I want to thank the member from Whitby for that question.

Any time you are in Ottawa, I would love to introduce you to our farm-to-table movement. The farmers and our farmers’ market, the rural and the urban and the suburban, have a great, strong relationship, and they are critically important.

I would invite the member to consider that it’s not necessarily a good move to be moving into arable land, whether it be the greenbelt or whether it be other forms of land that can be used to grow crops, can be used for animal husbandry, can be used to make sure we can nourish and sustain the province that we want going forward. But I take the member’s point: These are critical industries.

I would also say—and I keep getting a reminder of this when I go to farmers’ market after farmers’ market—that the smaller operations are at a distinct disadvantage still and they are supported less in Ontario relative even to Quebec and other provinces in Canada. I think those smaller family operations are giving us a diversity of product for the consumer that deserves the government’s further support—something to work in the future.

As I think I’ve said in this place many times before, I really would invite us to not look at ODSP recipients as anything other than our neighbours, who have an enormous amount of talent to share with us.

There is no festival in the city of Ottawa that functions without ODSP recipients. To qualify for ODSP, you have to demonstrate that you can’t maintain a connection to full-time employment, but you can volunteer. I think about a fantastic organization like Bluesfest in our city. I invite any member to go with me this summer, if you want to see it for yourself. It gives people on ODSP and OW enormous opportunities to make new friendships, volunteer, be part of something, and that’s extremely valuable. But I would like to see an Ontario in which those folks can earn double the ODSP rate they currently have so they wouldn’t be showing up to do that voluntary work dishevelled, in obvious poverty, nursing injuries. That’s rough, and I know we can do better.

I thank the member for her work in spotlighting the issue, for sure.

On the issue of costs for business: My goodness, yes; we—both of us from Ottawa—could introduce you to hundreds of small businesses, through the pandemic and now—whatever moment we’re in now; we’re still in the pandemic—that have gone through a wrenching, difficult process and need help and support. I think everybody in this place would agree to that.

Reducing WSIB costs for big employers like McDonald’s and Loblaws and Home Depot—that was a handout, in many respects, to enormously profitable employers engaging in pandemic profiteering, often at the expense of workers.

So we have to really, when we think of supporting small operations—and the member has run one, so he knows. Let’s make sure the support goes there. McDonald’s and Loblaws and Home Depot—Galen Weston does not need our help, but main street needs our help, for sure.

What I can say is this—pro tip: I love this book. It was recommended by a community kitchen provider at home, Karen Secord from the Parkdale Food Centre. If you’re listening and you’re looking for something to read, pick up the book by Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists. It is one of the best cases for a universal basic income I have ever read. One of the chapters of that book says, “Give away money to the poor and watch economic growth happen.” It’s counterintuitive, I know, but here in Ontario—we had Feed Ontario in this building this week. They told us that poverty costs Ontario $33 billion a year—and if we doubled ODSP and OW, that’s about another what, members? About another $9 billion? Think about less strain on our hospitals and more dignity for people, less police interactions, less people incarcerated with multiple police interactions. We could give people dignity and give people opportunity, but we have to get over that hurdle of thinking that it’s coddling folks; it’s not. What’s expensive for Ontario is poverty.

Let me be just succinct at the end of my time: This is a debate about capitalism. This is a debate about whether or not we tell the very, very powerful folks in our economy that they can’t have everything they want. They make powerful cases to this government: “You need to give us access to this land, despite what you said previously about the greenbelt, despite what you said previously about not doing what the Liberals did.” They’ve been convinced that they need to, but this is a moment when the government has to use its influence to say no, because the evidence that I’ve read suggests we don’t need to develop into the greenbelt.

You don’t need to do what the Liberal government did once upon a time—what you’re poised to do now. You can save that arable land. You can intensify urban neighbourhoods like mine and save Ontario.