously compromised by masks, for instance.

I think this is the frustrating piece, overall. The government really has the right language, “biggest budget ever,” but when you follow where the money is going, the money is not getting to the most important places: those pressure points which (1) could make people’s lives better and, (2) could save money down the line—because what we heard at finance committee through the budget consultations is that housing is health care.

This government has—I guess you can call it a housing plan. It comes by way of Bill 23, which we did not support because it takes away the very tools that municipalities need to facilitate housing in Ontario. When AMO says to us, “The cumulative impact of proposed changes to municipal fees and charges is significant and contrary to the widely accepted concept that growth should pay for growth”—I just want to say that these are the 444 municipalities across Ontario, who voice their concerns through their provincial association, which is the Association of Municipalities Ontario. This is what they say: “While AMO would like to support the province’s housing objectives, it cannot support changes that largely place the burden of carrying the costs associated with development onto municipalities. AMO believes that the proposed changes may contradict the goal of building more housing in the long term as it merely shifts the financial burden of growth-related infrastructure onto existing taxpayers.”

So not only do we have a cost-of-living crisis in Ontario, but we have a government that is willing to download the cost of housing to municipalities, which, in turn, is going to increase the taxes of the people in communities. You’re throwing gasoline on the fire. Our critic on housing did such a good job of doing an analysis of the tax increases across the province. Every municipality, with a few exceptions, had to increase their taxes to just carry out their planning, the government’s own objective, of facilitating more housing in Ontario.

When you don’t listen to people, just like the doctor I started my conversation off with—just like doctors were not consulted about downloading of vaccine transfer costs to family physicians. They would have told you, “We only bill the province $3 to $5 for those vaccines. So there are two choices: one, we don’t deliver the vaccines; two, we pass the cost onto the person who is getting the vaccine. Those are the two choices.” However, the government doesn’t know that, because the government didn’t talk to the doctors about downloading of vaccine costs to family physicians—as they didn’t do for AMO, as well.

“Municipalities are attempting to make sense of the government’s response to the housing supply crisis brought about by the COVID-19 demand spike.

“AMO will continue to shine a light on what is wrong with legislative changes that are based on a false premise.”

This is a very painful battle of words between the municipalities, which largely manage municipal housing stock planning, and the government, which has removed rent control, so we have record evictions. They are dead set against building attainable, affordable housing.

We have said to the government that developers are in the business of building homes to make money, and some of those homes, now, are going to be built on the greenbelt. The greenbelt is not where new immigrants are going to be living, I have to tell you. The new immigrants who come into KW want to be close to public transit, grocery stores, schools. None of those things exist out on the greenbelt. Do you know why? Because the greenbelt is sacred. It is environmentally sensitive. It is key to the overall health and well-being of this province. It is something that the Ontario farming association has said, “Listen”—how many acres a day?

Code black.

Some 319.6.

As I was sitting listening to Minister Bethlenfalvy give his virtual road tour of southern Ontario, many of the places—actually, every town that he mentioned I’ve been to; my family comes from southern Ontario. Specifically, St. Thomas, regarding the proposed battery plant for Volkswagen—the NDP helped fast-track that bill through the Legislature. We care about jobs. We understand. As I was listening to the virtual tour—and I listened intently. I drove home the next day, thinking about the virtual road tour and thinking that there aren’t very many people, probably, who know my neck of the woods, my part of the province.

The first thing that I noticed driving home was that at the work yard for the contractor who takes care of Highway 11 in the Temagami area, the flags were flying at half-mast, in respect to the snowplow operator who had lost his life a few days before in northwestern Ontario. That’s not an uncommon occurrence for the people who take care of our roads. The last time I talked to our local contractor, I believe there were 260 or 270 major accidents with snow-cleaning equipment, not counting the ones since that meeting. That’s what happens on some of the roads in the province.

I listened very intently, and they were talking about the Ring of Fire. The Ring of Fire has got a few other problems, because the government doesn’t appear be asking for free, prior and informed consent from all the First Nations. But that’s an issue for another day.

We were talking to the road builders’ association. Something the government might not have thought about is our road infrastructure. The roads that we have now that you have to take to get to the Ring of Fire, 11 and 17, are not good enough to actually get the equipment to build the road to the Ring of Fire. That is a serious concern.

You may not believe this, Madam Speaker, but once you get to Barrie, Highways 11 and 400 split. Highway 11 is still a four-lane highway, and so is Highway 400, but at some point that stops; it stops for Highway 11 in North Bay. So you’re thinking everything is fine, and then you crest Thibeault Hill and the world changes—because it is two-lane; it’s basically a southern Ontario country road. It’s paved. It has narrow shoulders. That’s the Trans-Canada Highway. That’s the highway that you think is going to help you get to the Ring of Fire. That is the highway that, since January, to March 29, has had major closures 11 times, and not closures for five minutes, but hours and hours—and that’s actually not accurate, because it was closed again yesterday.

