I’m proud to rise on behalf of our entire government to speak about our Plan to Build Act.

Je suis fier de me lever au nom de tout notre gouvernement pour parler de la Loi de 2022 pour favoriser le développement.

This legislation supports our 2022 budget, which is entitled Ontario’s Plan to Build. Mr. Speaker, as you know, our government’s budget was first released earlier this year, in April. It is a budget to make life more affordable for families by keeping costs down, and a budget that helps Ontario’s talented workers get the skills and support they need to succeed. It will get shovels into the ground to build highways, to build roads and to build public transit. It invests in hospitals, long-term care and home care so that people across the province can get access to the quality health care system they deserve. In short, this is a plan for a stronger Ontario.

To begin, I will go over some key areas of our budget as well as provide highlights for the next steps in our Plan to Build Act.

The first pillar of our plan is rebuilding Ontario’s economy. Our government has a plan to rebuild Ontario’s economy so that it gets stronger each day, building prosperity everywhere, for everyone. Part of our plan to build includes taking advantage of the province’s critical minerals opportunity.

Canada is the only country in the western hemisphere that possesses all the critical minerals needed for an electric vehicle battery. The Ring of Fire has the potential to fuel a provincial supply chain for battery technology, electronics and electric and hybrid vehicles. This brings multi-generational prosperity to northern and First Nations communities. That’s why the government’s plan includes close to $1 billion for vital legacy infrastructure, such as all-season roads to the Ring of Fire, accessing potential mining sites, building the corridor to prosperity. Critical minerals will be transported via these roads to manufacturing hubs in the south and help deliver prosperity to Ontario’s north. Likewise, it will help improve access for First Nations communities to health care, goods and services, education, housing and economic opportunities.

The plan is supported by a Critical Minerals Strategy and $2 million in 2022-23 and $3 million in 2023-24 to create a Critical Minerals Innovation Fund.

Ce plan s’appuie sur la Stratégie relative aux minéraux critiques et sur deux millions de dollars en 2022-2023 et trois millions de dollars en 2023-2024, constituant le Fonds pour l’innovation relative aux minéraux critiques.

During the past two years, Ontario has secured a string of historic investments of nearly $16 billion that will make the province a leader in automotive manufacturing. But I will leave it to the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade to speak to how our government is transforming this province into the economic engine of Canada once again, as it was at the beginning of Confederation.

As part of our plan to bring prosperity everywhere, we are proposing to extend the temporary enhancement to the Regional Opportunities Investment Tax Credit. It helps lower costs for businesses that expand and grow in areas of the province where employment growth in the past has lagged the provincial average. To provide additional support to businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, we temporarily doubled the tax credit in the 2021 budget from 10% to 20%, until the end of 2022. Our government is proposing to extend the temporary enhancement to the Regional Opportunities Investment Tax Credit to the end of 2023. This financial support will stimulate real growth and create jobs in regions that need it the most.

Madam Speaker, the shortage of housing supply impacts all Ontarians, regardless of background or budget. The Ontario government introduced legislation that would give the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa more responsibility to deliver on shared provincial-municipal priorities, including building 1.5 million new homes over the next 10 years.

Le gouvernement de l’Ontario a déposé un projet de loi qui donnerait aux maires de Toronto et d’Ottawa une plus grande responsabilité pour mettre en oeuvre les priorités provinciales-municipales, dont la construction de 1,5 million de nouveaux logements au cours des 10 prochaines années.

If passed, the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act would give the mayor of Toronto and the mayor of Ottawa the ability to move priority projects forward and get more homes built faster. This legislation is an important tool to increase the housing supply, and is one of a number of initiatives being taken by the Ontario government to address the housing shortage.

Additionally, to help communities across Ontario build more attainable homes, Ontario is also launching the housing supply action plan implementation team. This will provide advice on market housing initiatives, including building on the vision from the Housing Affordability Task Force, More Homes for Everyone and other governmental conversations.

