With its beautiful diverse landscape, it’s no surprise to see why northern Ontario is becoming a highly sought-after destination for many film production teams aiming to create high-quality content. Unfortunately, the film industry experienced challenges during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. We as a government must make the necessary investments now to ensure that the film and entertainment industry in northern Ontario remains competitive.

Can the Minister of Northern Development please share how our government is supporting this vital industry?

Northern Ontario truly represents a unique part of the world. We have a unique cultural contribution to the filmmaking and entertainment sector, with individuals representing Indigenous, French and English communities, as well as new Canadians. Together, the north contributes to producing unique, high-qualify film and entertainment content that the world enjoys.

Once again, can the Minister of Northern Development please outline the investments our government is making for this sector and how they will benefit northern communities?

Member for Eglinton–Lawrence.

Thank you to the member opposite for the question. This government, this Premier and the Ministry of Health are committed to supporting high-quality palliative end-of-life care for all Ontarians who need it, and I think we’ve done more than any government in recent history to support that initiative.

In 2019-20, the ministry provided Hospice Palliative Care Ontario with $1.7 million in additional funding over two years to support initiatives related to advance care planning. In October 2021, Ontario introduced a one-time investment of $23 million in hospice residences across the province to help them continue to provide high-quality, compassionate end-of-life services and care to people and their loved ones during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ministry is also supporting new hospices across Ontario by contributing to the cost of operating and constructing new and existing facilities. This government is making historic investments in palliative and end-of-life care, and we will continue to do so.

This government and Ministry of Health recognize the important role that hospices play in helping people live well from the time of diagnosis to a terminal illness at the end of life and while grieving a death. We continue to look for other opportunities to work with and implement the province’s palliative care framework and to work with Hospice Palliative Care Ontario.

Thank you to the member for Mississauga–Lakeshore for this very important question. Ontario proudly welcomes more immigrants than any other province. However, we are only able to select 5% of them, less than any other province in Canada. To build a stronger Ontario that works for everyone, we need to double the number of skilled immigrants we can select. That is why in our ongoing negotiations with the federal government, we have been calling, since day one, for 18,000 nominations. We need all hands on deck. That’s why we are working to welcome those with the skills Ontario needs.

On average, our government, under the leadership of Premier Ford, is processing immigration applications within 90 days—so within three months. But then it takes Ottawa up to 42 months to do their part. We are never going to resolve labour shortages if it takes four years to get a skilled worker into Ontario.

Mr. Speaker, we have offered our processing capacity to the federal government to help speed up the process. We want to work together to resolve these challenges and to help fill the 400,000 jobs that are going unfilled every single day in Ontario.

Thank you to the member from Brampton West for that question—and all the members from Brampton that are surrounding me here.

We know the people of Ontario are facing the rising cost of living and shortage of homes, and our government has a strong mandate to help the people of Ontario find a home that is right for them. Ontario needs more housing, and we need it now.

We are building a durable foundation for action that will increase housing supply and attainability over the long term. That is why we announced an increase to the Non-Resident Speculation Tax to 25% to prioritize Ontario families and homebuyers. Mr. Speaker, this increase means Ontario has the most comprehensive NRST in the land.

And finally, Mr. Speaker, let me be clear: As part of this commitment to tackle Ontario’s housing crisis, we are prioritizing Ontario families and homebuyers, not speculators.

The foreign buyer ban the federal government is proposing would be temporary, and some proposed exceptions appear to still permit residential property purchases in Ontario that may be subject to the NRST.

But, Mr. Speaker, while we support the federal government’s actions following Ontario’s lead in addressing housing supply, this government knows the housing crisis is not temporary. It is a long-term challenge that requires long-term solutions. That is why we increased the NRST to 25% and eliminated loopholes by focusing relief eligibility to newcomers who commit to laying down roots in Ontario long-term so that Ontario has the most comprehensive Non-Resident Speculation Tax in the land.

Mr. Speaker, all levels of government need to work together to co-operate and address the housing crisis.

