Something which I’m really passionate about is making sure that the youth have the resources they need, and I’ll give you an example. When I got elected in 2018, something I found out was that every high school in Peel has a sports facility. Malton was the only one with two high schools and no sports facility. Thanks to the ministry, both high schools now have track and field.

Something which I noticed in this bill is about making investments of $200 million in the Community Sport and Recreation Infrastructure Fund, which will help build new rec, sport and community centres all across our province, including some of the NDP ridings as well.

Through you, Madam Speaker: I’d like to ask the member whether she will be joining this side in delivering our commitment to uphold the mental health, physical health and well-being of all Ontarians, and is she going to support this important investment?

We’re going to go to questions for the member.

I listened to everything that my colleague from Toronto Centre was talking about, and there were so many really important points in those 20 minutes. But the one thing that I honed in on while they were talking about it was around the parents who are basically being forced by this government to surrender their children to children’s aid, thinking—when they can’t access the mental health supports that their children need—that if they surrender their kids to CAS, that CAS will be able to get them that access, which CAS cannot do. In my area, we have kids as young as four or five in hotel rooms because they cannot get foster homes for these kids with their complex needs.

So I’m wondering if my colleague can tell me if they see anything in this budget that will actually not only address the funding shortfalls that CAS is seeing but also the mental health supports and, in some cases, the developmental or intellectual supports for kids with intellectual or developmental disabilities. Is there anything in this bill that would address those issues?

Thank you to the member across for the question.

As I mentioned, a budget bill is a confidence bill, and you have to have confidence in the budget for us to pass this.

Well, let me tell you what’s missing in this budget. There is no concrete increase for school repairs for 2024 and 2025, and the funding for the school repair backlog has decreased year over year. This budget is simply not supportable.

Madam Speaker, I was listening to the member opposite, who was talking about the investments we’re making in schools.

I just want to read that what we’re doing here in the province is investing over $23 billion, including $16 billion in capital grants over the next 10 years, to build more schools and child care spaces, including a new joint French and English public school in Blind River, a new English public school in Ottawa, an additional Catholic elementary school in St. Thomas and a new French Catholic secondary school in Vaughan. This includes $1.4 billion in funding for the current school year to support the repair and renewal needs of schools.

But what I do want to talk about is also the Housing-Enabling Water Systems Fund where we increased the investment from $200 million to $800 million. I do get it. The NDP usually says that we’re not going far enough. So I again want to ask the member whether you will support the increase from $200 million to $800 million in the Housing-Enabling Water Systems Fund and are you going to support this bill?

Through you, Madam Speaker: I would like to ask the member if she can help us to understand whether she will be voting in favour of such an important infrastructure investment we are planning to do in favour of doctors for tomorrow alongside with us—

Next question?

Thank you to the member from Toronto Centre for their presentation today.

Listening to the questions back and forth, children are our most valuable resource. Yet, we do not see them reflected in this budget whatsoever. We have over 60,000 children on a wait-list for autism services—I believe the last number I saw was 67,000. We have a budget that says $120 million was going into that budget. Quite frankly, it’s actually only $60 million that’s going in. The numbers are ridiculous for them to think that they’re going to pull this off.

Then we talk about the schools. We have all of these children in schools without a day of service.

Can the member tell us what she has been hearing from her constituents about children and how they’re struggling within our school system and teachers who are just not able to keep up?

We know people on OW, ODSP, had been put into legislated poverty years ago. This government says that it has made the biggest revelation in giving people an increase. They just increased further poverty. They did not do anything to help the situation. There are so many ways that they could improve people’s lives.

Maybe the member would like to talk about her experience in Toronto Centre of people who are literally living in legislated poverty.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak to the budget bill, Bill 180. As we know, this government is not fond of hearing feedback from the opposition Liberals, so I don’t take this time for granted. But it is an opportunity for me to share the concerns of my Don Valley West constituents with this budget and this government, Speaker—and believe you me, they had a lot to say.

