As we know, youth leaving the child welfare system are at high risk of being trafficked, experiencing homelessness and developing mental health issues, and have lower high school graduation rates than their peers. As part of the child welfare redesign, this government is investing $170 million over three years to support a new program aimed at improving long-term outcomes for youth. We’re investing proactively to make sure that our youth in the child welfare system have the skills they need to achieve financial independence through life skills development, supports to pursue secondary education, training and pathways to employment.

My question is to the member opposite is, does he support this initiative?

You done?

Interjection.

Interjection.

The reason why I did that is because I’ve been arguing about price-gouging. Because where I live, in my riding—Niagara-on-the-Lake, Niagara Falls and Fort Erie—we have the highest number of seniors in the entire province of Ontario, and they’re coming into my office, sir, and they’re crying because they can’t afford to buy their food; they can’t afford to heat their home; they can’t afford to pay for their medication. That’s what’s going on in the province of Ontario. And you know what? I lose sleep over it, because these are people that have given their entire life to this beautiful province, to their family, to their grandkids, and they’re breaking down in my office—

As far as the human resources, I can’t say it enough here; I say it almost every day: Bill 124. You’re fighting it in the courts. Nurses, PSWs are leaving in record numbers because of Bill 124. If you want to at least show respect at all to our heroes—because you guys call them heroes; we call them heroes as well—repeal Bill 124, and the crisis in health care in retention will go away.

But to your point: To stand up and have never once—your government has never once, including yourself, sir, who I sat at committee with—apologized for what happened to our seniors, to the 5,500 that died, the 3,800 who died in for-profit care. And the reason why they died there—ask the military. You brought the military in. And what did they tell you? They didn’t die because they were old and they had COVID. They died from dehydration, sir. You’re trying to tell me if we had the proper staffing in these homes, they wouldn’t have been taken care of? They found seniors that laid in their beds for 24 hours—24 hours after they died, because they had no staff. This is in the report. This isn’t coming from me.

I will always fight for seniors. I always have, matter of fact, for my entire 40 years that I’ve been involved in the labour movement and the 10 years I’ve been here. Thank you for the question.

I talk to a lot of employers. I go around and talk to them all the time, and you know what? Even small businesses that I talk to don’t want their employees coming to work sick. They also don’t want that they can’t afford to buy their groceries at the end of the week if they have to take a day off or a couple of days off because they’ve got the flu—not necessarily COVID. There’s a lot of other things that you get sick and you have to take three or four days off.

There should be sick days in the province of Ontario, without a doubt. The one thing we all have to admit is that we live in one of the richest provinces in all of Canada. Are you trying to tell me we can’t afford to provide sick days for workers? Are you trying to tell us that? Come on, think about it.

But do you know what happened to that program, sir? Do you know? I’m going to help you—you can look it up when you go home tonight. I don’t think the Leafs are playing tonight; the Jays played this afternoon.

Do you know what happened to that program? It was cancelled in the schools by the Harris government. Now that we want to bring it back, I think it’s great. I think we should do that because it gives a hand up to people who, like myself, are maybe less fortunate. I’m agreeing with you on your comment. How we get there, we may differ, but I think the programs going back into schools is a great idea for skilled trades.

The member for Brampton North should actually apologize to the member for Niagara Falls. That’s the person he was trying to shout down while he was trying to answer the question.

But my colleague talked about how last night he went for a walk and passed—I believe it was 20 people sleeping rough on the streets. That was within just a few short blocks. And I’m going to point out that here in Toronto, you can’t walk a block without seeing people that are experiencing homelessness, and I think it’s important to point out that those people are becoming younger and younger and younger. It’s not uncommon for me to pass kids in their teens, those in their early twenties, because of the affordability crisis created by this government in this province.

