This coming Sunday, April 2, is world autism day. Many of us are aware of autism, and we recognize that autism brings with it its unique challenges and obstacles but also strengths, skills and perspectives that enrich our communities and contribute to our collective growth.

Now we must turn our attention away from awareness towards acceptance and inclusivity. I ask that all of us here in the chamber and all in our audience embrace the diverse spectrum of human experiences by creating environments for individuals with autism to feel valued, heard and supported. Let us take it upon ourselves to learn about autism, challenge misconceptions, and break down barriers. By cultivating a culture of acceptance, we nurture the growth of individuals on the spectrum and allow them to thrive in their own unique way.

Speaker, on world autism day, let us commit to a world where awareness leads to inclusion, where understanding leads to acceptance, and where every individual, regardless of their neurological makeup, has the opportunity to contribute their talents and reach their full potential.

Culture gives us a sense of belonging and helps us connect to serve and celebrate while bonding for life. That is why cultural organizations like the Rajasthan Association of North America do remarkable service to the world we live in.

Started in 2007, RANA Canada has grown into a vibrant association of entrepreneurs, health care providers, lawyers, educators, and financial and IT professionals.

For the last 15 years, RANA has been promoting cultural values through community events like Holi, Gangaur, Canada Day, India Day, and Diwali.

Mr. Speaker, tough times are the test times. During COVID-19, RANA members distributed meals to the homeless and supported hospitals and local food banks with financial contributions.

RANA also provided scholarships to deserving youth, supported students with extreme financial hardships, and provided platforms to mentor local and international students to help them to better integrate, succeed and contribute to Canada.

I am pleased to share that our Mississauga–Malton community office is joining hands with RANA to organize a blood donation drive in its efforts to keep working for the good of the entire community.

Thanks to RANA members for going above and beyond the call of duty and becoming an integral part of the beautiful mosaic of Canada. You are true representatives of Ontario spirit.

This is a brief statement about death and about gratitude.

About 17 years ago, when I was 19, I was driving to work and I was late, so I changed lanes to avoid a bus, and I rear-ended an old lady. As I said, that was 17 years ago. Most rear-endings doesn’t follow the story that we did, but what ended up happening was, we sort of adopted her into our family as a bit of a grandmother figure for me. Her name was Elta, and she was from the island country of Dominica. Over the years, my mother took care of her, and that care escalated.

Elta passed away recently, and in the course of her passing, I had the opportunity to experience both the palliative care team in our area—particularly Dr. Celine Sandor—and then ultimately the incredible benefit that we have in Waterloo region of Hospice Waterloo Region.

A week before her passing, Elta was moved to Lisaard hospice. We were very worried that it would be incredibly stressful for her, but on her first day there, I came into the room, and she held my mother’s hand and said, “I’m so happy.” I want to tell them how thankful I am for them taking care of Elta in her years—and how grateful I am that we have them in our riding.

Today I want to talk about my friend Marcel Charron.

Marce was a mill operator at Glencore back when it was called Falconbridge. He worked on the floor at a blue-collar job. He was the sort of guy who was friendly and quiet. He was definitely funny. He was proud to be blue-collar, but he wasn’t a stereotype. Marcel spoke openly about the horrors of femicide and the damage it does to community. His sister, Chantal, was murdered by an ex-boyfriend, and Marce shared his pain, hopeful that it would help, hopeful that it would lead to change.

Most people knew Marcel as someone who believed in workers. He spoke for workers. He stood for workers. He simply wanted a better world for everyone. His activism got him more involved with his union, and in 2013 he was elected as vice-president in Mine Mill Unifor Local 598, my dad’s union. Five years later, he was their president. Unfortunately, early in his term, Marce was diagnosed with cancer. The fight with cancer was hard over the past five years—but I witnessed a love story, and I’m a sucker for a love story, and few are as beautiful as how much Cathy loved Marcel and how much he loved her right back. It’s easy to be in love in the best of times, and it’s beautiful to see love fight through in the worst.