Our plan also includes keeping costs down for Ontario families. Our government has recently released the 2022-23 first-quarter finances, which provide updated information on the movement of Ontario’s economic and fiscal outlook since the 2022 budget. The numbers reflect that people and businesses are experiencing the effects of inflation in a very real way in their daily lives. While this global economic trend is happening, we’re taking action to help every Ontarian with the cost of living. We are doing our part to help keep a few extra dollars in people’s pockets and to help keep costs down.

The Plan to Build Act proposes amendments that would provide relief to families and workers by helping with the cost of everyday essentials. Beginning with the 2022 tax year, our government is proposing an enhancement to the low-income individuals and families tax credit, also known as the LIFT credit. The proposed enhancement would mean roughly 700,000 more people would benefit from this tax credit for the 2022 tax year.

À compter de l’année d’imposition 2022, notre gouvernement propose une amélioration au crédit d’impôt pour les personnes et les familles à faible revenu. Cette amélioration signifierait qu’environ 700 000 personnes de plus profiteraient de ce crédit d’impôt pour l’année d’imposition 2022.

It will increase and expand this tax benefit, providing $320 million in additional tax relief to even more of Ontario’s workers. And with the general minimum wage rising to $15.50 per hour as of October 1, 2022—by my calendar, that’s a little over 30 days from today, this will help ensure eligible minimum wage workers continue to receive additional relief.

Let me take a few minutes to explain how the LIFT credit works. Introduced in 2018, this non-refundable tax credit has provided up to $850 in Ontario personal income tax relief each year to lower-income workers. Under the current LIFT credit, the benefit is phased out at a rate of 10% for individual income above $30,000 and family income above $60,000. So, combined with other tax relief, the introduction of the LIFT credit means that about 90%—90%—of all Ontario taxpayers with taxable incomes below $30,000 will pay no Ontario personal income tax. And under our proposed enhancement, the maximum benefit will also increase from $850 to $875, helping to keep more money in the pockets of many eligible beneficiaries.

Our plan for keeping costs down also includes cutting fees. Our government is helping people who are feeling the pinch at the gas pumps, as the cost of gas has never been higher—although it’s lowering, it’s still very high. As of July 1, we cut the gas tax by 5.7 cents per litre and the fuel tax by 5.3 cents per litre for six months.

Notre gouvernement aide les gens qui subissent les effets de la hausse des prix de l’essence. Le 1^er juillet, nous avons diminué la taxe sur l’essence de 5,7 cents le litre et la taxe sur le mazout de 5,3 cents le litre pour six mois.

In addition to these cuts, we are making it less expensive to drive, because we know that driving is necessary for many families. By eliminating and refunding licence plate renewal fees for passenger vehicles, light duty trucks, motorcycles and mopeds, drivers in southern Ontario will be saving $120 per year, per vehicle, and about $60 per vehicle in northern Ontario. Further, Madam Speaker, we have also removed the tolls on Highways 412 and 418, bringing relief particularly to people in the Durham region, and a benefit to every single person who uses these highways.

The next pillar that I would like to speak about is working for workers. Our economy needs skilled workers, and our workers need our support. That is why our government is working for workers and reducing the harmful stigma around trades, especially for women and young people. Building on the success of the Skills Development Fund announced in the 2020 budget, Ontario is providing an additional $15.8 million in the 2022-23 fiscal year to support the development and expansion of brick-and-mortar training facilities, which could include union training halls, to help more workers get the skills they need to find good, well-paying jobs and to ensure employers can find the talent they need to build and grow their businesses.

The next part of our plan I will cover is building highways and our infrastructure. Ontario is growing, and as Ontario grows, we will need roads, highways, transit and other infrastructure. That’s why we have a plan to keep moving Ontario. At the heart of our plan is a capital investment of $158 billion over the next 10 years, with planned investments of over $20 billion in 2022 and 2023. Our plan fights gridlock, with improvements to trains, to subways and highways. We’re investing an historic $86.6 billion—let me repeat that: We are investing an historic $86.6 billion over 10 years to build and expand roads, highways and transit infrastructure right across the province, including Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass. Highway 413 will save drivers up to 30 minutes each way during rush hour on their commute, while supporting thousands of jobs each year.

