Next question?

On the subject of court cases and on another decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, I note that in a court case which this PC government undertook to defend responsible government in the province of Ontario, the Supreme Court of Canada said the following: “In Canada’s constitutional democracy, the confidentiality of cabinet deliberations is a precondition to responsible government.... Responsible government is a fundamental principle of Canada’s system of government....” That is from the Supreme Court of Canada, in a case which this government undertook to defend, defending the principles of democracy against an attack by the CBC. We had to fight that all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, and we won, because on this side, in this caucus, the PC caucus, we believe that responsible government and democratic traditions are very—

All of us together fighting the carbon tax will make a difference, because at a certain point something has to give. We can’t have carbon taxes of 28% and 29% on people’s heating bills. We live in a cold country. People need to heat their homes. We can’t have a federally imposed carbon tax, loved by the Liberals, pretending that they’re making life better for anyone through a tax.

Everybody knows this is not working. Everybody in Richmond Hill knows this is not working. The federal Liberal carbon tax has to die. We have to kill that tax. The PC government of the province of Ontario says, scrap the carbon tax.

But let me talk about the Supreme Court of Canada judgment that we actually fought all the way to the Supreme Court against the carbon tax. They didn’t support us doing that either, right? They didn’t want to fight the carbon tax, but the Supreme Court of Canada said it’s a federal Liberal carbon tax, and the federal Liberal carbon tax was imposed by Justin Trudeau and the federal government had the right to do that. Now, you can argue with me all day long, but you can’t argue with the Supreme Court of Canada.

I want to thank the member from Essex for his comments. I often find the member’s eloquence very entertaining, for sure. It was like a National Geographic commercial—a lot of anthropology trips down memory lane there.

The member made a case that the Premier we currently have is one of most environmental Premiers ever. I actually wonder, from one perspective, if he isn’t good at recycling our time, because we spent 72 hours in this place undoing legislation that the members opposite have proposed. Let’s go through it, shall we? Bill 124, Bill 28, the greenbelt fiasco, the urban boundary dispute. The Premier is famous for recycling—but recycling hot air in this place. I’m wondering if it’s embarrassing, frankly, to be part of a government that brings legislation into the House only to redo it later. I think it’s a waste of our time. I think it’s a waste of time to be using the lawyers hired to serve the province of Ontario to go fight court cases that are unwinnable.

So I’m wondering, because the member has talked about making life more habitable, if he thinks it wouldn’t be more habitable for this House to be working on legislation that doesn’t just have to get ripped up a few months later.

It’s hard to figure out where to begin with the comments from my colleague from Essex, so let’s do a history lesson here, because they are saying the carbon tax is not their tax.

My colleague talked eloquently about the backtracking this government does. When the current Conservatives were elected to form government, we had cap-and-trade, which meant the big polluters—industry—paid for carbon emissions. This government came in and scrapped that and brought in the carbon tax. And so it is really—“comical” is the word I’m going to use, because the other word is unparliamentary—that the member opposite is talking about how great they are, because they went to the Supreme Court fighting the carbon tax, when it was your carbon tax.

In essence, what we have seen is another example of something like the greenbelt, where the government does something, gets caught, the public doesn’t like it, and they pretend they’re taking a hard stance and going in the opposite direction. I will remind the member opposite: Two days ago—

Thank you to our member for mentioning the work this government has been trying to do to get life more affordable. The people in Richmond Hill have been complaining about how everything has been so expensive, and I’m happy that this bill is getting to it with making life more affordable—with the exception of the carbon tax.

I just cannot understand why we still have this problem of the carbon tax. People in Richmond Hill have been complaining as they go to the gas pump, and they didn’t even realize about the heating problem—29%. How can we work on this, getting rid of the carbon tax?

It is now time for questions.

Further questions?

Response?

It’s great to have the member from Essex here. We can see how the people of southwestern Ontario support our government in electing you as our first member for Essex in many, many years, replacing the current opposition’s member from the NDP.

We know where they stand on affordability. We know where the opposition stands. The NDP and the Liberals never saw a tax or a fee they didn’t want to hike, whether it’s tolls, taxes, energy costs.

