I want to thank the member from Ajax for the question and, of course, all you do as an ally, advocate and leader for Ontario’s Black communities.

Speaker, I am proud to say that, earlier this month, my ministry announced a further investment of $16.5 million into the economic stream of the Black Youth Action Plan. While previous Liberal governments stood by with the NDP, it is our government that took real action by increasing the funding of BYAP to over 500% from 2018 to dismantle barriers, improve outcomes and empower Black children, young professionals and families.

That work does not stop when Black History Month does. Our government will continue to take action and make critical investments needed to ensure all Ontarians, no matter their race, religion or background, have all the tools and opportunities they need—

My question is for the Minister of Indigenous Affairs and Northern Development. The carbon tax is making everything more expensive for everyone in this province, especially in northern and Indigenous communities.

The cost of transporting goods in northern Ontario is already much higher than in any other part of the province. Individuals in these communities often travel by car and in many cases larger vehicles for safety due to the many back roads and weather conditions, but the federal government is ignoring these concerns.

We know that the people of northern Ontario deserve better. Can the minister please explain more about the negative impact that the federal carbon tax is having on the quality of life for the people in northern Ontario?

Our government recognizes that this regressive and punitive tax is negatively affecting people in these communities as they are hit hardest at the gas pumps and at the grocery stores. That’s why we will continue to support them and call on the federal government to eliminate the costly carbon tax.

Speaker, can the parliamentary assistant elaborate on the detrimental effects that the carbon tax is having on the people, communities and businesses in the north?

Thank you to the member from Brantford–Brant for that question. The member from Kiiwetinoong often discusses the price difference in groceries between more populated communities in the north such as Sioux Lookout and the price of groceries in Sandy Lake First Nation. He notes that the price of chicken is often six times higher in Sandy Lake than it is in Sioux Lookout.

A 2022 report from the Office of the Auditor General of Canada concluded that Indigenous groups are disproportionately burdened by carbon pricing. This is before you factor in the harsh impacts of inflation that are disproportionally felt in remote communities and only being made worse by the carbon tax.

We know that the carbon tax is affecting the price of groceries and the supply chain. We continue to call on the members of the Liberals and NDP to support our government’s call to axe the carbon tax once and for all, for all Canadians.

Is the member from Orléans and the Liberal Party not aware that the dozens of remote and isolated communities rely on diesel fuel and that heat pumps will not work in communities in northern Ontario as temperatures exceed minus 20?

Our government is hard at work to get Indigenous communities off of diesel and onto our clean provincial power grid, but in the meantime, northerners and Indigenous communities are forced to pay more to heat their homes and gas up their vehicles because of the burdensome Trudeau carbon tax.

Members in my riding have routinely called me to say that it’s an additional $450 just in carbon tax to heat their homes. We continue to call on the members opposite to support us in calling on the federal government to axe the carbon tax to make life more affordable for northerners and First Nations people so that we don’t need to choose between heating and eating.

My question is for the Minister of Health. My constituent Kirsten has experienced great challenges accessing take-home cancer drugs. Kirsten was weeks away from losing access to life-saving medication all because Ontario does not automatically cover the cost of take-home cancer drugs. While on medication to help prevent a recurrence of breast cancer, Kirsten lost her job due to downsizing. Along with her income, she lost benefits. She was shocked to learn that Ontario does not automatically cover take-home cancer drugs. This is a long-standing broken promise of this government. To quote Kirsten: “To know that there’s this treatment that was so important to be on and the stress of not being able to potentially have it is near debilitating.”

Speaker, can the Minister of Health tell Kirsten when will Ontario cover the cost of take-home cancer drugs?

Interjections.

To reply, the parliamentary assistant and member for Thunder Bay–Atikokan.

The member for Eglinton–Lawrence.

British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec—they all cover take-home cancer drugs, some of them for decades. But in Ontario, good people like Kirsten face administrative and emotional barriers on their already difficult health recovery journey from cancer.

In 2022, your government said it would look at covering take-home cancer drugs. Speaker, today, the Canadian Cancer Society is calling out this government.

Access to take-home cancer drugs saves lives. Ask any member of RNAO here today. Minister, how much longer are we going to have to wait until Ontario covers take-home cancer drugs?

Cancer is a debilitating disease. A lot of us have personal experiences with it and so I do empathize with the patient. Our government will continue to work to ensure Ontarians have access to the care they need when they need it.

In Ontario, take-home cancer drugs are funded both by the New Drug Funding Program and the Ontario Drug Benefit Program. In 2022, our government spent over $1.7 billion on cancer drugs, 58% of which went toward take-home cancer drugs.