Nous faisons un investissement historique de 86,6 milliards de dollars sur 10 ans dans des projets d’expansion et de réhabilitation de routes à l’échelle de la province, dont l’autoroute 413 et le contournement de Bradford. L’autoroute 413 permettra aux conducteurs d’économiser jusqu’à 30 minutes à l’heure de pointe, dans les deux sens, tout en soutenant des milliers d’emplois chaque année. D’accord?

And construction of Highway 413 is expected to support up to 3,500 jobs each year and generate up to $350 million in annual real GDP—I thought the associate minister would like that.

The Bradford Bypass is a new four-lane freeway connecting Highway 400 in Simcoe county and Highway 404 in York region. The Bradford Bypass will relieve pressure off of Highway 400 and existing local roads.

Interjection.

It’s an honour for me to rise today on behalf of the great residents of London North Centre to discuss Bill 2, the Plan to Build Act, for its third reading in this House.

Last time, I discussed some items that were good in the budget—I’m very much in support of moving WSIB to London—but today I would like to discuss some of the elements that are missing. It’s often been said that if we do the same thing again and again and expect different results, it’s the definition of madness. But also, in nature, the tree that is unyielding will eventually break, whereas the one that will move with the wind is the one that will thrive and persevere. This budget is an example of unyielding, of unchanging, of not learning the lessons over the past number of months.

You see, Speaker, we have a budget that was tabled in April that has not undergone significant modifications. We’ve seen the affordability crisis explode—inflation at 8.1%. We’ve seen ERs closing across the province. We’ve seen nurses walking away from their jobs, retiring in droves. And this government has not done enough to address that in this budget.

The budget, as well, is a statement of priorities. We discuss values often in financial terms, but a budget also includes a government’s values in terms of principles. In short, the budget is a statement of values as guiding principles; it is both an ethical and a moral document.

In this Legislature, we ought to enforce equity to ensure those who are pushed to the margins are heard, respected and strengthened. We have to affirm as a Legislature that those at the beginning of their lives and at the end of their lives, with some exceptions, need more support than the rest of us in between. We ought to ensure as well that every single dollar that is spent by this government achieves its intended result. If expenditures are ineffective or compromised by outside forces, we should similarly adjust our approach.

We have this opportunity to learn the lessons from COVID, and we have the benefit of retrospection and clarity to see what worked and see what did not. Seniors, children, those living with disabilities, social services and small businesses were all pushed to the brink. At the same time, we saw others profiting from these disastrous conditions. We have yet to see this government stand up to pandemic profiteering and do the right thing, do the honourable thing.

As I mentioned, inflation has hit a staggering 8.1%. In this budget, the government has 2.5%. It’s less than half the current level of inflation. It’s even been called wishful thinking by some. It’s delusional. It’s unresponsive. It’s unrealistic to our current fiscal climate.

Additionally, the budget’s $1-billion rainy day provision is far, far too low. That amount is just one half of 1% of the total spending. If there are going to be spending hiccups, overruns or any other difficult or problematic decisions, this government is going to be in grave difficulty. And I worry that it’s going to be an excuse for further privatization and further cuts to our public spending if this government doesn’t do the right thing.

Furthermore, we hear a lot about this ridiculous and unnecessary highway, Highway 413, which is going to benefit many wealthy developer friends of this government, but in this budget there is no detailed costing for it and other highway spending. It’s not itemized. That’s disturbing, Speaker.

As well, with inflation being as high as it is and not being addressed thoroughly by this government, it means working people and families have lost almost one tenth of their buying power. It could mean taking on more household debt to put food on the table. People are having to make difficult decisions. To actively combat this affordability crisis, the government could raise minimum wage. They could focus on ensuring good jobs have equally good pay.

In health care, we’ve seen that Ontario has 5,400 fewer nurses than one year ago. They could repeal Bill 124 and show some respect for our front-line heroes, who have worked tirelessly, made tremendous personal sacrifices, put their families at risk. Instead, we see them plowing forward with this cut to nurses’ wages, because 1% is a cut with inflation being at 8.1%.

We also do not have wage parity across sectors. The Victorian Order of Nurses cannot respond to the number of requests that they have for service, and part of that is a direct result of wage parity, because in the community care setting, PSWs earn $3.57 per hour less, whereas nurses earn $11 less per hour. That’s a gap that needs to be addressed by this government.

