It’s an honour to rise this afternoon to speak in support of Bill 146, the Building a Strong Ontario Together Act, introduced by the Minister of Finance.

Before I begin, I want to offer my deepest condolences to the minister on the passing of his mother, Ester. As the minister said, she came to Ontario as a refugee when she was just nine years old, with her family from Budapest, Hungary, at the end of World War II. Like other Hungarian Canadians, she did so much to help build a stronger Ontario, and I was proud to introduce the Hungarian Heritage Month Act to recognize their contributions.

As the minister said, Ontario grew by almost half a million people last year, including over 60,000 refugees that came from the Ukraine. We’re on track for another half a million people this year. That’s more growth than any US state, including the fastest-growing states, like Florida and Texas.

But after 15 years of mismanagement and underinvestment, the previous Liberal government left us with an infrastructure deficit in health, long-term care, transportation, energy, at the municipal level and in so many other critical areas, as well. Our infrastructure needs to catch up and to keep pace with the growth we expect. The Minister of Finance said that this is one of the reasons he ran for office. It is one of the reasons I ran for office, and I think it’s why many of us ran for office, because we know you can’t have long-term prosperity without infrastructure.

Last week, I joined the President of the Treasury Board at the Royal York for a speech from the Minister of Finance to the Canadian Club. As the minister said, we can’t build a hospital, road or subway overnight. We need to have a vision of how the province will look in 10 to 20 years, and we have to focus on that. That’s what the fall economic statement does.

Speaker, that’s why we have the most ambitious capital plan in North America: $185 billion over 10 years. This includes the largest hospital and long-term-care building program in Canadian history. In my community of Mississauga–Lakeshore, we’re building the largest hospital in Canadian history, and we just opened the largest long-term-care home in Ontario.

After the minister’s speech here two weeks ago, I joined the Premier and the Minister of Long-Term Care to celebrate a real milestone in my community: the grand opening of Wellbrook Place. Speaker, this is now the largest long-term-care home in the province—larger than the Credit Valley Hospital when it first opened 38 years ago.

From 2011 to 2018, the number of Ontarians over 75 increased by 75%, but the former Liberal government, with the support of the NDP, built only 611 new long-term-care beds across the entire province. When we were elected five years ago, there were over 4,500 people on a wait-list for long-term care in Mississauga alone. We had 20% fewer long-term-care beds than the provincial average, and some of them were badly out of date, like the four-person ward rooms at the Camilla Care Community.

But now, in just one location, on Speakman Drive in Mississauga–Lakeshore, 632 residents are moving into a modern, comfortable, safe new home which follows the latest standards for long-term care design and safety, including single-person rooms, appropriate-sized dining rooms, outdoor spaces and enhanced HVAC systems with 100% fresh air supply. This will be part of the new campus with programs and services for seniors, including a new health services building, with special services for residents living with kidney disease and advanced dementia, as well as the first residential hospice in the city of Mississauga. Again, I want to thank Tess Romain and her team at Partners Community Health, and Karli Farrow at Trillium Health Partners for all their hard work to deliver this project on an accelerated schedule.

I also want to take a moment to thank our former Ministers of Long-Term Care Merrilee Fullerton, Rod Phillips and the government House leader. Because of their work, our government is making historic investments of $6.4 billion to build and upgrade almost 60,000 long-term-care beds here. There are projects like Wellbrook Place that are under way right across the province of Ontario, including over 1,100 beds in Mississauga–Lakeshore alone—more than any other riding in the province of Ontario.

Under the leadership of this Premier and this Deputy Premier, the government is also investing over $48 billion in hospital infrastructure, including a historic multi-billion-dollar investment in the complete reconstruction of the Mississauga Hospital. Last month, we hit an important milestone on this project as well, as the RFP process which began last April has now closed. Construction can now begin next year on this project, which will be the largest and most advanced hospital in the history of Canada—almost triple the size of the current hospital, with 24 storeys, three million square feet, 1,000 beds and 80% in private rooms.

Speaker, in September, I joined the Premier and the Minister of Health to announce that this will include a new 200,000-square-foot women and children’s hospital, which will be the first of its kind in Canada. It will transform how health care is delivered for women and children and families in Mississauga and Etobicoke. As the Minister of Finance said, this is our vision for health care, and I want to thank him again for these investments.

