Good morning to the members. It’s an honour today to rise to speak to Bill 2, the Plan to Build Act.

I want to start my remarks by sharing my first impressions. I want you all to know—and I think you do know—that I’m new to Queen’s Park, having come here from city hall after serving 12 years as a city councillor. So I have a little bit of experience in working with budgets.

As someone who is elected to hold government accountable for my constituents, I want to share with you some of my observations. I need to see the numbers—I think we all need to see numbers when it comes to budgetary decisions, but it’s really hard to find out exactly what’s in there. Given the very limited documents that we have available to us as MPPs, this is certainly something that I think could use some improvement.

Just to give you an example of how things could work in another government, the city of Toronto is the fourth-largest government in North America. The various city departments draw up their respective budgets based on city council decisions, often established based on motions established the year before. Therefore, municipal priorities are established by the city council, including the mayor, and then costed by staff. The budgets are then launched at the budget committee, and the financial planning staff and senior departments each present their budget request to the budget committee, the executive committee and, ultimately, the city council, for a final decision. During this time, members of the public can review the budget’s department spending, line by line, briefing notes and analysts’ notes. Budget town halls are held by city councillors, where we and the CFO or a financial planning staff representative will then go and present this information to the public, and the public can ask questions and dive deeper into some of their priorities.

Toronto residents are also available to submit their communication and their budget deputations in person to the committee, including to the mayor, who chairs his very powerful executive committee—each member hand-chosen and selected by the mayor and appointed by him.

The entire process from the city of Toronto’s budget is launched from—and it takes about six to eight weeks, from the beginning of the year. Therefore, we adopt the 2022 operating budgets, the tax-supported budgets and the capital budgets for a city of three million people by, roughly, February, which is in line with general accounting principles. Since the spending has already begun in January, we try to make that decision on the budget final deliberations as quickly as possible. Therefore, we don’t delay; we get it done. The problem with having a budget adopted so late in the year, when the spending has already begun, is that programs and services are already rolling out.

At Queen’s Park, we’re debating a budget that few have actually read. Having spoken to a number of media reporters and asking them how they review the line-by-line spending, how they are able to do that review and account—they tell me that it’s difficult because they don’t have access to the information either. This could change, and I hope that it can, and it should.

Ontarians need to have access to the detailed budget and any relevant data and information. This will empower our stakeholders and citizens to make informed decisions to better grow their businesses, to better understand particular issues, and to hold government to account. A much more detailed copy of the Ontario budget should be made available and accessible to everyone. The Ontario budget should inspire and invite universal participation, where everyone should be encouraged that they have a place here in Ontario and that they can also participate in important decision-making processes. We are sitting here; they are not. We’re making decisions about their lives with very little input.

After all, a government budget is the apex of every single policy tool. You can have all the strategies and the plans you want, but without a line item and discretionary spending, it just won’t happen. It cannot be operationalized.

As members here in this House, we can have the opportunity to make lives significantly better, or significantly worse, just by adopting a budget. So if we were to invert that process and bring residents in closer to help us design a better budget that better reflects their priorities and needs, we think that everybody would be better off. I hope we can do that together. It will allow us to create an open and accessible budget process in Ontario that can better create business, drive innovation and help us design citizen-centred services.

It’s extremely valuable to all of us and to our constituents to understand how government money is being spent. I know that fiscal responsibility and accountability are important values to all my colleagues here in this House.

I think we can do better. I hope we can do better. I look forward to learning with you how we can improve this process here at Queen’s Park.

I understand that I can now use my laptop in this chamber because of specific and long-overdue changes to the standing orders. I think we can do the same thing with how we modernize our budget process so that financial spending information is made available to all residents. After all, our residents, the citizens, the constituents of Ontario, are our best assets. They will help us live up to the potential and the inspiration of what we consider the concept of Ontario.

I know that the government was elected by a majority in the first-past-the-post system, and I want to honour that. But I also want to remind all of us that 43% of voter turnout—having less than 18% of eligible voters vote for the PCs—doesn’t give you a bulldozing mandate when it comes to the budget. We are here to work together, and I’m going to continue to echo this theme throughout my four years here at Queen’s Park.

What are the challenges of the day? I know we’re going to spend a lot of time talking about health care because, in this budget, we need to find the solutions to our health care crisis. As my colleague the member for Waterloo has said, health care spending has increased only by 5.2% in this quarter, when inflation was 8.1%. This means, according to Statistics Canada reporting of inflation at 7.6% in July, this effectively makes that budget spending a cut. So we are not investing actively in the health care system by adopting this budget as it is today without any significant amendments; we are making a cut, especially when health care investments are needed the most.

My constituent J wrote to me: “Health care workers are overworked. My dad is in hospital with lymphoma. While his condition is getting worse, nurses and doctors have been too busy to follow up with me when I ask about my dad.

“How much more suffering must my family and I endure before things can change for the better?”

I don’t see the answers to what J is asking for in this budget. In fact, what we’re hearing this week is that the government is considering privatized health care delivery. Privatization will not solve our health care crisis. Rumblings of privatization and the planning of privatization have my constituents worried.

My constituent Lee, a nurse who immigrated to Canada from the United States, wrote to me describing what he is seeing: “My clinic is the great equalizer—you receive the same level of care no matter your socio-economic status, language, race, religion, sex, creed, title” and so forth. Furthermore, he adds that competition between health care providers for the same pot of limited government dollars will create inefficiencies and increase the cost of health care delivery.

