It’s always an honour to rise and today to participate in the debate in responding to the speech from the throne. Before I get into the meat of my remarks, I just want to once again take an opportunity—I know I’ve privately congratulated most of you, if not all of you, on your election. I just want to publicly congratulate every MPP in this House on your election.

I want to take a moment to thank the people who supported me to be here for a second term. I especially want to thank my family: my wife, Sandy; my daughters, Isabelle and Beata; as well as my parents, my mom and my late father, Ron. I grew up on a farm, and both of them gave me the values that have led me to be here today.

Most of all, I want to thank the people of Guelph who have had the confidence in me, the trust in me, to send me back to this House for a second term. I will work hard to be your voice, I will work hard to deliver solutions for our community and I will work hard to be the best MPP I can be.

Speaker, Guelph is a caring, politically engaged and entrepreneurially oriented community. I can tell you, first-hand, as someone who started two food-related businesses in and around Guelph, that’s why food and farming and the protection of farmland will always be a top priority for me in this Legislature.

I asked my constituents, and I asked people across the province what kind of Guelph, what kind of Ontario you want us to build. People said affordable, caring, connected and climate-ready communities. So I’m here in this House as an opposition member to hold government accountable and to work across party lines to deliver the solutions for the kind of Guelph and the kind of Ontario people want.

I think there are four key issues that lack the urgency of the moment in the throne speech that I want to bring forward today. The first is addressing the health care crisis. It’s been interesting to see the evolution of the government’s speaking points on this too: “there is no crisis,” to the actual words in the throne speech, “it’s going to be very complicated to address it,” to subsequently saying that we need to explore privatization.

I think we need to increase investment in publicly funded, publicly delivered health care, and drive innovation through a publicly delivered system. That starts by investing in the people who deliver care, by repealing Bill 124 and allowing front-line health care workers to negotiate fair wages, fair benefits and better working conditions. It’s about fast-tracking the accreditation of internationally trained health care workers. It’s about spending the budget you’ve actually allocated for health care and doing it strategically by investing in primary health care, expanding access to mental health care and home and community care, and addressing the social and environmental determinants of health, which I’ll elaborate on more in my remarks.

Secondly, on education: We need a firm commitment that students will have stability in their educational year this year and that we’ll hire the staff we need to deliver the education our students need in our schools.

Speaker, on social supports: Poverty costs this province $33 billion a year. The government has an opportunity to double social assistance rates so that people on disabilities no longer live in legislated poverty. It will take stress off of our health care system and it will strengthen our communities.

On housing: The government has an opportunity to follow recommendations that the opposition has been putting forward and that their own housing task force has recommended, things like ending exclusionary zoning so we can rapidly build homes in our existing communities without paving over the farmland that feeds us and the nature that protects us; and investing in permanent supportive and deeply affordable housing, so that everyone in our communities has an affordable place to call home.

Finally, on the climate crisis: I did not even hear the words “climate change” in the throne speech. This is the biggest crisis our generation has ever faced. Scientists are clear that if emissions don’t peak in 2025, we will unleash irreversible climate catastrophes. We’re already feeling it: the floods, the droughts, the extreme heat. The bottom line is, we can solve this crisis while also addressing people’s affordability concerns—lowering their transportation costs by electrifying, lowering their home heating bills by investing in retrofitting homes and buildings to help people save money by saving energy, and investing in nature-based solutions, saying, “We’re not going to build billion-dollar highways, but we’re actually going to protect the farmland that feeds us and the wetlands that protect us.” Those are the issues I wanted to hear—