Speaker, I also want to thank the minister for making a new $200-million investment in a Housing-Enabling Water Systems Fund for the repair and expansion of core water, waste water and stormwater infrastructure. Last week, I was proud to join the minister and the Minister of Infrastructure to announce this fund at the Arthur Kennedy water treatment plant in Lakeview in Mississauga–Lakeshore. An expansion there will support the construction of 16,000 new homes in the Lakeview Village on the site of the former OPG coal plant. The new water systems fund is an important step towards our province’s target of at least 1.5 million homes by 2031.

Neil Rodgers, the CEO of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association said that this investment “will accelerate the construction of more housing,” and his “4,000 members across the province applaud the Minister of Finance for making this necessary investment, and we join him in calling on the federal government to match this investment to unlock even more housing choices for Ontarians.”

The water systems fund will build on several other programs, including the Building Faster Fund and strong-mayor powers.

It’s worth taking a moment, Speaker, to reflect on how far we’ve come. Just a year ago, Mayor Crombie and our Mississauga city council supported only 30% of our Housing Affordability Task Force recommendations. They opposed fourplexes, and they actually shared pictures of residential streets with giant, scary orange boxes to show what a fourplex would look like, but last month, when a council motion to allow fourplexes failed, at least there was a tie of five to five. Unfortunately, Mayor Crombie missed the vote. She was busy campaigning—

I also want to thank the Premier and the Minister of Finance for their leadership in removing the HST on new purpose-built rental housing, including apartment buildings, student housing and senior residences built for long-term rentals. For a new two-bedroom rental unit valued at $500,000, this will mean a $40,000-tax cut from the province, and $25,000 from the federal government.

The Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario will be here at Queen’s Park next week, and I know that they are very excited about these changes.

I want to join the minister, as well, in calling on the federal government to match our $42-million top-up to the Canada-Ontario Housing Benefit, to provide urgent help for newcomers claiming asylum. This is a federal-provincial program that should be cost-shared 50-50. As the Minister of Finance said, Ontario has done its part, and now the federal government should do their part.

Speaker, the minister’s plan also includes $71 billion for transit infrastructure, including the new 18-kilometre Hazel McCallion LRT line on Hurontario, which is still on budget and on schedule, to open next fall. Last year, I joined the President of the Treasury Board, who was then the Minister of Transportation, to see the first piece of LRT track installed in Mississauga. And just this past week, we marked another milestone, as the first LRT tracks were installed in Port Credit. They will connect to the Port Credit GO train station, with 15-minute service or better, and the new bus rapid transit line on Lakeshore. We’re working towards a modern, reliable transit network right across the GTA.

We also recognize the cost of traffic gridlock. That is why this government is investing $28 billion to expand and improve our highway network, because we know this is critical to the economic well-being of Ontario.

As the fall economic statement notes, we just hit another important milestone, as the first phase of the QEW/Dixie interchange improvements is now complete in Mississauga–Lakeshore. And then, at the end of August, the new twin bridge over the Credit River opened to traffic on the QEW. This is part of the $314-million QEW/Credit River improvement project.

When I spoke last year about my friend from Brampton North’s motion in support of Highway 413, I mentioned that the highest court in Alberta found that our federal Parliament is not allowed to require federal oversight and approval of intra-provincial projects like Highway 413—in other words, the federal Impact Assessment Act that they were using to target Highway 413 for a potential federal EA is unconstitutional—and a month ago, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed. In a 5-2 decision, Chief Justice Wagner wrote that the federal government clearly overstepped. So, again, I want to call on the federal government to withdraw so we can complete the provincial EA for Highway 413 and build this important provincial project as soon as possible.

But as the minister said, we know that Ontario taxpayers alone can’t build all the infrastructure we need. We need to attract trusted investors, like Canadian public sector pension plans, to help us build essential infrastructure. Many of these plans already make investments in infrastructure around the world. Just take one example: The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan has over $200 billion in investments, including water infrastructure in Australia, roads in the US and India, electricity infrastructure in Brazil and Chile—and I could go on. The Ontario Infrastructure Bank will give pension funds like this new options to put their members’ investments to work right here in the province of Ontario. And as the minister said, it will follow in the steps of many other places around the world with similar banks—including our federal government, the UK government, and US states like California and Connecticut.

