That’s equity; that’s right. So to see the education dollars be the same, really, as the summer budget was pretty disappointing.

I want to end on the housing piece, because a lot has been said about the importance of housing. I think that we actually all agree that the value and the importance and the key factor of shelter in an economy cannot be underestimated. But to see the housing starts really costed out and downgraded already, Madam Speaker, is—I mean, I go back to process. Those 444 municipalities that got really shut out of the consultation process—I don’t think that that can be ignored.

Just to go back: Where we are right now is the FAO is forecasting a $100-million surplus this year. That surplus is expected to grow to $8.5 billion in 2027-28. He’s actually projecting surpluses for the foreseeable future.

The formula that the Financial Accountability Officer uses and the finance minister uses—they both consult with various economists, but those formulas are not that different. You look at job creation, you look at revenue through personal tax and corporate tax, and then you look at the expenditures that you’ve already allocated.

And then you have this little thing called the COVID fund, which actually is interesting because it was tucked away in the Ministry of Finance, and then it was sort of scattered out—which I had questions about, where it was being scattered out to. But remember that that COVID funding, originally, the goal of it was to help the province stabilize. Stability is having a very strong health care system with guaranteed resources which acknowledges the importance of paying people a fair wage so that you can actually retain them. And this seems to be the piece that the government is not willing to acknowledge, the importance of retention.

Retention is important not only because going through a hiring process and going through another recruitment process is costly and takes time away from patients, from clients, but you actually lose the expertise. Then what does the government do? The government looks at agency nurses, and those agency nurses don’t have a connection with the unit. They are dropped into a work environment where they don’t have connections, where relationships are not there. All I know is that they’re making sometimes double what our nurses who are on the regular roster in hospitals are making. What is that doing to the entire staffing human resources issue in our health care system? It’s drawing people out to work in the private sector, which the government is also funding at twice the rate.

Imagine if we had a government in Ontario that was truly committed to public health care. Imagine if when they used the word “innovation,” then people would say, “When they’re talking about innovation, they’re actually talking about investing in health care and ensuring that the people in our system are respected, and that the resources are there for children and for seniors in long-term care.” Imagine if innovation meant that for this government. It would be incredibly refreshing.

The government, as I mentioned, for the first time in 14 years—in the last quarter, so much money came into this place through high inflationary costs and through tax revenue that we saw, for the first time in 14 years, a surplus—first time, right? You remember what was going to happen, and that is that the former government had tied ending the operational deficit to our compensation. Of course, that should not be any priority for any of us here in this place, especially given what’s happening in Ontario, but that’s part of the piece of the legislation as well, that MPPs won’t be seeing any raise or any increase or even a third-party independent review of remuneration.

But that didn’t stop the government from—88% of them became parliamentary assistants, which comes sometimes with between a $13,000 and $16,000 increase. That didn’t stop the government from ensuring that their caucus was well cared for. That seems to be the trend. They like to take care of their people, and we try to remind them that we’re elected to take care of Ontarians. Ontario is not Ford Nation; Ontario is Ontario. We’re elected to treat those citizens with respect.

The reason why the fall economic statement, in our opinion, is so irresponsible is that it’s another missed opportunity for this government to acknowledge what’s actually happening outside of this Pink Palace to people in the health care system, in the education system. The move from an environmental perspective around the greenbelt has really galvanized many people in many rural ridings, because nobody is buying this narrative that, because of immigration, we have to build these mansions out on the greenbelt. That’s a misnomer.

Process matters. Denying us the opportunity as the official opposition to do our due diligence through the estimates process is truly something that actually hasn’t happened in this place. You’re in new, unchartered territory. Given Bill 28, you’re obviously comfortable creating chaos, but we are very determined to ensure that we bring the voices of Ontarians to this place each and every day, and to ensure that your budget and your investments actually match the needs of Ontarians.

Don’t take the risk. Don’t gamble with people’s health in Ontario. We can’t afford another economic downturn. If you paid attention to what the Financial Accountability Officer had said, it’s not worth the risk. Let’s make sure that we avoid another economic shock. Let’s try to stabilize.

I’m not sure if we’re even going to get a chance to try to make this piece of legislation better, but we’re certainly going to try. Thank you for your time and your attention today.