The finance minister talked about this budget as one that sticks to their plan. It certainly does stick to their plan of fiscal irresponsibility. So my constituents were not surprised to see this budget continue the government’s plan to divert money away from public services to private businesses. By the way, they’re still upset about the ServiceOntario location operated by an independent service operator that serves my Thorncliffe constituents and those in Don Valley East, that’s going to be closed down and their business given to Staples under a sole-source contract. I do wonder if the Premier would advise his business friends to do business that way.

Anyway, Speaker, they’re not surprised that a government that added $93 billion in debt—15% more debt than the Liberals did in their last six years, when they spend hour after hour talking about that Liberal government here in this House—is going to add another $60 billion—$60 billion—in the next few years.

I’d like to say I’m surprised by the lack of new measures to address urgent problems in our province, whether it’s skyrocketing rents, ER closures, family doctor shortages, student mental health crises, overburdened food banks, bankrupt post-secondary institutions—the list goes on. It’s really just a continuation, though, of the reckless spending of this government that gives money to their rich friends while telling people they are putting more money into the pockets of Ontarians.

The government does indeed like to make reference to the former Liberal government, but Conservatives will not be able to grow their way out of the debt problems they are giving to this province. GDP growth under this government is lower—1.5% on average—than it was under Kathleen Wynne’s government, which was 2.5% on average, all while government spending is higher than Kathleen Wynne, and services are worse.

When Liberals spent money, they did things like give us all-day kindergarten and free education for low-income post-secondary students, which improved their chances of success and improved their quality of life.

When this government spends billions more of our taxpayer money, it’s only their rich friends who benefit, so I’m not surprised. Overspending on initiatives that help their friends, big budget deficits, and inaction on key files have all become hallmarks of this Conservative government. Nonetheless, I am still disappointed and, frankly, shocked that in the days leading up to the release of the budget, the government labelled it as one of a cost-of-living budget. When I heard that I thought, “Wow, they’re finally hearing the message that there are people struggling. Maybe there will finally be some help for those households. But instead, it was a real shame that there was not one new measure to help people dealing with the cost of living.

There’s a long list of this government’s broken promises, policy flip-flops, and failures. In fact, it seems that they think that by moving quickly from one mess to another, they hope to confuse the public and make it hard for us all to keep track.

But Speaker, we are here to hold them to account and make sure that their record, such as the scandal of Bill 124, the most damaging piece of legislation to our publicly funded health care system—let’s not forget the RCMP criminal investigation into their $8.3-billion greenbelt giveaway; their sole-sourcing of contracts to American companies while putting independent Ontario operators out of business; giving away the park at Ontario Place to a foreign-owned spa, and then giving that spa a half-billion-dollar parking lot to boot. Then, there’s the broken promise to middle income families for a tax cut, now broken for over 2,000 days.

The real shame is that there are no new measures to deal with the many crises that this government has orchestrated, no measures to relieve the administrative burden on family doctors—a 10% reduction in that could free up time for an additional two million patients a year—no new money to ensure hospitals don’t have to spend another billion dollars next year on private nursing and staffing agencies; no new money to ensure that teachers get the support staff in classrooms that they need to help those students who need extra help and help reduce the rising violence in our classrooms.

Ontarians are tired of this government and the crises they created in our public services. They’re tired of stagnant growth. They’re tired of hearing about how they’re building homes when they are way off their plan. Instead of owning up or stepping up on their housing record, they fudged the numbers by adding in long-term-care beds in the hopes that the people of Ontario will not notice.

A number of my constituents and others across Ontario who reach out to me as the Liberal finance critic wonder how we have the largest spending budget in Ontario history, under a Conservative government no less, yet the province is experiencing crises after crises. Never has a government spent so much to deliver so little. But the answer has to do with priorities. The government prioritizes their friends and insiders rather than the people of Ontario. I’ve been hearing from constituents about how the TDSB is having to choose between cutting education programs for seniors to prioritize their main mission, of course, which is serving kids, and those seniors are worried about those programs being cut.

I would have thought this government could have found a few million dollars in their budget to make sure that that school board was able to keep delivering services to their seniors without jeopardizing the success of their educational curriculum.

