Good morning. Let us pray.

Prières / Prayers.

Resuming the debate adjourned on November 29, 2023, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 154, An Act to enact the Recovery Through Growth Act (City of Toronto), 2023 and the Rebuilding Ontario Place Act, 2023 / Projet de loi 154, Loi édictant la Loi de 2023 sur la relance portée par la croissance (cité de Toronto) et la Loi de 2023 sur la reconstruction de la Place de l’Ontario.

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.

It’s a pleasure to rise and discuss this new deal for the city of Toronto. It’s great to see everyone this morning—a little bit warmer today than it has been in the last couple of days here in the Big Smoke, and maybe that’s because of this deal that the city has now entered into with the province and is trying to get through.

I think, if I was a resident of Toronto, which, of course, I’m not, or if I was a politician in Toronto, if I was a member of provincial Parliament from Toronto—especially one from maybe downtown Toronto—and I was a New Democrat and my New Democratic mayor had just negotiated this deal with the Premier of Ontario, I would with think that this is a really good deal, because it’s going to support investment in affordable housing. It’s going to support investing in transit. It’s going to upload highways off of the backs of property taxpayers in Toronto and free up even more cash for the mayor of Toronto to be able to do with as she and her council pleases.

Unlike other New Democratic leaders, the mayor of Toronto has demonstrated that she can bring disparate elements together into a common cause. There are Conservatives, Liberals, New Democrats and probably others on Toronto city council that she’s been able to bring together. Obviously, she’s made a deal with a Conservative Premier in Ontario. I think that’s an example for other New Democratic leaders in the province who are currently having a little bit of difficulty bringing people together, who are having a little bit of difficulty keeping the team rowing in the same direction. I think there are some lessons that could be learned there.

It’s a very good sign, this legislation, that the Premier and his government are open to investing more in municipalities. We’ve seen over the last five years—and certainly since the pandemic began and is now behind us, we hope—that cities are struggling. They’re struggling with declining public transit ridership because of the nature of people’s workplace. There aren’t as many people travelling into downtowns of our cities and, therefore, there’s an enormous reduction in the number of people using public transit.

We’re dealing with an affordability crisis where the price of groceries is up, the price of provincially regulated hydroelectricity is up, the price of provincially regulated natural gas is up. The price of most of the things in our lives is up, and so the ability to provide some financial relief to Toronto taxpayers, whether that is through some kind of property tax action or investing in social services that will help people, is obviously very good for the city of Toronto.

But my question, as someone who lives in the city of Ottawa, is, does the government understand that there are more cities in the province than just Toronto? The Premier was very clear that he made a one-sided deal. He made a great deal for the city of Toronto, which he admitted was one-sided, because he loves his city. And I don’t blame him for loving his city. He grew up here. He represents a part of Toronto. I think we would all be silly to not say that we love our cities. Of course we love the communities that we all represent and the communities that many of us were born in.

The real question is, though, are other cities going to see some love? The city of Ottawa is the second-largest city in the province. There are a million people in Ottawa. If you include the metro region and if you include Glengarry, Prescott and Russell and going to Kemptville, and heading out into the Ottawa Valley into Renfrew, Nipissing, and Pembroke, you’re getting into 1.2, 1.3 million people. So, there are a lot of people in eastern Ontario as well that would like to see some love from the Premier, and I think part of our ongoing frustration is that over the last number of years, it doesn’t seem like that love has been there. There was an absence of love.

There was an absence of presence during the convoy protests. The government really didn’t take notice of what was happening in Ottawa and didn’t really say anything about the protests overall until the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor was being blockaded. That’s when the government decided to talk about the convoy situation.

When the derecho windstorm ripped through eastern Ontario in the spring of 2022, there was an absence of love from the Premier then. He came to Orléans. He came to the fire station on the Charlemagne Boulevard. It’s a fire station I know very, very well. He thanked those firefighters for their efforts in the recovery and he said that he would be there for the city of Ottawa. He said to the mayor that he would be there for the city of Ottawa. And as of the city’s budget process, which is ongoing right now, we’ve heard from the president and the chair of Hydro Ottawa that they’ve received no funding from the province to cover the—I think it’s $30 million or $40 million in costs they had to clean up from the derecho. The city of Ottawa itself has received no funding to help with its cleanup costs for the derecho. So again the question is, where is the love? Where is the love for Ottawa?

