Like the rest of the world, Ontario continues to face economic uncertainty and pressure due to high interest rates and global instability. These pressures are being felt day to day by Ontario families, yet this government is continuing to work hard and strengthen Ontario. So, Minister, my question is, are you going to stop or are you going to keep going with this budget?

I appreciate the member singing me a song. I’ve never had anybody sing me a song before so thank you for that. It was kind of cool.

I live in northern Ontario so I want you to understand that in all the little communities—I have 33 little communities—you either have no gas station or you have one gas station.

That one gas station sells gas at whatever the market can bear. They don’t give a damn—am I allowed to say that?—they don’t care how much tax, they just sell it at how much they can. On a long weekend, when we have a lot of tourists, you pay over two bucks a litre for gas in many parts of my riding. It was just Easter and the price went up to $1.87 in my riding.

It has to do with regulating the price of gas. Do what many other provinces and states have done: Regulate the price of gas so that you set a cap so they cannot go over this. That would really help the people of northern Ontario.

Quand tu as une population comme Hearst, où plus de 65 % n’ont pas accès aux soins et qu’ils mettent des demandes de l’avant—il y a des façons de régler ça. Il y a des façons de donner l’accès. Ils font des demandes de financement au ministère de la Santé et n’entendent rien en retour.

Ces gens-là ont droit aux soins. C’est un droit fondamental de tous les Ontariens et Ontariennes, même quand tu vis dans le nord de l’Ontario, comme moi et le membre.

Mais je ne veux pas lui donner de faux espoirs : non, il n’y a pas grand-chose dans ce budget-là qui va aider les gens de Hearst.

Questions?

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Through you to the NDP member:

You better watch out, it’s normal to cry,

Life is unaffordable, I’m telling you why:

Carbon tax is coming to town.

I take this opportunity to extend an olive branch to our NDP member. An opportunity and a chance to stand alongside our government and distance themselves from the Liberals, who continue to push higher taxes on Ontarians. With the Liberal carbon tax jumping by a staggering 23%, our government made a decision to extend our own cuts to the tax on gas and fuel to help Ontario families and businesses save hundreds of dollars.

So, through you, Speaker, I ask the member of the opposition: Will they vote to pass our budget and support our government as we make life more affordable for Ontarians?

J’apprécie tout le temps ma collègue de Nickel Belt quand elle fait ses présentations, mais j’aimerais lui poser une question sur la santé parce que, moi, j’ai une communauté de 5 000 personnes à Hearst. Ils viennent encore de perdre un autre médecin.

On était déjà à 50 %. Sur 5 000 de population, on était à 50 %. Là, on apprend qu’il va y avoir un autre médecin qui prend sa retraite. Ça, ça veut dire qu’il va y avoir près de 60 %, 65 %, 70 % de la population qui ne va pas avoir de médecin de famille.

J’ai entendu dans votre allocution que vous dites qu’il y a 2,2 millions de personnes qui n’ont pas de médecin de famille. Moi, je peux vous dire qu’il y en a gros qui viennent de ma région qui sont dans ce 2,2 millions-là.

Mais la question que je veux vous demander : on voit les investissements que le gouvernement fait, mais on voit que rien ne change dans nos régions. J’aimerais savoir si le budget va adresser ces problèmes-là.

Before I ask my question, I want to acknowledge the member from Nickel Belt. We were together on SCOFEA for pre-budget consultations. Thank you for your passion for the communities and thanks to the community for coming forward and talking and sharing their concerns.

I always believe living in the north is living in heaven, but it comes with a price tag. That is why the government is investing approximately $94 million over three years to enhance the health and well-being of Indigenous and northern communities with culturally responsible, safe care tailored to the community needs.

Another thing which the member just talked about was the labour shortage, and that is why we’re helping Indigenous workers in northern Ontario train for rewarding careers in their community by investing $7.3 million through the Skills Development Fund.

