I wasn’t planning on speaking this morning, but the opportunity has arisen, and this is actually the first time that I’ve been able to speak since being re-elected by the good people of Timiskaming–Cochrane. I, as everyone else here, would like to thank the people who worked to help me get elected, but I would also like to thank the candidates who ran against me, and the people who helped them, because democracy doesn’t just take people from one side to work; it takes people from all sides to work. In Timiskaming–Cochrane, there was a record number of candidates this year. We had eight candidates, and I’m going to say some people were confused because we’re used to, you know, three, four—but more choice.

I have to go on the record, Speaker: I was vehemently opposed to some of their positions, extremely vehemently opposed to some of their positions, but not to them as people. And I would like to be on the record as saying, in Timiskaming–Cochrane, we have a long tradition of being able to be vehemently opposed to one thing and being able to work together on another thing. By and large, we maintained that tradition, and I think it’s very important that we all do that.

I’ve said to a few people when I came back that we all have—and, to the new members, from all sides, you will have days in this place you wonder why you won and why you ran. I have also had those days, and I’ve had days when I’ve said, “Why would I run again?” I never knew how much I relished the opportunity to be able to speak on behalf of the people of Timiskaming–Cochrane until this election, when I almost didn’t get that opportunity again. It didn’t come that close, but it came much closer than we were used to, and that’s not a bad thing—it isn’t—because it’s really important that you listen to people’s voices, that you listen to people who you are philosophically opposed to, and you explain to them why—what your position is, what their position is. I would like to make sure that the people of Timiskaming–Cochrane know that, regardless of their individual positions and individual issues, my office door is open. It always will be open, and we will work very hard for them on the issues that we can agree on. That’s why I’m here, it’s always been why I’m here.

There are many days—I had no childhood dream of ever becoming a public official. All I ever wanted to do was be a farmer, and that’s the first thing I thought of on election night: “I might have to go back to that quicker than I thought.” So I thought, “It’s lucky I kept the farm.” I actually kept a large part of our farm for my kids, in case they ever wanted to come back. It’s near and dear to our family, but on election night, I was thinking I might have to come back. But having said that, on that night, when the results were over, I’ve never felt so honoured to be able to have this opportunity. I think we all feel this: How many people have the opportunity to speak in this House and, in large part, say what they believe in a safe space?

We have just heard an inaugural speech from the member from Toronto Centre, and it was incredibly moving. I haven’t faced the issues that the member has faced, but in some ways, my family could relate. I was born in Canada, but I didn’t learn English until grade 1, because we always spoke the language of our family. I can remember my mom making soap. There’s a reason I hate liver: We were always on a farm. We raised cattle. We sold all the good meat, and we bought liver. My mom bought pig heads, and she made headcheese. I’m not a big fan of headcheese, either. I remember those things.

Immigrants, no matter where they come from, have a drive. The drive isn’t just colour or creed; it’s family. It’s pride in where you came from but also pride in where you’re going to. And except for the First Nations, we’re all immigrants. It’s just the degree of how long ago our families came. My kids won’t remember the liver and the headcheese; I do. We all work very hard so our kids don’t have to remember the bad things. Some people might love liver; I don’t. We all work very hard so our kids don’t have to face the same issues that we did. It’s a balancing act, because we also want our kids or our friends to keep the good things from our histories, because that’s what also makes Ontario and Canada very strong.

Speaker, you come from a much different background than I come from. The member who just spoke comes from a much different background than either of us come from. Yet the fact that we’re all here and we can all express, I would hope, in this place, without fear and without fear of retribution is incredible. The reason that we’re all here is to be able to do that so that others who don’t have the ability to speak without retribution can see themselves in us and so that they can approach us and tell us what their issues are so that we can help them overcome those issues. That’s one of the reasons we’re all here.

And the member from Sault Ste. Marie, I appreciate his comments too, because in every one of our lives, I am sure, there is a moment that you go, “Whoa, that’s not cool, and I don’t want that to happen to anyone else.” We have all had that, and so have I.

