I listened intently to the remarks from the member from Stormont–Dundas–West Glengarry—close?—and it was interesting that he has a restaurant background. Since we no longer operate a dairy farm, my wife is a server in a restaurant, and I’ve learned from her experience, listening to what happens every day, that I think running a restaurant might be a tougher job than running a dairy farm. I appreciate your experience.

Could you be a bit more specific—and you would know the restaurant business very well—about how Bill 91 would specifically address things that you face running a restaurant?

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas anti-2SLGBTQI+ hate crimes and harassment are increasing across Ontario;

“Whereas drag artists have been specifically targeted for intimidation by anti-2SLGBTQI+ extremists;

“Whereas drag performance is a liberating and empowering art form that allows diverse communities to see themselves represented and celebrated;

“Whereas drag artists, small businesses, and 2SLGBTQI+ communities deserve to feel safe everywhere in Ontario;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to pass the Keeping 2SLGBTQI+ Communities Safe Act so that 2SLGBTQI+ safety zones can deter bigoted harassment and an advisory committee can be struck to protect 2SLGBTQI+ communities from hate crimes.”

I will proudly affix my signature to this petition and send it to the table with page Stefan.

Yesterday, we heard from the Attorney General with regard to some of the changes that are being made from a creditor relief perspective. So my question to the member is, when it comes to updating the Creditors’ Relief Act, which is to include electronic formats, what changes are being made and why?

The next question?

Thanks to the member for his speech on Bill 91 this morning. I want to say that schedule 4 in particular in this piece of legislation makes a series of COVID-era temporary legislative amendments permanent. However, the government chose not to make the three paid sick days permanent even after going through COVID and realizing the impact of paid sick days interrupted the transmission of COVID, especially in the restaurant and tourism sector.

So can the member speak to why this government decided that paid sick days were not going to be part of this legislative change when, under schedule 4, the door was open there for you to do so?

Thank you to the member, my colleague from the opposite side. With regard to the Creditors’ Relief Act, it limits the delivery of enforcement documents to mail and in-person service. With the pandemic, we’ve modernized a lot of things. We were all on Zoom and Teams quite often, so it’s good to know that it doesn’t need to be in mail and in person. If approved, the changes would permit the sheriff’s office to serve these documents by email.

We all have email—or the majority of Canadians and Ontarians do—so to allow that process to happen and be more efficient with it—because sometimes addresses aren’t correct. We had an instance in my office, and we were trying to find the person who came in, and the police did not have the correct address on file. So to be able to serve those documents by email is—as much as I’m sometimes against technology, it’s about time that we’re going to update those, if this is passed.

Myself, I do offer the sick days to some employees—my management, specifically. But the one thing that was interesting about the paid sick days, and this is a concrete example, is the 10 paid sick days were actually used by the end of the first month that they were offered. So for the 11 extra months out of the year, they didn’t necessarily factor in that they should carry those forward. So in the end, those 10 days were—I’m not going to say abused, but they were utilized too fast. They ultimately weren’t using them for their sick days moving forward.

But it has now turned into an endemic, and ultimately, the pandemic will carry on moving forward. We were the only jurisdiction in Canada to offer the two guaranteed sick days—

But ultimately, there are a lot of pressures on small business with the inflation and supply chains and the staffing challenges. We were trying not to put too much pressure onto the small businesses. We need the businesses to be able to succeed for the employees to be employed and ultimately for our economy to succeed as well.

Unfortunately, we have run out of time for questions and answers, but we have time for further debate.

I want to commend my colleague from Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas for speaking out on Bill 91 and really highlighting what really isn’t in the bill and what we’re going through in the province of Ontario, where our hospitals are at their knees and the cost of living, like hydro and food—food banks have tripled in lineups. People are sleeping on concrete beds throughout our province. You’ve highlighted that houses are way too expensive, and this government continues to bulldoze over our greenbelt.

I’m not sure why they’re calling it cutting red tape in Bill 91. With almost 30 sections to it, it’s a huge omnibus bill. As I said, the honourable member here in the official opposition has highlighted what this Conservative government continues to ignore.

Can you highlight a little bit more what is not in this Bill 91’s almost 30 sections? And what is more important to the official opposition than cutting through this?

Thank you to the member opposite for her presentation. I listened thoughtfully to what was said, but I’m also aware of the fact that—she talked about limiting economic participation. We have a number of thriving businesses in Thornhill. We have a number of small businesses. Small businesses are the backbone of Ontario. Sometimes they are crippled by things that get in the way of doing their jobs. To that point, in 2017, Ontario businesses were paying $33,000 in annual compliance fees. That’s $4,000 more than any other province, and the largest regulatory burden in Canada.

