Mr. Speaker, I stand before you with a grim realization: Our children are being let down by this government.

It has been said that “the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” All of us bore witness to this government’s failure of our elders in long-term-care homes during the pandemic. Most recently, this government took aim at our lowest-paid education workers by trying to trample on their charter rights. And now it is our children who our government is failing, and they don’t have a voice to advocate for themselves.

We’re grappling with over-capacity pediatric ICUs, ERs and critical care that are overwhelmed, kids in adult ICUs, and surgeries being delayed. This summer, when this government was nowhere to be found, I called for the government to take measures to prepare for the upcoming respiratory season. And yet the fall vaccination campaign was non-existent and the plan to stay open has not eased the emergency care crisis in the slightest.

I would be remiss if I did not address the current state of the Ontario Autism Program. Under this government, the OAP’s wait-list for core services has more than doubled, skyrocketing from 28,000 in 2018 to 57,000 in 2022. That is enough children to fill the Rogers Centre and then some. This government needs to be transparent with families. How many children are registered? How many are wait-listed? And how many are receiving core services? I eagerly wait for those answers.

Was the word “autism” in—

No, but I would have asked about it if I’d had a chance.

The mental health piece would have also been a key part. I would have questioned the government on why, given what we know—the latest data—particularly on child mental health and how the pandemic and how isolation affected our youngest citizens, some additional funding would not be allocated to the mental health file.

I do want to thank the minister who’s responsible for mental health.

I know that the member for Toronto–St. Paul’s has also met with the minister to talk about eating disorders and all that that entails, which is very complex.

I recently met, on behalf of Kaitlyn Roth and her family, with the Associate Minister of Mental Health, and we talked openly and honestly about where the money is going and where the money is not going.

I want to advocate for those additional community-based teams in Waterloo region, because we are historically underfunded—nothing like what the member from Kiiwetinoong is facing, but significant nonetheless.

What I want to say about that is that the autism file, in and of itself, is pretty much a perfect example of a government that is not in touch with what’s really happening in Ontario. For some reason, autism rates in Waterloo region are very high, and the fact that we’re losing time, that urgency, that sense of a critical time for a child’s development—to miss that window, to have so many children waiting, and to definitely not see it reflected even as a priority in this piece of legislation is beyond disappointing.

The overall piece, though, that I think is the most shocking for most Ontarians is on the health care file—because you actually have to actively be trying not to pay attention to what’s happening in our hospitals. Maybe you don’t watch the news. Maybe you don’t read the newspaper. Maybe you don’t talk to your family and friends about what’s happening in our hospitals. When you compare the fall economic statement to the Financial Accountability Office’s economic and budget report from October 27, the government will be short approximately $6.2 billion in health, $1 billion in education, and $360 million in colleges and universities through 2024-25, and the health care spending and planned increases fall far short of what is needed to address this crisis.

I’ll just go back to the FAO discussion. The goal of having a Financial Accountability Officer is to help the government—but I guess, in some respects, the government would need to want to be helped or would need to be receptive to looking at some additional information that is not in their own bubble or in their own fairy tale.

The Ford government also stated in this document that they have added 11,700 health care workers since 2020, but we know that 47,000 new health care workers are needed to be hired per year for the next three years to maintain current service levels. And they are stubbornly—there are a few other words to use—attached to Bill 124. This is another example—you are going to lose this in court as well, I might add, because overriding collective bargaining rights is an enshrined right for workers. The impact of Bill 124 on the health care worker population cannot be denied.

Last night, I hosted a town hall in Waterloo on the privatization of health care. We watched a couple of movies around what has happened in Alberta and what has happened in Saskatchewan, and we learned a lot about the formula for increasing privatization; we instinctively know it. One of the classic measures that was embraced by Ralph Klein and then Jason Kenney and that other guy, Moe, is that you essentially starve the system so badly that you revert and you create this narrative that the only way to save health care is by providing private services and outsourcing and contracting out the work that health care workers do. The ground has been set for this exact thing, and doubled down on in the fall economic statement, the mini budget. Bill 124 is wage suppression legislation. It has a demoralizing, disrespectful impact on the people who are working in our health care system, all the way down from the PSWs, all the way up to the medical professionals and analysts and diagnostics. Nurses, in particular, are leaving this province for other jurisdictions where they will be treated with respect.

You cannot open a new hospital that you’re building or opening up a new bed that you have been talking about for some time without the human resources, without the personnel.

This has been a consistent theme by this government—they do not acknowledge the value and importance of the people who are delivering public services. They say they do, but then they introduce legislation like Bill 28, like Bill 124. The fact that you have not repealed this legislation yet is—aside from being stubborn—incredibly irresponsible. I know that you have nurses in your ridings. I know that you have people who have told you first-hand that they will be leaving the system because that 1% wage cap—when inflation is at 6.9% but was as high as 8% earlier this year—is essentially a cut. So you can’t call them heroes; you can’t say you value these people, who are, right now, down the street, at SickKids Hospital. We heard today from one of the doctors that they’re resuscitating three, four children every single day. We heard that from CHEO as well. Imagine the stress of that work, and then imagine having a government that says you’re only worth 1%. The disconnect there is so evident to us.

