It’s always an honour to rise in the House and today, to participate in the debate on Bill 2, the government’s budget bill.

Speaker, since the budget was first introduced back in April, there have been significant changes in the province of Ontario that are not reflected in the new budget the government has presented. First, we are facing an unprecedented health human resource capacity issue that is not addressed in the re-introduced budget. Second, inflation and housing costs are especially hitting the most vulnerable, especially those on Ontario Works and Ontario disability support, making it impossible for them to pay the bills while living in legislated poverty, and the government has failed to address that. And third, the costs of the climate emergency are escalating. We had a city in Ontario, the city of Ottawa, go without power for weeks because our infrastructure is not ready for the hammer blows of the climate emergency, and the budget fails to make the necessary investments to address that.

I want to start with health care. Speaker, the budget talks about buildings and beds. It doesn’t talk about the people who deliver care. If the government truly wants to address the health care crisis, they need to repeal Bill 124 and allow nurses and other front-line health care workers to negotiate fair wages, fair benefits and better working conditions.

Instead of talking about privatization, let’s actually invest in our public health care system. The bottom line is the province of Ontario spends less per capita on health care than any province in the country. No wonder the system is in crisis, especially when the government underspent their health care budget by $1.8 billion last year.

Speaker, people with disabilities are being forced to live in legislated poverty. Poverty costs this province $33 billion a year, so it’s not only the right and moral thing to do to bring people out of poverty, it’s the right thing to do for the fiscal health of our province. Homelessness and poverty are putting huge pressure on our health care system, which is why so many health care leaders are saying they want to write prescriptions to end poverty and end homelessness. This budget fails to do that.

Finally, instead of spending billions on highways to go to million-dollar homes that people can’t afford, let’s build climate-ready communities that are affordable, livable—where people can people can live, work, play and shop locally.

Over two years ago, the Ontario Greens put forward a retention and recruitment strategy to deal with the health human resource capacity crisis we’re facing. I don’t know why it’s taken the government so long to finally start to act. There are between 15,000 and 20,000 internationally trained health care providers, according to the RNAO. They’ve been pushing the government to fast-track their accreditation. It’s fantastic that there are now 3,967, but if we had started this two years ago, what about the 15,000 to 20,000 who could be working in our emergency rooms right now, taking pressure off of the system? What about paying nurses’ wages so we don’t have to spend millions on private agencies when we could be hiring full-time permanent nurses?

Speaker, there are many solutions, and it starts by supporting publicly funded, publicly delivered health care in this province.

On Highway 413: I don’t understand how any government can call themselves fiscally responsible and spend $10 billion to $12 billion on a highway that all the independent experts say will save 30 to 60 seconds. It will pave over 2,000 acres of prime farmland. And I want to remind the members opposite: The food and farming sector in this province contributes $50 billion to the province’s GDP, employing over 880,000 people in this province. Why would we pave over the asset base of all that prosperity and all of those jobs, especially at a time when global geopolitical events and climate-fuelled droughts are driving up food prices? If we want to keep food prices low in this province, let’s protect farmland and let’s support the local farmers and the local supply chains that feed people in our communities.