This government is indeed spending more than any government in Ontario’s history, yet, despite this, real spending on the things that matter to Ontarians—health care, education, child care, long-term care and post-secondary institution—remains stagnant in real dollars or have even declined.

According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, real spending on education has declined $1,200 per student under this government. Similarly, compared to every other province, Ontario continues to spend the least per capita on both health care and post-secondary education. That is not the path to a successful future, Speaker. Ontario’s universities and colleges, the backbone of our economy, have actually been allocated less funding in this budget than they were last year. This is before accounting for inflation and it’s just not sustainable. The blue panel’s recommendations were crystal clear: Ontario’s colleges and universities need an additional $2.5 billion to remain financially stable. This government has committed less than half of that funding, so it’s not a surprise that one third of our institutions are still projected to be in the red this year.

We’ve known for some time now that this government and the Premier are fond of helping their friends: for example, developers who own land near the greenbelt; they own land near Highway 413; they own private nursing agencies; they are long-term-care developers. We have former staff members and American-owned companies. And yet with this budget, they have taken helping their friends to a new level.

Let’s be clear, helping their friends does come at the expense of taxpayers and the people of Ontario. This Premier is spending more than double what Premier Wynne spent to staff his office—double, Speaker. That’s taking money away from the services that they could be providing to our citizens, our residents, and instead they’re putting it into the pockets of the Premier’s staffers.

Furthermore, despite grandstanding about how they’re helping “the little guy,” this government has also decided to give every member but one of its own caucus a promotion and therefore a pay bump. I don’t hear them bragging about that in their “sunny day” ad campaign. But I could almost hear it now. Here it goes: “What if you lived in a place where every member but one of your government’s MPPs earned more than every other MPP? Well, you do. It’s happening right here in Ontario.”

Speaker, let’s be clear: It’s just another one of the ways this government changes the rules or gets around its own rules to make their friends richer. Let me remind the government that they put in place a law where MPPs across the board could not get a raise while there was a deficit. So what do they do instead? They have a $9.8-billion deficit, then give raises to their MPPs by making sure that all but one are ministers or parliamentary assistants: 77 out of 78 MPPs in caucus. Shameful. Unfortunately, this is the kind of special treatment for insider friends that we’ve come to expect from this Conservative government.

But let’s get back to the numbers in the budget. This government has added over $90 billion in debt since coming to power in 2018 and are projected to add another $60 billion, and for what? What are we getting for the record amount of money being spent by this government? Speaker, I’ll tell you what we’re getting: We’re getting a record number of crises in every sector.

In health care, we have record ER closures. Under this government and this Minister of Health, we had three more rural ERs close just this past weekend. We have a wait-list for family doctors that’s record high and growing; 2.3 million Ontarians do not have access to a primary care provider. That number will skyrocket to 4.4 million as soon as 2026. And, Speaker, who benefits when people don’t have a family doctor they can access through the public system with their OHIP card? It’s the for-profit clinics that provide care you pay for with your credit card.

But instead of solving that problem, this budget only makes provisions to provide an additional 600,000 Ontarians access to a family doctor, and only by 2027. That means we will hear more and more in the years to come about Ontarians who are accessing care via for-profit clinics. I hear about that every week in my constituency office. In fact, hospitals in my riding are trying to find solutions for this because they know that 80% of people living in assisted living in my riding don’t have family doctors, and so they end up in the ER. That’s not good government.

This government hasn’t had the courage yet to say it, but they are defunding our public services—basically privatizing our public services—because we have a Premier who doesn’t actually believe in public services. That’s why he says the worst place you can give your money is to the government. In our public schools, we have growing staff shortages. According the recent Annual Ontario School Survey, 24% of elementary schools and 35% of secondary schools report facing staff shortages on a daily basis—record high staff shortages—under this government. Teachers and principals have cited several reasons, like mental health. Students are suffering from mental health. Young people are not doing well in this province, and it’s having an impact on our schools to function as safe places where kids can learn.