My question is to the Premier. In September, alongside my colleague from Toronto–St. Paul’s, I wrote to you about reports that Niagara hospitals turned away sexual assault survivors from receiving a local sexual assault evidence kit due to staffing shortages. Over the last three years, nearly 30 Niagara survivors had been asked to travel as far as Burlington or to come back later. Survivors need to be put first, not have their justice put at risk.

Niagara Health is seeking additional funding to support their staffing shortages for their sexual assault hospital program. They’ve heard nothing from this government. Today, will you approve that funding request? And will it explain why survivors in Niagara are being left behind?

New Brunswick as well reported that survivors had been turned away. However, last week they announced sweeping changes. Simply, this is about priorities. It’s about women. It’s about justice. Niagara Health, our nurses and front-line staff are going above and beyond, doing the best they can. However, they need more support. They need more funding.

Can the minister assure women that Ontario’s hospital response programs are not understaffed across this province, and that it will find ways to make sure this situation never, ever happens again?

I recognize that the Premier is in his chair today, so hopefully we can get an answer from him today. Nevertheless, my—

Interjections.

Bill 23 does nothing to house a single homeless person in encampments. Bill 23 does nothing to end homelessness or the mental health or the opioid crisis that 29 big mayors have spoken to.

Why is the Premier cutting $100 million from Ontario’s housing program when we need more investments and not less for deeply affordable housing in Ontario right now?

I’ll ask the members to make their comments to the floor.

Supplementary question? The member for Toronto Centre.

Start the clock.

I recognize the member for Toronto Centre.

My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

Toronto has a homelessness crisis. The wait-list for supportive housing is 21,000 people long, and we only housed 185 people last year. Our shelters are full.

The Premier has set a goal of building new homes for Ontarians. But if the Premier is so concerned about building new housing, why is he cutting over $100 million from the province’s housing program to build affordable housing?

My question is to the Minister of Finance.

I hear concerns from my constituents about the housing market. Parents ask me how their children will be able to afford family homes in their communities. Young individuals are worried about their future in this province and if they will still have an opportunity for home ownership.

Speaker, I won’t mince words. Many people are worried about the housing situation they currently face in Ontario. That is why our government tabled our most recent housing plan last week. An essential part of this plan is increasing the non-resident speculation tax rate.

Can the Minister of Finance please explain why it was essential to increase the rate to 25% when it was just increased to 20% in March of this year?

Speaker, the federal government recently introduced in the 2022 budget a ban on foreign investors buying Canadian residential property. The federal government plan would completely restrict foreign buyers from purchasing a property anywhere in our country, effective January 2023.

With our government increasing non-residential speculation tax rates at the same time as the federal government introduces their restriction on foreign buyers, it appears that this is creating an overlap in regulations.

Speaker, could the Minister of Finance please tell us how our plan differs from what the federal government is proposing and how this will help my constituents enter the housing market?

Thanks for this question. I’ve answered it many, many times.

We take the approach in the housing space that every government needs to do their part, whether it be municipalities—and I look forward to hopefully having your support for Bill 23 in a few minutes—but also with the federal government. Over time, federal-provincial cost-share programs come and they go.

We’re at a crisis point with the federal government. We obviously want to work collaboratively with them—for their $4-billion Housing Accelerator Fund. The Premier’s office and the Prime Minister’s office have had some great preliminary conversations.

This member knows the answer to this question. I’ve asked many, many times for her party to support our call to the federal government. You know the housing need; you just articulated it in your question. We’re being shortchanged $480 million by the federal government.

When are you going to join us and support our call for more dollars?

We put our money where our mouth was in our term of our new Homelessness Prevention Program. We consolidated three supportive housing programs and added an additional $25 million to our municipal partners. When we started the social services relief fund at the very start of the pandemic, who would have thought that we would have supported our municipal colleagues to the tune of $1.2 billion? In addition, our suite of homelessness programs now equals almost half a billion dollars. But we still are short $480 million from the federal government. And I think Ontarians would love to have support from that party on the opposite side.

