Good morning, everyone. I’m always happy to be here in this chamber representing beautiful Beaches–East Yorkers and to speak on the budget.

I guess my theme today will be “Invest Now,” because as we know in our own personal finances and in our own lives, when we invest now and we get proactive and preventive, we’re not saddled with a colossal price tag later—it’s basically pay now or pay later. A little investment now goes a long way later. That could just be the theme of this whole budget, because—I’m sure you’re hearing from your residents what I’m hearing from my residents: that this budget does not go far enough, unfortunately.

We’ll start with the autism community—strong advocates there. They’ve been out there marching, protesting on our lawns. They’ve been writing to us. They’ve been calling us about more investment.

We need more investment in mental health programs. We’re seeing more and more people on the street, more and more people struggling.

We are here, we’re in a position where we can make a difference, and we need to make a difference.

Paid sick days—we’ve learned that with the pandemic; we don’t want people coming to work when they’re ill. When they even have a sniffle of a cold, we don’t want them coming to work. We want them at home, taking care of themselves, not spreading their illness. It’s just so antiquated to not have paid sick days. It makes no sense. If you look all over the world, people stay home, and they get paid to stay home when they’re ill—we do, so why not have that for Ontarians?

Again, invest now and not have the colossal price tag later.

Bill 124—we’ve been around in circles; it’s a broken record with that. We need to pay people properly. We need to respect people. I think we’ve all learned, in this pandemic, how we wholeheartedly underestimated how valuable our health care workers are. Boy, we can talk one way, but then when we’re ill, when we’re in the hospital, when our loved ones are struggling, it’s a whole other eye-opener for us, and we learned that. We learned the trials and tribulations of front-line workers, how they struggle, how they work endless hours, how they’re overwhelmed, how there aren’t enough of them to do the job properly. They’re leaving their profession. It’s tragic. They’ve gone into a life of service like us, public service, and yet—that’s their passion and their love, and they have to leave it because they’re not being paid well enough or treated well enough. They don’t have the sick days they need.

There are other investments—ODSP, the Ontario Child Benefit. Again, we just need to invest now.

What is the problem with just a little bit now—and then reap the rewards later? We won’t have the colossal nightmare of dealing with a situation that costs a fortune and puts our Ontarians at risk later.

The Landlord and Tenant Board: I’m hearing so much from my residents about this.

I’m hearing from my residents about all these issues—the backlogs on everything. Wait times and backlogs—that’s all we hear about. And what can we do about it? I can’t do a whole heck of a lot over here, but I can share the voices of my community. I can stand up for them and I can let you know what my residents are saying and what I’m sure your residents are saying.

Health care: That’s a whole kettle of fish in itself. My colleague the member from Don Valley East does a phenomenal job in fighting—truth to power—from his lived experience as a medical doctor, sharing first-hand his knowledge of how we need to invest our money and where we need to invest our money and why.

Long-term care: We’ve seen the nightmare of that—the lack of investment and the lack of attention over the years. I lived in Japan 33 years ago, and, boy, does that country know how to treat their seniors well. We can learn from them. We can learn a lot from other countries. Intergenerational living—we could get creative with our housing, which I will get to in a little bit. We just need to take a breath, take a pause and not be shy about creating a budget for everyone and leaving no one behind and paying a little bit more.

Housing—it’s the lofty goal of 1.5 million homes in the next 10 years, which is great, depending on your definition of “homes.” I think we all have different definitions of that. For me and for many Ontarians, it’s not a colossal monstrosity McMansion out on a wetland; it’s all types of different styles of homes, including rental. I still feel that somehow in this House people have a stigma around rental, when the world rents. Montrealers rent. Europeans rent. Torontonians rent. New Yorkers rent. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s actually kind of smart, where—carpe diem—you’re spending your money on seizing the day, although rents are terribly expensive now. But we’re looking at co-ops and intergenerational living. There’s a great model of a school in north Toronto, where the developer built condominiums above a school. That kind of intergenerational, creative style of housing—we should be thinking about that, not just the standard meat-and-potatoes single-family home with the white picket fence. That’s so dinosaur-age thinking.

I worked for an innovative tech company in my former life, and we had all kinds of creative, innovative housing ideas—a housing trust and the shared equity model that they have in the UK, where you buy what you can afford. So if you have a 465-square-foot unit and you can only afford 300 square feet of that, you buy that, and you rent the rest. You might rent to own, or you might always have that model of owning part of it and not all of it. And who cares? That’s your home, and it works, and you have skin in the game.

New York has a housing trust idea where they slap 1% on the resale of market-rate condominiums, and then that goes into a housing trust for affordable home ownership.

So all kinds of things we can be doing—and we don’t have to create it all ourselves. There are smart cookies out there who are passionate. They are in the housing sector.

