I appreciate the question from the member from Humber River–Black Creek. This is actually something I’ve been able to apply throughout my career. I haven’t always practised as an engineer. Within the city of Windsor, I’ve worked in the mayor’s office or in the CO’s office. I’ve done traffic. I’ve done land development.

So at the end of the day, what’s of value is the problem-solving skills. You are given a set of constraints and you figure out a solution that fits within those constraints. You don’t use ideology; you look at, on balance, what is best. There’s never really a perfect solution, but you evaluate the options, and ultimately when we debate policy, that is entirely what we’re doing in this House. We consider the options, we consider the consequences and we cast a vote based on our feeling of what’s the best balance. That is the approach that I’ve always engaged in, and I’m looking forward to applying it.

This government’s commitment to redeveloping and developing the new regional acute care hospital on County Road 42 was a game-changer, and it’s why I’m here today. I have to see that come to fruition for the betterment of our community. I’m delighted that the government supports that direction.

Question?

Thank you, member for Don Valley West, for your fascinating story.

I’m going to ask you a lighter question than that. You met Gordon Lightfoot, an iconic Canadian legend. I’m sure we all can start with, I don’t know, Sundown, the railway trilogy, Edmund Fitzgerald—so fantastic and such a fascinating Canadian. Can you tell us about that experience, meeting him?

Thank you for the question. I think that the first few weeks, as all of us know who are new—it’s a learning experience every day, although I’ve been assured by my colleague that she continues to learn, two years into this, so I expect that that will be the case. It has been exciting. It has been interesting. It’s been a pleasure to meet with my constituents and different business leaders in the community who are reaching out and just introducing themselves. They might not even have a particular issue. They just want to say hello, to wish me well and, if there’s anything they can help with, to extend that hand. That’s really been appreciated.

I think about debates and I think about how we can be at one end of a spectrum and another end of a spectrum. I recall being in a meeting not too long ago where, after hearing one side of the debate, I thought, “Oh, that makes sense.” I then heard the other and thought, “Oh, that makes sense too.” Really, it was just highlighting a risk of that first person’s view, and we landed somewhere in the middle. I wish we could do more of that here. I would like to see us do more of that here, where we listen to the views of all the people who want to contribute and end up with a solution that is better for all.

Dennis’s birthday was just this week, so it’s a little hard for our family. But let me just say, as I said, that he was committed to his work and to his patients. We’ve had the pleasure of meeting so many of them, following his death. Again, they reached out. It’s been five years, but it feels like yesterday.

I think that when we see people dedicate their life to service, that is always inspiring, so Dennis was always inspiring to all of us. I said at his funeral that he was the best of the four of us. He got the best of all of us.

I’m sorry that I’m a little emotional here to talk about this.

I think that another connection we have here is that on the day he died, he was paddleboarding. He loved to paddleboard. He loved the outdoors, as I said. Sadly, he drowned. We have some questions about exactly what happened. But I think about his life of service when I’m here and I think about the doctors who are here, who have taken their place in this House. I think about Dr. Eric Hoskins. He happened to be at the hospital where Dennis worked in Orillia the day after Dennis died, so he commented on that.

The last time that someone says his name—that will be a long time from now, because he was a wonderful doctor, a wonderful brother and a wonderful son.

Davenport.

I want to thank the member from Don Valley West for those comments. It was really a pleasure to hear more about your own personal history and to be introduced to some of your family and supporters. I know how much it means. I remember back not that many years ago, four years ago, to my inaugural address and how much it meant to have those people who I care for around me.

You’ve had such interesting experience in life and professionally, and I wondered if you wouldn’t mind reflecting on what these last few weeks have been like for you. Was this what you expected? What would you like to see change? What are you hoping to achieve here in this chamber over the next few years?

Thank you for your comments. It’s certainly clear from hearing your words that your brother meant a lot to you. That loss and your reflection on it is obviously playing into your decision to be here today.

My favourite author, Terry Pratchett, said that no one is truly gone until the ripples they left in the world die away. I would certainly appreciate it if you were able to tell us a little more about your experiences or memories of your brother and immortalize his name in the Hansard for us.

Questions? It’s time for questions.

Member from—

I want to congratulate the member from Don Valley West on her election, and thank her for sharing her stories, for the beautiful inaugural speech.

