It’s a pleasure to be able to speak in the House today on Bill 146. It’s a real honour to share my time with the Minister of Finance and the member from Bruce–Grey–Owen Sound.

Second, I want to congratulate the minister and his staff at the Ministry of Finance for their incredible hard work and dedication in putting together a strong economic plan to build a strong Ontario. I’m proud to be part of such a great team.

It is my pleasure now to rise and speak in support of the bill before us today, Building a Strong Ontario Together Act, 2023. This bill and its measures support our plan, our responsible, targeted approach that provides the flexibility Ontario needs to help address ongoing economic uncertainty—a plan that will help build critical infrastructure in growing Ontario communities, while laying a strong fiscal foundation for future generations.

As the minister had already mentioned, our government’s work has structured key themes that help drive our strategy. “Better Services for You” is one of those themes. As we have shown time and time again, our government is improving public services and making it convenient and faster for the people of Ontario to access them. For example, we have made it faster, easier, and more convenient for people and businesses to access driver’s licences, health cards, birth certificates and many other services.

When it comes to health care in Ontario, our government is connecting people to convenient care, closer to home, through their OHIP card, and never through their credit card. Thanks to our government’s plan, the wait-list for surgeries has been reduced by more than 25,000 from the peak in March 2022. Pharmacists can now prescribe treatment for 19 common ailments. We are tirelessly building on that plan.

Our government announced a plan to invest $1 billion over three years to get more people connected to care in the comfort of their own home and community through the 2022 budget. Fast-forward to today, and we are now accelerating investments to bring home care funding in 2023-24 up to $569 million. This includes more than $370 million to support home and community care workers through rate increases and investments to hire more care workers. This funding will also expand home care services and improve the quality of care. This is just the beginning.

Just a few weeks ago, our Deputy Premier and Minister of Health, and alongside our great Minister of Finance, announced that we are expanding access to breast cancer screening for women aged 40 to 49. Beginning in fall 2024, this historic expansion will help more women detect and treat breast cancer sooner. We know early detection and increased access to care saves lives. By expanding access to the Ontario Breast Cancer Screening Program, we will connect more than 305,000 additional people to the services they need to ensure timely diagnosis and access to treatment as early as possible.

This isn’t all we are doing—far from it.

As we have seen with the Ontario Breast Screening Program, we are making it easier and faster to connect people to care.

We are also providing an additional $425 million over three years for mental health and addictions services. This includes a 5% increase in the base funding of community-based mental health and addiction services provided by the Ministry of Health.

I can confidently add that expanding the scope of practice of pharmacists to prescribe over-the-counter medication for common ailments has been an incredible success.

Speaker, as we make health care more convenient, we are also investing in growing and retaining the health care workforce. While over 60,000 new nurses and nearly 8,000 new physicians have begun to work in Ontario since 2018, we know it is still not enough. That is why our government is providing an additional $80 million over three years to further expand nursing program enrolment. This year, we are investing $200 million to address immediate health care personnel shortages and to expand the workforce for years to come.

It’s challenging for Ontario medical students to find residency spots right here at home. We understand that. That is why, to support these graduates, beginning in 2024 and going forward, we are adding 154 postgraduate medical training seats to prioritize Ontario residents trained at home and abroad. We are adding 100 medical undergraduate seats, and we’ll continue to prioritize Ontario students for these spots.

Speaker, we know that today many people in our province struggle to afford a place to call home. This includes some of the most at-risk people in our communities. That is why Ontario is investing an additional $202 million each year in supportive housing and homelessness programs. With this investment, we will help those experiencing or at risk of homelessness, those escaping intimate partner violence, and support the valuable community organizations that deliver housing.

Ontario’s most vulnerable continue to need support from our government—at a higher risk of being trafficked or experiencing homelessness, or our youth leaving the child welfare system. It is with this population in mind that our government is providing $170 million over three years to the Youth Leaving Care program to ensure youth leaving provincial care are set up for success. Notably, we are also expanding program eligibility to include those up to 23 years old, as currently, support ends at 21 years of age.

Speaker, as noted in the fall economic statement released by the minister earlier this month, our government is continuing to do its utmost to build Ontario and work for the people of Ontario. Our efforts to build Ontario and work for you are supported and moved forward by the statutory changes contained in this bill today.

I’d like to take a few minutes to shine the spotlight on some of the more notable efforts by this government to support our plan.

We are protecting communities and unlocking new housing opportunities with $200 million over three years in a new Housing-Enabling Water Systems Fund. This funding is for the repair, rehabilitation and expansion of a variety of municipal water infrastructure projects.

We are providing an additional $100 million to the Invest Ontario Fund, for a total of $500 million, which will enable Invest Ontario to help attract more leading companies to this great province, further support businesses already here, and create good-paying jobs in communities right across the province. Invest Ontario is the government’s investment attraction agency.

We also announced, in our March budget, the Ontario Made Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit. This credit will help Ontario’s manufacturers lower their costs, innovate and become more competitive—offers an estimated $780 million in income tax support over three years.

