I have a petition that reads:

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas one in four Ontarians over the age of 15 suffer from chronic pain, with 73% reporting that the pain interferes with their daily lives and more than half reporting issues with depression and suicidal thoughts; and

“Whereas pain is the most common reason to seek health care, with chronic pain making up approximately 16% of emergency room visits and 38% of frequent visits, adding to the already lengthy wait times and delaying treatment; and

“Whereas the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario ... is threatening to impose changes to how nerve block injections are administered which would only apply to pain clinics, while leaving similarly in-hospital procedures unaffected. These changes have been proposed seemingly without any consultations with patients or health care workers; and

“Whereas the most common treatment for pain provided by family doctors and hospitals is opioids, despite the current national crisis leading to an estimated 20 opioid-related deaths in Canada every day during the COVID-19 pandemic;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“Prevent OHIP from applying a one-size-fits-all solution to the issue of chronic pain, and allow for consultations with health care workers and pain sufferers to determine the best way to treat chronic pain without resorting to opioids.”

I’m happy to sign this petition, send it with page Jonas to the Clerks’ table.

I’m pleased to have the opportunity to speak during this third reading debate on Bill 46, the Less Red Tape, Stronger Ontario Act. I’ll be sharing my time with the member from Chatham-Kent–Leamington. I want to thank the Minister of Red Tape Reduction and his parliamentary assistant for their dedication on moving this important bill forward.

The Less Red Tape, Stronger Ontario Act is the first red tape reduction bill of this mandate—and the ninth red tape reduction bill since forming government in 2018.

Our government’s focus has been and continues to be building Ontario. Bill 46 will contribute to the goal by strengthening our province’s competitiveness in key areas. It will strengthen our supply chains so that more goods can get to more places. It will support our farmers and agribusinesses by laying out a path to produce and grow more food right here in Ontario. It will help grow Ontario’s labour force and protect our workers, so businesses can find the right people to grow and expand their operations. And it will make governments easier to interact with and work with by simplifying administrative procedures, improving customer service, and reducing compliance costs.

In total, this bill, as well as related policy and regulatory changes, will add up to 28 individual measures to reduce burden and red tape in Ontario. This is important because red tape is a significant barrier to efficiency.

When I was a little girl, I loved to swim, but it didn’t happen naturally. So, after a near-drowning experience when I was maybe three years or four years old—I’m going to get to the point—my family, who were all lifelong swimmers, were determined to make me a better swimmer. I thought about this when I was looking at the act. I was determined to become an efficient swimmer. I want to swim quickly. I wanted to get to where I was going, whether it was in the pool or the lake, quickly and efficiently, without any lag behind me. First, I learned to float, dog-paddle and then, finally, I was a swimmer—along with water wings. But once I was a skilled swimmer, I realized that water wings aren’t the fastest way to get around. They’re a barrier to swimming quickly and efficiently. I learned that removing those water wings made a more efficient swimmer of Laura. I listened to my instructors, I gained endurance, and by the time I was 10 years old, I was able to swim across the lake and back with no assistance from anything or anyone. I avoided the weeds in the lake because those things could slow me down or drag me down, which was also dangerous.

Later, in my high school and university years, I worked as a lifeguard. There, my team and I prioritized important issues like younger children in the pool and keeping them safe, which is also relevant in this bill. We opened up early and we stayed open late for the swimmers who needed the extra time. We had a harmonized workspace. We created a better-run pool that the entire community could safely enjoy.

Learning to swim was the one thing that I could do, but learning to swim effectively with more speed and less drag made it possible for me to save lives—and a couple of adults, I should add.

That’s what we’re doing. We are taking the water wings and getting the weeds of red tape away from us, making it so that Ontarians can get where they need to go faster and with less drag.

When it comes to our work, there are five principles that guide our efforts to reduce tape. The first principle is to protect public health, safety and the environment. We do this by easing regulatory burdens in a smart and careful way that always maintains or enhances important health, safety and environmental protections.

The second principle is to prioritize the important issues. We do this by assessing which regulation costs are the most time-effective—while looking for innovative ways to ensure rules stay effective and efficient.

The third principle is to harmonize rules with other jurisdictions, including the federal government, where we can. This is one of the most efficient ways to reduce compliance costs across the board.