We’ve taken many initiatives within this government. Could I ask the member, how and what in this particular bill—how is it going to help regular families? How is it going to help them save costs in driving their kids to soccer etc.? How is it going to save money and put money back in their pocketbooks?

To the member from Essex: This newest attempt of a Conservative bill has nothing to do with making life affordable as far as I’m concerned. It eliminates tolls that do not exist while ignoring the tolls that do exist, all in the name of making life more affordable, yet the only highway in Ontario raising their tolls in 2024 is the 407, the legacy of this PC government. However, instead of fixing that mistake or removing the tolls from the portion the province owns, they are choosing tokenism over real action.

How does the government justify these actions as sufficient responses to Ontario’s urgent housing crisis, health care system strains and the rising cost of living? I’m sure you see it all in your riding. Please explain to the people of Ontario how this Conservative government is going to make life more affordable besides getting rid of tolls that don’t exist.

What an interesting morning. We’re debating Bill 162, the Get It Done Act. I actually prefer the member for Oshawa’s expression of the “giant nothing burger act.” I think that’s right on the nose. This is basically a nothing bill. I know the members opposite are going to criticize me. They’re going to point out a couple of little, tiny things. But honestly, the number one issue since 2022, when all of us were elected or re-elected, is affordability. Freezing a fee that already exists, these minor little steps that you’re doing, is insulting to the people of Ontario.

This weekend, I was going to make sausages for my kids. We like to barbecue a little bit. I stopped by the grocery store, and a pack of buns was seven bucks. I can afford seven bucks, but I am not spending seven bucks on a pack of hot dog buns, so we had something else for dinner. That’s the reality for people; it’s not that things are slightly more expensive.

Don’t tell me it’s the carbon tax forcing Galen Weston to gouge me for seven bucks for a pack of buns. It’s a greedy grocer gouging me. When you knock on doors, and you tell people that it’s not because you’re letting greedy Galen Weston get away with this, you are insulting their intelligence, and they’ll call you out for it.

This is a pretend bill. This is to slow down the conversations about the greenbelt scandal and the RCMP investigations. There are things that we could be doing—should be doing—here that would help people have better lives. That’s what we should be talking about this morning.

This morning I had an interview with the CBC, and we were talking about the wildland firefighters. Why don’t they have presumptive cancer coverage? We did it for urban firefighters, and I think it’s great that we did it. I want to thank Jeff Burch for that. I want to thank the Minister of Labour, the previous one and the new one—I’m not playing favourites. This is what we can do for people that makes their lives better, that makes their families better.

Wildland firefighters being told to put a wet handkerchief over their mouths—that doesn’t do anything. And I’ll be honest with you, I doubt they do that, because when you tell someone to do something ridiculous, that doesn’t make sense, they’re not going to do it.

For more than 200 days, these workers have been asking the Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry, “Can we have some decent PPE to protect ourselves?” The forest firefighter season has started already in Alberta. It’s going to be starting here soon. It was raining yesterday—in February. Asking for PPE for more than 200 days: There is silence. They have to do a written recommendation and still wait another 21 days for a response—silence. “Can we have the same presumptive coverage that the urban firefighters have?” Silence.

I brought forward an amendment to Bill 149 on this. Why don’t we just include them, all firefighters, treat them all the same? I told the Conservative government, “Look, if the argument is that they’re outdoors instead of indoors and they’re not going to be affected the same way, it won’t cost you anything. But if it isn’t accurate, if they are dying and suffering from an occupational disease, you could allow that to happen with dignity.”

The Conservative government voted again that amendment. The Conservative government won’t answer the phone calls of wildland firefighters.

We could be doing this. We could be debating this this morning. We could each speak for 20 minutes, and we could all vote on voice and get it through and help these people today. But, instead, we have this big nothing burger—nothing burger. The member for Oshawa thought I stole it, but I said this is what the bill should be called. This is a nothing burger bill, and you can tell this because the Conservative member earlier when debating, half of his debate was about a Stone Age man finding copper, somehow inventing the smelting process during the Stone Age, and going to hunter-gatherers. That definitely has nothing to do with this bill. There’s nothing in this.

