J’aimerais remercier Chantal Filion et Macrina Perron, qui sont ici avec Cystic Fibrosis. Bienvenue à Queen’s Park.

I’d like to welcome three proud Windsor–Essex realtors to the House today: Mark Lalovich, Elica Berry and Damon Winney.

It is my pleasure to welcome OPSEU/SEFPO members. I notice that nobody on the government side—they claim to be for the unions, but nobody is introducing them, so I’ll take an opportunity. I’d like to welcome Rizza Millares, Angel Martinez—

Interjections.

I want to join with our friends here in thanking the people from Cystic Fibrosis Canada for that fantastic breakfast, for your amazing advocacy—and particularly to Ena Gaudet from Ottawa, thank you for all the great work you do with folks with CF in Ottawa. Thank you so much for being here.

Later today, Life Sciences Ontario will be here to meet with some of our members and host a reception in the dining room this evening. I hope everyone can join.

In my past capacity as a financial adviser, I’d like to welcome all the financial advisers here today.

Again to the Premier: We also heard yesterday that Children’s Hospital at London Health Sciences Centre announced the heartbreaking decision to cancel surgeries for sick children. In-patient bed occupancy is higher than any other time during the pandemic, despite the hospital’s efforts to expand capacity and to move children to the adult ICU. The director of pediatric critical care says the crisis is getting worse every day and they don’t know how long the cancellations will last.

We’ve been hearing that this government has a plan for the crisis in our pediatric hospitals.

How can the Premier possibly defend a plan that causes sick children and their families to suffer?

This government’s so-called plan is devastating for families like my constituents.

Why did the Premier fail to provide the supports and resources needed by Children’s Hospital and other pediatric hospitals to prevent surgeries and procedures from being cancelled?

It is obviously deeply disturbing for all of us to hear stories about parents who have to wait with their children as they get admitted, as they are waiting for that bed to open up in the hospitals, but I also think it’s important for us to understand and appreciate that these are not new issues and not new problems. We were left, frankly, with a health system that was in dire need of investments. Our government has made those investments, and we continue to make those investments.

We are the first government since the last previous Conservative government to open up two new medical schools in the province of Ontario.

We will continue to do what is right and what is needed.

But, yes, I do find it disturbing when we hear stories about how parents have to wait for that bed to become available and the child to ultimately be in a hospital room.

We have put in place with our partners, including Ontario Health, constant contact with pediatric hospitals, Ontario Health, primary care practitioners, community health centres to make sure that everyone is working at full capacity so that we have access to the care we need.

I understand this is very challenging—when we see these surges, when we see increases in viruses such as RSV, when we see increases in influenza. What I would ask, respectfully, is that all of us make sure we are part of the solution by encouraging our constituents to get that flu vaccine. If you haven’t yet received your booster shot for COVID-19, do it. That will make a difference in our hospitals, in our primary care facilities, and it will ultimately protect our children.

As I said, our best defence is to make sure that people get that flu vaccine, that we have sufficient investments in place at pediatric hospitals and, frankly, in community hospitals.

I want to highlight some of the partnerships that have happened. We often talk about the highly skilled, exceptional workers who are in our pediatric hospitals, but we also have highly skilled, caring, compassionate health care workers in our community hospitals. Now we have partnerships where SickKids nurses are training community hospital nurses on what to expect and how to deal with patients with, for example, RSV. It’s working. We will continue to do that work.

Speaker, the Premier is using Bill 39 to allow the mayor of Toronto to pass laws at city hall with the support of only one third of council. The mayor could pass laws with the support of just eight members out of 25. We operate in a democracy—50% plus one, majority rule. But this bill silences two thirds of council. It silences the voice of the majority of Torontonians in how our city is run.

Will the Premier abide by the democratic process and withdraw this absurd bill?

My question is to the Premier.

CTV News reported yesterday that a four-year-old with Down syndrome spent 40 hours in the ER of Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital before she was finally transferred to a bed. The child’s mother, Jasmine, was forced to create a makeshift bed out of chairs for her exhausted and sick daughter, who was suffering with a fever, vomiting and had low oxygen levels.

Our youngest children are sick and suffering because this government didn’t do enough to prepare for this crisis.

I ask the Premier, how many more kids will have to wait long hours for care before this government takes action to relieve the burden on hospitals and ensure our kids get the care that they need?

Why didn’t the Premier tell people during the recent election campaign that he’d be undermining democracy as part of his program?

I want to acknowledge my friend Macrina Perron from Cystic Fibrosis Canada and congratulate her on her philanthropy award from Nipissing University.

While I have a few horses in the World Cup race, my number one steed is, of course, Team Canada.

I’d like to ask unanimous consent for all members in the House, if they so choose, to wear any Team Canada swag to support our team. Go, Canada, go.

That concludes the time we have available for introduction of guests.