No Conservative MPP has ever given me a good reason or a good rationale as to why Bill 124 is needed.

I will point out that the evidence on paying people respectfully is very clear. In fact, David Card, a Canadian-American economist who won the 2021 Nobel Prize in economics in recognition of his achievements and contributions to the field of labour economics—he and his colleague Alan Krueger refuted the conventional notion in labour economics that increases in minimum wage led to lower rates of employment in low-paying industries. This has been part of the Conservative narrative for years. I can also say that it was part of the Liberal narrative for years.

You’re going to hear some of the members tout that they’re increasing the minimum wage. But I just want to go down memory lane for a little bit on the minimum wage, because when you look at how past governments have behaved and then you look at how this current government is behaving on the minimum wage, it tells a very different story than the sound bites that we hear.

In Ontario, the minimum wage has bounced between being frozen and corrected. From 1997 to 2003, the minimum wage was at $6.85. Up to 2010, it increased from $6.85 to $10.25. From 2010 to 2014, it was frozen at $10.25—four years, frozen; that was compliments of the Liberals. Then, from 2014 to 2017, it increased moderately, from $11 to $11.60; they really went wild for that three-year period. Premier Wynne announced overnight that it was going to go from $11.60 to $14 in 2018—and then this was followed by a $15 minimum wage, if re-elected, in 2019. Well, that did not happen, obviously.

One of the first things that the Ford government did when they got elected was, they cancelled the $15 increase—and the wage remained at $14 until 2020, when it jumped slightly to $14.25, and then $14.35 in 2021; and finally, $15 on January 1, 2022. So when they tell you how generous they’ve been, it warrants a little history lesson here. One of the first things that they did was cancel the $15 increase, in 2018. It’s true. Some of you weren’t here; some of us were, and it was painful to watch, for certain.

On the education front, I think the government has set up this very tension-filled, acrimonious relationship with the entire education sector. I don’t know if you saw some of the feedback following the repealing of Bill 28, but the players, the characters who are trying to negotiate a fair deal for the lowest-paid education workers in the education sector—I don’t know if you were out with folks the first Friday after we rose, when those CUPE workers walked out. I know that they visited some of the Conservative offices, and they came to my office as well. We called it a supportive rally, and it was really good to talk to some of the caretakers, some of the educational assistants, some of the ECEs. Most of them were women. Most of them had two or three jobs; they were paid that low. It was so good to see parents out there on that line supporting them. Once parents found out how little educational assistants are making in our system, they were shocked, because as you could imagine, these conversations don’t come up at a parent-teacher night. One EA told me that what she was making 12 years ago is less than what she’s making today due to inflation, so she has a second job. She was out there and really trying to—they didn’t even know what was going to happen. It was complete chaos. It completely destabilized this entire sector.

I think that the members who stood in their place on Bill 28 and supported it—I feel like those words are going to come back to haunt some of these members, because there had to be an admission at some point that—and the labour board was very set to rule on this—it was completely out of order for the government to use the “notwithstanding” clause during collective bargaining. It would have been good, when our member from Davenport asked the Premier if he would ever use that again—and of course, we got no answer from him. He said that he actually doesn’t regret it—creating all that chaos, all that pain, and yet he has no regrets. I don’t know what that says about the Premier. I just know that he’s really adamant about not wearing masks for some reason, even though he says that the medical officer of health is advising that everyone wear one in indoor settings. Our caucus has them. I have my mask. It’s not a big deal to wear a mask. It’s not a lot to ask, really, at the end of the day.

The education sector has responded to yesterday’s announcement, and I’m connecting this to the fall economic statement because it’s the same figure—$32.4 billion base, the same as the summer budget, so no recognition that there are increasing health care system needs and drivers within that system. This government and this minister seem very happy to dole out $200, at an overall budget cost of $389 million, but not invest that money into more educational assistants, into more child and youth workers in our system.

This is what we’re hearing—and this is from CTV Kitchener, just from yesterday. They said that the region of Waterloo public health officials are echoing the province’s messaging around masking, but some local teachers—the people who are actually in the classrooms, in the schools—say the directive doesn’t go far enough. They said, “The number of absences that we’re seeing right now is astronomical, and we don’t have enough teachers to cover those absences.” So the failure to fill in our systems right now is outrageous.