I know that you shared about your family, who is here today—welcome to the House—as well as you shared about your volunteers and the contributions that they have made. We have some of our volunteers from Scarborough here today as well, and I know that they’re the pillars of a campaign, of a movement that you create. Regardless of party line, they really inspire you. You also talked about diversity and the first time you came to Queen’s Park, seeing Nelson Mandela.

I guess my question would be, in terms of the ratio that that you told us about the amount of women that we have, I feel like an imposter sometimes. When I walk through the doors here—it’s been almost five years now—I still feel that at times. What are some of the things that you want to do to inspire more women to run for public office, and some of the things you want to do for diversity?

You know, it’s been really pleasant in here this afternoon. It was wonderful to listen to the inaugural speeches from the member from Don Valley West and the member from Windsor–Tecumseh, and I appreciate the tone of cordiality and collegiality in the House this afternoon. In keeping with that, I’m going to use a tone and I’m going to make a plea, particularly to the government members but to all of the MPPs in this House, and I’m going to ask you to support a call to double ODSP rates.

In keeping with the throne speech, the speech from the throne is entitled “Together, Let’s Build Ontario.” It says, on the second page, “Because now is the time for unity.

“A unity of people. A unity of purpose.”

That has to include Ontarians with disabilities. And this is an issue that I feel very strongly about, in part because of the education I’ve received over the last two and a half years during the pandemic. A friend and I started a food program; it now feeds 1,500 people a week. So almost every week for the last two and a half years, I’ve been delivering meals to people experiencing homelessness, and I’ve gotten to know many, and I’ve also known many who have died. This is the challenge with our ODSP rates. Our ODSP rates are literally killing people in Ontario.

CTV reported a few months ago about a woman named Denise. She’s 31 years old, she uses a wheelchair and has multiple chemical sensitivities. She applied for MAID, which is medical assistance in dying, essentially because of “abject poverty.” She cannot afford a wheelchair-accessible apartment with cleaner air that is safe for her illness. And they had also reported on another woman named Sophia, who also had a disability, and she opted for medically assisted death last February because she could not find housing that could accommodate her disability.

Earlier this week, my colleague from Ottawa West–Nepean spoke about two other people, Ontarians with disabilities, who are choosing medical assistance in dying because they cannot afford adequate housing; they cannot afford to live with their disability with the current ODSP rates. And last week, I had a conversation with a gentleman who is also in that process of applying for MAID because he cannot afford it. So the ODSP rates are literally driving people to seek to die because they cannot survive on the $1,169 a month.

And it’s not just this medical assistance in dying. ODSP rates are also driving people into homelessness, and the number of people who are homeless is increasing. It’s growing. It’s doubled over the last four years.

The Center for Justice and Social Compassion estimates that almost half of the Ontarians who are homeless have a disability, either a physical disability, an intellectual disability, a mental illness or an addiction. Based on my experience of delivering meals to people, I would say that’s probably accurate: About half of the people who are chronically homeless have a disability of some type. Toronto Public Health keeps track of the numbers. In 2018, 94 people died who were experiencing homelessness in the city of Toronto. I couldn’t find Ontario-wide numbers, but in the city of Toronto, it was 94. In 2021, it was 216. So in the term of office that we were here—this government was here between 2018 and last year—the number of people experiencing homelessness in the city of Toronto more than doubled. That’s a legacy of this House, of the decisions that are made here, and we have a chance to change that.

The challenge is that, relative to inflation, ODSP rates are 30% lower than they were 30 years ago. I’ll talk a little bit about Ontario Works recipients, as well. They are suffering even more. Their rate is $733 a month. People in Ontario are supposed to somehow survive on $733 a month. It just can’t be done. There’s no way. You cannot rent a room for $700 in Ontario anymore. We need to drastically increase this.

For Ontario Works and ODSP, the amount is calculated based on two calculations. One is for shelter and the other is for basic needs. The shelter amount for Ontario Works is $413 a month. So we give people on Ontario Works $413 a month and that’s supposed to find them shelter. We give people on ODSP $497 a month and they’re supposed to find shelter. It just can’t be done. Even with the increase—and I know the government’s promised to increase ODSP rates by 5%. That will bring it to $522 a month. You cannot—I’ve looked and I’ve been talking with people—rent a room anywhere in Ontario for $522 a month. So that increase is going to leave people on ODSP and Ontarians with disabilities continuing to be homeless.

That’s something we can change, and we can change it now. Part of the reason I’m bringing this up because the budget bill actually has that increase in ODSP of 5%, and we can change that. We can ask for a doubling of that ODSP.

