I’m very pleased to be able to stand in my place as the proud member representing Oshawa in this House.

Actually, it’s an important conversation that we’ve been having. We’re discussing Bill 157, the so-called Enhancing Access to Justice Act. This is a significantly sized bill, in that it has 19 schedules, 19 separate areas of focus in this bill. It’s possible to agree with lots of stuff that the government does and still have more to pull—because this is a missed opportunity. When you title a bill the Enhancing Access to Justice Act, I think people might get their hopes up, especially those thousands and thousands of people who are standing in a queue or waiting for their day in court, so to speak, waiting for their tribunal hearing, hoping that they can have legal support or some guidance through our chaotic systems. I say “chaotic” not to undermine them, but I think right now, we’ve seen such a degradation in our systems. And I’ll speak about that later—especially our tribunal system.

We’re at a point that if the government doesn’t really listen to the folks who are giving them good advice on how to make things better, we’re going to see things get really bad, even worse than they are now, and quickly. So, Speaker, what we have here, we have a bill—and I think I’m going to stand here, as a New Democrat, and say hopefully all of us, but certainly those of us on this side believe that everyone in Ontario deserves equal access to justice.

There have been years of this government; the government before, which was the same government; the government before that, which some days I feel like it’s the same government—they have underfunded and cut programs that have left Ontario’s court system in crisis. There are unprecedented delays and a massive court case backlog. We have seen cases, and the member who serves as our justice critic shared some very tough-to-listen-to stories about people whose cases have not had their day in court, and the perpetrators of very violent and terrible acts against them have been allowed to walk free.

That speaks to the problem in our court system because cases, including those involving the sexual assault of a minor, impaired driving and other serious, violent acts, are being thrown out because they’re moving too slowly through the courts. Many courtrooms are closed due to staffing shortages, others due to poor states of repair. Some are actually physically falling apart. There’s a range of challenges.

The Conservatives have dramatically cut legal aid and made it even harder for many Ontarians to access justice.

As I said, there are 19 schedules in this bill. Unfortunately, they fail to address some of the biggest challenges, not to say that they don’t address some of the pieces. There are some—I will say random, and that’s not even to diminish them, but there’s kind of a smattering of changes. I’m curious to know who requested some of them, because when we hear stakeholder groups across the province clamouring for change and support, those big issues are not addressed in this piece of legislation.

I would say the bill is disappointing. It touches on many issues that desperately need improvement, but it doesn’t meet the moment to address and fix those issues that the bill mentions. It recognizes that people are talking about it, but here we don’t see the fixes.

I will say, as I mentioned, that our justice system is in crisis. A case having to do with sexual assault of a minor and, as I said, drunk driving and other violence—they’re moving too slowly through the court system, so they have been thrown out, sometimes due to closed courtrooms.

I will say that the minister responsible for this file—this is not his first day. This is a minister who I will give credit where credit is due—there are some members over there for whom I wouldn’t be so quick to say this, but this particular minister is bright and capable of understanding these challenges. So I do believe that the minister knows how complicated these challenges are. We would hope that by this point in the journey with this government, we were further along to fixing them, especially when many solutions have been offered.

The government has been making some financial investments, for example, in the tribunal system. And yet, it’s so bad. It’s the worst that we’ve seen it. So money isn’t quite enough when we’re dealing with systemic challenges.

Speaker, one of the things that I would like to talk about as we’re standing here debating a bill called Enhancing Access to Justice Act—folks in our community right now have been seized with the story of the Premier now quadrupling down—is it still only quadrupling? Has he quintupled yet?

Quintuple hasn’t happened.

No? Okay—but doubling down, tripling down, quadrupling down on like-minded judges in the appointment of judges.

I’m going to read here from a piece. Law Times: “Legal groups voice concerns over”—I’ll say Premier—“repeatedly saying he wants ‘like-minded’ judges.

“Advocates’ group, Criminal Lawyers’ Association, CCLA, and FOLA all fired back at the Premier.

“Several legal organizations have spoken out about Ontario Premier”—name—“repeated statements since last Friday that he wants the judicial appointment process to produce judges who are ideologically aligned with his Progressive Conservative government....

“‘We got elected to get like-minded people in appointments,’ he said.”

Another quote from the Premier is, “I am not going to appoint some NDP or some Liberal. I have made it very clear where I stand with judges.”

