I am glad to be able to take my place in this Legislature—at any time, I’m glad to be able to rise on behalf of the people of Oshawa, but certainly, to be able to stand and speak for a second time for a full hour, I am overjoyed.

Here we are, all of us together, for what will be a riveting one-hour lead. I’m pleased to be able to stand as the critic for the official opposition for infrastructure, transportation and highways. Today, as we have before, we are discussing Bill 153, which is the Building Infrastructure Safely Act.

Really, this is a focus on “Call before you dig.” When we think about digging into the ground to do a home project, if we’re putting in a deck, or whether we’re thinking about putting in broadband—hopefully, one day—across the province of Ontario, we want to know what lies beneath. We want to know that we’re not going to dig and accidentally turn out the lights, at best, or at worst, cause harm to workers or to community members. The “Call before you dig” or “Click before you dig” initiative is obviously an important thing that most of us are familiar with, as residents of Ontario.

I have a lot of voices to share today that were raised before the committee process, but also during the committee process, explaining why parts of this bill are important and also making some suggestions about the next steps for this agency, Ontario One Call, or for the government generally to keep eyes on.

Speaker, this is a bill that makes very small updates to the Ontario One Call system, which has already undergone two previous major updates in the past couple of years. Based on stakeholder reaction, it was something that came from, dare I say, extensive consultation within the stakeholder community and the industry community.

The need to call before you dig and build infrastructure safely is not a new idea for the NDP. In fact, the Ontario NDP co-sponsored a private member’s bill back in 2012—the former member for Hamilton East–Stoney Creek co-sponsored Bill 8, the Ontario Underground Infrastructure Notification System Act, with the member from Sarnia–Lambton. When we think about a private member’s bill, many of us who have had the opportunity to table one know that while it might be great and done with the best of intentions, it isn’t necessarily fleshed-out government legislation. That is why we are here and why we have been here before. That private member’s bill has had to evolve, because it ultimately established Ontario One Call as a single point of contact for all underground utility location services in Ontario, and there have needed to be improvements and changes as that agency and organization has come into its own, so to speak, and as they have received feedback from the broader stakeholder world, as I said.

Everyone agrees that locates are a key part of building safely. I’m glad to see, in this case—well, I would always be glad to see it, but in this case, I am able to say that I am pleased that the government did consultation, as we’ve heard from stakeholders. To me, it’s a novelty to be able to stand here and say “good job” on listening to folks—because that’s not usually what we hear. I’m glad to see them listening to excavators and infrastructure owners, and addressing their concerns about efficiencies, inefficiencies, backlogs.

We’re hoping that this is all that’s needed to make this process what it needs to be. We’ll be glad to discuss what we’ve heard from the building industry, environmental partners and municipalities about what is needed to build infrastructure safely in this province going forward.

And because the government has named this bill the Building Infrastructure Safely Act, it’s fair game for me to be able to spend some of this hour talking about other ways that the government could be building infrastructure safely outside of locates. Talking about locates for a full hour—I can do it; many can. But I just want to make sure that we get as much out of this and put as much into it as we can in that hour, so—

As I’m being heckled, Speaker, I will only once acknowledge the heckle: It is very exciting to talk about locates for an hour, but while I have the floor, I’m happy to also be excited about talking about other ways that this government could be building infrastructure safely or more safely.

Interjection.

I’m going to read a little bit from a press release from Ontario One Call. This is from their Dig Safe Month, but I think that information about safety—it’s always the right time to share this. This is from their press release, and I think it helps to illustrate to the folks at home what on earth we’re talking about. Locates may not be something that folks are super familiar with.

“Everyone has a role to play during April’s ‘Dig Safe Month’

“According to a recent survey, two out of three Ontarians planning to dig this year will inadvertently put themselves, their loved ones, and their community at risk by not requesting a locate through Ontario One Call.

“Digging without locates is dangerous and against the law....

“Ontario One Call is raising awareness about the need to ‘Click Before You Dig’ for any size excavation project.

“‘We are working with all our partners to ensure that everyone in Ontario understands that if they are planning to dig this year, by law, they must request a locate. That way buried infrastructure owners can identify where their vital cables, wires, and pipes are situated and provide locates,’ says Ontario One Call’s Director of Industry Engagement, Ian Simpson. ‘Everyone needs to dig safely, and the first step is to contact Ontario One Call and request a locate.’”

They have stats that they provided:

“There were 4,769 reported damages to buried infrastructure, which is an increase of 8% from the previous year (averaging 19 damages per day);

“—37% of reported damages were due to digging without locates (not requesting and/or digging before receiving a locate);

“—61% of damages caused by people digging without locates were on hazardous and dangerous infrastructure.

“These damages cost billions of dollars to repair and put people at risk. Under the law, if you dig without a locate you are subject to potential fines and liable for any damages....