There has been so much walking back of issues on this bill. We’ve had to walk back Bill 124—but not immediately. I stood here several times and said, “This is unconstitutional. You’re going to lose.” And when you lost, I said, “It’s unconstitutional. You’re going to lose.” Then you appealed and I said, “You’re going to lose the appeal.”

Even after the appeal, you didn’t walk it back. You were kind of non-committal and then waited for a Friday afternoon, when no one was paying attention, to walk it back. I haven’t seen this much walking back since Michael Jackson invented the moonwalk. It is unbelievable.

Gilles Bisson was the member for Timmins. Gilles Bisson described the government as “ready, fire, aim.” You have done nothing but prove that time and time again: Bill 124. Bill 28. Bill 28 is—I remember the Minister of Education and the Minister of Labour high-fiving each other when it passed—high-fiving each other. We were talking about workers going to food banks. These are workers who work for the government going to food banks with their kids, workers moving back in with their parents with their kids, and the Conservative government is stepping on their necks to force through this terrible deal. They walked that back in less than 24 hours.

The greenbelt scandal they had to walk back. The greenbelt scandal: We keep being told we have all the facts, but just, I think Monday, the Leader of the Opposition, our leader, New Democratic leader Marit Stiles, was finding out there’s new information that was given to the Integrity Commissioner that was reported unfactually. At what point do you think you’ll have the trust of the people? There’s that line from Bob Marley where you can fool some people some of the time but you can’t fool all people all the time. I don’t think you could fool anybody any of the time at this point.

The greenbelt, the urban boundary scandal—again and again, you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar and you’re like, “I’m sorry.” But listen, in this bill we need to be talking about health care and housing and the skyrocketing cost of living.

In 2022, every single door that all of us knocked on— every single door—they told me, they told you “affordability.” “I cannot believe how expensive it is.” And you have done little baby steps, but nothing substantial that makes life easier for these people. It continues to get worse. In my riding, and I’m sure in your riding as well, what I’ve heard more and more over the last six months is that it has never been this bad. It doesn’t matter if I’m talking to non-profits, it doesn’t matter if I’m talking to middle class, if I’m talking to wealthy people, if I’m talking to doctors—it doesn’t matter who I’m talking to—I keep hearing that it has never been this bad, and that’s a mouthful because in the Liberal government that went from a majority to losing party status, it was pretty bad. It was really bad, Speaker.

People were looking for a change, looking for hope. Now, we were hopeful it was going to be us, but they selected the Conservative government. What they wanted was change, what they wanted was life to get better, and more than half a decade later it has never been this bad. You can’t keep blaming the Liberal government after five years, after six years. It’s not their mess anymore, it’s yours.

We should be focused on affordability. We should be focused on health care. When I ran for the first time, in 2018, we talked about hallway medicine and how bad hallway medicine was—and it was particularly bad in Sudbury. We’re still struggling in Sudbury, but now it’s become the norm everywhere. In 2018, when we were talking about hallway medicine, we weren’t talking about operating rooms closing. We weren’t talking about ERs closing. We were talking about closing hospitals, but that’s what we’re talking about today after five-plus years of this Conservative government.

I was talking to students yesterday—this is about how we should be talking about housing—and telling them that when I went to school, I was a full-time student. I worked on the weekends and had my own apartment. I made a little more than minimum wage. I didn’t make a ton, but I had my own apartment. I was a full-time student and only worked on weekends. If I worked any other shift, it was just sort of extra money to pick up a jean jacket or whatever was cool at the time. I can’t imagine any student now not working several jobs. I can’t imagine any student today who doesn’t have several roommates if they’re not living at home with their parents. How can we get people to have more affordable, better-paying jobs if we can’t make it easier for them to get the education they need, to get the training they need? Why is the government putting more and more hurdles in front of people? Why are these students paying the highest tuitions and getting the lowest funding? And to brag about this—I know they brag about this, Speaker—we froze tuition. You froze it at the highest across the country.

Interjection: And reduced it.

I thank the member from Oakville for that question. Clearly, he’s standing up for his constituency. He wants to fight the carbon tax, just like me. He’s standing up for a more affordable lifestyle. I thank him for joining us in that fight.

