I’m pleased to rise today and update the members of this House on the historic success of the Lambton College women’s basketball team who, this past weekend, captured the silver medal at the Canadian College Athletic Association’s national championship in Lloydminster, Alberta. Described by their coach, Janine Day, as a team of firsts, this year’s team delivered a season for the ages for Lambton College, including finishing on top of the Ontario west division standings for the first time; securing home court advantage for the provincial championship for the first time; defeating the number-two-ranked team in the country and winning the provincial championship for the very first time; earning a berth in the national championship for the first time; and playing in a national championship game for the first time.

Mr. Speaker, on many occasions, I’ve stood in the House and spoke about the best-in-class education and experience that students receive at Lambton College. In turn, those students are using that education and experience to do amazing things right across the country. Lambton College is truly a centre of innovation and excellence within our province. Congratulations to everyone at Lambton College on such a fantastic season. Let’s go, Lions.

It gives me great pleasure to introduce Nicole Bowman from the great riding of Barrie–Innisfil. She’s also the mother of the fabulous page Anne Bowman. Welcome to your House.

Although not an introduction of visitor, I just wanted to share and send condolences to the passing of Roy McMurtry, the former Attorney General, High Commissioner and then Chief Justice of Ontario.

I’d like to introduce some incredibly young, talented leaders who are with us from the Shevet Hermon-Friends of Israel Scouts. These are young volunteers making a difference in our community and country. We welcome you. We thank you for your courage. Welcome to the peoples’ House.

I’d like to introduce and welcome to the House today Ms. Karey Anne Large, the executive director of the Scugog Chamber of Commerce, and her son Nolan. Welcome to the House.

Point of order, Mr. Speaker: I seek unanimous consent that, notwithstanding standing order 67, the time for debate on Bill 174, Supply Act, be allocated as follows: 56 minutes to each of the recognized parties and eight minutes to the independent members as a group.

It would be great for the 15 members of the independents to be able to discuss how the government is spending the people’s money.

That concludes our member’s statements for this morning.

I’ll recognize the member for Ottawa South on a point of order.

It is my great pleasure to introduce this group of legislative pages: from the riding of Sarnia–Lambton, Ahmed Arif; from the riding of Etobicoke North, Krishna Bhargava; from the riding of Essex, Parker Booth; from Barrie–Innisfil, Anne Bowman; from Etobicoke–Lakeshore, Julian Chapin-Ker; from Renfrew–Nipissing–Pembroke, Emily Charbonneau; from Markham–Unionville, Tyler Chow; from Ottawa Centre, Christopher Falkner; from Chatham-Kent–Leamington, Alyssa Geene; from Simcoe–Grey, Korel Gogceloglu; from Guelph, Chase Hipel; from Parkdale–High Park, Olivia Jeens; from London West, Bhavneet Kaur; from Mississauga–Lakeshore, Noah Lakhani; from Eglinton–Lawrence, Ella Lau; from Ottawa–Vanier, Emma Taylor Lee; from Brampton North, Reyan Naseem; from the riding of Windsor–Tecumseh, Sarah Penner; from the riding of Humber River–Black Creek, Bhavna Prashar; from the riding of Scarborough–Guildwood, Farah Sharmin; from Windsor West, Jack Xu; and from the riding of Oakville, Owen Zeng.

Please join me in welcoming this group of Legislative pages.

Applause.

Good morning, Speaker. My question is for the Premier.

Yesterday, this government had a chance to show their commitment to ensuring that primary care for everyone is a priority, by supporting our motion to put patients first. They voted against it. Instead of working with health care professionals, they are making weaker funding announcements that amount to a drop in the bucket, and it is a leaky bucket. Doctors and health care workers say it shows the government doesn’t understand the scale or urgency of the problem.

So my question is to the Premier: Why are you refusing to listen to the clear demands of patients and doctors?

Back to the Premier: We gave you the solution. So to the Premier: Why did you vote against the solution that everyone else supports?

Interjections.

Back to the Premier: How many more emergency rooms and urgent care clinics need to close before this government takes this health care staffing crisis seriously?

So, to the Premier: When will this government implement safe staffing ratios in Ontario, like the NDP government in BC has done?

In BC, they’re taking action and they’re getting results. They’ve seen improvement in recruitment and retention among health care workers. They are only the second jurisdiction in North America that has implemented these same staffing ratios, but here in Ontario, it’s pretty clear that this government is not taking this staffing crisis seriously at all. That is not only having an impact on those overworked health care workers, but it’s having an impact on the patients that they serve.

