Under this Conservative government, Ontario’s justice system is in shambles—everywhere, access to justice is denied routinely. Ontario courts rank dead last in case backlogs and wait times nationwide. The Conservatives play politics with justice, appointing unqualified cronies, including a gun lobbyist, to select their next round of judges.

Delays and denials of justice ruin lives. Criminals walk free, and the innocent suffer behind bars.

This isn’t just about funding; it’s about setting priorities.

The government’s budget ignores the crisis in our courts. This government released its budget two days ago. I scoured the budget. I was looking for funding in our courts, and it was not there. Not once did it mention bail, pretrial detention or court backlogs.

It’s easy for Ontario survivors to give up when their own government has given up on them.

Today in the chamber sit two extraordinary women, Cait Alexander and Emily Ager, who have individually endured violent crimes against them, only to have their cases tossed out because of court delays. Devastated, they watched their accused walk free and back into the community.

Cait and Emily are here to demand tangible solutions, starting with the budget; not hollow assurances from the Premier and the Attorney General.

We must thank Cait and Emily for their incredible strength, for coming here today, and for sharing their painful stories once again in hopes that this government will actually come up with solutions and fix our broken courts.

The number one issue that I hear from the residents of Mississauga–Malton is affordability. With the increase in inflation, mortgage interest rates and economic uncertainty, it is resulting in stress to the residents.

And then, on April 1, the upcoming 23% increase in the carbon tax by the federal Liberals intensifies this burden, creating a vicious cycle of rising costs that affects every aspect of daily life. Increased gas prices lead to higher costs for everything from groceries to borrowing, resulting in inflation that further strains household budgets.

While Ontario is diligently working towards its 2030 greenhouse gas reduction targets, with emissions already declining 26.1% since 2005, initiatives like the green steel project exemplify our commitment to sustainable practices. This project alone will mitigate millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually, equivalent to removing almost over one million cars from the roads.

Therefore, it is imperative that all MPPs send a clear message to their MPs asking them to stand with their residents. Let’s prioritize affordability and sustainability without further burdening hard-working families. Tell the federal government to reconsider its approach and scrap the burdensome carbon tax now.

April 1, as we all know, is April Fool’s Day. But do you know what is not funny? On April 1, the residents of Oakville, along with the rest of the province, will wake up to life being more expensive and more unaffordable.

My constituents in Oakville have reached out to me, concerned with the rising cost of living—especially the rising federal carbon tax. Just last week, I had residents come up to me at a local grocery store and mention how much the carbon tax hurts them. They are feeling the extra costs for basic activities, such as driving their kids to soccer practice.

At the Oakville Meals on Wheels grant recognition program event I was at a week ago, residents were really appreciative of the funding they received, but they were very upset and worried by the rising tax hike coming on April 1. For those volunteers, the hike for gas makes each delivery to vulnerable people that much more expensive.

I am proud that our government, under the leadership of our finance minister and Premier Ford, is supporting families and businesses by proposing to extend the gas and fuel tax cuts until December 31, 2024. We know every dollar helps, and this gas tax cut is another way to help keep the costs for Ontarians down.

But that’s not all. Licence plate renewal fees and stickers—saved vehicle owners $3.3 billion. And we launched the One Fare program, which will save commuters in Oakville $1,600 per year.

As April 1 is around the corner, we continue to call on the federal government to scrap the tax.

Universities and colleges are incredibly important institutions. They are primary sites of research, and they are where the young and not-so-young go to learn critical thinking and specific subject and occupational knowledge.

Tragically, post-secondary education in Ontario has been underfunded for the last 20 years, at 43% less than the national average. Even with the injection of $1.3 billion divided over three years amongst our 60 public post-secondary institutions, Ontario will still be dead last.

To be clear, no one wants to see tuition increased. Domestic tuition is far too high, and making up the difference by charging international students exorbitant fees has been, frankly, shameful. Far too many students—domestic and international—have to take on part-time jobs just to survive when they should be able to focus their time and energy on learning.

