Thank you to the member opposite for the question.

Planning grants for hospitals are critically important.

We are building hospitals across the province of Ontario. When we took power, when we were elected in 2018, the health care system in Ontario was in dismal shape. We had a shortage of nurses, doctors; closing of hospitals. Our focus is getting that rebuilt. And we lived through COVID, I might add, in between all that. But our focus is still resolute. We are here; we have shovels in the ground in the Niagara Health System, Scarborough Health Network, Ottawa Hospital, Cambridge Memorial and more. We will continue to stay focused on building health teams and the infrastructure that they need to be able to operate efficiently.

Infrastructure is critically important wherever you are in the province. Whether you’re in downtown Toronto, in downtown Ottawa, in Collingwood, in Oakville, in Burlington, it’s critically important.

Our government is committed to working with the municipalities to make sure they have the proper investments. In this budget, we’ve put through a billion dollars in the Municipal Housing Infrastructure Program.

We’re also quadrupling the Housing-Enabling Water Systems Fund, which I think will help a lot of municipalities that are in dire need of effective, cost-effective safe water and systems in their municipalities.

We’ll continue to work with all municipalities across the province to ensure they have the infrastructure they need for the growing population.

In terms of my community, specifically, in Oakville—I could talk for hours on this, but I’ll focus on one or two issues of how this budget is helping people.

This budget is helping commuters. My town is a major community that has commuters going to downtown Toronto on a daily or regular basis. Many of them take Oakville Transit and then transfer to the GO station. Well, now, one tap, one pay—$1,600 a year. That is an incredible savings. And that’s after-tax dollars that people are saving. That is enormously going to help them.

Also, the gas tax cut that we’re putting through and proposing to extend to December 31 is going to save all those commuters who are driving in Oakville.

This budget is focused on helping affordability throughout the province of Ontario.

It’s always an honour to rise in this chamber and bring the voices of the residents of St. Catharines.

Speaker, at a time when rich, well-connected people in Ontario are benefiting from this government and working families like Nina and her husband struggle, how can this government defend a budget that fails to address the soaring cost of living; a budget that is failing their duty to build affordable housing, which even our federal counterparts are pointing out that Ontario, with this Conservative government somewhat at the helm—and a helm which seems to be a sinking ship, may I add—a government that is desperately failing the duty to build affordable housing, which is affecting real people in communities across St. Catharines and Niagara?

I want to start by saying thank you to the member opposite for talking about affordability, something this government takes very, very seriously.

This is a government—all the members strongly stood up in this House and talked again and again about scrapping the carbon tax. We talked about reducing the cost of gas. The member from Oak Ridges talked about the One Fare program that will help and make sure that commuters can save $1,600.

We are continuing with our previous decision to expand the LIFT, the low-income workers tax credit, to provide more relief to low-income Ontario workers, and of course, reducing the gas reduction, which I spoke about—$320 in savings.

Madam Speaker, I truly believe this is a government that believes and understands that affordability is an issue. We are here to support our residents of Ontario, and we’ll make sure we’ll continue to build those measures to help Ontarians.

Speaker, this budget—and you’ve been listening carefully, I know, this afternoon—reflects the government’s commitment to housing, health care, infrastructure and economic development. I’d like the member from Oakville to talk about the effects of the budget in those particular areas, please.

We’re going to move to questions.

As we are debating the budget, we should be debating the priorities of the government for the province. I would have hoped to have seen tangible health care investment for folks in my neck of the woods.

Specifically, something missing from this budget was what would be about $3 million—the cost of a planning grant to allow Lakeridge Health to begin the advanced planning and design work on a much-needed hospital in the Durham region. An expert panel selected Whitby. The Premier said we’d be getting a planning grant soon.

So my question to the Minister of Finance, who happens to be the MPP for Pickering–Uxbridge: When will the minister let Lakeridge Health get that planning grant, get started with that grant to begin the design work and start the wheels turning for health care in the Durham region?

My question is for the parliamentary assistant. One of the things I always look for in the budget is the four-laning of Highway 69 to Sudbury. It took till page 56 to find this phrase—here’s one sentence: “Continue to widen Highway 69 from two to four lanes, from Parry Sound to Sudbury.”

Interjection.

So are you doubling, tripling, quadrupling the amount of work you’ve done in the past? Zero times anything is zero. When are you going to get this done?

We’ll go to the next question.

I want to thank both parliamentary assistants and the minister for their remarks today.

I know one thing that we’re used to in Windsor-Essex is announcements followed by no follow-through—Highway 3 was one, named Bruce Crozier’s Way in honour of the late MPP for Essex, but then 10 years of inaction.

One of the great announcements that was part of this budget was the E.C. Row Expressway/Banwell Road interchange—$50 million. This is transformative for my community—both my municipalities.

I want to find out from the parliamentary assistant what the benefits are of investments in infrastructure, in terms of employment, in terms of commute times, getting people home to their families and helping the people of Ontario.

Thank you to the member from Windsor–Tecumseh.

You raise a good point about what kind of return you get on infrastructure. The previous Liberal government spent a lot of money, as we all know; I don’t think we saw much for that. We didn’t see efficient transit. We didn’t see schools being built; in fact, they were being closed—over 600, I believe, in the province at that time. Hospitals were in dire shape.

