It gives me great honour to acknowledge our page captain today, Alex Vanden Bosch, who is from my riding of Northumberland–Peterborough South, who hails from Grafton. She’s joined in the gallery by her parents, Irina and Justin; and Sue and Tim, her grandparents.

You have an outstanding granddaughter and daughter. Welcome to Queen’s Park. It’s an honour to have you here.

I’d like to add my welcome and introductions to my friends and neighbours who are visiting from Queen’s University, located in the great riding of Kingston and the Islands—and I know that there are many alumni of Queen’s here in this chamber. I invite everybody to meet with Queen’s later at the reception, if not in your offices, to understand the contribution of our post-secondary institutions to our society, to our economy, and to find out what they would like to see us do to help them contribute even more.

Today, I’d like to welcome the Grain Farmers of Ontario to Queen’s Park. In particular, from District 2, the great area of Chatham-Kent, I’d like to welcome Gus Ternoey. In the spirit of the holidays, I invite everyone to join the Grain Farmers of Ontario in rooms 228 and 230 later this afternoon.

I would like to introduce representatives from Queen’s University who are here today: Dr. Patrick Deane, the principal and vice-chancellor; Owen Crawford-Lem, the rector; Craig Leroux, director of government and corporate relations; Dr. Nancy Ross, vice-principal of research; and Ann Tierney, vice-provost and dean of student affairs. Thank you for being here at Queen’s Park.

The member knows that nothing could be further from the truth. We were elected on a very strong platform to ensure that the people of the province of Ontario were well serviced by their government. What that means right now is that the people of the province of Ontario know that we are in a housing crisis. The Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing has brought forward a very thoughtful program that would allow us to work in consultation and in co-operation with the city of Pickering to ensure that we can bring homes to the people of this province.

I look around me at my caucus here and I wonder how many of them are first-generation Canadians whose parents came here with one dream, and that dream was to have a better life for their family and for their kids. Part of that dream, I know from my parents, was to have their first home.

The opposition would take that dream away from the over 500,000 people who are expected to come here each and every year. Mr. Speaker, we won’t do that. We have a responsibility to the people of the province of Ontario to ensure that they can meet their dreams like countless generations have. They want to take that away from people; we’ll make sure that they get it.

The member for Eglinton–Lawrence and parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Health.

Final supplementary question.

Government House leader to respond.

My question is to the Minister of Health. The Minister of Health has risen in this House countless times over the past few weeks saying that the government had “prepared” for the surge in respiratory illnesses. And yet, just this past weekend, CHEO in Ottawa has had to call in the Red Cross to help. That is not what a well-resourced and prepared health care system looks like, Speaker.

Does the minister think it’s acceptable for a hospital to have to call in the Red Cross?

Ontarians deserve a health care system that provides the care they need when they need it. CHEO has already had to cancel surgeries, open a second pediatric ICU and transfer teenage patients to adult hospitals. It’s now clear that this government hasn’t done enough.

Why didn’t the minister do more to ensure that the province was prepared for the respiratory season?

The FAO has shown that in the first half of the year, the government underspent in health care by nearly a billion dollars. To add insult to injury, the government plans to appeal the ruling on Bill 124, which has already driven countless health care workers out of our system. The government continues to underfund and degrade our publicly funded health care system.

Why is the minister letting the situation in our hospitals get so bad?

Why is the minister betraying the public’s trust by removing these farmland protections and giving away this immensely valuable public investment to powerful land speculators like the De Gasperis family?

The Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve Act was passed in 2005 to reverse this betrayal of public trust. Why is the minister repealing the act and once again betraying the public trust?

The minister is about to remove protections from the preserve, giving billions of dollars’ worth of public wealth to private interests. Why is the minister enabling this betrayal of the public trust?

We understand how difficult this fall has been. We’ve inherited a broken system, which has been put under pressure by the triple threat now of RSV, COVID and influenza. But we inherited this system and we intended to take steps to fix it, which is what we’ve been doing to ensure children get the care they need.

Our government is in constant contact with our pediatric hospitals. In fact, our government funded a second pediatric ICU at CHEO for the fall surge, which CHEO has been staffing until now. But now they need a little extra help, and they have asked a small team to come in temporarily from Red Cross to assist them with the second pediatric ICU, but that was certainly part of our planning to make sure we had the care we’d need for pediatric patients at CHEO and other pediatric hospitals.

As Tammy DeGiovanni, the chief nursing officer at CHEO, has said:

“It has been all hands on deck at CHEO this viral season as we have responded to unprecedented volumes” of “RSV, the flu and COVID.... We have redeployed staff and medical staff from surgical and medical care units, added extra beds and workers in our pediatric intensive care and emergency departments as well as in-patient units, and asked non-clinical staff to support clinical teams where possible. Everyone at CHEO has been” doing all they can “to take care of kids and their families.”

