I wish to use my limited time today for my inaugural speech to tell you why I’m here and what I hope to accomplish as the new MPP for Don Valley West.

Before I do that, I want to acknowledge that we are on the land of many First Nations peoples and recognize their enduring presence here and the work still needed to implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action.

Je tiens à vous féliciter, monsieur le Président, pour votre réélection à la présidence. Je voudrais également féliciter tous les députés ici pour leurs campagnes réussies, ainsi que les candidats de tous les partis qui ont eu le courage de participer à l’élection.

Thank you to the residents of Don Valley West for talking to me at the doors, on the phone, at community events and at three debates during the campaign. I’m humbled by and grateful for their support. I will work hard and to the best of my ability to represent their needs here at Queen’s Park, and will strive to exceed their expectations.

I’m also humbled to sit with my fellow Liberal MPPs, both because of the small number of us elected here but also because of their mighty and varied talents.

Thank you to my family, extended family, friends, neighbours, campaign team, volunteers and donors who supported me throughout my first election campaign and for bringing such enthusiasm and delicious food to the office:

—my loving husband, Dave, and wonderful children, Maddi and Luke Farwell, who are here today, who campaigned almost as often as I did and who gave advice and help with things I couldn’t do myself;

—my parents, Keith and Barb Bowman, also here, who as always gave me their unwavering support and love even when they asked if I knew what I was getting myself into—and I’m sure I didn’t;

—my supportive in-laws, Peter and Barbara;

—my campaign team, many of whom are also here: Michael Fontein, Fatma Said, Abeir Liton, Caroline Leclerc, Jenna Ghassabeh, Ethan Ullmann and Shafiq Qaadri.

I would like to name all my dedicated volunteers but in the interests of time I will name a few to represent the many: Maralynn Beach, Ali Baig, Masood Alam, and members of the Don Valley West PLA.

To the rest of my team, ranging in age from 12 to 87 and from all parts of the riding, thank you. You all made our campaign so much fun.

I want to also give a special thanks to Kathleen Wynne, the past MPP and former Premier, for both her support and for giving me space as the new candidate to chart my own path.

Don Valley West has been my home for 28 years, and it is where my husband and I have raised our two children. It is a wonderfully diverse community. As candidates, we meet many interesting people during our campaign. Some who stood out for me were two Afghani refugees, two sisters, who had just landed in Toronto, and Canada’s own Gordon Lightfoot—especially since I’m fan.

Don Valley West was also home to John Bosley, who served as the Speaker of the House of Commons from 1984 to 1986 and who, sadly, passed away in April of this year, and Agnes Macphail, one of the first two women elected to the Ontario Legislature, in 1943.

Many Ontarians and indeed Canadians benefit from the great work of organizations in our community, like Sunnybrook Veterans Centre, Holland Bloorview kids rehab hospital, York U’s Glendon college, Sunnybrook Hospital, the Canadian Film Institute and the CNIB. It is also home to Fraser Mustard Early Learning Academy in Thorncliffe Park, one of Canada’s largest all-kindergarten schools, with 500 students, most of whom have a first language other than English.

Madam Speaker, I so appreciated listening to the inaugural speeches during the first two weeks of this 43rd Parliament. Hearing the personal stories of my colleagues in the House, including from Windsor–Tecumseh today, demonstrates that we have much more in common than the political differences we tend to focus on here. You will hear some of that similarity as I share my story.

I am descended from settler ancestors who came to Canada in the 1800s from Londonderry, Northern Ireland; Argyllshire, Scotland; and Cornwall, England, all of whom were farmers in southern Ontario.

I am fortunate to be born on this land. I was born in London, Ontario, eldest daughter of Keith and Barb Bowman and big sister to Mike, Dan and Dennis.

My parents both grew up on farms near Stratford. They learned about hard work by necessity, and my brothers and I learned it from them.

My father was one of eight children, my mom one of seven, and my paternal grandmother one of 14. Family is everywhere, and it’s a big part of who I am.

My paternal grandmother, Florence Bowman, had 23 grandchildren and 39 great-grandchildren. She died in her 100th year, on March 4, 2020, just as the COVID pandemic loomed. I have longevity in my genes, and I want to leave Ontario a better place for my great-grandchildren.