Investing in infrastructure is a long-term payoff. It helps people on a personal level when you have the hospitals and the facilities to be able to support them through their difficult times. It’s also an investment.

As you’ve mentioned, the roads that we are building and widening in the Windsor–Tecumseh area—that’s a critical border point, and having trucks be able to move more efficiently across the border will get goods to their market quicker, more efficiently and safely. It will also help families who are commuting and driving their kids to soccer practice or going back and forth to school or work. It’s going to let them get there safely. So it has a dual effect of being positive from a financial point of view but also on a personal and a family issue, as well.

I think it’s so symbolic that I get to start my one-hour lead on this particular budget for 2024 just as a solar eclipse will be hitting southwestern Ontario.

Interjection: Dark times.

Bill 180 obviously will have an impact on the people of this province.

I’m listening to the government members as they talk about the highways and the infrastructure; they leave out people a lot.

You can talk about opening a bed, but you certainly can’t open that bed without a nurse or without a health care worker.

So complicated is this relationship now between the people who serve the public and the Ford government that they’re actually moving further and further apart.

If you really want to build a strong province that’s inclusive, that’s reaching its potential, that’s meeting its climate change targets and that’s actually building on the spirit of the people of this province, you have to talk about people. And those people are still feeling the impacts of your unconstitutional piece of legislation, Bill 124. In fact, I would say that this province is going to be feeling the negative impacts of that wage theft—really, wage theft, and also wage control—in Bill 124.

It has been quite a day. I just want to start off by saying it was really powerful this morning—I was really pleased to welcome the Roth family to Queen’s Park. It has been emotional, because we all care so deeply about mental health. It’s one thing to care about an issue, but that caring and that compassion need to also translate into direct investments, into resources. As I’ve said many times in this House, when people have the courage to come forward and to ask for help, the system has to be there for them. We’ve done a lot of work on the stigma around mental health and mental illness, and so now people do feel like they can actually talk about their feelings, whether they’re farmers or construction workers or young people like Kaitlyn Roth. And those resources need to be there.

I want to thank the minister responsible for mental health. He did meet with the family after today’s question period. This is the third time we’ve met with that minister. I will tell you, as the Waterloo rep, the MPP, and also the finance and Treasury Board critic, I want that minister to have access to the funding that the government is promising, I want that funding to flow, and I want it to be a smart investment.

That’s why we’re so committed to the alternative destination for those who are suffering from mental health issues and a crisis. The emergency room is not the best place. From a basic, common sense perspective, I would hope that we could all agree that if you are in crisis, going to the emergency room and waiting 18 hours, with police there, with people in pain, with people in crisis—it’s not the best place. Let’s work together on this and redirect people to these alternative destination clinics, where people are trained, where they’re going to be met with compassion, where there’s going to be some empathy, where there are going to be some special strategies so that people feel supported—like Kaitlyn. When people fall through those cracks, we lose our potential as a province. I think that’s probably one of the most painful things about suicide. Kaitlyn was so talented and so smart. She wanted to work with special-needs children. Lord knows, we have a wait-list of 60,000 people who are on the autism spectrum who need that resource and need that compassion.

So I want to thank the members who were supportive this morning, and I want to thank the Roth family.

I also want to say a special happy birthday to my daughter. She’s 23 today. She’s navigating the world of retail. She’s a business leader with an American company here in Canada. And let me tell you, it’s not the best place to land as a young worker, but she’s learning some good lessons, and I’m very proud of her.

As I mentioned, the eclipse is set to happen very soon. I hope that everybody is being safe with regard to that. I want to thank the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo for sending me some guidelines and sending me some fancy glasses that you literally cannot see anything out of, which I think is the idea. We’re lucky to have the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo region as an anchor company that is doing some amazing work.

I do want to say, as we talk about this budget—and some members have heard me talk about this. Budgets really are moral documents. They really, truly tell the story of the priorities of the government of the day. They tell the story of where the money is going and/or where the money is not going. There are a lot of places, with this particular government, where the money is not going, where it needs to be going, which would actually save the province money down the line, and I’ll get to that in a second.

The need for government transparency is akin to the darkness before a solar eclipse, so you’re going to see how I’m going to tie this all together. What we have here in Ontario is a solar eclipse of common sense. And when I say common sense, there are good places to—

Interjection.

If I start singing Bonnie Tyler, we’re all in trouble here—which will not happen. A total eclipse of the sun. The hair in those days was really special.

The need for government transparency is akin to the darkness before a solar eclipse, highlighting the importance of shedding light on the government’s actions, for public scrutiny.

Boy, I’ve never seen a government that is so resistant to sharing what’s actually happening in Ontario—aside from the commercials that we’re all paying for that tell us this fairy tale where people can afford housing, where people can find jobs, where people can find a doctor, or ensure that you can go and get the appropriate mental health resources that you need.

This decline in transparency, particularly with this government, based on what I’m hearing from people in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, is a loss of trust. That loss of trust really started right from 2018, when the government who said, “We’re never going to interfere with municipal governments,” cut city council in half—during an election, at midnight, no less.