I’d like to thank the member, my friend from Perth–Wellington, for his question. If you believe you’re a victim of cybercrime, please reach out to the OPP toll-free at 1-888-310-1122 to report this matter.

Cybercrime is a serious issue and should not be overlooked. That’s why our government is investing more than $1.6 million to help fight cybercrime. This funding will support local organizations and their police services to work together to increase awareness about these horrible crimes and prevent them from happening in their communities.

Monsieur le Président, nous continuerons de faire ce qui est difficile, et nous continuerons de réaliser ce qui est difficile, pour assurer la sécurité de l’Ontario.

This $1.6-million investment is being allocated to 18 community-based organizations. I’m pleased—the member for Perth–Wellington will be happy to hear—that we’ve allocated $100,000 to Crime Stoppers Guelph Wellington. This organization will work with the OPP and Victims Services Wellington to increase awareness about cyber safety.

Monsieur le Président, rien pour moi, en tant que solliciteur général, n’est plus important que la sécurité de notre province.

I do. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

If everyone in the House tomorrow morning would like to get an “egg-cellent” start to your day, I would like to invite everyone to the breakfast that is being hosted tomorrow morning by the Egg Farmers of Ontario. It’s probably one of the best breakfasts of the year, so I hope to see you in the legislative dining room at 7:30.

Deferred vote on the motion that the question now be put on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 23, An Act to amend various statutes, to revoke various regulations and to enact the Supporting Growth and Housing in York and Durham Regions Act, 2022 / Projet de loi 23, Loi modifiant diverses lois, abrogeant divers règlements et édictant la Loi de 2022 visant à soutenir la croissance et la construction de logements dans les régions de York et de Durham.

Yes, we would like to refer the bill to the Standing Committee on Heritage, Infrastructure and Cultural Policy.

I would like to take this time to congratulate my amazing CA Jenny and her partner Andrew on the birth of their identical twin girls, Molly and Alice.

I would like to rise and provide some comment on the motion that is before us to begin the House tomorrow at 1 p.m. rather than 3 p.m. And clearly, this is all part of the government’s plan to ram through this legislation, to prohibit strikes and lockouts by education workers represented by CUPE, and to impose a collective agreement on those workers.

Speaker, we are completely opposed on principle and in substance to the government’s attempts to use the time of this House to try to force CUPE workers to accept a collective agreement that has not been bargained at the bargaining table. I would respectfully suggest to the government that their time would be much better spent sitting down at the bargaining table and trying to hammer out a fair deal with education workers.

We’ve heard the Minister of Education talk about using every tool at their disposal. This is not using the tools that are available to the government when they are negotiating with education workers, and, in particular, the education workers who are the lowest-paid workers in our public education system. They are the educational assistants, the early childhood educators, the custodians, the school secretaries, whose role is absolutely vital to the safe functioning of a school and to the success of the students who go there.

We heard the minister this morning talk about the government’s plan to catch up, and all of us, I think, have received feedback from parents in our communities that the $365 million that the government is spending on these catch-up payments to parents is being easily seen by parents as nothing more than a bribe. It’s just an attempt to try to get the government to ignore the fact that they are not—

Interjections.

I am not the only member in this House who remembers Bill 115. I’m sure that the Liberals at the end of the row here certainly remember those dark times of Bill 115. I know my colleague the member for Waterloo remembers Bill 115. We were trustees at the time. The member for Waterloo was the president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association. Bill 115 was really what got us mobilized to enter into politics. It was a terrible time in public education. The morale of education workers was lower than it had ever been. The frustration of parents was higher than it had ever been. And it was students who were losing out because of the then government’s failure to sit down with education unions and negotiate fair collective agreements that reflected the value that those education workers provide in our education system.

The mistakes of the Liberal government in imposing Bill 115 were rightfully challenged by education workers, education unions, and the courts have upheld those challenges. We know that the government has, so far, had to pay out $210 million as a remedy for taking that unconstitutional action and imposing collective agreements with Bill 115.

