It’s my pleasure today to welcome two of my friends and colleagues from the city of Ottawa who are joining me here today: Rudi Asseer, who is the chair of the Dare to be Vulnerable Project, dealing with storytelling for mental health among leaders in our city; and, of course, Dr. Aroldo Dargel, who is a bipolar specialist with the Ottawa Hospital, specifically at the General hospital. I want to say thank you to them for joining me. It is customary for us to get up and down and up and down to try and get somebody recognized around this place, so don’t take anything by it.

I’d like to welcome back to the House, once again, Michau van Speyk from the Ontario Autism Coalition as well as the busloads of folks coming in from Hamilton for the rally on the front lawn today for the Ontario Health Coalition. I am welcoming them to Queen’s Park.

It’s a great pleasure to introduce three constituents of mine who are in the gallery today: Mayor John Logel from Alnwick/Haldimand and constituents Jim Corcoran and Jake O’Connor, who have also made the trip down from Grafton.

Welcome to the Ontario Legislature.

It’s my sincere privilege to welcome the great mayor of the city of Windsor, Drew Dilkens, who’s in the members’ gallery today.

Let the honourable member take her seat.

Applause.

During question period, I will recognize the three additional independent members to ask questions during each eight-day period, allowing us to accommodate all 14 independent members into the rotation. This means that one independent member will be recognized to ask a question each day, with a second independent member recognized every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Each independent member recognized during question period will continue to have the opportunity to ask one question and one supplementary question.

Further, as a result of the two recent by-elections in the electoral districts of Scarborough–Guildwood and Kanata–Carleton, there are now eight independent members who sit as part of the Liberal group.

Finally, with regard to members’ statements, there will continue to be one statement allotted to an independent member every sessional day. However, each individual member will now be entitled to participate once per 14-day period instead of once per 11-day period.

I thank the House for its attention.

I understand the member for Ottawa–Vanier has a point of order.

The supplementary question.

The final supplementary.

Welcome back, Speaker, and colleagues.

This summer, people across the province of Ontario were feeling the strain of the rising affordability crisis, a cost-of-living crisis, a housing affordability crisis, and meanwhile, they’ve watched their government lurch from scandal to scandal, crisis to crisis. Now we’ve seen the resignation of three cabinet ministers and two senior staffers so far.

Speaker, my question is to the Premier: How can people trust this Premier to work for them when he has spent the last five years putting his friends and insiders first?

The government said they were going to clean things up. That’s what this Premier ran on, and now he’s embroiled in a scandal that has seen ethics laws broken. Three cabinet ministers have resigned in disgrace or ran for the exits. Staff in the Conservatives’ inner circles are leaving under a cloud of suspicion, and they’re lawyering up, Speaker. The Premier has said the buck stops with him, so let’s hear from him.

Will the Premier finally come clean and explain his personal involvement in the greenbelt scandal?

People out there thought something was wrong, and now we have two independent officers of the Legislature who have confirmed it. The Conservatives rigged the system to benefit their friends. I mean, it’s so bad that it’s being turned over to the RCMP.

Speaker, my question to the Premier is, has he spoken to the RCMP about the circumstances of the greenbelt carve-out?

Again, I just want to welcome our friends from Arizona: Welcome; I look forward to speaking with you. And my friends from Arizona, you think politics are tough in the United States? Watch us over the next session.

Anyways, I want to thank the Leader of the Opposition for the question. I’ll answer the reason why people should trust us: When we came to office, it was like walking into a bankrupt company. There were 300,000 jobs lost, down to our friends, down to the US, and now there are 700,000 more people working today than there were five years ago. We’re building $184 billion of infrastructure. We’re focusing on $70 billion of building roads and bridges and highways. We’re focusing on making sure we have the largest transit system in North America. We’re building 50 new sites and hospitals or additions to hospitals, spending over $50 billion—

My friends from Arizona probably don’t realize that Ontario is leading North America in economic development and trade and growth. We’re the fastest-growing region right now in North America. We have over 800,000 people coming to Ontario every single year, and they’re coming to Ontario because that’s where the prosperity is. That’s where the jobs are. That’s where economic development is. That’s where the quality of life is. You want a great life, you come to Ontario. But I can assure the people out there—the new Canadians that are coming here, the young people that need to afford a home—that we’re going to build homes. We’re going to build affordable, attainable—

Interjections.

I do, Mr. Speaker, thank you.