I want to go back to the Premier again: Will Ontario join BC and become a leader in health care by implementing staffing ratios, or is he content with the status quo?

Yesterday, we had an opportunity to choose primary care multidisciplinary clinicians and health care professionals. You chose administrative staff. We are going to stand with our clinicians, with our primary care providers, to ensure that across Ontario, we continue to expand primary care in the province of Ontario.

While the NDP cut by 10% the number of physicians who were able to train in the province of Ontario, while the Liberal government of the day cut physician services and seats by 50 per year, we are making the expansions necessary to get it done.

That was the day that I stood with the member from Peterborough and made the announcement of 78 primary care announcements, and since that day, we have had community health care, family health teams and CHCs standing with us and saying, “Thank you for making a commitment to primary care. Thank you on behalf of the patients in Ontario, the clinicians in Ontario and, ultimately, the health care system in Ontario.”

The OMA, the OHA, the family doctors of Ontario understand what significant investment this means to the people of Ontario. It is sorely disappointing that the NDP and the Liberals don’t seem to get it.

We have absolutely made those investments, whether it is in colleges and universities, with the Minister of Colleges and Universities expanding the number of health care physicians available; whether it is for nurse practitioners, for family physicians, for primary care paramedics in northern Ontario. These are significant investments that are going to make an impact in the decades to come—

Ontario is leading Canada in our wait times. Now, can we do better? Absolutely, which is why I am happy to put our record of increasing access to training to internationally educated primary care practitioners and clinicians against any other jurisdiction, because we are leading Canada.

We now have 1,235 more nurses reporting for employment and registered with the CNO than we did previously. Why? Because we are making the changes necessary to make sure that people have access to good employment, good jobs in the province of Ontario, in our health care system, and we’ve made those changes—

The member opposite can throw around all the insults she wants, but the facts actually paint a very different story. Last year, we had a record-breaking 17,000 new nurses registered in Ontario. Nearly half of those are in fact internationally educated. Some 30,000-plus nurses are studying in Ontario colleges and universities, and 24,000 new physicians.

Even the expansions that we’ve made to ensure that we have more physicians training in the province of Ontario—we have set aside 60% of those to be primary care practitioners. Why? Because we see the value in primary care, because we see the value in those multi-disciplinary teams. We will continue to do that work. It sounds like the member opposite and her party will continue to oppose those changes, but we’re getting the job done to make sure that people have access to multidisciplinary teams and primary care physicians in the province of Ontario.

Thank you.

Supplementary question?

I’m going to ask the independent members and the government front bench to stop pointing fingers at each other and heckling while the Leader of the Opposition has the floor.

Please start the clock. Minister of Health.

Speaker, the minister needs to get out of the backrooms and start listening to Ontarians. If she thinks that we’re doing well in the province of Ontario, boy—2.2 million Ontarians without access to primary care; operating rooms collecting dust. We have some of the best health care workers in the world, but we can’t retain them. They’re leaving faster than we can recruit them.

This government has no strategy to recruit and retain and return nurses to our hospitals and our long-term-care homes. Our long-term-care homes, our hospitals are relying increasingly on staffing, on private agency nurses that are bleeding the system dry.

I want to go back to the Premier again. How many more emergency rooms, how many more urgent care centres have to close before this government implements solutions that actually work in the province of Ontario?

Interjections.

Speaker, my question is for the Premier. The Information and Privacy Commissioner’s office has ordered the Ministry of the Solicitor General to turn over records of which OPP officers worked at the Premier’s family stag-and-doe event. We know these are the records that the government has refused to share with journalists through freedom-of-information requests. We know the RCMP is also investigating this matter. The Premier has denied there were extra officers on the site, but he’s going to great lengths to withhold the details.

So to the Premier: Can he confirm how many OPP officers were assigned to work at his family’s stag and doe event?

I want to remind the Premier that he’s not above the law, that the police don’t work for him and that they work for the people of Ontario.

We’ve already seen two explosive reports about this Premier’s family’s stag and doe. The reports revealed a deeply troubling pattern of a government that continues to help a select few of their friends at the expense of everybody else, and now we’re waiting for the results of an RCMP criminal investigation into this government’s conduct.

So my question is to the Premier: Did the RCMP have to step in because of concerns about the Premier’s close relationship with the OPP?

As I said in previous questions, we’ll allow the authorities to continue their work, and I have every faith that they can do it on their own.

I am keenly aware that the opposition consistently advocate for policies that would defund the police. They consistently advocate for positions that would make it easier for people who commit violent crimes to get on the street. They support the Liberals who have done that.