My constituent points to recent data that came out from the University Health Network, which the Toronto Star reported on earlier. The UHN’s spending on temporary nurses increased in the last fiscal year to $6.7 million. Compare that to the year before: It was $776,000 only, which means that our publicly funded hospitals are already in the business of privatization, because we are systematically starving them of the funds they need to do their work.

Inflation and privatization are burning through our hospital and health care budgets, and they’re doing so at both ends. This is a crisis that needs our attention.

To end this crisis in the hospitals, we need to do some things. We need to scrap Bill 124 immediately. We need to pay nurses, health care workers and PSWs more. We need to accredit tens of thousands of internationally educated health care professionals, and we need to start a hiring and training blitz immediately, right now.

The Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario has called for this government to hire 30,000 more nurses. They are the experts, and that should be our goal as well.

I want to now focus my concerns on how this budget has no measures to enhance gender-affirming health care. As the 2SLGBTQIA+ critic, my office reached out to stakeholders in trans and gender-diverse communities for their thoughts and lived experiences.

Fae Johnstone, the executive director of Wisdom2Action, told me, “Gender-affirming health care literally saves lives, but trans and gender-diverse people in Ontario are facing huge—and growing—barriers to access. Our gender-affirming health services have been neglected by government for decades, even as increasing social acceptance results in more coming out and seeking these medically necessary services. Our communities have been hit hard by COVID, with increased isolation and access to safer spaces reduced by the pandemic, all of which has been exacerbated by rising anti-trans hate. Now is the time to invest in gender-affirming care, particularly youth. If we can” do this “now, we can save lives. If we keep on with the status quo, we will be complicit in the continued suffering of trans and gender-diverse” people.

I know this government likes to talk about innovation. This is one area of the health care sector that you can innovate.

Hannah Hodson, another advocate for trans health, told my office, “Happiness comes from living honestly and feeling comfortable in who you are. Gender-affirming care is simply allowing people to see themselves in the mirror. It is about becoming who you really are. I was born appearing as a cis straight white man. I had won the lottery. I wouldn’t have transitioned on a whim and subjected myself to abuse and harassment just for fun, or because it was a trend. These services are essential for people to live their honest and true lives.”

Speaker, gender-affirming health care is life-saving health care. But it is a complicated and nuanced kind of health care that needs medical professionals with the capacity to respond to the needs of their patients. Ontario’s ability to deliver gender-affirming, high-quality health care is at odds with the health care crisis.

Trans activist Susan Gapka described this to me, and I share this with you: “Now, wait times for referrals and access to trans-affirming care and surgeries has dramatically increased, causing distress to those requiring these essential services. People desperately need equitable access to” life-affirming health care.

Speaker, in the near future, I will be re-tabling my predecessor’s bill, the gender-affirming health care act. It calls for an advisory committee made up of people with lived experiences into the barriers that are being faced by trans Ontarians as they try to access gender-affirming health care. Some of those barriers that they face are poverty, disability and perhaps being a sex worker.

Later this year, at the Trans Day of Remembrance, I hope every single one of us will remember when we go out to participate in these events that it’s too simple to simply raise the flag and say a few nice words. That is too ceremonial. It’s too perfunctory. What we need to do is confirm to this community that we actually understand what their needs are and that we are willing to be real allies, and that’s going beyond the events and going beyond the symbolic gesture of raising a flag.

On a similar note around emerging health care trends, we need to talk about monkeypox. I know from Hansard that this is the first time the word “monkeypox” is being mentioned in this House. So let’s have that conversation right now.

While monkeypox has been recently reported for its transmission through sex, it is not exclusively transmitted through sex. It can be spread through droplets, skin-to-skin contact and contaminated objects. I am worried about this monkeypox virus for my constituents. We live in a dense city. Many of us come from urban centres, and so many of my constituents have roommates. Sharing towels, sheets, utensils and clothes can also spread monkeypox.

We have to be honest that many men who have sex with men also have sex with women.

We know that the isolation with monkeypox can be several weeks long. As this budget confirms, this government will only be extending its three-paid-sick-days program until March 2023. Those three days were never enough to cover the spread of COVID-19, and they certainly aren’t enough to cover the spread of monkeypox.

Discussing the monkeypox quarantine period, Dr. Darrell Tan from a local hospital in my riding said this to the CBC: “Many folks during that long period, if they’re forced to isolate, are not going to be able to go to work, are not going to be able to pay their bills, pay the rent, put food on the table.”

We all have a duty of care to protect the health of Ontarians. Three days doesn’t come close to empowering our communities to fend off this emerging infectious disease.

My constituent Peter Kelly, who recently contracted monkeypox, told the CBC that the pain of having monkeypox was so bad: “You can’t control it. It feels like razor blades in a way, shocking you constantly.”

The Decent Work and Health Network has commented to the media that their doctors anticipate up to 10% of monkeypox patients will need emergency room care, because that is how powerful this infection is. Does anyone think our hospitals are ready and staffed to manage a new wave of an infectious disease?

For now, monkeypox is mostly infecting gay and bisexual men.

The clock is ticking, and the rates of infection are growing. We have the time to take hold and reverse that trend, but we can’t do it with an inadequate sick pay program that is only three days.