Last Friday, I visited Cathy and Marcel at the Maison McCulloch Hospice. Cath said he knew he had to come, but he was mad. Marcel winked at her and said, “I’ll get over it.” It was the last time I’ll ever see Marcel, a blue-collar worker, a vocal advocate against femicide, a worker activist, a union president, a loving father, and a loving husband.

I’ll miss you, brother.

Speaker, there is no better place to live than in Ontario. It’s one of the reasons I came here from Newfoundland so many years ago and why I chose to stay to raise a family here.

Ontario has always held great promise and great opportunity. But there’s a really growing sense out there that things aren’t quite right. People are struggling to pay rent and keep food on the table. Some are being forced to leave their communities or even the province just to be able to find an affordable place to live.

Speaker, my question is to the Premier. Why did his budget contain virtually no measures to help make life more affordable in this province?

In just a couple of days, rent is going to come due again for millions of people in this province. Thanks to this government’s massive loopholes in rent control, people are seeing a steep and sudden increase in their rent.

Back to the Premier: With people feeling so squeezed by the costs that are out of control, why didn’t he use the budget to bring back real rent control and give Ontarians some relief?

I’d really encourage the Premier and all his ministers to get out of the backrooms and start listening to real people, because people are really struggling, and I hear it everywhere I go.

It’s not just rent that’s through the roof; it’s more expensive than ever before to buy a home. This government’s plan to build luxury homes on protected land is not going to solve that problem.

Speaker, my question to the Premier is, will he act to end greedy land speculation and make sure the dream of truly affordable home ownership is no longer out of reach?

I’d like to welcome Thomas Keys-Brasier and Sarah Keys, mom of page Helen Elizabeth Keys-Brasier. Thomas was also a page here, and he gave good advice to his sister, who is page captain today. Welcome to the Legislature.

To reply, the government House leader.

Members will please take their seats. Order.

Restart the clock.

Final supplementary.

Speaker, it’s my pleasure to welcome parents and children from Pape Avenue Junior Public School: Jaclyn Greenberg and her child Isaac Greenberg; Yue Lisa Li and her child Nathaniel Kan; Cara McCutcheon and her children Everett Trudel and Reed Trudel; Mattias Saavedra and Emme Saavedra; Daniel Miller; Amrita Takhar and her child Max Lee; Ling Teoh and her children Daniel Lam and Abigail Lam.

Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Today, the Canadian Cancer Society is at Queen’s Park. I invite everybody to go at lunchtime in room 228-230. I would like to mention some of their members, starting with the cancer society patient advocates: Dylan Buskermolen, Rebecca Grundy, Anthony Henry, Andre Rose, Taaha Ijaz. There are also quite a few members of the Canadian Cancer Society attending: Dr. Stuart Edmonds, Hillary Buchan-Terrell, Rose D’Souza, Kelly Masotti, Rob Cunningham, Stephen Piazza, Ciana Van Dusen, Gari Ravishankar, Daniel Nowoselski, Julia Pereira, Sasha Frost, Kelly Wilson Cull, Ariana Del Bianco, Elizabeth Holmes, Olivia Kulbak, Apiramy Jeyapalan, Nuala McKee, and Sonia Sheechoria.

Welcome to Queen’s Park. I hope everybody will visit you at lunch.

It is a pleasure to welcome members and directors of Rajasthan Association of North America: Pramod Mittal, Dilip Sharma, Naval Bajaj, Reeta Sachdeva, Rakesh Goenka, and President Rashi Bajaj.

Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I want to acknowledge, in the members’ gallery today, three excellent young lawyers: Richard Campbell, Stan Cummings and Sam Davies, from the firm Flaherty McCarthy LLP.

Welcome, gentlemen.

I would like to welcome today to the Ontario Legislature the family of Draven Graham. With us is his father, Justin Graham; his grandparents Julie and Patrick Ritchie; Tony Stravato from the Ontario Autism Coalition; and Kyle Fitzgerald from the Alzheimer Society of Ontario.

