I’d like to welcome again members of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance who are here for the second day—talk about gluttons for punishment. So I’d like to welcome Abby Samuels, Carleigh Charlton, Simi Olufowobi, Riley Ambrose, Katie Traynor, Sam Brown, Victoria Mills, Alyssa Hall and Jazzlyn Abbott. Welcome to your House.

And I would also like to welcome Dennis Brescacin who has come here from Thunder Bay to represent the Ontario firefighters. Thank you for being here, I look forward to meeting with you.

I would like to introduce, of course, page captain Chloe Hassberger, who’s grand-mother was already introduced by the member for Kawartha–Haliburton–Brock. Her other grandmother, Bev Hassberger is here as well, along with her mother, Carrie Hassberger.

And I want to welcome the various firefighters, Eric Webster and their contingent, who we met with this morning.

I’d like to welcome Wes Case and Karen Hill to the House today. They’re here on behalf of the Ontario Real Estate Association.

As well, I would also like to welcome Dennis Brescacin from the Thunder Bay fire service. I want to thank all the firefighters here in the House today for your service.

Mr. Speaker, all I can say is wow, okay? Wow. When it takes the most popular NDP leader in this country, the mayor, that we can cut a deal with, why can’t we cut the same deal with the NDP with their leadership? Because there is no leadership over there, Mr. Speaker.

Talk about housing: We had the greatest housing starts in 2021-22 that we have seen in over 30 years. We’ve put legislation after legislation forward that that leader, along with the cohorts over there, voted against. They voted against making sure that we have affordable, attainable housing for people who need it. We made sure that we had legislation that’s going to be easier for local municipalities to get permits out, to get people building.

But guess what, Mr. Speaker? She voted against it. She votes against everything we move forward on; votes against building new hospitals, new roads, new infrastructure that these homes need to get built. But, again, the NDP is about no, no—

Interjections.

I, too, would like to welcome the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association who are here today. I’ve so enjoyed working with you. I enjoyed speaking with you yesterday.

I also would like to welcome some incredible con-stituents I have the honour of serving: JimBob Marsden, who’s here with Anishinabek Nation; Nancy Johnston, executive director of Cornerstone in Cobourg; and Dan Worrall who’s here with the firefighters. Thank you for being here at Queen’s Park.

I would like to acknowledge the Cambridge firefighter representatives that I’ll be meeting with later today. Thank you for your support and for what you do.

I think I may be the last one standing this morning, so I appreciate that. I want to thank this morning, for having met with me, the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance—we had a great discussion about mental health in universities—Abby Samuels, Katie Traynor, Carleigh Charlton, Simi Olufowobi and Riley Ambrose. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Look at this again: The Leader of the Opposition, that’s all she can talk about. But what I want to talk about is the fact that the Ontario Science Centre business case is being made public today. What I want to talk about is the new deal, the historic deal that the Premier and the mayor of the city of Toronto had struck, providing the city with more operational funding, with more support for TTC trains and streetcars, for the homeless, for one-fare service integration, improving the quality of life for the people, the hard-working people of the city of Toronto. And Mr. Speaker I want to talk about the vision for Ontario Place which includes far more than what she obsesses over.

Mr. Speaker, we are bringing Ontario Place back to life because we want it to be a place that families can enjoy and the city of Toronto is supportive of bringing the science centre, building a brand new facility with 10,000 more square feet of exhibition space.

Mr. Speaker, what the Premier did over the last couple of days is make sure that the city of Toronto, the largest city in Canada, is now financially secure and has financial sustainability for years to come.

And the new deal did include the city’s support for a brand new science centre facility. The old science centre is 54 years old. We want to make sure there’s a new science centre for generations of children to enjoy.

This question is for the Premier. After five years of Conservative rule, life is more expensive then ever for ordinary people. From big cities to small towns, more and more people are depending on food banks to get by, even while they work full-time. This week, we learned that food bank use has increased by 36% in Ontario over the last year alone. That’s about 5.9 million visits. In the Niagara region alone, food bank use has increased by a staggering 56% driven mostly by people visiting for the first time.

Speaker, while people struggle under the weight of this cost-of-living crisis, why is the Premier’s top priority the construction of a luxury spa in downtown Toronto?