I wonder if the government’s response would be different if most people getting monkeypox were not men having sex with men.

This budget doesn’t reverse the cuts to public health care. And this government has made it clear from the beginning of their first term—this is now your fifth year in government—that funding for health care is the price of modern living. We all agree to that. We cannot defer health care spending, because it is going to be much more expensive down the road when we are in a deeper crisis than we are in today.

I want to turn my comments now to social assistance and what Ontarians need from this budget.

As I discussed in my inaugural remarks in this chamber only yesterday, social assistance was there for me when I needed it, when I came out of the closet, and when I was trying to finish high school. Getting student welfare enabled me to recover from what was a traumatic life experience. That safety net no longer exists, and I think we need to think long and hard on how we’re going to address that. When it’s so fractured and beyond a state of repair, it is so difficult to build those institutions up. But worse than that, the potential of Ontarians and Canadians who want to give back to their country and help build this great province and give back to our communities—they won’t be able to do so because they won’t be able to get up when they’ve been knocked down.

My office was reached out to by Ivan Brochu, a tenant activist in Toronto who lives on ODSP, who says this about the Premier’s 5% increase and what his actual needs are: “A 5% increase completely ignores the reality that is ODSP hasn’t seen a raise since 2018 and most recipients live halfway below the livable income cut-off. Nothing less than doubling ODSP recognizes the dire situation” that people are currently living with.

Yesterday, Cally, another constituent, reached out to me to share her story. I’m going to share this with you today: “I am a newly diagnosed diabetic who now has a blood glucose meter. I only get enough lancets and test strips for 100 tests and I have to pay extra for the needles for my injector pen I need once a week. I have to cover the rest of the strips and lancets! This eats into what I have left for food. My extra $58 per month will now have to go mainly towards test stuff and needles. This should be covered by ODSP. I am so angry. Today I spent $64 I don’t have at the pharmacy!”

Speaker, this Legislature has the opportunity to end legislated poverty, and to do that we need to double the ODSP.

Speaking of legislated poverty, we need to be able to see more measures in the budget to also end evictions.

My riding is home to an organization called the Toronto Rent Bank. With my support as a councillor, during the pandemic they began providing tenant grants to avoid evictions. This is good. It actually keeps people housed. It also diverts people away from social assistance. The Toronto Rent Bank has helped over 1,700 tenants in Toronto avoid eviction.

I hear this feedback, and this is what I’m going to share with you today: “Thanks to Toronto Rent Bank I was able to make it through the worst of the lockdowns and stay in my apartment. Their service is an invaluable part of keeping communities intact.”

With skyrocketing inflation, tenants need support from more than the city; they need real help from the government and from the province—tangible support to keep people in homes and out of encampments. Instead of helping, this government is burning and hurting Ontarians, especially renters, by allowing rents to be raised by a historic 2.5% this year, and this is despite all the different challenges that we’ve now seen in the tenant and landlord tribunal. We need to be able to do more and act faster.

With skyrocketing inflation, vacancy control is the least expensive way that this government can curb the cost of living.

I want to be able to bring our attention to the fact that there are many people who are being hurt, and this budget is not necessarily helping.

Ontario’s tribunal backlogs need investments so that they can function at the level that Ontarians rightfully expect from their government and courts. The wait times for cases before the Landlord and Tenant Board, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, the Social Benefits Tribunal and the family courts are creating avoidable costs for our constituents and businesses. I hear about how legal firms are increasingly worried that they cannot take on more cases, which means people will not have access to justice, something that I believe this government should care about. I want to be able to see those investments in legal aid and so much more.

Mr. Speaker, thank you very much for the time and opportunity to address this House today. I look forward to any questions.

Thank you to the member from Toronto Centre. I want to congratulate them on their success in the election.

One thing she said earlier on—she was talking about health care—was, we’re not investing; we’re in fact making a cut. She was talking about the dollars towards—versus the cost of living and the inflation rate being at 8.1%.

Some 27 years ago, Speaker, as you know, the former Conservative government under Mike Harris cut OW and ODSP by 21%.

Then, in 2018-19, they started bragging about the 1.5% increase.

And then this budget is looking at 5%.

With your lived experience of being on social assistance, can you explain what it means when you can’t make ends meet, when you don’t make enough money even to pay for rent, let alone for food or hydro?

Questions?

My question is to my colleague, who presented a very eloquent speech and compared our process with the city process.

For years, we saw nothing but neglect from the previous Liberal government in Ontario’s long-term-care sector. Now that we are proposing so many new investments and expansion of home care, a billion dollars’ worth, which will allow people to stay in their homes longer—why are the members opposite not supporting these critical investments in the long-term-care system?

Thank you to the member opposite for your presentation this morning.

I realize you noticed what we have made, which is an historic investment for the 5% we addressed for the ODSP. In fact, we’re saying that in the future we will be adjusting that because of the inflation rate.

I would like to hear from the member something that we really highlighted in this budget, which is in highways and transportation—we know that, in the budget, we say that we are going to have $158 billion invested in highways and key infrastructure over the next 10 years, and $20 billion just for 2022 and 2023 alone. Can you give us a comment—why, and what we can do with this investment for the future development of this province?

I’d like to thank the member for providing a personal story, for showing their strength and providing a human face to social assistance. I also want to thank the member for their thoughtful discussion of issues that are facing the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, which are completely ignored by this government and their budget.

