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?

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.

I rise to acknowledge that, throughout the month of February, Ontarians celebrate Black History Month for the many great accomplishments and contributions of people of African descent to Ontario’s economy and safety in the areas of research and development, medicine, business, education, sports, festivals, politics and much more.

We celebrated these accomplishments through our ancestral ways of libation, singing, dancing, drumming, poetry and merriment together only last Tuesday at Queen’s Park, with many in attendance, from our Premier, Doug Ford, to our stakeholders, constituents, members of the Legislative Assembly, legislative staff and many community members, including staff and volunteers. I thank you all for supporting the event with your presence, efforts and speeches to make the event a resounding success.

I would like to use this opportunity to thank our sponsors: Mr. Chris Campbell of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America; Mr. Ivan Dawns of the international union of painters; Mr. Roodney Clarke of the plumbers and pipefitters union; Ms. Danielle Cantave of Ubuntu Arts; Mr. Chef TEE of Greelz; and Mrs. Julia Bebiem of Grandieu Events and Management.

I’d like to thank all—

While our federal New Democrat counterparts won pharmacare for Canadians, ensuring access to medication for those who need it, this provincial government is instead allowing huge corporations like Galen Weston and Loblaws to siphon money from our public health care for private profit.

Yesterday, we learned through investigative reporting that Shoppers Drug Mart is pressuring staff to bill for unnecessary and unprompted medication reviews. Here’s an example: A woman received a random call from her pharmacy at Shoppers to check if she was still using her inhalers for asthma. She said yes and the call ended in under five minutes. She later learned that Shoppers billed Ontario MedsCheck for that unsolicited call.

Ontario MedsCheck—or medication reviews—when done correctly, is a great service. But Shoppers isn’t doing it correctly. It seems that they are doing it not for the patient, but for profit.

It gets even worse: Each MedsCheck creates more administrative work on a frustrated and shrinking group of physicians who have to sign off on every record of a MedsCheck call.

Like many of its other decisions, this government has a proven record of working for insiders and huge corporations like Walmart and Staples. Big surprise: The person this government appointed as the director of pandemic response worked as a lobbyist for Shoppers Drug Mart.

So maybe you’re one of the 2.3 million Ontarians who don’t have a family doc, or maybe you’re stuck waiting in an emergency room with minor medical issues because you can’t get a family doc. If that’s the case, remember where to direct your anger: this insider-first PC government.

Point of order.

I apologize to the member from Sudbury.

I recognize the Minister of Long-Term Care.

It is now time for members’ statements.

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

This government recently announced capital funding to non-profit organizations across the province to ensure communities have safe and ready access to vital programming, activities and spaces.

My thanks to Minister Lumsden and the work the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport does along with the Ontario Trillium Foundation to support and improve infrastructure—everything from purchasing equipment and building new spaces to retrofits or repairs.

Speaker, a total of 12 organizations in my riding of Lanark–Frontenac–Kingston received funding—organizations like YAK Youth Services in Perth. With their funding, they’re upgrading their kitchen facilities, so they can continue to make healthy meals and snacks and provide a safe and supportive place for youth.

The Carleton Place Curling Club will use its grant to purchase and install a new chiller to allow the club to remain operational for recreation, gatherings and emergencies.

The Montague and District Seniors Forget-Me-Not Club will use its funding to make infrastructure improvements to the only space in the community for seniors’ programs and events.

Earlier this year, I had the honour of meeting with councillors and community volunteers at the new covered outdoor rink in Sharbot Lake.

Speaker, this government will continue to help build healthy and vibrant communities throughout Ontario by strengthening the impact of the province’s non-profit sector and supporting social determinants of health. Congratulations to all organizations in my riding that received funding and thank you for all your contributions to the people in your community.

Thank you very much.

The next statement.

Thank you to the member from Sudbury for his comments today.

We all know that this House and the comments made in this House are often replete with some rhetoric and intentions. Sometimes, as the previous question just indicated, they go off in a direction of what could be, should be, possibly might be in some future bill, certainly.