The fourth way is to listen to the people and businesses of Ontario on an ongoing basis, to learn what we can do to remove obstacles in their way—the weeds and the water wings.

Our fifth principle is to take a whole-of-government approach. This is the key to delivering better services to people and businesses, making it easier for them to access the information, programs and services they need to succeed.

To be clear, Speaker, we do not believe that rules and regulations themselves are the issue. But unnecessary, repetitive and outdated regulations are a problem. And it’s a problem we’re committing to solving.

As someone who previously worked within the judicial system, I can tell you how happy I was to hear that the act also included a number of changes to modernize and reduce administrative burdens in the justice sector.

Firstly, our government is proposing to amend the Provincial Offences Act to help reduce the backlog at provincial offences courts. Often, I hear from law professionals within my riding who tell me that the backlogs left over from COVID-19 are substantial—and I experienced them myself. Ontario needs to have access to justice within reasonable time frames. The proposed amendments would allow the court clerks, rather than a justice, to reopen certain convictions if satisfied that certain conditions are met, such as having a missed notice or being unable to attend a meeting through no fault of their own. This change would help to address the backlog by using court resources more efficiently and freeing up judicial time for other serious matters.

Secondly, we’re proposing to create more judicial capacity and alleviate backlogs in criminal cases at the Ontario Court of Justice by temporarily raising the limit on the number of days that retired judges can work. Creating more “per diem” judiciary capacity enhances the scheduling capacity and efficiency in the courts. This will help resolve the backlog more quickly and ensure faster access to justice for Ontarians.

Lastly, the proposed legislation will also reduce administrative costs and make it easier for prospective jurors to participate in court systems through updates to the Juries Act. If this bill is passed, it would introduce a pilot program that would make jury questionnaires available online and help us assess the impacts and response rates in different communities. Recipients of the online questionnaire would be able to request a paper version if need be, but this proposal would allow us to test the feasibility of moving away from sending hard copies of jury questionnaires through the mail. When I was in the judicial system, we dealt with paper constantly, and I was very relieved to see when our courts were finally moving forward. Getting rid of paper is something that brings us into this century, and it is long overdue within the judicial system, providing potential jurors or Ontarians a modern, convenient, streamlined way of participating in the justice system while reducing administrative burdens and costs.

I would also like to discuss some improvements that we’re making to some of the essential but often invisible functions of government.

TPON, also known as Transfer Payment Ontario, is a single-enterprise digital solution for delivering government transfer payment programs. Participants such as municipalities and not-for-profit organizations use TPON for everything from applications to payments and reporting. Our government is bringing the vast majority of all its government programs and related IT systems into this one platform, resulting in more efficient and effective program delivery at a lower cost to the taxpayer. For transfer payment recipients, the system provides a seamless user experience, reducing their administrative burden and freeing up more time to deliver their services and programs to their communities.

Speaker, I’m incredibly proud of the work the government has done so far to reduce regulatory burdens on people and businesses. I’m excited to see the changes proposed by this legislation in action. For businesses, some items could increase regulatory effectiveness, ease of operation and reduce the cost of doing business. For individuals, some items would reduce the cost of living and streamline interactions with government in Ontario.

All of us benefit when businesses can grow and thrive. A competitive business climate brings economic growth, jobs and new investments. These are investments that will not leave or go south—or even begin in Ontario. We want the businesses to start in Ontario; we want them to remain in Ontario. We don’t want them to go south.

Building on the previous red tape reduction bills and packages, the cumulative impact of these measures is expected to help modernize Ontario’s regulatory system. Our government needs to remove the red tape, like the weeds or the water wings, to move forward. We need to move forward with supports. The province’s economic competitiveness and ability to create and retain high-quality jobs is imperative. We have to make Ontario an attractive investment climate and make things easier. Those combined measures ultimately seek to build a stronger Ontario. People and businesses will thrive now and in the future.

I invite the member for Chatham-Kent–Leamington to speak on the further impacts of this bill.