In their discussion, they mentioned that budgets should have universal participation, and that’s missing from this discussion and this budget. Why is so much detail in this budget left out?

Thank you very much to the member for that question.

Not only should we be investing in home care, but we should be expanding it and making sure that we are meeting the needs of Ontarians where they are. The ability to draw up a budget and to meet the needs of Ontarians is all our responsibility, and we do that by listening; we do that by asking questions; we do that by really leaning in with the experts to determine what the solutions are. I believe that the solutions when it comes to health care are really quite evident, whether it’s home care or personal support workers, or an extension of them both. This is an equal system of health care that has to be designed to meet Ontarians where they are, and if that means meeting them at home, then that’s where it should go. But it has to be said that residents are crying out because it is too limited.

So, yes, absolutely, we need to do more, but we need to do it faster. “Scaling up,” “building up,” which I know are very sexy terms that we sometimes like to use—I really want us to put that into practice. If we were to really take a look at what the harm was in Ontario and how we can actually build up that system, this is what I would suggest. Listen to the experts, bring the residents in, and let’s get to work.

I think that the stakes are too high. So I want to see the details of the budget; I think we all deserve to. But, more importantly, Ontarians need to know how you are spending their hard-earned tax dollars and how you are going to be accountable to them when the ERs continue to close and the wait-list continues to grow.

I am actually a big proponent of active transportation. I believe that we need to build infrastructure that meets communities where they are, but I don’t believe that we should do it over the objection of local communities or over the compromising of preservation lands, wetlands, endangered species and any other type of environmentally sensitive areas.

For us to be able to build up Ontario and to build the network of roads and highways that we need, we need to be able to make sure that those growth areas are going to connect to other places. So it can’t be so random that the highway shoots up along a particular route and enriches certain developers who have massive landholdings. That is not necessarily smart development of highways and road networks.

What we do need to do is invest in transit, high-order transit, low-order transit, and make sure that that system of transit, especially for all those areas that are underserved, including rural areas—are going to be better served. Not everyone is going to have the ability to own a car. We need to recognize that, especially in a growing climate crisis.

I think for those who have grown up in poverty, whether it’s inflicted by war, perhaps political dissent, or challenges of not being able to just make ends meet, you will recognize that everything in your whole self is compromised. Not only are your relationships compromised because you can’t necessarily go out with your friends or perhaps are not able to engage in social activities that take money; you can’t send your children to programs they desperately need. Your body starts to break down. You have a lot of mental health—you have a lot of anxiety and stress. Your blood sugars are weakened. You are malnourished. Your teeth and gums start to erode, and everything starts to fall apart. You cannot possibly think well if you are not eating well. If you’re worried about not having a roof over your head, you’re constantly in a state of precarity when it comes to housing. At any given point in time, you could be on the street.

Each and every one of us is fortunate enough to have enough money to actually live in Ontario, but we know that it is expensive, especially for those on social assistance. This is why we can do better in this government, in this hall, to support people on ODSP.

I want to congratulate the member from Toronto Centre on her election to the province’s Legislative Assembly. I’ve known the member for quite some time, and I know how passionate she is in representing the people in her community.

Speaker, I want to ask the member, in her review—and it seems as if she did quite a thorough review, bringing her knowledge and experience from city hall to this Legislature.

In the $198-billion budget that was just tabled, could you tell me what you believe ought to have been the priority of the government and what you see is missing from this budget?

Today, we’re debating Bill 2. The province’s budget bill ought to be a road map for the people of Ontario, to show them what the government’s vision, plans and priorities are for their well-being, and yet, in the midst of an affordability crisis that has been steadily worsening, with health care staffing shortages that are literally closing down hospitals, closing emergency rooms, at a time when Ontarians are looking to Queen’s Park, their Legislature, for leadership, it has fallen well short. We have no road map to guide these uncertain times.

The budget failed to provide the support that is desperately needed by so many people, and in this way, it has offered no solutions to the problems that threaten not only the present but also the very future of this province. Imagine a budget that does not mention the climate crisis. How could that be possible?

With its heavy focus on infrastructure projects, this budget sent a clear message—even just on the cover of the budget, with the smoggy highway—to the increasing number of Ontarians lining up at food banks to eat; it sent a clear message to the growing number of residents unable to afford their rent; and it sent a clear message to the province’s most vulnerable, trying to navigate skyrocketing inflation while living on ODSP.

The Premier and the finance minister are either unable to see or they are unwilling to acknowledge that Ontarians need more support. Either way, it simply is unacceptable to prioritize things like roads and highways over people. Instead of working to improve circumstances for the people with their annual budget, the Ford government made a choice to double down on an approach to governing that refuses to allocate support to the alarming number of Ontarians who continue to struggle for the very necessities of life.

Speaker, in re-tabling their pre-election budget, virtually unchanged, while the situation around them has completely shifted, the Ford government showed Ontarians that despite changing circumstances in the form of rising inflation and a deepening crisis of affordability sweeping across the province, they have priorities that do not include taking action that is needed right now to address soaring rents and skyrocketing inflation.