“Let’s all go to the Ring of Fire”—how? How are you going to get to the Ring of Fire when we don’t have the infrastructure to actually get transit, to get goods across the country now?

It is a shame in Ontario that the Trans-Canada Highway that goes through northern Ontario is a two-lane country highway. That’s what it is.

The government can say, “We have pushed very hard”—and they have moved the average for cleaning up, from 16 hours after a major snowstorm or after a snow event to 12. Give credit where credit is due. They moved a little bit, because we’ve been pushing them like crazy for years.

To Minister Mulroney’s credit, they’re going to institute a “2+1” pilot project, which is basically extended passing lanes and a barrier on the passing lanes so you can’t cut into the passing lane. It’s a pilot project on 14 or 15 kilometres. That highway is thousands of kilometres, and a pilot project of 14 or 15 kilometres is not going to get you to the Ring of Fire. You need to think about that right away.

Northern Ontario has—as does the rest of the province—lots of jobs. We have more jobs than we have people, and we have good jobs.

I was talking to one of our major employers in my riding. A mine mechanic in Kirkland Lake can make $300,000 a year. They have a hard time finding people. Why? Because we don’t have a lot of social services in northern Ontario. Things that the member from Waterloo was talking about, that they’re worried about losing, that they are losing in northern Ontario—we never had them, or we lost them already.

We have local hospitals, and they do what they can, but if you need to see a specialist, you need to come to the hospitals down here. We have the northern travel grant, and that travel subsidy hasn’t changed in years and years and years. So equal access in health care for northerners has been gone a long time ago, and this budget completely and totally ignores that.

This budget talked a lot about the riches of northern Ontario, about the Ring of Fire—and there are many other riches of northern Ontario. But government after government—and this one probably more than any—has ignored the social needs of what people in the north need to provide the riches to the rest of the province.

The biggest gold mine, I believe, in North America, Detour Gold, is in the district of Cochrane—right next to my riding, actually. The town of Cochrane is in my riding; the mine is in the next riding. It’s a very big producer of gold, and we are soon going to have a big producer of nickel in that area—Canada Nickel.

Timmins is a mining—the Minister of Mines will know how big mining is in Timmins.

There’s so much money coming out of the north.

Do you know something else about the district of Cochrane, where Timmins and Cochrane and Detour Gold—what they are? The rate of homelessness in the district of Cochrane—covered by the Cochrane social services board—per thousand people is the highest in the province. It’s minus 40 lots of times, where I live, and homelessness now is a tragic issue. I’m not discounting it anywhere else, but very few people think about how it’s the highest where it’s the coldest, and where the riches come from. But for some reason, the services don’t come back.

It’s great to take—and we have experienced that in the north for as long as we’ve been there. Cobalt, the first silver boom; Kirkland, the first gold boom; Timmins—the original stock exchange for Ontario, the first one, was in Cobalt. But all the money eventually came to Toronto, eventually came to the south.

Now we hear this government saying, “Trust us. You, especially Indigenous people, are going to benefit incredibly from the Ring of Fire.” It has never happened before. They have trusted before, when they signed treaties. It never happened. It’s not going to happen this time either. They know that—unless they stand up for themselves.

The finance committee travelled through northern Ontario. It stopped in Timmins. It stopped in Sudbury.

Primary health care, specifically, is a tough issue in northern Ontario.

I’d like to read a quote from someone who presented at the finance committee in Sudbury. She’s actually the president and CEO of West Nipissing General Hospital, Ms. Sue LeBeau. She was also, before that, the CEO and president of the Red Lake Margaret Cochenour Memorial Hospital. She’s got a lot of experience in running hospitals in northern Ontario. I’m going to read directly from her statement. She talks about her experiences at the hospital: “But the most harrowing experience that I had and that our team had during my time there was the closure of our emergency department due to lack of staffing. It was a scary time, it was a short time, and it is something that we would not want to relive, and it is something that—my colleagues and myself in the north have struggled to maintain core services and to be able to manage to keep serving our communities.” She also identified one of the major problems that this government is perpetuating with Bill 124. Again, this is directly from her: “In terms of agency nursing, to paint the picture locally, our hospital, West Nipissing, has expended $1.5 million for agency nursing over the first three quarters of this fiscal year. That represents about 10% of our budget, for 10 nurses”—$150,000 per nurse, for three quarters of the year. “Those costs, of course, are not budgeted. Agency nursing has become a necessity in northern Ontario. However, it is not a long-term solution. Our loyal local nurses are impacted by these agency nurses....” They’re demoralized by this—and the government is not standing idly by while this is happening; they are perpetuating it with Bill 124. They’re forcing health care staff out of their chosen profession, or out of their profession, working for the public side, and they’re forcing them to work for the agencies—and the same nurses come back into that hospital for twice the cost.