Error! Bookmark not defined.“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Ontario has one of the most dedicated and highly trained health workforces in the world. Over 60,000 new nurses and 8,000 new doctors have registered to work in Ontario; and

“Whereas hiring more health care professionals is the most effective step to ensure Ontarians are able to see a health care provider where and when you need to; and

“Whereas starting in spring 2023, the government will expand the Learn and Stay grant and applications will open for eligible post-secondary students who enrol in priority programs, such as nursing, to work in underserved communities in the region where they studied after graduation. The program will provide up-front funding for tuition, books and other direct educational costs; and

“Whereas with new as-of-right rules, Ontario will become the first province in Canada to allow health care workers registered in other provinces and territories to immediately start caring for you, without having to first register with one of Ontario’s health regulatory colleges. This change will help health care workers overcome excessive red tape that makes it difficult for them to practise in Ontario;

“Whereas we are investing an additional $15 million to temporarily cover the costs of examination, application, and registration fees for internationally trained and retired nurses, saving them up to $1,500 each. This will help up to 5,000 internationally educated nurses and up to 3,000 retired nurses begin working sooner to strengthen our front lines;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To urge all members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to continue to build on the progress of hiring and recruiting health care workers.”

I fully endorse this petition. I will sign my name to it and give it to page Claire.

Further debate?

This is a petition from the National Chronic Pain Society. It is to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

“Whereas one in four Ontarians over the age of 15 suffers from chronic pain, with 73% reporting that the pain interferes with their daily lives and more than half reporting issues with depression and suicidal thoughts; and

“Whereas pain is the most common reason to seek health care, with chronic pain making up approximately 16% of emergency room visits and 38% of frequent visits, adding to the already lengthy wait times and delaying treatment...; and

“Whereas the most common treatment for pain provided by family doctors and hospitals is opioids, despite the current national crisis leading to an estimated 20 opioid-related deaths in Canada every day during the COVID-19 pandemic;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“Prevent OHIP from applying a one-size-fits-all solution to the issue of chronic pain, and allow for consultations with health care workers and pain sufferers to determine the best way to treat chronic pain without resorting to opioids.”

I’ll be signing this petition and giving it to page Madison.

Resuming the debate adjourned on March 21, 2023, on the motion for third reading of the following bill:

Bill 46, An Act to enact one Act and amend various other Acts / Projet de loi 46, Loi visant à édicter une loi et à modifier diverses autres lois.

I want to thank the member from Thornhill for sharing her time.

I also want to thank our Minister of Red Tape Reduction for the great work that his ministry has done on this bill to create the conditions for all businesses to thrive in Ontario.

Our government understands that to create the conditions for success, we must reduce the regulatory burdens that all businesses face here in our province.

Speaker, when it comes to reducing red tape, our government has taken 400 individual actions to reduce red tape and reduce our total burden by 6.5%. These efforts are saving businesses and organizations $576 million a year. This bill, if passed, will continue to build on our government’s commitment to ensuring businesses are provided the best environment to grow and meet the demands of a growing population and a growing economy.

It’s essential to growing our economy to understand the critical contribution and economic power of our agri-business sector. In Ontario, the agri-food sector contributes $47 billion to Ontario’s GDP, $19.6 billion in agri-food exports, and 750,000 people work in this industry here in Ontario—that’s one in 10 jobs. This sector is continuing to grow. In 2022, total farm cash receipts in Ontario were almost $21.3 billion. That’s 12% higher than the previous year.

Speaker, you cannot grow this economy without growing our agri-food sector. This is why it’s so important for our government to continue to reduce regulatory burdens for our farmers, processors and the broader industry to support and secure growth in the agri-food sector for generations to come.

Last fall, our government was proud to introduce the Grow Ontario Strategy right here at our local food terminal in Etobicoke. The Grow Ontario Strategy is our plan to strengthen the entire agri-food sector and ensure an efficient, reliable and responsive food supply. The strategy focuses on three pillars: strengthening the agri-food supply chain; increasing agri-food technology and adoption; and, finally, attracting and retaining the crucial talent across the sector. By focusing on these three pillars, our government is aiming to increase the consumption and production of food grown in Ontario by 30%; increase our food and beverage manufacturing capacity—our GDP—by 10%; and increase agri-food exports by 8% annually. This is a bold vision of pride and trust in the quality and quantity of food grown and processed right here in Ontario—in all of our ridings. It’s also our government’s response to creating a stable and secure food supply chain for generations to come.

Speaker, our government is well on its way to ensuring we can meet these goals. In the last two months, we’ve announced over $2 billion in investments for agriculture and food production.