This was a government that said, “We’re tough on law and order,” and yet, we have a justice system that is failing to meet the needs of both victims and the accused, I would say, where a record number of court cases have been stayed. I’m particularly concerned about those sexual assault cases.

Last week, our critic to the Attorney General hosted a press conference here and had two victims of sexual assault come to this place and talk about how they were denied justice in Ontario.

When you deny justice, it’s really hard to be talking about being tough on crime, as this government likes to espouse.

And so, just as the solar eclipse reveals the hidden layers of the sun, this budget reveals that the government is failing to meet the needs of the most vulnerable in Ontario. I believe that to be true. I believe that when I tell people in Waterloo and demonstrate how this government is failing so—I would say they’re overachieving on the failing perspective. The people in Waterloo hear it. They see it. They feel it. They’re experiencing it. And I’m going to talk about some of those people.

Just as a little joke—how does the man in the moon cut his hair? Some people say, “How?” Eclipse it; they eclipse it—

Interjections.

I know it’s bad. It’s bad, and it’s in history now.

I see my colleague from Kitchener–Conestoga is get-ting ready for the total eclipse of the sun—and hopefully he doesn’t break out into song.

There are a couple of areas that I really want to highlight, just to pull us all back.

There is a tendency of this government to side on behalf of the private sector, which is ironic, because as parlia-mentarians we take an oath to serve the public with integrity and we put the public first.

One of the issues that has really resonated—and this kind of reminds me of back when the former Liberal Premier was saying, “We’re never going to sell off parts of hydro,” but then they did. Then, the hydro costs continue to go up because of the cost escalation.

My friend and colleague from Toronto–Danforth, who is our energy critic, has been following what has been happening with Enbridge and the decisions that this government is making on the energy file.

It would surprise most people in the province of Ontario to learn that the government is subsidizing energy costs to the tune of $7.8 billion. It’s steadily going up. It’s across the board. Everybody gets the subsidy. If you are a super rich person or if you’re a super poor person, you are getting the same energy subsidy. I’m pretty sure Galen Weston can pay his own energy bills. The government has never considered even a sliding scale to address true affordability measures.

What they are doing—and I’m just going to read directly from one of the op-eds that my colleague wrote—is that they’re busy breaking their own promise on energy and housing affordability. In the latest twist, this government “plans to pass legislation in February”—which is now before the House, before the committee, even today—“that will raise energy bills across the province and make life more expensive for new homebuyers.” Does this sound like a common sense thing to be doing in a cost-of-living crisis? Of course, it does not. Two of the highest drivers, really, for people in Ontario are the cost of housing, and then, of course, the day-to-day costs, like groceries, and I’m going to talk about that.

So this government is reversing an excellent decision by Ontario’s independent energy regulator, and I talked about this on the budget motion, because it defies all sense. Why would you not listen to the independent energy regulator when they’re saying this is in the best interests of the province of Ontario, which you should be interested in as well? It all goes back to a subsidy that most gas customers do not even know that they’re funding.

Right now, your gas bill is funding a huge subsidy worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year to cover the cost of expanding gas pipelines into new developments. Most people in Ontario don’t know this. On December 21, the Ontario independent energy regulator decided to put a stop to the subsidy because it raises energy bills for existing customers and new homebuyers, while also increasing financial risk for the whole gas system. In fact, the independent regulator highlighted stranded assets—because we’re building an energy sector in a way that they used to in the 1950s, not in 2024.

Ending the subsidy would save gas customers over $1 billion over four years in avoided pipeline subsidy costs, which comes to almost $300 per customer, plus interest profit payments paid by customers to Enbridge Gas on those amounts. Is this what the government is doing? No, they’re not doing that. They’re not going to try to save you $300 a year.

“Ending the subsidy will also encourage developers to install heat pumps”—which we heard at pre-budget committee would actually speed up housing starts. Is this government having great difficulty meeting your own housing start targets? Yes, you are. Do you need some help? You definitely need some help—“in new homes, which provide much cheaper heating and cooling, instead of gas,” for new homebuyers. So not only would these heat pump installations actually fast-track housing starts, which is a good thing; it would also provide cheaper heating and cooling for new homebuyers. Is this an affordability issue? Of course, it’s an affordability issue.

“Ending the subsidy would be a win-win-win-win,” said my friend and colleague from Toronto–Danforth. It would lower energy bills for existing customers. It would lower energy bills for new homebuyers. It would lower carbon emissions, and avoid even more cost down the road to convert away from fossil fuel heating in the houses built with heat pumps from the start.

This is a good plan that the independent regulator came forward with for Ontario.

There is, however, one loser in this whole issue, and that is Enbridge Gas. It would lose millions of dollars in profits, and shareholders might not make as much money as they wanted to. But Ontarians would save money. Who are we elected to serve? Ontarians, right?

So here we are. Enbridge Gas is right here. They were here this morning. They’re lobbying hard against the decision and have launched two challenges, so this government is going to be back in court, I guess. Its court challenge boldly complains that the decision will mean that, “Enbridge Gas has no right or ability to invest and earn a return on capital for new customer connections.” In other words, it will reduce their profits. So they are a company that is fighting for their profits.

