SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
October 25, 2023 09:00AM
  • Oct/25/23 10:50:00 a.m.

I know who I take my direction from: the people of the province of Ontario. That’s where I take my direction from. And when I hear parents tell me that they have kids who have 21 offers on homes and are not even in the game, I know I have to double down and do even more. And do you know who else knows that? All of the Progressive Conservatives who are sitting in this chamber. We are completely focused on one thing: making life more affordable for people in the province of Ontario, building 1.5 million homes so that the next generation of Ontarian families can have the exact same dream that almost every one of us in this chamber have, and that’s the dream of home ownership. It is why millions of people have chosen to come to the province of Ontario—in her own community.

So to the member opposite, I saw very clearly: We will not stop working on behalf of the people of this province, we will not stop building a bigger, better, stronger province of Ontario, even if that means rolling over the radical NDP who simply say no to everything. If it was up to them, we’d be back in 1933, and we won’t let that happen.

So what are we doing? We’re building more homes for people and we’re removing obstacles so that we can get more homes built for people in the province of Ontario. We’re cutting taxes so that the lowest-income earners don’t have to pay taxes to the government. Imagine that they voted against it. I’m building long-term-care homes because, as the Minister of Long-Term Care says, we owe a responsibility to those who helped build this province. They’re against that.

Later on today, we will be bringing a motion forward. The member for Chatham-Kent–Leamington will be bringing a motion forward to call on the federal government to remove the carbon tax from fuel, and we are hoping the NDP will do the right thing and vote with us to put more money back in the people’s pockets. I bet you they won’t, and they’ll continue on a destructive path.

Now, to put it in context, they left the province of Ontario back in 1995 with an $11-billion deficit. What’s that? The equivalent of $25 billion in today’s economy? And what did they accomplish? They actually outpaced the Liberals; they accomplished even less than zero.

He’s talking about jobs and opportunity, yet he and his colleague from Sudbury voted against mines and more opportunity for people.

Their plan is predicated on the fact that somehow there is a secret cache of bureaucrats somewhere who are going to go out and start building homes for the people of the province of Ontario. If they’re there, then I will unleash them, but I have not found this secret cache of people. Because do you know who builds social housing? It is the same people that build rental housing. It is the same people that build the homes that all of us live in.

They say they want to take the profit out of it, but they want to add a tax to it. When we took away development charges on purpose-built rental and the HST, when we said no development charges on social housing, they voted against it.

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  • Oct/25/23 11:40:00 a.m.

On one point we will agree, and that is, the need for home and community care continues to increase.

We will continue to invest. Of course, in our most recent budget, a billion dollars in home and community care—that, first, stabilized the health human resources who are working in the field, but more importantly, actually allows us to make sure that there is consistency in what we are providing to our patients, to individuals across Ontario in a very stable manner. We’ve been able to do this.

Frankly, I ask the member opposite why, yesterday, when we were improving and bringing forward legislation that would actually stabilize home and community care, the member opposite and the NDP voted against it.

We will move forward. We have a plan, and it’s working.

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