It’s a pleasure to rise today on behalf of the residents of Ottawa West–Nepean to speak to Bill 146, Building a Strong Ontario Together Act.

Just for context, this is a bill that’s enacting budget measures following on the government’s fall economic statement, which came two weeks ago, right before the constituency week. That was a fall economic statement that really failed to reflect the moment that we are in here in Ontario. People in Ontario and Ottawa West–Nepean are really struggling, and we are not seeing any acknowledgement of that coming from the government.

But last night, Speaker, I was at the Cardinal’s Dinner, where the Premier spoke, here in Toronto. I almost fell off my chair, because the Premier actually did acknowledge that people were struggling here in Ontario. He acknowledged that homelessness is increasing, that we are seeing more people who are living on our streets and in encampments, that lineups at food banks in Ontario are increasing, that people can’t pay everyday expenses or afford a home. I thought, “Wow, this is really amazing progress,” and I was waiting to hear what the Premier’s plan was to address these issues that people are struggling with in Ontario. Instead, once again, somehow he’s powerless to do anything about it. The Premier of the province is somehow powerless to do anything about these problems that fall squarely within his jurisdiction. In fact, he’s busy trying to make people believe that everything within their control is absolutely amazing and everything that people are struggling with in Ontario is the fault of another government.

Now, I am the parent of a teenager. My daughter turned 13 this summer and was instantly a teenager. I don’t know how many other members here have teenagers, but this is reminding me very strongly of an experience I have repeatedly with my daughter. She likes to bake, and my husband and I have been very clear with her that the condition for using the kitchen is that you must clean up after yourself. The kitchen must be returned to the state that it was in before you started baking. And she always—

My question to either of the members, from Don Valley East or West, is around the unprecedented size of the contingency budget that is included in the fall economic statement. It’s now at $5 billion. Typically a government would put aside about a billion in contingency.

Is the member concerned about the size of the contingency, and why do they think the government is going in this direction?

Exactly—the member from Kitchener–Conestoga must have similar conditions with his teenagers.

Every time, she agrees: “Yes, yes, the kitchen will returned to the condition that it’s in.” And 40 minutes later, I walk into the kitchen, and the sink is full of dirty dishes, there is cupcake batter along the counter, and my daughter is next door in the family room watching TV. I call her in and I say, “What happened? You promised you would clean the kitchen,” and she says, “I did,” like she is physically not capable of seeing the dirty dishes in the sink or the cupcake batter on the counter.

So I walk her over to the counter, and I say, “But look, these weren’t here before you started, and neither was this batter on the counter.” And all of a sudden, she says, “Oh, that was my little sister’s job to clean up.” That’s what we’re seeing happen from the Premier of the province here. Apparently he is literally incapable of seeing the mess created by his government’s policies. And when he can’t avoid it, then somehow it’s the federal government’s fault; it’s the fault of the previous government.

As someone I spoke to said recently, this government is a perpetual victim. Five and a half years into their term, they are still the victim of the previous government and of the federal government. At a certain point, you have to wonder: If the Premier five and a half years into his term is a perpetual victim, then maybe we should stop electing victims and start electing people who actually want to use the power that they have as Premier of the province to make life better for people in the province of Ontario.

But what we have, in this moment when people are really struggling, is a fall economic update and now a bill that doesn’t mention the words “affordability” or “affordable.” Other words that don’t appear are “cost of living,” “rent,” “food,” “price gouging,” “social assistance,” “disability” or “education.” People are struggling daily, and yet this government is so bereft of ideas, so mired in scandal and police investigations of their government that they do not seem to have anything to offer the people of Ontario. And that’s despite the fact they have the funds, they have the resources to invest in the lives of Ontarians that will actually make their lives better. They’re sitting on $5.4 billion in a contingency fund that’s unallocated that could be going to address affordability, that could be going to address health care, that could be going to address disabilities, that could be going to address education. And instead of spending that money on things that will make the lives of people in Ontario better, they are just sitting on those funds.

The only ideas that the government seems to be able to come up with right now are ideas to make already-wealthy land speculators richer, and in that area, they’ve managed to be quite creative, because they have found quite a few ways.

