I’m happy to have this opportunity today to rise and speak about the budget on behalf of my constituents in Ottawa West–Nepean.

Ontario is facing multiple crises right now. Our health care system is collapsing around us. The rapid increase in the cost of living is hurting working families, forcing them to cut down on essentials and, in some cases, to choose between food and rent. Poverty is increasing. Visits to food banks are increasing. Homelessness is increasing. We see it in our ridings and communities every day, urban and rural. We have a system right now that is letting the majority of Ontarians down.

This budget was a chance for the government to meet the moment and address these challenges, Speaker. They have failed. There is nothing to fix the health care crisis, nothing to fix the cost-of-living crisis that is hurting so many families, nothing to fix the housing crisis that is making it so hard to find a place to call home and pushing so many people out onto our streets.

Budgets are moral documents; they show our government’s priorities. One thing this government and this Premier have been consistent about is that their priority is their wealthy and well-connected buddies, not ordinary Ontarians, not vulnerable seniors, not people living in poverty, not people with disabilities, not our health care workers and not Ontarians who need to call an ambulance or go to the emergency room—what a lost opportunity to help those who need help the most.

This budget is essentially the same one that was tabled just a few months ago. However, since then, our situation in Ontario has significantly changed. Our health care system—which was already under stress, and let’s be honest, should have received significant investment already back in April—is collapsing after years of being underfunded and ignored.

Our health care heroes who got us through COVID have been so worn down by this government, so disrespected and so poorly compensated that they are now leaving the profession, switching to agency work or cutting down on shifts. It’s not because they don’t want to be nurses working in our public hospitals—they absolutely do—but the mistreatment they’ve suffered, the conditions they’ve been forced to work in every day, and the significant cut in wages that they’ve endured with a 1% wage cap when inflation is over 8%, have led many of them to leave.

This significant increase in inflation is affecting everyone, Speaker. People across the province are being squeezed when they go to the grocery store or pay their bills. Prices are exploding and working people are the ones paying the bills. As I’ve knocked on doors over the past year and talked to thousands of constituents, I’ve heard again and again the struggles that people are facing because incomes aren’t keeping up with prices. Everybody is feeling the squeeze.

So does this budget do anything to address these problems? Absolutely not. This is a stay the course, nothing is wrong, everything is fine budget that maintains the status quo. No problems to see here. But that isn’t true, that’s not what I hear from folks across Ottawa West–Nepean every day. It’s not what I see when I go to the grocery store or fill up my tank. It’s not reflective of reality.

The Premier and his government seem to be living in a different reality than my constituents. This is an Alice in Wonderland budget, Speaker, where up is down and wrong is right. They keep on saying there are record amounts of money going into our health care system, but no one on the ground can see it as they wait 12 hours for care at the Queensway Carleton Hospital.

They say they’re building record amounts of new housing, but McMansions that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars aren’t affordable for everyday Ontarians, and they’re certainly not providing any help to my constituents earning minimum wage or on social assistance.

This was an opportunity for the Premier to show that he understood the problems that we are facing and to do something about it. Now, it’s those who can least afford it who are being asked to pay the price for the Premier’s inaction.

Take the health care crisis for instance. People are waiting 12 hours to be seen at the emergency room at the Queensway Carleton Hospital. The Queensway Carleton staff, meanwhile, are trying to deal with a situation where some days there are more patients in the ER who have been admitted but are waiting for a bed in the hospital than there are beds in the ER. Patients are receiving emergency care in the hallway and in the waiting room. Only 60% of the hospital’s surgical capacity is being used even though we have this massive backlog of surgeries and procedures because there are no nurses to assist the surgeons.

And if you call 911 in Ottawa, Speaker, there’s a good chance you may be waiting several hours for an ambulance. The number of hours where there is no ambulance available at all in the entire city is increasing.

I spoke to one constituent this spring who called an ambulance because of chest pain and dizziness. She waited two hours, worrying the entire time that she would die before the ambulance got there. Her daughter finally came and collected her and took her to the ER. If we don’t do something about this soon, someone is going to die before the ambulance gets there.

