I would like to welcome to the Legislature, in the members’ gallery, Lucas and Lily Howe, who are here with their parents, Brendan and Jessica. I understand that Lucas was here before on a class trip before the March break, and he enjoyed it so much he couldn’t wait to bring back the entire family. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I just want to wish my fiancée a happy birthday. It’s her birthday on Saturday. Happy birthday, Meghan.

It’s not very often we have people from Nickel Belt coming down to Toronto, so I’m really pleased to see Samuel Leach Jarrett, who is from Nickel Belt, at Queen’s Park today. Thank you for coming.

It’s my pleasure today to welcome to the House a resident of my riding, Sophia Burkitt, who is the proud mother of page Morgan Burkitt.

Today is my mom’s birthday. I want to wish her a very happy birthday. Thank you for creating a generation of strong women. Enjoy the sun—she’s in Jamaica, making us all feel jealous. Happy birthday.

Please welcome to the Legislature of Ontario Renée Beaulne, who is the mother of our page Cole.

Speaker, I see you clearly saved the coolest member for last. Thank you for that. I’d like to introduce the family of page captain Evelyn Yeung, visiting in the Legislature today: Paul Yeung, Isabella Szeto and Margaret Szeto. Welcome to the Legislature.

I beg to inform the House that, pursuant to standing order 9(h), the Clerk has received written notice from the government House leader indicating that a temporary change in the weekly meeting schedule of the House is required. Therefore, the House shall commence at 9 a.m. on Monday, March 27, 2023, for the proceedings of orders of the day.

I would love to welcome to our House the delegation from the Serbian Orthodox Church, His Grace Bishop Mitrofan from the Serbian Orthodox Church Canada and Father Jovan from the Serbian Orthodox Church. Thank you for coming today.

It’s my great pleasure to welcome to the House the University of Toronto New Democrats: Jake Barton, Emma Hartviksen, Samuel Leach Jarrett, Chaitri Shah, Nicole Ling and Sarah Pittimen. Let’s give them a round of applause.

She’s not going to like this, but I’m extremely proud to introduce and welcome to Queen’s Park today my daughter, Addison, who was up at the crack of dawn to go to the mutual insurance prayer breakfast with me. Addison is in her fourth year of university at Mac and will someday be one of Ontario’s front-line health care heroes.

What this member is hiding from Ontarians is the fact that her party stands shoulder to shoulder—

They are standing in favour of fees and charges that represent, in some municipalities, $150,000 on the price of a new home. If you don’t think that that’s a factor, listen to CMHC, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.: “Government charges can represent more than 20% of the cost of building a home in major Canadian cities.”

We believe that affordable housing, attainable housing and non-profit housing should be incented, and that’s exactly what Bill 23 does.

It must be bring your daughter to work day, because I am also proud to introduce my daughter Mira Pasma-Helleman, who is missing out on a day of school today to join Mom for a day of civic education instead.

Mr. Speaker, if you will indulge me, I have a couple of introductions today. I want to say a big congratulations to page Felicity, from my riding, who is page captain today. Her mother, Leslie Toews, is here as well.

I also wanted to give a warm welcome: Former member of Parliament for Nipissing, Jay Aspin, is here as well.

Speaker, I am very proud to say thank you for watching question period today to my absolute favourite friend from Nova Scotia, Pat Roscoe. Happy birthday. This is my wife’s mom. It’s great you’re watching, Pat.

Thank you to the member opposite. I’ll tell you, we as a government are so excited today. Today is budget day. It’s a big day in the province of Ontario. And while we can’t get into the specifics of the budget—we’ll be announcing that at 4 o’clock—what I can tell you is that we are going to continue to move ahead in this province with investments in hospitals, with investments in infrastructure, with investments in public transit, with investments in highways to get people to and from home quicker and safer.

I will also add that, with respect to the underspend question that you mentioned, the member opposite is a member of public accounts. Take a look at the public accounts numbers. Those are the actual facts as to what we spend every single year. You’ll see that we are spending more than any government in the history of Ontario on the investments you just touched on.

My question is to the Premier. The lack of transparency in the finances of this province are becoming increasingly concerning. Fortunately, we have the FAO, who tracks actual spending against government announcements. The FAO has said, “Ontario’s Conservative government is not being transparent about how it plans to spend money over the next several years.

“The government’s current spending plan contains $40 billion in program funding shortfalls over six years, though it also contains $44 billion in unallocated contingency funds.

“The contingencies could be used to address those shortfalls but it is an unusual way of budgeting,” he said. He also points out, “What we haven’t seen is this level of shortfall, but we haven’t seen this size of the contingency fund before.”

Speaker, this budgeting practice is irresponsible when there are such pressing issues in this province on health care, on education, on housing. Will budget 2023 actually focus on the real priorities of Ontario?

In fact, this is what the AMO president said: “In 125 years, it’s the biggest affront to Ontario’s municipalities that I’ve ever seen.” You are clearly not very respectful of our municipal partners.

Will budget 2023 make municipalities whole, as the minister has promised, so that they can address the homelessness crisis that this government won’t even acknowledge exists?

There are encampments in Greater Sudbury, in Waterloo region and in Peterborough, among other communities. Ontario spends $2,000 less per person on services and programs than the average province across Canada. AMO has said that Bill 23 is “undermining the financial capacity of municipalities to support growth.”

The simple question is, will budget 2023 reverse the damage you’ve done to municipalities? Will it assist municipalities with water, sewage, transit, parks, electricity and waste infrastructure costs, which those development charges pay for, so that housing can actually be built in the province of Ontario?

I, too, would like to welcome a dear friend of mine, Jay Aspin, the former Nipissing MP, the long-time member of the Near North District School Board and former chair of that board as well and current Ontario Health board member.

I appreciate the honourable member’s question. Of course, we’re always in a position to work with communities. I know the chief personally and I’m well aware of the positions that they take, particularly with respect to traplines. We’ll ensure that we make an appropriate follow-up with Chief Donny Morris and try to understand better moving forward what kinds of opportunities he sees to make sure that his community and the quality of life of those members is realized.

I realize that there are ongoing challenges and issues, but we’re going up there to experience on behalf of another one of my ministerial counterparts, the historical opportunity for KI, and I look forward to talking about a host of other opportunities, staying positive and moving forward on opportunities for Indigenous communities in our Far North.