One of the things that this government is doing under this legislation is freezing fees. That’s going to make life more affordable because, as you know, some municipalities across this province are increasing their property taxes, some as much as 6% or 7% or 8%. We’re not going to let that happen with provincial fees. We’re going to freeze the provincial fees. In fact, this is the only government that I can think of at the present time—between the federal government and the municipalities—that’s actually lowering fees and lowering taxes.

I thank that member from Oakville for joining us in making life more affordable.

You reduced it. It’s still the highest across the country. It’s still the highest and by a long shot. It’s not a little bit. I think you have to increase it by 40% to catch up to the next province. I could be wrong, but it’s somewhere around there, 30%, 40% to catch up the next lowest. So we’re at the bottom of the barrel. There’s no embarrassment. The heckle was, “And reduced it.”

There are 2.2 million people without primary care in this province, and I’m one of them. We had the Ontario Medical Association come talk to us, and in the middle of the meeting, they were telling me about how people are exiting primary care, about doctors who don’t want to be family physicians anymore because of the amount of paperwork they have to do, about the struggle we’re having to get primary care all across Ontario. It used to be a northern Ontario issue, and now it’s everywhere—2.2 million people looking for family doctors, looking for primary care. I don’t have a doctor either. I’m relatively healthy. I don’t go to the doctor that often. My doctor retired.

There are a lot of people, I think, in Canada who deserve primary health care, who take for granted that you should have a doctor—even people who are healthy—that if I need to see a doctor, I should have a doctor.

Dr. Garrioch, God bless him—once you get to your seventies, you want a little family time. Dr. Garrioch has been taking care of me since I was 15. Maybe it’s time to retire. He has had a full career.

Where are the new doctors? We don’t invest in it. We don’t encourage it.

Bill 124 crippled our health care industry. In the middle of a health care crisis, we treated health care workers, lab technicians, nurses, the people who provide our primary care in the hospitals—the Conservative government treated them like dirt. Those who could retire retired. Those who could retire early retired early. Those who could leave left, and they left for other provinces that treated them better. And when they rescinded Bill 124, the Conservative government didn’t even have the grace to let these workers know that it’s gone, so that more of them don’t leave.

There are simple things we can do for affordability. In Bill 149, there’s a digital workers’ rights protection act that gives these digital app workers the right to be paid less than minimum age—enshrines it into law. Basically, it tells you, if you’re an app worker, you do not have the right to the Employment Standards Act; you don’t have the right to the Labour Relations Act; you have no other rights that other workers are allowed; and that these multi-billion dollar companies can get away with paying you about six bucks an hour—sometimes as low as two bucks an hour, after your expenses. You can complain about it, but they have the right to do it, so that complaint won’t go anywhere. We could fix that. That would help ten of thousands of these workers. It would change their lives today. We’re not doing that. We’re colouring around the edges. “What can we say in the news that sounds good but doesn’t accomplish anything?’ That’s the theme of almost every bill we debate here—“Let’s give it a catchy title, but have nothing in the middle.” All sizzle, no steak.

I was meeting yesterday with fruit and vegetable wholesalers, importers, who provide fruit and vegetables for almost all of southern Ontario—a really amazing organization. One of the things they were telling me was that insurance rates for trucking have gone through the roof; that if you want to help keep the price of food down, if you want to help business survive in Ontario, you’ve got to do something about these insurance companies that are gouging our trucking industry.

We saw this two years ago, when the insurance companies were gouging the snowplow companies, and all these small snowplow companies—these farmers who take care of the churches in their communities aren’t able to do it anymore because the insurance rates are so high. Some of these industries who are doing snowplowing—they have to go to Lloyd’s of London to get insurance, and we’re talking about millions of dollars of insurance. So the little guy is falling out of it, and even the bigger players are trying to find ways to sell to somebody else, because the insurance company keeps coming back for another chunk and another chunk. There’s no one looking into that gouging.

There’s no one looking into the food price gouging. We know it exists. This would help people.