Our nurses and doctors and other health care workers are so burnt out. They were here for us during the height of the COVID pandemic. They fought for us and now it’s time for us to pay them back and be there for them when they need it. I know how hard they work because I’ve needed emergency care myself over the past few years thanks to long COVID. I saw how hard these folks work day after day, the personal sacrifices they make to ensure that people like me get the care they need even when the emergency room was packed and there was only one doctor on shift and not enough nurses. But they’ve gotten no respect and no help from this government.

If the government wants to start showing that they are taking this crisis seriously, they could start by repealing Bill 124. They could start implementing the recommendations of the Ontario Nurses’ Association and the Ontario Medical Association. These are the experts. They’re the ones on the front line every day—not the Premier, not the health minister. These people, who save countless lives of Ontarians every day, they’re the ones who know the true needs of our health care system.

When we talk about numbers in the budget, we forget at our peril that budgets are about people. They’re about what happens every day to people in Ontario. And the decisions within budgets can have massive consequences for people. I hear it every day from my constituents, so I want to share some experiences that illustrate the human cost of this do-nothing budget for people across Ontario so that the government can understand how their lack of action is hurting people.

Sherry, a constituent in my riding of Ottawa West–Nepean, reached out to my office because she’s extremely worried about the state of our health care system. Recently, she had to take her 92-year-old mother-in-law to the ER at the Queensway Carleton Hospital. After waiting hours to be seen, her mother-in-law was finally taken in for a CT scan. The results of the scan were inconclusive so she was sent home with the impression that everything would be okay. After two days of not eating or drinking anything, it was obvious that there was something seriously wrong.

Sherry took her mother-in-law back to the ER, this time at the Ottawa Hospital, where they waited seven hours before she was finally seen. She then spent two days in the ER, which she described as a nightmare, with incredible crowding and disgruntled patients waiting six to eight hours to be seen by a doctor. And when patients are admitted, there are no beds available for them. Just imagine waiting days and days for a bed in a little ER cubicle, with bright lights, the impossibility of sleep and the difficulty of obtaining food.

When Sherry’s mother-in-law had her second CT scan, they discovered lymphoma in the brain. After doing an MRI late in the afternoon, she was finally admitted to a room but had to shuffle between hospitals for the next five days while undergoing radiation treatment.

As the mother of a doctor, Sherry sees unequivocally that nurses and health care workers are suffering, and many are leaving the profession because this is just such a difficult time. They do not feel supported by this government.

Another constituent of mine, Peggy Mansyk, recently moved to Ottawa West–Nepean from Niagara with her husband. She was unable to get an appointment with a nephrologist to continue her husband’s care for his condition. When she booked two appointments to see the doctor in July, they were cancelled each time and she was then told that they would be unable to rebook an appointment this summer. Why? Because the clinic is too busy. Because there aren’t enough staff to see the volume of patients required. It will now have been over six months since Peggy’s husband has seen a nephrologist for his care, and they can’t get a family doctor either. The story is shocking and unacceptable, but unfortunately I hear similar stories every day.

Another constituent in my riding suffers from Crohn’s disease. As a result of complications, she has been hospitalized five times in the last two years. In January 2021 she was referred to a colorectal surgical group at the Ottawa Hospital. Because of the great deal of pain she was experiencing, she was eager to have this done as soon as possible. But her consultation was booked for six months later. However, shortly before the consultation she started feeling severe abdominal pain and was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery to remove two thirds of her colon. Post-surgery her colon flared up, which resulted in another two-week stay at the hospital. She was booked for another surgery in February 2022 to have the rest of the diseased colon taken out, but again it was delayed and rescheduled for April of this year.

Two months later, while visiting family in BC, she was hospitalized once again because of a post-surgical infection and internal abscess. She was treated with antibiotics and told to consult with her health care team once she returned to Ottawa. She was also told to keep an eye on her symptoms for anything similar and that she would need to go straight to the ER if anything similar happened.

Now, with recent ER closures in the Ottawa area, she’s living with the constant fear of being unable to access the health care she needs if she finds herself in an emergency once again. It is also very likely she will need another major surgery in the next few years, but is quite concerned about when that surgery might be scheduled, given the state of hospitals in Ottawa, and what impact this might have on her care.