We just secured $1.77 billion through the Sustainable Canadian Agriculture Partnership, an agreement between the province and our federal government. This agreement will provide programs to support farmers, processors and the entire sector. It will position Ontario as a world leader for environmentally, economically and socially sustainable agriculture.

We’ve invested $343 million through the Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance, an agreement with the University of Guelph and ARIO, the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario, that supports food research and innovation to help generate new knowledge that provides real and practical solutions across the sector.

Our government has secured the right investment by listening to our farmers and our growers, our processors and our industry stakeholders. This bill, if passed, will build upon these successes and create long-term accomplishments for the entire sector.

Through this bill, we’re also proposing changes to the feeder cattle loan guarantee program. The province’s feeder cattle loan guarantee program supports beef cattle farmers by facilitating access to low-interest loans through their local feeder cattle co-operatives. The proposed changes will permit co-op members to custom-feed one another’s cattle, give them more flexibility, and improve the competitiveness and profitability of big and small businesses. This action follows months of discussions with our stakeholders and our partners and program users in the programs themselves. To quote Don Badour, a representative of the Beef Farmers of Ontario, on the benefits of these changes: “It will maximize flexibility for co-op members to make decisions on custom-feeding to help expand their beef operations under the Ontario Feeder Cattle Loan Guarantee Program to improve their competitiveness and profitability.” These are small farms and big farms alike. This is good news for all of Ontario’s beef farmers. It will help secure our entire agri-food industry.

We’re also proposing changes to the Animal Health Act. In the event of an animal health emergency, it’s critical to have the tools necessary to take immediate action to protect the health and safety of the public and our animals. Through the lessons learned in the past few years alone, these proposed changes will enhance our government’s animal disease emergency preparedness. The changes will provide an additional critical tool for our Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs to take immediate action through a temporary order to require time-sensitive action to be taken by our farmers, our food processors and other stakeholders in the event of an emerging animal health event. This may include temporarily stopping animal movement and adopting specific biosecurity measures to protect health and safety. This will enhance our level of animal health preparedness and better position us to minimize the potential costs and risks of the impacts of a significant animal health event, and ensure we can take immediate action to do what we can to establish longer-term measures.

Our government listens to and understands our farmers and our food processors, and these proposed changes target burdensome government processes within the agri-food sector and beyond to continue to maintain regulation that keeps Ontarians safe and healthy and our food supply system safe, healthy and reliable.

The future is bright in Ontario for our food processors, our growers, our farmers. The passage of this bill will allow our government to ensure good things continue to grow in Ontario.

The member for Chatham-Kent–Leamington to continue.

Members touched upon the justice system and how we need to modernize it, finding different resources so that they’re not disparaging people who are seeking justice.

One of the government’s initiatives in this bill—I believe it’s schedule 5—is to hire retired judges back into the system. That’s a temporary solution.

I’d like to ask the member, what is the long-term plan to actually hire new judges to fill the void for cases that are long predating the pandemic, that need to be dealt with? Can the member speak to if they do have that commitment in place so that new judges are hired—and not just recycling the retired judges?

I enjoyed hearing the remarks, particularly from the member from Thornhill. I enjoyed the metaphor—there are lots of swimmers in our family, too, and water wings and weeds and the like.

I wonder, given the discussion the bill is having around red tape, if you could help me understand, from the standpoint of persons with disabilities—I spent four years, in the previous Parliament, working with people with disabilities. I learned that their lives are absolutely encumbered by red tape. I’ll give you an example that I’d appreciate a response to. If one is on the Ontario Disability Support Program and enters into a relationship, immediately your income as a disabled person is reduced by virtue of who you fall into a relationship with. That seems to me like inordinate red tape that this bill could address.

I’m wondering if the member from Thornhill has considered this and has any thoughts to share about that.

Thank you to the member across for his comments.

This bill is all about removing red tape. We’re focusing on reducing barriers to improve services. This includes a whole-of-government plan, including the elimination of administrative overlaps.

Just as an example, currently, the WSIB is required to create both a five-year strategic plan and an annual business plan spanning three years to come. The strategic plan and the business plan duplicate content for governance and oversight. Requiring the WSIB to submit both is burdensome and a matter of red tape—and yes, those are weeds. So removing, in that circumstance, the five-year strategic plan while keeping the business plan will eliminate red tape and ensure that the WSIB focuses less time on paperwork and more time on helping the workers.