So my question to the member is: We’re investing $100 million in SDF. Do you think it is a good investment? Should we continue or should we add more?

Next question?

It’s a quick question, so I’ll be quick. Madam Speaker, we are investing $1.1 million in funding to Maamwesying North Shore Community Health Services. Along with that, something which is very close to my heart is investment into recreation. Through this budget, we’re investing $200 million in the Community Sport and Recreation Infrastructure Fund. To the member, my question is, what do you think of this investment? Should we continue these investments and do more of them?

We are very fortunate to have some really dedicated workers who work within community living. There’s about eight group homes that exist in Sudbury and Nickel Belt. All of them are always packed to full capacity, and I have many families like the Rodgers, who care for a child with a developmental disability who is now an adult, who is now a 60-year-old adult, and they see themselves as, “We need to prepare for the next phase, when we cannot look after”—and there is no money in the budget to open up new group homes. There is no money in the budget to allow the group homes that exist to put on a few more beds and take on a few more residents. But there are many, many people with developmental handicaps who would love to know that, if their support’s not there, they would have access, but there’s nothing in the budget for that.

I can tell you that, in the community of Cartier, the community hall had to close. They don’t have a place to gather anymore. I have many of the little communities that I serve where the hall where they used to meet together is in such poor shape that they cannot offer recreation anymore. They cannot offer a place for the community to gather.

I hope that this money will be available to them, but I know that the demand will be way bigger than what the budget offers.

It is my pleasure to rise and debate today the budget measures act. Of course, all members of the assembly often say, “It is my pleasure to rise,” but really, I leapt at the chance and the opportunity to speak to this year’s budget for a number of different reasons.

First, I’ll say this: On April 18, 2006, I gave my first speech in the Legislature, my maiden speech, on the budget measures act, right after I had been elected to the chamber. As a result, I was able to speak both to the bill but also about the recent election, my ability to go door to door and the new mandate that I had received.

I spoke at the time about my constituents in then Nepean–Carleton—as you know, I represent Nepean now—and about what is important to the people that I represent. At the time, I recall—and I looked back just to make sure I have chosen words for this remark appropriately, but it hasn’t changed: The people of Nepean, indeed the people of Ottawa, expect their government to ensure that they have safe streets to support strong families and an economy where there’s a great deal of self-reliance so people can make more money, and while they earn more money, they keep more money in their pockets.

I was able to deliver that speech many, many years ago to talk about those wonderful people that I represent in the community, and I can tell you today, I still get excited when I go to a local event. On the weekend, for example, Speaker, I spoke to number of young Jewish students who were talking about mental health, given some of the realities we’re facing both in Canada and abroad.

Earlier in the week, I had the opportunity to have both the Premier and the Minister of Housing in the community to acknowledge the hard work that our city council has done under Mark Sutcliffe’s leadership as mayor to announce $37 million for Ottawa housing initiatives. I was able to talk to people like Big Brothers and Big Sisters in our community and, earlier today, to talk to people from Shepherds of Good Hope.

What is different from my community than all of yours is simply one thing: We are the seat of Parliament. Having said that, Speaker, we are so much more, and that’s why I have always decided it was imperative to stand up for the people of all of Ottawa to make sure that our voice is heard beyond the echo chamber that is the House of Commons and the Senate and the national press gallery—that there are people just like you and me that live there, that send our kids to school, rely on transit, want to make sure we can afford both groceries and our mortgage, and we give back. We give back in many different ways of philanthropism, through donations and, of course, through volunteerism.

I think of those folks. I think of Darrell Bartraw, whom we call Mr. Barrhaven, the man who puts on Canada Day every year and asks the province for a modest grant through Celebrate Ontario or Experience Ontario or Reconnect Ontario grants.

I think of these folks in the legion as we look at Vimy Ridge Day today in this assembly and acknowledge the hard-working people. I think of the folks at the Bells Corners Legion and the Barrhaven Legion who both have received Trillium Foundation grants over the years.