Clearly we have to understand that red tape is a significant barrier to our economic competitiveness. So why does the opposition continuously vote against this kind of red tape reduction measure, when all the benefits they would have for the people of Ontario, including the—

Thank you to the member from Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas. I know the member spoke a lot about some of the challenges in Hamilton. I appreciate you talking about those. I’m a Hamiltonian myself—born there; high school there. I know the problems of Hamilton.

But in this bill—speaking of this bill, Bill 91—through the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services, we are looking at updating the Services and Supports to Promote the Social Inclusion of Persons with Developmental Disabilities Act, 2008. The new developmental services funding approach is based on the government working to develop a new, evidence-based funding approach that will determine funding for adult support based on a person’s assessment needs.

I’d like to ask the member, can you support this change in this Bill 91?

It is now time for questions.

Just because I said I didn’t like it doesn’t mean I said I won’t vote for it. Let’s be clear, I didn’t—don’t put words in my mouth.

But I will also say that in this province, for small businesses, we have the highest insurance rates in the province, so small businesses struggle under the burden of insurance. During COVID—do you want to talk about red tape? I had so many small businesses, which I understand are the backbone of our communities—I understand that they represent over 90% of the businesses and over 90% of the jobs in my community of Hamilton. I understand that. But my phone was ringing off the hook with small businesses that were trying to keep the doors open, trying to stay alive and keep their employees in place, but couldn’t get through the red tape of your COVID supports that you were trying to provide them.

We hear about mothers, families, who can’t afford formula to feed their babies. This is what we should be talking about, not about this bill. And while I imagine in here, there are probably some things that will indeed reduce regulations, possibly, is this what we as legislators expected to do when we came to this House, to look at this kind of legislation, when our communities are expecting so much more from us than this?

I want to thank the member from Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas for her passionate speech. I know she cares for her community very much, and I think Hamiltonians are very proud to have you represent them.

One of the things I’ve been very keen on asking about for this bill specifically is small businesses, because we know that during the pandemic, our government could have done a much better job supporting them. You mentioned insurance for small businesses. One of the things was the fact that a lot of businesses did not qualify for grants, because there was a lot of red tape. And for a bill that is about red tape reduction, I don’t see a lot of reduction of red tape when it comes to small businesses having the ability to quality for supports they truly need and deserve as contributors to this province. What are your thoughts?

Further questions?

I want to thank the member opposite for the presentation this afternoon. I know Hamilton, like Windsor, is very much an industrial city and has been part of recessions and boom-and-bust cycles. I certainly remember the boom and bust from the last recession; coincidentally, it was the same time as we had our previous government which had crippling deficits, crushing debt, a systematic dismantling of the manufacturing sector and, quite frankly, unaffordable electricity costs.

The changes that are being proposed in this bill—some of them have to do with electricity—will ultimately ensure that ratepayers are not subject to additional costs that are not directly related to their usage of electricity or gas. Does the member plan on correcting the record about lack of affordability in this bill—because I think it’s there—by supporting this bill to keep penalties off of rates?

I think I heard the comment earlier, “Is this what we come to government to do?” I’d say, in my case, yes. My previous career as an engineer for a municipality meant that I dealt with regulations all the time and their impact on the public that we served with unnecessary costs imposed, unnecessary delays. It kept things from getting done.

I spent nearly 20 years being the regulator. There were rules and they needed to be applied, and I did my job faithfully. Actually, it came back to haunt me at our pre-budget consultations a few weeks ago when one of our local property owners actually raised an issue he had brought directly to me when I was Windsor’s drainage superintendent. He cited it as an example of unnecessary red tape. The situation was that he had a piped municipal drain that crossed his property just at the corner; it wasn’t much. But he had an economic development opportunity that he wanted to leverage quite quickly. He had an engineer with him who demonstrated a suitable fix and a way to accommodate the piped drain and the land development proposal. And I told him no. He was incredulous.

The reason I told him no was the Drainage Act required that downstream properties affected by the change had to be notified and have the opportunity to participate in the dialogue as to whether this was a good idea or not. While the turnaround on this wouldn’t really have been the worst among government standards, it was lengthy enough that the opportunity to land any investment by this property owner could be lost. Speaker, the irony of it is that at that point in time, our government had already engaged in consultations for amendments to the Drainage Act that, once passed, would have given me the discretion to say yes.

