I appreciate the comments made, but I really don’t think the taxpayers should be paying $650 million for a spa using taxpayers’ dollars. I think that’s a mistake.

We also know that the government is spending $600 million on a private spa while food bank usage has skyrocketed and people can’t afford to make ends meet right here in Toronto. In my riding in Niagara Falls, Project Share had a 71% increase in usage.

Could the member explain why the government cares more about a private spa than people going hungry, dying on the streets of Toronto, and having encampments set up all over Niagara Falls?

Niagara Falls.

Since I’m going to be spending a lot of time in Toronto in the next few years, one of my plans is to make a bucket list of all the things that I want to see and do while I have this opportunity.

So my question for the member from Etobicoke–Lakeshore is, how do you think this new deal, this plan, will make Ontario Place sustainable? Because that’s one of the things on my list for sure, as well as the science centre.

Thank you to the member. I was listening intently. Your uncle—so if he’s watching, I want to assure him, yes, there is an Ontario gas tax which has been reduced by this government. However, can you tell your uncle there is another tax, the carbon tax, which is 14 cents, from the federal government? Can he help us to shave that off so that all Ontarians can get the same benefit of—having to live under this affordability crisis—a little more savings so they can spend more on their family?

The member mentioned about women 40 years and over not needing a physician’s referral anymore to gain access to breast screening services. Whenever we make access easier, it always helps health care, but we know that the existing hospitals that have mammograms for breast screening already have very long wait-lists. You’re talking—if you phone now, you will get an appointment in July when the recommended time frame is no more than two months. Is your government going to invest in those publicly delivered funds in our hospitals or give private clinics the money to handle the new clients?

I’m happy to talk a little bit about my excitement about Ontario Place, because I am actually really excited. There’s going to be a wellness centre, yes, as we’ve all discussed, and there will be more things. There will be bike lanes. There will be beautiful bike paths. They have these fire pits. Ontario Place is going to be amazing.

We are going to be building some parking because people need to drive because they come from your riding. They’re not going to ride a bike from the Windsor area; they’re going to have to drive a car.

So, wherever we come from around the province, we have to actually drive. We also like to be environmentally friendly but it is actually impossible for you to put four kids on the back of a bicycle, so you need a place for that car to go.

Our plan for Ontario Place is phenomenal, and if you have some other ideas, please share them.

I know the minister has been working hard. There is a map if you want to see all the things that you can share with your constituents of what Ontario Place will offer.

You can go to the aquarium, which is down by the CN Tower. You can go to the CN Tower. You’ll be able to take—because the new Ontario Line will connect everything. You can actually walk it. It’s not that far if you have the energy, and we all know that young kids have the energy to go take a walk through. Or you can rent bikes. We have bike rentals everywhere, so you can grab a bike and you can bike through the biking paths through Ontario Place and have a great day. You can stop and have a coffee; you can stop and have lunch. It’s going to be a destination for everybody.

I understand that the Liberals had an RFP and chose the same, Therme, when they were in power. So there was an RFP that was put out, and they were the winning bid. But you know what I didn’t mention? I didn’t mention the uploading of the Gardiner and the DVP. That’s part of this whole plan. This will help get people to Ontario Place. They can take the Gardiner. The city of Toronto can no longer dangle that in front of our face, saying, “We’re going to get rid of that”—because we need that infrastructure so people can get to and from work on time, people can get to and from the places. This is a major artery. I’m really happy to see that the government is going to be taking over the Gardiner.

When it comes to the carbon tax, one thing that I can look at in my riding of Etobicoke–Lakeshore, which is the home of the food terminal, is, how does that food get from the farms to the food terminal in Etobicoke? Well, they drive. They have to fill up their trucks with gas. Each time they fill up their cars with gas, it costs more. Then they come to the food terminal and the trucks ship it out again, and how much—what is that? More tax, and it’s the carbon tax. Then you look at the circle—so that means your prices of your food are going up, everything is going up. So the carbon tax, there is nothing positive about it. It is a tax. It is money that’s coming directly out of our pockets. We’re in an affordability crisis. I think it’s time to axe the tax.

