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.

It’s interesting that a nurse on that side of the House is heckling me, because I believe you take an oath—

Interjections.

I do want to say one final thing on that, because until you actually acknowledge that this is the reality in our health care system, I worry. The mental health piece was mentioned in the throne speech yesterday, Mr. Speaker, and I just want to finish on this point. I started the first day of the election attending a visitation of a young woman who died by suicide. That was day one. She waited for two years for mental health supports. Her name was Kaitlyn Roth. She was a friend of my daughter’s.

The mental health funding that was in the budget that you tabled—and then you ran away to an election—is insufficient. It is insufficient, because this young woman came into contact with 27 police officers. Think of the cost to the Halton police services and the Waterloo police services, and the cost to her family, and the lost productivity, and the fact that she was stuck in a hospital that was not prepared for or equipped to deal with mental health.

So when I say that budgets are moral documents, I mean it. This budget and the throne speech and the language within that throne speech, which only addressed in a very insulting and demeaning way the ODSP rates, which are legislated poverty for the people of this province, and the fact that you are continuing to undermine public education—this does not instill confidence in us as legislators or in the finances of the province of Ontario. When you do that, you hurt our democracy and you hurt the people of this province. I would urge you to course-correct. You have time to do it, and we want to help you do it.

Speaker, before I begin, I want to say congratulations to you. Welcome back. It’s good to have you in this chair.

I also want to congratulate all the new members. We’ve got some incredible members on our side here, who I’m so proud of.

To the rest of us coming back—it’s an honour.

Regardless of political stripes—I listened this morning to the member from Ajax’s stories about her parents. It reminds me of myself and the campaigns that we ran, which are sometimes filled with your parents, your family members, your friends, and new friends and allies that you make over the weeks and months and years. It’s really incredible for us to be here, because a lot of people put their heart and soul in the work that they do to bring us here. A lot of people in our ridings put their faith in us to come back here and serve them, to serve our communities, to serve the ridings that we represent and to serve this amazing province that has given us the opportunities.

When I was listening to the throne speech—first, I want to say that I appreciated the way it started, because it talked about the people of this land, the Indigenous people, and the work that we need to do to reconcile. I am so privileged and honoured to sit next to my colleague from Kiiwetinoong, who teaches all of us and teaches me about not just the history but the realities that people continue to face in some of the regions in Ontario, in our province, in many of the communities; we don’t have to go far.

I have a healing lodge that’s going to be built in my riding of Scarborough Southwest, so I understand a little bit, working with the community, in terms of the work that we need to do to really look at truth and reconciliation. I don’t think the word “reconciliation” itself has been defined in the way that a lot of Indigenous leaders and community members want it to be defined, to see the action that’s necessary.

I was impressed to see that there was a good start, because it understood or at least reflected on the realities and acknowledged the hurt and pain that have been felt by many of the parents and grandparents of the Indigenous community members. However, when I talked to my colleague and we listened to the rest of the throne speech, we were, I think, shocked—maybe not fully shocked, fully surprised. Because when we heard about the Ring of Fire and the way that we need to talk to, we need to consult with, we need to take the leadership of Indigenous community members—that still needs to be done by this government. There is a lot of work that’s missing when we do any sort of work.

Something that we have fought for and we continuously fight for is the work that needs to be done to provide clean drinking water, to provide housing, to provide mental health support. I could not find a lot of those words that were necessary in the throne speech. That is so urgent, that is so critical, to make sure that—talking about reconciliation, talking about truth. You have to have that. You have to make sure that you are providing the day-to-day things that are the basic human rights. I mean, clean drinking water—come on.

Those are the commitments that we should have made not just in the previous terms, but before that. So I expect some of that in this government, and I hope that we can work together to make sure that we take the leadership from those who are in those spaces and do the necessary work that everyone across this province has entrusted us to do, has sent us here to do.

In the throne speech, there are also quite a few other topics that I think sometimes have a really good—it’s sort of buttered, in a way. It sounds beautiful. This government is really good at that. We saw this in the previous government as well, where you see the name of a bill and you think, “Well, there might be something that’s working for workers.” But then you look at the real meat of that and—surprise, surprise—it does the exact opposite of what the title even says to do.

I hope I have enough time to talk about this, because I have to begin with the health care system. It’s the crisis that we’re facing right now. Some time ago, I was reading a book about the health care systems across the world and some of the countries that see Canada as to be envied. They envy the system, this pride that we have. Just this afternoon, I believe, or after question period, one of the things the health minister said was that all options are on the table when she was asked about privatization, when she was asked about what kind of options are available in terms of what you would do to address the health care crisis. I have to say it is very concerning to hear the Minister of Health even hint towards privatization, because what we really need right now—we have the solutions available to us. We have the ideas. We have the leaders in our health care system telling us exactly what we need to do. And here we are. We have a Minister of Health and we have a government that’s looking at—I don’t know why.