I also am deeply surprised that, in terms of seniors’ care, this government has not yet learned that—having profit off of someone’s ill health or someone’s old age is something that they’re content with. When we saw that the army came in and saw the conditions that they did, this government should have been incentivized to act to make sure seniors were treated with respect and dignity, but instead we see rewards going to the worst of the worst, multi-million-dollar contracts, 30-year contracts going to homes that do not deserve to care for yet more seniors. It is a moral horror and one that is on this government’s conscience. I wish they would listen to their conscience.

As well, when we look at young people, students do not have enough supports. We see that this government has frozen tuition, but they’ve cut from the university sector. We also need to see greater further mental health supports for students, as referenced by OUSA and Eunice Oladejo. Unfortunately, we don’t see enough investments in mental health, either for the province or for children. The two-and-a-half-year wait time for children for mental health supports is unconscionable and something that needs to be acted upon.

There’s so much to discuss in this budget. Ontarians with disabilities are hardly even mentioned. We take a look at this government and their investments in hospital infrastructure, but not in the people who support that infrastructure. There’s no mention of the AODA whatsoever. It doesn’t mention the goal or the fact that they’re not going to achieve it by 2025 as promised.

I see that I’m running rather low on time, Speaker, but I also wanted to mention something that the last Liberal government let southwestern Ontario down on for a number of years, and that would be rail connections to southwestern Ontario. It’s something that was promised, and we still have yet to see shovels in the ground.

This crisis that we have in health care and long-term care and privatization should be a wake-up call for us all that privatization steals money from the public purse. It siphons tax dollars into the pockets of insiders, and how Conservative governments can justify not spending the entire health care dollar on front-line care is beyond me. It goes against the fiscally prudent values which they claim to espouse. No one should profit off of someone’s ill health or old age.

I cannot accept this budget as written. It needs to be improved.

We ran on the budget.

When we’re talking about the budget, it’s a very large document that has a whole lot of stuff in it, and usually the government focuses on some of the key things that they want to talk about in it—and there’s a lot of good things in this one. We talk about eliminating the licence plate renewal fee. We talk about electric vehicles and our Critical Minerals Strategy. We talk about seniors’ tax credits so that they can stay at home. We talk about child care costs and reducing that for parents. We talk about some of the gaps that there are in education as a result of what’s happening with COVID—and there’s a lot of really good things in it. The Ontario Staycation Tax Credit—up to 20% for people who want to vacation here in Ontario; spend your money in Ontario, get the economy going. Those are all great things that we talk about in the budget, and the opposition focus on things that they want that may not be in it.

But, Speaker, there’s something that we don’t often talk about and it’s one of the tools that we, as MPPs, have. As members, all of us have the ability to introduce a private member’s bill. We can all craft some legislation that we would put forward, but you can’t have anything that commits government money in it. That’s not possible. But sometimes there are things that we, as members, are passionate about, that really got us here at Queen’s Park: things we’ve decided that we want to do, that we want to make better, and bills like the budget and the fall economic statement are ways that we, as members, can actually have influence on what the government does because we have the ability to go and lobby a minister.

I’m going to touch on a couple of things. Specifically for me, in my first year I was really active in our community with the special-needs community, involved with hockey, involved with baseball. A lot of the people I worked with helped me, and I said to them, “I’m going to do some things that are going to raise awareness, that are going to make a difference in your lives—small differences, but they make a difference.”

One of the things I was able to get in the first fall economic statement was Special Hockey International day. For those who don’t know, Special Hockey International is a hockey league designed specifically for those who have special needs. Ontario has hosted that tournament—it’s an international tournament—a number of times. And 2019 was the last time we hosted it in Ontario. Prior to that, it was 2016 and it was in Peterborough, and I was involved in it. I was able to convince the Minister of Finance at the time—again, I’m not allowed to say his actual name—that this was something good. It was something I was able to accomplish, just a small thing. It became part of the budget—actually, the fall economic statement.