I’d like to thank the member for her presentation. What I’m trying to understand—and I hear all these wonderful things that the member was talking about, about what’s going to happen at Ontario Place. But the thing that we’re concerned about is we don’t actually know about the deal. We’re dealing with a company that is a sole proprietorship. It’s not traded on any exchange. It’s not subject to any security laws. We don’t have anything about the deal. All of a sudden, we had a $650-million parking lot that the people of Ontario were supposed to participate in that wasn’t part of what the RFP was. So there’s no transparency around it, and this government has, in this session and probably for its full term, had a history of insiders getting an advantage: greenbelt, urban boundaries, MZOs. So how come we can’t see what’s in the deal?

Thank you to the member for that question. I know in Sudbury they have a great group of workers. Louise, who is a nurse at the hospital in Sudbury—I say hello to you and thank you for your work.

I will give you an example of how that is not accurate. I had a breast screening. My doctor said I needed a breast screening. It was five weeks I waited. I went in—it was 8:30 in the morning.

I also want to thank the Minister of Health for the infrastructure investments in St. Joseph’s hospital. They’ve opened up their new breast-screening rooms, which are on the third floor. It was seamless. It was easy to park. I had my test and I went home. I was in and out within an hour—I only had to pay $5 for parking. That’s why I know.

So we are investing in our hospitals. Hospitals are getting the money. They’re getting the funding to open up these sessions. If you want to look at the one at St. Joseph’s hospital, please do. It’s a beautiful site, and I—

This is for everybody, these highways. So I just want to congratulate the government on this bill.

Thank you. Next question?

It’s a pleasure to rise this morning and speak to this legislation before the House, the New Deal for Toronto Act.

I want to acknowledge some breakthroughs in this legislation, despite the fact that I have some lingering concerns. One of the breakthroughs, I think, about this legislation is beyond what’s actually in the bill. It’s a lesson for anybody that wants to get into politics. Let me explain what I mean by that, Speaker.

We began this morning with a prayer, with the directive, as we have often heard, to use power wisely and well, to create a society where freedom reigns and where justice rules. I love that prayer. It’s a terrific prayer. But often in the five years I’ve served in this building for the great people of Ottawa Centre, I’ve heard us collectively offer that prayer, and then the moment we tumble into debate, we start doing the opposite. We start saying and holding forth in a way that disrespects each other, that insults the integrity of this place and that puts Ontario on a bad footing, in my opinion.

I believe the Premier of this province did that when, on June 21, 2023, he called Mayor Olivia Chow an “unmitigated disaster.” Those were the words that tumbled out of the most powerful office-holder in this province. The Premier is entitled to his opinions. His speech, like all of our speech, is charter-protected. But I don’t think he set a very good example for people who are thinking about getting into politics in the way he characterized someone like Mayor Olivia Chow as, again, for the record, on June 21, 2023, an “unmitigated disaster.” The Premier was making the argument, I guess, that Mayor Chow—now Mayor Chow—would create too great a toll on the revenues of the city of Toronto and was too ambitious in her plans. Well, the people of Toronto thought differently. Thankfully for us, the Conservative-supported candidates in that mayoral race would appear to have been split at least three ways because they couldn’t get their act together.

So what Mayor Chow has done since then is not respond in kind with ritual denunciations to the Premier—that’s more his gambit. What she has done is take the higher road in speech after speech. Her choice was not to fire back at the Premier and call him a bunch of names. She certainly could have. Her choice was to say, “What do the people of Toronto deserve?” They deserve good transit. They deserve community safety. They deserve money for housing; money for community services; the after-school programs that so many children in this city rely upon; the city staff, who work hard every single day, whether it’s collecting the garbage or the recycling in this city or monitoring the safety of our streets, roads and enforcing the bylaws, or making sure the beautiful parks of this city are well-maintained. That was Mayor Olivia Chow’s priority—not responding in kind to ridiculous assertions from the Premier. There’s a lesson in here for how we do politics.