“‘We do not provide the actual locates,’ says Simpson. ‘We are the one-stop shop that connects people who want to dig with the owners of infrastructure. There is no cost to request a locate through Ontario One Call and you will reduce your risk,’ says Simpson. ‘It’s a win-win.’

“If you are planting a tree, building a fence, replacing a mailbox, putting in a new garden, or planning to dig for any reason, you must follow these five steps.” Basically, the first step is to reach out to ontarioonecall.ca, request a locate—“wait for all buried infrastructure owners, like the gas, electric, Internet, water, and sewer companies to locate their infrastructure;” review the paperwork provided “to make sure there are no conflicts with where you want to dig;” and number five is to “dig safely.”

All of that to say, Ontario One Call came from that original private member’s bill to establish that one point of contact for anybody who’s wanting to dig safely. Now we have government legislation that has had to evolve—and that’s what we’re here doing, not just today, but have been doing through this process to make sure that indeed it meets the needs of the organization. It’s not a new idea, as I said.

Here’s an interesting piece from the Horticultural Trades Association. This is from an article from January 2012. I won’t ask the pages how old they are—but some of us might remember. This says, “At the provincial Legislature at Queen’s Park on December 2, the Ontario One Call Act, or Bill 8, received all-party support on second reading....

“This bill affects all of us in the landscape industry. It requires that all municipalities, utility firms, locate companies and other companies who have utility infrastructure in the ground be part of the One Call process....

“Presently, before digging commences, some landscape and excavation companies need to make as many as 13 calls to ensure that all underground wires, pipes, cables, gas mains, etc., are located. This is a major endeavour by the Ontario Regional Common Ground Alliance to unite the industry to support efforts to create an efficient, cost-effective and simple system....

“This legislation will save lives, make workers safe and provide an effective cost-efficient process to provide locates for all who live and work in Ontario.”

This, again, goes way back, and here we are, still talking about it, but I don’t see that as problematic if we continue to fine-tune and make improvements.

I was glad to have a briefing at the beginning of this process, when the bill first was tabled, and this is a bit of a summary as to what is accomplished in this bill. I’ll delve into some of these chunks. There are essentially four buckets of changes handled by this piece of legislation. The first one is prohibiting the infrastructure owners from charging for the locates. The current practice is to not charge—but the act is silent. This isn’t about anybody charging for locates. If I want to put in a deck and I call One Call, and Bell Canada provides the paperwork to let me know what’s there, I don’t get a bill for that. Obviously, it would be a deterrent if I had to pay money to get that information. Maybe I’ll think, “Oh, I’m sure it’s fine,” and then we’ll end up in a mess. However, the existing act that we’re amending with this bill is silent on fees. It doesn’t say you can, but it doesn’t say you can’t. This bill says, “Now you can’t.” There was some talk about Enbridge going to start charging $200 per locate—not for homeowners, but for excavators. They are going through the OEB process to figure out their costs and how to recoup them and whatnot. I’ll read a letter from them later. They backtracked on that; it was an idea and it’s not happening, but this bill makes sure it can’t.

The other bucket is better aligning One Call with other agencies. As I said, this bill initially came in as a private member’s bill. It wasn’t drafted by government whizzes in the back. So some changes are necessary to make, as we can understand.

Another bucket is removing a certain recourse provision in the act that excavators have—excavators being the folks who would be digging. Now don’t think about a deck; think about a massive infrastructure project. Think about, oh, I don’t know, one day a subway being built somewhere ever, or a significant building in downtown Toronto. We want to know, as I said, what lies beneath. So removing a certain recourse provision in the act that excavators have and allowing them to take the infrastructure owners to the Ontario Land Tribunal—it hasn’t been used to this point, but it removes that provision, anyway. I think that there’s still some discussion in the industry about what happens when things go wrong, but that’s outside the purview of this act.

The fourth bucket is to enhance the regulation-making authority that the minister has. Provisions for One Call are housed in the act. Some things that One Call would like to be more responsive—this allows the minister to establish. We can talk a bit more about that, but there were specific examples that felt a little in the weeds, and they were not controversial; they were more about an agency running its day-to-day affairs.

That’s what we’re talking about. That is the bill. We’re here at third reading; the bill has been to and through committee and out the other side. We had a number of presenters at committee.

We heard from the Electricity Distributors Association. They presented at committee, and I’ll share some of their thoughts:

“The EDA represents Ontario’s local hydro utilities, the part of our electricity system closest to customers. Publicly and privately owned utilities, otherwise known as local distribution companies (LDCs), deliver electricity to 5.4 million residential, commercial, industrial, and institutional customers—powering every community in the province.

“The sector owns more than $30 billion in electricity system infrastructure and invests more than $2.5 billion annually in the electricity grid. This sophisticated network of infrastructure delivers a significant amount of energy into which billions of dollars have been invested. A substantial proportion of this infrastructure is the subject of the matters considered within this proposal.”