According to a recent report, while Ontario has the second-highest incidence rate of new cancer cases compared to other provinces and territories, we’re doing a good job on treating them because we have the third-lowest mortality rate for cancer in Canada, and that’s thanks to our great health care providers.

As part of budget 2022-23, an advisory table was struck with a mandate to explore improvements to access for take-home cancer drugs and we’ve already taken action, expanding the use of safe and effective biosimilar drugs while allowing our government to reinvest in new drug therapies to support more people receiving more accessible care.

As I indicated in my answer, in 2022, for example, our government spent over $1.7 billion on cancer drugs, 58% of which went toward take-home cancer drugs. So we’re continuing to work with our stakeholders and partners on further discussions and we’ll continue to look at that.

But our government is also making health care more accessible for everybody closer to home, and I know this is welcomed by cancer patients. For example, we funded 49 MRI operations in hospitals in small and rural communities, which is very much appreciated, so people can get a diagnosis easier.

We’re also funding community paramedicine. As I mentioned earlier, we have the pharmacist funding with 700,000 assessments in the pharmacies happening just this year alone. So we’re doing everything we can, in addition to our primary care expansion at $110 million, to make sure that care is closer to home for everyone.

I welcome the Liberals back into the discussion about how they ran their judicial appointments. Not only were their former chair and their former members multiple-year party donors, I can tell you, when I went back and looked—because I wasn’t looking through this lens as I was appointing judges, but I went back and looked. The Liberals join the NDP in their sanctimonious, high-horse rhetoric and, right before an election, they appointed 27 judges, in 2014. Two years before or three years before, it was three people; then, in 2017, 47 more judges, 40% of whom were donors to that party and that party, and not one donor to this party or the Green Party. So I’ll take no lessons from them on how the system should work.

Interjections.

Thank you.

The supplementary?

The supplementary question?

You know, it took Ontario years of neglect by previous governments to get into this situation that we’re in now, but our government has been taking action and delivering results for Ontarians. Our government is very proud to have one of the largest publicly funded health care systems in the world, a system that we’re investing over $80 billion in this year alone. With our Your Health plan, we’re reducing wait times for surgeries and procedures across the province by connecting Ontarians to the care they need when they need it.

Just yesterday, there was an article in the Ottawa Sun, February 28, with a patient, Deb Paterson, who had knee replacement surgery at the Riverside hospital last year. She said she had an excellent experience. Five months after being told that she would have to wait for a couple of years, she received a call asking if she wanted to have the surgery through this new program. She had surgery four months later, after being assured it was covered by OHIP. She summarized her review of the service with this: “This sure went well for me.”

I remember another story from the Thunder Bay–Superior North riding, where a man had his surgery done much quicker. What we’re doing is seeing that patients are getting back to their lives, to living a fulfilling life much more quickly because they have these surgeries much more quickly. There are countless stories of life-changing impacts across this province: 17,000 people have had cataract surgery already because of the clinics that we opened. They wouldn’t have had that surgery had we not opened those clinics.

We’re delivering for patients in Ontario so they get the care they need when they need it.

My question is to the Premier. A recent report by the Ontario Health Coalition noted that funding for private clinics in the province has increased by 200% in the last year and, for private hospitals, it has been increased by 300%. Meanwhile, we have operating rooms in public hospitals across Ontario that are not used because public hospitals don’t have the funding to recruit and retain staff or pay for the surgeries.

Speaker, why is the Premier choosing to cut public health care and give money to private, for-profit care?

We also know that private clinics are receiving more money per surgery from the government than our public hospitals receive. We know that private surgeries are more expensive than public ones. This government’s privatization scheme is making wait times longer, making the staffing crisis worse and costing taxpayers more, not less.

Why doesn’t the Premier drop the expensive, unfair, two-tier privatization attempt and instead properly fund publicly funded, publicly delivered health care in the province of Ontario and respect the nurses that are here today?

Thank you to the minister for that response. It is reassuring to hear, unlike the previous Liberal government, our government is beginning to take meaningful action and making critical investments to empower Black youth and young professionals across Ontario.

Speaker, community grassroots organizations play an important role in helping youth find meaningful employment, develop critical skills and unlock a brighter future for themselves and their communities. Black youth and communities are not looking for special treatment, but, due to historical barriers, need meaningful opportunities to succeed. Our government must remain focused on creating these opportunities where all Ontarians can achieve their dreams and reach their full potential.

Speaker, could the minister please share with this House some of the ways in which investments towards the Black community action plan are creating and driving success for the Black community?