But actually, what we’re here to talk about is the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act. I have listened to most of the debate on this bill, and the government is focusing on an issue, housing, but it isn’t actually addressed in the bill. So if the answer to housing is changing the power of two mayors in Canada, it’s pretty simplistic.

I was a councillor in a very small township for a long time, and we had incredible frustrations with the length of time for planning. Some of the planning issues—there are just not enough planners. Changing the powers of two mayors isn’t going to change that.

One of the issues we heard at the AMO conference is that building permits are given and developers sit on them—they sit on them. Maybe if we put an expiration date on building permits—and I’m not saying it’s just that; this is just one issue—so that if you, the developer, get a building permit, you can’t just sit on it until the price goes up high enough so you can make a bit more money. And that’s not evil; that’s private business. I’ve been in private business my whole life, but you don’t need to change the power of two mayors to do that. There’s all kinds of things you can do.

I listened very intently to the member from Peterborough. He’s a great speaker. We were elected—I think you were elected after I was. But anyway, great speaker. I actually agree with a few things with the member from Peterborough—not a lot, but a few. We get along. But he spoke very eloquently about how this was going to change, and how the schedules were going to change. There’s absolutely none of that in this bill—nothing. Nothing. This bill is about changing the power structure of the mayors for two cities.

One thing he did say which was very interesting, I thought, was that the purpose of this bill was so the municipalities would align more with the will or the wishes of the province of Ontario. That’s really what this bill is about.

Interjection: Priorities.

I’d like to remind the member to make his comments through the Chair.

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

Members’ statements?

Priorities—that’s what this bill is about. But that’s not necessarily housing, either. That’s not necessarily housing, because the bill does not focus on housing. The speeches do, no doubt—absolutely no doubt. Every speech, the focus is on housing. But the bill, except for the “building homes” in the short title, those two words, doesn’t focus on housing at all.

And something for members who haven’t been here very long: What you have to look at in legislation—look at the legislation itself, not just the talking points that your party gives you. Look at what could happen to that legislation over the years, because we’re making legislation not for the next two weeks. What your government is doing isn’t just for the next four years. That legislation also impacts—

Interjections.

But what you always have to look at with legislation is look at the legislation, not at the talking points. And the legislation itself—very well, I am not disparaging the government. I’m saying that the focus might be housing. I have no way of knowing that. But the speeches do not equal what the bill says, and that’s the biggest problem with this. Changing the mayoral—

Being my first time rising in this House, I would like to congratulate all members on their election to this House. I would also like to thank my constituents for their support and for electing me as their MPP for the great riding of Brampton East.

Speaker, just a few short weeks ago, Jessy Sahota and Neil Nijjer represented Canada at the World Police and Fire Games for heavyweight wrestling hosted in the Netherlands. Jessy Sahota returned home with first-place gold, and Brampton East’s very own Neil Nijjer returned home with silver. I would like to congratulate these two individuals for making our province and country extremely proud and for becoming exemplary role models for our youth to come.

I would also like to add that this past weekend has been a very eventful week for the residents of Brampton, with various sports and cultural events taking place across the city. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the United Brothers Field Hockey Academy for the success of the Toronto field hockey cup and commend them on their continued efforts on promoting the game of field hockey throughout the region.

Finally, Speaker, I would also like to extend my best wishes to the Pakistani and Indian community and all those celebrating on an extremely happy 75th Independence Day.

Yesterday was my first stop on our ice cream tour across Toronto–St. Paul’s. We hung out in one of my favourite neighbourhoods, the Winona and Vaughan neighbourhood. We went to Cy Townsend Park. Today, we’re going to be at Marian Engel Park, in our Melita Avenue neighbourhood.

It was all fun with the kids. The kids—of course you’ve got to love the innocence of children; they were not bothered. But I tell you, the adults at the park hanging out with me, the parents, the post-secondary age young adults, their concern was all about affordability. I spoke to a 23-year-old university student literally with tears in her eyes. She feels that there is no moral value, no character left in the province, in this House, because she feels that the government is not listening to her—and many people’s—concerns around affordable housing. She, like many of the parents, simply wants to be able to make ends meet, wants to be able to have a better future and wants to be able to live in St. Paul’s and stay a while.

