The cost of living in Ontario is out of control. People feel it every day, and many middle-class families are doing things they never expected.

The Feed Ontario report reveals record-high food bank use. Since the pandemic, first-time visitors are up 64%, with one in three people accessing food banks for the very first time. In its report, Feed Ontario cites precarious employment, underfunded disability supports, and unaffordable housing as reasons why middle-class people are turning to food banks in numbers never seen before. They say, “The reason that so many people must turn to a food bank is because our once-strong economic foundation has weakened.”

In my community of London, average rent jumped 36.9% last year, one in four children are living in poverty, and 6,230 individuals and families are on social housing wait-lists.

People are being crushed under the skyrocketing cost of living. Families shouldn’t have to turn to food banks to help feed their kids when they work hard for a living, but that is the reality in Ontario right now.

The middle class built Ontario because of public health care, because of public education, and because they earned good wages. The Ford government is strangling these public systems, while more and more people are being pushed into poverty.

This government should take Feed Ontario’s recommendations: improve the quality of work, improve social assistance, invest in social housing, and put people at the centre of policy and program design.

To this Conservative government: Protect Ontario’s middle class; not just wealthy, insider donors.

Today is the last day this government can choose to save Connect-Clinic, the only virtual clinic in Ontario dedicated to delivering gender-affirming health care. An alternative funding plan could save the clinic. They are commonly used in academic, northern and specialized health care settings already. Connect-Clinic checks all three boxes.

Tomorrow, 3,500 trans Ontarians will lose access to life-saving care. And I cannot stress this enough: They will have nowhere to go for this specialized care.

Losing virtual health care does not only affect patients in the north or rural areas of Ontario; I’ve heard from my own constituents in Toronto Centre who are reeling at the loss of virtual health care.

My constituent Andrew shared, “My partner and I are among 1.8 million Ontarians who don’t have a family doctor. We’ve registered multiple times for the Health Care Connect and contacted doctors’ offices with zero responses to date. My partner and I have just found out that we’re expecting a baby. So this weekend we booked a virtual appointment to be referred to an ob-gyn. If this service is no longer supported after December 1, we would lose access.”

Speaker, this government brags about their embrace of innovation, and yet they’re throwing away that same innovation that enables virtual care.

Funding cuts to virtual health care will not all be replaced with in-person appointments—they’ll be replaced with Ontarians without access to health care.

I urge this Conservative government to change course.

I’d like to welcome, from Diabetes Canada, Russell Williams, Ashley Bergwerff, Terezinha Hignett, Walter Robinson, and John Whitehead. My caucus colleagues and I, and some other members as well, look forward to meeting with them during lunch today. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I want to give a warm welcome to my father, Ray Lecce; my brother Michael Lecce; and two future Prime Ministers: my nieces Valentina and Vivienne. Thank you for coming today to watch Queen’s Park.

Today I would like to welcome an amazing young city builder and resident of the beautiful Scarborough North riding, Amina Mohamed. It’s always great when you come here.

I’m very pleased today to welcome many people here from the teachers’ unions and education unions.

But I want to make a special point—to point out Paul Kossta, in the members’ gallery. He has been the legislative observer for OSSTF for many years and is going to be retiring soon.

Interjection: What?

Thank you for all you do for the people of this province.

I’d like to welcome to our House Kevin Davis, mayor of the incredible city of Brantford, and his key staffer, Sasha Hill. Welcome to the people’s House.

I’d like to welcome today’s page co-captain Isabelle Casselman and her family, who are here as well—her mother, Melissa; her father, Stephen; and her younger brother Nolan.

I’d also like to welcome Patty Coates and Janice Folk-Dawson from OFL.

I’d also like to say thank you very much to all the education workers, ECEs and health care workers outside who came out in support.

I’d like to welcome Upasna Kumar, my executive assistant—the first time in the chamber watching question period.