Our government applauds the work of our health care workers in making sure that pediatric patients and all patients in our system are getting the care they need.

Interjections.

The government wants to thank everyone who provided comments on the Environmental Registry of Ontario for our posting related to the greenbelt. As members will know, that posting, at the end of the day, will add over 2,000 acres to the greenbelt while at the same time providing, under very strict criteria, the opportunity to build up to 50,000 homes.

Because his members wouldn’t let me read an excerpt from Mayor Kevin Ashe from the city of Pickering regarding the DRAP, I’ll do it today, Speaker, with your indulgence. Mayor Ashe says, “I would also like to support and thank you and your government for your efforts in proposing the removal of the Cherrywood Area Lands from the greenbelt plan and in proposing to repeal the Central Pickering Development Plan. In light of this planned residential and commercial growth, I am encouraged that your ministry will ultimately augment and strengthen the greenbelt by adding 9,400 acres to it.”

I would like to give a special shout-out to one of our pages from the great riding of Sault Ste. Marie. Grace Curran is with us, and I really want to say a special thank you to her.

Let’s be clear: For the last year, as our public accounts showed, we increased funding to health care by $5.2 billion in base funding. That is the largest increase in the history of this province.

What does that mean? That means that since March of 2020 this province has added over 12,000 health care professionals in Ontario. This year alone, the Ontario college of nurses has registered over 12,800 nurses. This is because the investments that this government is making to shore up our health human resources are working.

We’re going to continue to make those historic and unprecedented investments into health care to ensure that we have the support across this province.

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of meeting with the ironworkers of Local 765, along with the Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development. Local 765 is located in the great community of Metcalfe, in my riding of Carleton. I saw the amazing work Ontario’s skilled tradespeople do to keep our province’s economic engine running.

Unfortunately, Ontario is facing a labour shortage. In Ottawa alone, there are more than 42,000 vacant positions. The skilled trades are no exception, and opportunities abound for people looking for a job in this sector.

My question is for the Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development: What is our government doing to bring more people into the skilled trades? Thank you.

My question is once again to the Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development: What is our government doing to market the skilled trades to young people?

Good morning, Speaker. Remarks in Oji-Cree.

My question is to the Premier. Highway 105 was washed out, separating Red Lake and Ear Falls from the rest of Ontario, and Sioux Lookout experienced flooding during the spring. Kiiwetinoong experienced unprecedented flooding. Sioux Lookout experienced flooding that damaged over 30 homes and businesses, including two hotels.

Last week, the Auditor General said Ontario is not doing enough to help municipalities with this planning. Mr. Speaker, they need assistance. What is Ontario doing to help communities in the north to mitigate future flooding?

Government House leader.

Start the clock. The supplementary question.

I know that the members opposite will do anything—they’re like a leak, right? You know when you have a leak in your house and you want to find out where the leak is before it does too much damage, right? Of course, the people of Ontario know what happens if you don’t find that leak. By consequence, we didn’t find it in 1990 to 1995 and the NDP almost bankrupted the province.

But more importantly, Mr. Speaker, we have a situation in the province of Ontario where we are in a housing crisis. The NDP are going to do and say everything they possibly can to stop hundreds of thousands and millions of Ontarians from having the same dream that millions have. Put your hand up in this caucus or over there if you’re a first-generation or if your parents came here. Look at the hands that are going up.

Interjections.

When my parents came here impoverished from Italy, they came here to have a better life for their kids. And the number one dream is the value of a home. They got it and look where they—

Interjections.

But more importantly, what you’re seeing day in and day out, colleagues, is the NDP who refuse to acknowledge that in the province of Ontario there is a housing crisis. That housing crisis was created by policies that they helped support.

We know that in the province of Ontario we want to continue to welcome people from all over the world to help us build a better and more prosperous Ontario, just like my parents did. When my parents came in the late 1950s and early 1960s, all of them, the brothers and their sisters—six of them lived in one house. Some lived upstairs; some lived in the basement. And one by one they managed to have the dream of a brand new home right here in the province of Ontario. That was the dream when they came. They wanted their kids to have a better future than they had. That’s why millions of people came here, struggled, and helped build the province of Ontario.

They want to take that dream away from people. This Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing said no. That is a dream that countless generations had—

There is a tremendous amount of resources that have been put not only into northern communities but across the province of Ontario to ensure that we are prepared to meet the challenges of natural disasters, both in southern and northern Ontario, in urban and rural communities. That means working very closely with our municipalities, who have expertise on the ground.