I was appointed as special adviser to Ontario Parks at one point, and I did a great deal of work on a parks report. What came from that was two budget cycles later—just about everything that I had recommended was something that was implemented in our budget. It’s a way that we, as private members here representing our communities, can make that difference without having to be a minister, and it doesn’t have to be partisan. In fact, it’s not partisan in a lot of cases.

A story was relayed to me today by my good friend Jeremy Roberts, the former member from Ottawa West–Nepean. He talked about his time when he was working for the federal government, and how Jack Layton had this great idea and he went to Prime Minister Harper about it. He went to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty about it and pitched it, and they worked together across partisan lines.

Jack Layton’s idea was something that truly was not partisan: It was a way to help veterans turn their helmet into a hard hat. How could we get veterans who were leaving the armed forces into the skilled trades? How could we do something that would make it easier? That ended up being part of the budget; I believe it was 2011. A federal budget: a private member—opposition leader, actually—Jack Layton working with the finance minister to get something put in the budget that was completely non-partisan, that was in the best interests of not only the people Jack represented but the people every MP represented.

That’s a tool that we have in the tool box. We have that ability, then, to lobby the minister, to lobby the Premier, to work with the ministry to flesh out things that are going to make a positive difference.

We heard Jeremy’s story of why he got involved in politics, why he wanted to make a difference: Jeremy’s younger brother is on the autism spectrum, and there were some significant challenges that his family had gone through navigating the system and getting things done.

One story in particular—and I’m going to apologize to Jeremy, because I’m going to plagiarize a number of things that he has said and done. When his brother was 10—Jeremy was 14 at the time—they had gone into CHEO hospital, and there were some issues around behavioural outbursts with his brother. That’s not uncommon when you’re on the spectrum. When you’re far on the spectrum, it’s not uncommon for something like that to occur. They were working with the children’s hospital and, as Jeremy has relayed the story, they were talking to the doctor about it. He wanted to change the medicine, but they needed to speak to a neurologist, as well, to find out how that would affect Jeremy’s brother and whether or not this was actually something that was going to be good and have the desired effect. But they couldn’t talk to the neurologist right at that point, because that’s not how the system worked. At 14, Jeremy was dumbfounded by this and said, “He’s only three floors above. Why can’t we get together in the same room? Why can’t we have the same meeting?” The answer was, “Because that’s not how the system works.”

He was a very strong advocate for the autism community. The reason he got involved in politics was because of that: to try to make life better.

On page 128 of the budget—I just have to bring my laptop back up here so that I get the quote appropriately. On page 128 of the budget, there’s a line in there. It reads, “An example of a children’s health investment is $97 million over three years to improve the experiences and lifelong outcomes for more than 1,100 children and youth with complex special needs at Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario”—CHEO—“Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital and McMaster Children’s Hospital. Funding will support a pilot project for an integrated model to provide key health and social services, including hospital‐based assessments, access to interdisciplinary clinical teams, medical care and behaviour therapy.”

What it is, is a long way of saying, “We’re going to make it easier for those families.” We recognize that when there’s a child with a special need, that there are multiple diagnoses, there are multiple people you need to be working with. The way the system is right now, you are going to be working with multiple different divisions within the hospital.

I’m going to pivot a little bit to a personal experience. It’s been well documented that my daughter had cancer when she was four. We saw the nephrologist. We saw the oncologist. We saw a psychologist. We saw a urologist. And after treatment was over, we still had to see all of those individuals. It was about once a month that we saw them—four different departments in the hospital—and it meant we were coming up once a week, because there was no coordination of it. There was no way that we could get all of those different departments together.

You go through a traumatic experience, and the way our system was set up—fantastic medical support, absolutely the best. My daughter is alive today because of our health care system. There’s no question in my mind about that. We have, by far, the best medical professionals in the entire world, but the system is not designed to be focused around the patient, to be focused around the child or the family.

If you have a child with a special need, it’s not uncommon to have multiple different diagnoses, and everything is based on that diagnosis. The supports that are there are based on this diagnosis or that diagnosis, but there isn’t a system in place where they’re put together, where they work together for the needs of the child, the needs of the parents, the needs of the family.