And do you know what also is informative for me, Speaker? What’s informative for me is: This week, as the Premier was promoting this particular bill in the House, I saw him describe Mayor Olivia Chow as the greatest NDP leader in history. Colleagues, did you see that too? So it’s an interesting leap of logic for a man to go from categorizing somebody as an unmitigated disaster to calling her the greatest NDP leader in history. What’s happened since? Well, I want to believe that what’s happened since is that one person showed humanity in politics and the other did not. One person showed how you lead in a moment, despite the arrows slung by your critics, and the other did not.

It reminds me, Speaker, of a quotation often used by the great Nelson Mandela, someone who had the pleasure to visit this particular building twice. I have a picture of one of those occasions proudly in my office. Mandela once said, “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” Who would know the lesson of that better than him? Someone imprisoned for 27 years by an apartheid regime that dehumanized him.

And I think about Mayor Olivia Chow and the roads she walked to the mayor’s office: losing a mayoralty race that many people predicted she was pledged to win, getting knocked down, dusting herself off and getting back up again to serve not yourself, but to serve the community that you live in.

I had great pleasure, Speaker, to knock on doors in the mayoral by-election. I came a day early one weekend. It’s always a negotiation, I’m sure, for all of us when we come to this city from out of the city a day early. I had to plead with my family: “Hey, let me go a day early to Toronto. I want to go knock on doors for Olivia in St. James Town, where she grew up.” And when I knocked on some of these apartment buildings, they are, in Ottawa-Centre terms, like twice or three times the size of apartment buildings back home—massive apartment buildings. But when I said the words “Olivia Chow,” faces brightened because those are the buildings Olivia grew up in. That was the community she proudly served as an immigrant kid coming to this country at the age of 14, with a family divided by violence and difficulty. She persevered to the office of school board trustee. She persevered to the office of city councillor. And now, St. James Town has a mayor—a mayor, in the seat of power, serving this great city. That’s not an unmitigated disaster, Speaker; it’s a Canadian success story. She withstood the arrows from this Premier. She clearly has turned him around.

And now, before the House, we have a piece of legislation that is proposing some significant investments that I want to talk about this morning. One of them is something that I have had occasion to talk about many times as the transit critic for this province: funding for operational transit. In this legislation is $300 million in a one-time transfer for subway and transit safety recovery and sustainable operations. Another is a $330-million investment over three years—that funding accumulates over three years—for operating support for new integrated provincial transit projects.

People have been rising in this House for years, encouraging this government, encouraging governments before it, to not come to the people of Ontario and say, “We have a wonderful transit plan. Billions of dollars of aspirational transit projects”—be it the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, the Finch West LRT, the Confederation LRT in my city. “Look at the wonderful products we have. Look at the consultants we’re hiring. Look at the beautiful ticker tape we’re going to cut at press announcements.”

This is what I call aspirational transit. That is what governments have been seized with in Ontario for years, but it hasn’t moved a single human being, and the only person who has been employed by aspirational transit are the consultants hired to come up with the dreams. Meanwhile, the women and men who woke up this morning early to move people around this great city have been struggling with a poorly funded transit system.

But again, what precedes this bill? What precedes this bill is a mayor of the city, Olivia Chow, who said on September 20 that as this government’s aspirational transit plans continue to fail, the Finch West LRT, the Eglinton Crosstown LRT—both over budget, both delayed, both being built by consultants who rake huge salaries from the taxpayers despite delivering nothing. Mayor Chow announced that she was going to reallocate, based on advice from staff, $10.3 million from these delayed aspirational transit projects to the TTC that actually exists. She said in that press conference that 160 more staff could be hired with that $10.3 million to make sure staff were visible on our trains, to make sure neighbours who are having mental health challenges, whatever they may be—feeling themselves unsafe, making other people feel unsafe—they would visibly be interacting with staff so transit could be safer.

While we’ve had a government for years that has gotten up in this building and talked about aspirational transit, here we had a mayor of this city who said, “Actually, I’m going to redirect money from your failing transit projects”—I’m adding the editorialism; Olivia is a bigger person than me—“I’m going to reallocate money to make sure that people are safe in our subways, because the aspirational transit systems of this government and governments before it are failing.” That’s leadership.