Thank you so much for joining us today, and welcome to the Legislature.

I’m glad to hear that the Leader of the Opposition is as optimistic about the province of Ontario as we have been since 2018. In fact, just earlier this week the opposition was continuing to talk down the province of Ontario.

But let’s look at what we have done, Mr. Speaker. We didn’t just start this year; we started back in 2018 to reverse what was a disastrous time frame, when both the Liberals and the NDP systematically increased the costs on the people of the province of Ontario. We started, in 2018, to cut taxes from people. We took the most vulnerable right off the tax rolls entirely. They voted against those measures. We’re continuing with the gas tax rebate; of course, they voted against that. We’ve reduced the costs for our small, medium and large job creators by over $8 billion. The results have been that over 600,000 people in the province of Ontario now have the dignity of a job that they didn’t when they shared power with the Liberals, and we have 300,000 jobs that still need to be filled. That’s good news for the people of—

I ask the Leader of the Opposition, will she join with us in asking the federal government to, at the very least, pause that incredible increase on the costs of everything for the people of the province of Ontario? Will she put her money where her mouth is—

Interjections.

As I said last week, the opposition, the federal government—they can either support us in bringing more homes to the people of the province of Ontario, so that more people can share in the dream of home ownership. Whether it’s to own a home, whether it’s your first rental—more people want a share in that dream. You can either help us or simply get out of the way.

Interjections.

The Olde Forge Community Resource Centre in my riding of Ottawa West–Nepean provides crucial supports to seniors and people living with disabilities that allow them to lead healthy, independent lives and stay out of the hospital. They’ve been trying to survive on 2012 funding levels, while demand for services is going up. They begged this government for a budget increase, but to no avail. Now, starting on Monday, 95 seniors and people with disabilities will go without services because of this government’s inaction.

Why is the Premier willing to let such vulnerable people lose such vital supports?

Speaker, it’s not just the Olde Forge; 30 community social service organizations in eastern Ontario are faced with the same challenge and will have to make cuts, thanks to this government’s decisions. Hospital CEOs in eastern Ontario called on the Premier to support these organizations because they know that these organizations keep people out of hospitals, with preventive health care, and help people get home sooner, with Meals on Wheels and home care. Just $7 million would allow these organizations to maintain their service levels.

Will the Premier listen to the hospital CEOs and properly fund these organizations?

Order.

The next question.

Stop the clock.

I’ll ask the Leader of the Opposition to take her seat.

The government side will come to order so that I can hear the member who is asking the questions.

Start the clock.

Leader of the Opposition.

In fact, it’s just the opposite: Since this government has been in place, we have been systematically revamping our services for not only our seniors, but for our most vulnerable across the province. That is why we started off by ensuring that the lowest-income-earning people were removed from the tax rolls altogether.

When you look at the improvements that the minister is making with respect to senior care, not only in this current budget, where we increased access to the guaranteed income supplement—the incredible investments that we are making in home care, the investments that we are making in long-term care.

We’ve also heard from our seniors that they also want the opportunity, where they can, to participate in the growing economy. The Minister of Labour is making that available to them, as well. The Minister of Education, through COVID, ensured that those seniors—retired teachers, for instance—who wanted to come back and help us through the pandemic could do that.

So it’s more than just looking at seniors as exiting the workforce, it’s more than looking at them as exiting their time to participate; it’s about how we can integrate them into helping us continue to build an Ontario that they left us—a thriving Ontario that they almost destroyed.

When the hospital CEOs, in September, asked us to do more to help those seniors in hospitals who needed to be in long-term care or other options, the opposition suggested that people would be sent thousands of miles away and that they would be bankrupted by the policies that the hospital CEOs asked for. And what happened? In fact, just the opposite. When I tour long-term-care homes, the residents there say it’s the best thing that ever happened. The quality of care is much better. Why? Because we listened to the hospital CEOs.