More than 500,000 people, individuals and families in Ontario count on ODSP for part or even all of their income. Many of them live in my riding, in Scarborough–Guildwood. A 5% rate increase is not nearly enough for our province’s most vulnerable people to survive on. Even when asked—to the finance minister—if he could live on $1,169 a month, the minister’s response, admittedly, was that it is merely a step in the right direction. But this is wrong; this isn’t even a baby step.

In my own riding of Scarborough–Guildwood, my staff receive so many troubling calls from residents, including emails from distressed residents who are wondering when more help is coming and asking why the government has not just provided those supports that are needed right now in the face of the rising cost of living. There is so much urgency to do that. When the government is projecting higher-than-expected revenues driven by this very inflation, and when the budget that they just re-tabled features $7.2 billion in underspending, including in our troubled health care system, these are very difficult conversations to have with Ontarians who, quite justifiably, find the government’s accounting difficult to reconcile.

The bottom line here is a shameful one. By prioritizing themselves, the Premier and his government failed to get it done for the province’s most vulnerable, while effectively abandoning Ontarians they are duty bound to support.

Speaker, we already know the PC government’s and this government’s history when it comes to supporting public education and education workers. Even prior to the pandemic, thousands of education workers were standing right outside of this House and circling Queen’s Park and rallying outside of schools to call out the government’s cuts to education. Unfortunately, since then, and even throughout the global pandemic, the government has demonstrated time and time again that the safety of children and education workers is not a top priority. In fact, privatization is more of a priority versus public education.

Two years of learning in a global pandemic has left many students struggling, while the full impact of the pandemic on student outcomes is still unknown, and we are just scratching the surface of this. One thing we do know is that a return to normalcy for Ontario’s world-class public education system is sorely needed right now. That means a proactive plan to return to in-person learning. After two years of disruption, what our students need the most is consistency, stability and a safe, in-person return to a well-funded public education system, not privatization.

Adoption of an ongoing hybrid model or expansion of online learning requirements is solely about cutting costs at a time when our children need more support, not less. We simply cannot exacerbate the issues caused by the pandemic when there are other pathways available. The government, in fact, needs to consult with education partners to set these priorities.

It also means a return to classrooms that aren’t overcrowded. If we’re going to close the learning gap that was created by COVID-19, our students need the focused, individual attention from teachers and education workers that can only come when we keep class sizes manageable. My students and parents, frankly, in Scarborough–Guildwood are asking for this support.

We also need to ensure that our students have access to the support services, the programs and the personnel that they need to succeed, and that means ensuring our schools not only have the appropriate number of educational assistants, speech-language pathologists, mental health professionals and other support workers needed to deliver those services, but also ensuring that those professionals are valued as vital contributors to our strong public education system.

I’m going to take a minute to say thank you. Thank you to our teachers. Thank you to our education workers. Thank you for all that you do on an individual basis, frankly, without the help and support from this government, on behalf of our students, even in the face of these challenging times.

Speaker, having school-board-employed support professionals immediately available within schools would help to ensure that our students get the help and the support they need.

I know that right now our students are crying out for help. I want to remind the Premier and the minister that it is still not too late to do the right thing and to table a plan for a safe return to in-person learning in our education system. School is not yet open. There is still time. We know that our students, right now, are suffering. There’s rising anxiety, mental health and other concerns that we’re hearing about. What is this government doing to support their learning and their well-being?

Speaker, I also want to say that it is an absolute shame what is happening in our health care system. It is particularly distressing that the Premier and his health minister refuse to take proactive action in addressing the staffing crisis that our health system is currently facing. Why are they dragging their feet when the needs are so clear? For months, hospitals have been closing emergency rooms—and yet re-tabling a budget that was drafted pre-election, without acknowledging this problem, is absolutely shameful. The government is failing to react to this crisis and actually letting the system fail. They are being called out by our front-line health care workers—our nurses, our emergency room doctors—and they need to respond. Scrapping Bill 124 should have happened long ago—and yet Bill 2 does not do that. In fact, the Premier and his health minister are doubling down on this health crisis that needs to be fixed right now.

I mentioned in my opening remarks that one of the failures in this budget is not even mentioning the term “climate crisis.” In fact, there was less than a paragraph on the environment in general. It’s as if it does not matter at all. But what about the future of this province? As I said, a budget needs to be a road map; it needs to be the government’s vision, telling Ontarians, the people of this province, where its priorities belong. And we know that it does not align at all with the needs that we have in the environment.

What about housing? The budget falls well short in recognizing that we are in a housing crisis and that people need help and support.

The people in my community, in Scarborough–Guildwood, are struggling. They are struggling with the rising costs of food, of rents and of basic needs.

This budget that we are debating today does not acknowledge the priorities and the needs of the most vulnerable people in Ontario, and it is a shame.

Thank you for the question.

There are so many things that are missing from this budget. There are probably too many to list, as I’ve got a minute left. But I do want to highlight one thing which I think is critically important.

Earlier this month, Statistics Canada released some new data and it specifically talked about the rise of gender-based violence and how Canada is seeing no end in sight. We’ve seen the highest level of gender-based violence that we have seen in past years, and this has grown an astounding 18%. There’s absolutely nothing in this budget that addresses gender-based violence. I couldn’t even find the words “gender-based violence.” I couldn’t find the words “sexual assault.” And yet we know it’s an epidemic in Ontario.