The other thing about the 5% that should be pointed out is that it’s in addition to a 1.5% increase that this government made in 2018. So that’s a total of 6.5% increase over the last four years. Inflation over the last four years is 12%, so it’s actually a 5.5% cut by this government to ODSP over the last four years. People were living in destitution four years ago, Ontarians with disabilities were living in destitution—it’s even gotten worse. And this is why people are seeking medical assistance in dying. This is why so many people are homeless and why so many people who are homeless are also dying. So it’s something that can be changed.

I’ve been looking for how do we actually calculate this and what the rate should be. Statistics Canada calculates the very fundamental basic housing unit as a shared two-bedroom apartment. So how much is half of a two-bedroom apartment? The average cost in major cities in Ontario is $2,236 a month. That’s what Statistics Canada says. Half of that is $1,118 a month. That’s what Statistics Canada says is the minimum residence allowance that people need—not for a fancy apartment, not for anything fancy; just to share a two-bedroom apartment. The $497 that’s currently allocated and the $522 that it’s going to increase to—it’s less than half of what people actually need in order to have a place to live.

I’ll give you an example of a gentleman I met, Darrel MacDonald. He has got a disability. He currently lives in a one-bedroom basement apartment, and it costs $1,250 a month. He rents out the living room to another person, so he’s sharing a one-bedroom basement apartment. The landlord is selling the building, so he’s looking for a new place. He knows he’s going to have to move. He’s been phoning around. He lives in Toronto currently. He phoned Niagara, because he saw a room advertised for $500 a month. He phones the guy and when he’s talking to the landlord, it turns out it’s not $500 a month for the room; it’s $500 a month for half of the room and you share it with somebody else. You cannot find a room in the province of Ontario for the $522 that we’re going to be voting on, that this government is going to be voting on to allow for people with disabilities. We absolutely have a moral obligation to make that change.

The other portion of Ontario Works and ODSP: There’s the residence amount and then there’s the basic needs amount. In 1995, Ontario Works was cut by a Conservative government by 21.6%. The minister at the time, David Tsubouchi, argued that people could survive on the welfare diet. The welfare diet consisted of dented cans of tuna and pasta with no sauce or salt or other condiments. The welfare diet wasn’t healthy and it wasn’t really affordable. But since then, the cost of food has increased by 100%, and the basic needs amount of Ontario Works has increased by only 41%. So people today who are on Ontario Works or ODSP cannot even afford half of the welfare diet that was not a healthy diet 25 years ago.

This is why I’m making this argument, that we need to—I will just make a little aside here. Before becoming an MPP, I was a trustee in the Toronto District School Board. There were 22 of us representing all parts of the city. Most of us were party-aligned but not strictly party-aligned, because we didn’t have to be, and some people were not party-aligned. At our monthly meetings, we would have 15 votes or maybe 20 votes. Every vote was a different configuration of voters, because we were all voting according to what we thought would be best for the students in the city of Toronto. I lost some votes that were important to me, but I would say, overall, we actually did the best that we could for the students in the city of Toronto.

I would love to see that kind of collegiality, that kind of co-operation in this House. I would love to see us actually get together and say, “Hey, people with disabilities are going to be a priority over the next four years,” not just for the government side but for all of us in this House, the 124 members in this House, that we are going to make them a priority and we’re going to double ODSP rates because we don’t want people choosing to die because they can’t survive on ODSP rates. We don’t want people driven into homelessness because they can’t survive on ODSP rates.

I’m going back to Statistics Canada: The current amount for basic needs for ODSP is $672 a month. The basic needs amount that Statistics Canada calculates is $1,200 a month. When you add that up, Statistics Canada is saying that if you want to rent one bedroom in a two-bedroom apartment, you need $1,118. If you want to have enough money for food, transportation and clothing and other basic needs, you need $1,200 a month. Statistics Canada says the bare minimum that somebody can survive on in the province of Ontario is $2,300 a month. That’s why I’m calling for this doubling of ODSP.

Let me give you one other example, too. Andrea Hatalal is a person in Ontario with a disability. She’s a passionate advocate for people with disabilities. She lives in an apartment. She gets her $1,167 and she gets a $250 nutrition supplement. Her rent is $1,100 a month, so that gives her $300 a month to survive on. She survives by using food banks. Any time there’s a free meal anywhere—that’s how she survives. That’s how she gets the food that she needs, and she’s constantly struggling. It’s not just her. She’s actually one of the ones who’s housed. At least she has housing. Some 8,000 Ontarians with disabilities don’t even have housing.