Going on, he reiterated his support for like-minded judges and said, “We’re going to triple-down on making sure communities are safe. I’m sick and tired of judges letting these people out on bail. We’re going to hire tough judges. That’s what we’re doing.”

The Criminal Lawyers’ Association reminds this government that, “Judicial independence is a cornerstone of our constitutional democracy.... We echo the concerns of other Ontario legal organizations and urge your government to appoint qualified, principled, impartial judges of the highest calibre regardless of political affiliation. Judges must be free to make fair and impartial decisions—often difficult decisions—without concern for whether or not their rulings align with the government of the day.”

Also, at the press conference where the Premier made the initial comments, he said that judges were releasing too many criminal suspects on bail while their cases proceeded through the court system. He said that in every appointment, he is looking for “tough judges, tough JPs ... to keep guys in jail.”

“The Advocates’ Society’s letter said that a judge’s role is to apply the law to the facts of the case, not to implement government policies, such as being ‘soft’ or ‘tough’ on crime.

“‘To suggest otherwise violates the separation of powers ingrained in Canada’s constitutional order, and undermines the judiciary’s independence as the third, equal branch of government,’ said the letter....

“‘In the view of the CCLA, it’s imperative that judicial appointments remain non-partisan and based on merit to ensure that the charter right to bail is implemented in a way that upholds the rule of law’....”

We’ve been sharing a lot of the reaction of the legal community in this room. I’ll say a favourite of mine is this: that the chair of the Federation of Ontario Legal Associations, Douglas Judson, had said, “For the legal community, the Premier’s comments reflect a ‘fundamental and, frankly, juvenile misapprehension’ of the importance of judicial independence to democracy....”

In FOLA’s statement on the Premier’s comments, “the organization urged” the government “to ‘de-politicize and return independence’....”

Speaker, what I found interesting about this story—beyond that it’s upsetting, and meddling in the judicial side of things is not what we’re supposed to do—is people in the community really don’t like this one. Folks who may or may not generally share their politics or have political opinions in their every day—because most people are too busy to tune into what happens in this space and place. A lot of folks out there are like, “What are they doing?” So they’ve pushed a button here.

Speaker, I will also return to what I had been talking about, with the experience of people in our community, those backlogs, the challenges. Here’s a letter that I got from David. David wrote: “Hello Jennifer,

“I have been trying to get an answer as to why the courthouse service counter hours are only 9-11 and 2-4?...

“I got to the courthouse today before 1:30 p.m., and there were already 12 people waiting for the counter to reopen at 2 p.m. But the stats won’t show the demand for this service because we all have to wait until 15 minutes before the counter opens to be able to get our ticket to wait for our turn to be served. Isn’t access to justice a right in Ontario?”

That is maybe a small piece of the big picture, but this is how this individual is experiencing it: standing in line to get help, and where’s the help? And where’s the answer to “Where’s the help”?

I’m sharing this as I had reached out, of course, to the Durham Community Legal Clinic. Our legal clinics in our communities—I imagine that all MPPs in this space have them on speed dial. We’re all connected to the legal clinics, because we do our best to serve people who come through our door, and many folks have many needs, and we don’t give legal advice—except the Premier, but the rest of us don’t give legal advice.

As a preliminary point, I want to say, it’s important to note that community legal clinics are funded out of the general legal aid budget; they’re not funded separately, so the cuts of 2019 to the Legal Aid Ontario budget impacted clinics as well as other legal aid services.

These are some points shared—we’d reached out to Patrick Gillespie, the executive director locally. He said, “In 2019, the provincial government cut its contribution to” Legal Aid Ontario “by one third, or approximately $130 million ... clinics continue to strain due to underfunding. Particularly, clinics face a recruitment and retention crisis regarding their staff. Chronic underfunding is making it impossible for community clinics to hire and retain staff, particularly lawyers, who can be better compensated elsewhere.

“Clinics have been asking the provincial government and LAO for an infusion of additional resources to respond to this crisis.

“The LAO financial eligibility requirement is too low, forcing us to turn away many clients in need; however, the challenges with recruitment and retention pose a problem in addressing that need even if the financial eligibility rate was increased.”

Making it local, but probably you could extrapolate this to other communities in the province: “Durham region is one of the largest catchment areas in the province with an ever-growing population ... and service need; yet, it is served by only one clinic when much smaller areas have many more.”