So I saw the benefits of previous red tape reduction efforts by this government. Absolutely, there were cases that I witnessed first-hand where they would have made a difference. There are countless stories like this that I can tell.

But it’s important to recognize that regulations exist for a reason. You have to trust your regulators and their authority and their judgment. Giving a certain amount of discretion means that we don’t have to just make work to make work and add cost to an initiative where it truly isn’t necessary. If something is reasonable, please let your regulators make that judgment call and not necessarily have it written down that there is a mandate to do specific things.

Personally, having been responsible for holding up and adding costs to projects repeatedly for intangible benefits to the common good, it truly is a privilege to see bills like this one that try to get rid of unnecessary work and expense in the delivery of vital services for the people of Ontario.

Our government’s red tape reduction efforts follow seven key principles:

(1) Less onerous compliance requirements should apply to small businesses rather than to larger businesses solely.

(2) Recognized national and international standards should be adopted.

(3) Digital services that are accessible to regulated entities should be provided.

(4) Regulated entities that demonstrate excellent compliance should be recognized.

(5) Unnecessary reporting should be reduced, and steps should be taken to avoid requiring regulated entities to provide the same information to government repeatedly. That’s something I saw time and time again: giving the same information across the board to various agencies who were looking at exactly the same thing.

(6) An instrument should focus on the user by communicating clearly, providing for reasonable response timelines and creating a single point of contact.

(7) An instrument should specify the desired result that regulated entities must meet rather than the means by which the result must be achieved.

Speaker, this bill contains 42 separate and distinct measures. I know that they will reduce frustration, save money and help make things work better. Knowing that my time is short today—I think I’ve just about five minutes left—I’d like to focus on two particular refreshing approaches that this bill has brought forward.

Number one: For people of my generation multitasking is everything. There’s so much going on and not enough time to do it all. We have known a world with card catalogues, libraries and encyclopedias with 20-something volumes. But then we came of age with the keyword search, and so the digital modernization components of this bill reflect today’s world. We are a digital-first society, and we need to get there.

I signed up for epost over 20 years ago. I think it was actually 2000. I was going through my old files and saw my application to Canada Post. Epost was just shut down last year, but it was the first electronic billing records system, and now it’s actually beyond its usefulness; people have moved on to other ways.

I continue to get RSP cards, investments, pension prospectuses, which, over the course of time, I’m probably going to lose at some point. Having electronic filings helps me immensely, because they’re archived; I have an opportunity to access them. And this bill contemplates that, just like the rest of the world, it doesn’t have to be printed just because the government likes it. There is a better way.

Also, part of this is clarifying, especially for the occupational health and safety and labour-related matters: An email is considered a written record. That is a long-awaited realization that modern practices by employees and employers is indeed to conduct business electronically. Our legislation needs to catch up, and we are there.

The COVID-19 pandemic showed us our long-conceived notions for legally compliant meetings where people travelled in person for long distances just for the meeting could very well be ended. I don’t want to decry the value of meeting in person; we’re here today. I live four hours away, so I travel—just as many of you do—long distances to be here in person. But not all meetings warrant an in-person visit every single time, especially when it’s a short period of time. A two-hour meeting—yes, I’ve done that, charging mileage, hotel and per diem for a very brief meeting. Now, with the advent of virtual meetings, not only do I not pass those costs on to my employer, I also don’t lose a productive day of work, and I can get my work done. This bill makes corporate virtual processes permanent in Ontario.

The other part of the bill I wanted to cite had to do with the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. Speaking again from first-hand experience, the MTO corridor permits do apply to a number of proposals, including one I did involving a low-impact, environmentally friendly parking lot. It was an infiltration trench. It didn’t have anything to do with the King’s highway; it wasn’t adjacent to the highway, but it was within the corridor as defined, and so that meant I had to get an MTO permit. It was a regulation whose reach was far and wide. Understanding that some developments do have an impact on the King’s highway—take, for example, a Costco or a Tim Hortons, where people are turning left and people behind are going to have to hit on the brakes, waiting for that left-hand turn to happen—probably not something we want direct access to, especially on a controlled-access highway like Highway 3 back home.

Our government is reinforcing the opportunity now to undertake pre-consultation and better triage these applications to the MTO. And I want to say that MTO was great in my case; they facilitated the permit process as quickly as they could. And now with pre-consultation, more opportunities to reduce the time frame for those rules will exist. The workload decreases, because the increased engagement and awareness of developers and municipalities and the inclusion of specific language in MTO and municipal affairs and housing policy documents and processes is part of this bill, and I want to commend this approach to MTO corridor management.