But Speaker, I want to ask my colleague about health care, because he talked about that. This government is excluding those people experiencing homelessness from being able to access health care. That’s their policy: They’re excluding them from accessing health care. But I’d like my colleague to talk about the health care system and maybe expand more on the issues we’re seeing as far as the health human resources crisis that is making it more difficult for everyone in this province to access health care.

The member from Niagara likes to speak about long-term care, so I have a question regarding long-term care. This budget supports over 60,000 new and reconditioned long-term-care beds. Some of those:

—Crescent manor: 28 new, 68 redeveloped;

—Gilmore Lodge: 160 redeveloped;

—Niagara Long-Term Care Residence: 100 new and 124 redeveloped;

—Radiant Care Pleasant Manor: 119 new and 41 redeveloped because of this government.

This government: 60,000 new and reconditioned beds. I’d like to ask the member from Niagara how many beds he supported before 2018 in his position as MPP?

I want to congratulate my colleague the member for Niagara Falls on his remarks. One of the things he didn’t mention that is in the budget is the end of the government’s flawed paid sick leave scheme. It’s almost as if this government thinks that COVID is over in this province, that Ontario workers will no longer need to stay home if they develop COVID symptoms or test positive.

I wondered if the member wanted to comment on whether that is sound fiscal policy, whether that is a sound public policy of this government to abandon paid sick days instead of fixing paid sick days and ensuring they’re available to all Ontario workers in this province.

It’s an honour to rise in this august chamber, and specifically as the member for Don Valley West glares at me. I’m very pleased that I’ll be sharing and splitting my time with her over the next, roughly, 12 minutes.

I also want to thank the member from Don Valley West for the outstanding work she does for the members of her riding and specifically for her outstanding leadership on analyzing and guiding us through this budget, which I sadly must admit is thoroughly underwhelming.

As has been articulated before, this is a budget, sadly, that very clearly tells Ontarians that they’re on their own, that this government does not have their backs, and that for the things which matter most to all of us, the things that matter most to Ontarians, they should just figure it out themselves. Unfortunately, this does not come as any surprise. As a young child, I was taught in my family to do what you say. If you promise something, then you have to deliver on it, and this is something, sadly, that this government struggles with.

For example, this government said all fall that they would accelerate the credentialing of foreign-trained family doctors, and we’re still waiting. I have no confidence whatsoever that this bill will or can deliver on the unambitious promises that it makes. You have to do what you say.

The recent reports from the Financial Accountability Office do nothing to reassure me that this government will do otherwise. In successive quarters, we have seen consistent underspending across all of the major ministries: $1.3 billion less in health than promised, $844 million less in education, $175 million less in post-secondary education and $458 million less in children and social services—the funding that goes to deliver services to those who need our help the most. Do what you say. This budget simply inspires no confidence, because the members haven’t even delivered on their last budget.

But there’s more to it than that, Madam Speaker. You don’t just have to do what you say; you have to say what you do. This government has consistently committed to doing one thing, only to actually do another. For example, this government is funding a housing plan, but they promised in the process that they wouldn’t touch the greenbelt, and now they’re carving it up. They promised that they would protect our public health care system, and are now funding a plan that is so poorly conceived that it will lead to the corporatization and profitization of our health care. And so, as much as I am underwhelmed by this bill, I’m also concerned about just how much it is not talking about.

In health care, for example, the budget mentions nothing about eliminating hospital surge funding for COVID, even though it is getting eliminated tomorrow. It mentions nothing about access to hospital care for our most vulnerable and marginalized uninsured patients in Ontario, even though that also is getting eliminated tomorrow. Say what you’re going to do.

The government has also made a profoundly short-sighted decision in eliminating paid sick days, which will actually hurt our businesses and economy when sick people are forced to come to work and infect entire workplaces.

Most upsetting of all, there is no attention whatsoever to health care worker retention, even as this remains one of the biggest challenges that we face in health care right now. Say what you do. Not only is there no mention of health care worker retention, outside of this chamber this government is pursuing avenues to fight courts that have told this government that Bill 124 is unconstitutional legislation that infringes on charter and worker rights.