That’s not all. We are strengthening Ontario’s position as a global leader across the electric vehicle, or EV, supply chain. We have done this by attracting over $26 billion in the last three years in transformative automotive and EV battery-related investments from global automakers, parts suppliers and EV battery and materials manufacturers.

We are taking steps to strengthen Ontario’s position as a global leader in mining as well. With this bill before the House, we are proposing to enhance the Ontario Focused Flow-Through Share Tax Credit eligibility to help stimulate the critical mineral exploration and improve access to capital for small exploration companies. If passed, the change would start with the 2023 tax year and add $12 million per year in tax credit support to Ontario’s critical minerals mining industry.

Touching on what the minister spoke of, we are building on Ontario’s clean energy advantage and meeting growing electricity demand today and into the future. We are doing this by supporting the refurbishments of Darlington and Bruce nuclear generating stations and the extension of the Pickering nuclear plant to 2026, and also by supporting the building of North America’s first grid-scale small modular reactor, starting pre-development work for a large-scale nuclear station, planning strategic new transmission lines and procuring long-duration storage projects. We are doing this by committing a historic $185 billion over 10 years, including $20.7 billion in 2023-24 toward Ontario’s Plan to Build.

This bill under discussion today includes a measure that, if approved, will help move forward our plan. Here, I refer to the proposed amendments to the Construction Act. These proposals would allow for lower minimum bonding requirements for projects that do not involve private financing to help attract more contractors to bid on capital projects, fostering and diversifying market competition.

You see, we are investing and building. This includes investing more than $48 billion over 10 years in health infrastructure, supporting more than 50 hospital projects that would add 3,000 new beds over 10 years to improve access to reliable quality care. Totalling a historic $6.4 billion since 2019 is our planned investment to build 30,000 new long-term-care beds and upgrade more than 28,000 existing beds across the province by 2028.

To build new schools, add child care spaces and modernize school infrastructure, we are investing $22 billion over 10 years. This school year alone, 21 new schools and additions have opened, creating 7,000 new student spaces, including six French-language school projects. We are making progress toward creating 86,000 new, high-quality, affordable child care spaces by 2026. By the end of 2023, now only weeks away, over 23,000 new spaces will be created, including over 1,500 new licensed child care spaces in schools.

As the minister touched upon, we are working to put money back in people’s pockets—among the most significant is how we are proposing to extend the current gas and fuel tax rate cuts through to June 30, 2024. This proposed change, along with gas and fuel tax cuts already in place, would save households $260, on average, since the cuts were first implemented in July 2022.

Another step in our government’s plan to help the people of Ontario find and afford a place to live is how we are encouraging builders to construct more rental units. We are encouraging construction of new, purpose-built rental housing by taking steps to remove the full 8% provincial portion of the HST on qualifying projects. Together with federal actions, this would remove the full 13% HST on qualifying new purpose-built rental housing.

We are also supporting people who are on the go. We are eliminating double fares for most local transit when using GO Transit services and increasing Presto discounts for youth and post-secondary students, all while providing riders with more options and convenient ways to pay.

Another way we are helping people is by increasing the general minimum wage to $16.55 per hour—a 6.8% pay raise to help workers and their families keep up with the rising costs.

This year, we are putting $550, on average, back in the pockets of more than 200,000 low-to-moderate-income senior families with eligible medical expenses. This includes expenses that support aging at home through the Ontario Seniors Care at Home Tax Credit.

We are also building—building at least 1.5 million homes by 2031. We are building these homes through targeted incentives to municipalities, including the Building Faster Fund, strong-mayor powers and the Streamline Development Approval Fund.

We are a government focused on building Ontario together. To facilitate this building, we are supporting skills development and training with more than $1 billion invested over three years in Ontario’s Skilled Trades Strategy, as well as investing $860 million in the training stream and $224 million in the capital stream of the Skills Development Fund.

Speaker, as we continue to grow our job market, we are welcoming more skilled immigrants to Ontario, investing $25 million over three years in the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program and expanding the Ontario Bridge Training Program with a $3-million investment in the 2023-24 tax year, helping skilled newcomers start working in their trained fields and faster.

We are also removing Canadian work experience requirements for certain regulated professions. Why? To make it easier for newcomers to work in the professions they trained for.

Speaker, in closing today, let me say the following: Our government is very confident in our vision—that despite the geopolitical and economic uncertainties in the world today, the Ontario economy and our communities continue to demonstrate resiliency.

We are putting in place the infrastructure to support the growth of the economy and communities, through the infrastructure—in roads, bridges, highways, schools, and health facilities.

We are also building up the skilled workforce for the jobs of tomorrow.

We are helping those who need it the most during these uncertain times.

We are connecting the people and families of Ontario with the health care and the child care they need, when they need it.

I encourage all members to vote in favour of Bill 146, Building a Strong Ontario Together Act, 2023.