We’ll move to questions and answers.

Thank you for the member from Waterloo’s presentation.

Speaker, we know that inflation is at a 40-year record high in Canada. This government understands that families, workers and seniors—especially low-income workers and those on fixed incomes—are feeling the pressure on their household budget, and we also recognize the impact that inflation is having on families. That is why our government proposed to extend the gas tax cut for an additional year to help Ontarians to overcome this challenging time.

Speaker, my question is simple: Why won’t the member opposite support the government’s proposed measures to extend the gas tax cut and keep costs down for the people of Ontario?

Thank you to the member for Waterloo for an excellent breakdown—what a breakdown the fall economic statement is, by this Conservative government.

I’d like to ask a question with regard to children being triaged into adult care, hospitals having to turn away sick kids because there’s simply no staff or there’s a staff shortage and they cannot give them the treatment they deserve. How does this fall economic statement address this? I mean, I look at the document and I see that the health expenditures are the same now in the fall as they were in the summer, even though we know the crisis has worsened. Why is this government not paying attention to the calls from panicked parents who are seeing their children turned away from the health care they need at a time when some of these very parents in St. Paul’s don’t have paid sick days or are the very front-line health care workers who are being pushed out of nursing because of Bill 124?

I want to thank the member from the other side. I was happy to hear that she agreed with the ODSP element, and she talked about the cost of living and seniors.

Another member talked about the dire need. This legislation, if passed, would cut costs for people across this province and support those on ODSP and fixed incomes, and work to help more Ontario students get into the good-paying skilled trade careers that this province needs. By increasing the monthly earning exemptions on ODSP from $200 to $1,000 per month, we are making significant changes. Why won’t the member from across support the legislation?

Next question?

I want to thank the member from Waterloo for her very informative speech. It didn’t even feel like an hour, because you were so good at explaining exactly what’s happening. You mentioned the troubling trend this government has with all their budgets, really, in terms of really underestimating their revenue and overestimating its deficits.

Would you be able to explain a little bit more in terms of the damage that it does, especially when we look at health care spending, education spending and some of the more dire needs that we have in our province, especially right now?

Thank you, Madam Speaker. We’re the host of the greater Toronto airport. We’re the host for everybody. That’s Mississauga–Malton. I just want to say thank you to the residents of Mississauga–Malton for giving me an opportunity so that I can talk on an important bill today.

Madam Speaker, I’m proud to rise in the House today to speak about the wonderful things that this government and all the members on this side are doing to help the people of Ontario through our fall economic statement, which is right here. To all residents of Ontario, take a look at it; read it. It’s a wonderful document. It talks about “Team Prosperity,” what your government is doing, where we are investing, and how, together, we’re going to build a better Ontario.

The fall economic statement helps Ontarians to provide financial relief by reducing taxes, raising earnings and encouraging participation in the workforce. We are making real progress to get Ontario back on track, help people find work and build Ontario’s economy for the future and the world to envy.

From day one, we stood with the workers of this province, and we have made a commitment to build an Ontario for the next generation, and that is what this is doing here, Madam Speaker. That is why we’re making critical investments to help people get better jobs with bigger paycheques and, in doing so, building a better and stronger Ontario and better and stronger communities.

I want to take a special focus on what our government is doing to help address the labour shortage in our province. It’s not a hidden secret. In the last four and a half years, we have seen the government working together with businesses, with the province and hard-working Ontarians, making sure it is economical to do business here. When you reduce the cost of doing business and increase support in increasing the revenue, what happens next? More businesses create jobs, and that is what has happened. We have seen that the number of jobs has gone up, but the number of jobs still pending and not being filled has gone up by around 380,000 people. That’s what we are doing here.

In order to get to the place where we can have those people filling these jobs, we are looking to immigration. And I know, and I noticed that we had a conversation when the Premier stood up and talked about that in the next few years we are going to get approximately 500,000 people coming and choosing Canada as their home. Typically, what happens is, they look for a good place to come, and what could be better than Ontario—something I chose on January 15, 2000. If 60% of those 500,000 come here, that’s about 300,000 people. We always welcome newcomers to our province and have wanted to make sure that Ontario remains competitive on the international stage. That is why what we are doing is celebrating their milestone.