I ask you, who is fighting to keep costs down for Ontarians? Not this government, because they have clearly sided with Enbridge Gas. In fact, the minister, MPP Smith, has announced that they will pass legislation to overturn this decision. The Ontario government seems to have been convinced that the change will reduce housing supply and affordability, but developers can just forgo gas and install heat pumps instead for little or no additional cost and sometimes even a savings. This could actually be good for developers as well, if developers are dedicated to actually building housing. But the question remains: Why should every other gas customer in Ontario be forced to pay to subsidize them to install this fossil fuel infrastructure and then be forced to pay Enbridge profits on top of that? Is this a fair situation for Ontario voters, for Ontario citizens? Absolutely not. Is the government truly showing their hand by siding with Enbridge? Absolutely.

This is what we also know—you can’t really get a clear answer from the government on this, but this is where we are right now: Gas is no longer the cheapest heating source. Investing in gas pipelines for heating is financially foolish because they will become obsolete as we decarbonize buildings. It is 2024; we should be talking about this. The government’s own expert electrification panel noted “growing indications that it is unlikely that the natural gas grid can be decarbonized and continue to deliver cost-effective building heat.”

Our neighbours—we hear a lot from the Premier about Texas, which always makes me want to break out into a Beyoncé song—like New York state and Montreal are prohibiting gas in new construction. I want to re-emphasize that: New York state is prohibiting gas in new construction.

Passing legislation to reinstate a subsidy is completely out of step and risks financial disaster down the road.

The Minister of Energy has clearly shown that he is on the side of Enbridge and not on the side of Ontarians who will face higher gas bills, instead of providing an opportunity of $300 in savings. Unfortunately, there are obviously major misconceptions about the broader issues, in part due to a great deal of misinformation. Right now, this is happening in committee, where this debate is happening.

Enbridge is fighting for their profits. We need the government to fight for the people, to keep those costs down.

We definitely think that the Ontario Energy Board made the right decision, based on evidence, to lower your energy bills. And we’re going to continue to raise these issues in this House.

What a perfect example, though, to clearly demonstrate who this government is working for.

We’ve seen some other escalations, if you will, in other ministries—particularly on health care. My God, we cannot afford to privatize health care any further. We’ve got to hold the line and we’ve got to walk it back; there’s no doubt about it. When this government spent $1 billion last year on agency nurses instead of hiring nurses in our acute-care and community care centres—this is not only fiscally irresponsible, but it is actually failing to meet the needs of communities.

I’ve talked about my future daughter-in-law. She’s a nurse—excellent, top of her class—working in the NICU, working with those little babies. Grand River Hospital is not hiring nurses. How can it be?

Clearly, choices are being made here around where the money is going to be spent or where the money is not going to be spent, but it certainly isn’t being invested in our health care human resources crisis.

The minister can talk about all the numbers she wants. Three emergency rooms were closed this weekend in southwestern Ontario. If you’re in a community and you need to go to the emergency room, you need that emergency room to be open. Surely we can agree on this. But in order for that emergency room to be open, you need to have nurses and medical professionals there.

What we have seen in Ontario is a mass migration of these very talented people, some of whom studied here, some of whom received support to study here, some of whom are very invested in medical research and the life sciences file. They’re leaving Ontario because Ontario is such a hostile place right now, in the health care sector.

When you talk to people who are in the health care system and they have an agency nurse working right alongside them and they can’t get a full-time job, but this nurse beside them is making twice or three times as much money—can you imagine what that does to morale? It is counterproductive. It’s counterintuitive. It’s fiscally irresponsible. I said this to the Minister of Finance—that we cannot afford $1 billion in agency nurses.

Let’s invest in human health resources in this province. Let’s demonstrate that we’re committed to retaining these people in the system, but also recruiting into the system. In order for that to be successful, the system can’t be broken; the system has to be a healthy place. That’s how you recruit back into the health care system.

These are very conscious, very committed decisions that the government is making. They refuse to close the loopholes on these private health care agencies that see the market here in Ontario because 2.3 million Ontarians don’t have a doctor. They see the loophole. The government sees the loophole. And now they’re charging anywhere between $450 a year to have access to a doctor, all the way up to $4,900.

In the public session in the public accounts earlier today, our health critic brought forward a motion and she said, “Let’s have the auditor look into this. Let’s follow the money.”

These agencies, let’s also remember, are being subsidized by OHIP, as well. So the taxpayers are funding the profit margins in these health care agencies. This is happening in Ontario. In fact, these health care agencies are popping up just as much as cannabis store clusters—Waterloo has about nine in a three-block radius; I don’t know what’s going on, exactly, with that. These businesses see a market share here in Ontario that has been intentionally created by this government.

When you purposefully create a crisis by not funding health care, you are, in turn, creating a whole new market share for for-profit health care. So that is happening.

In fact, we even have for-profit plasma centres opening up in one of the poorest areas in Hamilton. A European company has said, “Do you know what? They’ve done such a terrible job of promoting and supporting blood services in Ontario and in Canada that we’re going to go there and we’re going to offer to pay for plasma and pay for blood in the poorest neighbourhood, where people are the most desperate.” They’re the most desperate. They’re looking for some revenue because they’re poor. They’re easily—the argument can be made to them that they’re doing something good, but this is the new culture of Ontario, where we’ll buy anything. Anything is for sale in Ontario,, and it’s quite a development, I have to say.