This small paragraph—I’ll read it again, because I think it’s so important: “An example of children’s health investment is $97 million over three years to improve the experiences and lifelong outcomes for more than 1,100 children and youth with complex special needs at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital and McMaster’s Children’s Hospital. Funding will support a pilot project for an integrated model to provide key health and social services, including hospital-based assessments, access to interdisciplinary clinical teams, medical care and behaviour therapy.”

For many parents across the province whose children are diagnosed with special needs, they’re shocked to learn that clinical therapies for the children are often not fully funded and, unlike other medical issues, special needs treatments are often funded through a web of social services and health care. It’s a challenge to navigate and access it.

This is a pilot project to show that we need to be focusing on the needs of those families and those kids. What we have said all throughout government, for the last four years that we were elected, is that we need to break down those silos. We need to make sure that things that are inter-ministerial are actually breaking down those silos. This is one of those prime examples, because you have the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services, who looks after most of the funding for special needs, but there are health care components to it. What this pilot is doing is putting the Ministry of Health together with the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services, and they’re working closely together and they’re jointly funding a project that, in the grand scheme of things—and I never, ever thought in my life I would ever say this: $97 million isn’t really a whole lot of money for a government. I never thought I would ever say $97 million isn’t a whole lot of money. It’s a $190-billion budget; $97 million is not a whole lot when you look at it from that perspective. But it’s going to make such a positive difference for so many different families.

The only reason it’s in the budget is because a former member decided to put his name forward, because of his personal experiences with how the system worked. That member had the tenacity to not accept “no.” He knew what the problem was. He had the lived experience with it. He saw how the system wasn’t working properly.

All of us, as members, find times where we feel like we’re beating our head against the wall talking to the bureaucrats on different things, because a government of this size with a budget of that much money doesn’t turn on a dime. It’s a massive, massive shift, and the way things are done. We hear that a lot when we introduce things.

I’m going to use one of our catch phrases, and the NDP is going to boo me for it and harass me and heckle me on it: Status quo doesn’t work anymore. You can’t just accept status quo. Jeremy Roberts didn’t accept status quo. He had an idea. It was the right idea. The idea was, focus on what the needs are of the families; focus on what the needs are of the kids.

How do we make it easier to get a better outcome? The system is the system. We’re not changing families. We’re not changing what’s happening that creates the environment of whatever it is. We can’t do that. But what we can do is, we can change the system. We can make it easier for families to navigate. Because when you find yourself in those positions—whether it is a special need, whether it’s a family illness, whether it’s some diagnosis that you don’t know anything about—your focus is on, “How do I deal with this? How do I help my child? How do I help my brother or sister?” That’s where your focus is.

This is one of those times where a private member has been able to get into a budget a pilot project that says, “How do we focus on the needs of that family? How do we focus on what is going to give the best outcomes for that child?”

In the grand scheme of things, it’s $97 million of a $190-billion budget. It’s a small victory. It’s not a victory for us. It’s that small victory for all of those families who have had to navigate the system, for all of those families who have found themselves in the position where their child, at two or three years old, was diagnosed with something that was outside of the norm of 80% of the rest of the population. It’s a change to the system for the better. It’s a small change, but the expression is, how do you eat an elephant at a barbecue? You do it one bite at a time. Government systems are a massive, massive thing. It’s very difficult to change the direction. It’s very difficult to make an adjustment. The system wants to continue with status quo.

But a private member, a member elected by his community who wasn’t a minister, said, “Status quo is not acceptable. This needs to change. We need to focus instead on the needs of the families, the needs of the children, the needs of everybody who is coming through the system.” We can make that change. It’s a small change, but it’s a change that is going to make a difference for every one of them.

By doing it as a pilot, it makes it small enough and nimble enough that we can try different things. We can see what’s going to work. We can see that maybe there’s going to be some challenges with it; maybe there are some things that aren’t going to work perfectly. By rolling it out by a pilot this way, we can do things to get it right. Because that’s why all of us have been elected, to make that positive difference for so many families.

I want to make sure that it is on record that my friend Jeremy Roberts stepped up and made a positive difference for all of these families. He made a change to the system that will benefit everybody, and deserves the credit for it.