Speaker, you can appreciate that an organization representing folks who have $30 billion in electricity system infrastructure would like to know who’s digging into it and have thoughts and opinions. They shared that they were supportive. They did say other feedback, though.

“As we outlined in our previous submission, we encourage the ministry to provide advanced visibility into locate requests. Currently, when a requestor submits a ‘work to begin date’ more than 10 days in advance,” Ontario One Call’s “system will suspend the request, and then only bring the request back online 10 days before the work needs to begin. This function doesn’t give LDCs a line of sight into projects in the queue because the requests are sitting in suspension until they hit the 10-day trigger. We recommend removing this operational hurdle to give LDCs earlier visibility of those advanced locate requests and allow them time to plan resources accordingly.” Well, that makes sense.

“We also welcome the opportunity to continue engagement with the ministry and OOC to further refine the categorization of locate types and the associated completion times as OOC’s system evolves and offers more flexibility. As OOC makes changes to its system and potentially more data stratification is available, it would be beneficial to further separate very large projects and consider excluding them from the AMPs regime given they can be delivered using the dedicated locator model.”

I’ll read one other part that they have shared here: “We wish to reiterate our appreciation to OOC for its collaborative work with the sector and the government’s leadership in continuing to build Ontario.” How often has it been in the last 10 years that I stand here and am able to share that industry partners and others have said that there was actually a collaborative process with the government? That’s good. Keep that up.

There were some other thoughts. People were supportive of what is in this bill. I will share, though, a little bit from the Independent Telecommunications Providers Association. This is from their committee submission:

“The Question of Jurisdiction”—oh, just a second. Hold on. Oh, well, this was interesting. I’ll flag this so that the—I figure that there are bureaucrats who will be watching this speech, who understand the guts of some of these comments more than I do at this stage. I’m not a locates expert. I’m learning along with you, Speaker, and other folks at home. One of the things that they have raised is:

“At the outset, as it relates to the regulation of underground infrastructure owned and operated by Canadian carriers, the ITPA submits that the province does not have the necessary jurisdiction to impose regulations on this infrastructure. This underground infrastructure, also known as telecommunications facilities, are under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission”—or the CRTC. “In its letter dated 10 February 2023, regarding the province’s administrative penalty regulations, the ITPA raised the issue of jurisdiction and requested a formal response from the province that provides the legal basis for provincial regulation of underground infrastructure in light of the settled fact of federal jurisdiction over telecommunications facilities in Canada. To date, the ITPA has not received a response to this request. The ITPA reiterates its request for a formal response from the province.”

Interesting. I won’t speak to the merit of their challenge or their question here, but they’re waiting for a response, and that’s a matter of jurisdiction. Maybe answer their letter.

Anyway, it says, “However, as it is currently structured, the system is open to gaming by the excavation industry. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that the environment on excavator side of the locate regime is the equivalent of the ‘wild, wild west’.”

Some of the challenges raised here is that excavators abuse the locate request mechanism through poor planning or wilful disregard for any party’s interest other than their own. For example, ITPA members report instances where excavators—remember, excavators are the people who want to dig—request locates for both sides of a street and then build on only one side of the street. Excavators order locates too far in advance of actual construction, so that the locate goes “stale,” and then request a fresh duplicate locate. Excavators order multiple locates on the same parcel of land. Excavators engage in locate ticket dumping or flooding the system with locate tickets.

Here is an example: A fencing contractor canvassed a neighbourhood providing free quotes and ordered locates for the entire neighbourhood at the same time so the company is in a position to begin construction if one or more homeowners accepts the quote.

These are interesting, very specific examples. But I appreciate that they are raising it because, within the broader provincial framework that seems to be basically agreed upon with Ontario One Call, I think that the folks at Ontario One Call and the government can kind of take that back and figure out, how do we ensure that it’s the best use of people’s time and safety, and that we don’t have actors, in this case, that are maybe taking advantage of the fact that it’s free and, as they said, the Wild West? But when we’re thinking about massive infrastructure projects or a neighbour who is wanting to do work around their property, this looks like it’s the right fit in those cases, especially with these changes.

They raise some other issues because, again, with this Independent Telecommunications Providers Association, these are not the large companies like Enbridge, right? They’re independent telecoms folks. They’ve made a point here: “Unlike large companies such as Enbridge, small business such as ITPA members do not have the capability to flow through costs incurred via the locate regime to a customer base that numbers in the millions. Enbridge’s large customer base enables it to limit the cost impact of the regime on a customer-by-customer basis. ITPA members do not have the same luxury,” and moreover, unlike ITPA members, Enbridge does not operate in a competitive market.

So remembering the small business piece of this in comparing to some of the big dogs, I think that that needs to inform the continued improvements going forward.