As he had shared, “The move by the government and their ‘digital-first’ program to keep Landlord and Tenant Board tribunals online has had a negative impact on marginalized, elderly and low-income clients. This approach favours those who can afford technology.” Yes, technology as an option, great; technology as that’s all you’re allowed to get, no. We all are hearing that, and we know this.

Here’s a letter. This is a tenant in my community; her name is Jackie: “I am a 70-year-old resident of Oshawa, who has lived in basement unit of a five-plex in Oshawa....

“I have lived here for almost 17 years.

“Always pay my rent on time. Apartment is immaculate. I have done all painting of walls and ceilings, backsplash, put down new flooring all on my own and on my own dime.

“I have three cats, two very senior that have always lived here, and go outside with a cat door because there is a field next door that they love to go to or just lay on my front lawn.

“I am a perfect tenant, and have been helpful all through the years because the landlord is rarely here, and I’m the one to contact him if pipes burst, washing machine breaks etc.

“I was given this N12 notice in September”—I’m going to move forward here. “I did not move out of my apartment ... and the hearing for the tribunal has been scheduled” for a date in April “through Zoom, which I have no idea about.” Just to replay, Jackie is 70 and is trying to live her life.

I will continue. Jackie has shared, “This is ridiculous and inhumane. What can be done about this? I will have to retain a lawyer for the tribunal meeting as I know nothing about Zoom meetings, and I will have an added expense for a lawyer.

“I feel I have grounds to fight this....

“Is there anything that can be done that you could advise or help me with? I have been sick with worry and stress for six months now, living in limbo, affecting my sleep, my livelihood, my job. Yes, I still work full-time....

“Thank you,” says Jackie.

There are lots of tenants with lots of experiences out there, and we’ve got a lot of people waiting in line at that tribunal.

This is a portion of a significant four-pager, and this is from Roxanne. She has written to me as an independent small landlord of one home/unit in regard to the Landlord and Tenant Board. She raises issues of lengthy waits of over a year, continued suffering by small landlords, abuse of the system, non-paying tenants allowed to appeal an eviction after failing to follow through on an order, tenants living in unsuitable homes that landlords refuse to repair, sheriffs are backed up for two months, as you are all aware. The list goes on and on.

I’m pulling just some highlights from Roxanne in the interest of time: “I own a home in Oshawa ... and have tenants occupying the premises....

“The arrears are now over $25,000. The next hearing” was “January 23 ... for an issue that was already granted a resolution with consequences. Need I even say, is a time slot that could have been used for someone who actually needs an adjudicator to sort out a serious issue. For example, how many tenants are suffering at the hands of landlords that don’t know their legal obligations or are deliberately making the life of a good tenant difficult in hopes they will just move out so the landlord can now have new tenants, new lease, and charge more. These tenants are waiting upwards of two years for resolution to their problems while non-paying tenants get appeals and second and third hearing dates and are allowed to continue abuse of the service.”

Roxanne says, “Thousands of landlords losing their savings, their properties, their shirts and going into serious debt to hang on to a property they worked hard to acquire while a tenant can ... stay in a unit and pay nothing until it finally gets to the point where a landlord now has to spend more money they already don’t have to pay for a sheriff and have them physically removed. Granted, the sheriff is a last resort and not always needed but the four-to-six week wait for a sheriff tells me that it is used frequently enough for those ... tenants that just refuse to leave....”

Man, I feel for people who are living in this kind of chaos and limbo.

The sheriff circumstance—that’s two months that she has to wait for that. There’s only one in Oshawa, apparently. And it says, “I am now approaching two years of stress and waiting.”

That’s Roxanne. Roxanne was speaking as somebody who has one unit that they rent out, trying to make ends meet in a community. A lot of us have small landlords who are our neighbours. And we’re in a crisis of—we don’t have enough housing. If this government can’t fix the tribunal, how many people are going to leave the system and say, “I’m not renting my basement anymore”?

I’m basically out of time, because I had this whole report highlighted and ready to go from Tribunal Watch Ontario, but I will read this bit that they have said: “There is little justice to be found for Ontarians who have to turn to Ontario’s busiest tribunal—the Landlord and Tenant Board. The LTB has been failing badly since 2019, when the current government began removing its experienced adjudicators and moved the LTB under the leadership of Tribunals Ontario, a mega-cluster of tribunals. The deplorable situation at the LTB is not getting better. According to the most recent annual report from Tribunals Ontario, the situation is getting worse. The backlog of LTB applications has grown to over 53,000.