I do seek unanimous consent that, notwithstanding standing order 40(e), five minutes be allotted to the independent members as a group to respond during statements by the ministry and responses today, which is about Franco-Ontarians.

Mr. Speaker, I can assure the minister that the city of Hamilton did not request that you meddle with our urban plan.

I have been ringing the alarm about this government’s backroom deals for urban sprawl in Hamilton for months now. The Integrity Commissioner’s report revealed that the same developers who successfully influenced the Ford government to remove their land from the greenbelt also benefited from a provincial order to expand the city’s urban boundary.

My question, Mr. Speaker: Did this government give preferential treatment to developers, with shady MZOs and undemocratic changes to our official plan?

Stop the clock.

Interjections.

Restart the clock. The next question: Once again, the Leader of the Opposition.

The Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

Restart the clock. The final supplementary?

Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

Maybe if the Premier had spent more time listening to people this summer—people who have seen their emergency rooms closed; kids who can’t get treatment with the autism program; people who were fighting forest fires all across this province—maybe he would have learned something and he wouldn’t have spent his summer divvying upping the spoils to his friends.

This afternoon, I’m going to be tabling the Greenbelt Restoration Act, the official opposition NDP’s bill to restore and protect all of the lands this government removed from the greenbelt—a solution that the Premier finally agrees is the right thing to do. We must restore integrity to government, Premier. We’re going to be calling for unanimous consent of this House, so, to the Premier: Ontarians will be watching. Will he pass our legislation to restore and protect lands in the greenbelt?

Interjections.

So, back to the Premier: How did these speculators know to give your office the details about the parcels of land to remove from the greenbelt before it was announced to the public? Who tipped them off?

Interjections.

Speaker, back to the Premier: How much is this government’s greenbelt disaster going to cost Ontario’s taxpayers?

Interjections.

Speaker, through you to the Premier: The same favoured insiders who received preferential treatment in the greenbelt decision are also benefiting from shady backroom deals for MZOs, urban boundary expansions and Highway 413.

Will this government stop paving over protected farmland to enrich its friends?

To be very clear, Mr. Speaker: No, we will not be supporting the member’s legislation. Obviously, we’ve not seen the legislation, so we would never provide unanimous consent to something that we have not seen. But, to be very clear, we will be voting against that legislation today.

I will be bringing forward legislation very soon which will not only return the lands but ensure that an additional 7,000 acres of land are put into the greenbelt. And we will go one step further, Mr. Speaker: We will codify in legislation the boundaries of the greenbelt so that it is protected through legislation and not through regulation. So, no, we will not be supporting the member’s legislative piece today because we’re going to go further and we’re going to do what has never been done in this province before: We will protect the greenbelt once and for all.

We have been working for five years to untangle the mess that was the opposition’s policies on housing. In fact, Mr. Speaker, in the member’s own riding, where average income is about $55,000 a year, the average house price is about $1.1 million. It would take somebody $80,000 in mortgage payments just to afford that home, and what does the member opposite do? She continues to support policies that would take all of the people in her riding out of the ability to own a home. We are going to double down on policies that help build houses for people across the province of Ontario. Make no mistake: We’ll get the job done.

Interjections.

Nothing—nothing. We will be presenting a bill later on this week which will ensure that the people of the province of Ontario are focused on what matters to them: building houses for the people of the province of Ontario.

She talks about us adding on to the housing crisis? It’s unbelievable to me. We have seen, because of the policies of this government, housing starts at the highest level in over 30 years—and it’s not just single-family homes; it is purpose-built rentals that, under their policies, came to a halt for over 30 years. This is a party that, with the Liberals, doubled down on increasing taxes for the people of the province of Ontario year after year after year. They think that increasing taxes somehow encourages an economy to grow.

We have shown that by reducing taxes, cutting red tape and investing in priorities of people, 700,000 jobs come back and the economy booms. And now we’re going to get it done in housing as well.

Well, let me tell you this: We are going to build all across the province, because young Ontarians deserve to have that first home; the seniors who want to downsize deserve to have a place that they can downsize to, they deserve to have long-term-care homes; our students deserve to have dormitories. That is what is important.

So to all of those people who are in their parents’ basement right now and want to have a home: We have your back. They continue to do the same thing, and we won’t allow it to happen.

We’ll get the job done for them each and every day.

It is a pleasure to be able to rise and talk about some of the incredible investments we’ve been able to do since 2018. There is no doubt that we were left with a system that Kathleen Wynne, in an exit interview, said, “if we had only, as the Liberal Party, not frozen the health care budget; if we had only not cut those residency positions for physicians.” Imagine where we would be, Speaker. We would have an additional 100 physicians being able to practise in Ontario.