On Indigenous issues, I am most disturbed at the growing chorus of Indigenous people and communities who say they have not been adequately consulted on so many of the proposed changes in the budget. I have heard from Indigenous stakeholders, for example, that the government’s plan for integrated community health services centres is being implemented without their input. And we all witnessed yesterday how Indigenous people share their concerns about the Ring of Fire. We must listen to Indigenous people, particularly the ones who are most at stake.

I have more I could say, but in the spirit of respecting the time of my colleague, I will simply mention that on the challenge of education, this government has dropped the ball, focusing upon things like infrastructure, like buildings, instead of supporting teachers by making sure that they are adequately funded. On this issue, along with so many more, the bill is very clear: People in Ontario are on their own. They don’t matter, and this government does not have their backs.

With that, I turn it to the member for Don Valley West.

The member from Don Valley West.

Thank you to the members opposite for their comments. A question to the member from Don Valley West: I was listening to her remarks, and I think I heard “uninspiring” and “mediocre” in describing the budget. I just wanted to run a few numbers by her, Madam Speaker, through you: infrastructure investments of $184.4 billion, including $70 billion for transit, the biggest in the history of the province; health care infrastructure, $56 billion; highways, $28 billion; education, $22 billion; economic development, $17 billion of investment in electric vehicle and battery plants; $8 billion of cost reductions for businesses which, by the way, will enhance productivity, which I know is an important issue for the member.

I don’t know about you, but those numbers, to me, actually seem very inspiring. Would the member not agree and support us in this budget?

I want to pose a question to either of the independent members who just spoke. I know in my riding of Essex people are very, very concerned about the carbon tax. I speak to my greenhouse growers and it’s driving up the cost of vegetables; I speak to my grain farmers and it’s driving up the cost of grain. I’ve spoken to the Minister of Agriculture and she’s shared the same concerns with me about the carbon tax driving up the cost of food every day.

My question to the independent members is this: Since you have influence with the federal Liberal Party, which is imposing the carbon tax, will you meet with your colleagues at the federal level and ask them to pause the carbon tax?

Thank you to the member from Don Valley East for your presentation. I know you are a doctor and you understand the health care system very well and the dynamics of the hospital system. You’re asking why we are not hiring foreign-trained doctors in the system.

Actually, we are hiring 50 more foreign-trained doctors into the system, and we allocated a huge chunk of money in this budget. Also, our plan to both build the new hospital and expand the existing one—it’s a plan to build a brand new hospital serving Mississauga and Brampton, a plan to redevelop St. Mary’s General and Grand River Hospital in Kitchener-Waterloo, plan to build a new hospital in Uxbridge and one in Windsor.

We are doing huge investments through this budget. I will ask the member, don’t you think these are huge investments in the health care system?

I’m sure we all have these families in our riding. For two decades I’ve had a family come to me, since I’ve been elected. They’re on a wait-list for assisted living, the Rodgers family. Their son is Patrick. They’re in their late sixties now.

Recently, I had another family and their daughter. The parents are in their eighties and their nineties and Christy can’t find assisted living.

Currently, I had a constituent just last week talk about her son—he’s 26 years old—Fernando. He has autism and he needs assisted living.

The government has a line in their budget of $202 million for homelessness. Where in the budget is there a line for assisted living for families that need so much help in our province?

Speaker, point of order: We are debating motion 11 today.

If the member would like to talk about what we need to do to cut carbon tax and cut our greenhouse gas emissions, I think we could have some meaningful dialogues about that, if the government would talk about what they’re doing to invest in green energy. I think this budget falls far short of that. We know there’s a lot to do. We know that the government cancelled wind projects. They cancelled solar projects. Those things would have helped us get to a place where we have fewer carbon emissions. We can talk more about what the government needs to do on reducing our carbon emissions, and I’m happy to do that sometime, Speaker.