My maternal grandmother, Isobel, lived to be about 90 years old and made us laugh all the time. My grandfather abandoned her and their seven children all under the age of 11. I come from a line of strong women.

I followed in my father’s footsteps as a CPA chartered accountant, but in my mother’s in being a mom to my kids. I worked hard as a woman and working mom to have a fulfilling career and to make our house a loving home. I hope I have succeeded at both most of the time and that my kids forgive me for the times I didn’t.

My mother led the charge to save our local London public school from being shut down, and it’s still open today. My father served on numerous volunteer boards throughout his long career. He retired at age 75, after which I promptly enlisted him to be my campaign CFO.

My grandparents and parents were all great role models, and are still today, for living a life of service, for lifelong learning, working hard and using one’s talents to make a difference and reach your full potential. I want to support our public institutions so that all Ontarians can do that too.

As a young kid of 10 or 11, I delivered the Globe and Mail in the early mornings and have loved reading it ever since. I built on that interest and became a CPA and later a banker, which gave me a wide range of opportunity, from conducting an audit at Darlington nuclear station to working in finance in Canada, the US, the Caribbean, Latin America and Asia. During my professional life, I worked hard to accomplish my career goals while living out my personal values by volunteering with great organizations like the Kidney Foundation and co-founding a women’s network more than 20 years ago. I continue to be involved in supporting women today.

In 2017, life dealt my family and me a very severe blow: My youngest brother, Dr. Dennis Bowman, died suddenly at the age of 39. Dennis was a physician, an anesthetist, an outdoorsman and a minimalist. One of the things we had in common was the pursuit of efficiency, in time, money and resources. Dennis loved his work but would also share stories about the opportunities he observed in the health care system, and we would talk about how things could be better.

In the months that followed Dennis’s death, I thought about family, my career and what was next. I wanted to use my skills of leadership, financial expertise and implementing major change to make a more meaningful impact and contribution of service in advancing women, education, economic prosperity and diversity and inclusion. I was fortunate to be appointed to the board of the Bank of Canada. It was a wonderful opportunity for someone like me, who has a keen interest in our economy. Policy really matters, and policy-makers have an enormous impact on our lives.

Being at the bank, I got to see first-hand how interesting the work of policy-makers is, and I began to think about how I could contribute to that work in a more meaningful way. Strong policy, community service, working together for a common cause—that is what we are all here to do.

I want to focus on what I can give back to my community of Don Valley West and this great province. I bring to this experience the things I’ve learned when helping lead businesses and organizations, and that includes the belief that we can provide better opportunities for more people when we work together, when we are inclusive.

The residents of Don Valley West work together to support those in need and to shape the future of their neighborhoods. They have spoken about the need for more home care for seniors, affordable housing, and about the surprise announcement of the Metrolinx maintenance and storage facility in Thorncliffe Park, one of the most densely populated parts of Toronto.

Many of my constituents were disappointed with the government’s cancellation of the Midtown in Focus plan, which was created with input from municipal and community stakeholders and approved by a democratically elected city council. This plan would have balanced the needs of a growing population with the services that that growth demands. Instead, residents feel that they are losing their voice, and it’s up to us to make sure that they are engaged in how their communities grow.

There are smart, capable people in every party, and therefore there are innovative ideas in every party. Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney brought Canada NAFTA. The CCF brought universal health care. These were both good for Canada.

I am a Liberal because progressive policies help Ontarians thrive, and when people thrive, businesses thrive and the economy thrives. I ran in Don Valley West as a fiscally minded Liberal who believes that we can invest money wisely to lift our public institutions so they lift people up. Progressive policies do just that.

Policies like subsidized child care not only lower costs for families, they bring more women into the workforce, alleviating the worker shortage, promoting economic growth and helping address inequality. More diverse boards result in better business outcomes. Policy that would drive more diversity on boards would improve equality and grow our economy. According to McKinsey, taking steps to decrease gender inequality in the workplace may benefit Canada’s economy by as much as $150 billion. That’s like adding a whole new financial services sector to our economy. Progressive liberal policy, progressive policy, is fiscally responsible.