That is one example of the things that are missing, but we also know that when it comes to missing one critical policy piece, the others fall apart—with respect to court services and support, with respect to housing for women who are fleeing violent situations, with respect to children who are losing the capacity to stay in school because their housing situation is so unstable.

Next, we have the member for Scarborough–Guildwood.

First of all, I would like to congratulate my colleague from Scarborough–Guildwood for her re-election to this august House.

For 15 years, the Liberals—my colleague was part of that government, as the Minister of Education and other posts or positions—did not plan for the growth of our city or province. The best demonstration is Scarborough—for 15 years, Scarborough has been ignored.

During our government’s last term, we brought so many important infrastructure projects, like subways, building hospitals, community centres, medical centres.

Wouldn’t my colleague support our plans—which will also benefit individuals in Scarborough—to improve the quality of life?

I’d like to thank the member opposite for a very eloquent speech and address to the House. She touched on many very important issues that we obviously addressed during the election. And we won a historic victory.

We also understand—this House, this party and this government understand—that all Ontarians are struggling, not only with inflation but the rising cost of living in all the areas she touched on.

A simple question to the member for Scarborough–Guildwood: Does the opposition not support the historic increase to the ODSP that we are presenting, that will be adjusted, I might add, for inflation in the future?

Questions?

Thank you to the member opposite.

It does not meet the current needs that people have. It actually doesn’t come close to meeting the inflation cost and pressures. Someone in my community said to me, “Milk is so expensive right now, and babies need milk.” People on ODSP need the government to recognize that. It does not meet the current need of the affordability crisis that people are facing in this province, and it’s actually forcing them into food bank lines.

In my riding, there has been an over 25% increase in food bank use. When you look at the faces of those individuals, it’s really changing.

There’s a real, desperate need there. If you talk to people who are part of the ODSP coalition, you’ll hear that it needs much more than that.

We, the Ontario Liberals, say 20% immediately, with a review of the basic income pilot so that we can provide adequacy for people who are most vulnerable in this province.

So I do believe that all Ontarians should be able to have a choice in how they live in our society, and our society should accommodate that.

What is very distressing in this situation is that the government creates so many hurdles for people who are on ODSP, even just to access support. During the pandemic, there was a $200 amount that they had access to, but they had to go through their caseworker. So many people contacted my office because those offices were closed, or people were working from home and they were inaccessible. So why would the government put an extra burden on people on ODSP, rather than just distributing the funds to the cases that they know they have on record and have on file?

Absolutely, there is more that can be done to support people with disabilities in this province.

We often rise in this House and put questions to the government, but sometimes those questions are best coming from our constituents. I want to raise this one from a constituent back home for the member for Scarborough–Guildwood. It’s from Donna Behnke. She’s from Elliot Lake. She writes: “If any of them had a single ethical bone in their body or even the slightest hint of common decency, they would do what is right. Does”—she used “Ford,” but I’ll change it to “Premier”—“not realize some people on ODSP are fighting mental illness? People with cancer, people that had strokes, people that had multiple sclerosis—the list goes on and on. He needs to stop painting everyone with the same paintbrush. The Premier and prior governments always target the poor. You can’t make healthy people by destroying them. They will never be fit to hold a job. But what it will do is push more people to seek out MAID.”

My question to the member is, do you agree with Donna?

I’d like to thank the member from Scarborough–Guildwood for her presentation.

My question is quite simple: What, in their mind, would be an acceptable increase in ODSP and OW?

I thank my colleague from Scarborough–Agincourt. We are on the same side, when it comes to fighting for the people of Scarborough–Guildwood. That’s why I was elected nine years ago. Speaker, on August 1, which is Emancipation Day, I was elected by the people of Scarborough to do this very thing, to fight for them.

Scarborough is a community I grew up in—went to high school; went to University of Toronto, Scarborough campus. I know Scarborough needs more infrastructure. In fact, the extension of the subway is something I fought for. I was elected in 2013 as the “subway champion,” to bring that very infrastructure to the people of Scarborough. I continue to fight for the people of Scarborough.

You recently announced a medical school for Scarborough. That was a project that I helped to co-create with the former principal of the University of Toronto Scarborough campus because I noticed that we had a gap in that area. I pushed for that.

Oftentimes, that’s what the people of our province expect—that in successive governments, you will build on the work that has already started for their benefit.

I will always continue to fight for the people of Scarborough and for what they need.

I’m also very proud of the environmental contributions that were driven by the former Liberal government. The closure of coal plants was recognized even by President Obama as the most significant contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gases in North America by any jurisdiction, and that was led by a Liberal government.

I’m also proud of how the former Liberal government handled the Great Recession. We remember how precarious everything was. We brought back over 800,000 jobs. All of the jobs that were lost during the Great Recession were brought back under our leadership. That is why I call out this current government in terms of what they are doing—with the lack of vision, the lack of a road map, the lack of a plan in this budget—when we’re facing such precarious economic times.

Of course, on health care, we have some of the most innovative approaches—Cancer Care Ontario—to our health system, in terms of leading the transformation and renewal of our health system.

That form of innovation and leadership is needed today and always. And I give credit to the great people of Ontario for our great education system, and the people who work so hard—

Questions?

I appreciate this opportunity to speak to our Plan to Build Act. But in my first official opportunity outside of question period to speak in this place, Mr. Speaker, I want to express a heartfelt thank you to the people, my constituents, of Kenora–Rainy River for five elections—four of them, I had an opportunity to come to either the other place, the House of Commons in Ottawa, and here now for my second session. I appreciate the support, the confidence that you have put in me.