Thank you very much for that question. The message very clearly is universal in this budget: Ontarians are simply on their own. The services that they need, that have been underfunded in the last quarter, as per the Financial Accountability Office—they’re not there. They weren’t there before; they’re not here in this budget; they’re not going to be there in the future.

We as legislators and parliamentarians have an obligation to look out for the little guy, or the little gal. We need to have compassion, integrity. To respond to the member across, we have to collaborate with each other—with other levels of government but with each other right here in the room. Let’s have a conversation, talk about the issues that actually matter to Ontarians. Affordable housing is inaccessible. There are over 62,000 people that cannot get access to autism services. What we’re looking for, and what is entirely absent in this budget, is a government that has compassion for people who need help the most.

Interjections.

To exactly the point that I made: There is no plan for the retention of health care workers.

As we continue to see mass attrition and a mass exodus of health care workers across multiple professions—physicians, nurses, PSWs and all of the amazing health care workers who work at the front lines and behind the front lines—this budget does not have a solution to the empty hospitals that this government is proposing and hoping to build.

We need staffed hospitals, not empty ones.

My comments were intended to highlight the fact that there may be some investments here that are intended to look at addressing that crumbling infrastructure. But in this budget, it is to the exclusion of the people who are essential to enable our education system to thrive. So thank you for allowing me to clarify that comment. I don’t think that we disagree on this.

My question is to the member from Don Valley East. In his remarks, when he was talking about education funding, he talked about how this government is not investing enough in the supports that are needed in our schools and for our students, but also mentioned that the government was instead—I believe the word he used was “instead”—investing in infrastructure.

I believe that we need to invest both in infrastructure and in supports. As you know, the school repair backlog is at over $16 billion; under the Liberals, it was at $15 billion.

I’d like to ask the member if he could clarify his comments, and also if he believes that we should be investing in addressing the repair backlog.

Questions?

A quick response.

Thank you to the member for the question. Certainly, those are big numbers, but I don’t find them inspiring. It’s more of the same. The numbers are very similar to those that were in past budgets. I talked about some of the ideas around investing in things like our semiconductor strategy, digitization and technology. Manufacturing jobs are good, but we need to invest in other sectors as well to make sure we’re firing on all cylinders.

This afternoon, I’m addressing the motion on the budget. I’ll be sharing my time with the member from Lanark–Frontenac–Kingston, whom I’ve had the opportunity to meet during this session of the Legislature and who is a fine member serving his constituency well, and probably the most calm and serene individual in this chamber.

Other members before me have observed that this budget is a very big document; it’s over 200 pages long. I think that every member has now had an opportunity to read all that and digest it so that they could make their comments in the chamber. I suppose I could talk about a lot of things in this budget. I’ve already talked about the hospital commitment that’s been made to Essex county and Windsor–Tecumseh. I’m excited about that. My citizens are excited about that in Essex. My colleague from Windsor–Tecumseh is excited about that, and the citizens of Windsor–Tecumseh are excited about it as well.

But I’m not going to go through the entire 200 pages of the budget and speak about every topic. I have a very particular concern, and I’m going to focus on that one concern. That appears in this budget at page 100. So, if you got halfway through the budget, you arrived at it and you know exactly what I’m talking about: It’s the $13.4 million in this budget that is committed to continuing the strategy against illegal guns, gangs and violence.

That was a strategy that was introduced by this government. It’s a wide-ranging strategy. It has several aspects to it. One of those aspects is to continue funding the strategy; that’s very important. One of the aspects of that strategy is to train officers in the particular skills needed to go after these very serious crimes, and one of the aspects of that strategy is to form a special unit that is specifically engaged with going after illegal guns and gang crime. Those are different aspects of the strategy, so it’s not all about money. It’s also about training: for example, training people who work in our correctional institutions in having the skills and knowledge that they need to recognize the trafficking of contraband—that’s a skill.