I want to acknowledge, having just mentioned several policies that would advance women, that, along with the other 46 women MPPs in this 43rd Parliament, there have only been 162 women elected here in Ontario, of 1,968 parliamentarians in total. Mr. Speaker, there is more work to do to ensure women’s voices, diverse voices, are heard here at Queen’s Park and outside these walls.

I will conclude with a story of my first time at Queen’s Park. It was June 18, 1990. Thousands of people, including me, left their offices to see Nelson Mandela, just four short months after he was released from prison. To hear his words and see his spirit of hope after what he had endured was so inspiring. With a majority of seats, this government does not need the support from those of us with other political stripes to pass their bills, but I urge the Premier and his ministers to think not only in terms of seats but in terms of people—all people of this province, who are represented also by those of us in opposition. I urge him to consider the words of Mandela, to ensure that at the end of the debate we should emerge stronger and more united than ever before.

I have to say that it’s been a real pleasure to hear the speeches this afternoon, to hear so many new members share their life stories. Sometimes there were jokes and laughs, and sometimes there were tough times and emotional times. We heard about losses of people dear to them.

Unfortunately, we lost an hour of it. And that’s part of what it means to be a legislator; things like that happen here. An hour of it was lost, and in turn we heard a lecture from the House leader. I must say, and I say this humbly and with greatest respect, he’s an incredible speaker. And I do enjoy those lectures. They make me laugh sometimes. But I would like to offer sincere, humble advice, and my advice is directed to the new members in this chamber, particularly the Conservative ones. Because I’m a new member too: I’ve just been here a term, just got re-elected. I remember what it was like for the last four years. And I know why every government, not just yours, wants to silence the opposition: because we make your job harder. And sometimes you may feel like you want to take it personally, what we say. And I’m sure for those members that were here—I don’t know how many are in the chamber were here under the last government—I think you know what I’m talking about. And again, I am a new member.

I watched after the last election how there were standing ovations for literally everything. Sometimes I felt that you guys were up on your feet—well maybe not the new members—more than you were answering questions at all. Constantly, the Speaker would have to get up and say, “Stop the clock.” There was a lot of boasting. We hear it. “We won! We won! You lost!” We heard that a lot. We continue to hear it. And you know what I saw? I watched the polling numbers just like you, and this is what I saw, just like this: Eventually the government, your government, about three years ago reached the popularity of the government before you, the team you called the minivan party. And then the pandemic happened and things changed. That’s where you were.

I think there’s something we should all address and consider: We have gone through an election where people felt hopeless. They were filled with despair. I know you know this; you heard it. There were not many people rushing to vote. They felt like the future was very scary to them and their loved ones, and so we saw the lowest turnout per capita in Ontario’s history. You won. You won a majority and you gained seats, and you did so with 18%—with a loss of half a million votes. And sure, we lost votes. We lost more than you. But what is out there is a feeling of disenfranchisement that I’ve never seen before, not to this level. And it’s scary. All of us need to consider this, and I hope that you consider it, too. I hope that despite what we hear sometimes in this chamber, when you’re in your caucus rooms talking and thinking about it, that you actually think about what’s actually going on.

I know that it is difficult for you as a government. It must be very hard for ministers. All I’ve ever known is opposition; I’ve been here for just one term. To get up and have to answer questions when we bring out stories of individuals that are not the exception, because in many cases the exception is the rule—people suffering in many different ways, and you have to get up and scramble and give an answer. I know it’s not easy. I get it. I know your job is hard.

Listen or don’t listen, but people out there are suffering. I want to say, you might want to shut us down and keep us quiet, but we have options and ideas to help. You will hear those amendments when things get to committee. I think a third of all the material may, in fact, go to committee. We can fix a lot of the things that you are dealing with. We can help you. It is your choice to listen to us or not.

Your throne speech doesn’t go far enough. I can’t match the words of the member from Spadina–Fort York. And to your credit, the questions that were asked of him and the compassionate speech that he gave were very respectful. How can people live on a 5% increase in ODSP when we are facing this inflation? It is impossible. I know you know this.

You look at the throne speech, and I get it—I did a Ctrl-F on the word “environment.” I found it three times. Two times, it had to do with the business environment.