The government and the Minister of Finance say, “Oh, we’re putting more money than ever into health care”—that could very well be, but a lot of that money is going to the private sector, who are running those agencies and siphoning money out for profit.

Why don’t you just pay the nurses what they’re worth and cut out the agencies? How can you pretend to be careful with the province’s finances when you don’t understand that basic principle—or actually, you do understand that basic principle and you’re perpetuating it.

It’s incredibly tough to sit here and stand here and see that there are solutions. We can’t provide solutions for everything, but there are solutions staring you in the face—and, yes, for some of them, you’re going to have to admit that you made mistakes.

Bill 124 seemed like an easy solution at the time—holding public servants to 1%, and you will save costs. You just didn’t realize that public servants, especially those in health care, are going to be able to move with their feet when you’re not paying them with respect. You talk about respect, but when you’re not paying them with respect, they’re going to move with their feet. And when you still need them, then you have to hire them back through private agencies, at more cost. It’s killing the system.

I’m going to go back a little bit to my road tour—because I want people to come to northern Ontario. We need people. It is a great place to live. We have our challenges, and that’s what we’re trying to bring to people’s attention, but it’s a great place to live. If you decide to come, I’m just going to give you a couple of pointers.

If you like stopping at ONroutes—because you can get whatever food you want, you know the market, and you know you can load up for the trip—past Barrie, there are none. Ontario stops at Barrie for ONroutes—nothing. Crest Thibeault Hill and your four-lanes stop. There are none.

We have a lot of transports on Highway 11—it’s the Trans-Canada Highway; it is where the goods cross from one end of Canada to the other. There are very few places for those transports to stop. There are very few parking spots for transports. That’s a big problem, because they have no place to rest, and we have lots of accidents with transports—and you wonder how it got there. With a transport, you just can’t pull off to the shoulder on Highway 11, because you’re not coming back on, because the shoulders are narrow and you’re stuck. So be prepared.

When the highway is closed, if you cross Thibeault Hill—at Thibeault Hill, there’s a big sign that says the highway might be closed. But if it’s closed right after you cross that sign, you might be on the highway for hours in a line, and there are no emergency services that are going to come find you—maybe volunteers; volunteers from Temagami do this a lot. So you better bring a blanket, you better bring chocolate bars, and you better have a full tank of gas when you cross Thibeault Hill.

That’s northern Ontario. I am not trying to disparage it. I love northern Ontario. I’m never going to live anywhere else.

My last point I’d like to make—I’d like to give a shout-out to a group. This government is talking a lot about agriculture in northern Ontario. I’m a farmer. I’ve farmed in northern Ontario my whole life, and northern Ontario is a great place to farm. If you want to know something about farming in northern Ontario—you’ve got an incredible chance to do it on April 13 and 14, at the Earlton Farm Show. The Earlton Farm Show is an exposition of agricultural services available in our area. You will talk to people who actually make a good living farming in our area. They’re very good farmers. In the Little Clay Belt around Timiskaming and farther north in the Great Clay Belt, there’s a lot of expertise there. If you’re thinking about farming in northern Ontario or seeing what farming is like in northern Ontario, please come to the farm show. The volunteers who put that together put a lot of effort into it. This is the first one in three years because of COVID. I’m going to be there. Everyone who has anything to do with agriculture in northern Ontario is going to be there. I have been warned that the Minister of Agriculture might even be there. We will welcome her with open arms.

But, please, we have our problems in northern Ontario. The government has to recognize them and address them so that we can truly fill our place in the province.

To talk about the Ring of Fire—when your connection to the Ring of Fire is Highways 11 and 17, two-lane roads, you’re dreaming. They can barely handle the traffic on them now. They can’t because their accident stats—people talk about Ontario having the best roads in North America; they’re certainly not 11 and 17, and those are the roads that connect southern Ontario to the Ring of Fire, and you need to pay as much attention to them as what you’re paying to the rest of the province.

I’d like to thank you for your time, Speaker.

Some 319.6 acres a day in this province are bulldozed for development. This is another thing that doesn’t make any sense to us either. What we learned during the pandemic is that we need to be more self-sufficient. We need to have a stronger local economy. We need to take care of our food security systems, our worker systems. Yet the government is not taking a strong stance, I would say, at all against land degradation in Ontario.