I think of the folks at Manordale and the work they do as a community association in supporting our seniors, making sure that they’re recognized and that they’re not shut in.

And I think of the people at the Roberts Smart Centre who need a new facility and have been fundraising to support Ontario’s most vulnerable children and youth who have both mental health issues but also, in many cases, criminality issues and trying to support them so we can better ensure their recuperation and perhaps even re-entry into life.

These are some of the organizations that I support and have supported over the years, and of course they’re also the people behind them that rely on the government of Ontario to continue to meet the needs that we have as we both grow but, at the same time, indicate to other Canadians, and Ontarians in particular, that we are not just a seat of Parliament; rather, we are the second-largest municipality in the province of Ontario. We are the largest agricultural city in the world. We are oftentimes the coldest capital in the world and our physical geography is larger than Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver all told.

One million people—and they all don’t live on Wellington Street or Elgin Street in Ottawa. They live in communities like Navan where farmers, each and every day decide that it’s important for them to be able to work and get support from our government.

They work in places like Orléans where we are going to be having a lot of investments from the Ontario government into the ByWard Market in order to protect and preserve not only a great tourism asset but important communities.

We are investing in homelessness in Ottawa to ensure that the ByWard Market and other places in the city of Ottawa can best accommodate those who need assistance. These are the types of supports that our government in the province of Ontario has given most recently to the city of Ottawa in the form of a $600-million deal that was signed between the mayor, the Premier and, of course, our finance minister, Peter Bethlenfalvy.

I can say, Speaker, that that is incredibly important to me, because as Ottawa grows, so does our diasporas. We have many new Canadians who have decided that Ottawa should be their home, and we couldn’t be more proud to welcome people; we just want to make sure that there is adequate housing for them, that there is skills development and training for them, that there are seats in our universities and in our schools. That’s why I was excited, in this most recent budget, to see that we are a city for all people and our province has acknowledged that. That is why we are investing so heavily and mightily into some of these core issues.

In this last budget alone—and I was pleased when the finance minister acknowledged one very important project I’ve been working on, the Barnsdale interchange off of Highway 416. I was proud that we’re going to upload Highway 174 in the east end of the city.

I was proud that the Minister of Colleges and Universities and the Minister of Health were able to work together to invest in more nursing spots at Carleton University while getting practicum at the Queensway Carleton Hospital.

More schools are coming. They’re coming to Orléans. They’re coming to Kanata, and a Transitway in Kanata. There are more schools in Barrhaven, there will be more schools in Findlay Creek and there will be more schools in Riverside South and in Stittsville.

This was a great-news budget for the city of Ottawa. When you talk about building a better Ontario, we saw it with that key announcement of key priorities in my community that needed to be addressed.

And I couldn’t be more proud, of course, than to say we are going to have the second-largest new hospital build in the entire country at the Civic unit. I was excited last week to receive from Graham Bird an update on the building of that facility. But also, as somebody who goes to the Civic hospital almost on a weekly basis to receive my bipolar supports from my psychiatrist, I’m very excited about what that means not just for the patients and not just for the doctors, nurses, custodians and others who work there, but for the people who are going to be building this state-of-the-art facility that is going to be second to none.

I know in the months and weeks ahead, as the Ottawa Civic Hospital celebrates its 100th anniversary and CHEO, which is the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, celebrates its 50th—when I was community and social services minister, I was able to make a big investment there for their 1Door4Care. They are going to be celebrating these great milestones. That’s going to be exciting.

We’ve got more long-term-care facilities that are being built in Ottawa—especially in Barrhaven, I might add, where I was with the Minister of Long-Term Care not too long ago, and I look forward to doing a ribbon-cutting, of course, with him. This is great news.

And it doesn’t stop there, because we are working with Invest Ottawa to create more jobs in the global expansion fund and ensure that that is dealt with.