I’m Jessica Bell, the MPP for University–Rosedale, and I rise today to speak about the government’s budget. A budget is not just about numbers; it’s a moral document because it affects our lives. It tells us who the government cares about and who they don’t. Here are a few things I noticed when I read through the government’s budget and how it affects the University–Rosedale community.

Number one: Education funding falls short. I recently looked at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ analysis of education funding and the state of education funding in Ontario, and the reason why I had to go to an outside source is because the government does not provide a clear indication of how they’re spending their money and when they’re spending their money. So we have to go to outside sources and our Financial Accountability Officer to get that data. Their assessment is that, over the past five years, the amount of funding that now goes to each student has dropped by $800 a student when you factor in inflation and enrolment. They looked at how much that affects each school, and they calculated that the average high school has lost $600,000 in funding over the last five years. This budget is part of that process.

It’s a reason why there is not going to be enough funding to hire enough education workers to help kids catch up and grapple with the learning loss that they face because of the pandemic. There’s not going to be enough funding for the community nurses and the mental health professionals and the social workers to help kids who are struggling, who need extra support. There’s not going to be enough funding to hire education workers and teachers in order to decrease class sizes to ensure that our kids get additional time with a teacher to help them learn how to read and write and excel at math.

It is a tragedy that we are not investing more in our public education system, because it is good for our kids, it’s good for our future, it’s good for women and parents in particular, and in the long term, it’s good for our economy.

I also notice—number two in this budget—the issue with health care funding. This government loves to talk a good game about how much funding they’re putting into health care and how many nurses are supposedly going into the system, but the reality is, in my riding of University–Rosedale we have critical care units at Toronto Western who cannot take new patients at certain times because they have staffing shortages. We have issues at SickKids, where they have a shortage of 15%. They’re short 15% of staff, and they’re short funding. And this is the pre-eminent hospital for children in Canada. We have issues where Toronto Western’s emergency room was at risk of closure—the MPP for Davenport raised this issue in the Legislature—because there wasn’t enough staff. That’s unbelievable that that is happening.

Number three, what I noticed in this budget: I deeply care about our response to climate change and how we can adapt and mitigate to climate change. There’s nothing in this budget that will seriously address the climate crisis that we face. There are no significant funding programs for energy efficiency, for building resilient cities, for funding transit operations so that we can improve the service and lower fares on the thousands of transit routes that operate across Ontario today. There is nothing in there.

There is funding for future transit projects, that will one day—2030, 2032—be built. But there’s also a huge amount of funding for highway projects that we just don’t need. Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass will not save commuters time, and they will cost upwards of $10 billion. That money should be invested into our health care system, into our education system, and it should be invested into climate change programs so we can adapt to the crisis that we are facing.

There are many other issues that I see with this budget. The minimum wage is not going up fast enough. It should being $20 an hour, because $15.50—with inflation at 7%, with rent at the rate that it is today—is not enough. It’s not enough to live on. And the social assistance rate increase of 5% is really an insult to the people in this province who are living on Ontario Works and Ontario disability. It is locking them into poverty, when they should be helped, not hurt.

I urge this government to do more for the people of Ontario and bring forward a budget that invests in education, in health care, in mitigating climate change, in investing in public infrastructure and to helping people who are struggling get a leg up.

It’s an honour to rise today to participate in the debate on budget Bill 2.

Speaker, budgets are about priorities. They define who we are and who we want to be. And yes, I want to build in Ontario, but we have to build in a way that is strategic, sustainable and responsible, and this budget fails to meet the moment that we’re in, in achieving those criteria.

I’m going to focus in my limited time on three critical areas. The first is health care. The government talks a lot about building hospitals and long-term-care homes. Yes, I want those. Yes, we need a new hospital in Guelph and in many other communities. The bottom line is: If you don’t invest in the people who are going to run those hospitals and care for the patients who access those hospitals, they will not provide the care we need.

I wanted to see a budget—I believe the people of Ontario wanted to see a budget—that repealed Bill 124 and said nurses and front-line health care heroes can negotiate fair wages, fair benefits and better working conditions, that we could have fast-tracked internationally trained health care providers to address the chronic health human resource crisis we’re facing across our health care system. We could have invested in the 28,000 young people who are on a mental health wait-list right now that averages 18 months. Imagine: Imagine not being able to access care for your child for 18 months.