“Despite increased funding and more staff and more adjudicators than ever before, the delays remain crushing and the number of cases resolved each year has continued to drop.”

It goes on and says, “This begs the question: What is going wrong at the LTB?”

I’ve got nine pages to tell this government what is going wrong at the LTB, but I’d be willing to bet that the minister and the ministry already know, and that is why we should have seen those solutions in this piece of legislation or action from this government.

For women like Emily—and I say “women,” because there are a lot of women who are struggling with even finding the—I hesitate to say strength, but to have faith in the system, to even enter the system, to come forward with an accusation and step into the system. And then to have gone all the way through it and to not get the day in court, to know that her abuser or the perpetrator had gone free—I don’t know the words to say to someone like Emily. But I do have the words to say to this government—and that is, Emily is not an anomaly.

There are a lot of folks out there who deserve justice, not only access to justice. What we can do to fix the system, we have to do.

We’re going to move to questions for the member for Oshawa.

Thank you to the member for Oshawa. You talked about the backlog in the courts and the delay. The government likes to say that it’s because we don’t have tough-minded judges, but in fact, it is the delay in the court system.

The most poignant—there are a number of poignant stories, but I want to share again the story of Emily, who was a young woman who was sexually assaulted in her home. She bravely took her rapist to court despite how difficult we can imagine that is, only to have her case delayed again and again, and then finally it was thrown out because it passed the 18-month timeline.

To the member from Oshawa, can you imagine the indescribable feeling of being violated not once, but twice by this system and a government who puts this bill forward and doesn’t put anything in there to make sure that something like this does not happen again in the province of Ontario?

As the member mentioned, recently our Premier has made disturbing statements about his desire to increase political influence over judicial candidates. You will all remember in the House, when we asked, he said it, and then the next day he doubled down, and on the third day he tripled down, and on the fourth day he quadrupled down that he wants to make sure that judges are people who support the Conservatives’ ideas, no matter what people think.

There have been many, many people within the judicial system who say that in order for the judicial system to be as strong as possible, it has to be independent of politicians’ views.

Do you see anything in that bill that will rebuild the public trust after the Premier’s comments?

I thank the member for her statement.

I was working within the courts during COVID, before and after, and it was remarkable, actually, because they went from a system where we filed papers to get things done. The AG flicked a switch over the course of a few weeks, and they hit the gas and they modified and they modernized the courts in a way that literally was unprecedented when it comes to speed. He should actually be applauded for that because that was absolutely remarkable. I watched it happen in real time, and I have a real concept of how that was difficult for the legal community. But the courts worked throughout the pandemic.

I’m just wondering, don’t you think these initiatives were positive? What would be the alternative had we not been able to modernize the way we have through this new legislation?

As all Ontarians know, the NDP and the Liberals have a strong passion to protect offenders by defunding the police and also freeing the offenders back to the street ASAP.

This government’s Enhancing Access to Justice Act, 2023, would, if passed, make it easier for more victims of crime to sue an offender for emotional distress and also increase access to justice for victims by making changes to the Victims’ Bill of Rights, 1995, and its regulations, allowing victims to sue for emotional distress and related bodily harm for more crimes, including terrorism, motor vehicle theft, human trafficking etc.

So what specific policies in this proposed legislation does the member have issues with?

I thought it was ironic that the government question that just came before talked about passion with regard to crime. Ironically, it seems that the government does have passion when it comes to crime, but when it comes to helping victims, all the passion goes out of the room; there’s no passion whatsoever. In fact, they got rid of the victim compensation board, and they’ve replaced it with something that gives far less.

When people become victims of violence, their families can be destroyed. They need help. They’re counting on a government. And yet, this government has no passion to help those victims. Why?

Speaker, I move that the question now be put.

On division.

Next question?

Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? I heard a no.

All those in favour of the motion that the question be now put, please say “aye.”

All those opposed to the motion that the question be now put, please say “nay.”

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

MPP Downey has moved third reading of Bill 157, An Act to amend various Acts in relation to the courts and other justice matters.

Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

I declare the motion carried.

Be it resolved that the bill do now pass and be entitled as in the motion.

Third reading agreed to.