Look, Progressive Conservatives will always stand with our front-line officers, who do extraordinary work each and every day. I will leave it up to the opposition leader and her friends in the Liberal Party to explain to the people of the province of Ontario why they support catch-and-release policies, why they have reduced bail, why they don’t support us when we want to build more jails. When we want to ensure that our communities are safe, they want to defund police, and they’re helped in that by the Liberals, Mr. Speaker. We’ll go in a different direction.

Mr. Speaker, it’s contemptible, actually, what the federal government is doing in introducing an increase to the carbon tax in 13 days’ time, at a time when people are in the midst of an affordability crisis. As the member rightly points out, she’s talked to members in her community. All of us, I know, have talked to members in our community about how difficult it is to pay for the grocery bill. It’s more and more difficult to fill up your gasoline tank for your vehicle. Mr. Speaker, we need vehicles to drive.

It’s outrageous that the federal government is increasing the carbon tax by 23% on April 1. Do you know what’s even more reprehensible? The fact that we couldn’t get an answer, again, out of the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, this morning when she was having a press conference about whether or not she supports the federal carbon tax that’s about to increase in 13 days. The Ontario Liberal leader needs to come clear to the people of Ontario: Is she supportive of the federal carbon tax increase on April 1?

What I can’t understand is, given the track record of the previous Ontario Liberal government when it comes to the energy file, a record that increased hydro rates by tripling them during their period in power, and now seeing the impact that the carbon tax is having on the people of Ontario and the people of Canada, why they can’t have that conversion. It’s not that difficult to understand that this is negatively impacting the people of Ontario.

You know what? They should be standing with us and advocating to the Prime Minister to stop the tax increase on April 1. But instead, the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, said this morning to the media in her interview, “The PM doesn’t need my advice.” It’s her job, it’s our job in the Ontario Legislature to represent the people of Ontario. They want the tax gone.

My question is for the Minister of Energy.

The carbon tax is making life more expensive for everyone. Last week, as I was knocking on doors in my great riding of Newmarket–Aurora, every single door, every person I spoke to spoke to me about their concerns and their frustrations about the impact of the federal carbon tax, that it’s having on their daily lives, specifically their essential needs. They want the federal government to address their concerns and make life more affordable for them and for all Ontarians. But the federal Liberals and opposition parties only want to hike this regressive tax. After next month’s increase, Ontarians will be paying 17.6 cents extra on every litre of gas, costing them hundreds of dollars each year.

Speaker, can the minister please explain how the federal carbon tax negatively impacts the people of Ontario and what our government is doing to provide financial support?

Speaker, can the minister please explain more about the negative impact that the carbon tax is having on so many Ontarians?

Minister of Health.

Minister of Health.

Remarks in Anishininiimowin. Northern Ontario hospitals have been struggling to keep their emergency room doors open for years now. The program that allows them to hire locum doctors from southern Ontario as a temporary fix is coming to an end. What is this government going to do to make sure our ERs in the north stay open?

Speaker, March 31 is 12 days from now. What is the status of this program?

Interjections.

My question is for the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade. When it comes to attracting investments, the competition from across the globe is very fierce. Governments are pulling every lever at their disposal to secure investments that create good-paying jobs and strengthen their economies. We know that fostering the conditions for a robust, low-cost business environment is crucial to landing important investments. But unfortunately, we’re playing a bit of tug-of-war with the federal Liberals when it comes to taxes and costs. We’re lowering taxes and cutting costs while the Liberals continue to hike taxes and continue to drive up costs every chance that they get. Their upcoming carbon tax increase on April 1 is just another example of this.

Speaker, can the minister explain to the House how, by lowering costs and cutting taxes, we’re able to secure important investments?

I’ve heard from plenty of businesses, plenty of households in my riding, who are concerned about the increase in the carbon tax, and I’m positive that Liberal and NDP members were hearing the same thing when they were in their ridings last week.

Speaker, can the minister please share with us what he’s hearing about the federal carbon tax?

When it comes to the economy, we have shown the Liberals that lowering taxes is how you create those conditions.

Now, here are some new facts this year, Speaker: In 2023, Ontario attracted 137 foreign direct investments. That brought in $11 billion from outside of the country into Ontario. That has created 12,000 new good-paying jobs right across our province. In fact, a new statistic today: Ontario has the largest number of FDI projects in Canada, and from 2018 to 2023, more jobs were created from foreign direct investment into Ontario than every US state and every Canadian province. That’s what happens when you cut taxes, lower taxes. Scrap the carbon tax.