Finally, in the time I have left, I want to thank the minister for schedules 3 and 4 of Bill 146, which would extend our gas and fuel tax cuts until the end of June 2024. As Jay Goldberg, the Ontario director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said, “This gas tax cut extension is great news for Ontario taxpayers.” This “gas tax cut has saved the typical Ontario family hundreds of dollars over the past 18 months, and this will ensure that critical relief continues into 2024.”

At the same time, the federal government has announced an exemption to their carbon tax for home heating. Unfortunately, Speaker, it only applies to home heating oil, which is used by 40% of homes in PEI and 32% of homes in Nova Scotia, but only 2% right here in Ontario. And I want to join the Premier—and the Premiers across the country, including the newly elected NDP Premier Kinew in Manitoba—in calling on the federal government to provide an exemption for all Canadians, including those who are heating their homes with natural gas.

As the Premier wrote in an open letter, providing relief only to Atlantic Canada is not fair and it is causing division across the country. As the Premier pointed out, the federal Liberal ministers said on CTV that Atlantic Liberal MPs lobbied for a special exemption for home heating oil, and if other provinces want exemptions, “perhaps they need to elect more Liberals.” Speaker, there are 76 Liberal MPs from Ontario, and now we’re counting on them to treat Ontario fairly and cut the carbon tax on all home heating, including natural gas. As New Brunswick Premier Higgs said, no Canadian family should have to choose between heating their homes or buying Christmas gifts for their children.

Speaker, I want to close my remarks by thanking my friend Dr. David Jacobs, the president of the Ontario Association of Radiologists. As many members know, he’s been a strong advocate for scanning for breast cancer in women aged 40 to 49, and we’re now lowering the age to receive publicly funded mammograms to 40, beginning next year. Dr. Jacobs said the day of this announcement was “the proudest and most impactful day” of his medical career, because we know that scanning saves lives.

And that’s the reason I introduced Bill 66: to encourage people to get a stethoscope check for heart valve disease. Unfortunately, Canadian women are less likely to get a stethoscope check than Canadian men.

I want to thank Dr. Jacobs again, and I want to thank the Minister of Finance and his team, including his parliamentary assistants, for all their great work on the fall economic statement and on Bill 146. I look forward to voting for this bill, and I encourage all members in this House to support this bill.

I want to thank the member from Ottawa for that question.

As you know, our budget last year—we had a $202-billion budget in the province of Ontario and $81 billion went to health care alone. Now, I compared the 2017 budget that the former Minister of Finance had presented here in the House—whom I defeated in Mississauga–Lakeshore. He invested $59.4 billion; we’re at $81 billion just in health care. And we put $6.4 billion into long-term care, to build infrastructure, and another $48 billion to build hospitals through the province of Ontario. That was neglected by the previous government, which you propped up for many years here in the House.

As I said, we have the largest budget in Ontario’s history, and we’re going to continue spending as we have through our mandate here in this House.

I want to thank the member for that question. As you know, I come out of the automotive industry, and we’ve been able to attract $27 billion worth of automotive investment here in the province of Ontario. When I was in the automotive industry, we were worried about plants shutting down, but our great Minister of Economic Development has been able to attract that $27 billion, as well as having the funds from the Treasury Board with our new President of the Treasury Board always there to support the growth of this province.

But with 500,000 people coming into the province each year, we are going to have a lot of work to do, and that’s what we’re doing. We’re building homes for these people in the province of Ontario. Not only that, we have removed the HST on affordable homes and removed development charges so we can build more homes here in the province of Ontario to help the newcomers who are coming to this province.

As you look at other jurisdictions in the world, they have an infrastructure bank as well. As you know, the teachers’ pension plan has $200 billion which they invest around the world. Why not keep that money in the province of Ontario so we can build the infrastructure projects we need so that our economy can grow much better here?

We’re going to keep doing things to help our families here in Ontario, so they can achieve what they have to achieve. I know that the federal NDP have supported getting rid of the tax as well, so that’s nice to hear, that the federal NDP are supporting what we want to do here in the province of Ontario.