On the faculty side, class sizes keep going up, as do the number of faculty on short-term, low-wage contracts, who do not have the time to support students outside the classroom.

Students and faculty are being squeezed on all sides, and the effects are showing up in mental health crises.

The Ford Conservatives are undermining all our futures.

Research cannot flourish and students cannot reach their full potential when our colleges and universities are collapsing.

We can and must do better.

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to attend a funding announcement at Bancroft Fitness. This $71,700 capital grant from the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport through the Trillium fund allowed them to upgrade their HVAC system to ensure a safe exercise environment and allow more comfortable exercise temperatures for their brand new hydrotherapy pool.

Bancroft Fitness is a unique environment. It operates as a not-for-profit, small-town-style gym. Residents of Bancroft and the surrounding area can join the gym for a minimal membership fee which includes typical group classes like yoga, meditation, high- and low-impact fitness, and more.

Speaker, what’s truly unique about this facility is the connection between health and fitness championed by Dr. Carolyn Brown over 20 years ago. She had a patient who was suffering from soft tissue pain after a car accident, and she realized that she couldn’t use medicine to help that patient, so she partnered with a kinesiologist, Angela Carrera, to create a new fitness centre.

Bancroft Fitness promotes healthy fitness habits for individuals of all needs and all activity levels in direct partnership with the Bancroft Community Family Health Team. This is the first fitness facility in Ontario that partners directly with an Ontario family health team. They provide programs like cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation, where they provide exercise, education and counselling. This is health care innovation.

I want to express my congratulations to Bancroft Fitness on the improvements to your facility, and my thanks to the ministry and the Ontario Trillium fund for their support.

I rise today with great concern over the inaction and provincial defunding of urgently needed supervised consumption services in Ontario. This will result in increased overdose deaths and undue burden on emergency response services, and will deny the rights of access to essential health care interventions and wrap-around supports for people dealing with addictions.

In 2018, when this Conservative government came to power, they arbitrarily capped funding to only 21 sites. Six years later, despite overwhelming need and local support, only 17 sites have been approved and funded. Now, even this handful of sites are under imminent threat of closure due to lack of funding.

Communities across this province are declaring states of emergency over this crisis. Sites are operating through the sacrifices of burnt-out front-line workers, keeping doors open through piecemeal donations. This is for basic life-saving services.

There were an estimated 3,644 drug-related deaths just last year in Ontario and over 20,000 deaths under this government’s watch.

The Conservative government is literally abandoning the most vulnerable and marginalized people in our province.

The overdose crisis is impacting many in my community of Parkdale–High Park and people across Toronto. But do you know what, Speaker? It’s worse in northern Ontario and in southwestern Ontario. It’s smaller cities that are hardest hit by this crisis—many communities that Conservative MPPs represent.

These are preventable deaths. The government must stop ignoring this crisis. It’s not going to go away unless you do something about it.

Colleagues, I want to update you this morning on the ongoing, exciting developments in the world of medical isotopes. As members know, for over half a century, Canada has been a world leader in the development, production and use of life-saving medical isotopes in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, while also tackling some of the greatest health science challenges, including equipment and PPE sterilization, fighting the Zika virus, and pharmaceutical advancements.

In 2023, the Canadian Nuclear Isotope Council launched Isotopes for Hope: Canadian Leadership Needed Now More Than Ever, with the goal of doubling Canadian production of isotopes by 2030. “The world needs more Canada” is core to the CNIC’s message, as they have unique capabilities, people and infrastructure for our Canadian isotope ecosystem. They recently launched the first Isotopes for Hope podcast series to share perspectives from Canadians who are inspiring leaders, turning this vision into a reality and delivering important progress to people around the world who are counting on Canada as a global isotope superpower.

Last week, this important message was brought directly to Queen’s Park at an excellent medical isotopes reception. The members from Kitchener South–Hespeler and Mississauga Centre have been very active in this exciting work and were there to share their message.

This ongoing work is absolutely excellent for Ontario, and we look forward to ongoing leadership and collaboration right here in Ontario to promote medical isotopes.