A couple of times this morning, Speaker, I’ve heard the Conservative government brag about how they’re freezing fees and how municipalities are raising property taxes. It is unfair to the municipalities to blame them for raising property taxes because the Conservative government is downloading developer fees: $5 billion worth of developer fees have been downloaded to the municipalities, fees that used to be collected and given to the municipalities, but now the municipality has to make up that shortfall. And a municipality can’t run a deficit, so the only thing they can do when the Conservative government at the provincial level says, “Hey, take the hit for $5 billion,” is reduce services or increase fees.

I said it before, I’ll say it again, I’ll continue to say it, that when you look at your property taxes and you’re mad at them going up, save some of that blame that you’re aiming at your mayor and city council and put it where it belongs: the Conservative government. They made that call in record unaffordability. They said, “Wealthy developers shouldn’t have to pay anymore; you pay for it instead.” That’s not fair to people.

A lot of this bill Speaker—I said “a giant nothing burger” before, from the member for Oshawa, but a lot of this bill really can be, “It’s the same as it ever was”—the “same as it ever was” bill. Let’s remove tolls from places where there’s no tolls. Why don’t we remove tolls for the trucking industry to get on the 407 so we can move things around quicker, so we can help industry, so we can help business? Why don’t we, for the 407—I wish the Conservative government hadn’t sold it off so many years ago—collect $1 billion that they owe us instead of waiving it and saying, “We’ve got this one. We’ll pick up that cheque. It’s just a billion dollars. Don’t worry; our taxpayers will pay for it”? Why don’t we allow transport trucks on the 407—waive those tolls, allow people to drive? Less transport trucks on other roads, more people driving around—that’s not part of it.

One of them has to do with licence plate fees. They’re going to enable automatic licence plate renewal. I talked about backtracking before. The reason they have to do this is because people were getting tickets because they hadn’t renewed it. The Conservative government removed the cost but forgot to implement a system where people were reminded to renew, and so people didn’t and were getting pulled over. They also did the same thing for the health cards. People were going to hospital for emergency care with expired health cards. This isn’t you doing an amazing new thing, this is you fixing a mess that you made before. This bill is a giant nothing burger.

Questions?

Back to the member for Sudbury.

I want to thank my friend from Sudbury for those remarks. As I ask the member a question, I just want to acknowledge that the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario are in the building today. I see Doris Grinspun there; I see other friends I had the privilege to have breakfast with this morning. Thank you for being here. You are inspiring me to ask my friend about what this this bill could do.

This bill we have in front of us could be called the “retread act” because we’ve spent 72 hours in this place debating legislation which later gets withdrawn while our hospitals are suffering, while our practices are suffering. Unfortunately, we had at lot of great proposals for primary care that came out of Ottawa. We’ve had one funded for a terrific bunch of nurse practitioners, Hoda and Joanna and that team. But we have 150,000 people in our city, in our larger Ottawa region, without access to primary care, Speaker, and there is absolutely nothing in the “retread act” to help those folks. There’s gimmicks and bobbles.

So I’m wondering if the member from Sudbury has the same experience. Should we have action on primary care instead of hot air on retread?

The member from Cambridge is asking about the carbon tax. Honestly, what we’ve heard since October of last year is carbon tax and carbon tax and carbon tax. The Conservative government at the provincial level wants the people of Ontario to think that they’re fighting for them, but do you know what they’re doing, Speaker? They are petitioning us to write a really stern letter to the federal government. That’s the authority we have at this level. This is a strawman argument. We’re going to get a fancy ostrich-feathered pen, and we’re going to write a letter, or maybe we’ll do a fancy font or something.

This sounds like you’re fighting for affordability for people, but you’re not. The things you could do for people that are not performative, that are not writing a stern letter, where you can have people make at least minimum wage and not get ripped off by their employer while you can go after wage theft—that you ignore. But everything else, it’s just fluster.

If we can hire workers making a decent wage, we should pay them the decent wage. We shouldn’t pay an agency an extra $1,500 on top of that to provide the services. That would be better for us. That would bring our taxes down. That would be more affordable for hospitals and health care.