As mentioned, I did work within the system for several years. We were constantly dealing with paper. Papers get lost; people lose them. Those notices were actually sent out to people, and they would lose them; it would never get back to them. They could get into trouble. Eliminating that paperwork will modernize the court system. We do still have a requirement that—people can still ask for paper.

But actually modernizing the system and the justice system is a long time overdue, absolutely.

Following up on what I was talking about earlier, as we continue to modernize regulation, our government is committed to taking action that reduces that red tape. We’re proposing to repeal the five-year strategic plan for WSIB, and we’re focusing and proposing that this be done by providing a five-year strategic—the WSIB, also allowing them to submit a business plan that spans three years or more. This strategic plan, this business plan is not a duplicative—

TPON is utilized, I believe, by all of our not-for-profits and we want to keep them whole. The enterprise Transfer Payment Ontario system, TPON, is used for the end-to-end administration of transfer payments, from application to payment to reporting. Continuing to implement TPON will provide ministries with standardized, streamlined processes to manage and administer their transfer payment programs, resulting in more efficient and effective program delivery at a lower cost to the taxpayer. For transfer payment recipients, this system will provide seamless user experiences, reducing their administrative burden and freeing up more time to deliver key services for the people of Ontario. Through this initiative, there is a concerted focus on bringing all government transfer payments and programs and related IT systems onto TPON and driving an enterprise-wide efficiency and process.

My question deals with the proposed legislation that would fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery; specifically, the enterprise Transfer Payment Ontario system, the TPON system. What specific changes are being proposed to that system?

Further questions?

We’ll move to questions.

I have a question for the member from Thornhill.

She mentioned the modernization of the Juries Act. The ministry recently identified two issues that have affected the composition of recent jury rules in Ontario.

How are you working to prevent these errors from happening in the future? And is this the right time to implement further changes to the jury system?

We have time for one further question.

Thank you, Speaker. It’s always good to see you in the chair.

I’m proud to rise on behalf of the people of Toronto Centre to speak to Bill 46. This is an omnibus bill with a series of housekeeping amendments that are largely supportable. There are nine schedules.

When this bill came before the House, using our time in debate—it does make me wonder whether or not we are actually cutting red tape. There seems to be a lot of talk about cutting red tape—but the actual motion of cutting the tape, perhaps not so much.

Because there are nine schedules and we don’t have a lot of time to go through all of them, I’m going to try to go through at least the portions I have flagged that I want to raise specific issues with.

I’m going to begin with schedule 2 of the bill. Schedule 2 extends the allowable time of service for retired provincial judges serving on a part-time basis from 50% to 75% of full-time service.

I recently spoke with members of the Federation of Ontario Law Associations regarding Bill 46; specifically, around schedule 2 and allowing retired judges to take more time back onto the bench. I need to be clear that I have a great deal of respect for judges and those who have retired and those who’ve served us incredibly well in the judicial process. However, I was taken back by the reaction of the members of the federation when they heard about this specific change. First of all, they were surprised. They had not been consulted about this change, and they want to know who was pushing for it. Many legal workers shared experiences that they had during the pandemic, when judges near retirement struggled with the simple use of technology, such as Zoom, which was underpinning the virtual court system and their court duties. They were apparently not ready for this change, and they were not able to do their work in the most professional and timely manner. Secondly, I heard from people who work in legal clinics, and the discussion came about this in this way: They said that trying to fix this problem in the courts from this particular angle was simply wrong. What they did share with me is that they needed more judges and more court staff to ensure that everyone has a right to a timely and fair trial. That is something that everyone is convinced is needed in order for the backlog to be cleared. I heard this loud and clear, and, frankly, the members did also describe that there was a missed opportunity by the government, by not addressing the issue structurally.

How could we expand the talent pool of our bench by bringing in more lawyers and giving them the experiences that they need to become the talented judges that they will be? This is something that requires a fundamental investment of new money.