Oh, thinking about milestones, Madam Speaker, I want to talk about my uncle and aunt: Mrs. Raj Bhupinder Kaur Cheema. She got married to my uncle Bhupinder Singh Cheema on November 14, 1964. They just celebrated their 58th wedding anniversary, so I just want to say congratulations. It takes a lot of courage and perseverance to stay together, but you did an amazing job and you raised my cousin very well. So I just wanted to say this to them.

Madam Speaker, talking about finding the skill set, I just want to quickly talk about the OINP program. Since 2020, we have people from 130 countries who have come together and over this period we have been able to support 2,200 different employers in leveraging the Ontario Immigration Nomination Program. By the end of this year, over 40,000 international skilled workers have been nominated through the OINP program, and I just want to give an example of what our government has done and how it has helped. Before our new expression-of-interest system, only 7% of the foreign worker stream were trained in jobs in construction. As we know, we want to build more homes and we want workers in the construction industry. After changing the system, we have seen the improvement in the result and actually the numbers have doubled to 14%. We will continue to work with our economy and the labour market to make these changes so that all these new immigrants who are coming and making Ontario their new home can thrive and raise their families.

We’ve talked about, through Ontario’s Plan to Build, how we are going to help the Ring of Fire, committing approximately $1 billion to support the critical legacy infrastructure, attracting $16 billion in investment by global automakers and suppliers of electrical vehicle batteries right here in Ontario and attracting $2.5 billion in investments to produce clean steel. When we do have these investments coming up, they’re actually creating jobs. To fill those jobs, we need people. I always say, in a simple single system, jobs need people, and people need jobs. When we work together, we give them a hand up, and we make sure the economy grows well. That is why we have seen over many years—the last few years, especially—the revenue growing year by year. Thanks to each and every hard-working Ontarian for contributing.

We actually had a bill, our Working for Workers Act. We want to make sure that new immigrants who are making this country, and Ontario especially, their new home have a job in their own field. That is why we made sure that we brought in the changes to the foreign credentials, so that they don’t have to wait for their licence and they can go ahead and as soon as they arrive they can start working towards their professional licence and can work in their own field.

By an estimate, we’ve noticed that if people work in their field, which, in fact—the last data, which we had in 2016: Only 25% of the people were working in their own field. What that means is, if they were working in their field—for an example, if you take somebody who is an undergraduate in engineering, like me, I was working at about $40,000. If I had had a licence as a professional engineer, the minimum entry salary would have been $70,000 to $75,000. The differential between the two, if you really look at that—you’re basically adding the revenue to the businesses, you are adding the revenue to the families, you’re adding the revenue to the government as well. If you calculate the whole thing, the differential is between $15 billion and $20 billion. And we can collect and use that money to service Ontarians, and that’s what we’re doing now.

For instance, we are providing an additional $40 million in 2023 in new funding in the Skills Development Fund to support our priority infrastructure fund and our youth employment training. Along with that, we’ve provided $4.8 million over two years for dual credits to enhance pathways for high school students like my daughter, who is in high school, so they can go into the skilled trades and early childhood education. Why do we need this? Well, Madam Speaker, we all know we are going to $10 child care, and to do that, we need people who can support that child care education, and we need to make sure our youth are ready and supported.

And we helped more than 52,000 people find a path to employment via Ontario’s integrated employment services system, which began in 2020. Colleagues, if you really look at this, 52,000 people getting a job means 52,000 fewer cheques from the government. This means 52,000 more people paying to the government. That’s what we’re doing. With a special focus on the skilled trades, we are continuing the efforts to make sure that everyone who can work and who wants to work is able to work. That is why we’re making sure we’re making the investments in training more than ever before.

Madam Speaker, we always hear about workers: how we’re supporting the workers, how we’re supporting the minimum wages. One of the things we did was to increase the minimum wage to $15.50, including the workers who are in the hospitality business. At the time when we increased from $12.50 to $15, the raise was about 19%, something which we believe that our workers need our help, and we are always there to help them. That’s how we added 11,700 health care workers, including nurses and personal support workers, as well as 800 internationally educated nurses who have become licensed as nurses in Ontario through government-funded programs.