With the greenbelt—to their credit, the Liberals had it brought in 15 years ago, and that correlated with good places to grow, which intensified planning in our city cores. Because the infrastructure was already there, it therefore reduced the cost of the housing, so that costs of the housing were not passed on to families who were looking to buy.

But right now, we even have a rental crisis in Ontario. Because this government has removed rent control, we have seniors, right now—I’m dealing with a lady in my riding who has lived in her apartment for 29 years. It is her home. She is being demovicted. It’s a six-storey building of the 1950s, 1960s era. It’s a beautiful building, but they want to knock it down, and they want to build condos. There is literally no place for her to go. It’s funny—because there are two or three other senior ladies who have reached out. We try to help them navigate a system that really is not designed to be navigated, especially when you don’t have the stock. I was telling one lady, “There’s a couple of other women who are of your age and who are in a similar situation, on a fixed income.” She said to me, “Well, maybe the three of us should live together,” which made me think of the Golden Girls. But that’s not a realistic option for women of that generation, who did not work, did not have a pension, and so they really are—there’s no extra money here. So when you increase the rent for some of these folks, they’re well past eating or paying the heating bill—they’re at a desperate place in their lives. I don’t believe that seniors in Ontario should ever get to that place or should have to worry about getting upsold on their cataract surgery, when they go for eye surgery at one of those for-profit, private clinics.

CBC did a really good story last Tuesday about this—I’ve shared it; our leader has shared it. It tells the story of why, when you pull public health resources and services out of the public system and you go to a for-profit, private clinic, upselling is the norm. That also, I want to say, with greatest respect, does not help with the cost-of-living challenge, especially for seniors who are on fixed incomes.

Just to go back to AMO and go back to housing—because I’m going to pass this along to my good colleague from Timiskaming–Cochrane.

This budget missed the moment. Removing funding for uninsured Ontarians who need health care is a very poor decision.

The Kingston mayor came to us at the committee. Kingston has spent $18 million trying to keep 120 vulnerable people out of the emergency room. They did so, and they were very successful, but this is not where municipal budgets are usually going—to do mental health services, to do crisis intervention.

We heard yesterday from the member from London. London has spent $22 million around supportive housing. They’ve dipped into their reserves, and they’ve allocated funding from their budgets.

So that’s two municipalities—Kingston and London—who last year dipped into their reserves, who were doing the supportive housing piece that the provincial government should be responsible for.

Housing is a provincial responsibility, but the government has $202 million allocated in this budget—and so that was part of my “good, bad, ugly” thing. It’s good that there’s finally money for supportive housing; what’s bad is that it’s so insufficient, based on the two municipalities that I’ve just given you an example of. And it’s going to get ugly because those municipalities are now going to be fighting for that money and trying to prove to this government that they’re worth that $202 million.

As I’ve already pointed out, municipalities who have challenged Bill 23 are not wrong. They’re not wrong to challenge this legislation at all.

With that, Madam Speaker, I am going to pass this along to my good friend and colleague—and I hope that you enjoyed budget 2023, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”

The member for Timiskaming–Cochrane.

I’m going to be sharing my time with the member for Richmond Hill, and I will simply be mindful of the fact that I will begin my remarks now, conclude at 10:15, and continue this afternoon.

In that context, it is my pleasure to join the debate in this House with regard to the Building a Strong Ontario Act, our budget bill. This budget confirms our government’s commitment to invest in Ontario’s future and enhance our competitiveness within a global economy, with a responsible, targeted approach to help people and businesses.

The budget speech that was presented last week to this House by the Minister of Finance outlines this government’s priorities for building a strong economic foundation to provide Ontario’s growing population with highly skilled, well-paying jobs, while at the same time attracting global investments in manufacturing and research. We are exercising fiscal prudence by keeping Ontario’s finances in check as we make the necessary investments in health care, education, infrastructure and transit, while being on track to balance Ontario’s books with a $200-million surplus by 2024-25. This is what Ontarians asked for. This is what Ontarians expect. And we are delivering both on growth and fiscal responsibility. This is our duty. This is our pledge. We are getting it done.

Speaker, this budget is all about people. This budget is about investing in workers, in families and everyday Ontarians who have asked this government to live within its means while investing in the programs that workers and families desperately need to purchase a home, raise a family and save for the future. This government is a citizens’ government that reflects the will and the expectations of the people.

Because of the failed tax-and-spend policies of the previous Liberal government, Ontario lost over 300,000 manufacturing jobs between 2004 and 2018. The previous Liberal government, which was propped up by the NDP for three years, thought they could spend their way to prosperity, and look where that left Ontario—higher debt, lost jobs, and a downgrade of Ontario’s credit rating.