The important thing, when we talk about the north, is that we have to create those partnerships, because it is so important. That’s why we are bringing, of course, more roads and transportation networks to northern Ontario. I know the Minister of Mines has been working very hard with First Nations partners and with our mining partners to ensure that we can unleash the power of the north. I know the Minister of Energy last week just talked about how we finally were able to get hydroelectricity to some parts of northern Ontario—I know the honourable gentleman was there as well—finally taking them off diesel generators.

Look, the north is an important part of the economic prosperity to the province of Ontario, as he talked about, and that’s why we’re working so closely with our partners to mitigate that.

I want to thank the member for Carleton for that question and for an amazing day that we had in her riding on Friday.

We need all hands on deck to get more people in the skilled trades and to build those 1.5 million homes by 2031, to welcome all of those new Canadians that are going to be coming to Ontario. That’s why we are investing a record $1.5 billion over the next four years to teach anyone who is eager to work in the trades the skills they need for these life-changing careers.

The Ironworkers Local 765 in Ottawa and right across Ontario are constructing, installing and erecting the iron that our major infrastructure projects depend on. Simply put, we depend on them to keep Ontario standing tall. They are everyday heroes and we need more people like them to continue building Ontario.

To tackle the shortage in the skilled trades, we must promote these amazing careers to our young people. They are the next generation and we need them to build a stronger Ontario for all of us.

Speaker, through you to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing: Last week, the minister failed to explain why he was allowing his ministry to be lobbied by his former chief of staff Luca Bucci, who left the ministry in April, less than eight months ago. The government House leader wouldn’t even let the minister answer.

Maybe the minister will answer this: Before Mr. Bucci became CEO of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association, or since, did the minister or any other government official share information with Mr. Bucci, information not available to the general public, that could be used by a member of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association to further their private interests?

On September 15, just two months before the minister announced plans to remove certain properties from the greenbelt, one of these properties sold to a company controlled by developer and PC donor Michael Rice. The real estate listing advertised the property as a “prime land banking opportunity,” as if expecting the value of this greenbelt land to rise.

The seller was the developer Schickedanz Bros., who sold the property for nearly nine times what they paid for it in 2000. Speaker, Bob Schickedanz was president of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association on September 15, at the same time Luca Bucci was CEO of the Home Builders’ Association.

Did the minister or any other government official share information with Mr. Bucci that could be used by the buyer or seller of the Schickedanz property to further their private interests, yes or no?

My question is to the Premier. Over the past half decade under your watch, my community and its hospitals in Niagara have struggled to keep pace with our health care needs. Policies like Bill 124 have contributed to a nursing and staff crisis month over month. Over the summer, Niagara Health had over 608 staff vacancies. I know that number has grown now. Even worse, those vacancies have more than doubled since November 2019, the month that your health care morale-killing policy, Bill 124, received royal assent.

The courts overturned Bill 124, Premier.

Premier, will you do the right thing and recognize your policies have worsened our health care staffing crisis?

I used to work in health care, and, let me tell you, you are not tricking the nurses on the front line. You are not tricking the seniors and parents that have to wait endlessly—

We see the receipts. We see the results, and the results are the results.

Premier, why do you still plan to appeal Bill 124 when it is clear your health care policies over the last half decade have led to a worsening of the staffing crisis in Niagara and straight across Ontario?

Thanks to the member opposite for the question. I appreciate the opportunity to respond to some of the information that is not accurate in the member opposite’s statement.

We know the importance of ensuring that investments continue, the types of investments that we’ve seen, including in three new hospitals in the Niagara region: the West Lincoln Memorial Hospital, the new Niagara south hospital and the Hotel Dieu Shaver hospital. We’ve seen two new palliative care expansions, 20 new palliative care beds being brought into our area. We’ve seen a new nursing program launch at Niagara College, as well as an expanded nursing program doubling the amount of nursing graduates from Brock University.

These are the types of investments that, under the leadership of Premier Ford and this team, we are making in Niagara to ensure that each and every patient in our region has access to the world-class care that they deserve. The opposition had years to make that happen with the Liberals and they didn’t—

Interjections.

Thank you to the member for the question. In fact, we’ve increased the number of medical seats at Brock University. I hope you’ve had the opportunity to tour the university and see the amazing things that are happening at Brock University.

Mr. Speaker, in fact, this fall we saw a record number of applications at Ontario’s colleges and universities in the province: 25,000 students were applying for nursing programs at Ontario’s colleges and universities—world-class post-secondary education. We are seeing record numbers of students looking to join the profession, and we’ve already seen that the Council of Ontario Universities says that more than 13,000 students applied to university nursing programs this past year.

We’ve also seen changes to the Ministry of Health through the Ontario college of nurses, where we’ve seen a record number of 14,000 registered nurses this season.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There’s lots more to come.