Thank you, Speaker. It’s self-explanatory. The bill allows us to continue working with our friends in education to ensure that our kids remain in school.

Mr. Bethlenfalvy moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 36, An Act to implement Budget measures and to enact and amend various statutes / Projet de loi 36, Loi visant à mettre en oeuvre les mesures budgétaires et à édicter et à modifier diverses lois.

It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of His Majesty’s official opposition to respond to the fall economic statement.

Budgeting is about priorities. The fall economic statement is a key opportunity to communicate with Ontarians. What the government is communicating today is that they don’t share our priorities of health, of education or of cost-of-living relief for low-income families.

This government’s economic update comes on the heels of a multi-billion dollar surplus. Instead of taking the opportunity to invest in our hospitals, they sit on billions. Amid a health care crisis, which is real, this government has not allocated a single new penny. We have seen cancelled surgeries across the province, ER closures, code reds in all of our communities, long waits. And now, for the first time in the history of the province, there is a shortage of pediatric ICU beds for children. Every single pediatric unit is full.

Just this morning, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health said the province’s health system is facing extraordinary pressures.

Despite the crisis before us, the government is projected to spend $6.2 billion less on health care than what is needed through to 2025.

I’m not sure if the members of the government in the House have seen the pictures of children and babies on ventilators, but I would urge you to pay attention to what is happening in our health care system.

As staffing shortages plague our hospitals, the Ford government touts that they have added 11,000 new health care workers since 2020, but informed reports say 47,000 new health care workers need to be hired per year for the next three years to maintain current service levels. And yet this government stubbornly holds on to Bill 124, which is wage-suppression legislation, which is driving health care workers out of this province. Health care workers are increasingly reporting exhaustion and burnout, and more and more health care workers are considering whole profession changes.

On the education front, over the last few weeks we saw the government lowballing CUPE education workers and imposing a collective agreement on them with meagre increases, well below inflation. The fall economic statement continues this trend of underspending. Comparing the document before us to the non-partisan Financial Accountability Officer’s report from October, the government will be short $1 billion in education through 2024-25. What does that mean for our kids? And what does that say about a government that doesn’t respect education workers and that doesn’t understand the damage that was done to our students and to our system throughout the pandemic?

The cost of living: Instead of addressing the housing affordability crisis, this government has downgraded its projection for housing starts in the coming years and has refused to fully reverse the $100-million cut to the housing program. The government has failed to accelerate public funding for affordable and non-market housing to ensure an adequate supply of new homes. We should not have people in Ontario living in tents. There has to be an investment in truly affordable housing.

There were some encouraging parts, I do want to say. We were absolutely relieved that there were improvements to ODSP, where future increases will be tied to inflation—and increasing the allowable earnings from $200 a month to $1,000 a month. That is a good move and something that we have tried to get the government to pay attention to. But Ontario’s ODSP rates have not kept pace with inflation. An inflationary increase is welcome, but it’s not enough to combat the skyrocketing costs of rent, of heating and of groceries—and the gas tax will not help these folks.

A troubling trend that we have observed in the last two budget cycles, and this is something that I think everyone should be paying attention to in Ontario, is that this government is underestimating revenue—you just heard it—and it overestimates the deficit. This has been observed by public accounts, by the FAO, by the Auditor General—and the government’s own summer budget. For 2022-23, the government is projecting a deficit of $12.9 billion, $7 billion lower than the outlook published in the summer budget, but in the same period, our Financial Accountability Officer has predicted a $100-million surplus. Where is the transparency? Where is the trust on the dollars?

Mr. Speaker, this fall economic statement is disappointing because it does not recognize the current state of affairs that the people of this province are experiencing. It is a missed opportunity to invest in the people of this province.