So today, I want to offer the government a few ideas, remind them of the power that they actually have to get things done for people in Ottawa West–Nepean and in Ontario today. We are seeing record numbers of people using food banks in Ontario. Every single year under this government is a new record number of users. This week, we learned one in 10 people in the city of Toronto are now using a food bank. We’re waiting on the numbers in Ottawa next week, but I know that those numbers are also going to be a record because what I am seeing and hearing from food banks in Ottawa West–Nepean is that they cannot keep up with the demand and, in fact, they have had to extend their hours into the evening and on weekends to accommodate people who are working full-time and still can’t put food on the table without going to a food bank.

The food bank at the Pinecrest Terrace Community House told me that by the time people call them, they are desperate. They have tried every other solution they can think of to find food to feed their families, and yet the demand is so high that the Pinecrest Terrace Community Food Bank can’t give them an appointment for three to four weeks. People are going desperate with no food at all, waiting three to four weeks for a food bank appointment because the demand is so high.

Food banks are also providing less food because they can’t stretch it far enough, and food banks themselves are on the verge of collapse, having difficulty keeping the lights on. In my riding of Ottawa West–Nepean, the Caldwell food bank nearly had to close for six weeks this summer because they couldn’t keep the lights on and pay their employees any longer. Thankfully, the Ottawa Food Bank was able to step in with some emergency funding because of the thousands of families that would have had to go without food if the food bank closed for just six weeks. Yet, this government killed the social services relief funding which was keeping Caldwell and many other food banks across our province operating.

But the truth is that food banks don’t want to expand. They don’t want to be open for longer hours. They don’t want to be serving more clients. They want to see the government actually tackle the reasons why so many people in the province are hungry—things, again, that are absolutely within this government’s power that they could do something about today.

The government is directly responsible for setting the income level of people on social assistance, and what are they doing? At a moment of huge increases in the cost of living, they have left people on social assistance languishing in deep poverty at rates that are well below the cost of housing, let alone other expenses. Rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Ottawa is now going for $2,050 a month. A single person on Ontario Works gets only $730 a month. If you even doubled it, they still wouldn’t be able to afford an apartment. A single person on ODSP is getting $1,308 a month. That’s still $700 below the cost of rent, and they still have to buy food, groceries and other medical necessities.

I have many constituents reaching out to me about ODSP. This is one email that I received: “My husband and I are both on ODSP and are needing to move from our home of 21 years as the landlady needs to sell.

“The amount that we get from ODSP and CPP disability isn’t meeting our needs now and on top of it is nowhere near enough to cover rent in today’s marketplace in Ottawa. Nobody wants to rent to someone on ODSP when you tell them that you are receiving assistance and definitely not to two people on ODSP. Our credit ratings are both in the high-700s and not even this helps us.

“How can we make the Ford government understand that there is no subsidized housing available anywhere? With food prices skyrocketing and heat and electricity doing the same, I just don’t know what to do anymore. The line at our local food bank is a nightmare and it is only getting worse.”

This is another constituent: “I’m writing in regard to Ontario Works and the fact that it is much too low for anyone to live on. ODSP was changed, and that was great. But Ontario Works needs to increase as well. Absolutely no one can live on $700 to $900 a month with rent, cellphone, food, transportation etc. Many people are becoming homeless, living in situations that are not healthy or safe. Shelters are full with waiting lists. Food banks are struggling to keep up with the needs. Ontario is increasing the amount of poverty in this province. It needs to change! Put yourself in the shoes of people that are struggling every single day. It is not fair to increase ODSP and leave everyone on Ontario Works unseen. This issue needs to be addressed, especially in our nation’s capital. Parliament Hill is well cared for while a block or two away, people are living on the streets.”

The government has within their power the capacity to increase social assistance rates today if they wanted to. They are choosing not to do that.

It’s not just people who are on social assistance who are using the food banks. In fact, they’re seeing an increase in the number of people who are working full-time. The food banks in my riding tell me they’re seeing people who haven’t been there for three or four years because they got a job and got back on their feet. They still have that job, they haven’t lost the job, but the job is no longer paying the bills anymore.

Statistics Canada data that came out earlier this week show that wages for the bottom 50% of wage earners—let me say that again: 50% of wage earners—in Ontario are actually declining. In 2021, the average wage for the bottom 50% went down 3.7%; the median wage went down 4.9%.

The government wants you to believe that affordability is somehow all the fault of the federal government—in fact, the member for Kitchener–Conestoga was just saying this—but they control the minimum wage for the people of Ontario. They can increase the minimum wage for people living in Ontario and help them to afford rent and groceries and other things.

