March is Persian Heritage Month in Ontario, and this week there will be celebrations here and around the world for Nowruz. Nowruz, which means “new day,” falls on the spring equinox each year, also known as the first day of spring. It is based on the Iranian solar Hijri calendar and it marks the Persian new year. Its origins are in the Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism and it has been celebrated for 3,000 years, making it one of the oldest festivals in human history that is still celebrated today.

On Nowruz, millions of Iranians from around the world and from all walks of life, irrespective of religion, age, language, gender, race, ethnicity or social status, gather together with family, friends and loved ones to celebrate the new year. The celebration marks the rebirth of nature, symbolizing the triumph of good over evil. Nowruz represents much of what Iranian character, history and culture is all about. We eat traditional food, including a fish and rice dish called sabzi polo ba mahi. We give gifts, also known as eydis, to children.

More than 300 million people around the world celebrate Nowruz, and it is no small celebration. Imagine Christmas, New Year’s Eve and Canada Day rolled into one month-long holiday, and then add delicious food, street dances, fire shows and a lot of loud banging on pots.

To everyone celebrating Nowruz in Carleton, Ontario, in Iran and around the world, I wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

Nowruz Pirooz. Javid Shah.

Spring is in the air, and I’d like to highlight that it’s been an absolute pleasure over the last week, knocking on doors and getting to hear some of my constituents, what their thoughts are, and seeing the kids and their smiley faces.

It reminded me of an event I attended just this past February. It was a graduation ceremony for recipients from a local college, and it was recipients from the Black youth action plan. Now, graduating from the Canadian College of Healthcare and Pharmaceutics, these talented and smart young professionals are helping to improve Black youth representation in health sector technologies. They didn’t just graduate from school, they were going to work the next day. So congratulations to all those graduates.

I’d like to thank Umbreen Akhtar, Junaid Bhatti—who is the senior administrative officer—and president Syed Hussain, all from the Canadian College of Healthcare and Pharmaceutics, for inviting me to join them in the afternoon.

Ontario’s health care field has some of the most innovative and hardest-working professionals in the world, and with funding like the Black youth action plan, it pays dividends in both recipients’ lives as well as for the end-user in the health care system. Now, because of the great success of this program and on behalf of the Minister of Citizenship and Multiculturalism, Michael Ford, I had the pleasure of announcing further funding for this program for the college of $600,000. This is great news for those communities, and I just want to congratulate the workers once again.

Speaker, 2024 marks 100 years of the city of Oshawa. However, our roots go much deeper than that. The earliest known settlement was in the 1400s, when the Wendat settled near Harmony Creek. The story goes that “Oshawa” meant “where we must leave our canoes,” and Oshawa was known as the carrying place where goods and canoes were carried north to Lake Scugog. It was a busy place of intersections. By 1850, Oshawa had become a growing village.

By 1914, the McLaughlin Carriage Co. was the largest carriage maker in the British empire, and the McLaughlin Buick was the first car built in Oshawa in 1908 under the GM umbrella. General Motors of Canada was born in 1918, with Sam McLaughlin its first president.

A hundred years ago, Oshawa achieved city status on March 8, 1924. From canoes to carriages to cars, Oshawa was on the move.

Oshawa is the home of labour. In 1928, 3,000 striking autoworkers voted to form an Oshawa auto union. In 1937, the UAW 222 Local was born out of another massive strike. CAW, and now Unifor Local 222, has been the heart of Oshawa labour ever since.

Oshawa was the hometown of Ed Broadbent’s local and national legacy. Oshawa is an academic centre, with three post-secondary institutions. It is a centre for health care, sports, arts, music and culture, and is a hub of business, creativity and diversity.

As it has always been, Oshawa is a place of intersections, innovation and possibility. Happy 100th birthday to the city of Oshawa.

Today, I’d like to congratulate the Punjabi Arts Association on 30 years of success in arts and theatre. The Punjabi Arts Association is known for bringing attention to serious community issues in a manner which is relatable and entertaining. Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to see their latest theatre production, CID, bringing bizarre 911 calls to centre stage. The play was a 90-minute comedy-drama focused on the critical issue of non-emergency calls flooding our 911 call centres. Through creative storytelling and humour, it shed a light on the real-life consequences of these calls, emphasizing the importance of responsible use of emergency resources.

I want to extend my sincere appreciation to the Punjabi Arts Association for their dedication to using arts and theatre as a tool to address social issues for social awareness and change.

Speaker, as residents do their part in ensuring these critical services are being used properly, our government, under Premier Ford’s leadership, has invested $208 million to modernize our emergency response system. This investment is helping municipalities and emergency response centres transition to new emergency communication systems known as Next Generation 9-1-1. Once fully implemented, the new system will make it easier to provide additional details about emergency situations, such as making a video call at the scene of an accident and giving people the ability to text 911 when requiring immediate help from police, fire or ambulance services.

Under Premier Ford’s leadership, we’re committed to making record investments to modernize and improve government services across the province.

Life in Ontario continues to get more and more expensive. Families across the province are facing higher grocery prices, higher hydro rates, higher property taxes, and this government continues to fail to act. The government has failed to control hydro prices, and families are paying more. The government has failed to support municipalities, even pushing more and more costs onto them in order to benefit their friends and insiders, and families are paying more. The government has failed to take concrete actions like removing the HST from essentials like home heating, and families are paying more. Medical practices are charging fees for service, and so families are paying more.

There is virtually no area of family budgeting where the increased costs are not directly tied to the actions or inactions of this government, all while this government continues to reward their friends and supporters with contracts, public appointments, regulatory changes to help them earn record profits, often on the backs of taxpayers.