Standing in this place today, I reflect on the past four years. I would make the observation that it went quite quickly, as these sessions often do. Just getting back from AMO in Ottawa—the seven years that I spent there and the seven years since seem a bit of a blur. But in sitting down with some of my older old colleagues from that other place and looking around this magnificent Legislature, I am struck by the opportunity for renewal—most notably, in this session, the strong, stable majority that the people of Ontario have given the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, and some fresh new faces to join us here today, because they rejected out of hand the platforms of the opposition parties and, in particular, if you will, the gaggle of non-affiliates across the way there who used to form the governing party for some 15 years. So if there’s anything to be proud of there, it is the fact that they’ll have an opportunity to sit in this place and take note of the fact that in this legislative session, the people of Ontario have sent a strong message that they want our government to continue to build.

I’m going to focus, for the purposes of my remarks, on northern Ontario, where not only did we pick up a few new seats, but we also got a couple of those NDP members out on the doorstep a lot more vigorously than they’re used to, as we replaced a couple of seats in northern Ontario and finished a strong, notable second in every other seat across northern Ontario—a historic finish in and of itself. I want to thank the candidates who ran for us across northern Ontario.

Mr. Speaker, from hospitals to highways, from bridges to broadband, we’re committed to building northern Ontario and rebuilding our economy across northern Ontario. In the past four years, several new mines moved to construction or transitioned into electrification only. This isn’t just sound environmental policy; this puts significant demands, positive pressure on our northern communities to ensure that we’re ready and that we continue to be ready, as some northern communities across the province will see exponential growth and therefore requirements for infrastructure and community enhancements moving forward.

We understand the opportunity to ensure that our highways, our modes of transportation, are upgraded. We saw, in print, our budget highlighting a plan to twin Highway 17 from the Manitoba border to Kenora, and hopefully points beyond, as we make a commitment not just based on safety, but based also on the economic opportunity to link our northern communities across some 800,000 square kilometres and ensure, as we move from earth to electric vehicles, from mining to motors, that for the first time we have a fully integrated supply chain in our transportation modalities—most notably buses, transport trucks and electric-powered vehicles—that northern Ontario is part of that integrated supply chain. More importantly, it would start there. So, safe transportation modes, rail into the Far North out in northeastern Ontario, and a plan to link our highways with two-plus-one and/or twinning is a great way to get started.

My colleague the Minister of Mines and I have an extraordinary opportunity to continue on with our growth plan to open up what I’ve referred to as the corridor to prosperity, leveraging what governments do. Let mining companies build those mines; we will be there to support the regulatory pieces, but most notably, to create a highway or road infrastructure to leverage health, social and economic opportunities for those isolated communities in the north. I know a thing or two about that. I spent more than eight years of my life living and working as a nurse in those isolated communities. Retired in that capacity, I also served as a lawyer—I asked my constituents not to hold that part against me—and then as a politician, ensuring and committed that the northern communities—I even got a smile from the Speaker on that one. Lawyers are good people, Mr. Speaker, just for the record—just to ensure that we understand the opportunity to connect our communities.

There has been much discussion about health care. As a former health care provider and someone who has worked with communities across northern Ontario to improve access to health services and programs—we’re investing $142 million, starting in 2022-23, to recruit and retain health care workers in underserved communities. This will start with $81 million, beginning in this fiscal year, to expand the Community Commitment Program for Nurses, which includes compensation and recovery for the cost of full tuition for nurses.

We see at Seven Generations Education Institute in Fort Frances and Kenora an incredible opportunity, as that Indigenous post-secondary education institution, now accessible for all students, is training in paramedicine, PSWs, RPNs and registered nurses.

There is a plan and a relationship to work with the Northern Ontario School of Medicine to address one of the greatest opportunities we’ve seen perhaps in a generation, and that is to ensure that students attending northern high schools—and now northern colleges and potentially northern medical schools—will have an opportunity to play out and live out their dream to be educated and then work in their region. As a young man coming from southern Ontario, armed with a diploma in nursing in the very late 1980s, early 1990s, I came there, I settled there, I made it my home, and went on to other things. We need to ensure, moving forward, that as many northern students have that opportunity.

The expansion of these kinds of programs—the Ontario Learn and Stay Grant—will support and attract the retention of a whole host of human resources, health human resources, moving forward. We think that is the right thing to do.

Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about a couple of other programs that are highlighted in this bill but that find their importance in the previous session—because this is about building. It’s not just building Ontario as a legislative exercise; it’s about a government building on the previous session.

A couple of those key things for northern Ontario were found in the Northern Energy Advantage Program. This wasn’t just a rebrand. This was a program that replaced the northern industrial energy rebate program. NEAP, as it’s called, is kind of neat, because it provides—now, as opposed to before—large industrial electricity consumers with competitive and predictable electricity rates. This program is now broader in scope and will assist more major and larger operations, through a new investor class, to be competitive. In the forestry sector, margins are razor-thin. Mines are pivoting to full electrification, in some cases, and they need to know that that cost has certainty—unlike from the previous government—and that it’s competitive.