The statement also mentions our continuous support to the small businesses. Madam Speaker, in 2021 alone, small businesses made up 98.1% of all employer businesses in Canada. They employ 63.8% of the total labour force. Given the fact that the majority of small businesses are concentrated in Ontario, supporting them in offsetting their tax burden is a direct contribution to creating and sustaining job opportunities in Ontario. Under our new program, thousands of businesses will now qualify for the small business corporate tax rate, allowing them to save tens of thousands in taxable income. What do they do with that money? They invest back into their business. By creating more jobs, they bring more people on board and help many more Ontarians to get financial independence.

Besides providing over $675 million in Ontario income tax relief over three years by temporarily allowing eligible businesses to immediately expense up to $1.5 million per year for certain capital investments, the statement also proposes to extend the phase-out range for the small business corporate tax between $10 million and $15 million of taxable capital.

When we look at these things, all these small steps add up to bring bigger results, and that is what we’ve seen in the past few years. We have seen the increase in revenue. Every paycheque not collected is a missed opportunity for a worker and their family to start a better life. That is why we extended the programs that made a real impact on thousands of lives.

For example, we are doubling the Guaranteed Annual Income System—GAINS—payment throughout 2023 and providing more than $40 billion in the next 10 years to improve and increase the space in hospitals and build new health care facilities.

As part of the plan to keep costs down, we are helping and making sure that millions of drivers will be relieved from gasoline tax till 2024. We’re making sure that the 5.7-cents-per-litre discount that was set to expire at the end of 2022 is extended until December 31, 2023.

Madam Speaker, we’ve talked about ODSP recipients in the past, how we are able to help them and support them. Through this statement, we’re going further and making sure that a recipient is allowed to net $200 in monthly pay before their provincial payments are reduced, raising their earnings threshold to $1,000 per month, while also increasing the percentage of support money that’s clawed back. We’re also increasing ODSP core allowances and the maximum monthly amount for assistance for children with severe disabilities by 5%. This way, over 25,000 ODSP recipients will be encouraged to participate in the workforce, which will help the province address the labour shortage and give them financial independence.

Madam Speaker, I just want to quickly talk about our Skills Development Fund. To date, with the $560-million investment that we made in the Skills Development Fund, we are proud to say that, to date, almost over 400,000 people around the province have taken the next step in their careers. That’s what we see when you help workers. When the government comes together and supports workers, workers come together and support our province of Ontario.

We have seen the high uptake and interest from stakeholders and the continued success of the program. I just want to quickly talk about two things in this program. We have seen in the past that about 10% of our Canadian population has some sort of criminal record; some mistake made and already paid back. They’ve already taken steps to rectify it, but the stigma stays with the person. What our government is doing through the SDF, we’re giving a hand up to those people and making sure they have a second career, a second chance to prove themselves. And we have seen the results of this: Prisha, for example, from Etobicoke, who is actually working into a skilled trade and building an amazing career. That’s something we want to continue.

Given the success, we are looking to invest $20 million in 2022-23 to enhance our SDF, with a focus on supporting priority infrastructure projects by hiring, training and retaining those workers, including apprenticeships. The intended outcome of this initiative is to ensure that there is sufficient skilled labour and training resources to meet labour demands from the significant capital investments made across the province.

In October 2022 alone, we have seen the results because of all the efforts we all put together: government and our wonderful workers and Ontarians. We have seen Ontario lead the country in job growth by creating over 42,000 new jobs. As the Minister of Finance said recently, we have also added, as I said earlier, over 11,700 health care workers to Ontario, including nurses and personal support workers to our health care system.

Madam Speaker, on top of our skills development program, we are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in innovative training programs to help people looking for work find good jobs close to home. For an example, our government’s Better Jobs Ontario program is making sure that it’s providing up to $28,000 available for short-duration training programs.

I’ll give you a small example. Before COVID hit, we had over 50 million visitors coming to the greater Toronto airport, and there were approximately between 250 and 300 taxi drivers supporting those visitors. But when the numbers had gone down to about 10 million, there was not a need for those taxi drivers—the people who always worked and made sure they helped those visitors so that they can reach their homes on time or can have a better experience in our province. But because of COVID, they lost their jobs, and that’s where the Better Jobs Ontario program comes in handy.

