I thank the member opposite for the opportunity to speak about Ontario’s health care system. Ontario is leading the country with over 90% of Ontarians having a doctor or primary health care provider. Our government will not tolerate clinics taking advantage of a loophole created by federal legislation. If the federal government doesn’t take action to ensure Ontarians and Canadians can access publicly funded health care we will.

Each year our government invests over $50 million to connect hundreds of thousands of Ontarians to primary care through 25 nurse practitioner-led clinics across the province. In this year’s budget, we went even further: Our primary care expansion has expanded to a total of $546 million over three years to connect 600,000 Ontarians to primary care.

We will continue to work with our health partners across the province to ensure the best public health care for the people of Ontario when and where they need it.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker, Ontario is the first jurisdiction to use the nurse practitioner-led clinic model of care and we will continue to use this innovative path of delivery—publicly funded primary care—to connect hundreds of thousands of people across the province to the care they need.

Ontario is leading the country with almost 90% of Ontarians having a family doctor or a primary care provider. Since 2018, we have registered over 12,500 new physicians in Ontario, including a 10% increase in family doctors, but we know more needs to be done. We will always continue to work with our health partners across the province to ensure that Ontario has the best publicly funded health care when and where they need it.

In this year’s budget, we went even further, Mr. Speaker. Our primary care expansion has expanded to a total investment of $546 million over three years to connect over 600,000 people with primary care in Ontario.

As I’ve stated, we will continue to work with the health care partners across the province to ensure that the people of Ontario have the best publicly funded health care when and where they need it, Speaker.

Thank you to the minister for his response. We know that the carbon tax is making life more unaffordable for everyone, but the federal Liberals and their provincial counterparts continue to turn a blind eye to the hard-working people and businesses in our province. Ontarians should be able to fill up their tank without paying an extra 17 cents per litre and families should not have to choose between heating and eating.

Our government has always and will continue to stand up and fight this regressive tax. We are focused on keeping costs down for Ontario families and businesses and building our clean energy advantage. Can the minister please tell this House if there is anyone who stands to benefit from the Liberal carbon tax?

Every one of us in this chamber knows that every day, more and more Ontarians are struggling to pay their bills, to pay their rent, to pay their mortgage, to put food on the table. And every day, more and more families are having to use their credit cart instead of their OHIP card just to get their son or daughter the basic medical attention that they need.

By any measure, Speaker, life is harder for most Ontario families, except for the Premier and his office. At a time when Ontario families are struggling, how does this Premier justify increasing the staff in his office from 20 to 48 and more than doubling his budget to $6.9 million?

And in the Premier’s office, all of those 48 staff make more than the median family income in Ontario—some of them double, some of them triple, some of them quadruple the median family income, Premier.

Is the Premier so out of touch, Speaker, that he thought it was a good idea to raise his office budget by more than $4 million and that each of his 48 staff make more than the median Ontario family?

Interjection.

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.

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?