Every day in this province, people are struggling to pay rent and put food on the table. In my riding of Don Valley West, residents in Thorncliffe Park are resorting to rent strikes because they’re facing repeated years of above-guideline rent increases.

Take John, a veteran on disability facing a 12% increase, who said, “My pension does not increase by 12% each year.” Joe has called the Premier and the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing to ask them to do something to limit rent increases for those on disability and pensions. Like John, I anxiously await their response.

Speaker, building new housing that’s affordable is part of the solution, but what is the government doing now for people like John and tenants in Thorncliffe Park who are struggling with $300-a-month rent increases because the government removed rent control in 2018? We know the government thought that allowing a few developers to make $8.3 billion in windfall profits was a good idea, but now we need good ideas that help those struggling to pay rent and buy food.

As Steve Pomeroy, a prof at McMaster’s housing evidence collaborative, said recently to CBC, “An ideal approach would limit the volatility of rent increases for non-rent-controlled units while ensuring new projects still make financial sense for developers.”

Speaker, it’s time for the government to take the affordability crisis seriously and take serious action to help people who are choosing between paying rent and buying food.

I’ll be sharing my time with the member from Don Valley West. It’s always an honour to rise in the House to discuss matters of importance to the constituents of Don Valley East and, more broadly, across the entire province. Today, of course, we’re discussing Bill 146 and the fall economic statement, and I have to admit that it is clear this government has been so busy covering its tracks and reversing its commitments that they have not been able to focus on the matters of real importance to Ontarians. Indeed, they’ve been so preoccupied with a range of things—the greenbelt debacle, an RCMP criminal investigation, a special prosecutor, an urban boundary flip-flop, three ministers resigning—that they have not been able to take meaningful action on real issues relating to affordability.

For example, they could have instituted rent control. They could increase the Ontario Child Benefit. They could look into potential collusion around grocery prices. But no, sadly, they have failed to do any of these things. Indeed, it is so clear that the Premier is a conductor on his own gravy train on which he’s yelling “all aboard” to donors, friends and people who stand to benefit from for-profit private corporations.

Now, as it relates to the fall economic statement, very clearly this government has not taken action. Rather than dealing with real issues, they proposed a $3-billion infrastructure bank with very, very questionable prospects.

As it relates to health care, we have a number of issues. Amidst the FAO reporting a $1.7-billion period of underspending in the last financial quarter—no action. They are leaving hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government on the table rather than raising the wages of health care workers such as PSWs. It was actually really difficult to hear the member across speak about the government’s so-called work on increasing hospitals in our province as we see unprecedented emergency department and hospital closures ever since this government took power.

In fact, on health care the number of things the government has done has been, frankly, minuscule. We saw a $72-million investment that is targeted specifically towards private, for-profit clinics. And just yesterday, we learned the consequence of investing in this manner. We learned that a private, for-profit hospital is being paid two to four times what the public hospital is being paid to provide the same service—the same surgery, the easiest surgery with the least complex patients at the most convenient times with the least oversight, and yet they are making the most money. This is how our budget is being mismanaged.

Moving forward, we now also see a number of so-called investments on home care, supposedly $569 million, which is, by the way, not at all a new investment into home care. It is merely a recommitment of hundreds of millions of dollars that were already supposed to be spent.

Let’s not forget that this government is merely dragging its feet. There is much more that I could say around the fall economic statement’s shortcomings on northern development, on Indigenous affairs, on colleges and universities, but I’d like to surrender the rest of my time to the member from Don Valley West.

I’m curious to get the member from Don Valley West’s take on a balanced budget. That is something that previous Liberal governments were not able to do, and it is something that, through the fall economic statement, we’re looking forward to in 2025. So I wanted to get her thoughts on whether she thinks that’s important, because I know a lot of people I talk to, not only in Kitchener–Conestoga and Waterloo region but across the province, are very keen to see that happen. I would like to get her thoughts.

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?