If you are in a profession where you can’t find a job or you believe the number of jobs has gone down, you can always take a short-duration course and pick up a career in in-demand jobs. Through this, we were able to help many of the residents in Ontario. We’re also making employment services easier and more convenient than ever, so that we are able to help thousands of people get what they need to get into the workforce.

No matter how or where you work, we believe more workers in Ontario should have access to benefits such as health and dental plans, and that is why we are working towards a portable benefit program so that we can help those vulnerable employees, workers, right here in Ontario.

To do this, we actually have a portable benefits advisory panel, which was established in March 2022, to advise the government on the viability, design and implementation of a portable benefits program for Ontario. The panel began consulting with the public and key stakeholders in September 2022, and will provide their final report and recommendations to the government in 2023. This is another way we are helping our workers in the province of Ontario.

Madam Speaker, we are making real progress and changing and supporting the lives of millions of Ontarians, including Ontario workers who stood up during the pandemic and supported our Ontario. We just want to take a moment and thank each and every worker for all your hard work and making sure that we can stand back on our feet, stronger than before COVID. So thank you for that, and as we continue in our mission, we will continue to work hard to make sure that families are at the centre of our focus.

Stronger families create stronger communities, and that’s why our government is making critical investments to help families and build up Ontario for the future. I commend the minister and his PAs for doing an incredible job and making sure that Ontario is the best place in the world to live, work and raise a family.

Madam Speaker, I just want to take a moment and want to commend the whole caucus for coming together, working together so that we can achieve this great success in our province. I look forward to all of you—let’s continue to work together and support our great province. Let’s support this bill.

It’s always a pleasure to listen to my friend from Mississauga–Malton hold forth in this place.

I have a question around recipients of the Ontario Disability Support Program and what the member talked about in this financial update. He noted that it is a good thing that the clawback on income has been expanded to $1,000 a month. But as the member knows well, because we’ve had discussions on this in this place, a requirement to qualify for the Ontario Disability Support Program is a medical note, a certificate, demonstrating that you cannot attain significant attachment to paid employment. You can’t qualify for ODSP unless you have a medical professional—a doctor, generally—proving that to qualify for ODSP. So I’m going to ask the member, what is the government’s vision for people with disabilities who do not have the capacity to get that $1,000 of paid employment income? The income levels that we have on ODSP, the $1,200 a month—are those adequate to live in Mississauga–Malton, Ottawa Centre, or anywhere else in the province of Ontario? I would submit, no. So what is the government’s plan to help people with disabilities who can’t make that $1,000 a month? Moreover, what could the government do to acknowledge the volunteer labour that so many of those persons with disabilities do and the value that brings to our province?

We’ll go to questions.

Madam Speaker, through you to the member for Mississauga–Malton: You often talk about your journey here, from India to Canada, and how proud you are that you were able to build a career, raise a son and a daughter, and take advantage of the opportunities that Ontario provides.

I would like you to share with the Legislature this afternoon what our government is doing, the measures we are putting in place, so that other new Canadians can also pursue a career and perhaps even realize the dream of home ownership.

I noticed that the Ontario government has made a decision to change the definition of affordable housing. Currently, the city of Toronto has a definition of affordable housing that would put a one-bedroom unit at a purchase price of $190,000; that means you could buy that if you were earning about $58,000 a year. Well, now the Ontario government is looking at changing the definition of affordability so that a one-bedroom unit would cost $444,000, requiring a household annual income of at least $130,000, which is really shocking.

What is this government’s plan to build more affordable housing in Ontario?

I want to acknowledge and thank the member opposite for that question. I was listening intently. I thought he was probably going to take the whole 10 minutes asking the question.

Our government wants to make sure that every worker who is able to work, can work, wants to work is on the path of the dignity of a job.

Talking about the re-entry jobs and the ODSP that the member opposite is talking about—we have seen, in 2019, 88% of all the injured workers were able to return to work and earn 100% of their pre-injury wages within one year.

We have increased the ODSP rate by 5%. Through this statement, we’re actually moving further, by increasing the Ontario disability support monthly earnings exemption from $200 to $1,000 per month. This change would encourage as many as 25,000 more individuals to participate in the workforce.

Madam Speaker, our government supports our injured workers and anyone and everyone who is on ODSP. We will continue to focus on creating hope and opportunity for all Ontarians.