A key point that I need to make, Speaker, is that the privatization of our health care system that the Premier wants to force on Ontario will only make matters worse. The health minister just announced this morning that the government’s response to our crisis is going to be privatization. What does this mean for Ontarians? It means, instead of getting the quality health care services you deserve through an efficient and highly professional public system, you’ll have to get worse care for more money. Health care costs will soar because middlemen investors will now be pocketing profits on top. The only people that benefit from this will be shareholders making more money at the expense of taxpayers.

Let’s deal with the argument being parroted by the government that outsourcing and privatization will lead to shorter wait times. They absolutely do not. In fact, what is already happening—and if this government’s plan is pushed through, it will get even worse—is that the crisis of short staffing will continue. The public system will bleed doctors, nurses and other health care workers away to the private system. We will continue to have a chronically understaffed public system that lacks the resources it needs to serve the public.

Will the private system that is being foisted on Ontarians serve the public with higher-quality service? Absolutely not. Wait times won’t go down, but private shareholders will make more money. This isn’t scaremongering, because we have a clear example of what a private, everyone-for-themselves health care system looks like. It’s the system used by our neighbour to the south, which is consistently ranked as having some of the worst health outcomes of any Western country. In fact, it is often used as an example of what a health care system shouldn’t look like because it leads to high costs for patients, poor health care services and a huge amount of money for private companies, who make extraordinary profits at the expense of working and middle-class families.

The evidence is clear: Privatized health care leads to poor services. Just look at our long-term-care system and what happened there during the pandemic and what continues to happen to our seniors, persons with disabilities and loved ones living in long-term care. Companies like Chartwell homes put profit and their shareholders before people. Shame on them, and shame on a government that wants to do the same thing to our health care system that they did to our long-term-care system.

Let’s also talk about the cost-of-living and affordability crisis that is hurting families in my riding of Ottawa West–Nepean. Again, this budget does nothing for them. It has nothing in it to protect working people from the rapidly rising price of groceries and rent, with inflation devastating families’ purchasing power. This is a do-nothing budget.

One of the biggest problems we are facing is that large corporations are now using inflation as an excuse to gouge working people. The oil and grocery companies are making record amounts, yet you don’t see gas or groceries coming down. Where in this budget are measures to make these companies accountable to Ontarians? They are nowhere.

For working people and families, this means that every month their paycheques lose more and more of their buying power. This is forcing families to choose between basic necessities, pushing back getting their car repaired, not being able to sign up their kids for a summer camp, not sure if they’re going to be able to get their kids’ school supplies this year.

Everyone, not just those on low incomes, is having to cut back on their grocery shopping. For those on Ontario Works and ODSP, it’s even worse. They have now officially been legislated into poverty. A 5% rise only for those on ODSP is an insult to those who have already been pushed to the brink. They face a situation that’s gone from bad to worse. This will mean that seniors and children are going hungry and homeless. That will be this budget’s legacy and record: profit for those at the top and cuts in real terms for everybody else.

On housing, this government’s answer is simple: give developers more money and let them build more unaffordable McMansions. That doesn’t do anything for my constituents who are struggling to get by. They are being exploited by predatory landlords, with their rights and protections increasingly eroded and disregarded by a Premier who cares more about developers making money than actually fixing the housing crisis and building genuinely affordable homes. I’m hearing stories every day from vulnerable constituents who are paying the price for this government’s inaction.

To give you just one example, a constituent in my riding has been in contact with my office with concerns about safety in her community and a request to transfer housing. She is pleading for help. This constituent has been targeted because of her advocacy for LGBTQ2+ rights in her community, and she is a survivor of multiple assaults. After a recent midday shooting in her small community, she has requested a transfer with Ottawa Community Housing and has been listed on the urgent safety priority list.

Speaker, the current wait-list for urgent safety transfers with OCH is averaging two and a half years. Non-urgent transfers are up to eight years.