To rent an apartment in Ottawa, someone working full-time at minimum wage literally needs to pay 77% of their income on housing. The living wage in Ottawa is $21.95 an hour. The minimum wage under this government is only $16.55. It’s absolutely shameful. People cannot get by.

In addition to increasing the minimum wage, the government could improve the quality of jobs in Ontario by cracking down on exploitative practices, including the use of permanent temps; facilitating unionization; bringing in anti-scab legislation. There’s so much the government could do to address the quality of jobs and wages in Ontario.

They could also address the cost side by addressing the cost of housing, bringing in real rent control, reinstating vacancy control. I hear so many stories from constituents whose landlords are trying to force them out, knowing that they can jack up the rent on the next tenants.

The government could also create a public agency, Housing Ontario, as my colleague from London North Centre has suggested, and actually fund and build not-for-profit, deeply affordable housing in Ontario. We used to do that. Even the Bill Davis government did that. Governments of all political stripes did that. The government could move on this today and start getting back into the business of building affordable housing in Ontario.

Then, there’s the price of groceries.

This is an email from a constituent about the cost of groceries:

“I am writing you this email as a constituent of yours from Nepean, and a resident of Ontario that is horrified by the rising grocery prices, and lack of social services available for ... Ontarians. Tonight, while grocery shopping at the Carling Ave. Metro ..., we were approached by a man asking for change, and then asking if we had any food. After talking to him about his situation, we asked if we could help with groceries.

“We got a cart for the man, and asked him to gather groceries he needed. He was now living in community housing, had access to a freezer and stove, and had already used the food bank for the month....

“The cost of groceries for this man came out to $240. Once upon a time, that would have been my family’s grocery bill for December (turkey, and all the fixings for the holiday included—and I had five siblings). I want to make it clear that this man did not abuse our generosity. His purchase was groceries for a month, with smart purchases like Ensure, and Gatorade, with his most indulgent request being three bags of Lay’s plain potato chips and toilet paper.

“I ask, how is the average Canadian supposed to stay fed? This was a single man, and these would have been enough groceries for my sister-in-law and brother for their two children for maybe two weeks, if they stretched it out. Went without any breakfast, avoided any ‘indulgent’ dairy or butter or eggs. Beyond what was required to make the four boxes of Kraft Dinner ($10).

“While Galen Weston weeps in front of the government over how mistreated he is by average Canadians, he abuses his monopoly on groceries and pharmacies to make us pay exorbitant prices.... What are we doing to help these Canadians? What are we doing to stop Shoppers from charging $30 for a Quo hairbrush (the only ones available by the way) or $4 for a box of Kraft Dinner. I have a difficult time believing that there has been a 400% increase in the cost of dried noodles and cheese powder.”

These are the kinds of cost increases that Canadians are dealing with at the grocery store. And yet, what did we learn today? We learned that Loblaws third-quarter profits went up 11.7% this year compared to last year. Loblaws raked in $621 million in profit in a single quarter while Ontarians are watering down their milk, cutting back on meat and reusing diapers. And yet somehow, all this Premier can bring himself to do is to gift investment opportunities to Galen Weston instead of siding with desperate Ontarians, which he could do today.

One area where we are seeing a slight increase in spending, Speaker, is in health care. But, sadly, even in this area, that increase is not going to Ontarians who are in desperate need of health care: the 2.2 million people who do not have a family doctor; the people who are waiting 12 hours to see a doctor at the Queensway Carleton Hospital. Instead, what we learned this week, thanks to a freedom-of-information request—because the government, strangely, didn’t want to volunteer this information—is that the government is paying three to four times as much to private, for-profit health care providers in the province of Ontario to provide the same surgeries that are being provided for much less in our public hospitals. These are public funds that are going directly into the profits of wealthy investors in Ontario instead of going to provide greater health care for people in Ontario who desperately, desperately need it. That’s in addition to failing to provide appropriate support for home and community care, and continuing their appeal of Bill 124, which means that we continue to bleed health care workers every single day.

Then, of course, there’s education, where spending is down under this government by 11%. This is despite the fact that our children are struggling. They are struggling because of the impact of the pandemic, where this government closed schools in Ontario for more days than any other jurisdiction in North America, and where this government is failing to provide the resources that our children need to recover their learning, to address their mental health and to make sure that our children have a safe and healthy place to learn every single day. In fact, when you look at per-student spending in the province of Ontario, this government is spending $1,200 less per student when you account for inflation between 2018 and 2023.