I want to quote one lawyer who told me after hearing about this proposal—they wish to remain anonymous:

“I have to express extreme concern about this proposal to, rather than appointing new judges, bring back older judges because I can tell you that it was a disaster in the Milton courthouse. It created a complete disaster for children and families in the hopper for over a year during the pandemic. We had two Family Court judges that one Family Court judge ended up having to go on medical leave and another Family Court judge went on medical leave and then left. And as a result, we had many, many per diem retired judges coming to our court on a daily basis with no knowledge of the files, no continuation of the files, a journey many, many of the court files as long as they could, until we finally got an appointment that took, I think, almost a year to get the new appointment. And many I’m telling you the child protection lawyers, the lawyers representing the families were all very upset because it was obviously no continuity in the court cases. I think that by allowing more judges to come back and sit on a per diem basis is going to make a much bigger mess of the entire system right now, which is already in a big mess because of COVID. So I’d like you to know, I think you need to please investigate this” to ensure that you can hire more judges, that you should appoint more judges. We’re going to need more—instead of producing more per diem judges—and it’s just going to create more havoc.

Again, I want to stress that retired judges can be an extremely powerful tool in helping the court system move faster.

I also want to respect the professional experience of practising lawyers, and when they reacted to this news with disappointment and concern, that gave me absolute reason to pause.

While we’re on the topic of the legal system, I want to talk about schedule 8, which makes amendments to the Provincial Offences Act. Schedule 8 reverses prospective reforms of the early resolution process for provincial offences. The prospective reforms were passed in the 2017 budget bill to further government aims to streamline and modernize the court system by supporting early resolution of cases where appropriate. The Provincial Offences Act will continue to provide for early resolution but will no longer provide for these discussions to happen through email, would no longer permit the prosecutor to withdraw charges without a court appearance, and would require that a defendant appear before a judge in all cases where a plea agreement is reached. This change appears to be a step backwards from the goal of increasing efficiency in our court system. This change would get rid of an amendment that would never be implemented, and I understand that this government has been asked by municipalities to remove it, as this is an amendment which would be exceedingly difficult to implement.

Both schedules 2 and 8 are intended to propose changes to speed up the experiences Ontarians have in their court system, and ultimately the intention is to drive down the backlog, but we’re hearing from practising lawyers that this is not going to be the outcome that you are seeking.

I want to quote Daniel Goldbloom from the Law Society of Ontario, who described Ontario’s case backlog: “If you ever speak to an American about how long it takes to get to trial in Ontario, they’re shocked. They can’t believe that it can take a year and a half for trials in the lower courts, and up to two and a half years in the Superior Court.”

Nicole Myers, an associate professor at Queen’s University who studies our court system, said, “Across Canada, 67% of the people in provincial custody are in pretrial detention, and in Ontario” that number goes up to 77%. “The rate with which we hold people in pretrial has more than doubled in the last 40 years, and the number of actual individual people held in pretrial detention has more than quadrupled in that time....

“Keeping a person in pretrial removes them from the community and may provide some short-term safety; this protection, however, is temporary. It is undermined by the long-term negative public safety outcomes. We need to be mindful that custody is extraordinarily expensive, but it’s also criminogenic. Even short periods of time in custody make it more—not less—likely that someone is going to commit offences in the future. And there are many reasons for this, some of which include pretrial being overcrowded, harsh, dangerous, and rehabilitative programs being virtually absent. Removing people from the broader community is also incredibly destabilizing, disrupting connections to the community, families, employment and other social supports.”

Speaker, legal experts are telling our government how to speed up the courts. They are trying to make Ontario safer. They’re trying to say the following: Resource the courts, hire the staff, and ensure that the court schedule is operating efficiently. Use the real estate that you have. Get it going.

We should be embarrassed that Americans cannot believe how slow our system is, when Ontario leads America in most indicators of well-being.

Again, if we really want to cut red tape, we have to help Ontarians navigate the invisible rules and procedures that hold our legal system together by reversing the cuts to legal aid and increasing funding to legal aid.

I want to dig into how inadequate legal aid funding is creating so-called red tape for Ontario.

First, our court system has many precedents and rules that internally operate to ensure that all Ontarians have the right to a fair trial. This puts a significant onus on the courts to determine that people charged with provincial offences are treated equitably and fairly. I need to stress this point: Many court cases are mostly, if not entirely, resolved before going to trial, in pretrial meetings and resolution meetings. Here, legal aid lawyers are the subject matter experts in fighting to ensure that marginalized people’s rights are protected and that due process occurs. This takes a massive and hugely expensive burden off our courts. It saves us court time, thereby saving taxpayers money.