So, Speaker, I’d like to hear from the Premier: What is so special about this luxury spa that the government is literally changing the law to make it happen?

Rents are skyrocketing and we are nowhere near the one and a half million homes that we’re going to need. We’ve got a minister of housing who brought together stakeholders and municipalities this week only to refuse their request for help.

Speaker, it’s time for the Premier to get real. Why is he dragging his feet on building the housing that people need while fast-tracking a luxury spa that no one wants?

Let’s go through what’s really in Bill 154. The Conservatives are giving themselves unprecedented powers to bypass laws to force through this luxury spa development on behalf of a private company. This bill would also block lawsuits against the government for misrepresentations or misconduct and would block legal remedies for—and I’m going to quote here, Speaker—“misfeasance, bad faith, trust or fiduciary obligation.”

Why is the Premier giving his government the power to commit misfeasance and breach of trust with this Ontario Place scheme?

Interjections.

The appearance of abuse of power is so bad under this government that the current minister of housing is reviewing more than half of the MZO decisions made by his predecessor, and the Auditor General is investigating. And now the Conservatives are giving the Minister of Infrastructure the power to issue ministers’ zoning orders.

Back to the Premier,: When this government is already under multiple investigations for its abuse of planning authority, including a criminal investigation by the RCMP, why would the Premier give MZO powers to the Minister of Infrastructure?

Interjections.

You know, again, Mr. Speaker, the opposition, all they want to do—

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker, we’re leading North American job creation, economic development. We’re leading North America when it comes to creating new opportunities for families to get a job—

Ontario is Canada’s largest life sciences sector, and we have a storied reputation around the world. Ontario is where insulin was discovered. We developed the first cardiac pacemaker right here in Ontario, and we detected the gene that cracked cystic fibrosis. That’s what the 70,000 men and women who work in life sciences do.

In the last three years, we have attracted $3 billion in new life science business. That’s because we lowered taxes and reduced red tape in Ontario. We have 1,900 firms generating $11 billion in annual exports. All of that is because we lowered the cost of doing business in Ontario by $8 billion every single year. You don’t achieve those heights by raising taxes.

Speaker, we plan to grow that 70,000 to 85,000 people and they too will care about a carbon tax. This growth only happens because we keep our taxes low.

My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Earlier this week, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing hosted a housing round table with municipalities. Municipalities told the minister very clearly that they were ready to cut red tape to get more housing built, but they needed more funding for growth-related infrastructure.

They asked the minister to allocate funding under the Building Faster Fund, based on housing permits, which they can control, rather than housing starts, which developers control. Why did the minister say no to these municipalities?

My question is back to the minister. Earlier this year, the Regional Planning Commissioners of Ontario pointed out there were hundreds of thousands of development-ready homes in Ontario that were approved for construction but remained unbuilt. No matter how fast a municipality issues a housing permit to a developer, they cannot force the developer to build.

This is my question to you, Minister: Why is this minister withholding infrastructure funding from municipalities for something they cannot control?

Interjections.

The opposition will come to order. The Premier has a right to answer these questions. You’re asking questions; he’s got the floor.

Premier?

The final supplementary?

The supplementary question.

Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

Again, Mr. Speaker, this is all the opposition member cares about, but, Mr. Speaker, let me just remind the opposition member that we are legislators. It is our role to bring in new laws. It is our role to amend legislation before the House to make sure that we are addressing issues in our society.

We had a very competitive procurement in 2019. We had third-party evaluators involved in that process. Mr. Speaker, the Liberals led their own procurement back in 2016 and, let me guess, Therme was a successful proponent—actually, their top proponent, as it was for us as well.

But, Mr. Speaker, we are bringing Ontario Place back to life. What the opposition wants is: They want that island to continue to fall into disrepair. They want the island to continue to flood. They want the island not to be enjoyed by Ontarians and the 15 million people that live here, and that is just simply not acceptable to government.