Health care crisis: Each day we get up and we say, “We need to deal with this. Let’s call an emergency discussion and debate on it. Unanimous consent.” It fails every day. Why do we criticize you? I know it’s not easy to hear. Because there are things that we observed—at least, I observed—in the last four years that could have been done so much better.

Privatization: We don’t have to raise it. You raise it. You call it “innovation.” Conservative governments have a pedigree, a history, of ripping apart and tearing down public services and institutions. You did it to hydro and we saw the rates go up. You sold the 407. I get it. That wasn’t you, new members; it was the government before. But last year, when the 407—the people that own it—owed a billion dollars to you and the taxpayers, this government said, “Keep the change. We don’t need it.” Imagine.

The list goes on and on, and sometimes it feels—and we all know that there are people out there always waiting to turn a profit on a crisis.

Long-term care: I’d like to talk about long-term care a little bit more. I must say, and it is not an insult, that until the pandemic happened, I do not believe it was a priority for this government. We tabled bills like the Time to Care Act where we said, “Give at least four hours to our loved ones to take care of them.” It was ignored. You heard, just like I did, PSWs and nurses come in, file into our offices and, through tears, tell us that they had to help residents—dozens, for one nurse, one PSW, dozens who needed to be changed, who needed to be fed, an impossible task. It’s not just about creating the beds. It’s about hiring the workers and giving them the time, the respect, to be able to help the people who are entrusted under their care.

In 2019, before the pandemic: 626 homes. How many proactive inspections do you think happened under this government? Nine. Most of the inspections happened because it was a phone call—someone in a crisis. You would have heard it: nine proactive inspections. And during the pandemic, those proactive inspections were suspended, I think, as far as into last fall. I’d have to do a little more research to see if it’s still happening as we speak right now.

What a past government did—I don’t blame you who are sitting in this chamber—was open the doors to privatization. I’ve heard the stats: For every dollar invested in long-term care, 49 cents in private long-term care goes to direct patient care, but in non-profit public, it’s 79 cents. Is the solution to continue to build private beds, private beds, private beds? We all know that the majority of people who were suffering the worst during this pandemic were in those facilities.

If there was more attention spent in that first year, PSWs—having multiple shifts, rushing in and out of long-term-care facilities, some of them with full outbreak going place to place—would that have happened? Would the training have been there? Would the PPE have been there to save lives? I’m not putting this all on you individually, but as a system the people have been failed.

I’m going to talk a little bit more now about my own portfolio as NDP auto insurance critic. I have to say that I think so much more could have been done in the last four years. It’s unbelievable. When the pandemic started, there was—and I did the math; I reached out to Toronto police—a 74% reduction in automobile accidents in the city of Toronto, and the government’s response at the time when it came to auto insurance was what? Let them give rebates. In fact, what did these insurers do? Since most people couldn’t even drive, a lot of them just parked their cars at home. They switched their coverage to things like fire and theft, and what happened as a result of that? Of course, in those instances, they paid less. Again, what did the government do? It felt like PR. The former finance minister, your guy, came out and it felt like he was doing PR for the automobile industry. They were giving out peanuts, if anything, to drivers.

What else happened? We would always wait on the quarterlies when the auto insurance companies would report if rates were going up—rates were going up. Well, this government hid it. Your government—not you new members—hid that fact, and about a year later we learned they were preapproving auto insurance increases. I honestly think sometimes that right there in that nice green space, the government should plop a chair and sit an auto insurance executive right here because sometimes I feel what this government does around automobile insurance—there’s got to be executives watching on TV, just nodding. I want to see them sitting there in the room, nodding their heads. It’s just unbelievable. What did they tell the last government? They said, “Reduce automobile insurance accidents and we’ll reduce rates.” Guess what? Rates went up.

I see in the government’s Bill 2 that you talk about fraud, and that’s something the insurance companies will always tell you. They’ll say, “Why are the rates so high? It’s fraud. It’s all fraud. Everybody is lying.” That’s why, if a person is catastrophically injured, they will be getting lawyers out and telling them they’re lying; for sure, they’re lying.

It’s in here, and it’s hard to not be cynical. It says that you want—or this government, it seems, wants to authorize that your regulators will be able to get more information when it comes to the issue of automobile insurance fraud. It’s hard to not be cynical and think, are you going to use this information to help drivers or not help drivers?