Secondly, investing in people is also about addressing poverty and housing in ways that take pressure off our health care system. We are forcing people in this province to live in legislated poverty if they’re on social assistance. Doubling social assistance rates would be the right thing to do, to bring them up at least to the poverty line, and it would help save Ontario $33 billion a year, which is what poverty costs this province.

Finally, Speaker, the biggest crisis of our generation is the climate emergency, and I don’t understand how a government, in the face of the fires we see, the flooding we see—the fact that just in the month of May, when we had an election campaign, we had people in northwestern Ontario being evacuated from their communities because of flooding. We had a storm that hit eastern Ontario which forced people to go two weeks without power, and we were already having extreme heat days.

As a matter of fact, a report just came out two days ago saying that the climate crisis is going to cost us, from an infrastructure standpoint, $139 billion over the next two decades. And yet, this budget proposes to spend $25 billion paving over the farmland that feeds us, the wetlands that protect us from flooding—protect us from flooding at no cost. We simply cannot afford in this province to continue to pave over the farmland that feeds us and the nature that protects us, if we have any hope of mitigating the costs of the climate crisis and leaving a livable, sustainable future for our children and grandchildren. That’s why I will be voting against this budget.

Thank you, Speaker. I, too, would have liked to see things in the budget that are not there. The first thing is in my riding. In Foleyet, they are at risk of losing their ambulance services because the district services board doesn’t have enough money to maintain an ambulance service to a community that is an hour away from the next town, whether it be Chapleau or Timmins. How could you fathom that in Ontario there would be a community an hour away from the nearest hospital without ambulance service there? This is what’s about to happen in Foleyet if the district services board does not get an increase to their budget. But it’s not in the budget.

How could it be that in Gogama, tomorrow, on September 1, there’s a chance that their—well, there’s not “a chance;” Their nursing station won’t have a full-time nurse practitioner, won’t have a collaborative physician. The good people of Gogama won’t have a nursing station anymore. They have had a nursing station for decades. This is how they access the health care system.

Do we see in the budget money to improve people getting access to health care through nursing stations? Absolutely not. But what we do see are things to help the for-profits, whether it be for-profit home care or for-profit long-term care.

I just had the courage to read the Sienna Senior Living report—their second quarter for 2022. I am happy—no, I’m not happy to report at all that they made $354 million in the first six months. That’s $180 million in the last three months out of their long-term-care portfolio alone. That’s $2 million in profit. That would be 110,000 hours of care more if that money had gone to care rather than going to their shareholders. But no, they’re happy to report that their revenue increased by 10.7% to $180.2 million for Q2.

Also interesting is that they issued this on August 11, and they already knew that the bill to force people into the long-term-care home that they didn’t want was going to come. Not only did they know this, but they used it in their financial statement to say, “Don’t worry, although we are only at 88.5% average total occupancy in our long-term-care homes, we know that we will be at full occupancy to get the full amount of money, because we were made whole during the pandemic.” Although they’re supposed to have 97% occupancy to get full dollars, they were made whole. Now that the government is stopping this on October 1, they told their shareholders, “Do not worry, we will continue to be full; although we’re only at 88.5%, we will be at 97%,” because they already knew that the government was going to pass a bill that would force people to go into a long-term-care home that is not of their choosing. So that they could maintain, or even increase—rather than making $60 million a month, maybe they could make $65 million a month on the back of frail, elderly people who do not get the care they need in those long-term-care homes.

I could go on and on, Speaker. But the fact is that we will be voting against this budget because we want care to be based on needs. We want the taxpayers’ money to go towards the care, not the shareholders who make hundreds of millions of dollars, who are willing—it’s on the website, so anybody can go and see it. Sienna Living: Type it up and you will see they’re very proud of the $354 million that they made in the first six months. The $180 million—$151 million that they made in the last three months out of our long-term-care homes. I am not proud of that, Speaker. Not at all. And forcing people to go into those long-term-care homes so that they can continue to make millions of dollars is wrong.

I’ll be voting down that budget.