It’s a pleasure to join the debate today on the throne speech. I have limited time because we’ll go to question period, but for the time being I want to start off, of course, by thanking the very good people of Waterloo for returning me to Queen’s Park for the fourth election. It was a very interesting election, I must tell you, and I’m sure we will be debriefing on that.

I also want to thank the members for Durham and Ajax for your inaugural speeches and for getting the chance to learn more about you. I also share the sentiment from the member for Ajax around collaboration. That said, this morning I just found out that the government House leader shuffled us around at our committees, so I’m hoping that maybe she could speak to the government House leader around collaboration and around respecting the opposition, because I was really looking forward to serving on public accounts.

I also want to say thank you to my family and my friends and my campaign team. I’m supported—unbelievably, actually—in Waterloo by the community and by the election team that has brought me back to Queen’s Park. I hold that trust very closely in my heart. It is a huge responsibility. Actually, it is in the prayer that we start with every day here, where we are called upon to put the people who we serve first in this place. I hope that this is a very different Legislature session than it was last time. One can be optimistic at this stage; it is day 1, and we haven’t had question period yet.

With that, I also want to pass on my congratulations to the Speaker. I must tell you, that was a good day for us on this side of the House, for the opposition and the independent members, and I truly enjoyed dragging you to that chair.

I am going to be sharing my time with the member from Toronto–Danforth, who will continue on with the throne speech comments a little bit later on today.

I want to start off by saying it was very noticeable: The tone of the speech from the throne was very sombre, and it was a sharp contrast, actually, to the first throne speech that was given in this place in 2018. There are two notable increases to the budget—the budget that has never been passed and/or debated, because prior to the election the government dropped the budget and then went to an election. That is not, I think and we think on this side of the House, the best way to provide financial oversight and accountability.

Honestly, that budget did not meet the needs of the people of this province. It did not. And it did not address the inflationary pressures that we see in the province of Ontario: 8.1%. As the finance critic for the province of Ontario, I track the money very closely; there is a very disturbing pattern of the Ford government whereby you budget money for health care, for education, for some investments in infrastructure, but the money does not make it out the door, and that is why we actually have a $4.8-billion contingency fund that is unallocated.

We know that investing in the health and the well-being of Ontarians is good for the economy. We know that because this was a key lesson from the pandemic. When the health and well-being of Ontarians is compromised, we are in a position where the economy comes to a standstill. So I want to preface my comments by saying, Mr. Speaker, that there is a huge disconnect between what happens in this place and how that budget was designed, and the real lived experiences of Ontarians out there.

I’m going to start by saying that there are two additional expenditures that were not in the original budget, and one was around education. I also was a school board trustee for 10 years. I was the president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association. Education brought me into politics because education is always worth fighting for, and if you get it right, many other factors fall into place. But in the throne speech yesterday, there was a promise of $225 million to help kids catch up. Now, one thing that we can agree on is that there were serious learning disruptions in our school system because of the pandemic, and that mental health in our system right now, both from a staffing perspective and from a student perspective, has been challenged, and mental health was already a crisis prior to the pandemic, with one in five children suffering from mental health challenges.

This $225 million—no details were given about it, except that it is called a “tutorial program.” If you do the math, this is approximately $90 per student. Now, $90 per student is one tutorial session. That is not a catch-up policy; that is not an earnest policy. That is a gimmick, and it will not work. Not only that, we were very clear yesterday: Our interim leader, when we were asked about this money—that $225 million would go so much further if it was invested in the public education system. All of us hear the same calls for action: We need more educational assistants; we need more child and youth workers; we need more mental health resources in our system. Some $225 million is not a lot of money. So let’s be clear about the intentions of this. And drawing that money out of public education also does not strengthen those values that we have around public education.

The other issue was ODSP: $245 million, a 5% increase to those who live on ODSP, and I have to tell you the finance minister was challenged yesterday by several reporters on this. He was asked a simple question: Can you live on $1,169 a month? The raise will only go to $1,227, which is approximately $50.

I’m going to answer the question for the finance minister right here and right now: This is legislated poverty. That is what it is, and there is a cost to poverty. I always try to make the investment case. When people live in poverty, their health care suffers. There are issues with justice, with police involvement. There is housing instability. There are mental health issues. By not investing in the health and well-being of Ontarians, you are actually working against your goals, the goals that were stated in the throne speech so beautifully delivered by the LG yesterday. The 5% is tied to inflation. So not only are you legislating poverty, knowing—because the poverty rate is $14,724. That’s what people on ODSP live on. That’s impossible. It is not doable, and we all know it.

When you talk about faith and hope and charity, let’s think about this from a moral perspective, because that’s what budgets are supposed to be. They are supposed to be moral documents that tell the people of the province who we are as a population. It should explain what our priorities are because everything else is just words on paper.

The other final issue that really was a missed opportunity—I mean, the government had an opportunity to course-correct with this budget, because the inflationary rate was not 8.1% back in May. The health care crisis: We’ve lost 5,400 health care workers in one year. Wage suppression is undermining our health care system. I cannot say this any more clearly. You have the numbers right before you.

Bill 124 is an insult to health care workers, education workers and the public service as a whole. In our health care system, you can plan all the beds you want, you can cut all the ribbons you want, but if you don’t have a nurse, that bed will not be opened. Bill 124 would have been one hopeful step for the people of this province. If the Premier went to the emergency room, as he’s been invited to go, as has the health minister, and said, “Listen, I see you, and I recognize that a 1% cap on your wages for three years is a cut”—it is a 7% cut when you have an inflationary rate of 8.1%.

At the end of the day, if you truly value health care and if you truly value education, then the return on that investment is worth it, and it certainly is worth fighting for. And I’ll return to that next time.

Debate deemed adjourned.