Finally, we’re excited that we are going to be investing more into policing. As a city, as I said, that is growing, we are not immune to auto theft. We are not immune to other types of violence and gang activity. And so, having that in our community is going to be critical. Sadly, Speaker, as you’re aware, my community just a month ago dealt, sadly, with a massive multi-murder situation where an entire family, with the exception of the father and a friend, were all sadly taken by one criminal.

So, Speaker, that’s what we’re doing. We’re investing into a new nurse practitioner-led clinic. Things are getting so much better in Ottawa as a result of these investments that I have to say, in the 18 years I’ve been here, this is the most excited I’ve ever been about a budget, and I recognize it’s not easy to be excited about a budget.

Questions?

Speaker, when I looked at the budget, there was mention of $16 billion in capital grants over 10 years to build, expand and renew schools and child care spaces, but that’s pretty much it. They’ve left so much out of the child care sector. They haven’t given concrete numbers on creating new child care spaces to achieve $10-a-child-a-day child care. There’s no effort to repair the funding formula for child care, which has left child care operators at risk of closure, and I’ve heard this time and time again—I’ve met with operators—that the funding formula needs to be fixed.

Quite frankly, Speaker, the fact that this government hasn’t had a wage adjustment for the child care workers—the government previously announced increases in wages for early childhood educators of $23.86, but they’ve made no comment on wages for non-ECEs, and we’ve called for salary increases to a minimum of $25 for non-RCEs, and $30 for registered RCEs.

Why has this government abandoned the child care sector, the operators and the families?

I think we can all agree here in this House that safe communities and a secure Ontario are paramount. In my community of Chatham-Kent–Leamington, our office has heard it countless times that the safety of their neighbours, the safety of their families or businesses, is a top priority.

Through you, Speaker, I ask the member to please share what our budget of 2024 will do to keep our streets safe and protect our communities, especially those unique, special places like the ByWard Market, like the vibrant commercial precinct surrounding Parliament.

Thank you very much to the member from London–Fanshawe. I know she comes here with a lot of vigour to express her opinions. I appreciate them—I actually respect them—but I will disagree with her.

I’ve been privy to having the Minister of Education come to my community and open up child care spaces, much needed in a growing community. Do you know what they called Barrhaven sometimes? “Babyhaven,” because we have a lot of children. I’ve been, as I’ve said, fortunate enough to have the minister come there and utilize his existing budget and what we’ve expanded here into making sure that that’s a reality.

In addition, as I say, in a high-growth community, we’re building a lot of schools, not only in Nepean but in Carleton and Kanata–Carleton and Ottawa-Orléans. In fact, I do believe somewhere in the inner core, they are looking for new schools in some of the other school boards. So in Ottawa, that is what we’re doing to address the shortages that have been long-standing.

(1) We need housing for homeless, which is part of this deal;

(2) We need support for the businesses that are down there, which is part of this deal; and

(3) We need to make sure that we are dealing with the criminal activity that is happening in the market and then spoked out across the rest of the city.

So there is a significant investment there to support the Ottawa police, and, of course, it’s not just about supporting the Ottawa police where it pertains to criminal activity—and safety, let me add—in downtown Ottawa. It’s also there to support communities that are high-growth like mine and Orléans and other places, where their proximity to highways makes them targets for auto theft. That’s something that we’re looking at as well.

Maybe one day he’ll take me out for a plane ride. That sounds kind of exciting.

As long as you don’t throw me out, I guess that would be great.

We certainly want to say thank you to all of our firefighters across Ontario for doing the great work that they do. I do know, in speaking with my colleagues over at the ministry of labour, skill development and whatever else they’re responsible for, they are investing in order to support our firefighters where it comes to that.

But do you know what we have in Ottawa, Speaker? We had one in my backyard in the summer—tornadoes. I know that our government has been responsive to my community—not once, but twice—as we’ve dealt with tornadoes. These are some of the matters that are very important.