The other thing is, here you have a government defending Enbridge and trying to hold their profit margins at a certain level through legislation, which even undermines the government’s own initiatives. And then Enbridge goes and cuts off rebates, leaving some homeowners on the hook for thousands in green renovation costs. This is bold. This is so bold, I would have to say, that Enbridge has said, “Do you know what? We’re not going to honour those rebates.”

This was just in the paper last week—that “most Ontarians’ carbon footprint is dominated by natural gas heating.” One lady decided to swap out her furnace for a heat pump. She applied for the government rebates. “Knowing there were $10,000 in government rebates available from the federal government and Enbridge Gas”—this was a partnership; it was a collaboration—they “went further with their renovation” to reduce their carbon footprint. They changed out their furnace for a heat pump; they upgraded some windows. And then what did Enbridge do? “We applied and we got confirmation to go ahead”—great, but then, when things were done and they had made commitments to contractors and thus, Enbridge said, “No, we’re not going to honour that commitment.”

So is this the new normal, where the government is not even protecting consumers on policies and programs that the government has negotiated?

One homeowner said, “This is a significant upfront cost to the homeowner. We’re not talking hundreds of dollars here”—we’re talking thousands. “Times are tough. Inflation is insane. Everyone’s mortgage is up for renewal and they’ve just put thousands of Ontarians in a really tough position to be able to manage these costs that they were not anticipating.”

So the energy minister is defending Enbridge, and then Enbridge is saying to people that they have agreed to have a contract around reducing their gas costs, that they’re not going to honour that commitment anymore. But who is the Minister of Energy going to bat for? He’s going to bat for Enbridge. You can’t even make it up.

This is an ongoing issue for Ontarians, who really feel abandoned by the government. The government is making very poor choices on the energy file, which is a huge cost to the province of Ontario. This speaks to priorities—and I feel like it’s getting darker. I think that it’s actually happening, and it does feel very symbolic to me, I have to tell you.

I’m going to talk a little bit about—and this is along the same theme of how the government is making decisions. We have all agreed in this House now, for years, that at 319 acres a day—the fact that we are losing these acres every single day in Ontario is not sustainable, nor is it a practice that any government should be endorsing or condoning.

In Wilmot township, farmers in that township just outside of Waterloo—not in my riding—in January, were approached by some developers who heard that 770 acres of prime agricultural land would be rezoned. It wasn’t in the official plan. If this sounds familiar—I’m already calling it greenbelt 2.0. The fact of the matter is that these farmers knew that they weren’t part of the official plan for development. The region has traditionally had a very balanced and positive relationship with farmers. We are an agricultural community. We believe that farmers feed cities. The citizens love the fact that we had a countryside line around the region which would focus our attention on building up, building smart, investing in the needed infrastructure, but not being wasteful with sprawl—more and more and more sprawl. So when this government rolled back their Bill 23 and the urban boundaries, and said, “Do you know what? We’re really, really sorry”—I just want to tell you, Madam Speaker, they weren’t that sorry, because they’re still carving out parcels of land and they’re making it available, bypassing the provincial environmental strategy, bypassing municipal plans, quite honestly. So this government has been very complicit and a willing participant, even though they were very sorry. They were sorry about the $8.3 billion in land acquisitions that some developers were going to benefit from. And we also know that this was never really about housing; right?

In Waterloo region now, we have farmers who are being forced off their land. They received lowball offers, somewhere around $35,000 per acre. But as soon as that one acre turns into an industrial proposition, it goes to $1 million? This is exactly what happened in the greenbelt—someone told someone who happens to be a developer that this land was now going to be industrial land, so it’s for economic development.

We also strongly believe that rural communities can be a strong partner in economic development, but, boy, it shouldn’t come at the cost of 770 acres of some of the best farmland in Ontario. These six farmers on this 770 acres—one of those families has been there since 1861. Out of nowhere, not part of any official plan, not part of any public consultation—no transparency whatsoever—farmers got a fellow, a third party from the States to come to them and say, “I’ll give you $35,000 for each acre, or you’re going to be expropriated by the region.”

Imagine being a contributor to the very fabric of our country and of our province and of our community, the very people we all espouse to say we respect and honour—this time-honoured tradition and profession of being stewards of the land and feeders of the city, and it’s $35,000 or you’re off, you’re expropriated. Forget that these are also six really productive family businesses.

Farming is a hard life; we can agree on this. There are not too many farmers in here, although I have worked with a couple over the years. They have to be tough, because it’s a tough profession.

The region has looked at the Get It Done piece of legislation, and schedule 1, which eases the onerous red tape—I guess, if you will, or blue tape—of expropriating land without an environmental assessment that meets the needs of the conservation authorities. They usually are consulted. Of course, the conservation authorities in Ontario have really been cut off at the knees, if you will. They’re not even consulted on key environmental decisions that are happening. Nobody even asked them, “What about the flood plain? What about the aquifer?”