But what’s also leadership in this bill is the fact that we have finally convinced the Premier of this province to take an interest in operational transit. But as the member for Orléans just said, the transit needs in this province are much bigger than the city of Toronto. We need a new deal for transit all over this province. We need it for Sudbury; we need it for Niagara Falls; we need it for Windsor; we need it for Thunder Bay; and we absolutely need it for Ottawa, Speaker. I can tell you that. Because what we just learned at city council in Ottawa is that in 2024, we are going to have 74,000 fewer service hours in our public transit system—74,000.

I took the bus over the weekend, as I was finding my way around community events. I took the number 6 down Bank Street, headed back to home near where I live, near Billings Bridge—packed to the gills, barely a place to sit or stand. But do you know what was great, Speaker? You could always see, as I’ve seen on so many buses, so many subways, neighbours helping elderly folks, people with children finding safe places to sit.

But you ask yourself the question, “Why isn’t there another bus right behind this bus at peak hours? Why is there one staff member on this entire elongated bus sitting in the front, behind Plexiglas, and no other staff members that are available, dispersed across stops to help people figure their way on and off the bus who have mobility challenges?” Cutbacks, Speaker—cutbacks from this government.

What we know is, we’re $500 million short in operational funding for transit across the province of Ontario. We have been making the message very clear to this government that in their upcoming budget, they need to put that $500 million back into the system so the buses, the subways, the streetcars can run safely and run effectively to get people to work and get people back home, get people where they need to go. But that hasn’t happened.

So who has been the stopgap, as this government loves its aspirational transit but neglects its operational transit, loves its dreams but disrespects the people who deliver every single day? I’m going to tell you: It’s the riders who are organizing to get together to bring messages into this place and, close to my heart, it’s the workers who operate the public transit system.

I want to spend some time this morning talking about someone who has got a message for this House. His name is Cory MacLeod; he’s the president of ATU 1320, which is in the great city of Peterborough. In Peterborough, Cory MacLeod just presided over a terrific campaign that sadly had to lead to a strike, in which he told the city of Peterborough that 2%, which was the original wage offer being offered by the municipal authorities in Peterborough—2% is good for milk, but it’s not good for people fighting to make a living.

The member for Peterborough–Kawartha will come to order.

Except there’s no strikes.

The member from Peterborough–Kawartha just said there’s no strike. Do you want to know why, Speaker? Because the women and men who stood up and fought—the 125 operators and the eight folks who work in the garage fixing that transit actually stood up and fought for their transit system.

But it’s funny, Speaker—as the member for Peterborough–Kawartha heckles me—I don’t think he’s once called Corey MacLeod to congratulate him on the agreement that they just won. I don’t think he has once taken an interest in his public transit system to talk to the elected leadership of the transit authority at the municipal level. Isn’t that a curious thing, Speaker? I wonder why the member from Peterborough–Kawartha has nothing but disinterest and disrespect for the people who run and work in the public transit sector. That’d be a good question for him to answer his constituents.

It might be the fact that Laurie Stratton, who is a disgraced former Metrolinx executive, was sent to his city to run the Peterborough transit system, and it may be the fact that Ms. Stratton was fired in March, because she—among many transit executives—had been pushing this on-demand transit system to try to eat into the schedules and the jobs and the operating hours that serve his city and many great cities.

But unfortunately the member never found it worth his time to contact Corey MacLeod once, to visit the transit workers once, to find out about their concerns, to raise them in this House. Let’s look through the Hansard, Speaker, and see if the member has once stood up for his community.

Now the members of that union, however, they stood up for Peterborough. They care about the people of Peterborough.

Interjection.

But do you know who has? Mayor Olivia Chow. Mayor Olivia Chow has stood up for the transit workers in this great city of Toronto. Mayor Olivia Chow cares about the operating efficacy of transit in this city.

The member for Peterborough–Kawartha may think that people will forget how he behaved in this moment. They may think that people will forget that he wasn’t there as Laurie Stratton and that team drove that transit system into the ground—or attempted to. But people won’t forget, Speaker. People won’t forget. They won’t forget the fact that, as the member sat on his hands and watched a transit disaster almost unfold, as people were pushed to the brink of a strike, as people pushed and fought and tried to get the attention of decision-makers like him, they stood up for their community. And I tip my hat this morning to ATU 1320. I thank them for their public service.