It is always a special day when community leaders from Mississauga–Malton come to Queen’s Park. I’d like to introduce Avtar Sandhu and Roshan Pathak from the Council of Heritage and International Peace. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Mr. Speaker, I have a good-news story from Essex county about long-term care. Arch Long-Term Care operates a 75-bed facility in Tilbury, but the building is old, and they want to build a new one only 15 minutes down the road, in the town of Belle River. It’s going to be brand new, state-of-the-art. It will have private rooms. It will have 160 beds—twice as many as the old facility. Of course, the NDP member before me opposed that idea. But because of this government’s progressive and compassionate policies, Arch applied for and received a licence to build the new facility in Belle River. That means the people of Tilbury and Belle River will now have twice as many beds, in a state-of-the-art facility that they didn’t have before.

I want to thank the Minister of Long-Term Care for ensuring that the people of Essex county—and indeed all Ontarians—receive access to the quality long-term care they deserve, in a safe, homelike setting, when and where they need it.

I’d like to introduce the Ontario Bioscience Innovation Organization to the Legislature this morning, and thank them for bringing Ontario-made, innovative health care solution providers Oncoustics, Able Innovations and Huron Digital Pathology to Queen’s Park this morning to showcase their great technologies.

I’d like to welcome my staffers Dayna Prest, Jonathan Cassels, and Robyn Fishbein. I’m so pleased that you’re spending today at Queen’s Park with me.

I’d like to acknowledge Aiden Perritt, the legislative page from my riding, who is the page captain today. Today in the members’ gallery, we have his father, James Perritt. We also have his grandparents: Brian Cole, a Knight of Justice in the Order of St. John and CEO of the St. John Council of Ontario; and Sharon Cole, a Dame of Grace in the Order of St. John and chair of the St. John Canada Foundation. Welcome all.

I’d like to give a warm welcome to Patty Coates, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, Carolyn Ferns of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, Rachel Vickerson of the Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario, and the many, many members of CUPE and other child care workers and ECEs who are here as part of the national day of action on child care.

I have a very special guest to present today. I would like to introduce Currie Dixon, the member of the Legislative Assembly for Copperbelt North—and he is the leader of the Yukon Party—and his chief of staff, Danny Macdonald. They’ve come a long way. We’re so happy they’re here.

It’s my pleasure to rise in the House today and acknowledge an extremely worthwhile organization in my riding: Harvest Hands.

Speaker, did you know that close to 50% of all food produced in this country is wasted or lost to landfills? It’s a staggering and unfortunate reality.

That is exactly why Jim and Jacintha Collins founded Harvest Hands in St. Thomas in 2020. Their mission is to rescue surplus food from retailers, bakers and growers to help feed families. Nutritious, bountiful and perfectly edible food is rescued from landfills. Fresh produce, frozen food, packaged and canned goods all end up in homes throughout southwestern Ontario.

As a non-profit food distribution bank, Harvest Hands’s purpose is to help agencies gain access to good food. Funded entirely by donations and volunteer-driven, Harvest Hands provides food that feeds over 24,000 families a year in southwestern Ontario. Since its inception, Harvest Hands has delivered over $8 million—$8 million—of food from Windsor through to Oshawa. The distribution network that Harvest Hands serves is comprised of more than 80 agencies.

With Christmas fast approaching, many food banks across this province will face an even greater need for volunteers and food donations to meet increased holiday demand.

Waste not, want not.

Thank you, Harvest Hands, for a job well done.

Welcome, gentlemen. Thank you for coming to Queen’s Park.

I’ll remind everyone there is a reception tonight in the dining room.

Mr. Speaker, we’re continuing to work for workers every single day in Ontario.

That’s why we partnered with private sector unions, employers and tradespeople to bring in the Building Opportunities in the Skilled Trades Act, to get tens of thousands of people into well-paying jobs in the province.

That’s why we brought in historic legislation in Working for Workers 1 and Working for Workers 2 to ensure that workers have the right to disconnect, and that, for the first time in Canadian history, we’re recognizing international credentials, so when newcomers come to this province they can work in professions that they’ve studied.

We became the first in Canada to give truck drivers access to washroom facilities across this province.

And we are the first in North America to move forward with expanding portable benefits so millions of workers who don’t have health and dental benefits today are going to get those benefits under Premier Ford.