I’m very proud to rise in the House to speak on behalf of the good people of Toronto Centre, specifically on Bill 46. The title is Less Red Tape, Stronger Ontario Act.

I read the bill with quite a bit of interest, and I thought, “Hey, this is going to be good, because who doesn’t want a stronger Ontario and who doesn’t want less red tape?” But here we go.

I found, as I was reading the bill—and I will admit that I haven’t had as much time with it as I would like. But as I was reading the bill, I was recognizing that it’s actually not what the bill says, it’s what the bill doesn’t say that seems to be of importance. Although this has been touted as a bit of housecleaning bill, it’s a large omnibus bill. I think one thing that I would offer is that I’m not seeing as much of the stronger Ontario in here as I would like to see, because there are some missed opportunities, which of course can always be corrected through collaboration, as the good member was speaking about just earlier: collaboration perhaps at committee; there could be amendments there.

I want to recognize that we have a framework of discussion on a number of key, important issues that I think the government should be tackling, but there are some missing components that I want to highlight. There are so many to go through, so I will recognize that my time is limited; I won’t be able to get through it all.

As the official critic for the Attorney General, I’m going to focus on the justice system changes that are outlined in this bill, which I think are important. Allowing electronic notification, electronic filing, is perfectly acceptable, and I think we should all be welcoming that. We should embrace that wherever we can because that is a good thing to do, but it doesn’t seem to go very far beyond that. One of the missed opportunities I would offer is that we can also build up our legal aid system. We can invest in community legal aid clinics to make sure that we can actually provide stronger, more fair, faster access to justice. That clearly is not in the bill. That would probably eliminate quite a bit of red tape.

Studies into legal aid impacts in other Commonwealth countries—I’m going to pull some examples from Australia just because it’s got a parliamentary system similar to ours and it’s got a legal system that’s very comparable to ours, especially through our evolutionary histories as Commonwealth nations. What they have identified is that legal aid is revenue-neutral. Efficiencies that can be found can be diverted from the social justice systems by saving courts some time, making sure that people are adequately represented so that people do not have to wade through what is an arduous, long, red-tape-bounded process. It also means that people who are waiting for justice can get there a lot faster, and then there’s the human value and the human cost that is very difficult to measure.

I had a meeting with the Ontario trial lawyers earlier in my term, when I just began—I got here in June, you’ll remember, Speaker. I had a lot of people wanting to meet, and one of the groups was the Ontario trial lawyers. What they were offering was what I thought was a very strategic way of cutting through a lot of red tape and that could get us through the process of getting access to justice a lot faster. What they have offered is that the government should end the use of civil juries, not in every single case, but there are enough cases that we should consider it. They built a very strong business case, so it’s about efficiencies for cost as well as efficiencies to reduce red tape and a faster pathway to justice.

“Civil litigation,” as noted by the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association, “involves many types of disputes, but a large portion of those disputes arise from injury claims and mainly involve insurance companies. Claimants are often unable to work and in desperate need of health care not funded by OHIP”—and in desperate need of support. “Some have no choice but to rely on social assistance as they wait for their case to come to trial.” In many cases, what they’ll be living with is the loss of income as well as escalating medical needs. So they’re in the system, they’re being dragged out, the clock is running on them, and they’re not getting to where they need to go. That’s a very obvious red tape elimination that could take place if we actually eliminated the option for civil juries.

The other thing that is critically important for us to note is that in Canada there is no constitutional right to a jury trial in many of those civil matters. Ontario is one of the last Canadian jurisdictions to grant parties the right to choose jury trials for most civil matters. In most provinces, civil trials are presided by judges alone. Even in Ontario, civil juries are eliminated for matters where a claimant seeks $200,000 or less, or there’s a distinction between the claim that’s $200,000 or $200,000 plus $1, which seems very arbitrary. How did they come up with that quantum, and then to be able to give us an option that is going to then be bound by more time?

Here’s another example of red tape that’s not contained in the bill that could be addressed in the bill so you can make things move a little faster and eliminate that red tape. Civil juries actually cost a lot more time than judge-adjudicated trials. They’re more costly, and they demand many more resources from the courts. Lawyers spend extra time preparing and presenting evidence for a jury trial. They have to coordinate the logistics of actually obtaining a jury, and it sometimes could take weeks, if not months, to actually get that jury to come together. There are numerous interruptions that occur throughout the jury trial when a jury is excused from the courtroom so that lawyers can discuss the finer points of law. There are so many other examples that I could draw from, but that is just one piece of the pie.