Yet this budget barely even touches on this issue, proposing only to spend a paltry $8.3 million over five years on youth mental health hubs. With about two million students in Ontario, that’s about 83 cents a year per student. That’s not going very far. There is no plan to expand access to mental health services in schools, where they are needed most.

So again, Speaker, where is all this record spending going, if not towards education and health care? It’s going to things like moving the science centre; to building Highway 413, a highway that will cut through more valuable farmland and only benefit private developers who are looking to build more car-dependent suburbs. The budget did find half a billion dollars to build an underwater parking garage for a foreign-owned spa. Those are the kinds of priorities of this government, not education and health care.

We shouldn’t forget about the hundreds of millions in federal dollars that this government has turned down because they won’t allow fourplexes as of right across this province. They wasted millions on fighting public sector workers in court and millions wasted on partisan Super Bowl ads. There is a pattern, Speaker, and it’s not a good one. The government is spending billions, costing Ontarians billions with their mistakes, and they’re mortgaging our future to pay for it all.

Last week, while answering questions about the budget, the Minister of Long-Term Care referenced my advocacy for a not-for-profit care home in my riding, and I did not have time to answer it, so let me summarize here. It seems the minister was upset I’d asked for help from his office to meet with that home, to provide clarity regarding their current contract, so they can have certainty to build new beds. But it seems that the not-for-profit sector, despite providing better care at a lower cost, always seems to be last in line.

Speaker, Ontario does have a bright future, but it’s not with a budget like this that adds billions to our debt and puts the future of Ontario at risk.

We’re going to go to questions for the member.

My question for the member is about highways. In my riding of Essex, we’re expanding Highway 3 from two to four lanes, and I think that’s a very important investment to be made. I think it kind of exemplifies the approach to highways and infrastructure investment that this government has. We believe in infrastructure investment. We believe in the expansion of highways.

On the other side, I would say that there’s an example that the Liberals actually are opposed to expanding highways, and that is probably exemplified by the statement of the federal Liberal environment minister, Steven Guilbeault, who says he doesn’t want to build any more highways. So I ask this member: Where does she stand? Does she stand in favour of investment in infrastructure and highways like Highway 3, or does she stand with Steven Guilbeault?

I want to thank the member for Don Valley West for her presentation. I’m wondering, because I know the member has expertise in financial management and a financial background, and you’ve commented a lot on what you believe to be the deficiencies from a financial perspective in the government’s budget—spending a whole lot, as the member from Ottawa South often likes to say, for not a lot.

Transit: I’m looking at a government that—unless you look at the city of Toronto, thanks to Mayor Olivia Chow—we don’t have a lot of money for operating the buses that we operate in many of our municipalities. Certainly in Ottawa, we’re 74,000 service hours short for OC Transpo this year because of government cutbacks. But meanwhile, the cost of building transit under the Conservative government has climbed to a billion dollars per kilometre for the Ontario Line, that I know you care about in this city. The Eglinton West Crosstown: 3 years overdue—a billion dollars over budget.

Can the member talk about the financial mismanagement of transit projects under this government and, from your perspective in Don Valley West, how much would putting more money into transit operating funds all over the province matter to you?

Speaker, Ontario families are struggling, whether it’s to pay their rent, pay their mortgage, to get their kids something extra—they’re using their credit card to access basic medical services for themselves and for their children.

Leadership starts at the top, so I would like the member to tell me her thoughts on the fact that the Premier’s office budget more than doubled to $7 million a year. It went from 20 staff to 48 staff on the sunshine list and each of those 48 staff make more money than the median Ontario family—the median Ontario family—some of them, twice as much, some of them, three times as much and some of them four times as much.

Can the member expound on whether this is really fair or right for Ontario families?

Well, I stand in favour of building things that benefit Ontarians. The highway in the member’s riding I’m not familiar with; it may benefit Ontarians, and certainly I would encourage that. Highway 413, we know from this government’s own ministry, does not benefit Ontarians, Speaker. It saves 30 seconds. It will certainly, though, benefit the rich developers who own land around that area. That is not the kind of thing we should be prioritizing. We need to be prioritizing spending money on investing in things like our post-secondary institutions, who are feeling the pain right now, who have deficits. That will only cause the future of Ontario to grow dimmer, just like our solar eclipse today.