I just want to say at the very top of this that economic development does not have to come at the cost of prime agricultural farmland. This is a false choice, and it’s a choice that this government doesn’t want to even talk about. Most of regional council have signed nondisclosure agreements, so these farmers don’t even have anybody to ask a question like, “What’s going to be developed on there? How thorough was the environmental assessment?”

While this 770 acres is not directly over the aquifer, it’s 200 metres away from it. And I don’t know if you know this, Madam Speaker, but water doesn’t just go down; water moves. We know this.

We have the knowledge, we have the power to make the right decisions, and yet this government brings forward legislation that is so open to the overriding of basic rights.

I’ve said this: Something is fundamentally unjust about what’s happening to farmers in Wilmot right now. I don’t know how you would feel if someone came to your farm and said, “Do you know what? An undisclosed industrial project is needed, and therefore you must leave your land.” It would be cartoonish if it wasn’t so very serious—because 80% of the drinking water that Waterloo region accesses is from the moraine; it is from the ground. So we are very protective of our source water protection; we have to be. We cannot afford to have a pipeline to Lake Erie or Lake Huron. Nobody wants that. The smart investment is to ensure that we become true stewards of the land.

In 2024, the fact that this government is so complicit in the paving of 770 acres of prime farmland, knowing the history of what has happened around water in the PC Party is astounding to me. It is so—it’s not even the 1950s; it’s like the 1850s here. Do you know what I mean?

I’ve written to the Premier. I know the Ontario Federation of Agriculture has asked the province to intervene, to pause and take a sober second thought, because once this land is gone, it is gone forever.

No consultation; no transparency; strong-arming farmers; no environmental assessment that we can see, that we can build some confidence in; and also a lack of process. Like, where else could this rumoured electric vehicle battery plant go? Do you know what I know for sure? You can’t eat an electric vehicle battery.

We definitely need to be focused on food security. If we’ve learned anything from the pandemic and having to be dependent on other jurisdictions, we need to be self-sufficient as a province. We need people to understand that the province is supportive of farming and of farms. We need new generations to look at that profession and that trade with some confidence that this is going to be something that the province of Ontario actually supports. We’re moving in the opposite direction—and it is getting darker, just on cue, for sure.

Total eclipse of the sun.

LCBO paper bags.

Is there a siren?

The Premier, though, has really taken a very principled stand on a very important issue. When you go to the LCBO tomorrow, you’ll be able to get a brown paper bag. This is where his focus has been. He has asked the LCBO to reverse the fact that they weren’t giving you brown paper bags. This is—

Interjections.

When I tell people and sometimes show people what’s actually happening in this place, honestly, it doesn’t instill a lot of confidence.

Never fear, though; we’ve got some really good commercials—and it’s all happening here. You’re footing the bill for it, Ontarians.

I’m sure when you are one of the people who is waiting an average of 12 hours in an emergency room and that TV up in the corner is just on replay and you see this commercial where people are buying their first house or even moving into a rental place or—

I don’t know what is actually going on over there around priorities, but this province has never spent so much money and given so little to the people of Ontario.

The cost of where you are, the cost of these poor decisions on the people of this province—particular y in education, I want to say, just for a second—is having a huge impact. Our critic on the post-secondary education file, this morning, asked a really excellent question of the Premier because his comments last week, when they were opening another medical school, were—sure, this is great. We do have qualified people in Ontario that have come from other countries that can’t be working in the medical field.

I’m thinking of the head of security at my building here in Ontario; his name is Mohammed. He’s a renal specialist from Pakistan. When I first met him—six years ago now—that’s exactly when the government froze the minimum wage. We calculated how much he lost by that freezing of the minimum wage: $7,000. He has five children and he’s a doctor, okay? He’s a doctor working as a security officer, and he wants to go back to medical. He wants to get his qualifications here in Ontario.

Do you know how hard it is in Ontario if you’re a foreign-trained medical professional to access your potential? Is this a place where the government is focusing some energy and some resources and some funding? Of course not, no, but a shiny new medical school with a ribbon cutting is going to be great.

But at that ribbon cutting, the Premier had some very strong words when he was mentioning international students that are training. I can’t remember the exact quote, but he was like, “I just want kids from Ontario to go to these schools.”

It’s important to remember that all of us are immigrants in Ontario, except with First Nations Indigenous people—and cue my colleague from Kiiwetinoong walking by as I say that. They’re the first peoples; the rest of us are immigrants.

And there’s a siren too.

Immigrants and settlers, yes. And yet the Premier can stand in his place and start talking about these international students that are taking up these spaces.

Let’s be really clear and back the bus up a little bit here, because the reason that post-secondary institutions, colleges, moved to accelerate and commercialize international students is because the public system was so fundamentally underfunded, to the point of crisis. It started under the Liberals, and it continued and accelerated with this government.

Even your own blue ribbon panel had said, “Listen, you have to come to the table with operating funding.” Even when the Minister of Finance met with the editorial board of the Toronto Star, they said, “Listen, this is not sustainable. Your $1.3 billion that you’re going to put back into the system—that you’ve already taken out—is not going to cut it.”

So, post-secondary institutions started to look towards international students to generate revenue. This is a fact. It’s well-documented. It’s actually in your own blue ribbon report. So, to hear the Premier use this kind of language—and, listen, I know that the media show up every time, because you just really never know what’s going to be said by this Premier.