Finally, I want to bring home the costs and why I think this would be a great example of how the government could use the powers that they have, which is this super-majority, to actually eliminate what is a significant amount of red tape that’s literally choking our courts system.

We could consider the burden of jury duty on the individual. Think about it: When you get the notice through the mail—and your average citizen will in Ontario—do they jump for joy when they get this notification that they’ve been chosen for jury selection? Most likely not, and this is why. Juries are paid nothing for the first 10 days of service and a mere $40 up to day 49, and then $100 a day for 50 days of service. They actually have to lose money—they’re literally walking away from whatever employment they have to make less than minimum wage to sit through a jury trial. So there aren’t a lot of people who are actually jumping up and saying, “Give me this opportunity”—ut it’s not just the lack of compensation for the individual jurist; it’s the fact that they’re also having to carry additional expenses such as child care. Employers that are relying on those employees while they’re serving on juries, with these very long and unpredictable schedules—all of that is red tape. All of that is going to cost taxpayers, ultimately, a heck of a lot of money, and we’re not going to get a better, quicker, expedited judicial process for it.

If we’re going to name a bill the Less Red Tape, Stronger Ontario Act, then I would expect more content—and that’s why this bill is so difficult. I don’t blame my friend across the aisle as he struggled to make some sense of the bill. I was struggling myself, trying to find out exactly what this bill is trying to do and what it is not going to do.

I want to talk a little bit about WSIB. WSIB is actually a reference in this bill, and of course, there’s all sorts of things that we can say about it—but there’s also the request to move the WSIB headquarters from Toronto to London. Companies move all the time. That’s perfectly fine, and we can certainly accept that. But when it’s a public agency, there should be some public accountability. You’re going to have to explain to the public, why is this happening? What is the business case? Where’s the value-for-money proposition that you are using to justify this move? Companies move to Toronto all the time. Companies leave Toronto. But I have nothing in this bill that explains to me why this is happening. So not only will jobs leave my city—yes, I should be concerned, but Toronto is a magnet for employment. Many of your children, many of your family members, friends and family, all come into the city of Toronto to work, so it’s not the biggest concern for me. However, what’s left behind? There’s a $600-million asset sitting on the street, at Simcoe and Front, and it’s not really clear to me what happens to that asset. Given the government’s track record of unlocking government assets and quickly selling them for perhaps not the highest and best use and not necessarily the maximum dollar, I think there is a massive loophole that’s there, and I want to be able to rein that back in, or at least to ask questions that the government should, in terms of justifying why is this happening.

If we’re going to be talking about WSIB—how are we seeing the impacts of WSIB? What we know is that COVID is still among us, and one thing that the WSIB has been very poorly performing on is how are they taking care of COVID long-haulers, those with long COVID, as they call it. Those are symptoms that are not going to be quick to resolve. They may emerge and they may disappear again, but it becomes a chronic, underlying illness. So now you have Ontarians who have contracted COVID during the global health pandemic living with, now, long COVID that may be coming in sporadically, and there isn’t a strategy within any of this act that actually deals with this piece specifically. Ontarians are getting sicker, and there isn’t a package or program to support them.

So we’re not making Ontario stronger by any stretch of the imagination, and I think that we need to be able to put aside our differences here in this House—ensure they exist.

This is a very serious issue that I think we need to address, especially for the 10% to 20% of the people who have been infected by COVID who are seeing their symptoms last 12 weeks or longer. Some of those symptoms render them unable to work—and this is the important part. They have weakness, they have brain fog, they have elevated risk of strokes—and so what that means is this red tape act that’s before us isn’t really getting to a better outcome.

I want to talk a little about carbon capture and storage. There has been lots of good discussion about it, and there’s a foundational assumption here that it’s a good thing. I want to be able to talk about why that is maybe not the best strategy. Carbon capture and storage has been explored for over 50 years, and it still has not shown any meaningful promise to turn the tide on greenhouse gas emissions, but it has been used time and time again as some type of political cover to allow us to keep drilling, keep digging, extract as much as possible. But how can we do that when the whole world is talking about reversing the climate emergency? “Let’s move towards CCS. Let’s make sure all of that is discussed and we’re going to package it up”—because it’s nice, meaty language. It’s a lexicon that not everyone understands, and if you say it enough times—carbon capture and storage—you sound awfully smart.

What do the smart scientists around the world tell us about carbon capture and storage? Well, what they tell us is that the very best strategy of removing CO₂ and carbon and keeping it sequestered is actually very simple: As much as possible, especially in the age of the climate emergency, keep it in the ground. But there’s another tangent to it: You should also be planting, building and investing in forestation, investing in the ecosystem, investing in trees. That is the best technology that exists on the planet to actually reduce carbon emissions, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and to actually reverse the trend of the climate emergency.