As the government continues to focus on helping their friends and supporters, many families have begun to cut out the little extras they’ve worked so hard for. Too many families have begun to cut back on what many of us would consider to be essentials.

It’s time for the government to put families first and focus on regular everyday Ontarians, not only their friends and supporters.

It’s great to see so many friendly faces in the visitors’ gallery today. I’d like to introduce my constituency assistant, Harman Gill. It’s his first time in the House. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I have a number of people to introduce today. I’ll start with my staff: my executive assistant Emma Henry; my executive assistant in the riding Sally Carson; and a Trent University intern student with us Jini Ganesalingam.

Also, today from Trent University—and that is why I’m wearing my Trent University shoes—we have president Leo Groarke, vice-president Julie Davis, vice-president Marilyn Burns, vice-president Glennice Burns, director of portfolio operations Christopher Armitage, director of communications Kathryn Verhulst-Rogers, executive director Ngina Kibathi and Trent student Sam Begin.

Il me fait grand plaisir de présenter deux invités aujourd’hui. J’ai Eric Lemieux, un ami de la famille, mais surtout, je veux vous présenter une petite fille, une jeune demoiselle qui a vécu de grandes épreuves mais qui a une joie de vivre qui peut comparer avec n’importe qui : bienvenue, Mila, à Queen’s Park.

It is my great honour to welcome one of our legislative pages from my great riding of Windsor West, Jack Xu. Welcome to Queen’s Park. I look forward to working with you.

It’s my pleasure to introduce a family friend of ours who is visiting from Trinidad, Kareema Whittle, and with her, previously mentioned in my member’s statement, is of course my mother, Ruth Dixon, the wind beneath my wings.

I’d like to introduce to the House this morning board members from the Toronto Caribbean Carnival: Jennifer Hirlehey, Mischka Crichton, Adrian Charles and Bernadine Marina Rambarran. The Toronto Caribbean org—Caribana, as people remember the carnival—will be hosting a reception today, in rooms 228 and 230. I hope everyone can get a flavour and a taste of the islands this afternoon when we come down to join them in the reception hall.

I would like to welcome my friends from Mortgage Professionals Canada: Dr. Kuljit Singh Janjua, Mohinder Pal Singh, Barbara Cook, Lauren van den Berg and all the other members of Mortgage Professionals Canada. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

This morning I’d like to welcome to the House as a guest Mr. Jeffrey Spiegelman, trusted legal adviser, excellent legal counsel and advocate. Welcome to the House.

I want to wish a warm, warm welcome to Sarah Penner, who is beginning as a legislative page today, from the riding of Windsor–Tecumseh. Welcome to Queen’s Park, Sarah.

There’s a point of order from Ottawa–Vanier first.

The member for Ottawa–Vanier is seeking the unanimous consent of the House that, notwithstanding standing order 45(b)(iv), the time for debate on opposition day motion number 2 regarding support for primary care providers be apportioned as follows: 56 minutes to each of the recognized parties and eight minutes to the independent members as a group. Agreed? I heard a no.

Good morning, Speaker. My question is for the Premier. Ontario’s health care system is on the brink of collapse because of Bill 124. While jurisdictions around the world try to attract our health care workers, this government chose to freeze their pay and dock their wages and fight them in court. And then they lost again.

Now it’s time to pay up, at least $6 billion so far. The Financial Accountability Office is saying the government could owe workers more than $13 billion. To the Premier: How much money is this government currently withholding from working people?

I seek unanimous consent that, notwithstanding standing order 45(b)(iv), the time for debate on opposition day motion number 2 regarding support for primary care providers be apportioned as follows: 56 minutes to each of the recognized parties and eight minutes to the independent members as a group.

Interjections.

Through all this, we value very much the hard-working health care workers, teachers, construction workers and skilled trades, through COVID and beyond, as they help us rebuild Ontario.

Obviously when in 2022 the judge ruled Bill 124 to be unconstitutional, we then negotiated and through arbitration and other means have been paying out fair and reasonable wages to all those workers that we value. That money has been going out for the last almost two years. In fact, we have expended virtually all of that money—over 90% of the agreement.

What is really important to know, as we rebuild this province, as we build the infrastructure, as we build the hospitals, when we rebuild the schools, as we build the highways and the public transit, everyone in Ontario will participate to help rebuild Ontario.

Mr. Speaker, as I am a student of history, one thing I remember is from 2003 to 2018, the Liberal Party, supported for three years by the NDP in 2011 to 2014, didn’t build anything. We inherited an infrastructure deficit. They closed 600 schools. They didn’t build roads. They didn’t build subways. They didn’t build hospitals. They didn’t build long-term care. In my own riding, from 2011 to 2018, do you know how many net new beds were built in long-term care? Squadoosh, Mr. Speaker—zero.

This government has a plan to rebuild this economy. It has a plan to build the infrastructure. It has a plan to support the workers who are going to build that and service those buildings. This government has a plan, and we’re not going to stop until the job gets done.

Last week, I was out with the Premier and this Minister of Transportation touring in Windsor—the great work and job that they’re doing at the Stellantis battery manufacturing plant. This is creating good-paying jobs and do you know who’s doing those jobs? The hard-working people of Windsor.

When we criss-cross this province, and often when I’m with the Premier and with my colleagues, do you know what? They line up from here to there to meet the Premier and thank him for his leadership to not only supporting all workers, but to support the building of this economy, Mr. Speaker.

We inherited a weak economy; we’re rebuilding that economy—great jobs, bigger paycheques and including all workers in Ontario.