If you go back to what the Financial Accountability Officer said—we cannot have a major economic shock in Ontario; otherwise, that razor’s edge that we are on will in fact push us over into a recession. Knowing this and knowing all the lessons that we learned during the pandemic, or that we thought we learned, around the importance of paid sick days so that people don’t have to go to work sick, around the importance of ventilation, around the importance of public health hygiene measures—all of this knowledge you have at your fingertips, because we lived it.

And yet, here we have a piece of legislation that adds not one new penny to health care. The entire health care sector was shocked at this, I have to say. They’re in crisis right now, so they can’t come to the front lawn of Queen’s Park and rally and kick the building, as many protesters have done in the past. They can’t do that, because they are done, and they can’t afford the time or the energy to fight a government that’s so adamant about holding them down to that 1% and around not consulting them.

I go back to process on this. If the fall economic statement had a fair and open process around consultation, around listening to the people who were elected to serve—if that had happened, then this budget would have additional resources for nurses and for doctors and for hospitals, and you could envelope it for sure. It would have money for mental health, and it would have money for autism, because it makes sense to invest in the people you serve. It makes sense to adopt an early intervention process. These are the basic principles of the social determinants of health. And we called on the government to double the ODSP rates.

I did say in my original comments that there was something good in this fall economic statement. I do try to find some of the goodness in some of the initiatives. The one encouraging part was the improvement to ODSP; notably, tying future increases to inflation. So you understand that inflationary costs matter. Why won’t you acknowledge that with the education workers, with the educational assistants, with the ECEs? You’ve said that you’re going to tie future increases to inflation and you’re going to increase allowable earnings from $200 a month to $1,000 a month. However, it does fall very short of doubling ODSP rates and Ontario Works. To their credit, yesterday the media asked the finance minister—they said, “Literally, these are the most vulnerable people in Ontario.”

The money is there. The government says they’re going to run a $12.9-billion deficit, but the Financial Accountability Officer says that they’re running a $100-million surplus at the end of this year, and that’s without the tax revenue changes from the first-quarter finances, which is $5.8 billion. So money is going to come into this place.

You’ve made a decision to put that money down towards debt and not to the pressing issues that are facing our most vulnerable.

The Minister of Finance can’t answer that question—I will answer that question. I could not live on the rates of ODSP that are offered in this province—not when the average rent in Waterloo is $2,200, which is also not rent-controlled.

The media pushed back and said, “How come you’re not addressing the needs of Ontarians in the fall economic statement? Why is this mini budget leaving some of the most vulnerable people out—like not even part of the equation?”

Really, you’ve just said that for those people who are on ODSP who can work—they can actually keep more money.

And it did, actually, especially last year, when the government had given $210 million to businesses that weren’t even in Ontario—do you remember that? Speaker, $210 million is still a lot of money—it doesn’t have a B at the end of it, but it’s still a lot of money. I asked the finance minister at the time: “How come you can go after someone on ODSP, who maybe generates $225—you claw back that $25, but you’re not willing to go after $210 million that went to people who didn’t deserve that small business grant?” The answer was kind of disappointing and shocking. They said, “Well, businesses have been through enough.”

Do you know who goes through a lot every single day? An individual who lives on ODSP in Ontario. Life is not easy for these folks.

I have one person in my riding who has really—this may not change her mind, but she has said that she is seriously considering medically assisted dying because the quality of her life is that poor. You would have heard this before. There are many people in this province whose day-to-day existence is hellish.

The government has the money to acknowledge that those on ODSP are deserving of additional funding. You’re actually acknowledging it, in many respects, because you’re saying, “Well, you can work more.” But there are so many people on ODSP who can’t work; it’s not an option, and also because discrimination out there is quite real against folks who are on ODSP.

I will say something else that’s good: The government is addressing the Ontario Guaranteed Annual Income System for one year. This is the GAINS program, and they’re providing financial support for low-income seniors, who would see their rates increase to $160 per month or $332 per couple. Listen, I’ve already said and I’m on the record as saying that seniors using food banks is up to a shocking percentage in Ontario right now. I do hear from them, because seniors have certain needs, they like to cook certain meals, and you can’t find those meals at the food bank. And they’re mostly women—I do want to say that as well: mostly women.

Finally, the projections for the education spending remain the same from the 2022 budget, despite what you’ve heard. However, the spending gap between the FAO’s projection and the province’s outlook is $400 million in 2022-23, and this increases to $2 billion. I go back to the original funding formula for education in Ontario, which has truly never been, I guess, modernized. It’s never acknowledged. Some of the programs that this ministry has thrown out at the education system, like destreaming—destreaming, in theory, is a great idea, but you have to resource it. You have to fund it so that everybody can be successful.

I don’t know if the Minister of Education spends a lot of time in the public education system, but in my husband’s class, there are 38 students, and the learning levels and the learning gaps that have happened over the last two and a half or three years are profound. There are sometimes three, four levels in one classroom. So you can say that everybody’s equal, but you actually have to say, “But we’re going to give you an equal chance of being successful.”