I’ll give you one other example. A gentleman I met a couple of months ago, Pat Gallagher, used to be a roofer. He was a roofer for 25 years and he’s given me permission to share his story. He fell off a roof and was badly injured. He was prescribed OxyContin to manage the pain. He developed an addiction. He hasn’t been able to overcome the addiction. He’s wanting to go into detox, but he can’t get into a detox bed. So he’s been homeless for the last three years. Last February, while he was homeless, his feet were badly frostbitten and his toes were amputated. He had hope of going back to the roofing business, overcoming his addiction, getting his life together and going back into the roofing business. I don’t know that he can without the portions of his feet that were amputated.

The thing I’ve learned in delivering meals to people experiencing homelessness is that homelessness is a constant series of crises. It just keeps compounding the problems. I went to one encampment to deliver meals last winter, and in the one area where I was delivering, there was a couple whose tent had burned down and it destroyed everything. Thank God they were okay. Another gentleman—and this is a different gentleman—had been taken to the hospital because he had suffered frostbite. The other gentleman had had an overdose and was in the hospital. Homelessness is an absolute nightmare for the people experiencing it. It’s also terrible for the communities because in the communities we do not have the resources to provide people with what they need. What they really need is housing. In order to get housing, we need to double Ontario Works and we need to double ODSP.

I made the Statistics Canada argument for doubling ODSP. There are two other government agencies that also argue that the basic amount that people need to survive in this province is well over $2,000. CERB was set at $2,000, and CERB was set to provide people enough to get by through the pandemic.

There’s one other calculation, and this is from the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy. This is a federal agency—some of you are nodding, because you know—and it implements the bankruptcy and insolvency rate. They had a table: When a person goes bankrupt, they are allowed to keep a certain portion of their income in order to survive while they start to pay off their debt. Beyond that, they start to pay off their debt. That basic amount that they calculate at the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy is $2,355 a month. That’s what they figure is the basic amount that people need in order to survive, so that they can start paying off their debt. And then, when they make more than that amount, a portion of it goes back to paying off the debt.

The design of the system is to be restorative rather than punitive. Somebody has gone bankrupt, and the idea is to help them get out of bankruptcy, pay off their debts and get back on with their lives. I would argue that the system that we have—the Ontario Works and ODSP systems that we have in Ontario—are actually punitive rather than restorative, because when you are trying to tell somebody that you have to survive on $732 a month or $1,169 a month, that’s punitive. You are telling them, “You’re going to be living in a constant state of crisis, just trying to find a place to live, some place to rest your head at night and enough food that your stomach isn’t constantly hungry.”

Ontarians with disabilities are going to continue to struggle and they’re going to continue to die until we actually increase Ontario Works and ODSP rates to a rate that will actually allow people to get on with their lives, to live decent lives, to have shelter, to have the food, clothing and transportation that they need to live and get on with their lives, so that they can actually restore some of their lives.

I’m almost out of time, but the member from Don Valley West was talking about a life of service, and all of us here are serving our communities. We all have a dedication to service in some way. I think we all are also thinking about the legacy that we’re going to leave behind here. I would really love the legacy of this Parliament to be the doubling of ODSP rates and OW rates, so that we don’t have people living in absolute destitution and in a constant state of crisis. It is possible.

I know that’s not the government’s direction right now, but especially the caucus members from the Conservative Party, you, in caucus, have a voice. You have an opportunity. You can speak up in your caucus and say, “Look, we have a moral obligation as Ontarians to support Ontarians with disabilities by doubling ODSP rates,” and I’d ask that you do that. That’s my plea to you, because I don’t want to continue seeing people dying all the time on the streets in this province, and it’s something this Legislature has the power to fix. So that’s my plea to you.

Question?

I want to thank the member for her great, great speech. I was looking over her biography, and I noticed she did a lot of great volunteer work, especially through women’s organizations. As she knows, we’re all so very ambitious to try to get more women into the workforce, to try to break down some of those barriers. So I wanted to ask her, with her great experience on many of those volunteer organizations and boards, what she’s learned with that and how she wishes to progress those types of ideas and policies here.