Government members have this submission as well, and they can take a look, but there were a series of thoughtful suggestions by the Independent Telecommunications Providers Association.

We heard from Cogeco: “Cogeco commends the government of Ontario for continuing to address lingering challenges with locates, and for actively engaging with industry stakeholders throughout the process that led to the tabling of Bill 153.” They say, “The passage of Bill 153 will play a crucial role in expediting broadband deployment, which will support the government’s objective of achieving full connectivity by 2025.”

I’m so excited to talk about broadband. But even more than that, I would really love for the government to reassure me that we are ever, in my lifetime—pages, in your lifetime—going to see broadband across the province, because, to be reminded of the government’s stated objective of having that full connectivity before the next election, by 2025, if that’s right, I don’t think that this bill has been what’s standing in the way. We don’t see the broadband yet. You can tell me it’s coming, but we haven’t seen the dollars get spent. I’ll talk about that in a bit.

One of the other things that I would say here that Cogeco has raised is they say. “While we support Bill 153, we would like to seize this opportunity to remind the government that significant labour shortages in the locating industry are causing significant delays in the fulfillment of infrastructure projects across Ontario. The recent launch of the Accelerated High Speed Internet Program has brought about an increased demand for locates, thereby exacerbating an already precarious situation. In the last year, a number of Cogeco’s broadband expansion projects were put on hold for many months due to a shortage of locators. If left unaddressed, this underlying issue will continue to have negative impacts on all underground infrastructure owners and excavators.

“We encourage the government to continue addressing labour shortages across the locating industry, particularly through investments in skills training.”

So those are some thoughtful suggestions, and I think it’s stuff we’ve talked about in this room before, but what I had just said is that this particular bill isn’t going to help us get the broadband faster. Recognizing that someone in the business, Cogeco in this case, has said that in addition to this bill, we need to focus on labour shortages and some of those challenges, right—that’s outside of this bill, but a next step for us to keep working with, because broadband matters a lot. I know that we all sing that same song. We want to make sure that we get there.

Actually, while I’m talking about broadband, let’s review a couple of stats here. The government has announced significant spending. Everybody across party lines has been in agreement that this is what is needed. Whether we’re talking about agricultural business needing the connectivity, kids at home doing their homework, small-business folks working from home, all of us in this space—no matter where we look, from banking to libraries, our world is online, and we have that need to have broadband expanded.

I had raised concerns in this chamber, and I continue to have them, about the last-mile connection. So even if we get broadband from this government, if it is indeed coming, I worry about the last-mile folks. What I mean by that is the rural or—it’s not always that remote or rural, but the folks that it isn’t lucrative for the big broadband companies to connect them. They’re not making the money on it, so who is going to chase them and make sure that it happens?

We’ve had reassurances from this government that it will, it will, it will, but the contracts have gone to the bigger Internet service providers and not the local smaller Internet service providers. Now, they may be contracted for some of that work but, again, by the bigger ones. They couldn’t even get into the process. We understand that many of them had to sign non-disclosure agreements to even be able to get that initial information to be able to get into the bidding process or find out about it. And those regions, the parcels of land—some of the smaller Internet service providers, which might be local and do an excellent job in our community, can’t compete. If they look at that map chunk and say, “Wait a second, we don’t have the infrastructure, the equipment or the human resources to be able to serve that whole area. I guess I can’t bid. I can’t compete on that”—whereas they would be fantastic in their smaller home community and have a vested interest, both because they have a business reputation and because it’s their neighbours—maybe their neighbours in Nickel Belt—that they want to connect. So it’s been a process that—I have been disappointed to see that a lot of them were knocked out initially.

But when I look at the money that’s been allocated—and I take us back in time to estimates and looking at public accounts—the 2022-23 interim actual for rural broadband infrastructure was $76.7 million. That was just 11% of the previous year’s $693-million broadband budget. So that was an underspending, and it was an underspending problem that started before that, okay? There have been lots of announcements. There has been very little action on the ground that we can point to. The government can correct me if they can show where that money has been going or flowing, but what we’re seeing is, according to the public accounts, this government spent only 3.6% of its $405.6-million broadband budget. In 2021-22, 3.6% was spent. It spent only 1.37% of its broadband budget in the 2020-21 year and spent zero the year before that.

So we’ve got four straight years in which the government has failed to spend the vast majority of its broadband budget.