Secondly, legal aid funding ensures that people’s time in court is well used, as much as possible. When people represent themselves—and this does happen—it is often not only detrimental to the likelihood of the success of their cause, but also the time of everyone in the courtroom.

Third, legal aid clinics help stabilize people’s housing and other essential life needs so that they can then stabilize their lives and mitigate the crushing impacts of poverty that so many in our court system face. They often serve a rehabilitative role, connecting people to local health organizations and to local service providers, and helping people access the government benefits to which they are legally entitled.

It is for these reasons that studies in other jurisdictions regularly find that legal aid is at least revenue-neutral, if not a net source of savings, for government spending. But this government has not reversed the cuts to legal aid made in their first year of government, and the legal aid clinics and practising lawyers are all crying for help—not to mention those who are recipients of legal aid.

A member of the Federation of Ontario Law Associations was discussing how to modernize access to justice in Ontario and told me: “We’re concerned about the financial cut-offs in terms of whether people are eligible because there’s such a gap between the top limit of eligibility for legal aid and people who are unable to afford a lawyer. We have major areas within the province where no one is able to access their legal aid certificate. And that’s a huge problem for us within the clinic system. We also in the clinic system have funding issues because of inadequate compensation” for lawyers “we’re having a great deal of difficulty maintaining staff. So without continued adequate funding going into that system, we’re really undermining the administration of justice—particularly for our most low-income residents.”

Another lawyer told me, “One of the things that I’m hearing a lot from my members is that a great deal of the backlog and wasted judicial resources in the system comes from the high turnover rate that we are seeing. It’s difficult maintaining staff who have experience and who are more efficient in particular areas. So I encourage you” to take a “look into that. Because I know that it has been impacting my practice and the practice of others that I represent.”

Speaker, lawyers from all over Ontario are in agreement: Our legal institutions need to be better resourced, and funding must be in place in this budget coming this Thursday. If we are to retain the good staff, the qualified and experienced staff, in order for us to deliver this service most effectively, then we need to make those investments. Every business will tell you that investment in people is the number one way to get the best outcome—and if you want to call it “return,” the very best return.

I now want to discuss schedule 5, which deals with oil and gas resources. This bill does nothing to address the 27,000 oil and gas wells across Ontario, 15,000 of which have been identified as abandoned and almost 4,400 that have been identified as posing an immediate and significant risk to both property and life. The Auditor General talked about this in her very recent report. She said the province failed “to identify and inspect high-risk oil and gas wells, even though improperly maintained or abandoned wells are a safety risk for people.” We know this to be true because we had the explosion in Wheatley, Ontario that flattened their downtown core and sent 20 people to the hospital.

I want to read the Auditor General’s report into the record on this matter:

“Few oil and gas wells are being inspected annually. The ministry has not assessed the risk of all 27,000 oil and gas wells in the province, and is therefore unable to determine whether it is focusing its proactive inspection efforts on the highest-risk wells. Furthermore, based on our analysis of inspection data in the ministry’s database for oil and gas wells, we found that only 19% of oil and gas wells in the province have been inspected since 2005. Of those, 38% of inspections occurred more than a decade ago. The low rate of inspections could lead to a risk of complacency by well operators.”

This is red tape cutting? You’re putting people’s property, their lives, their communities at risk.

“Unreliable information on how many high-risk wells have been plugged. Wells that are poorly maintained and improperly plugged can lead to contaminants getting into the province’s groundwater or rising to the land surface around the well. Based on our own analysis, 6% or 1,625 wells are not in use and have not been plugged. A further 30% or 8,011 were plugged prior to 1970 when materials used to plug them included logs, gravel and lead which can lose their integrity over time. As a result ... 36% of wells could pose a danger. Further, we found that three high-risk wells have been leaking since ... 2018, but only one is scheduled to be plugged during 2022-23. We were told that the gas explosion that took place in Wheatley, Ontario in August 2021, was in part due to a well that had been plugged in the 1960s, where the materials used to plug the well had deteriorated over time.”

Speaker, these incidents can be prevented. Lives can be saved. Property and communities can be protected. That’s not red tape; that’s just providing good government. If we want Ontario to be open for business, we need to think of red tape not just as regulation but all of the avoidable systemic barriers that matter to the lives of Ontarians and people doing business here in this province. This bill is opening the act governing oil and gas to allow carbon sequestration and storage for oil and gas recovery. Right at the time when we collectively need to find ways to keep fossil fuels in the ground, this section of the bill wants to put carbon back into the ground only to squeeze it out for more oil and gas at a later date.