What’s happening now is we’re being besieged by demovictions, by renovictions, by skyrocketing rent increases that folks just simply cannot afford. Even No Frills, on Alberta, where I go grocery shopping as well, too, is becoming more expensive for too many of us. So we really want the government to hear from St. Paul’s.

Affordability is a crisis, and you’ve got to—

The government is bringing high-speed Internet access to hundreds of homes and businesses in the town of Whitby, marking another milestone to help connect every corner of the province by the end of 2025. The province has signed agreements with eight Internet service providers to bring access to as many as 339 municipalities across the province. Now, these service providers are part of Ontario’s historic investment of nearly $4 billion to bring access to reliable high-speed Internet across the province.

What’s clear is that the government has a plan to build Ontario’s future with shovels in the ground for highways, hospitals, housing and high-speed Internet infrastructure. Without a doubt, Speaker, Ontario’s high-speed Internet initiatives will help ensure that every home and business in every community can participate in today’s economy.

I had the pleasure of meeting the hard-working staff and board members at Street Haven at their Roxborough site this summer. Street Haven is one of Canada’s oldest women’s shelters. The shelter provides temporary housing, food and treatment for mental health and addiction to about 1,500 women a year.

These are high-risk people, people who are homeless, people who’ve just been released from prison or hospital, people who are deeply traumatized. They need help. And it’s the staff at Street Haven that step up to help them each and every day.

But here’s the problem: Street Haven also needs our help, because they’re seeing a big increase in the need for their services. And there has been a big rise in homelessness, in addiction and in people facing very complex issues and very tough life circumstances.

Yet government funding for Street Haven’s work is being cut by this government. Funding to help people manage their addictions is being cut, and funding to manage the home and provide housing to people in need is also being cut. Street Haven is operating at a deficit. Their hard-working staff—when I met them—are exhausted and underpaid, and the need just keeps growing.

I am asking this government—the Minister of Health, the Solicitor General and the Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions—to meet with Street Haven and understand what they do, and commit to providing support to them and other vitally important supportive housing services and treatment programs so Ontarians can get the help they need.

As a Canadian, I’m proud to call this country home, and our universal health care system is one of the main reasons. Because of great Canadians like Tommy Douglas, residents use their OHIP card for health care—not their credit card.

But this government seems determined to destroy that system by underfunding it. Ignore and underfund our health care system, watch it buckle under the pressure of COVID, and then say the only solution is to find innovative approaches to fix the mess they created.

Unfortunately, those innovative approaches are really just new ways to give health care services to private corporations, whose main focus is to make more and more profit. But there are more problems with this approach. It’s been proven time and time again that it costs us more.

The Toronto Star reported yesterday that temp nursing agencies are skyrocketing health care costs. In fact, they’re paying as much as $110 an hour to temp agencies. Front-line health care workers like our great nurses at ONA have said this is already a form of privatization. Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital has spent $8.2 million this year on temp agencies.

We literally can’t afford to continue down this road. Not only will the quality of our health care suffer; costs will become unsustainable. We must stop all forms of privatization, invest in our public system, repeal Bill 124 and start reminding the world why it’s so great to be a Canadian: It’s our publicly funded health care.

The member for Haldimand–Norfolk.

Thank you, Speaker. I want to first congratulate you on being elected to the Speaker’s chair. Given your track record, I know we are in very good hands.

On a sombre note, I’d like to express my deepest sympathies to the family of former MPP Bill Murdoch, a member I have fond memories of from my early days as a staffer here at Queen’s Park.

Speaker, each year, 20,000 seasonal agricultural workers arrive in Ontario to work on farms and in greenhouses. Roughly 5,000 come to Haldimand–Norfolk, where they play a vital role in ensuring fresh, safe food makes it to our tables. These workers, mainly from Mexico and the Caribbean, leave their families behind to plant, cultivate, harvest and pack. The money is lucrative, and they are very quick to admit they are well-respected on the farm and across the community.

