I’m hearing from many constituents in my riding of Don Valley North who are extremely concerned about a dramatic increase in instances of vehicle theft and carjackings in our area. According to an article in the Toronto Star, 70 vehicles were stolen in North York during the week of October 13 to 19. The previous week, the number of stolen cars in the area was 54. There is one vehicle stolen every six minutes in Canada, and the proceeds from stolen vehicles are often used to fund global organized crime and terrorism.

This issue is being addressed by the police in our community and through public safety initiatives in our province. But without proper registration and procedures to hold accountable those who alter vehicle identification and to prevent stolen vehicles from exiting Canada, we are far from solving this serious public safety issue.

I hereby call out to the federal government to tighten border controls and stop stolen vehicles from being exported overseas.

Look, the NDP has been pushing for action to address rising cost of living for months, if not years. This is one of the things that we have called for.

This government, however, seems to forget that there are people who don’t drive cars. There are people like Charles who I mentioned, Tom who I mentioned, who need some relief from cost of living through increased ODSP.

There are students who don’t drive cars who need some relief from rising food prices through breaks on financial aid. They need more OSAP. They need grants instead of loans.

Even the people who do drive cars—one of the biggest things that I hear consistently is about the need to rein in auto insurance companies who are jacking up premiums for no reason whatsoever.

These are the kinds of measures that we would like to see in this—

Yes, certainly. Bill 124—when that was introduced by this government back in 2019, what it said to all public sector workers is, “We don’t value your work. We think that your work is worth a 1% wage increase regardless of what the cost of living is, regardless of inflation, regardless of the value of the services that you provide to our community.”

And Bill 124 has become a symbol—for public sector workers, for health care workers—of just how much this government disrespects and devalues the work that they are doing, and the constant call for the repeal—not just from us; from health care workers across the province—are to tell this government, “Take that bill back. Tell us that you value our work, and maybe we will stay.”

We have seen and we have all heard, I think, from the violence-against-women agencies in our communities that they are seeing a huge spike in calls, they are seeing a huge spike in service levels and don’t have the capacity to respond effectively.