Thank you for the question.

I think the member has nailed it on the head here when he says that people are on their own.

Again, that money is basically being stored away for a rainy day and potential risks that the government talks about. Well, again, those risks are here. As you’ve mentioned, children are suffering from the pandemic. Their mental health is suffering, and they’re being told, “Here’s a couple of hundred dollars to go get some tutoring help.” That will not advance their learning. Seniors are being told, “Wait for your eye care appointments.” People are being told to keep waiting for their surgeries.

That money could be invested in our economy, invested in our health care system, invested in helping the homeless, whom we know are struggling, and that’s affecting all of us more broadly in our economy.

The member is quite accurate in saying that that money could be better spent under many different programs, instead of squirrelling it away for a rainy day.

Certainly, investing in new immigrants to Ontario and to Canada is important.

I know the government likes to point out that if we vote against the budget, we’re voting against the whole thing. I certainly don’t think that’s the case.

I think the focus really needs to be on keeping the workers we do have. The government is focused on finding new workers. That’s because they’re driving away workers. They’ve driven away workers in the health care sector. They’ve driven away education workers. And they’re driving away daycare workers, so that’s actually preventing us from achieving the full potential we can around the federal government’s program for daycare.

While I support supporting new immigrants to Ontario, we need to also make sure that we’re fighting for the workers we have today.

It was really heartbreaking to hear the interview with the mother of the 16-year-old boy who died. She was very brave and spoke up about the need not only for investment in our transit systems but for investments in the people who are vulnerable—the homeless man who allegedly killed her son.

So I think that, on two fronts, this budget lets us down. It is not investing in our transit systems. There are broken promises related to new lines that the previous budgets have laid out that are not here.

We know that the TTC is having to cut service, and that only leads to more unsafe conditions on our transit systems, because with fewer people around and longer wait times, we know that that can lead to more issues.

Absolutely, the member is correct that we should be investing in public transit and the surrounding supports to make sure the homeless are supported.

We need to be making sure that if we build transit, we actually can run it. We can’t run it without sufficient operating budgets. We know that the TTC is one of the most underfunded transit systems in North America, and I expect that’s probably the case for others, like in Ottawa.

Again, having government support for that transit system will provide safety, but we also need to talk about how many people are homeless, what kind of supports they need, what kind of housing they need. Let’s look at things like small homes that can be affordable, that can be done quickly, to put a roof over their heads so that they can then get the help that they need.

The greatest challenge we have in our hospitals right now—indeed, in our health care system—is not having enough people to care for those people who need care. There is a health care human resources crisis in Ontario, and what it means is, we’re not fully using our operating room capacity, we still have emergency room closures, and the surgical backlog from the pandemic persists, all because our hospitals are desperate for nurses, doctors and other front-liners.

Bill 60, as it stands, risks setting up a parallel for-profit system that is only going to make it harder for our hospitals to retain and recruit the people they need to clear that surgical backlog. It will pit patients’ interests against the interests of shareholders. If we’re going to effectively cure the backlog and reduce wait times, Bill 60 must be amended.

Il existe une crise des ressources humaines dans le secteur de la santé en Ontario. Les temps d’attente restent élevés et l’arriéré chirurgical dû à la pandémie persiste parce que nos hôpitaux ont désespérément besoin d’infirmières, de médecins et d’autres travailleurs de première ligne.

Le projet de loi 60, dans sa forme actuelle, risque de mettre en place un système parallèle privé. Cela ne fera que compliquer la tâche de nos hôpitaux, qui auront du mal à recruter les personnes dont ils ont besoin pour résorber l’arriéré—

I want to be as clear as I can possibly be, because it is deeply disturbing that the NDP continue to put a false narrative out there. We—

We are returning to a funding model that existed pre-pandemic, that ensured that individuals who do not have an up-to-date OHIP card have access—that ensured 75 community health clinics that have funding models that ensure individuals without OHIP coverage get access.

Individuals who appear at emergency departments in our Ontario hospitals get health coverage.

It is deeply disturbing that we continue this narrative with the NDP opposition to suggest that there is a change that is not happening.

We are returning to what we had in March 2020. It was there under the Liberals. It was there because it assists people.

Health811 is another program that is available all across Ontario to ensure that individuals can speak to a registered nurse to find out about their health condition and see what the next steps are.

To suggest, as they have, that Ukrainian refugees are suddenly going to be without health care coverage is completely and utterly false, and if the member opposite really wants to have credibility in this field, she needs to stand up and say that in the province of Ontario, Ukrainian refugees, individuals without a health card, will have it as they had it in March 2020.