We could build affordable housing and define what it means and not pretend it is affordable and say things like “attainable.” The newest iPhone is attainable but not affordable to everybody.

The other thing is, all this bill does is say, if you’re going to bring something in, there’s going to be a referendum. It is sabre-rattling. It doesn’t amount to anything. It is just pretending you are doing something. We can stop talking about this, this thing that we don’t have direct control over, and we can help people put money in their pockets by doing simple things like removing the digital workers’ rights protection act so people can make minimum wage per hour and not less than minimum wage. That’s what we need to focus on: putting money in people’s pockets in a substantial way and not colouring around the edges.

So you’re all over the place talking about everything, but what I really want to know is why you can’t commit to saying that the carbon tax is not good for the people of Ontario. Why can’t you say that?

Thank you to my colleague from Sudbury, who used to be my wingman here on the other side. I think that your insight to the people of Ontario in trying to really explain how we can make life more affordable from this side is really, really a good way of putting it. And considering the high level of performative and talkative pieces in the Get It Done Act or the latest attempt from the Conservative government to bring forward a bill that maybe should be called “trying to get it right for once,” what alternative measures would you propose to effectively tackle the pressing issues of real affordability, like housing affordability, health care accessibility and the cost of living for all Ontarians? How would we really tackle that?

I thank the member for his comments. He touched on a number of different subjects, and I heard him say that it has never been this bad before. I certainly understand why folks might think that because we haven’t had this type of price pressure and inflation for a long, long time. But you can tell from the colour of my hair, I’ve been around and seen it before. In the 1980s, inflation was in the teens, interest rates were 19%, 20%. My first mortgage was 10.5% and I thought I had won the lottery. These periods of price pressure happen.

My question to the member is—he is from a northern area; I’m from a rural area. The carbon tax: If you live in the GTA, you’ve got a choice. You’ve got transit you can take, or not drive. That makes sense. But in rural and northern areas, we’ve got no choice. Our farmers have no choice. They’ve got to drive their vehicle and drive their crops. Parents taking their kids to school have got no choice, they’ve got to drive. So doesn’t the member agree that this bill will support families by keeping costs down?

We absolutely should. Look, I mentioned it earlier—I don’t know if the nurses were here when I talked about it—but the quickest thing we can do is get rid of these private staffing agencies, or at least reduce the use so that they’re only used in situations where they used to be used. We have to show respect to the nursing agency that’s there.

Bill 124, for 53 months, punished nurses—for 53 months. The Conservative government didn’t have the dignity to do a press conference when they repealed it after losing a court challenge and losing an appeal.

Look, the reality is that Bill 124 was harmful to the health care industry. People are exiting in rapid numbers. If they did the press conference, maybe nurses would know that it’s been repealed and those workers would stop exiting the province, knowing that we’re going to finally pay them what they’re worth.

I can’t wait for the standing ovation because I love watching you guys give a standing ovation while sitting on your hands.

Speaker, on this last day of February, I want to congratulate the London Black History Month coordinating committee for a fantastic lineup of events.

There was the wonderful and moving opening gala at Museum London, where a new On the Spot app was launched chronicling the history of Black communities in the London area since the early 1820s.

There was the third annual Essence and Culture Awards, an inspiring celebration of Black excellence and a showcase for the extraordinary talents of Black Londoners. Kudos to Colin Caleb and Michelle Brissette, and all the ECA board members, for a phenomenal evening.

There was the premiere of a new documentary about the Fugitive Slave Chapel, built in 1848 as a place of worship for former slaves who fled to Canada on the Underground Railroad, which was restored and relocated last summer to Fanshawe Pioneer Village.

There was the thrilling performance of Freedom: The Spirit and Legacy of Black Music with London Symphonia at the magnificent Metropolitan United Church. The show was created for the Stratford Festival by the multi-talented Beau Dixon, a graduate of London South Collegiate Institute in London West.

February also saw the Fugitive Slave Chapel and the Metropolitan United Church performance space recognized by the Lieutenant Governor, with two of just four provincial and highly prestigious Excellence in Conservation awards.

Many thanks to all the London Black History Month coordinating committee volunteers for such amazing opportunities to learn, engage and be inspired.