Certainly, public transportation has been proven to be a driver of economic growth, so I’m absolutely in support of public transit. We cannot allow the death spiral that is happening, as the member referenced, in Ottawa happen here in Toronto. When ridership goes down, revenues go down, service goes down—it’s a death spiral.

In Ontario, we have one of the lowest-funded public transportation systems in the world and we need to make sure that we get that back as a priority for not just Toronto—for Ottawa and for other cities that are growing and need to have public transit to make sure that workers across the province can get to work in an energy-efficient way. And that helps our environment too, so absolutely, we need more public transit.

Speaker, again, it really does just show the priorities of this government. They didn’t take out an ad talking about the increases in the Premier’s staff budget. I wonder why. It’s because it’s nothing to be proud of—doubling the budget is not a good use of taxpayer money and it’s not a good use of this government’s resources.

When you think about adding people to the sunshine list when families are suffering, when we’ve got families who are, in record numbers, going to food banks—we’ve got people with full-time jobs going to food banks because they can’t afford the cost of living in this province. We have a Premier who took away rent control so that rent is now an even bigger portion of people’s take-home income.

So, Speaker, I think this government has its priorities all mixed up and this is a perfect example of that.

Speaker, certainly, there are programs that we’re spending on that do benefit workers. But this budget did not brag about the billions of dollars that came out of the public purse to fix a wrong done by this government to workers who really do matter, our health care workers. Bill 124—this government has had to pay $6 billion so far for reparations on that. There’s probably another $7 billion more to come, so while I appreciate the $100 million spent on skilled trades, this government certainly has not prioritized workers across our province.

I want to say thank you to the member from Don Valley West. We were together at the budget consultations and we heard from people across Ontario about investing in skills training through the Skills Development Fund—SDF, as we call it.

Through this budget, we are investing another $100 million for 2024-25 to help workers and job seekers. This is in addition to the $860 million that has been invested since its launch in 2021. To date, the government has delivered close to 600 training projects, supported over 500,000 workers, including those in the skilled trades and health care taking the next step in their career.

My question to the member is very simple: Do you think $100 million is enough investment in SDF, or do you think we should invest more in SDF?

The budget makes mention of a few announcements that are being recycled, so the government is reannouncing the Ontario Made Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit. They’ve reannounced the advanced manufacturing and innovation competitiveness stream. They’ve reannounced the target benefit framework, but I couldn’t find anything in the budget that actually targets support for businesses who are still struggling through COVID recovery; nor did I find anything that would actually boost wages to increase and build new jobs so we can transition to a low-carbon economy. Did you find anything in the budget that speaks to those concerns and needs for Ontarians?

Hello, everyone.

Madam Speaker, I feel very honoured to rise today in support of Ontario’s budget known as Building a Better Ontario. I will split my time with the member for Mississauga Centre.

The 2024 budget demonstrates how Premier Ford and our entire government are delivering on the plan to build a better Ontario by investing in infrastructure to get more homes built faster, attracting better jobs with a bigger paycheque, keeping costs down for families and businesses and working on a path to balance.

Another thing this budget is doing is continuing to build a better Ontario for our seniors. Our seniors are the most important people. They are the ones who raised the families. Our seniors are the ones who built the best province in the world, Ontario. Our seniors are the ones who have built the best country in the world, Canada. This budget shows how our government remains committed to stable, predictable funding for programs and services to build a better Ontario for our seniors. As I travel around the province, I see how we are providing great programs and building on our services for our seniors.

I was in Havelock not too long ago celebrating the opening of a new senior active living centre with the MPP for Peterborough–Kawartha. The seniors I met there were so happy that our government was investing in this new centre. They see first-hand the benefits of what our government is doing, as we continue to increase our investments for our seniors.

I was in Amherstburg just last week to open another new senior active living centre. The seniors there were so happy that they will now have a place where they can come and meet old friends and be together with new friends. It’s amazing to see just how active our seniors are when they come together. I was also in Kingsville, in Essex county, with the MPPs for Essex and Windsor–Tecumseh. The energy we received from all of the seniors was amazing.