And yet, here we see the government is prepared to make almost exactly the same mistakes. They’re spending $365 million in these catch-up payments that will offer parents $200 per student—$250 if a student has special-education needs—to, what the government says, allow that student to catch up. But we know, parents know, that’s not going to make a drop in the bucket.

What will really help students catch up, what will really help students who are struggling with the learning loss and the disruption over more than two years of the pandemic is having more education assistants in our classrooms; it’s having more custodians who are keeping schools safe and clean; it’s having those school secretaries, who are really the backbone of the school system, who are there to help students who need to go home when parents come to pick them up early—they really are the traffic managers of the school system. All those workers deserve to be fairly compensated. They deserve to have their work valued to the extent that it should be.

The experience that we’ve gone through with COVID has, if anything, heightened our awareness of the importance of education workers in our system. We know that kids’ mental health needs have increased to a point that we haven’t seen before because of the disruptions over the last year. We know that kids are struggling both academically and also socially and developmentally because of the experience of the last two years.

What we do not need for kids when they’re in our system is education workers who feel completely demoralized, devalued, beaten down and tossed to the curb by this government, by its planned legislation to move forward as quickly as possible to prohibit any strikes or lockouts and to impose a collective agreement.

This government is saying, “The cupboard is bare. We have no money to settle with education workers and come up with a fair deal for those workers.” And yet, as I mentioned, they have the $365 million in catch-up payments that won’t do a thing to help kids catch up. They have the $210 million that they’ve already spent on remedies in response to the Liberals’ Bill 115. And as the Financial Accountability Officer showed us, there’s $44 billion in unallocated contingency funds that are available to this government over the next six years, on top of a $25-billion surplus.

Parents in Ontario, education workers in Ontario know that the cupboard, in fact, is not bare, that this government has the resources available to sit down and hammer out a fair deal with education workers that reflects the value that they provide in the system.

I am deeply disappointed that the government wants to bring us back at 1 o’clock tomorrow so that they can have more time on the legislative agenda to deal with the legislation that is before us.

This is not legislation that we should be considering in this place. The government should instead be focusing its efforts, its resources—everything, all the tools that it has available—to sit down with education workers and hammer out a fair collective agreement that recognizes the importance of those workers in our system.

With that, Speaker, I will conclude my remarks.

The Keeping Students in Class Act, 2022, would, if passed, keep kids learning in school without disruption, critical to catching up on their studies, along with supporting their mental and physical health.

This legislation will prohibit strikes and lockouts during the term of operation of the collective agreement and require termination of any strikes already under way, following over two years of learning loss.

This legislation would, if passed, ensure students remain in class with a refocus on learning, catching up on extracurricular activities and quality education.

This legislation will protect the interests of two million children, their working parents and the communities that depend on equitable access to nutrition, mental health supports, developmental services and, quite simply, access to a safe place. It is for them, Speaker—it is for all students—that we are acting to keep kids in class.

Interjections.

The ayes are 74; the nays are 34.

Pursuant to standing order 63, your committee has selected the 2022-23 estimates of the following ministries for consideration: Ministry of Transportation; Ministry of Infrastructure; Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing; Ministry of Heritage, Sport, Tourism and Culture Industries.

Pursuant to standing order 64(a), the 2022-23 estimates of the following ministry and office not selected for consideration are deemed to be passed by the committee and are reported back to the House:

Ministry of Citizenship and Multiculturalism: 4601, ministry administration, $2,388,200; 4602, Anti-Racism Directorate, $28,068,900; 4603, citizenship and inclusion, $25,837,600; Office of the Lieutenant Governor, 1701, $1,903,500.

My question is for the Premier. Auto accidents were down by 40% last year compared to 2019, yet premiums keep going up and insurance company profits hit 27.6%. The cost of living in Ontario is unbearable, and drivers continue to be gouged. Auto insurance companies are regulated by this government, so will they do the right thing and return these excess profits back into the pockets of drivers?

Speaker, drivers in GTA communities like mine continue to be ripped off simply because of where they live, compared to other drivers with similar records in different parts of the city. I tabled the bill to end this unfair treatment. Will the government pass it into law immediately?