But we have not let that deter us. We have a plan and it is working. There are so many pieces of it. I’m looking forward to talking about some of the innovation that we have able to do working with, for example, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, to make sure that individuals who want to practise in the province of Ontario can do that without additional barriers.

When we brought forward those expansions of cataract surgeries in January—we now have 14,000 people who can read to their grandchildren, who can go back to work, who can volunteer in their community, because those surgeries were done in community, publicly funded, using their OHIP card.

Ma question est pour le premier minister. Premier, this morning on our first day back, people from across Ontario woke up early to get on buses to come to Queen’s Park. The good people of North Bay, Renfrew, Cornwall, Barrie, Bracebridge, Midland, Orangeville, Parry Sound, Chatham, Peterborough, Durham—the list goes on—are joining thousands of people on the front lawn. They are speaking with one voice.

Does the Premier know why thousands of people are on our front lawn?

It doesn’t matter what you call those private clinics. The Auditor General already did the work: 97% are for-profit. They are there to make money for their investors. They poach valuable health care workers from our public system, the system that this government turned on its head with Bill 124.

Are the Premier and Minister of Health ready to listen to the people who made the journey to come to Queen’s Park to represent millions of Ontarians, and reverse the privatization of surgical suites as well as all hospital services?

Interjections.

We had an extraordinary opportunity to go visit towns and cities across northern Ontario, to invest in their economies and invest in their local infrastructure. We started out in Sudbury, with the YES Theatre. The Blind River Beavers were celebrating a new roof and dropping the puck against the Elliot Lake Vikings. We weren’t there just to fix the roof; we were there to raise the roof, Mr. Speaker. They went on to win that game.

Making improvements to the Legion in Spanish—and then we swung through Little Current—no pun intended—and announced a brand new two-lane swing bridge, and then off to Echo Bay for a new roof in their arena.

What do they have in common, Mr. Speaker? There was so much enthusiasm about these local infrastructure projects. I had to tell them that their member of provincial Parliament voted against the projects, but they wouldn’t let that rain on their parade. They’re excited about northern Ontario towns, cities and First Nations communities and what our government is doing to invest in them.

My question is for the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade.

Companies from around the globe are looking to Ontario for their future, and our government must be a champion that will support our industry leaders and innovators. It is essential that we continue to attract new investments that will ensure Ontario’s economy will grow and thrive. This summer, the minister led an international trade and investment mission to South Korea and Japan to strengthen economic partnerships, foster pre-existing relationships and forge new alliances.

Speaker, at a time of economic and geopolitical unrest, can the minister please explain how his leadership in spearheading this investment trade mission is helping to strengthen Ontario’s overall economic environment?

The minister mentioned that he met with companies in an array of sectors. Speaker, can the minister please expand on other companies he met with while on his trade and investment mission and shed light on any news that we can expect following it?

In order for Ontario to be a decisive, confident international leader, we must ensure that every region of our province is thriving economically.

Speaker, can the minister please explain to this House what our government is doing to ensure that northern Ontario businesses and communities can prosper?

Even the Liberal Party, during one of their leadership debates, acknowledged that northern Ontario’s economy is booming because of the actions taken by our government—thank you.

While these are positive developments, we know that during this time of global economic uncertainty, many northern and Indigenous businesses continue to face unforeseen challenges. That is why our government must ensure that we are making meaningful investments that will help create jobs and support opportunities to modernize business practices.

Speaker, can the minister please explain what our government is doing to ensure that Indigenous entrepreneurs can participate in Ontario’s growing economy?

Supplementary question.

Minister of Health.

Our recent sales mission to Asia focused on strengthening relationships with our partners and attracting new investments in key sectors, including electric vehicles, life sciences and tech.

While in South Korea, we joined LSK Investment to announce their new $100-million life sciences fund for Ontario companies. This new fund will support early-stage life sciences companies with a focus on developing new therapeutics. LSK also announced their plans to open the first overseas office worldwide—and their first North American office—here in Toronto. This investment will strengthen Ontario’s growing life sciences sector. With Ontario’s talented workforce, the best R&D facilities and 65,000 annual STEM grads, more overseas companies are coming.

Speaker, companies around the world continue to choose Ontario for their future because our government has reduced the cost of doing business by $8 billion every single year.