I want to thank the member for Spadina–Fort York for your comments. I really appreciate that you took this opportunity to speak specifically about ODSP and OW and the doubling of ODSP rates. And I want to thank you for taking me out with you on food deliveries during the pandemic. Actually, I’m sure you would be pleased to have others join you at some point. I think we met some of the folks that you mentioned.

But I wanted to mention one other thing: My experience in working with people in my community who are on ODSP is that the other piece of this is that ODSP is punitive, as you pointed out, but also how often ODSP is clawed back and, in many cases, quite arbitrarily, and how often people who are on ODSP have to fight and fight and fight, and how few of the case workers can stick around for more than a year because they can’t handle the pressure and how depressing it is to be constantly clawing back on people’s already meagre payments.

I wonder if the member would care to comment on that and also whether this 5% really—what that’s actually going to look like in terms of impact on the lives of the people he was mentioning.

Thank you to the member from Spadina–Fort York for your passionate speech. I know you always stand up for the marginalized and vulnerable people in your community and the province. You talked about food programs—you started a food program for needy people in the areas in your riding, and also you were talking about ODSP. I know you bring a different perspective to this House.

My question, through you, Madam Speaker, to the member: Could you please elaborate on your food program? You’re known as a food man in your area. Please elaborate on that program for the benefit of this House.

Questions and answers?

I thank the member opposite for his considered remarks and for his significant work in the community. I know you asked a question to me this morning about homelessness.

I wanted to ask you, though—and as you’ve heard on the issue of ODSP, firstly, the increase that has been proposed is very important, and linking it to inflation as well is very important. But as the Minister of Children, Community and Social Services has also offered, there are many other programs that I understand typically are offered to, potentially, ODSP recipients as well.

My question to the member is: Is that your experience? Because as we as a government look at this, we can’t only look at one program in isolation, but look at all the other programs combined. I’m curious to hear your thoughts, member.

I would like to express my thanks to my colleague the member for Spadina–Fort York for his passionate address this afternoon, but also for his advocacy and his commitment to putting words into action, which he has shown by his efforts.

But I wondered if he could comment on—there was a 2019 report from Feed Ontario that estimated the cost of poverty in Ontario is somewhere between $27 billion a year and $33 billion a year. They looked at the loss of tax revenue and the increased cost to the health system, the justice system. I wondered if the member could comment on the cost of poverty.

Thank you for the question. The food program began at the beginning of the pandemic. I got a call about a supportive housing building in my area. The people in the building, a lot of them, have disabilities. Many of them have disabilities. They weren’t allowed to go out, because they were medically vulnerable, and so they were getting meals delivered through the week, but not on the weekend. A friend and I, we went to Kentucky Fried Chicken and we bought everybody a lunch, right? And then we thought, well, we can’t continue doing that. Nothing against KFC, but it’s not the healthiest option if you’re going to eat it every day. Also, we couldn’t afford to keep doing that.

So we organized some people, we asked some people to cook some meals and we started doing that. Then my friend really took off with this and made it her mission. The program is now feeding 1,500 people a week. It operates three different food banks. It’s an incredible program, and it’s an honour to be serving the community in this way.

I’ll just quickly summarize: It’s $24,000 a year for supportive housing with round-the-clock, seven-days-a-week support.

Question?

Further debate?

You’re right, and one of the challenges is there’s a lot of bureaucracy involved with ODSP, and a lot of the people that we serve don’t have the capacity to navigate that bureaucracy. Plenty of us in this room would have a hell of a time navigating that bureaucracy. Add to that a disability, add to that homelessness, add to that you’re homeless and you’re in a shelter overnight and somebody stole your ID and you have to start all over again and you don’t have a home address: It just becomes an absolute nightmare.

The 5% will take us from, what, $1,169 a month and add about $50. It’s only $1,200 a month. It’s barely even going to cover the cost of a room with the whole entire amount, let alone food and transportation and other things. So the 5% is really, really, really inadequate, and it will leave people continuing to suffer, and continuing to die.

Then when they get to school, we have to make sure that we have food in the schools. The provincial government contributes money, I know, to different public health units and to the school boards, but we need to increase that amount because inflation has eaten away at what that can actually provide. As a teacher, I’ve sat in a school with a student who was hungry. I didn’t recognize what was going on at first—she was just lethargic, she could not think—until we figured out what was wrong: She was hungry in the classroom. That just can’t be happening. In a province as wealthy as this, there’s no excuse for people to be suffering in that way or for anyone to be going hungry.