I remember when I landed here on January 15, 2000—and even before I landed, my wife came home from the office and said, “We’re going to Canada.” I said, “What’s that?” She said, “That’s the land of opportunities.”

Proudly, 17 years after landing in Canada, I want to say thank you to my extended family and God for giving me an opportunity to become a candidate in 2018. Eighteen years after landing, I became a member of provincial Parliament.

What I’m trying to say to every newcomer is, if you can dream it, with your hard work, with the support of other Ontarians, you can achieve it here. That’s what we do here.

I still remember when I came here, when we bought our first house in Brampton—70 Native Landing in Brampton—we used to go and see it almost every second week to see how far it had gone up.

This government is committed—as we heard this morning from the Associate Minister of Housing, we will continue to support Ontarians, and we will make sure that we will build 1.5 million homes in the next 10 years.

Again, going back to, if you can dream it, through hard work here in Ontario you can achieve it—that is what our government is doing.

When I came here, the first thing I did was, I went back to Sheridan College. I understand the value of education. Back then, we used to start in the morning—by the evening, we would have two or three jobs. Back then, also, in 2000-01, there was a huge labour shortage, something which we are facing now.

Thankfully, we have a government that believes in and understands giving a hand to Ontarians through the SDF program. We are helping Ontarians through Better Jobs Ontario. We are making sure anyone who is looking for a job, who wants to do a job, who is able to do a job—through the small credentials, we will support them.

Along with that, we know that our youth needs a hand, needs help. We know there are going to be over 100,000 jobs in construction alone coming up. That’s why we are investing in the Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program. I encourage everyone: Reach out to your guidance counsellor. We are actually doing career fairs across the province. We want to tell these youth: Come join the skilled trades and enjoy the benefits.

Regarding the question the member asked, I have a very simple answer: Read this wonderful document you have. There is a lot for our province of Ontario. Together, all of us—

I have a very simple question for the member: Why does your government’s fiscal update not include any new money in the health care budget?

My question to the member is about keeping costs down.

The people of Ontario work hard, and our government understands that taxpayers are under pressure.

Could the member tell us some more about why the proposed plan in this legislation keep costs down while investing in the priorities that matter to the people of Ontario—and also my riding, my constituents of Markham–Unionville—so critical during this time of economic uncertainty?

Speaker, there are so many aspects to Ontario’s Plan to Build. I want to therefore ask the member from Mississauga–Malton if he could explain how this proposed legislation will support the government’s efforts to address the labour shortage in Ontario, particularly the shortage in skilled trades, and in reference to the Skills Development Fund.

Next question.

We are going to continue with further debate.

I am pleased to rise today, on behalf of the people I represent in London West, to participate in debate on Bill 36.

I certainly have some thoughts about the government’s progress on their so-called plan to build, but first I did want to observe that I think what we see in this document and this bill that is before us today is another fundamental misread of what the province of Ontario is looking for from this government and where Ontarians are at in their daily lives. We saw that with the government’s decision to ram though Bill 28, the bill that used the “notwithstanding” clause to remove workers’ rights to bargaining and impose a collective agreement on the lowest-paid education workers in our system. It created chaos in our schools, and it completely ignored some of the issues that are priorities for the people in the province. That’s what we see today in this bill. That’s what we saw yesterday when the minister stood up to present the fall economic statement.

The priorities that the people in this province have identified right now, the pressures, the crisis that they are living through, are in our health care system, and one would have expected that the government would have recognized this as they were preparing the fall economic statement, and that they would have put in additional funding to mount an aggressive campaign to recruit and retain and return nurses. We have seen nurses burnt out, exhausted, leaving the profession in numbers that we’ve never experienced before in Ontario. They’re switching careers. They are retiring early. They are going to other jurisdictions where they’re better compensated. Instead of seeing this government taking the aggressive actions that would be necessary to shore up that health care workforce, to prevent the overwhelming of our pediatric ICUs, of our pediatric ERs, and prevent the closure of emergency rooms in small hospitals across the province—this government decided, “No, that’s not a priority for us right now. We’re not going to put in any additional funding to deal with that crisis.”