As evidence that nothing has changed, the federal Liberal government, also propped up by the NDP, delivered a budget this past Tuesday which included record spending, tax increases, and zero investments in municipalities, business, or assistance for everyday Canadians.

This year marks the 47th anniversary of the annual Festival of the Maples in Perth, Ontario. Since 1976, Perth has celebrated a legacy of liquid gold against a backdrop of magnificent heritage architecture on the banks of the Tay River.

Hosted by the Perth chamber of commerce, the Festival of the Maples embraces all that Lanark county has to offer, with artisans, vendors, musicians and award-winning maple syrup producers. For residents, guests, and tourists of every age, the day begins with steaming stacks of pancakes and unwinds with music, shopping, dining and classic entertainment, including the historic sap-tapping contest and the wood cookie crosscut saw competition.

Lanark county is the maple syrup capital of Ontario, and at this time of year visitors are hiking our sugar bush trails, touring award-winning multi-generational sugar camps, and heading home with some of the finest maple syrup in the world.

Throughout Lanark county, you’ll find maple syrup featured in restaurants, bakeries, coffee shops and distilleries, all eager to embrace the sweet taste of spring.

Last year’s festival featured 160 vendors and welcomed over 30,000 guests—and this is a town of 9,000—to this event.

Today, I extend a warm Lanark county welcome to one and all to experience the 47th Festival of the Maples, on Saturday, April 29, in beautiful heritage Perth. I hope to see you there.

I rise today on behalf of London West families of children with autism.

After four and a half years on the wait-list, Sarah Farrants felt hopeful when her seven-year-old son Mason was invited to register for the OAP in October, but she has heard absolutely nothing since. While she waits, the one-time funding that paid for Mason’s speech therapy has run out, and so has Sarah’s hope for Mason’s future.

After a 10-month wait for an assessment for his three-year-old son Luke, Sean Menard was told he could wait years for OAP funding. Sean wants a plan from this government to clear the backlog and get Luke the critical early intervention he needs. Sean desperately wants Luke to speak one day. Sean said, “Without help from the government, he may never speak a single word to his mother or me.”

Even for families who have been approved, the autism program is broken. Virginia Ridley’s two teenage sons receive OAP funding, but Virginia struggles to find services geared to youth and faces constant delays getting reimbursed. At the end of February, she was out of pocket $9,000.

With no mention of autism in the 2023 budget, these families feel abandoned by the Ford government.

Where is the plan, where is the urgency to fix the OAP and get Mason and Luke and Virginia’s sons the services they need and deserve?

Further debate?

Debate deemed adjourned.

I am pleased to rise in the House today in support of the Canadian Cancer Society’s daffodil campaign.

Every April, the Canadian Cancer Society’s daffodil campaign raises essential funds to save lives and improve the quality of life for people affected by cancer, spreading hope from community to community. A key part of this effort is supporting the world-leading work of cancer researchers in Canada to transform cancer care and improve the treatment experience.

I’m thankful to the Canadian Cancer Society for all the work they do across this province, including in my riding.

I am confident that everyone in this chamber had or currently has a loved one who was diagnosed with cancer. I have a sibling who was diagnosed a year ago and today is fighting for her life.

As the member of provincial Parliament for Newmarket–Aurora, I’m committed to continuing to work closely with the Canadian Cancer Society as they establish health policies to prevent cancer and better support those living with this disease here in Ontario.

Malheureusement, le gouvernement de M. Ford ne répond pas aux besoins des Franco-Ontariens. Le budget provincial de cette année est un exemple clair de cet échec. Par exemple, le seul collège qui ne reçoit pas le programme « learn and stay » est le seul collège pour les francophones. C’est vraiment incroyable.

Le gouvernement manque également une véritable vision pour les Franco-Ontariens. Nous avons besoin d’un gouvernement qui investit dans des communautés fortes et solidaires; qui offre des soins de santé publics de qualité, un soutien à la santé mentale, une éducation de qualité, des logements abordables et des transports publics fiables.

Encore une chose : il arrive souvent que les autoroutes 11 et 17 soient fermées à cause des accidents de poids lourd. D’abord, il faut embaucher les contrôleurs pour les stations d’inspection. Aussi, nous devons contrôler les permis de conduire des chauffeurs de poids lourd parce que, trop souvent, les chauffeurs nouveaux ne sont pas préparés à conduire dans les conditions du Nord.

Le gouvernement doit agir maintenant, avant qu’il ne soit trop tard. Les Franco-Ontariens méritent mieux que cela.