One of the highlights was meeting up with the senior achievement award winner while I was in Essex County. She travelled to join in the celebration. It was so great to see her again. I was able to meet with her and present the senior achievement award here at Queen’s Park in February.

I was in Innisfil just this past Friday, with the MPP for Innisfil, celebrating another new senior active living centre. This new mobile senior activity centre is travelling around the region, bringing programs and services to seniors in their communities. This is so important because it allows seniors to stay connected.

Staying connected is so important because it fights social isolation. Social isolation is public enemy number one for our seniors, and building a better Ontario for our seniors means we are building a better network, bringing programs and services to our seniors at the local and community level.

When I was in Bryanston, just last month, outside of London, I joined a line dancing class as we celebrated the opening of another new senior active living centre. We had so much fun. It was an honour and pleasure to meet with all the seniors in that part of Ontario.

I could tell that the new senior active living centre meant a great deal. Thanks to the leadership of Premier Ford and the hard work of the Minister of Finance, our entire government is laser-focused on getting the programs and services seniors need at the local level. We now have 316 senior active living centres. We are investing a record amount into those centres and those communities because our seniors deserve our dignity and respect. But that’s not all we are doing for our seniors.

This year, Madam Speaker, we will see a [inaudible] amount invested in bringing a greater, better Ontario for our seniors with our senior community grants. Since 2018, we have invested close to $30 million on 1,500 projects all across Ontario. Everywhere I travel to and meet our seniors who are benefiting from these investments, I see first-hand how our seniors stay fit, active, healthy, socially connected and close to their home in their communities.

We are anticipating that we will announce over 250 seniors community grants during Seniors’ Month in June. All across Ontario, we’ll show with this investment that we are building a better Ontario for our seniors.

One area where we are also supporting our seniors is the Ontario Seniors Care at Home Tax Credit. This is something I know that the Minister of Finance is passionate about. The Ontario Seniors Care at Home Tax Credit is designed to help seniors live in their homes for as long as they want. And when we talk about building a better Ontario, we also look to strengthen our villages, towns, neighbourhoods and cities by having people who chose to live in those communities all across Ontario have the ability stay and continue to build a better town, village or city they live in. The Ontario Seniors Care at Home Tax Credit is doing just that. It is helping seniors access the right care they need. It is helping seniors bring the right care to them in their own homes.

You see, Madam Speaker, building a better Ontario includes building a better Ontario for our seniors, those who are young and young at heart, because one day all of us will become seniors. That is why, thanks to the leadership of Premier Ford and the hard work of the Minister of Finance, we are building a better Ontario for our seniors for today, tomorrow and well into the future.

Next question?

The Minister for Seniors and Accessibility.

To the member for Don Valley West: I must admit I found it very amusing to see the taxpayer-funded advertisements by this government trying to sell their mismanagement as prudent financial work.

Could I ask you to elaborate a little bit on how their poor fiscal mismanagement has contributed to this province’s paltry economic growth?

Thank you to the member for the very good question. The answer is no, Speaker. In fact, I provided some suggestions to this government about things that would do exactly that—for example, Digital Main Street, and extending that program beyond the current fiscal year. That would help Ontario small businesses grow and expand. Instead of spending money on highways and long-term-care homes through their $3-billion bank that they’re now calling a fund, they could have taken that money, as I suggested, as my caucus suggested, to spend it on things that do help us transition to the green economy; things that will advance our work in innovation in health care, in genomes and in lots of areas where we have the opportunity to create new jobs in the new industries of the future and drive productivity growth for our province.

When I talk to people in the business world, they talk about the concerns that people have in our province, the concerns that capital owners have for our province, when they say people don’t have a place to live, and how can we hire skilled workers here and retain our workers when they don’t have an affordable place to live?

Those are the kinds of things that do not drive economic growth. We need to make sure our institutions are well-funded, that our post-secondary institutions get the money they need to provide the education they need to advance our productivity growth into the future.