Madame la Présidente, nous sommes fiers que nous ayons un programme qui vise spécifiquement des armes à feu illégales, les bandes criminalisées et la violence. Nous voulons que tout le monde en Ontario puisse vivre dans une communauté sans violence et sans la crainte d’être violé par les bandes criminalisées. C’est pour ça que nous avons cette stratégie, qui s’appelle la Stratégie de lutte contre les bandes criminalisées, les armes à feu et la violence.

Notre stratégie comprend des programmes de financement provincial. La stratégie comprend aussi la création d’une unité provinciale de soutien parce que tout le monde sait que les forces de police locales ont besoin de soutien. Nous savons que nos officiers dans les instituts correctionnels ont besoin de bonnes formations pour lutter contre les problèmes qui sont spécifiques à ces instituts, comme le trafic de contrebande.

I know that there are several members of the PC caucus who took a look at this specific strategy and are very, very glad it’s in there and continues to be funded, for $13.4 million.

Now, your everyday beat cop might not have all of the training and skills necessary to do the very challenging job of fighting gang violence and illegal guns. That’s one of the reasons why we need this very specialized program. And to be absolutely clear, we have the support even of law-abiding firearms owners, who know that the ownership of a firearm is very important and ought to be treated with the most seriousness and safeness—and they are legal firearms owners, as compared to the illegal gun acquisition, which is happening through the border between Canada and the United States. That is a very important distinction to make.

What happens after these illegal guns sneak into Canada? Well, they get into the hands of gangs. The illegal guns get into the hands of gangs, and the gangs use those guns to go after some of the most vulnerable people in our society. That’s why I’m very proud to support this program. I think the PC caucus is proud as well. I think the PC caucus is going to vote in favour of the budget because they know how important it is to continue a program which fights against illegal guns, gangs and the violence that those engender.

But we know that not everybody in this assembly feels the way we feel. We know that’s not the case. In fact, we know that there are several members of this assembly who are very strongly opposed to what we stand for. We know that there are several members of this assembly who have been quite vocal about not wanting to fund police forces and not wanting to fight the fight that we want. They’ve even campaigned on it. They’ve been very vocal about it. They want to defund the police. Their position is entirely opposite of the PC position: Whereas we want to fund police forces, they want to defund police forces.

But it’s not just a few individuals—no, it is not. In fact, the NDP have actually completed an entire policy document, which they’ve entitled, “an Ontario NDP Commitment to Action.” Now, I would characterize it as a commitment to inaction, because the entire policy document is all about defunding the police, and I think defunding the police is a very bad idea. But apparently, among the NDP caucus, they’ve committed an entire written policy document committed to defunding the police.

I have taken the trouble to read the policy document, and it’s very clear as to what it wants to do: The NDP want to defund the police. That’s what they want to do. Well, I want to make my position very clear: I don’t agree with that policy document. I think it’s a very bad policy document. I think that we should be funding our police forces. These are the people who work every day to protect you and me and our families. As I said before in my previous comments, these are specialized forces, some of them very specialized, who work specifically against illegal guns, who work specifically against gangs, who prey specifically on some of the most vulnerable populations in our province.

I’m very, very happy to see that in this budget 2023, the Minister of Finance has committed—and the PC Party, I believe, will commit when we vote on this budget—to continuing the financing of $13.4 million to continue funding the police. I’m committed to that. I want to thank the Minister of Finance for recognizing the importance of funding our police forces properly, and I want to thank the Solicitor General for having a strategy that’s going to deal with illegal guns, that’s going to deal with gangs, that deals with the violence they create here in the province of Ontario against some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

When it comes to a vote, I’m going to be voting for funding the police. I’m going to be voting for assisting the police officers who go out there and put their lives on the line to make it possible for me and my family to sleep well at night. And so, Madam Speaker, I will be voting in favour of this motion and in favour of properly funding our police forces.

The member for Lanark–Frontenac–Kingston.