Back in February 2023, so a year ago, at that time, the government had underspent on infrastructure by $700 million, including broadband and ICIP projects, which were delayed. Now, that was a year ago. Let’s flash forward to this February: the third-quarter finances—this is February 2024—a $451-million decrease in planned expenditures due to an updated construction schedule for the broadband program. This is an in-year cut to planned broadband spending of nearly 70%. I have no idea how much the government will actually end up spending—maybe all of it; we’re only in Q3. Again, the government is failing to spend the broadband expansion money. Evidently, the government has its priorities, and we stand here hoping to be reassured with evidence, but what we see is a focus on spending public dollars on Therme’s luxury spa at Ontario Place, but we don’t see the connectivity; we don’t see the broadband. Rural folks who are waiting so patiently for broadband—I wonder when they’re going to finally notice and start getting mad. The government might start spending money on broadband when that happens.

Back to talking about locates and calling before you dig: As Cogeco, who does the work and is in the broadband and in the Internet business, has said, there’s some human resource pieces and labour shortages but there’s not anything in this particular bill that is holding up broadband—not specific to this. I wouldn’t say that’s a missed opportunity. I haven’t heard from either any on the excavator side or the industry side that there’s a challenge with locates in regard to that.

I had mentioned earlier that Enbridge had kind of—I won’t say “threatened,” but there had been talk that there was going to be a $200 per locate and for every relocate request, which was looming. They rescinded that or they clarified that that was not going to happen. Again, back to this bill and what’s actually in this bill: There can’t be fees, so that can’t happen.

Speaker, we’ve talked about the industry side of things. One of the things that I will mention is that the backlog of getting locates is really challenging to smaller communities, more rural communities. When we knew that this bill was coming back to the House for third reading and through committee, we had a conversation—and talking to my colleague from Nickel Belt, there are a lot of folks in rural communities that when they pick up the phone and want to call to get those locates and make sure it’s safe to dig, it’s unbelievable how long it takes. If that’s the case, if they pick up the phone and call Ontario One Call and they’ve got to wait too long, they’re going to not call or they’re just going to move forward, and we all cross our fingers.

I think that if Ontario One Call can take that back and do the math on how to make sure, on the customer service side, that the actual residential locates process is faster—and I think that maybe speaks to the labour shortage. That may be a part of it, but we’ve got to make sure that we do things safely.

Speaker, this bill, as I have said, is called the Building Infrastructure Safely Act. People in Ontario want infrastructure built. People in Ontario want that infrastructure to meet their needs. They want it to reflect what it is that communities or cities are asking for, are needing, what they depend on. They want to know that their roads are going to be safe to travel on and not deteriorate. They want to know that buildings, whether they’re residential, a hospital or a mall, are not going to fall down around them, that it’s going to stand the test of time—all of that, right? We want infrastructure physically to be built safely, but we also need infrastructure to be built based on plans, not just whims. I think that sounds like common sense and yet.

When we see rushed process, we see less safety. I have an article here, and I am happy to bring it back and share it again because it’s one that I still just shake my head about, and I know there are some members in this room who remember when I shared it the first time and probably enjoyed it not as much as I did. Regarding minister’s zoning orders, it’s entitled “Ford Government Forced to Fix Rushed Zoning Order That Put Tower on Flight Path.” This is a Global News piece, November 2023: “The Ford government was forced to scale back a minister’s zoning order after the developer was given permission to build a skyscraper right in the middle of the flight path of Pearson International Airport, sources told Global News, after a rushed process.

“Months after it was issued, the zoning order was quietly amended when airport officials told the government it couldn’t allow a 50-storey tower to be built on a flight path utilized by hundreds of aircraft.”

Now, I will be fair that I don’t know it was that obvious. I’m not making excuses, but I don’t think it was a really busy flight path. My understanding is it might have been a bit of an emergency, once-in-a-while flight path.

The point still stands that if you’re going to build a 50-storey tower, you would hope that by the time it comes to you to approve, there are plans and due diligence has been done. When we have a rushed process, we have problems, and we have embarrassing headlines. Fortunately, we don’t have people living in a flight path or we don’t have office workers in a flight path, and fortunately, we don’t have emergency flights having to go around a surprise building.

Now, it says, “The gaffe is likely to draw more scrutiny to the province’s use of minister’s zoning orders or MZOs, a controversial tool that allows the province to overrule and replace planning decisions made by local councils.”

Speaker, I see it. I see it often. I see it locally. All of us know Orchard Villa. We’ve heard that name. I don’t think we’ll hear that name much going forward except by the families and except by the people who want to remember it. But the people who want to turn the page—corporate entities, perhaps this government—it’s being rebranded. The government, in an MZO, is allowing for a 30-year licence extension, a whole whack of new beds and a rebuild and a rebrand. And the care that had been provided by Extendicare—in the military reports, people died; it was awful. Extendicare is not in the mix anymore. It’s a whole new company to provide the care. In fact, it’s a company that, to the best of my knowledge, has never existed before, has no track record and is connected, I believe, to the building owners, to Southbridge homes. It’s called “south care” or “Southbridge care,” something like that.