I don’t want to anticipate anything, but in the way it’s going, the way that this government looks at this crisis, or denies that there is a crisis, and then hints towards privatization—there is something inherently wrong with the way of our thinking, our psyche. There is something really wrong about that, because so many people across the world see our health care system as a model, and here we are with ER closures. We had, I think, 24 or 25 hospitals that had closures over the long weekend—we had SickKids hospital, a kids’ hospital. The fact that children have to not just wait for hours—we were already bad. And trust me, I know someone is going to heckle and say, “Well, it was the Liberals’ fault.” We had an emergency that was already in long wait times, but the fact that right now we’re facing ER closures is problematic. We’re talking about children.

My colleague from Waterloo talked about the fact that there was someone on the phone trying to figure out whether they were going to provide support to someone giving birth, or CPR for a choking baby. Those are the choices you’re asking a health care worker to make, and those are the options that you’re giving the people of this province, who have entrusted you to represent them. When you look at that and you think that there isn’t a crisis, there is something inherently wrong about that.

I was at the OFL rally just the other day—and I know that CUPE Ontario has given over, I believe, 30,000 letters. There were so many workers from across the health care sector and other sectors. Every single one I have talked to has asked for a few things, and one of them is to repeal Bill 124. It is fundamentally wrong to call these people essential workers—health care workers who have been working day and night, who have sacrificed their lives to protect us—and here we have a government that’s telling them, “Even though we call you heroes, you’re not good enough to have a raise. You’re not good enough to benefit from the basic things that you need: health care benefits, good benefits so that you can have a good life and a good wage for your family. You’re not good enough. You’re heroes when it comes to providing the care, but we’re not going to pay you enough.” That is fundamentally what this government is telling them.

When we talk about paid sick days, I have heard from members opposite who talk about solutions. We are giving you solutions right here. These are specific things this government can do right now. They can do them today. Repeal Bill 124. Give them paid sick days. We’ve been calling for it over and over. I believe the member from London West has now proposed it a third time. Many of us on this side proposed it in the last term, and I know there are so many people across this province who have called for it. So many health care workers, so many doctors and nurses, on national media, have called for it. And here we are—“Nope, you can’t have paid sick days.”

Another solution I can give you is making sure that you actually give them good working conditions. It’s just mind-boggling; I can’t even believe that’s actually something I have in my notes, because it should be common sense.

I have proposed a bill in this House—Bill 98, which this government passed on second reading and then just stalled—to recognize internationally trained workers who have come here with a dream and hope, who have been given that hope by the federal government and been recognized by the federal government through the point system, but then when they come to the province, the province tells them no. “That recognition that you got from the federal government—those points? They don’t count. Your skills and your credentials are not good enough.” Not only that, but they have many barriers that they have to go through in order to be recognized, in order to get the credentials necessary. Some of those barriers include the fact that they have a huge financial cost. You’re telling a new immigrant who is trying to survive on a wage, trying to put food on the table, trying to pay rent, trying to provide for their family—on top of that, you’re telling them to get re-educated and get the certificates, and the experience, by the way, in order to get a job in a field that they have worked in for, let’s say, five, 10, 15 years. That is the cycle that we go through. We tell these people that they have to get experience, but then when they try to get that experience, they’re told to get experience.

Do you see, Speaker, where this doesn’t make any sense? I know many of the members opposite will also hear from community members who go through this. I know you’re sitting on the chair right now, Speaker. You have community members who have gone through this, who come with the hopes and dreams of practising.

There are a lot of health care workers who are nurses, who are doctors, who have the skills that we need right now. We have a shortage in our communities right now.

In 2020, this government promised that they were going to recognize internationally educated nurses. Let me tell you, Speaker, what happened. Of these IENs who were promised that they would go through it, only 2,000 actually became registered nurses, from the 14,633 who tried. That is the gap we face when we give these people this hope.And the continuous announcements, by the way—this government is great for radio commercials. They’re great for propping themselves up. But when it comes to the reality, this is what actually happens. These are the real numbers of people who actually get through the actual roadblocks. You’re not recognizing them fast enough.

The other day, the Minister of Health decided, “Do you know what? I’m going to just leave it on the colleges and say, ‘Well, recognize them’”—how do you say this word?