To be clear, it is not offensive that I’m seeing that we can move some carbon into the ground, but I am worried that maintaining our society’s commitment to an industry of the past is not any kind of innovation; it’s certainly not the direction that Ontarians are expecting from this government.

This brings me to schedule 9 of the bill. Schedule 9 tinkers with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, removing the requirement of a strategic plan but still requiring that the board meets four times a year. On one hand, injured worker groups are concerned with the removal of the requirement of WSIB to produce a five-year strategic plan, as they have made submissions about this plan. However, the injured workers additionally point out that none of their plans have been adopted.

One way that this bill could actually cut red tape for WSIB would be by ending the controversial practice of deeming. Jessica Ponting, a legal worker at the Industrial Accident Victims Group of Ontario, has described deeming as an egregious and pernicious tactic used by WSIB. WSIB identify suitable occupations that they think the worker can do, and then they cut off the workers’ benefits as if they were working that job, even though many workers never find a job that they can do.

Migrant workers said, in an open letter to this government last year, “We believe that the workers’ compensation system is racist and that we are treated very badly. This systemic racism does not treat us like we are human.” The letter says, noting that migrant workers are hit hardest by the province, “Rather than helping us heal, the current system makes it worse for us. We have been denied the right to function as humans in Canada. For those of us who have been repatriated, we are returning to our home countries with injuries and traumas.” That is their souvenir after working and toiling in our factories and our fields in Canada.

If this government really wants to cut red tape surrounding WSIB and Bill 46, this government would have made the acknowledgement that COVID is an airborne disease. This has been said by the World Health Organization and by the Centers for Disease Control. It has been singled out by every order of public health in Canada, but it has not necessarily been said in this House, and it has not been said by the members of the government side. This matters, because workers who are getting COVID on the job—that is still happening, and sometimes those COVID symptoms are long-lasting. Health Canada estimates that up to 15% of people now have long COVID, and COVID-19 Resources Canada projects that over 858 Ontarians contract COVID every single day in our province. They have life-limiting symptoms that last more than three months—they’re not able to go back to work any single time, but WSIB doesn’t cover them. It’s a safety net, WSIB. Our safety net is supposed to be integrated into our building code. Our health guidance and recommendations are there to avoid the suffering, but instead it reinforces the suffering. It actually condemns the workers to less and not more.

These are the issues that Ontarians are dealing with, and these are the issues that are not necessarily dealt with in Bill 46. So is it a perfect bill? Far from it. Can this government do more? Yes, they can.

At this point in time, Speaker, I want to thank you for the opportunity to rise to speak to the House. It is an absolute honour to deliver these remarks.

Thank you, my friend, for that question.

The most exciting thing we’re doing while reducing red tape is the launch of the Grow Ontario Strategy. It goes hand in hand. This is one way to modernize a system that we haven’t really looked at since back in the 1960s. We’re still operating on a premise and operating on assumptions—we’re a food-producing nation, but we’re actually exporting far more than we consume. To modernize and build up the infrastructure and the research capability, attracting young people to the skilled trades within the agri-food sector is essential.

We can continue to export the trusted brand that’s “Grown in Ontario.” It’s known worldwide as trusted, safe, clean and secure. It secures our food security for generations to come and allows us to grow our GDP, grow our economy, and grow interesting, long-serving jobs in the skilled trades in the agri-food sector.

I thank the member from Chatham-Kent–Leamington and the member for Thornhill for their comments.

The member from Chatham-Kent–Leamington is also the PA for agriculture, and he has got a great knowledge base. Because the Ontario Federation of Agriculture is actually here today and we have made a lot of great progress with our agriculture communities so they can thrive and survive and expand, I wondered if he could expand a bit more about the benefits in this bill, particularly on what we’re doing for the agri-food, agriculture sector.

Through you, Madam Speaker: The backlog in the Ontario court system affects all court users, and creating judicial capacity enhances the effectiveness of the courts. I know this. I lived in this. This was my world. To help resolve this backlog more quickly and ensure faster access to justice, this initiative, by allowing retired judges to come back, is a way we can effectively utilize our courts and allow the process of justice to be more efficient. It’s just another way of cutting red tape.