Resuming the debate adjourned on February 29, 2024, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 162, An Act to enact the Protecting Against Carbon Taxes Act, 2024 and amend various Acts / Projet de loi 162, Loi édictant la Loi de 2024 sur la protection contre les taxes sur le carbone et modifiant diverses lois.

Amending the environmental stuff.

Go ahead.

Interjections.

It’s always an honour to speak in the House—and I hope someone can hand me a briefing note.

The working title is the Get It Done Act. A lot of parts of this bill came out in the press before we actually saw the legislation. I have to admit that the first thing that came to my mind when I heard “Get It Done” bill—in my part of the world, it’s the “get ’er done.” I thought, they’ve finally come to a new low: They’ve hired Larry the Cable Guy to write their legislation. But at least Larry is funny.

In my part of the world, when you say “get ’er done,” it doesn’t really mean quality; it doesn’t mean careful. It just means “just get ’er done.” You don’t hire a carpenter who just gets ’er done. It’s just not something that exudes confidence.

As we went farther and farther, more reports and more reports—

Laughter.

If you will recall, at some point the Ford government decided to remove the need for licence plate stickers for registration— get ’er done. They seem to have forgotten that you still needed to remind people to register their plates—when it came to where they realized that is when police started to pull people over because their plates weren’t registered. I know the police were doing that because they pulled me over as well—get ’er done. I, like many other Ontarians—we have busy lives and just didn’t realize. In true—I don’t think it’s Larry the Cable Guy fashion; this one is more Homer Simpson. D’oh. We need to make sure that people don’t get charged because we no longer need them to register their cars. That’s a big part of the “get ’er done” bill.

Interjections.

Something else that the “get ’er done” bill—I can’t get the “get ’er done” out of my head. There’s another analogy that I could compare this with, but I’m not sure if I can go there.

After I thought of Larry the Cable Guy and then Homer Simpson, what this bill really reminds me of—and my own party might not even like this analogy—the Dukes of Hazzard.

We all know who Boss Hogg is. We don’t have to go any further with Boss Hogg, right? We had—and it had been a long time, so I’ll think. I think the sheriff was Rosco P. Coltrane—

Interjections.

Enos was the apologist. Deep down, he knew what the Boss and Rosco were trying to do just wasn’t 100%—it was more “get ’er done” than it was “let’s make this work and let’s make it work for everybody.”

Really, the question for me is, who are the Roscos on the other side and who are the Enoses?

The Get It Done Act reminds me and many other Ontarians—it seems tired.

I was recently at the annual meeting, the annual banquet, of Beef Farmers of Ontario. I’m pretty sure you can’t get a much more conservative group than Beef Farmers of Ontario. We were talking about Get It Done—and I respect the people I was talking to. They were Conservatives; no doubt about it—old-style Conservatives, like, “Do things right.” They described this bill as gimmicky. Even the title, Get It Done—come on. “Get ’er done.” No.

This is the bill that takes the tolls off where there are no tolls?

This is the bill that tries to force future governments to have referendums on carbon pricing, except for the carbon-pricing regime that this government already employs. Let’s make it clear: This government does have a carbon-pricing regime, but Ontarians can’t vote on that one, but for any subsequent one, they can have a referendum.

There are many other things that could have had referendums. Perhaps a referendum on the greenbelt, before they—

To the government’s credit, they made a mistake and they retracted. But if they had had a referendum early on—“Do you want to destroy the greenbelt?”—I think Ontarians would have said a loud no. It would have saved them a lot of grief.

Applause.

It was just like this, and it was done.

You know, the Get It Done Act is probably one of the best names I can think of for everything that our government has been doing for the last several years.

I actually got into politics—and I appreciate that the member is concerned about his constituents and his community, as well as anybody in this room. But I remember knocking on doors when I wasn’t a politician and wondering—and I represent Thornhill. It doesn’t have a subway. It hadn’t had a subway. It hadn’t gone north of Finch for decades, and it was traumatic, literally, to get cars up and down the corridor. I would knock on doors, as I said, as a young mother, saying, “When are we going to get this infrastructure in? When is it going to happen?” Previous governments did not get it done but, God bless us, because you know what? I’m at Finch subway station, they’re digging and they’re getting things ready. We’re getting it done, and that’s what we do.

And a well-deserved round of applause.

It’s now time for questions.