My question is to the Premier. Last week, the Premier said that he wants to get rid of international students in Ontario. He wants Ontario universities to be attended by 100% Ontario students. These statements reveal a stunning lack of understanding not only of the purposes of post-secondary education but also the value that international students bring to our province, which is far more than the tuition dollars they generate to subsidize completely inadequate provincial grants.

Speaker, it’s almost as if the Premier wants our post-secondary system to fail. Does he?

Instead of dog whistles blaming international students, will the Premier commit to the $2.5 billion in base funding that the government’s own expert panel said—

Interjections.

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.

There is no new money for increased mental health supports for students. I want to just repeat that very clearly, because this government has talked about mental health supports. There is no new money in this budget for mental health supports for students.

I’ll tell you what I’m hearing from parents are tears and calls of rage. They have reached their wits’ end. Why, Speaker? I’ll tell you. Because the $18 million that’s allocated in this budget doesn’t even come close to the actual need that our communities are looking for.

The TDSB, in 2022, spent $67 million more on special education than they received—$67 million more. More than half of the secondary school principals and nearly two thirds of the elementary principals have reported that they’ve asked their parents to keep their children with special needs at home. Don’t even bother sending them to school, because they don’t have the capacity to support them and there’s nothing in this budget to actually change that.

I really appreciate this government’s persistence. They love to re-announce announcements. So once again, we hear about the York University medical school, which is great, but they’ve announced that before. What they forget to tell us is that there’s no associated funding attached to it.

We are also hearing that post-secondary institutions are running deficits. They were very loud and clear in their pre-budget consultation. They’re running deficits; they’ve raided their reserves; they’ve sold off their assets. The well is dry and they need a partner that is going to step up, and multi-year funding that’s sustainable and predictable, and that’s not here in this budget.