And just to quote the Ontario Forest Research Institute: “Forest management offers some means of reducing negative impacts to forests if the anticipated levels of climate change occur. Thinning to reduce moisture stress and early harvesting of stands deteriorating due to stress, followed by planting with more climatically adapted populations and species could help maintain higher levels of productivity. Climatic adaptation could be increased through tree breeding aimed at increasing pest and stress tolerance. Forests are important in their role in absorbing and storing carbon from the atmosphere. Although not presently a stated goal, carbon sequestration (storage) could in the future become an objective of forest management.”

All of that being said, in a very long way, is that—if you plant trees, if you don’t go into the ground to extract, which is a very dirty, very earth-damaging process, you actually are better off. You’re going to do a better job of protecting the environment. It’s also good for the economy, at the end of the day, and there are business cases for that.

I mentioned earlier that Australia has done some really good work, but they’ve also been looking at this issue for a much longer time. In Australia, they call their carbon capture and storage experiment the Gorgon Project. For the past 20 years, Chevron has been touting their Gorgon Project, and it’s sort of their excuse to go into the ground: “We are going to capture carbon; we’re going to store it,” and the Gorgon Project is their marquee example—as Chevron, the oil company, wanted to put forward—of why they should be given permissions to dig.

What we learned is that despite receiving $60 million of taxpayer money and three years later, after their first project began in 2019, they are actually seeing significant problems emerge. All the promises, all the claims that this is the way to dig safely and this is the way to offset carbon emissions have been proven untrue. So what we know is that Gorgon emitted over 7.7 million tonnes of CO₂ between 2016 and 2017; that’s a 12-month period. They wiped out all the savings made by all the rooftop solar panel installations in Australia that same year. Can you imagine how large this country is? With everything that has gone on, they’ve installed all these rooftop solar panels—all of that diversion went away.

The Western Australia Environmental Protection Authority then concludes that Chevron should be held accountable for the venting gas from the Gorgon project, arguing that due to the two-year delay in storing emissions, Chevron is likely to fail to meet the requirement to capture and store at least 80% of the project’s emissions.

We’ve just heard that this bill is going to bring Ontario to a stronger place, that by removing this sort of red tape, you’re going to be able to build a stronger economy. I also heard that the government has said, “Businesses want us to do it. All the businesses are asking for this.” Well, I’m sure that businesses are not saying to you, “Let’s actually let go of the need to reverse climate change so we can get as much out of the ground, and then have a different problem on our hands.” The strategy you put forward to offset actually doesn’t work. Then the question would be, why are we doing it? Which businesses are asking for this, and who’s paying? Ultimately, from what I can see, it’s actually the taxpayers who are going to pay for a failed strategy that doesn’t work, but then future generations are going to pay because there’s not much of an environment left for them to inherit. This could be a very technical conversation. I do have some more notes on it, but I can see that perhaps it’s a topic that’s not easy to digest. so I want to move on just for a moment.

I want us to recognize that—actually, I will just say it say for myself. I can’t speak for everybody in the House, but I’ve noticed there’s a disturbing trend in the House, and that trend in the House—and I’ve seen it before. Obviously, it’s not my first time at the rodeo; this is my 12th and a half year in government. But what I’ve seen before is that the title of the bills don’t oftentimes match the intention of the bills. This is just a great example of a bill that has a lot that’s packed in it, that claims to be doing something—because we’ve heard members of the House on the government side speak to all the great things this bill does—but I can’t see a shred of evidence, or at least not a lot of it anyway, that that is what the bill does.

I guess the part that’s most challenging for me is, what is the purpose of what I think is a clean-up bill when it opens up a whole new can of worms that we’re not going to be able to get to, a whole new problem that we’re not going to be able to get to—because this bill is obviously not that exciting. The media is not reporting on it. It’s probably going to sail through committee—because, God knows, if there’s 10 hours of debate, it’s going to go down to 20 minutes of debate. And yet, it actually opens up so much that needs to be answered and is not answered.

I fear that we’re going to make some bad laws here—laws that don’t serve the people of Ontario, not this current generation or the generation next, but it will be touted as some type of government announcement that they’re cutting red tape when it doesn’t really do that.

First, before I answer the question, I just want to acknowledge the member from Mississauga–Erin Mills for your advocacy. You’re doing an incredible job for your residents. Some of us call you “Professor,” too, by the way.