Listen to the names of companies that have rallied behind our government, Mr. Speaker, to support this and access this:

—Algoma Steel, which is now transitioning to an electric arc furnace thanks to the investments that we’re putting into their operations;

—Domtar, one of the most efficient pulp producers across northern Ontario—in fact, in the world—right there in Dryden, in my own riding;

—Evolution Mining;

—Vale Canada in Sudbury;

—Impala Canada;

—GreenFirst Forest Products;

—Pan American Silver; and

—Agnico Eagle.

These have a couple of interesting features. They are anchor tenants and major employers in all our ridings.

Historically, we’ve brought these programs to this legislative floor.

And do you know what, Mr. Speaker? Are you curious?

The Speaker is curious.

They have two features: They were transformative programs, and the members of the NDP, for reasons I don’t understand, voted against them. They have a chance at redemption here today and as we vote moving forward. They’re going to get an opportunity to support these programs. They’re going to get an opportunity to ensure that their constituents, especially the younger ones, have an opportunity to transition out of high school or out of college or other training, Red Seal training, into the industries that have characterized northern Ontario for well over a century. This is a plan to build, but this is a plan for opportunity.

I mentioned transportation modalities earlier in my remarks, and I just want to return to that for a moment. Our government’s efforts in the last session and moving forward, as highlighted in our plan to build, include cutting the gas tax and fuel tax by a combined 11 cents. That doesn’t sound like a lot, until you fuel up jets and my 133-litre tank in my pickup truck, to serve one of the largest ridings in northern Ontario with highway networks.

It’s a commitment to make investments through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund, widely acknowledged as one of the most robust efforts to modernize the investments for municipalities and northern businesses moving forward. But it also made investments in airports—the town of Hearst, to replace the René Fontaine Municipal Airport in-ground fuel system; the town of Iroquois Falls, to make improvements to the Iroquois Falls municipal airport; Confederation College, to improve and expand and modernize its aviation programs so pilots can move out across northern Ontario to ensure safe passage across some 800,000 square kilometres of this amazing part of the province; and, of course, closer to home, for my purposes, in the city of Dryden and the town of Fort Frances, improvements to their facilities and terminal buildings.

I’m so pleased to serve with an amazing Premier and a caucus, frankly, who have made sure that every time discussion substantively comes up in caucus or cabinet, it is viewed mandatorily through a northern Ontario lens, and that we continue to understand that through things like the Northern Ontario Resource Development Support Fund, we are ensuring that our towns and cities, where pressures are put on them as a result of the resource sector, are accounted for and are stackable to work with other levels of government, including our own, for meaningful upgrades to their infrastructure that’s targeted towards the impact of resource development.

I’m going to take up the last few minutes to talk about, in my capacity as Minister of Indigenous Affairs, some of the tremendous progress that has been made not just historically but for the purposes of this plan to build.

We sat down with Indigenous business and political leaders to talk about a wealth creation table and a prosperity table. We took our direction from then-Regional Chief RoseAnne Archibald, now the national chief. We took our lead from people like Matt Jamieson, president and CEO of Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corp.; my friend Kevin Eshkawkogan, president and CEO of Indigenous Tourism Ontario; Brenda LaRose, partner and head of the national diversity and Indigenous board practice; Desiree Norwegian—one of my favourites—owner and chief executive officer of Atunda Inc., working in the nuclear sector; and of course, a dear friend of mine, Darren Harper, co-founder and president of Maawandoon Inc. What they know is what we know: the tremendous opportunity for Indigenous communities and businesses to prosper. It’s why we’ve advanced and built on resource revenue-sharing agreements between Indigenous communities in the province. It’s why we have invested in increased funding for Aboriginal financial institutes to access capital. We’re going to have more to say on that as budget 2022 endeavours to address the Indigenous Economic Development Fund highlighted in our plan to build.

This is exciting because this is organic. It comes from Regional Chief Glen Hare’s pen and his adviser Ted Nolan—you will remember him as the coach of the Buffalo Sabres and a former player in the National Hockey League. My only wish is that he had played for my beloved Toronto Maple Leafs. But forget all that. For the purposes of this discussion, Ted, who has one of the largest business networks the province over and the country over, with Indigenous partners, has come to the table to advise Regional Chief Hare and create an opportunity to the tune of $25 million.

The Chiefs of Ontario office and their Indigenous leadership, the Grand Chief included, know that access to capital, investing in Indigenous businesses is the right way to go.

Mr. Speaker, finally, on that note and making a quick pivot, Indigenous businesses, now more than ever, under the revamped Northern Ontario Heritage Fund, are seeing exciting opportunities—expanding existing businesses, helping to support the creation of new ones, and, vitally, by virtue of our business programs in the new-look Northern Ontario Heritage Fund, ensuring that they are an essential part of the supply chains.

As I mentioned earlier, not only does northern Ontario count itself in from mines to motors, from the earth to electric vehicles—from some of the most northern communities that you can contemplate, right down to the Stellantis plant in Windsor that we intend to onboard—but we want to include Indigenous communities in that opportunity.

So, Mr. Speaker, already we’re seeing the results in the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund revamp. This budget accounts for an ongoing commitment to the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund.

Once again, my NDP colleagues across the way will have an extraordinary opportunity to stand with the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, to focus on the opportunities and support this important bill as we build Ontario and as we build, importantly, for the purposes of my representation, northern Ontario.

Thank you for this opportunity.