I hope this government extends its new-found empathy for the city of Toronto to the rest of Ontario, because the great people of Peterborough, the great people of Sudbury, the great people of Windsor, of Thunder Bay, of Niagara Falls, of Oshawa, of London—they deserve great, functioning transit too, and it shouldn’t have to come to the fact that women and men working in a struggling operational transit system have to go nearly on strike to make sure that we get their attention.

I wonder, Speaker, how do you contrast a government that manages to find over $600 million in funding for a luxury spa, for an Austrian-owned conglomerate, but that will watch operational transit systems fall apart; they will watch people suffer instead of helping the people that make our communities work.

I wonder how big the cheques are, Speaker, that are coming out of Therme into the Progressive Conservative donations department. I wonder how big the cheques are coming out of various real estate conglomerates for the various projects this government pushed. Meanwhile, Speaker, the women and men operating transit in this great city impacted by this bill, operating transit in Peterborough, operating transit in Ottawa—they don’t get the attention and the love. There’s no new deal for them, and you have to ask yourself why.

Interjection.

It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter, because whatever opinions that member over there and this government may have of transit workers in this province, they will persevere. They will persevere. They will persevere in Peterborough, will persevere in Ottawa. We’ll persevere in a great city like Hamilton, where ATU 107 just negotiated an agreement.

I was moved deeply, Speaker, when, just before the Grey Cup that was in that terrific city of Hamilton, the transit workers were pushed into a position of having to threaten job action that would have impacted that terrific celebration, the Grey Cup celebration, because they were pushed to the brink. Cassie Theaker, who is a single mom, told the press with tears that she had no money in her bank account after two weeks, despite serving that city for 25 years. The costs of living have increased so much that with what she is paid to operate public transit in the great city of Hamilton, she couldn’t feed her kids; she couldn’t pay the rent. So that should be a cautionary tale for all of us.

I want to congratulate the Premier for having a change of heart about Mayor Olivia Chow. I want to congratulate the fact that finally, this government seems to have taken an interest in operational transit instead of aspirational transit. They finally looked into the eyes of a leader who had more humanity than them, who suffered the arrows of the moment to win the victories that come later, and that’s a lesson for all of us in politics. That is a lesson for all of us.

Now, we have a bill before the House that is proposing some funds for operational transit for this great city, but we need funds for operational transit all over Ontario. That’s what this government needs to recognize, and if they’re not prepared to do it, there will be a consequence for them. If they’re not prepared to fund the transit systems of Peterborough and Windsor and Niagara Falls and Sudbury and Thunder Bay and Ottawa—the residents of those communities care about those buses. The residents of those communities care about the operators and mechanics that fix those buses, and we’re prepared to stand up and advocate for them.

So, is this bill a useful step in the right direction? Yes. It has taken them a long time. Meanwhile, we somehow find a million dollars to pay Phil Verster at Metrolinx. Meanwhile, we somehow find the money to pay his 59 vice-presidents and 19 C-suite executives. Meanwhile, we have projects like the Eglinton Crosstown, which is a billion dollars over budget and three years late.

We’ve got some work to do to get transit back on track. There are elements of this bill that I like that move in that direction, and I’m happy to rise as the transit critic in this province to speak to those. But I remind this government again: The province of Ontario is bigger than the city of Toronto. It’s a wonderful place, and I agree with the government members who said we have to recognize Toronto’s special place in Ontario. But the rest of this province needs a new deal for transit too, and we need to see it now.

It was great to hear the presentation this morning from my colleague from Ottawa. I was, however, slightly confused during parts of the presentation, because on one hand, the member rails against one of the primary features of the deal between the Premier and the mayor of Toronto, which is the completion of the Ontario Place partnership and the building of a water park and what he describes as a luxury spa, and on the other hand, he tries to take credit for the NDP in negotiating such a great deal with the Premier of Ontario. That’s certainly the tack that the leader of Ontario’s New Democrats has taken the last number of days.