We saw nothing in this fall economic statement or this legislation to repeal Bill 124. That has been consistently raised by nurses and health care workers and public sector workers as one of the biggest impediments to their ability to sustain the kind of workforce that we need to deliver those vital public services, those vital health care services to Ontarians. We saw nothing in here to indicate that the government has any kind of a plan to put forward a comprehensive and effective public education campaign to get people to mask, to get people to recognize the link between wearing masks in public places and protecting kids from having to go on ventilators in pediatric ICU rooms. We saw nothing in this legislation or this statement that would indicate that the government understands the severity of the crisis and how much Ontarians care about the government dealing with the crisis, taking the actions that are necessary.

In my community, in London, the Children’s Hospital reported double the typical volume of pediatric patients ending up in the pediatric emergency room. Typically, they would have about 100 visits a day. Now they have 200 and more visits a day. These are critically ill children who are, with their parents, waiting hours on end to get access to the care that they need and they deserve.

I’m sure that other MPPs in this room read the comments from the CEO of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children on the weekend. He was talking not just about cancelling surgeries—because that had happened previously—but he was talking about the overwhelming of the pediatric ICU beds at SickKids hospital. He said that the cancellation of surgeries was “heartbreaking for the families” and “morally distressing” for medical professionals, who are not able to do the surgeries that they know these kids need in a timely manner. He said, “There is no child who ever has an elective surgery. There is just a question of what is life-saving, what is very urgent and what is less urgent.”

So I would say that it’s shameful that this government made the decision not to rise to the occasion and do an all-hands-on-deck response to the crisis that we are seeing in our pediatric ICUs.

Also, in London, we are continuing to see the problems with off-load delays of ambulances, of code zeros being declared when there are no ambulances on the road to be dispatched to help people who need emergency assistance.

We had a motion that we debated in this House just a couple of weeks ago—and it was actually passed unanimously, if I recall, by members on all sides—calling on the government to develop a plan to deal with the code zeros, to put an end to code zeros, because people in this province deserve to know that if they are in a crisis and need an ambulance to come, that ambulance would be available.

In London, we are seeing regular lineups of 16 or more ambulances waiting in the bays to off-load patients. That means that those ambulances can’t be on the road responding to emergencies, and the paramedics in those ambulances can’t be providing the support that they need.

Again, just as with the nursing workforce, we are hearing about paramedics who are experiencing burnout at levels never before witnessed. They are also making decisions to leave that profession.

We also know that in London and across the province there is a dire shortage of family physicians. There’s nothing in this economic statement to deal with that shortage of family physicians. I hear regularly from people in London that they can’t get access to a family doctor. That just puts more and more pressure on our emergency departments at our hospitals across the province.

We have a crisis in children’s mental health. I am hearing awful stories of the kinds of experiences that parents are having to go through with their children who are in dire mental health crises and absolutely cannot get the supports they need.

CSCN, the local agency that helps children who are having mental health issues, told at least two of the families who recently contacted my office that the needs of their children were too high for the programs that they had available. A response that we got from the ministry, when we contacted the ministry about one of these families, was that there is no provision in the existing model that facilitates a crisis response if or when one is indicated. We are reliant on community-based, ministry-funded services to address the needs of the community youth, to the extent that they are able. Well, they’re not able to address the needs of youth in the community, the needs of youth who are self-harming and are attempting suicide and all manner of experiencing mental health distress.

We also know, in my community in London, that there is a housing crisis. I want to point out, Speaker, that this document that we received yesterday has just three mentions of London, which is Ontario’s fifth-largest municipality, and one would think that, in a document of this size, London would be mentioned.

There was one mention of raising the speed limit on Highway 402 between London and Sarnia, and then there were two mentions of long-term-care homes in London that are getting upgraded beds. But interestingly, Speaker, as we consistently see from this government, the focus on beds comes without any kind of a plan to ensure that the staffing is there to care for those long-term-care home residents who are in those beds. There is nothing in the legislation, nothing in this document that suggests that the government has any kind of a plan to get to those four hours of hands-on care that long-term-care residents certainly deserve and have been waiting for, for far too long.