Madam Speaker, asking about the gasoline volatility regulation: The Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks are proposing changes that would simplify the requirement for petroleum refiners, importers, terminals and storage solutions to report summertime gasoline volatility limits in Ontario. This would reduce the compliance risk by aligning with the national standard and reduce the administrative burden and cost, and that’s exactly what we’re doing, Madam Speaker. We’re making sure the cost of doing business is lower. When you reduce the cost of doing business, you have extra money which you can invest back into your business and grow your business. When you grow your business, you grow Ontario.

We’re making sure your cost of living is lowered by reducing the five cents in gas. We’re making sure, through LIFT, that for up to $50,000 income, you don’t pay any tax. And through these measures, Madam Speaker, we made sure that you don’t have to pay for your licence plates and that you’ve got the money back. These are the ways we’re reducing.

But at the same time, I want to urge the member opposite: Let’s all stand together and fight the carbon tax, so that we can get more relief to our province of Ontario and the Ontarians in their fight for—

Madam Speaker, this is an amazing action that the member and his ministry are taking. Ontario is working with the agri-food sector to determine current and future research needs that promote innovation and enable farmers to be on the cutting edge of best production practices. Every time I go to Adolphustown, I always see, “Farmers feed cities,” so I want to take a moment and say thank you to all our farmers. Thank you for your hard work, and we are all enjoying the benefits in the province of Ontario.

I had the opportunity to talk on Bill 23, and I just want to say, from your government to each and every Ontarian, for somebody who’s here or who’s planning to come to Canada, you have a government who is going to be with you, for you.

We are in a housing crisis, and we will make sure that everyone who wants to buy a house or rent a house has a roof over their head. That is why Bill 23 is making monumental changes so that we can have 1.5 million houses in 10 years.

Speaker, if the member could help us understand an issue very important to my stakeholders and to stakeholders throughout Ontario: Why is the ministry proposing to modernize the ARIO Act?

Thanks to the member from Mississauga–Malton. You spun a very good tale in this House, I will say this, about that. He did talk about the importance of consultation and working with us across the lines, and I find it a little ironic, I have to say. The member is on finance with me, and I got 20 minutes on the fall economic statement—20 minutes instead of 15 hours.

The consultation piece, though, in Bill 23 I think is one of the most egregious moments for this House, when you did not welcome the Association of Municipalities of Ontario—444 municipalities. The member from Mississauga–Malton talks about how important it is to consult and how to rise above politics, and yet the former mayor of Toronto, John Sewell, at the age of 82, had to disrupt Bill 23 delegations because you shut him down. That’s not good practice, and I’m going to give the member an opportunity to correct his record.

Questions?

The member from Chatham-Kent.

Thank you, Speaker. I appreciate it. I listened intently as the member opposite said, why are we discussing energy? It’s not surprising when they bankrolled the previous government’s drastic energy price increase through a carbon tax on heating and on fuel. But my question to this member is, carbon capture, storage and utilization are really important. Can you talk a bit more about that? It’s so important to work with industry and with everyday Ontarians as we support environmental solutions. I appreciate the work being done. Can you share more with the House on that?

As we all know, the effect of the gasoline pricing changes and the volatility are causing the logistics and all the trucking companies to suffer, causing some of the pricing of the groceries to go up, and every other item which has transportation elements in it.

My question is for the member from Malton. How is this regulation going to affect the volatility of the gasoline pricing? How is it going to simplify these regulations on the gasoline volatility, and how will this affect the pricing of the gasoline?

Thank you very much to the good member from Etobicoke–Lakeshore. I really appreciate and value your question.

This is kind of why I alluded to the fact that the title and the content don’t always line up. Bill 23 is a great example, where the government has said, “We’re going to cut red tape so that we can allow for a lot of development, and this is going to save money.” Well, it’s actually not saving money. What we’ve heard is that municipalities are going to be paying a heck of a lot more to make up for the loss of revenue, so it’s not revenue–neutral.

Recently, I’ve heard there are mayors who are now putting forward motions and considerations to their council to create a new category within their tax bill and to call it the “Ontario property tax section.” So is it saving money—all these proposed gestures? Some would argue that it’s not.

Questions?

I want to thank the member opposite for her comments.

With this bill, we are helping create the conditions for businesses and people to thrive, and we’re not going to stop until the job is done.

One thing the member mentioned was that Toronto is a magnet for employment, and she’s right—through you, Madam Speaker. But to be a magnet for employment, we have to create the environment—and that is what this government is doing, by cutting red tape, keeping taxes low and building houses.

Since being elected in 2018, our government has taken over 400 actions to reduce red tape while maintaining important regulations that provide people’s health, safety and the environment. This has led to savings of almost a half a billion dollars in annual compliance costs—$500 million.