I will tell you, though, in that first budget that I spoke to back in 2006, the Liberals cut the MNR budget, and I’m not sure it has ever gone back to where it should be. In fact, there was a time when our MNR officers actually had to sell cookies at a bake sale for the gas in their vehicles, under Dalton McGuinty.

Last year, we saw a record level of fires in Ontario. In fact, we all remember how smoke affected Toronto and everybody else in the province. Now, in the budget, we’re reducing the budget for forest fires by an amount of $81 million. The amount in 2024-25, for this year, is $135 million, down from $216 million.

We’ve seen hardly any snow this winter. I just came back from Fort Albany. The river is still so down, even the First Nations haven’t seen it. I went by plane. We’ve seen where the fires stopped last year. It was like from here to University Avenue right in front here at Queen’s Park. That’s how close.

Communities are scared. They’re concerned about forest fires. So how can you justify reducing the budget when we know we were 50 teams short for forest fires? This year the minister says it will probably be the same amount this year, yet we’re reducing budgets. What can you say to these communities that are really concerned about forest fires this year?

Next question?

Speaker, it’s unfortunate that the member opposite, also from Ottawa, chose to ask a question about a number of staff in Queen’s Park rather than talking about the issues from the city of Ottawa—why we’re here to fight.

If he wants to talk about the derecho—I drove through the derecho. It happened in my constituency. It happened in Barrhaven.

I can tell you, after dealing with what we dealt with in 2018, the Premier was right there flipping pancakes with me, as myself, councillor Jan Harder, at the time—now retired—and Darrell Bartraw, who I mentioned earlier. We fed over 10,000 people. I was a cabinet minister at the time, and I will never forget the generosity of the people of Ottawa.

As I said, we are more than Parliament Hill. We’re more than the Big Smoke. We’re more than places where laws are made. We are the place where people live.

And we, yes, had two tornadoes—the Premier was at the first one.

We had a derecho in the middle of an election; you’ll recall it.

I can tell you this without a doubt: I don’t stand up here unless I’m fighting for the people of Ottawa.

We have been good friends a very long time, and so I know it won’t come as a surprise to you, particularly because you hear me in caucus weekly, that Ottawa has always been and always will remain my number one priority—and the entire city, but in Nepean, I was so proud that we got the Barnsdale interchange; that it was actually mentioned in the budget speech by the Minister of Finance. I was very proud that they packaged a great deal for the city of Ottawa to talk about homelessness, to talk about policing, to talk about building new homes, to talk about new medical issues that we’re going to be dealing with in terms of nurse practitioners.

I was so pleased to see that we’re finally going to upload Highway 174. This is good for the city of Ottawa, not to mention—I’m not even getting into the new schools that myself, the member from Carleton, the member from Orléans and the member from Kanata–Carleton are going to get in our communities as a result of this budget.

Is it perfect? Meh—is anything? But do you know what’s great? This budget. It’s a lot better than any budget I’ve ever seen in the province of Ontario.

Speaking of natural disasters, I do want to remind the member that we did have a derecho in Ottawa and the Premier has not made good on his promise for emergency funding for not just Ottawa, but for, as the member from Glengarry–Prescott–Russell would know, those people who were so affected. It would have been good to see that in the budget. It would have been a bit of a relief for them. I see some members smiling over there because they know that I’m right.

I would like to ask the member if she could explain to me why the Premier’s office grew from 20 staff on the sunshine list to 48 staff on the sunshine list, all earning more than the median family income in Ontario—some of them double, some of them triple, some quadruple. How in any way on God’s green earth is that helping Ontario families?

Yes, the member is right; she is a continuous fighter for the people of her riding.

Madam Speaker, when we talk about this budget, we all know, like the rest of the world, that Ontario continues to face economic uncertainty and pressure due to high interest rates and global instability. These pressures are being felt day to day. Yet, our government is continuing to work hard to strengthen Ontario and Ontarians.

I want to ask a simple question to the member: What is there in this budget for your residents that you are proud of?