And it has continued since then. We know that Ottawa, as the second-largest city in the province, isn’t represented in the Premier’s cabinet. There are many—well, maybe not many, but there are certainly a few government members from Ottawa and the Ottawa region, and yet we don’t have a cabinet minister in the cabinet. We don’t have someone who can be that cabinet champion for investment in the National Capital Region, who can be on the phone with the mayor every week or occasionally to talk about the issues that are important to the city that relate to the provincial government and how they might move forward on them. We don’t have that representative who can be in contact with the federal minister for the National Capital Region to work on those issues collaboratively. So again, residents in Ottawa are wondering, where’s the love for Ottawa there?

An important part of this deal that the Premier has made with the mayor of Toronto is, of course, the uploading of the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway. I think that’s a very good deal for the property tax payers in Toronto. Property taxes aren’t really designed to pay for urban expressways like the DVP and the Gardiner, and that money that’s used on policing those highways, that’s used on repairing those highways, that’s used on snow-clearing for those highways, that’s used for lighting those highways—all of that money could be better spent on local roads, on side streets and collectors and main arteries that perhaps don’t get the care and attention that they need. Those policing resources can be better spent in the community to deal with the increase in violence that we’ve seen around the TTC and other areas of downtown Toronto. So there’s a great benefit to the city of Toronto and to taxpayers in Toronto for that upload.

Again, though, I ask, where’s the love? Because in Ottawa and in eastern Ontario, we have a very similar situation. We have an urban expressway, Highway 174/17, that travels from the centre of the city of Ottawa all the way out to basically the border of Quebec, through Orléans and through the riding of Glengarry–Prescott–Russell that is the responsibility of property tax payers of Ottawa and Glengarry–Prescott–Russell. That’s a highway that takes millions and millions and millions of property tax dollars each and every year to maintain. It requires additional policing. It requires an additional snow-clearing operation. When there are major events like the flooding we experienced in Ottawa or the sinkhole that we experienced on Highway 174, we’re talking about tens and tens of millions of dollars in both unforeseen but enormous costs to maintain that urban expressway, which is really a regional highway. The 174/17 in fact used to be part of the Trans-Canada Highway system, which I think should just in and of itself tell everyone that that’s not the kind of road that property tax payers should be paying for with property taxes. Property taxes should be used to pay for your local infrastructure: for the street that you live on, for the streets that your bus drives on, for the parks around the corner and for the rec centre your kids learn to swim at. It should not be paying for urban expressways.

So the upload of the Gardiner and the DVP in Toronto, I think, is a very good step. It’s a step in the right direction. It’s obviously a very good deal for the residents of the city of Toronto. But for the residents in Ottawa and the residents of other cities across the province who have similar situations, I think they are and will continue to ask, “Where is the love for our communities?” Because we have these same financial pressures.

I want to continue to talk about the city of Ottawa a little bit more because the government doesn’t have that member in cabinet to maybe share with their caucus the challenges that Ottawa is facing. I want to spend the next three or four minutes sharing some of those.

OC Transpo, which is the second-largest transit agency in the province, is running a $40-million deficit this year. They are cutting back bus routes—and I’m not talking about a bus route at 11:30 at night that’s got one person riding it; I’m talking about suburban connection routes that feed into the hub-and-spoke system of OC Transpo, two in particular in Orléans that travel past a community rec centre. It travels past a library, and it travels past a high school. These are the kinds of bus routes that are now being cut in the city of Ottawa because of the financial challenges that the city is facing.

The city is also facing challenges when it comes to affordable housing. In fact, right now, as the city is going through its budget process for the next fiscal year, it is contemplating and debating the purchase of those white military refugee-style tents. Imagine that—