This past weekend, migrant workers gathered at the Simcoe soccer pitch for the annual Farms of Norfolk Football Association Tournament, hosted by the Norfolk Seasonal Agricultural Worker Community Committee in conjunction with the local legal clinic. The tournament developed after workers expressed they wanted additional community engagement. This year, nine teams competed, and it was serious business with a tremendous display of athleticism. These men and women are in great shape, considering their days are physical. Many farms in my neck of the woods are not complete unless they have a practice field, and even after a long day’s work, it’s common to drive by a farm and see a practice or a scrimmage breaking out.

Sunday morning, farm families were on the sidelines cheering on their team. It was just one of those events that left you feeling good. I invite you all to next year’s tournament to witness this significant event and to meet the workers who make our agricultural industry here in Ontario viable.

It’s a privilege to have the opportunity to rise in this Legislature as the re-elected MPP for Etobicoke–Lakeshore. I want to extend a big thank you to the people in Etobicoke–Lakeshore for your trust in me, and the team of countless volunteers for your hard work and dedication. I would not be here without you. I also want to extend a thank you to my constituency staff for your years of service for the people of south Etobicoke, because we all know we can’t do these jobs alone.

Over the past four years, we have accomplished so much for the people of Etobicoke–Lakeshore: securing over $1 billion for the redevelopment of the Queensway Health Centre, adding over 150 new beds, and another $1 billion for St. Joseph’s Health Centre, adding over 100 new beds; securing over $100 million to refurbish and build new schools, like St. Elizabeth, St. Leo’s, Bishop Allen and St. Marguerite d’Youville, and those who drive up Islington can see the shovels in the ground for the new Holy Angels school.

We announced a new long-term-care home that will provide 256 new beds; new transit projects, such as the Kipling Transit Hub, the Mimico GO station, and for the growing population of Humber Bay Shores, finally the long-awaited Park Lawn GO.

Over the summer, I have been busy attending many events in person and I see the Etobicoke spirit everywhere I go. It was great to attend the grilled cheese festival hosted by the Lakeshore BIA, and I’m pleased to announce that our government is investing $60,000 through the Ontario Reconnect Festival and Event Program so we can look forward to a bigger challenge next year.

I look forward to a productive term and will continue to get it done for the people of Etobicoke–Lakeshore.

I rise today to recognize a significant milestone for the town of Tillsonburg in my riding of Oxford. Many of you may have heard of Tillsonburg in the famous song by Stompin’ Tom, but today is about the 150th anniversary of the incorporation of the town. It was the residents who pushed for the incorporation of their community. There was a population of about a thousand at the time, and several businesses were established. Tillsonburg was booming.

Oxford South’s MPP, Adam Oliver, was the area’s representative here in the Legislature on March 2, 1872, when the Lieutenant Governor gave royal assent to his bill to incorporate the Town of Tillsonburg.

Edwin Tillson was elected as the town’s first mayor. On March 22, council held its first meeting. One hundred fifty years later to the day, on March 2, the town’s current mayor, Stephen Molnar, and town council hosted a cake-cutting to mark the anniversary. Though it wasn’t an official council meeting, it was the official start of the celebrations. Events wrapped up on July 1 with a community birthday party.

Tillsonburg has a rich history and is still a booming town in south Oxford. With all it has to offer, it’s no wonder the town has been listed as one of the top 100 places to visit in Canada.

I am proud to recognize this historic moment in my riding, and I wish all those in Tillsonburg a very happy birthday.

I would like to welcome Brandon Machado, who is sitting in the members’ gallery today. Brandon is a member of the Ontario NDP Persons Living with Disabilities Committee and a resident of the great riding of York South–Weston. Welcome, Brandon.

I’d like to welcome members from Mississauga–Malton: Numiara Naseer, Shehryaar Naseer, Shanzay Naseer, Mujtaba Naseer, Murtaza Naseer, Shahid Mughal, Nurguss Mughal, Iqra Mughal, Humzah Mughal, Ahmed Mughal, Faizan Mughal, Ejaz Ahmed, Nafisa Farzana, Aman Ahmed, Zainab Ahmed and Mahdiya Ahmed.