When the hospital CEOs told us that we had to do better on small and medium-sized hospitals’ budgets, we did that.

When the hospital CEOs in Ontario—in eastern Ontario and Ottawa and Niagara—said we needed new hospitals, we came through.

When they said that they needed more staff, the Minister of Colleges and Universities came through with a program that is hiring thousands of nurses. When they needed more doctors, the minister of the Treasury Board—

Thank you to the member opposite for the question.

This government is actually making changes through Bill 60 which, if passed, will be expanding oversight and patient protection when it comes to people’s health. For some reason, the members opposite don’t seem to want to expand those patient protections. They don’t seem to want to support Bill 60, but I hope they will, because Bill 60 has a whole bunch of protections in it to address situations such as this.

For example, any community health centre, in the future, will have to post any uninsured charges both online and in person so people know ahead of time. They’ll have to have a process for receiving and responding to patient complaints. And patients cannot be denied access to treatment if they don’t purchase uninsured services. Finally, we’re also expanding oversight to the Patient Ombudsman to include these new centres.

All of these things are in place to help patient protections. I would think the members opposite would support that.

The whole point of this legislation is to change the model that was a model of independent health facilities into a model of integrated community health centres, bringing the new health centres and the old ones, 900 of which have been operating across the province for 30 years under all kinds of governments—NDP, Liberal and Conservative—to change that model to make them integrated under the auspices of Ontario Health and with direction which is centrally controlled—centralized wait-list management. This is a significant improvement. It will improve access to patient care, and this government is all about doing that—making sure patients get the care they need quickly, and making sure they get their lives back as soon as possible.

In fact, that is what this government is doing—putting people like Lois first, putting patients in Ontario first. We know the status quo is not working, and that is why we are innovating.

There’s nothing in Bill 60 which talks about any particular model of care. For example, we had the Kensington Eye Institute come in. Kensington Eye Institute would be a model that could be—under this Bill 60, they could be the kind of place that gets established. Kensington Eye Clinic has been giving great care to patients for many years and will continue to do so. So we can continue to build out models, make sure that they are serving patients, and make sure patients are getting the care they need, in a timely way, from the best possible experts who can provide that care. That is what Bill 60 is about—patient access, quickly.

Again, Speaker, they’re totally out of touch and not listening to the people of this province.

There’s a whole bunch of seniors—

Interjections.

Speaker, to the Premier: Will this government stop the predatory upselling that is happening across this province?

Mountains of evidence show that patients have been repeatedly misled by for-profit clinics that have recommended procedures people just don’t need. It’s how they make a profit. This government’s health act is going to do nothing to stop this, so we have proposed amendments to outlaw upselling in any form.

Speaker, to the Minister of Health: Will the minister accept the NDP’s amendments to protect patients?

It is absolutely critical for Ontarians to believe that their government is acting in their best interest.

Ms. Cooper’s experience shows us how patients will suffer under Bill 60, because private, for-profit clinics are going to upsell and cherry-pick their patients—private, for-profit clinics, some of which just happen to be major Conservative Party donors.

Speaker, to the Minister of Health: Who is making health policy in this province? Your donors? When will someone start putting people like Lois first?

I thank the member for the question.

As she acknowledged this morning in her news conference with the parents and the grandparents, the bill that was presented to the House is significantly flawed, and had it gone to second reading today, we would not have been able to make the changes that the member herself suggests need to be made in order to make the bill effective. That is why we took the unusual and aggressive step, given that there is broad-based support for this, to send it directly to committee, so that the changes the member herself acknowledges need to be made could actually be made and the bill could be supported. I did communicate this to the member and the opposition House leader on the day we took that step to move it directly to committee.

Again, it is our intention to do everything possible to make a flawed bill—although one that is presented, I suspect, in an honest, good spirit—better so that it actually works for the parents of those who are here today and all those who are watching and want us to make an appropriate change.