My question is for the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade. Under the previous Liberal government that was supported by the NDP, investment was fleeing the province of Ontario. By contrast, since taking office, this government has welcomed record levels of investment from across our economy in an array of industries. Global companies in auto, advanced manufacturing and the tech sectors have been coming to Ontario to set up shop, and we’ve also seen unprecedented levels of investment from life sciences companies. Yet the opposition expects us to do nothing when the federal government continues to hike the carbon tax on Ontario businesses and workers.

Mr. Speaker, can the minister please explain how our government is supporting investments in the life sciences sector?

But even as we do that, we continue to hear from the opposition members in this House, and they defend and they even brag about the federal carbon tax. They say how much good the federal carbon tax can do. They don’t understand that raising taxes on businesses and people hinders innovation and growth and job creation.

Mr. Speaker, can the minister please explain how our government and its pro-business strategy, low-cost approach is helping our life sciences sector and the Ontario economy?

Let’s dig a little deeper into this special deal that this Premier seems to be so obsessed with, because there seems to be repeated preferential treatment for Therme: no fairness monitor for procurement, no scoring criteria for bids, and a half a billion public dollars to give Therme a parking garage, even though the government told other bidders they wouldn’t pay for it. And even that wasn’t enough: Now, they’re letting Therme bypass all the environmental and heritage laws.

My question to the Premier is: Why is the Premier so determined to give preferential treatment to this one private luxury spa operator?

The challenge is that I actually did not have a round table with municipalities this week on housing. I had a housing forum that included municipalities, not-for-profits, that included home builders, that included representatives from modular building. It was a round table—it was actually a forum with 300 people from across the province of Ontario who are focused on building homes, Mr. Speaker. That was what it was all about, not just the municipal sector.

We had a lot of very productive meetings, and they were focused on one thing. They said the same thing to us: “Help us get shovels in the ground by removing red tape. Remove obstacles.” And we heard time and time and time again that the federal government has to step up to the plate and help us with infrastructure, to enable housing to be built faster across the province of Ontario. So, that is what we’re up to, Mr. Speaker.

Unfortunately—it was an open forum—the NDP did not send anybody to participate in that forum. I would have thought the critic for the NDP would have been there, maybe the Leader of the Opposition, but they didn’t show up. But that is consistent. They haven’t showed up since they’ve been in this place, Mr. Speaker.

Interjections.

Let me unpack it for the member opposite: It was a public forum. Anybody could have applied to it, but in order to do that, you’ve actually got to read the public pages, and apparently the member didn’t do that.

With respect to infrastructure, in about—I don’t know—45 minutes the member opposite is going to have the ability to vote for infrastructure for our municipalities to get shovels in the ground faster. I’m hoping that the member opposite will vote for that, Mr. Speaker. We’re bringing forward a use-it-or-lose-it policy so those developers, those home builders that don’t get shovels in the ground after doing all of the work with their municipal partners will lose that allocation.

But here’s the big thing: The member opposite could call 1-613-JAGMEET and bring down the federal government if they don’t redirect that $15 billion worth of spending to put housing-enabled infrastructure in the ground. That’s what we need, Mr. Speaker.

Remarks in Anishininiimowin. Good morning. My question is to the Premier.

Speaker, the ongoing systemic gaps in both the federally and provincially funded education systems have resulted in systemic discrimination for First Nations children. The Chiefs of Ontario launched two reports on these gaps in K-to-12 schools across Ontario. The evidence in the reports confirms the need to increase supports for First Nations learners in the provincial system. I ask: What is Ontario doing to address the inequities for First Nation learners?

I do appreciate the member opposite’s question. We are committed to the success of First Nation, Métis and Inuit students. It’s why we’ve increased funding for Indigenous education. This year is a really important year because in the Truth and Recon-ciliation Commission report, they asked the government of Ontario to close the gap to ensure every child is learning residential school history. We’ve now done that this year. We’re proud to have done so. I did it with the Minister of Indigenous Affairs.

In addition, we signed a reciprocal education agreement to allow Indigenous students on- and off-reserve in order to access the schools of their choice without having to face the red tape and often months or years of delay to get into our schools. We more than doubled the Indigenous graduation coach program. I appreciate there’s more to do, and we’re going to continue to work across the government to ensure the success of these kids—they graduate, they achieve their potential, they get good jobs—and that we’re able to remove the barriers that have held them back historically in this country.