Speaker, we learned that the mayor of Toronto and the Premier were having these backroom conversations as far back as this summer. This is how the government operates—secret conversations behind closed doors. We saw that with the cuts to the greenbelt. Backdoor meetings led to results for wealthy donor developers at the expense of the interests of the people of Ontario.

Will the Premier stop his backroom deals with donors and serve in the interests of the public?

Hate in all forms has no place in Ontario, and to be clear, this includes anti-Semitism. We will not let anti-Semitism disrupt our way of life, especially here in Ontario.

Mr. Speaker, this is very personal to me. I’m proud to serve a Premier and a government who have used our diversity as our greatest strength. The proof of our diversity is right here—all those who sit around me, in our party, working together.

So what can we do? We can call it out. Anti-Semitism is toxic to our democracy, and when we combat anti-Semitism, we protect our human rights and our human dignity for all, and we protect our common values in our communities. It doesn’t matter where we come from or how we got here; it’s about doing the right thing and calling out hatred for what it is. It has no place in Ontario, and we will not tolerate it.

Interjections.

We’ve invested over $25 million to protect against hate-motivated violence, racism and hate.

Just two weeks ago, I was proud to be with our Minister of Education and our caucus members at an important announcement of mandatory Holocaust education in the grade 6 curriculum, commencing for the first time next year.

Some things have to matter: the rule of law; our ability to live safely in our own communities one to another, free of hate and discrimination. Mr. Speaker, this must matter.

The final supplementary.

Restart the clock.

The next question.

Restart the clock.

Supplementary question.

Anti-Semitism has no place anywhere here in Ontario. This chamber must be united in condemning anti-Semitism. Those words must not be hollow. When anti-Semitism is left unchallenged, it has a direct consequence for the safety of the Jewish community, not only here in Ontario but across Canada.

According to recent Statistics Canada data, Jewish Canadians continue to be the most targeted religious group of hate crimes in this country. We must not allow that hatred to be fuelled, especially by individuals in power and responsibility. There must be consequences for anti-Semitic behaviour.

I understand that words matter, but actions matter more.

So I’d like to know what our government is doing to stand up and combat anti-Semitism.

On this side of the House, the government has a strong record of combatting anti-Semitism by introducing things like Holocaust education in our school system as young as the age of grade 6.

But let’s be clear: More needs to be done. As we continue to invest resources to combat all forms of hate, we cannot allow the normalization of anti-Semitism to take place in Ontario. We cannot take a casual approach. And we all have a responsibility to act.

I’d like to ask the minister, the Solicitor General, how we are freeing Ontario of anti-Semitism.

Speaker, I want to remind the House that we’re in the middle of a housing crisis. Our best year in 30 years was last year, when we had over 100,000 starts. New Democrats, this morning, in debate on Bill 23, acknowledged the 1.5 million homes that are needed in Ontario over the next decade. The status quo does not work.

The fact that our government is advancing the strong-mayor powers over and above Toronto and Ottawa is not something that the Premier has hidden in any way, in any shape, or in any form.

We need to ensure that mayors across the province have all the tools that they need to get shovels in the ground faster. We need to ensure that we have a plan in place to build those 1.5 million homes.

We’re going to continue with our agenda as we work with our municipal partners.

Interjections.

Again, to the Premier: The Public Order Emergency Commission published an email yesterday detailing a conversation between the Premier and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino on Wednesday, February 9. During the call, the Premier said that Dr. Moore would announce the end of vaccine passports on Thursday, and on Friday the Premier himself would announce the end of mandates. Coincidentally, it was at this exact same time that the Premier was alleged to have been speaking with convoy leaders, vowing to “pull these passports” and telling convoy leaders he would be making an announcement on Friday.

Will the Premier finally admit today that he was speaking to both federal government officials and convoy leaders during the occupation of Ottawa?

Will the Premier tell the people of this province who and what he is hiding from?

I think what the member is referring to is the federal commission into the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act. We have been working, of course, with the commission, as I’ve said on a number of occasions.

I’m certainly glad that the member opposite highlights the very good work of health care professionals across the province of Ontario throughout the last year to get us in a position in the province of Ontario where we were able to remove some of the mandates. That helped us so much in getting us to the position where we’re at today—and part of that, of course, goes to the Minister of Health and the good people who work in that area, who undertook one of the largest vaccine rollouts in the history of this country. I think over 90% of Ontarians have gotten their first and second dose.

The member is quite correct; we were working to remove mandates as quickly as we possibly could, always putting the people of the province first, putting the health and safety of Ontarians first. Because of the investments that we made, we were able to remove those mandates. And I’m very, very happy that the member opposite recognizes that good, hard work.

We actually had two debates in this House when those states of emergency in the province of Ontario ended, and on both occasions, although we had set aside four hours, assuming the opposition wanted to talk about it, debate collapsed after I think only about an hour on one, an hour and a half on the other, because the opposition had had enough.

The reality is that we worked very hard to keep the people of the province of Ontario safe. The people of the province of Ontario deserve all of the credit for that, as do our front-line health care workers who brought—