Anyway, in all of this, we’re talking about building infrastructure safely, but we also want infrastructure to be built for safety. We’ve got loved ones in long-term care. I have stood in this place and said that that building, that process has been a mistake. The Pickering council, and I know Pickering council—there’s politics all over the place in Durham region and relationships all around this room, and that’s fine. That’s going to happen. Welcome to Ontario. But that council said that they had wishes and that MZO ran roughshod over them. It was against what the council had wanted. And now we have the families—the families of Orchard Villa and the Ontario Health Coalition have taken legal action against this government in trying to prevent this 30-year licence extension.

So we want infrastructure built, but we need it to be safe, and we want the reassurances that—look, if the government wants to say that Southbridge has now turned over a new leaf and they’re magic and sunshine and they have made all of the changes and they’re going to be awesome and care is just going to be top-notch, why are they still even willing to risk a 30-year gamble on that assumption? Right? They don’t have the track record to back up 30 years. I’m not standing here saying, “We’ll give them a five-year one and then we’ll re-evaluate.” This has been a reward for poor behaviour, but without something to point to that justifies it or reassures communities.

So while this bill might be about locates, we are watching decisions being made that are going around the planning process, a rushed process. We definitely have safety in mind in the Durham region. The Pickering community—but it’s not only Pickering. Families in my riding have loved ones that were at Orchard Villa.

I’m talking about 50-storey towers that might have been built right in the middle of a flight path to Pearson airport. I’m talking about long-term-care buildings; we want to ensure that the government has done its homework to make sure that there will be safe care. There’s lots to talk about. When we see infrastructure being built, we want to know that it’s being built well and with safety in mind.

This is a government that has such—I was going to say “obsession,” but they have such commitment. This government has made such a commitment to P3s and building things with the P3 model, and ideologically I am opposed to big giant consortiums who get to take the reins and make decisions and we don’t get to put eyes on projects mid-game. How do we know, when the province puts together a contract with a big financial consortium who hires everybody and all the contractors—they do this and they say, “Trust us. We’re going to build something, and I promise it will be on budget and on time.” But then it’s not, and we pay a 30% premium to be able to transfer the risk to the private sector and off the public. That’s the best the Auditor General can rationalize this 30% premium that we pay for P3s.

But when often we see these massive projects be super delayed and way over budget—let’s think for a minute. These massive financial consortiums, it’s not in their best interest to deliver on budget or on time. It’s in their best interest to drag their feet and make more money, fundamentally.

The other problem is, it’s in this black box or behind the P3 curtain, where I’ve seen people in this Legislature ask the former Minister of Transportation, “Why is this project over budget?” or “What’s happening? What’s the delay?” And we don’t, as a government, have the ability to get those answers. I didn’t see her able to get those answers. I think more broadly—not that minister—when we sign our rights away to peek behind the curtain, and just get the project back at the end, we don’t get to know, and that’s a problem. We’re talking about building infrastructure safely. How do you know it’s safe?

I’ve got an hour to kill, so why not: I remember when I was the critic for community safety and correctional services, and I would show up at jails—the front door, by the way—and do surprise tours. I went to, I think—I’d have to look at my notes—17 of our provincial jails, and a number of probation and parole offices.

I remember being at the Toronto South Detention Centre getting a tour—and this is super in the weeds, but I don’t care. That building was built as a P3, and when I got the tour, walking around both with the management side and the union side, they were pointing out physical things in this jail that were so dumb—and when I say “dumb,” I mean so dumb, like design things that were just dumb: Where the drains were in the showers, they weren’t built with the right grade, so the water was running into living areas instead of into the drain; they had to put towels on the floor. It was just things where you think, “Have you never built a floor before?”

There were other challenges that I remember—and I still don’t know who paid for this; maybe some bureaucrat wants to send me a note who paid for this. But there were areas in that jail where inmates are transported from one section to another, so it was still inmate areas. It was found out after it was handed back after the P3, after they had commissioned this jail, did all the contracts—bought and paid for; the jail comes back to provincial hands—there were inmate areas where the glass was breakable. Breakable glass, and they were like, “Oh, no. That’s not safe.”

Do you know what? It turned out that in the contract, we the government or whatever had not specified that it needed to be not-breakable glass. Even though it was a jail, they did it to condo specs in that section. I remember thinking, “What are you talking about?” This is so in the weeds, and it’s a bit absurd that I’m telling this story. All of that breakable glass in the jail had to be replaced, and we’re on the hook for it because we didn’t specify that it not be condo spec in that one section—super nitty-gritty and ridiculous. But you extrapolate that nugget to massive infrastructure projects—billions of dollars—where we don’t have access to those contracts, and we just have to trust that they were done well.

I’ve spent a lot of time at committee talking about real estate—and I don’t mean today; that’s a different bill. I’m talking about the realty portfolio specific to hospitals years ago—and it was the same thing that we were asking Ehren Cory at the time, who was the head of Infrastructure Ontario: “Have you learned your lessons about how to write contracts for these P3s and the hospitals?” We kept getting into messes. I remember being sort of reassured with, “Yes, we are looking at the lessons that we learned.” Oh, my gosh.