That’s the other thing: We think we’re the sharpest knives in the drawer; sorry, we’re not. We’re talented in certain ways, but we’re not the experts in every field. That’s why we should be listening to stakeholders and heeding their advice.

Now we will get to my favourite topic of all: environment. I will say—I’m going to throw a bone—the emergency preparedness aspect of this budget is pretty good. Of course, it doesn’t go far enough, but I think it’s pretty good overall. Had my private member’s bill, Bill 56, been passed last week, that would have been extra helpful for that. It was a piece of paper going out to your residents to educate them on basement flooding mitigation. It costs nothing for us, but somehow it didn’t pass—so I’m not sure about that.

We’re investing in EVs. That’s great. That’s not the full answer for creating a sustainable world, environment and Ontario.

Where are the investment incentives encouraging homeowners to do deep green retrofits? We know a huge chunk of greenhouse gases come from buildings. We can incentivize and educate homeowners on doing the right thing; they want to. I have a great group called Green East that is keen to do something for their homes and their neighbourhood.

There’s a great group called the Pocket Change Project, and they’re in the Toronto–Danforth riding, that beautiful riding next to me. They’re doing great work. They’re trying to educate people on heat pumps, get them off gas, get them electrifying their homes. They’re taking it one community at a time. They’ve done such huge, phenomenal work in their neighbourhood, and they want to bring it further east to Beaches–East York—they want to take it everywhere. Residents are taking it into their own hands because the government is not.

We’re here to lead, and we’re here to be role models, and we’re here to provide the education and the funding for Ontarians, but I don’t see that in this budget. We’re not investing enough now, so we’re going to be hit with a colossal price tag later on. We’ve been told by the Auditor General and the Financial Accountability Officer of Ontario about the high cost of inaction.

I’m not sure about that time, but I’ll just keep going.

That’s the deep green retrofits for our homes—

Of course, I’m here to help make the world a better place for all Ontarians, as we all are, and so it’s great to invest, for sure.

One thing we all heard at the door—at least, I heard it in my community. I was surprised when I was door-knocking; I thought people would be most worried about the climate emergency—but it was affordability. It doesn’t matter the demographic, the age, the background—everyone is worried about affordability. Seniors, kids—everyone is struggling. Just adding crumbs here and there is not enough. We need to really continue investing now rather than later.

We know that price tag for BC was $9 billion; for Alberta, it was $5 billion. We had $1.5 billion total insured catastrophic loss in Ontario in 2022.

For every dollar invested in the climate emergency, in climate action, it’s a $3-to-$8 cost-avoidance savings. It’s not rocket science.

My private member’s bill—it was a big surprise to me, because I had spoken to 122—and I’m the 123rd—almost every member in this chamber. I’ve heard from people who had basement flooding. They were very supportive, and they wanted to save their residents, Ontarians, $43,000 for a basement flood, that could be avoided by a simple infographic going out in the mail. If we can’t even send out a flyer, I’m pretty worried about what we can do for the climate emergency.

What I would say to one of my favourite members asking me the question, who was super keen on hearing my speech—that was lovely—is that my time started on June 2, 2022, and I’m forward-thinking. So I was here on June 2, and I’m optimistic, and I want to work together. I tried to work together on my private member’s bill, but that didn’t happen. I’m here, moving forward, looking to collaborate if I can—but I haven’t seen that yet, and I’m not looking backwards.

I think I’ve mentioned this in the House—my friend’s Irish mom saying, “Start as you mean to go on,”

We started with the throne speech, without having the words “climate change” in it once—“environment” was in it, but it was “business environment,” so it wasn’t talking about sustainability.

And it’s the same with this budget—we have “emergency preparedness.” That’s great; I will throw a bone there. EVs are great too, but they’re not the be-all and end-all; neither is clean steel.

We’re hearing from stakeholders and communities and builders and developers. They want deep green retrofits. They want green infrastructure. They want renewable energy. The rest of the world is going ahead, doing this. Continually, Ontario is lagging behind. We used to be a leader, but we’re not going to solve it—

I put forth an idea to create an all-party climate change committee. How easy is that? Everyone gets to be on it. I was speaking to the House leader about that umpteen times, including making it reflect the House, where the government had more seats and more say on the committee than anyone else. How generous is that? How fair is that? But it got shot down—the same as my private member’s bill last week, which would have helped your residents.

After the next flood, I want you to look your residents in the eye when they call you, upset, devastated, distraught, with raw sewage in their basements, all their prized—

I just wanted to add to the Minister of Education’s introduction, because Jessica Rotolo is my resident in beautiful Beaches–East York.

Welcome to the chamber.

A thing you should know: Jessica is a very talented artist, and has beautiful cards and artwork available at a beautiful shop on Kingston Road called Chocollata, if you want to write anyone a love letter or a kind letter.