Park cars.

In this bill, they’re talking about WSIB selling their office in Toronto and moving it to London. And yet, nothing in the bill talks about that money going to injured workers.

My good friend just talked about injured workers. Speaker, 50% of injured workers today are living in poverty. The main reason they’re living in poverty—he’s right on the money, because it has been brought to this House—is deeming.

You had the opportunity, with a majority government, to pass Bill 119, and you chose not to.

Injured workers go to work every day and get hurt, through no fault of their own. They are deemed, and they are forced to live in poverty. Do you know what happens to them? They lose their family. They lose their kids. They lose everything.

Why isn’t that in the bill? Why aren’t you helping injured workers in the province of Ontario?

If we remember the last time, under this government—

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.