Nothing about the housing crisis in our city, and as my colleague, our finance critic, the member for Waterloo pointed out that, in fact, what the government does highlight in this document about housing is a downgrading to the targets they had previously committed to to reach the 150,000 new housing starts that are needed annually in order to get to that 1.5-million-homes target that we need to achieve in this province over the next decade. So the government has now reduced its projections for new housing starts and leaving it—you know, even after they announced this plan to carve out the greenbelt and they introduced Bill 23 to deregulate, to restrict the role of conservation authorities and housing development and to make it easier for for-profit private sector developers to build. But we know that the needs for deeply affordable housing, for non-market housing, are not going to be met by the private sector, and yet the government has not included the kind of investment that would be necessary to meet the needs of Ontarians in our community who are under-housed, who are living in substandard housing or who are homeless.

I just want to refer to the Vital Signs report for London that came out earlier this month. According to the city of London, there are more than 6,000 people currently on the wait-list for social housing, and as of September 1, 2022, 2,241 individuals in our community were experiencing homelessness.

London Cares is an agency of the city that provides wraparound supports through an outreach team for people who are experiencing homelessness, and they have reported a 68% increase in their outreach team’s interactions with homeless individuals in the last year.

We need supportive housing, Speaker. We need housing that that will address the mental health needs of people who are homeless, who are under-housed.

I just want to share a couple of shocking stories that were in the media just over the last week in London. Charles Pearce is living at Bruce Residence in London. He’s been living there for two years. He is on ODSP. Bruce Residence is a for-profit business. They announced a $200 rent increase for him, even as there is a rampant bedbug infestation and a rampant cockroach infestation at his building. He gets about $1,100 in ODSP. He’s being asked to pay $1,000 in rent for this facility that he is living in because there are no options. There are no options for people like Charles, who ends up having to stay in a horrifying place like that.

Another story just came out yesterday. Tom has both legs amputated. He has lost several of his fingers to frostbite. He was discharged from London Health Sciences Centre and has been lying at the corner outside the hospital for the last four days because the electronic wheelchair that he was discharged in—the battery died, and he has no way of getting somewhere to stay.

This is the kind of dire circumstances that people on ODSP are facing. The government’s plan to allow recipients to earn $1,000 before they start clawing back ODSP instead of $200 won’t do a thing to help Tom. Tom has difficulty with a lot of issues around daily living. He’s not able to go out into the workforce. He needs the doubling of social assistance rates that the NDP had called for, as does Charles, who is living in that bedbug-infested Bruce Residence.

Speaker, we also know that Londoners are experiencing food insecurity, again, at rates that we haven’t seen before. The London Food Bank said that the record for monthly visits was broken three times over a four-month period, and many of these people who are visiting food banks—one in three, in fact—are first-time users of the London Food Bank. Many are students. Many are seniors.

My colleague the member for Waterloo talked about the fact that in last year’s budget, the government underspent OSAP funding for students by $83 million. They withheld $83 million of financial aid to students that would have made a huge difference. But we also know that this government has decided that student loans are the way to go, instead of the grants that students in financial need should have access to, to attend post-secondary.

But when you have students who are facing big loan repayments and interest rates are rising to the extent that we’ve seen them, you’re going to see things like what we saw at Western University: Demand at food banks for Western University students doubled. Students are facing financial hardship, again, like they haven’t seen before. And more students are turning to the food bank on campus, to the food bank operated by London Food Bank, than they ever have before.

I also want to, in the last minute and 40 seconds I have, highlight that November is Woman Abuse Prevention Month. Today is Shine the Light on Woman Abuse. It’s a campaign that originated in London to raise awareness of gender-based violence. In June of this year, we had an inquest release 86 recommendations coming out of the Renfrew murders of three women by an intimate partner. Over the last year, there have been 43 femicides in this province, and yet the government has decided: no new investments in violence-against-women programs; no new investment in counselling and support for survivors of gender-based violence.

We know that those deaths, in all of those inquests that have been held into intimate-partner violence, were preventable if the proper supports had been put in place. It’s very disappointing that what we saw today—or yesterday, when the statement was read and the bill was tabled. We saw a bill that really fails to address the highest priorities and concerns of Ontarians. But frankly I’m not surprised, because that is what we have seen all along from this government.

Thank you. We’ll move to question and answer. The first question to the member for Scarborough–Rouge Park.

Report continues in volume B.