But I want to give the member an opportunity to correct something. At the beginning of his speech, he said that he was arguing in favour of supporting the wildfire forest firefighters getting defined. He said that this government was silent on it, but if I may read directly from Hansard, Speaker. His seatmate asked the question, “With wildfire season anticipated to start early this year, will the government finally do the right thing and classify forest rangers as firefighters?” That was the question from your own member. The answer from Minister Piccini was, “A short answer to the member opposite: Yes.” So I guess this government isn’t silent on these matters.

This Monday marked the launch of One Fare—fully funded by our government, we’re keeping the costs down for public transit riders in Thornhill and GTA.

Now, riders will only pay once, and they can transfer for free between participating transit, including GO, TTC, YRT, MiWay, Brampton Transit and DRT. So we’re making life more affordable by putting money back into the pockets of transit riders, where it belongs. The One Fare program will save commuters an average of $1,600 each year.

Thornhill borders on the city of Toronto. Students attending U of T, TMU, York University are stuck with double fees daily, but that stops right now, because our government has made it easier than ever to access transit with this system. Also, with pay your way, riders can pay with Presto or with their credit cards or debit cards—no more rushing to reload the funds.

These programs will boost ridership by eight million per year, which means we’re taking cars off the road, decreasing traffic and pollution. Thanks to the Minister of Transportation and the Associate Minister of Transportation, people will benefit from this, especially our students and seniors.

When I announced it at the Promenade mall in Thornhill, it received a huge round of applause. Our government will never stop advocating to make life more affordable and convenient, building a great province to live and work in for generations to come.

Happy winter, everyone. I am beyond proud to speak today about a Canadian filmmaker extraordinaire, Norman Jewison, a man with strong roots in beautiful Beaches–East York.

On January 20, 2024, we lost Mr. Jewison at the age of 97—a long life worthy of grand celebration and thoughtful acknowledgment. He was known for directing films which examined social and political issues, all while making controversial or complicated subjects in easy reach to all audiences. He inspired us with standout films like Moonstruck, Fiddler on the Roof, The Cincinnati Kid and In the Heat of the Night, just to name a few.

I would like to think that the formative years spent in our beautiful Beaches neighbourhood contributed to his keen sense of curiosity and creativity, with Lake Ontario at his doorstep and the “small town in a big city” feel of Queen Street East. It was the landscape that he drew on to form his respect for human rights, hard work and humour.

He returned to Canada from the United States in 1978, settling in the Caledon area and establishing a farm that would produce prize-winning cattle.

The Canadian Film Centre in Toronto was founded by him and incorporated in 1986.

He is truly one of Ontario’s finest gems.

Look out for a number of local tributes to Norman Jewison, including some of his most beloved films screened at our community’s most beloved, 100-year-old Fox Theatre.

May his life and work be remembered forever.

Recently in my community, two innocent lives were targeted by senseless violence. A 16-year-old youth waiting for the bus to take him to a volleyball game was indiscriminately shot in the face. He suffered critical, life-altering injuries.

Nearby, on the very next day, Mr. Adu Boakye, a 39-year-old man, was shot multiple times and killed. Speaker, he came from Ghana just three months ago to build a better life here and support his family back home. Now he’s gone, leaving behind a grieving wife and four children. Two completely innocent lives targeted, and for what? For nothing—absolutely nothing.

These senseless acts destroy lives and families but also rob communities of their feelings of safety. The Ghanaian community held a vigil for them this past weekend, and our faith community and Toronto police led a prayer walk yesterday. They did it to bring community together, to comfort one another, to mourn. They did it to begin restoring feelings of safety and to build hope for the future, and I thank them deeply.

Collectively, we must all do more to stop this senseless violence. We must get these guns off the street and stop them at our borders. We must continue to strengthen and build the relationship between communities and our police who are here to serve and protect us. We must support victims of crime. And we must invest more to find out and intervene when a person begins to gather that darkness within themselves to cause such terrible harm. We must find them and change the course of their lives before they lose their humanity and take the lives of others.

Speaker, there is hope and there are solutions, and it is our obligation, our moral imperative, to deliver them.