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?

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—

We are out of time for debate. We’re moving to questions.

I want to thank our member for providing that valuable information. He talked about multi-tasking and reflecting on today’s world, and he actually reflected on his own perspective, when he moved to a digital platform so many years ago, and our own government’s ability to pivot to a temporary flexible manner in which corporations can conduct meetings. Could he talk a little bit about that issue and the flexibility that’s required to maintain the virtual process?

I just want to again say what I said earlier this morning: This government is making sure that we are reducing the cost to the business; by reducing the cost to the business, we’re making sure that businesses are competitive, and that’s why we are seeing the investment.

My question to the member is very simple: The title says, “Less Red Tape, Stronger Ontario Act.” What is the significance of this title to the member?

It’s an honour to rise in the House today to speak on behalf of the constituents from Toronto Centre.

The bill that we’re debating is entitled Less Red Tape, Stronger Economy Act. It’s an omnibus bill. It has got hundreds of pages and 37 schedules, and was just recently dropped in the House. We’re all scrambling to read it, understand it and offer some hopefully meaningful reflections on how this bill can—perhaps right now it does not—support the needs of all Ontarians.

I want to offer you a few reflections. The government is really fantastic at creating bills that are very lengthy in nature—sometimes they’re truncated—but the titles are always very fascinating, because if you don’t read the rest of the body of the bill or any of the schedules, you actually think it’s doing some really outstanding things. But, unfortunately, the title reaches much higher than the content of the bill, as we have seen in the past.

I have some mixed feelings about the bill, largely because the title is very ambitious, but the content, the substance, the meat of it, is fairly weak. So yes, there are some housecleaning matters which have to be done, and some of it is about streamlining the application around paper transfer and moving it to the digital side, which I think is absolutely fantastic. We should be doing it. There’s no reason why we should not pursue that. However, that’s not what I would call groundbreaking, and it certainly doesn’t meet the needs of what Ontarians are asking for today.

And so, the bill does feel like it’s out of touch. It feels like, once again, it’s not meeting the moment and the needs of Ontarians, and Ontarians are very clear about what they’re looking for. They’re looking for some financial relief from the punishing financial environment that they’re under right now: stagnated wages, much higher costs of just about everything with respect to the cost of living.

I did raise, in earlier questions—I shared some information from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. They have been specifically concerned about making sure that all parliamentarians at this House—and every other order of government—understand what their small business owners are struggling with. They are being ground into the pavement with astronomical debt, and the simple mathematical formula is that they had a lot fewer customers coming in, and at the same time, the cost of service delivery was getting higher. And yes, there are supply chain issues, but right now they are dealing with grappling debt and the soaring interest rates that are just beating them down every single day, and they’re not getting help from this government.

Now, omnibus bills can hide things, and there are a few things that I believe this bill has sort of put aside, hoping that we can gloss over it, but I’m not going to, and I will bring that up in a few minutes.

But I wanted to speak, Madam Speaker, about my community in Toronto Centre. I happen to represent the Church-Wellesley Village. It is a very dynamic business environment. We also happen to be the largest lesbian and gay community in Canada, and one of the biggest ones in North America. There’s really nothing in this bill that helps that community meet the needs that they need to have addressed today with respect to soaring commercial rates and the challenges that we’re seeing on our streets. Oftentimes what we’re seeing is a lack of safety for our community.

Now, red tape can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but for my community, we need to be free from hatred and bigotry. We need to know that our businesses can open their doors without a group of protestors trying to shut them down and intimidate them. Right now, we’re seeing this happen in so many businesses across Ontario, as I noted yesterday. I want to share with you that cutting red tape for the trans and queer community means that they are going to be able to open their businesses and operate freely. In particular, the drag artists that are under attack right now in Ontario, the audiences that support them and the businesses, the venues that host those events are under attack.

Speaker, I have received a deluge of hate these past few days, specifically because I dared stand up for our communities—and your communities, because it’s happening right across Ontario. I dared to stand up to intimidation, to hateful speech, to death threats and harassment, all because I want to defend the rights of LGBT people in Ontario.

I have a message for those who are trying to shut us down, to try to push us back into the closet: We’re only going to get louder. We’re only going to get prouder. We’re only going to get more visible. We’re only going to get more fabulous. We’re only going to throw out a lot more glitter. We’re only going to get queerer.

I very much appreciated listening to the member from Windsor–Tecumseh and his remarks, and reflecting on the fact that he used to be, as I think I heard him say, a drainage superintendent in Windsor. That’s a very practical position, and, frankly, someone we really need in this building, and perhaps even in this Legislature sometimes.

I was interested in the comprehensiveness of this bill—energy, colleges and universities, mining, natural resources, infrastructure, transportation, so many ministries impacted directly. I wonder if the member can further reflect on, from his past experience in a very practical role, other practical benefits he sees from this bill going forward.

I also want to thank the member for his contribution to the debate as well. Actually, I want to follow up on the question that my colleague on this side of the House from Toronto Centre asked; I know that the member from Windsor–Tecumseh may not have had enough time to answer.

We have a lot of businesses that are in debt right now across this province, and because of the red tape created by your government, unfortunately a lot of these businesses did not qualify, or even after qualifying, did not receive the funds that they truly needed to just stay afloat.

What would you do to change that, and how come there is nothing in this bill to support those?

Further questions?

I appreciate the question from the member from Bruce–Grey–Owen Sound. I didn’t have enough time to mention it, but it actually is a nice full-circle moment. Back when I was in engineering school, in solid waste management, we had a class detailing the Blue Box Program and the issue with the refillable bottles and how troublesome that was, and that was in the early 2000s. Now, as part of the regulations affiliated with this bill, the government of Ontario is actually addressing them, getting rid of these regulations that were no longer relevant. They weren’t relevant in 1999.

I just brought up the article that was cited. I believe it was in the environmental science management journal, and I’ll quote—actually, another interesting part is the author of that report was Dev Tyagi, who I used to report to at work. He was in Toronto at the time and he eventually made it to Windsor.

That’s one other example of a practical implication that I have seen, in the Blue Box Program, and I’m looking forward to seeing many more of the options in this bill implemented for municipalities and corporations and persons to come.

Yes, we went through a pandemic, and, yes, you have to set limits as to what programs can do and cannot do, but this is a permanent, ongoing cost savings for all kinds of organizations, and that’s why this is worth implementing because, going forward, it reduces those costs, and that means that property owners, business owners, Ontarians do not have to lie awake at night thinking, “How am I going to address this?” Their costs are coming down thanks to the measures in this bill.

Bill 91 addresses red tape and regulations. In listening to the member, I was really focused on the priorities of the government, what areas you chose to bring in regulations. Because right now, the province of Ontario is making sure that ODSP clients have to weigh in every month to a MyBenefits app or to their worker to confirm that they’re still in Ontario. This seems onerous. It doesn’t seem necessary. You know what? It seems like red tape.

What does the member say to the government when they’re picking and choosing which areas to reduce red tape in or to actually just double down on regulatory burdens?

Thank you to the member for Toronto Centre for her presentation. I’m sure the member for Toronto Centre would agree that modernizing agency governance and clarifying rules for Ontario’s public appointees is an important thing that we do. What this Bill 91 is proposing is changing clarification rules for public appointees to align agencies and government best practices. What we want to do is ensure that we’re making it easier and more attractive to serve on their boards. This is specific to the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport.

Based on the member’s presentation, I would have to assume she would be fully supportive of this proposal for Bill 91.

I would remind the member her comments should reflect the bill that is before us today to debate.