This morning, when the member from Oshawa asked a very legitimate question about the planning grant for the Whitby hospital, what she got back was just complete broken-telephone, grade 6 excuses. It’s so irresponsible, and I don’t know if it’s a personal thing, because sometimes get pretty personal with this Premier, but the fact that, if you want to be responsible and you know that the population is growing and you know that the population is aging and that, from a demographic perspective, we are going to have to have the resources and the people to take care of future generations, then the planning grant is really just a common sense first step, right?

Waterloo region received $25 million, I think, in the last budget. We’re going through the process of site location. It’s not going to be on 770 acres of farmland, I’ve been told. And we’re doing our due diligence. You want communities to do their due diligence, right? It’s the responsible thing to do, but is that happening? Did we get an answer from the Premier this morning to a very basic, common sense question around planning for future health care needs? No, we did not. We got some name calling, we got some generalizations, and I have to say it was—sometimes it’s just dumbfounding for me.

One of the other issues, as it relates to international students, Madam Speaker, which is really rearing its head in places like Kitchener-Waterloo because we have Laurier, we have University of Waterloo, we have Conestoga College, is that folks who are coming to Ontario—maybe sometimes they’re doing a PhD, they’re here and they’re doing their research and they have spouses, they have partners, and those partners sometimes are pregnant. But what we’re seeing is that these uninsured patients, international students who do have CIHIP or UHIP and then—this also is inclusive of Old Order Mennonites, Low German-speaking folks working in Ontario—they’re required a $5,000 deposit before they will take an initial visit.

So you want to talk about barriers to health care: $5,000 for an initial visit, even though you’re insured, is a true barrier. Additionally, Grand River Hospital is now requiring a $10,000 up-front deposit for delivery. Now, you have to remember that if you’ve travelled from, say, Nairobi, and you are specializing in nuclear physics at University of Waterloo and your spouse—but you’re still a student, you’re not making a lot of money, you’re still studying. Five thousand dollars just to see a doctor and $10,000 to guarantee a delivery of a baby—is this the Ontario dream? Is this the Canadian dream that we’ve talked about? It is not, remembering that all of us are settlers here in Ontario.

My office has been really great. We’re focused on this issue, we’re trying to find some solutions, we’re trying to find the disconnect. A letter went to the minister around what’s happening. But this is important, that the college of physicians and surgeons say that there are no rules around what they can charge uninsured folks. There are no rules, but it feels like they’re prioritizing uninsured folks who can pay rather than OHIP folks. This is a growing, emerging issue. I wanted to raise it today in the House, something very fundamentally unfair, unjust around asking $5,000 just to see an OB/GYN and then also to charge $10,000 cash to deliver a baby.

In keeping with the theme now, it’s pretty dark out there right now, and that’s keeping with our total eclipse of common sense here at Queen’s Park.

I’m going to move into the affordability piece. Also, just on the groceries, there’s a recent survey that showed that when people go to get food, they go to Food Basics, they go to Loblaws, more and more people are shopping for groceries at the dollar store. That stock is doing pretty well, I just want to tell you, More than 31% of Ontario residents voted price gouging as the top reason for escalating food prices.

So there are legislative options that this government could take around addressing price gouging and there was some pretty tough talk from this Premier during the pandemic. I mean, when he held up that bottle of $20 Windex—"I’m not going to take it anymore,” you know. I mean, lots of talk. Talk is so cheap, right? But actually, at the end of the day, when you say that you’re going to do something around price gouging, we would encourage you to act on it. Because those legislative tools are there; this government can do this.

This is a fundamental consumer protection issue, and the discrepancy between prices is real. And it’s a cost pressure that’s impacting the quality of life of the people of this great province, I would say particularly for seniors. I’m definitely seeing more and more seniors in my office, and more and more senior women, I find, because they certainly do not have the financial independence to secure housing, to secure the kind of food that they want, to actually have the kind of quality of life that they were considering, they were thinking about, that they thought Ontario would offer.

I do also just want to raise the issue around where certain grants are going for this government because my job is to follow the money. Sometimes it goes right down to a very dark hole. And I will say that one of the most egregious issues that we’ve learned about is around Indigenous communities and the agencies that care for some of those children really accelerating their pricing and their gouging of those costs.

Indigenous communities in northern Ontario have been told on several fronts that agencies that are in the caring industry are actually using First Nations’ contracts and viewing those children that come into care which they describe as “cash cows.” Now, this is something—forget even the concept of reconciliation, but these agencies in mostly northern Ontario have been caught overcharging and then delivering very poor care for Indigenous communities. This is a doubling down on an abusive pattern that we saw first in residential schools. It’s systemic racism and really is colonialism in 2024, I would say. Especially I know that you know that my colleagues have raised some serious issues around mental health. Children are actually being removed from their communities because those mental health resources are not there. I hope that we can agree that we can do better.