What does that mean in tangible terms for our students? It means that many of our students are in overcrowded classrooms. In Ottawa West–Nepean, in some cases the classroom is so crowded that the students can’t even have desks; they have to sit at tables because it’s the only way to pack all the students in. It means that our students who require special education supports aren’t getting those supports that they need, that schools are desperately trying to triage who gets access to the resource teacher, who gets an educational assistant. The educational assistants themselves are running in between classrooms, holding walkie-talkies, trying to figure out which student is having the greatest emergency so that they can provide immediate care to them while other students’ needs are going unaddressed.

It means that 50% of our schools do not have any kind of access to regularly scheduled mental health resources, and nine out of 10 principals in Ontario say they need more support for mental health than what they are getting from this government. It means that we have absolute chaos for school buses in Ontario, in no small part because the government somehow forgot to include non-bus forms of student transportation, even though students with special education needs and students who are in larger school boards, particularly francophone school boards with huge geographic areas—it doesn’t make sense to be running a big bus, and so kids can’t even get to school, which means they can’t even learn.

And it means, unfortunately, that we have normalized violence for our students in schools. One teacher told me that, as she was spending her own money once again, she spent money on an evacuation kit for her students because she knows evacuations are going to happen because of the level of violence. So this is absolutely a fall economic statement from the government that fails to meet—

Hear, hear.

Well, thank you very much, Madam Speaker, and I just—I’m not using this as a prop. I just want to make that clear. I’m just making sure I get everything out here.

On page 68 of the fall economic statement, it says, “On October 1, 2023, the government increased the general minimum wage from $15.50 to $16.55 per hour”—a 6.8% increase, Madam Speaker. A worker who is working minimum wage for 40 hours a week will see an extra $2,200—$2,200—added to their paycheque.

For the member opposite to stand up in her place and say that a 6.8% wage increase is not a factor, I don’t understand how that can be the case, because I’m pretty sure that anyone across Ontario would be very happy to see an extra $2,200 deposited into their bank account.

It’s now time for questions. I recognize the member for Kitchener–Conestoga.

To the member opposite: You may be aware that in the fall of 2022 the federal government had implemented a federal vaping tax, and subsequently, the federal government had invited all the provinces and territories to participate in this tax. Ontario is responding to this invitation to enable the federal government to levy an additional excise tax duty on vaping products which are intended for sale here in Ontario at the same rate as the existing federal excise duty.

My question to the member opposite is, do you agree with our economic statement and will you vote for it? Because what we’re doing is we’re entering into a coordinated vaping product taxation agreement.

I actually think Bob Rae removed rent control back in the mid-1990s, if I’m not mistaken—the one chance the NDP ever had at government.

But I do want to talk a little bit about ODSP because the member did bring that up as well. I just wanted to let her know that, since 2022, there’s been an 11.5% increase in ODSP rates, and not only that but for the first time in the history of the province it’s actually tied and indexed to inflation.

So when we look at what we’re doing around minimum wage, when we look at what we’re doing around supporting low-income earners by removing the provincial portion of income taxes, when we look at what we’re doing to support people on ODSP, when we look at what’s happening in the fall economic statement, we are on the right track to helping Ontarians, we are on the right track to bringing more money back in their pockets, and I just can’t understand why the member opposite wants to stand in the way of that.

Further questions?

I’d like to thank the member for Ottawa West−Nepean for an excellent presentation on Bill 146. What the member has pointed out is what amounts to a clear and calculated omission of discussing rent or rent control within the fall economic statement, as well as Bill 146.

My question, though, is, how has this government ignoring the gaping loophole of vacancy decontrol, as well as the removal of rent control in 2018, exacerbated the homelessness crisis?

Thank you to my colleague the member for Ottawa West–Nepean for her remarks. I want to focus on what she’s talked about with regard to the education system. My colleagues and I in London had the opportunity to meet with the Thames Valley District School Board trustees and senior administration last week. One of the things they told us is that the special incidence portion of the education funding that flows to school boards has not increased in 10 years. This is funding that is used to support the highest-need kids in our classrooms. The lack of that funding has meant that school boards can’t hire the EAs they need, and they can’t offer the wages that EAs need, to support kids in classes.

What does the member think this budget should have done to deal with those high-needs students in our schools?