So are we still signing contracts where we are not specifying jail glass instead of condo glass, and then the taxpayer is on the hook for 30 years of maintenance of this glass and replacing it? I’m in the weeds.

This bill is called Building Infrastructure Safely Act. I think when you involve the public, folks who know what they are talking about, rather than the private consortium—their goal is to make money for their investors. Why would they do things well? Why would they do things on time? Why would they do things on budget?

I’m surprised I’m not getting yelled at more that I’m against P3s—and that’s what they tuck themselves in with at night. Still, this is the Building Infrastructure Safely Act, and I get to raise in my hour lead other things to consider for how to build infrastructure safely.

Interjection.

And the member from Kitchener–Conestoga—I appreciate his enthusiasm for my one-hour lead.

Speaker, as we’re talking about building infrastructure safely, I would like to raise a couple of points that have been raised by a member of my community. His name is Jim McEwen. I imagine that there are members of the government who have also received letters from Jim through the years. He sends lots of emails and has thoughtful comments. He has been raising an issue, I think, with all members across Durham region about the Bowmanville GO expansion. I’m looking across at my colleague from the riding of Durham. We are excited about the GO train to Bowmanville. We want the Bowmanville GO train. We want it, and I have been reassured it’s coming. I don’t want to cast aspersions. I want it just as much as everybody else across Durham region, and I want it built safely.

So I’m going to raise his challenges because I’ve raised it when I talked directly to Metrolinx, and I get no reassurance. I have raised this in this House, and everybody looks at me and thinks, “I wonder if that’s a real thing?” And I get no reassurance. So I’m going to do it again.

Jim McEwen has written to me and written to the folks at Metrolinx and government members, and this is just a piece of one of his letters. He said, “Knowing of how restricted the topography is in west Oshawa, please explain to me how Metrolinx/Stantec plan to build the new railway link between the Oshawa station and the bridge over Hwy. 401 to a grade of 1-2 per cent and while utilizing a horizontal curve in compliance with national railway standards? A passenger train cannot make a sharp 90 degree turn as suggested in your documents....

“And please do not hide behind the design/build process, because as the proponent and in accordance with the Ontario EA Act, Metrolinx has a duty to prove engineering feasibility with your recommended solutions.”

That is a lot of specific stuff, and when I have met with Metrolinx and said, “Please put my mind at ease, because I have got an inbox full from Mr. McEwen raising specifics around the safety of this curve, the angles, the type of train—the diesel train.”

He said, “A diesel locomotive cannot descend a 4 per cent grade and make a sharp 90 degree turn into the existing Oshawa station.” And it goes on with more specifics.

To date, I am unaware of a response that puts his mind at ease, or mine.

In fact, continuing on from there, when I have spoken to them at Metrolinx, I’ve said, “I read in the news that you don’t have any engineers on staff.” They don’t. They have told me that they contract engineers as needed. Fine. Hopefully, there’s an engineer who can ensure that this train that is going to be travelling over the 401, not too far from where I live, actually, in Oshawa—and we’re watching the bridge happen. Can somebody just say, “Yes, don’t worry, Oshawa and everybody on the train. Someone has done due diligence”?

As far as the point of order that he raised, in this hour lead, I have been very glad to be able to stay very close to the title. If the government wanted to name it “only talk about locates,” then, yes, I’d be limited. But the government chose to call this bill Building Infrastructure Safely Act. So I’m excited to have that opportunity to talk about ways to build infrastructure safely.

In the first 40 minutes or so, I was very happy to be able to “dig deep” into the locates topic—

Anyway, the Building Infrastructure Safely Act is, yes, about locates. I’ve had 40 minutes to talk about that. But when we’re wanting to build infrastructure safely, we want to stop skipping planning steps; we want to see environmental assessments; we want folks to call before they dig. That’s an NDP collaboration from back in the day with Sarnia–Lambton, as I talked about earlier. But we also want to hire engineers—

God, I’m really sorry to folks—

Speaker, I’m going to digress again—just for the member from Kitchener–Conestoga. I had all morning and all day at committee, where I was also glad to give the government what for on a couple of things and talk. Apparently, I’m out of practice. I did not think that I could talk more than my voice could handle. I’ve been teaching for many years, and I’ve been an elected member for 10. I didn’t think I’d ever have a problem talking.

Anyway, one of the other pieces I wanted to raise while I’ve got a couple of minutes is the need for engineers to be more involved or to be involved in processes to—did somebody send me cough drops?

Interjection.

Thank you to all of my colleagues for the cough drops. I don’t think I’m sick; we’ll find out tomorrow.