I wish that Bill 180 provided better. I hope that as this bill moves through the House, that the government is amenable to fixing this bill, because it needs to be fixed and there needs to be dedicated resources that are enveloped particularly in the not-for-profit sector, which is basically holding the very social fabric of Ontario together. I don’t know how they’re doing it. There was this very poignant moment during pre-budget consultations when we were at the Holiday Inn down in Oakville and the PSE sector was before us. I think it was the president of the council of universities, and he was saying, “Listen, we can’t do it anymore. We’re at a tipping point. We’re at a breaking point on infrastructure on campuses across Ontario.” And, at that point, there was some rain coming through the ceiling and so the really good staff from broadcast came together and they covered their equipment, and we just kept talking about how bad things are getting in the post-secondary education sector. Then, it started to rain a little bit heavier—this is in the ballroom during pre-budget consultation. Then at one point, I think Steve Orsini said that the infrastructure is on the brink of collapse, and that’s when the ceiling did collapse in the pre-budget consultation. I’ve actually never seen anything like it, but I thought it was also very symbolic as well.

So the post-secondary education sector, as our critic outlined this morning, is on the brink of really having to make very tough decisions around class sizes, around training of staff, around retaining some staff, and you know, if we can agree on a few things, it’s that when you invest in future generations, that return on investment through education pays back in huge dividends. It really does. Just like the core infrastructure piece around Enbridge and ensuring that we’re not saddling future generations with these stranded assets of gas lines. I mean it deserves an honest answer: Why are we subsidizing the building of gas pipelines for Enbridge? That time has come, and it has gone. Yet, we have a Minister of Energy who is firmly supporting the use of tax dollars in those subsidies.

I do want to say, “Environmental Defence Condemns Ontario’s Move to Overrule OEB Decision to Benefit Enbridge.” It’s also worth noting—and this is actually by Keith Brooks, who is the program director. This is a quote about the legislation that the Minister of Energy brought in, which is going to keep your gas bills higher: “This legislation would be bad for new homeowners, bad for existing gas customers ... bad for the environment. The only one that benefits is Enbridge Gas.” Then it goes on to say, “This is all too similar to the greenbelt scandal: The government is legislating against the public good in the services of a few private interests, namely Enbridge and housing developers.”

So no lessons have been learned from the greenbelt. If you’re looking at what’s happening in Wilmot right now, the government is really doubling down on those backroom deals that are actually ensuring that sprawl becomes the new reality for Ontario. We can’t afford sprawl. We need to be very strategic around investments, especially around energy.

Listen, the potential of actually good local jobs on conservation—that reality really is there, and there is a consumer protection perspective. If you are focused on conservation, where the smart money is, those good local jobs to replace the windows, to do the heat pumps—those are local trades. You can’t outsource those to China. Then, you also have tax credits, which people will apply for because these exchanges are not happening in the underground economy. They’re actually happening in real time by qualified, skilled people, which also ensures that the work is done to a standard which is commensurate with the talent of the people who are doing the work. It is like a win-win-win-win all around. You think this government’s doing that? No, they’re not.

Also, with regard to Enbridge and this Minister of Energy fighting the independent legislator, it says, “This legislation also sets a dangerous precedent: This is the first time any government of Ontario has overruled a decision by the independent Ontario Energy Board. The board’s mandate is to keep energy costs down, and that’s what drove this decision.”

So you have a Minister of Energy fighting an independent organization that has a mandate to keep your energy bills down. He’s fighting that agency. That is a perfect microcosm of what’s happening in Ontario right now around who this government is working for and who they are leaving behind. What a lost potential and opportunity in a budget of $214 billion to keep focused on those corporate profits and not on keeping costs down for the people of Ontario. It truly is. You really are out-Liberaling the Liberals, I have to say.

There were a lot of things I wanted to talk about, but I do want to mention the justice file, because we met with the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association recently to talk about the backlog in the courtrooms, and I sort of started this with Emily, who was here a week and a half ago, whose rapist walked free, and also Cait, who never even got her day in court because the timeline to deal with the criminal charges had expired. These are perfect examples of how broken the system is. When people have the courage to come forward after being sexually assaulted and talking to police about what they experienced, everyone who we’ve spoken to references the re-traumatization of their whole experience by going into the police station and also going through the court system and then, obviously, seeing their perpetrator walk away. That’s not tough on crime.

Having a justice system that deals with these very serious issues in real time, that keeps people safe, particularly women—we do have an amazing motion, a PMB that’s going to be coming forward later this week, which is calling on the government to recognize that intimate partner violence is an epidemic. Why not acknowledge that? I mean, with the number of women who have been killed most recently in Sault Ste. Marie, a whole family, because often children are also victims in these cases, what would be the harm for this government to acknowledge that this level of violence against women and against partners exists in Ontario? Is it just pure ideology? Because even when we ask questions of substance around the response of the justice system and of prevention of violence against women, the government will come back and say something about the carbon tax.

Let me tell you, if you know someone who’s gone through that court system, who has experienced that kind of violence, and we ask a serious question about the lack of response, the lack of dignity, the lack of integrity that these women experience as they go through the justice system and you come back with, “Well, why aren’t you writing a letter to the federal government about the carbon tax?”—ironically, even though we have a carbon tax in Ontario because this Premier cancelled cap-and-trade and the federal backstop came into play, the only reason we have a carbon tax in Ontario is because of this government, Madam Speaker; right? The cap-and-trade program—

Interjection.

Settlers.

We’ll go to questions.