This constituent has stated that she is overwhelmed with stress because of the fear for her safety, and incredibly concerned for her mother’s health, who was recently diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer. She is on Ontario Works and cannot afford to leave community housing because rent in Ottawa is simply unaffordable. She needs the transfer, but fears the harm that the stress will cause both herself and her mother if she has to wait another two and a half years before she gets one.

I hear stories from constituents every day about the unending wait-lists. In Ottawa alone, 500 families are living in motels, including children, because there just isn’t enough affordable and safe housing for them to access. That means parents washing their children’s clothes in the bathtub. It means the only option to prepare food is a microwave. Just imagine 500 families living in these conditions. This is a disgrace. This government should be doubling both Ontario Works and ODSP rates so that people can actually afford to live in this province.

I urge the government to go back to the drawing board and to come up with a plan that will actually address the challenges facing Ontario. It’s not too late to save our public health care system. It’s not too late to help people living in poverty or experiencing homelessness. It’s not too late to support people with disabilities. It’s not too late to invest in genuinely affordable housing. It’s not too late for the government to side with ordinary Ontarians and the issues that matter most to them. Thank you.

I thank the member for the question. I’ve heard from many of the food banks and service agencies that are located in my riding of Ottawa West–Nepean that they’ve seen an incredible increase in demand over the past few months. I’ve heard the same from Meals on Wheels and other organizations that are serving seniors. I’ve met with the community health centre, that says they’re seeing a real increase in need for their programs and services. I’ve met with tenants who are living on Ontario Works or ODSP who are terrified that they’re about to be squeezed out of the only housing that they’ve been able to afford. I’ve spoken with people who have their kids living with them at home because they can’t afford to move out. There are incredibly desperate needs across Ottawa West–Nepean for a government and a budget that actually takes the affordability crisis, that actually takes poverty seriously and I know that my constituents would only want me to vote in favour of a budget that actually addressed the challenges that they are facing.

I also had the opportunity to meet with the nurses of Local 83 in Ottawa last week from the Ottawa Hospital, and they explained to me in clear terms there’s only a set number of health care workers and nurses and doctors in Ontario. We can’t magically expand it with a wave of a wand because we’ve created a private system. So now that same number of workers has to spread out over a private system and a public system—a private system which can refuse to take those patients who have the highest care needs, who have the greatest complexities, who actually need doctors and nurses the most. Those private care companies can focus only on those with the easiest problems to address and solve. So now those patients are ahead of the line and the lineup for care at our public hospitals and at our public clinics is even greater. This is a solution that will only make the crisis much, much worse.

The need is absolutely great. Not a single constituent that I spoke to in Ottawa West–Nepean over the course of a year said, “Please privatize our health care system.” What they said was, “Please fix our system. Please support our hard-working health care heroes so we can actually get the health care we need, when we need it.”

I’ve heard from Meals on Wheels and Jewish Family Services, which provides Kosher Meals on Wheels, that there’s an increased demand for these services, but unfortunately the government’s funding for these services has been frozen and isn’t keeping pace with the need. So they’re afraid they’re going to have to raise prices, which means that some of these seniors are going to go hungry rather than actually getting the food services they need.

I think the refusal to address the challenge with dental care for seniors because of the rise in CPP is an example of being penny-wise, pound foolish because we know that these seniors will now go without dental care, but we also know that when dental problems aren’t addressed, they result in other health care problems, including heart problems, which means that some of these seniors are going to end up in our emergency rooms when the problem could have been addressed early on if they could have simply afforded to see a dentist.

I thank the member from Hamilton Mountain for this question. It is something that I hear about constantly from constituents in Ottawa West–Nepean.

The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Ottawa is $1,160. Unfortunately, that’s about the amount of ODSP for a single individual. That means you pay the rent and you have no money left over. Ontario Works is even less, which means that you can’t even find a place to live if you collect Ontario Works, let alone have enough money for food and for anything extra.

I have a friend who is living on ODSP, who is not only struggling to make ends meet, but also lives in constant fear that this government is so mean-spirited that they are going to find additional ways to claw more benefits back from him. I think it’s incredibly cruel. I think it’s time that the government actually address poverty by doubling Ontario Works and ODSP rates.