I want to say thank you to the parents for bringing their children to Queen’s Park as they’re having their summer vacation.

I want to thank the opposition for the question. The facts are, with recruiting and retaining, we added 14,500 new nurses. That’s on top of the 10,500 health care workers, which included nurses and PSWs.

We invested over $40 billion in 52 projects that were neglected under your government. Under their government, propped up by the Liberals and NDP, they fired 1,600 nurses.

I’ll tell you, Mr. Speaker, the opposition voted against historic funding, which went from $61 billion when we came into office in 2018 up to over $75 billion. That’s an over $14-billion increase. They voted no, against it, for the historic funding. They voted no, against the people of Ontario. They voted no, against the health care system. That’s their solution.

And by the way, the backlogged surgeries? We put $300 million into backlogged surgeries to make sure we get caught up, and we’re doing exactly that.

We’re building a new medical school that’s going to create more doctors in the system—as we did last year: Over 720 new doctors are coming into the system, Mr. Speaker. We are investing in health care like no other government in the history of this country.

But the opposition? Their answer is the status quo, the status quo that destroyed this health care system under 15 years of their rule, the NDP and the Liberals, that crumbled the health care system. We’re fixing the health care system. We’re putting in historic funding. We’re making sure that we put through processes that are going to make sure that people aren’t in emergency rooms for hours on top of hours. We’re fixing the health care system, the same system that they destroyed for 15 years, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we added 3,500 beds, and with a historic $40-billion investment, with 52 regions around Ontario that are either getting a new hospital or a new addition, we’re adding another 3,000 beds.

We’re working with the College of Nurses, working with the College of Physicians and Surgeons as well to make sure we speed up the process. As we saw, over 720 internationally trained nurses are now coming into the system. We need a lot more. We’re going to continue asking the College of Nurses to speed up the process to bring all these qualified nurses right here to Ontario.

Mr. Speaker, we are fixing a broken system we inherited and will continue to have a thriving system moving forward.

The member for Brampton North here—first day.

It is an honour to rise in this House on behalf of my constituents in Brampton North, and I am humbled by their trust in me to be our voice for our community at Queen’s Park.

Mr. Speaker, please allow me to speak on behalf of my community when I say that Brampton North is simply tired of waiting. We’re tired of waiting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on Highway 410, Bovaird Drive and Sandalwood Parkway. We’re tired of waiting at the Brampton Civic waiting room, where our incredible health care workers strive to keep up with the demands of our growing and aging population.

And quite frankly, we’re tired of the committees and the studies and the working groups. We demand action. We demand a government that gets it done. That is exactly what our Premier and our government are here to do.

We’re getting it done by building a new Peel Memorial Hospital with a full-fledged 24/7 emergency room.

We’re getting it done by building Highway 413, cutting commute times and bringing economic opportunity to our region.

We’re getting it done with the TMU medical school where, for the first time ever, Brampton students will become medical students and eventually become Brampton doctors.

Mr. Speaker, we will get it done for Brampton North.

My question is to the Premier. Records from Ontario Health show 1,400 people died while waiting for surgery last year. That’s a 43% increase compared to pre-pandemic years and a 30% increase over just a year before. When lives hang in the balance, why is the Premier refusing to invest in recruiting, retaining and respecting health care workers?

The staffing crisis is costing people their lives. Why is this government planning to spend money on privatization that will bleed even more staff from our hospitals?

We have a hospital staffing crisis. Privatization would siphon staff out of our hospitals and send them to a for-profit system. Why is this government planning to spend money on privatization that would make the hospital staffing crisis even worse?

I’m pleased to introduce Angela Preocanin, the first vice-president of the Ontario Nurses’ Association, as well as Nour Alideeb from the ONA. Welcome to Queen’s Park, ladies.

I’m proud to welcome Society of United Professionals president Michelle Johnston. Welcome to Queen’s Park.