This government continues to award contracts without a competitive bidding process, make legislation without a consultation process and has given away $8.3 billion in greenbelt land to their rich insiders without any evaluation process at all. All these examples are evidence of an extremely flawed decision-making process. What has been the result? Walk-back after walk-back and flip-flop after flip-flop. They have wasted years of precious time that should have been used to help Ontarians.

Now we’ve just learned that the Attorney General made the decision to appoint a former Conservative staffer and gun lobbyist to be chair of the Judicial Appointments Advisory Committee. Is appointing a gun lobbyist who will lobby against gun control what the Attorney General and the Premier meant by appointing like-minded candidates?

The Attorney General said in this House that he has an obligation to the public to make appointments in the interest of the public. Does the Attorney General believe that it is in the best interest of the public to bring American-style political appointments to our Ontario courts?

Interjections.

Now, there’s a member that gets it, Mr. Speaker. There’s a member that listens to his community, that drives on the roads that those families are driving on every single day trying to get to and from work in the gridlock that has been created because the previous Liberal government refused to invest in roads and bridges and highways.

I’m equally shocked at the comments from the federal environment minister saying that he won’t build or invest in more bridges and highways. We’re seeing explosive growth in Ontario, a million people over the next two years, and the federal government doesn’t want to invest in infrastructure. That’s crazy. But thankfully, we’ve got good members, like the member for Brampton North, fighting for their residents, fighting for the people of this province.

We’re going to invest $28 billion over the next 10 years in building highways and roads, and we will take no lesson from the previous Liberal government that—

I can tell you it’s world-class, Mr. Speaker, because this program was developed by the autism community for the autism community, and I thank them for the great work they do and the continuous support they’re providing.

The member across and the previous government may have been okay with families languishing on a wait-list where only 8,000 families were being served. It wasn’t good enough for us, Mr. Speaker. It wasn’t good enough, which is why we’ve worked with the communities, clinicians, to put in a program that is designed by the community for the community. Thousands of families are now accessing programs and supports that were provided, again, by the community—even the implementation team that supported us in putting this program together was done by the community.

So, once again, taking lessons from the NDP on a failed program by the previous government where they sat on their hands and did nothing is not something I’m going to do.

Interjection.

My question is for the Minister of Mines. The previous Liberal government all but ignored the importance of the north, failing to invest in northern Ontario’s mineral exploration and development sector. Their inaction had dire effects on the economy of northern Ontario. Even the NDP, after being given the opportunity to build a stronger mining sector and vote in favour of investment and development, chose to say no and do nothing.

Unlike the opposition members, our government understands that exploration and development of critical minerals is essential for the economic prosperity of our province. Can the minister please tell the House what our government is doing to support the mining sector while attracting game-changing critical mineral investments in Ontario?

Order.

The Attorney General.

The next question.

To reply, the Minister of Children, Community and Social Services.

Mr. Speaker, let’s talk about the day that Dalton McGuinty stepped down. Do you know what happened that day? He filled two positions, associate chief justice positions—two of them—that very day. And guess what? Those positions weren’t open yet. They weren’t to be open for over six months in the future, and that night he announced he was stepping down.

I will take no lessons from these people on how the system should work. They abused the system. We are treating it with the respect that it deserves.

My question is for the transportation minister. He’s a fellow Brampton boy, so it won’t take me long to go knock on his door tomorrow if he gives me the runaround today.

Actually, Speaker, getting around Brampton takes a heck of a lot longer than it used to, thanks to 15 years of dithering, delays and neglect from the previous Liberal government. Now, we have a federal Liberal government that decided that the first provincial highway that they ever wanted to declare a federal impact assessment on just happens to be Brampton’s bypass highway, Highway 413.

I wish I was joking about this next part, Speaker, but could you believe that the federal Liberal environment minister, Steven Guilbeault, actually said that Canada should get out of the road-building business altogether? I wish I was joking. Can you believe that—a minister of the crown?

Speaker, could our transportation minister please highlight our government’s approach on whether or not the Ontario government should be in the business of building roads and highways?

The federal carbon tax is making life more expensive for everyone in this province. I’ve heard from many people in my riding of Brampton North that they’re finding it difficult to keep up with the rising cost of living. They’re paying more for everything, from buying groceries to gassing up their cars to heating their homes. People in our province should not be experiencing financial hardship for the simple acts of buying groceries, taking their kids to school or going to work. We need to stand up for Ontarians all across the board and ensure their concerns are heard loud and clear.

For many residents in Brampton and across our province, heating your home is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. Driving is not a luxury; it’s a necessity.

Speaker, can the minister highlight what our government is doing to keep costs down for drivers, families and individuals across Ontario?