I’m proud to welcome OPSEU Local 535 AGO workers to Queen’s Park today: Paul Ayers, local president; Ruth Jones, who works in facilities: Teya Vitko, bargaining team member; Charles Audu, local vice-president; and Mark Thornberry, bargaining team member. Welcome to your House, for the love of the arts.

None of us can take our place here in the Ontario Legislature without the support of our family.

I’m delighted to welcome my son Seth Harrison Kerzner to the Legislature today.

I was truly proud to see that Windsor and Tecumseh were once again front and centre in our government’s affordability-focused budget.

As this House is aware, in 2017 the then Liberal government announced that planning funding for our new regional acute-care hospital would be stopped in its tracks with the 2018 budget.

The contrast couldn’t be clearer: Premier Ford committed to seeing the Windsor-Essex regional acute-care hospital, and this budget sets out the hospital procurement for 2025.

This budget also builds the new Banwell Road and E.C. Row interchange, right at the boundary of Windsor and Tecumseh—a project that successive governments of all stripes outright ignored for 40 years, until this government.

This budget also develops the future Lauzon Parkway and 401 interchange, supports thousands of new jobs at NextStar and Bobaek, invests in local broadband, grows access to primary health care and long-term care, and says yes to our new local schools, including the Beacon Heights Public School and Eastview Horizon Public School.

These investments make our region stronger than ever.

I want to say thank you to Premier Ford and the Ontario government for doing the heavy lifting for Windsor-Essex that just never happened under NDP representation and Liberal governments.

I encourage all of my Windsor colleagues to support these great investments in the budget.

I’m really proud to announce our page Justin. His mom, Estelle Chapin-Ker, is here today with her husband, Jeff Ker, and Onikay Neil, who is the godmother of our page Justin.

Welcome to the House today.

Au nom de la ministre des Affaires francophones, j’aimerais bien souhaiter la bienvenue à une délégation du Conseil scolaire catholique MonAvenir. Avec nous aujourd’hui, nous avons des élèves des écoles secondaires catholiques Saint-Charles-Garnier à Whitby, Académie catholique Mère-Teresa à Hamilton, Saint-Frère-André à Toronto, Monseigneur-de-Charbonnel, Renaissance à Aurora et Maple; ainsi que M^me Geneviève Grenier, présidente du conseil; M^me Nathalie Dufour-Séguin, vice-présidente du conseil; et M^me Nicole Mollot, directrice de l’éducation. Je souhaite la bienvenue à vous tous.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome folks who have travelled from Milton here this morning and who are part of the group called Action Milton. We have George Minakakis, the board chair; Sharon Barkley; Heather Murch; Cindy Lunau; Gary Williams; Monica Minakakis; Scott Travers; and Noah Zatzman.

Thank you for coming today, and welcome to Queen’s Park.

I’d like to welcome members of our University–Rosedale team today: Doga Koroglu, Matthew Cooke, Molly Tarsey, Leah Wahl, Madeleine Vogelaar, and Kirsten Snider. It’s wonderful working with you. Thanks for being here.

I have the parents of page Owen from Oakville here today. We have Ji Li and Frank Zeng. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

We are joined in this House by some extraordinary individuals—survivors and advocates to end gender-based violence: Emily Ager and her husband, Brandon Quint, as well as Cait Alexander and her mother, Carolyn Alexander, and Tom Alexander.

Welcome to your House.

On a lighter note, Samantha has recently designed a most wonderful design on a tote bag for me, and it features Toronto’s beloved streetcars and raccoons.

I want to introduce visitors from my riding in the gallery: Andrey Golubovsky and his daughter Maria.

Thank you for coming.

The member for Algoma–Manitoulin has a point of order he wants to raise.

That concludes our introduction of visitors.

My question is for the Premier.

As I continue to review this Conservative government’s budget, I’m left with very serious questions.

Does this budget make rent affordable for renters?

Interjection: No.

Interjection: No.

Interjection: No.