Thanks to the member from Kitchener–Conestoga for that question. Now, I wasn’t here in 2018, but the member from Kitchener–Conestoga was, so you’ll remember that one of the first actions of your government was actually to cancel the scheduled increase to the minimum wage, which means that minimum-wage earners in Ontario lost several thousand dollars out of their pockets over the last few years because of where the minimum wage would have been if your government had not come to power compared to what it was. So you know what? A delayed increase to the minimum wage—sure, it’s better than a kick in the pants, but it does not in any way make up for the fact that this government depressed wages of minimum wage earners in Ontario over the last five years.

One of the top issues that my office hears about is tenants who are in positions where their landlord is trying to force them out so that the landlord can increase the rent. One of the most egregious cases that we’ve dealt with is a safety situation where there’s been high turnover because the landlord hasn’t been addressing a safety situation.

What we saw was that in the course of just six months, the rent increased from $1,400 a month for the first tenant to $1,900 for the second tenant to $2,600 a month for the third tenant, and that was all in the course of 2023. So landlords are absolutely using their ability to set the rent at whatever they want in between tenants to jack up rents, and they are doing whatever they can to force people out so they can do that. We need to make sure that renters have protection against that so that they’re paying what the last tenant paid and people in Ontario are actually able to find affordable housing that meets their needs.

What we actually need to do, what a government that actually cared about these kids would do, is fund special education based on the cost of special education rather than constantly underfunding and forcing these kids to go without.

At the beginning of the previous Liberal mandate, they introduced the biggest single tax increase in the history of the province of Ontario. They then racked up the hugest debt, and leaving at the end of their mandate—making Ontario the largest indebted sub-jurisdiction in the world—the highest tax rate, the worst debt.

My question to the member is this: How many years do you think it’s going to take this Progressive Conservative government to undo the massive, massive damage done to the finances of Ontario by the previous Liberal government?

I’ll ask the member from Guelph the same question that I put earlier. When the previous Liberal government took office, they introduced the biggest tax increase in the history of the province of Ontario. Then, over the course of the next 15 years, they racked up the largest amount of debt in the history of the province of Ontario, leaving Ontario as the most indebted sub-sovereign jurisdiction in the world.

The biggest tax increase and the biggest amount of debt: How many years does the member from Guelph think it will take this Progressive Conservative government to undo all of the massive damage done to the province of Ontario by the previous Liberal government?

I appreciate the question from the member from Oshawa. Actually, Guelph is doing pretty good—much to contradict maybe some of what we’ve heard from across the aisle—but we have more to do, and partly what we need is a government that is going to replace the fiscal hole that it created for municipalities.

Over a year ago, the government said they would make municipalities whole, address the $5.1 billion they took away from municipalities to service new home building. They have not done that yet. So municipalities like Guelph are looking at a 10% tax increase because of the hole created by the provincial government. So I’m calling on the government to make municipalities whole so they can build the infrastructure needed for homes.

I was the only MPP in this entire Legislature—there was one MPP in this Legislature who voted against the licence plate gimmicks, costing this province $2.5 billion in the first year, $1.5 billion each and every year afterwards, a policy that disproportionately benefits wealthy households. Imagine if we had that money to reduce the deficit now, to invest in health care, to invest in affordable housing, to invest in things that will address the affordability crisis people are facing—

But what this really means for the people of Ontario is somebody struggling to access a doctor or an emergency department, somebody whose school doesn’t have an educational assistant so their child gets the services they need, somebody at Community Living whose housing is being closed, somebody who needs an affordable home but can’t get one because they refuse to invest in co-ops. Those are the real-world implications of underfunding services in this province.

Questions?

I was at AMO, and a lot of folks there were talking about this government’s targets for municipalities and the contingent targets that were required so that they would get the funding needed to build housing and all of that. Because Guelph has been oft maligned in this place by the government, I would ask the member how it’s going when it comes to meeting those targets in your neck of the woods?

My question to the member for Guelph is around that over $5-billion contingency fund that’s been set aside in this budget.

The CCPA did an analysis looking at program spending over the last five years with the numbers adjusted for inflation. They found that real per capita spending on post-secondary education has dropped 11% since 2018 when this government was elected; in children and social services, down 12%; in education, down 11%. What does the member think about a government that allows program spending to decline to that extent and also puts aside over $5 billion in an unallocated contingency fund?

That’s a lot of hospital.