So I’m wondering, is he going to vote against the bill and support the leader of Ontario’s New Democrats, or is he going to vote for the bill and support the most powerful New Democrat in Ontario, the mayor of Toronto?

Before we move on to questions, I want to recognize that Peter Meligrana from the riding of Kingston and the Islands is today’s page captain, and he is being visited by his grandparents: his grandmother Hiltrudis Meligrana and his grandfather Francesco Meligrana. They have been married for 60 years and have lived in Parkdale–High Park the entirety of their marriage, and are excited to be here today to support Peter during his page captain day. Welcome.

Questions?

I want to congratulate my colleague from Ottawa for his comments. Speaker, the people of this province have serious trust issues with this government and for very good reason. This is the first time, I think, in the history of this province that we have a government that’s being investigated by the RCMP for potential criminal wrongdoing.

This bill gives the government extraordinary powers to indemnify itself against legal action from a number of things: government misrepresentation, misconduct, misfeasance, bad faith, breach of trust, or breach of fiduciary obligation. The government is giving itself these powers so it can push through a luxury spa and this $650-million parking lot. My question is: Why do you think the government is giving itself these extraordinary powers?

I’m glad to ask the member a question. We put our focus very differently in our debates on this bill. I focused on schedule 2 and the unbelievable redevelopment plan of this government. But because the member focused on schedule 1, I will as well.

I have concerns. I’ve never in my nine and a half years seen before a legislated discussion, which doesn’t need to exist. There can be a discussion; there doesn’t need to be legislation that says, “Thou shalt have a conversation.”

Where I see concerns in here is that financial support for the city of Toronto for shelters and other homelessness programs and services is conditional on financial support from the government of Canada. The money is, of course, conditional upon money from the feds. This is a schedule that repeals itself once those legislated discussions have been had, and yet there is, indeed, no commitment for any outcomes from these discussions.

I’m holding my breath and hopeful. What does the member say?

I find it really rich when someone from Ottawa Centre starts giving advice on transit. That’s special. Then the member from Ottawa Centre is trying to give the NDP credit for this deal. What Olivia Chow did is that she decided to sit down with the Premier, with mutual respect, and come up with this deal. It is so many good things for Toronto, but it’s also good things for Ontarians. The Premier is known for deals for the benefit of Ontarians. The Minister of Economic Development speaks about it almost every day.

My question to the member is, does the member not know or believe that deals require two people, two parties with a focus—and the focus is for the benefit of Ontario—and is he going to support this bill?

What I’ll say to my friend from Orléans is this: This bill is before the House now, before debate, and our job in that debate is to scrutinize this bill heavily. That’s the job of the official opposition.

So really, this bill, in the end, as my friend from Oshawa was just telling me, is about committing to a conversation, and I think it’s a good thing that that conversation—so far, at least—is committing to real money going into operational transit. Do I have a problem with the fact that the government would seem to have a greater priority for a wellness spa that would cost $650 million to taxpayers in Toronto? That investment is greater than the investment contemplated for operational transit in this bill. So yes, I’ll say to my friend from Orléans, yes, I have a problem with that. But am I happy that this conversation is moving in a direction of more funding for transit? Great. He knows and I know, though, that the transit needs of Ontario are much bigger than the city of Toronto. We need a new deal for transit everywhere.

The richness of advice from Ottawa Centre on transit has not been lost on this government. I know, because we fought for two years for a public inquiry into stage 1 of our LRT system and we won. We won. We finally got the government to listen to us. So we’re happy to offer the richness of that advice every day.

The member is right: The Premier is known for his deals in this place. Half the time I wonder, as I hear government members talk about red tape, if I’m going to walk into this building one day and see police tape wrapped around the Premier’s office because of the kinds of deals that have been publicly exposed that this Premier has been privy to negotiate. That’s on them. That’s their caucus meeting. That’s the presence they have to live with.

I am happy that in this bill before the House there is contemplation of real investments in operational transit. Am I happy about that, member? Yes, I am.

So, are we potentially moving into a good place with this commitment to a conversation? Yes. Is there a chance that there will be more money for operational transit in Toronto? Yes. Do we need it everywhere else in Ontario? Yes.