Speaker, as we’re talking about building infrastructure safely, I wanted to be able to share something from a submission that was made by the Professional Engineers Government of Ontario. These are the folks who are professional engineers who work in different government ministries. PEGO—the Professional Engineers Government of Ontario—members deliver some of the largest infrastructure projects in the province. They write standards, codes and regulations. They approve major industrial projects and enforce and regulate environmental projects and operations. This includes the provincial highway network, the Ontario building code, land surveying, food safety, workplace safety, safe drinking water—speaking of safe drinking water, thank you, Paras—and clean air.

Speaker, as Ontario grows, its infrastructure and public service needs are growing too, and as we’re building our roads and our clean water systems and infrastructure, we want to know that people can rely on them. We want to make sure engineers have eyes on the projects and are involved in the planning.

To my earlier comment: Metrolinx doesn’t have any engineers on staff. I forget how many executives they’ve got and whatnot, but they don’t have engineers. They contract those out.

The Professional Engineers Government of Ontario work across government ministries to make sure that the government does things well and that we have infrastructure, we have projects that somebody who knows what the metrics should be and knows what the safety requirements are—that they have been involved. For example, I don’t think there are any who work in the Ministry of Energy; somebody can correct me, but that’s my understanding. That’s a little scary. But they are much less expensive than contracting out to the private sector. For every dollar that’s spent on the professional engineers in the government, we spend more than $10 on the private sector. About 30 years ago, they did about 40% of the engineering work in Ontario; now, based on the figures, it looks like less than 5%. That means that we—you as a government, but we as a province—are now contracting out and not relying on in-house, which surprises me. I would think the government would want information, knowledge and wisdom to be in-house. It means that private sector engineers are often compensated double the rate of the engineers who work in the government of Ontario. They charge 200% to 300% more for the same work of this government.

This government is always looking for ways to be more efficient, but let’s also look at that efficiency coming with safety. If you compare that work, why on earth wouldn’t you want that engineering expertise, the industry expertise, to be in-house? Maybe the government would have less opportunities to repeal all of their good ideas if they actually did their due diligence.

Anyway, as I am looking at the clock, I will say I am finally coming to the end of this one-hour lead, which is the second one-hour speech on locates I have given as the very proud and enthusiastic critic for infrastructure, transportation and highways.

I think that the take-away from this and all legislation that has to do with building infrastructure is that we want it done well. Yes, people want it done quickly and they want it done predictably. They want a start date and an end date that they can count on. The government has a lot of improving to do in that regard. But where this piece of legislation is concerned, I will say it is it a novel thing to be able to stand in this House and say that I hear there was a collaborative process and consultation went well, that industry and community stakeholders were in agreement with what is presented in this bill. That sounds like a new way—kind of an old-fashioned way—of governing, and I would like to see more pieces of legislation that actually went through a process and out the other side.

Speaker, I’m a little bit early, but I am glad to be finished my hour and to again have my voice on the record.

As I have said, this is a bill that came forward initially—so, many moons ago, the private members’ bill that was a collaborative effort between the member from Sarnia–Lambton and the former member from Hamilton East–Stoney Creek. There is nothing contentious in this bill; there wasn’t in that private members’ bill.

When you talk about the northern call centre—I just want to flag for the minister the comments from the member from Nickel Belt and others who have highlighted the challenges of northern community members and One Call, or getting those locates inside a timely way. That continues to be on a case-by-case basis. There are still improvements to be made, but that’s outside of this bill.

Everything I’ve heard from folks, with the few exceptions I highlighted, seems supportable. We’ll have to wait and see.

I’m telling you that not to be able to defend something the government is doing, but to be able to say to the government, “Look what happens when you learn from people who do the work. You get a piece of legislation that we don’t crumple up and throw back at you and that you won’t have to repeal.” Anyway, they’re lessons for everyone.

I’m pretty sure she’s not allowed to suggest that I am doing misinformation, but, Speaker, if you’re going to let her, then I guess I will.

A few things: The Ontario Place stuff—

However, what the member suggested was misinformation that came to the floor—that story, “Ford Government Forced to Fix Rushed Zoning Order that Put Tower on Flight Path.” I’m referring to a Global News piece posted on November 6, 2023. It explained the whole thing about the rushed process, what happened. It’s a three-pager. So if it’s misinformation, please let Isaac Callan and Colin D’Mello know.

Everybody in here is rooting for broadband for everyone. So the fact that we have seen this pattern of underspending—why? How come?

I think not specific to this bill but to broadband generally: When you’re working with municipalities or regions that have suggestions, sometimes government can be almost too rigid. If they’re looking for applications on a particular funding thing, then innovative ideas might not fit and then we miss an opportunity. I have examples of that that I’m hearing from communities about ways to make things better. We need to make sure that those ideas can move forward.

They’re still there.