This afternoon, I and colleagues of mine that are here in this chamber, the member from Scarborough Southwest and the member from Davenport, introduced a bill, a bill we voted on unanimously before the election happened and it said, “Let’s deal with postal code discrimination in the GTA.” Drivers in Ontario, especially the GTA, pay not just the highest rates in Canada, they pay the highest rates in North America. All the while, last year, do you know what the return on premiums was for the auto insurance industry? 23%. Can you imagine the amount of money? So if someone on your side gets up and says, here’s a person who saw a rate decrease or not—and I’m not hearing it. The proof is in the premiums. Ask the people in your constituency. If you represent an area in Scarborough or Brampton or Vaughan or many of the areas—in fact, the Premier’s own riding in northwest Toronto, my neighbour—people in our communities are getting crushed in this affordability crisis when it comes to automobile insurance.

Home warranties—and we’re going to hear a lot about it. They’re going to build a million homes, right? And this government I don’t think has ever seen a bad development. Those of you who’ve been on a city council have. Sometimes it’s great—we all, for the most part, unless we built our home, live in a development—but sometimes there’s a little bit more work that needs to be done to get it right.

So if you’re going to build a million homes, wouldn’t you want to get the warranties right? We had an opportunity to fix new home warranties in Ontario. It was an honour and a privilege to travel this province when the government said they had a plan to do better than the Liberals before them. And the consumer protection advocates, many of whom were not facing problems with a new home warranty, but were so traumatized by things that may have happened even as far as 20 years ago that they’re fighting for people, gained nothing. They put in time and money to help others after them.

We travelled the province, and I’ll tell you this: Every single consumer advocate, everyone going through or suffering from a new home that has gone wrong, said that this legislation didn’t go far enough. Do you know who liked what your government was doing? Just one: the representative of the development industry. They said, “Keep the status quo.”

The Auditor General—and again, I get it; it’s not easy to get those reports, right? The Liberals didn’t like it. You probably don’t either. She pointed out—it felt like literal absurdity—the level that the development industry was controlling the regulator of the time. I mean, think about this. I travelled to Ottawa, to a subdivision that is still experiencing difficulties to this very day. People who bought new homes as a dream—beautiful homes, when you looked at the brochure. I went into a person’s home, a family’s home; their entire basement was ripped up. It looked like a bomb had gone off in their home.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars of repair, fighting Tarion, trying to get lawyers, all of it—it’s so many people, and when people do this, because this is a huge investment on your part, it’s a big risk. Because when you go and tell everyone, “My home is in bad shape,” what do you do? Some people see it and sell, and another person picks that up, and they’ll never know until, years down the road, something absolutely terrible can happen.

There was an opportunity to change it. Still, I sat in on the last Tarion board meeting, and it’s same old, same old: the same old complaints. And so when I hear targets that the government talks about, I can only hear them as aspirational: “We’re going to fix home warranties. We’re going to build these homes. We’re going to fix it.”

Long-term care: Now, all of a sudden, because it’s a big issue—I’m not going to get into all of what we’ve heard recently. Of course we have concerns. Where are you sending people? You’re now, all of a sudden, going to charge them for a bed unless they get out of hospital? Why do you think, under this system of long-term care, people want to stay in a hospital?

I brought up the question of a gentleman named Vibert. I brought it up last year, before the election: a poor gentleman in a hospital bed. The only person advocating for him is his dear sister. He had bedsores that looked like horrific wounds. I brought images—they were very difficult to see—and I shared them with some of the ministers on your side. Months later, it’s the same situation, if not worse, and where is Vibert? In and out of the hospital. People there don’t have time. They don’t have the luxury of time to wait. They need solutions now. It’s life or death for them.

And I get it. We bring it up; don’t throw a dart at me and put it on my back and blame me. I know you don’t want to hear it, but it’s life or death for people. People don’t need aspirational targets in a year or two, three, four, five or six years. They need the help now.

I’m the critic for consumer protection, and the last thing I’m going to talk about is this: I don’t believe there’s the kind of consumer protection that we need in Ontario, that people here deserve. If you face—