Will the member opposite agree that cutting red tape saves people and businesses time and money so they can grow their businesses and spend more time with family, therefore creating more jobs in Toronto?

Questions?

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

The House adjourned at 1758.

The government side keeps talking about reducing red tape. Those of us on this side of the House are very leery when the government—any Conservative government, like the previous Mike Harris government—talks about reducing red tape, because what you often find is something like Walkerton, where people were very ill and died because the Conservative government cut red tape and the water was contaminated.

Speaker, I want to ask my colleague from Toronto Centre to speak a little more about access to justice. She talked about jury duty. I don’t think many people would know that if you are called for jury duty, you are not paid for that duty, you lose time at work and pay, and child care costs are not covered. So I’m wondering if my colleague from Toronto Centre could talk about how that, in itself, is a barrier to access to justice—because you’re talking about people not being able to keep a roof over their head or food on the table or take care of their children if they actually are called for jury duty.

Thank you to the good member for the question.

That’s exactly what I’m saying. I think that the way schedule 5 is written, it looks like a red herring to me. I guess the challenge before us is that we’re not going to go through a fulsome debate. That’s just a fact of where this bill is headed. I am very concerned that schedule 5 is opening up an extremely large hole in the legislation that you can’t reverse. Once the environment is gone, it’s really hard to come back. We need to think twice about moving something like this without any type of research debate or any type of background—and it can’t be because we’ve consulted with business. I’ve heard that time and time again from the government—that you’ve consulted with somebody, but then there’s no document to say, “This is what the consultation produced.”

This is complicated legislation that’s going to have multiple effects—not even just in one act or one piece of legislation, but multiple pieces of legislation, and then you’re going to be dealing with years, generations of impact.

I think it belittles the people of Ontario when we actually don’t put our heart, energy and grey matter into making good legislation.

I just want to start off by saying, whenever there’s any talk about red tape cutting, oftentimes that’s coded language for deregulation. I’m not going to be fooled—that you can get me to vote for this because you want me to cut red tape—because you’re asking me to support deregulation, which I cannot do.

Back to jury duty: For a lot of folks who are trying to get access to justice—the best trial lawyers in the country have said that every other province has moved in a direction where you don’t have to have an option for civil juries. Therefore, why is Ontario lagging so far behind? For a government that talks about modernization and embracing change and about moving forward with innovation—we’re one of the laggards. So why be the outlier and not be the leader? This is a great example of how you can eliminate the option for some civil juries to actually cut the red tape and to get us moving faster—not to mention the fact that it’s good for business.

I really think that one of the best ways for us to go about this debate is not to try to create it into a binary—because when you do that, you actually eliminate what is really at the heart of it. There are going to be some conflicting reports—some of them are actually produced and funded by the big fossil oil companies—that are going to give you one result, and then there are going to be other studies—perhaps our noted scientists and third party reviewed—that will give you others.

What I’m interested in doing here is to actually just raise the question that the premise right now that’s in this bill—you’re assuming that carbon capture is neutral, but studies have shown us that it’s not. Studies have shown us that it has failed to be neutral and it’s actually going to have longer ramifications in the future that we can’t necessarily undo.

Thank you to the member opposite. I listened to her speech with great interest.

On carbon capture, storage and utilization: I note that the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States commits over $369 billion, of which a portion goes to CCUS, and an international panel report on climate change showed that “the potential for CO₂ capture and storage is considerable,” and goes on to support this.

To industry that are already doing this and have asked the government to play a leadership role in establishing a framework here in Ontario, like Stelco—what would she say to that industry? Does she feel they have a role to play in capturing CO₂, and what would she say to the workers and union workers on the cutting edge, looking to do this for sustainable capture of CO₂?

Our government has taken relentless action to reduce red tape across the province. The opposition has continuously voted against the actions we are taking, which have saved businesses over $500 million in annual compliance costs.

Will the opposition finally correct their record and vote in favour of this bill?

Thank you to the member from Toronto Centre for your comments. It’s always interesting—I’m always learning when you’re speaking.

You mentioned that this bill is not going to get the attention it deserves, because right now the government just passed Bill 23, which paves over the greenbelt, and they’ve got Bill 39, which overrides the last municipal election results. Now they’ve got this bill, which is going to promote carbon capture, and you’re saying that in Australia, where they tried this project, their government put in $60 million of taxpayers’ money and didn’t get the results.

Are you afraid that this carbon capture is actually just a diversion to allow oil companies to continue to drill and to burn oil?