I will also highlight, as part of the corridor management, the broadband implications. There’s a lot underground in a municipal right-of-way. Most of them are about 66 feet wide—larger arterial roads were about 100 feet—and there’s only so much room down there. One thing I’ve seen in my neighbourhood has been the installation of broadband by multiple companies. When I was a municipal councillor, a lot of my constituents were upset that there was actually two choices for broadband because of all the construction disruption. But unfortunately, there’s only a limited amount of room.

A lot of communities don’t have broadband, and they need it. Rural communities need broadband in order to stay viable, and our government is improving guideline 3.0 that clears up the processes and timelines for MTO corridor permits, and this initiative will definitely expedite projects of significance like the expansion of broadband services to Ontarians, so—

Thank you to the member for the question. I knew there was a reason we got along when I sat over there. People from the Hammer kind of hang together sometimes.

Thank you for the question. People in this province living with disabilities need our help—absolutely, they need every bit of help they can get—but do you know what? They’re living in poverty. You have ODSP rates that are below, below, below the poverty line.

We also had a bill the other day that MPP Begum brought forward, for example, to make sure that transit is accessible. There’s a small thing you could have done—actually not small; a very real and tangible thing you could have done—to improve the lives of people who are living with disabilities.

It’s one schedule in a giant bill, but there’s so much more to do before we come even close to the kind of equity we need when it comes to people living with disabilities in our community.

I just want to show you an example of who this government is listening to. I just want to show that in schedule 27, it opens up the Pension Benefits Act, and basically the only thing they do in there is to say that people can or cannot receive their forms electronically. But we have an Auditor General’s report that says, “Pension plan members may be unaware about the risk that they might not receive their fully targeted pension benefits, and improvements in sector oversight....” So we’re failing in sector oversights to protect people, especially pensioners, and we have done nothing in the bill. There’s nothing that directly supports small businesses, and there’s nothing here to support small investors, pension plan owners.

Your government came to power because they were going to fix the hydro mess. They blamed everything about hydro bills on the previous government. I could agree with that, but you’ve been in power for five years. You promised to reduce the cost of electricity. It hasn’t happened. People need to know. Ratepayers are paying high—they haven’t got the reduction—but taxpayers are still supporting this system to the tune of $7 billion—

To the member across, thank you so much for your presentation. I wholeheartedly agree with you that we have to be able to force and move and compel businesses to innovate, especially in the new digital economy. I’m a huge believer around modernization, especially around making it more efficient and reducing any type of red tape, as we like to call it in this House.

But the conversations I’ve had with small business owners and small-to-medium enterprise, including with the representatives with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, are that the biggest concerns right now with small business owners and business owners in particular is the debt that they’re carrying because of the COVID pandemic. That’s probably their number one concern that’s not being addressed in this bill. They’re carrying about $139 billion of debt. Over 76% of those businesses are going to have to take a lot of their one year to pay that debt. How does the government plan to address that specific business concern that’s coming so prominently from the community?

I know many seniors now who are on pensions. They’re not just using a computer for Hoyle’s book of games and solitaire; they’re actually doing their business online. Every person needs access to electronic files these days, and this is one of many measures in the bill that makes lives better for Ontarians and gives them access to information in the manner that they need it.

What our government has done through this bill and through other bills in the past has been the reduction of business costs. So far, there’s been historic progress, saving businesses nearly $700 million per year in net annual regulatory compliance costs, so that’s $120 million more than the 2022 burden reduction report. There have been 450 actions so far to reduce red tape for businesses and individuals without compromising public health, safety or the environment.

Thank you for the question.

Thank you to the member from Windsor–Tecumseh for your thoughts on this bill today. I want to refer back to your role. As you said, you were a regulator. Regulators play an important role in this province, particularly when it comes to protecting pensions that people have worked all their lives for, and when it comes to protecting investors, particularly small investors that have their life savings invested.

The Auditor General’s recent report—it’s actually from 2022, a value-for-money audit—talked about pension plan members who may be unaware of the risk that “they may not receive their full targeted pension benefits,” and improvements in sector oversight were needed to protect investors. She also went on to say that over the “past three fiscal years, about 718 pension plans submitted a total of” 1,000 “required filings late,” but they were not charged.

Rather than going after that, in this bill you just make it so that pensioners don’t have the—they have the obligation to say they want to receive their—