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.

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?

It’s always an honour to speak in this House, and it’s a particular honour to speak about the budget.

I have to say that the budget process itself is really steeped in theatrics. Every year, we come in at around the same time, and I have to say that it feels like a great big wheel of cheese is rolled into the chamber when the budget is presented.

I remember last year’s budget was a little different, because it had this analogy of the minister travelling around all of Ontario, and I found that the reflections at the time were very one-sided in the description of what Ontarians were facing; it was as if nothing wrong was happening in the province of Ontario, and we know this to be very, very far from the truth. I remember, at the time, just like now, the minister, after vigorous applause—the government benches were as rowdy as a Manchester bar during a soccer match, at the time of budgets.

There’s cheering. It’s so vigorous. The minister is sort of finger-pointing at people and all of this, and then he goes into his speech. We’re all handed a piece of paper where we could follow along, and I’m sure most of us take the time to read ahead, hoping for those pearls that would help our community. Often, we find ourselves left so disappointed. That is not to say that every government doesn’t have something to offer the people, because they always do something—but is it enough, and who are they truly helping and supporting?

I’ve often said that the individual members of this government are well meaning and well intentioned, but when they come together as a government, it’s one of those few examples that the whole is lesser than the sum of its parts.

Budgets are a value statement. They are a statement of the values that a government has. They also talk about the value for money, and I think that this budget, unfortunately, is failing on both counts, because we’ve never spent so much to have so little—and when I say “so little,” don’t take it from me; take it from your constituents. The proof is in their own lives.

I know the government will take credit for things that they see as positive but will never ever take responsibility for the actions they often take that can lead to harm, whether wilfully or by neglect or by ignoring issues. The list is so long, yet the fact that after six years of a Conservative government and over $1 trillion spent, so many of the most vulnerable Ontarians are left on waiting lists—I’m talking about youth, teenagers looking for mental health counselling, almost 28,000 of them still waiting, in some cases two and a half years, for counselling that could change their lives.

Health care: You want talk about a legacy? This government is doing everything they can, in any way, shape or form possible, to privatize the health care coverage that we see, and this is not delivering better value for money. In fact, we know that this government has spent a billion dollars on agency nurses to get a third of the hours that they would get from our nurses in hospitals, but they don’t care because this is planned obsolescence. What their hope is, is to continue to privatize health care by making decisions that intentionally harm and really restrict hospitals from helping people in many ways.

Under this government—and they don’t want to admit to this legacy—the average wait time in emergency rooms is 21 hours. We’ve had over 200 emergency room closures across the province, but the government doesn’t want to accept that. They don’t even want to discuss it. In fact, if you ask them a question in question period, they won’t even answer it. They’ll just answer something else. I know I’ve been often reminded over and over that there’s a reason why it’s called question period and not answer period, but the reality is, answers or that lack of answer is insulting for people across this province, and it only harms them because the people cumulatively that are being harmed by the decisions this government makes are keeping score and they’re waiting for their time to cast a vote, and you’ll see eventually that those numbers add up and add up and you’re not going to like the outcome of it. Value for money, auto insurance—one thing that this government loves to do is reannounce announcements. It’s mind-boggling.

Auto insurance is a perfect example of that. There are parts in the GTA, in particular— Brampton, Vaughan, my riding, the Premier’s own riding and Scarborough—where people pay sky-high auto insurance rates, people with clean driving records, and they’ve talked about this postal code discrimination they’ve faced. In fact, I have a bill that I’ve placed before the chamber to deal with that, to end this. In the summer, right after the election, the Premier himself said that this was something important to change, a priority. Two years later, at this budget, as I looked and, as I said, was reading ahead, what do we have on auto insurance? Looking through the budget, they’re going to study it for another two years. This is four years.

And the thing is, the last government of Ontario is actually not the independent members; it’s this government. So when they look and they criticize about cleaning up a mess, there have been about five and a half—almost six—years now of their own mess that they’re creating. In fact, the mess is so messy that they’ve spent—some would say wasted—at least a month of solid debate walking back bad decisions, and more than that.

And where do these decisions come from? And I’ve said it before in this House: I’m not going to blame individual members. In many cases, I can’t even blame ministers, because the decisions made by this government come from two different sources: PR people and special interests. Those who criticize the doubling of the staff in the Premier’s budget—maybe it’s because there are just so many special interests that they have to cater to, that you need more staff to be able to do that in the first place. I don’t know. But that’s where the decisions get made. And sometimes the PR person has to whip this government into line and say, “The people are frustrated.” That’s why we see what happened with the greenbelt.

And the thing is, this government is not a government to be outdone. I’ll give that to them, because the Liberals before them were investigated multiple times by the OPP for decisions they made, and ultimately paid the price. Not to be outdone, this government upped the ante and said, “How about an RCMP investigation?” And that’s where we stand to this very day: investigation after investigation.

We’ve heard a lot about carbon tax, but do you know what I’ve noticed in this House? Where that quota of saying the words or the phrase “carbon tax” about a hundred times a day started was, it really started at the point of that greenbelt debacle, when they had to walk it back, because that was at that point of popularity that this government faced before the pandemic, where people were starting to question the transparency and what the real decisions were behind this government. That’s where we began to hear the phrase “carbon tax” over and over and over, almost like a channel change.

The reality is this: There are Ontarians who are really struggling, very vulnerable, and in times of hyperinflation like this that this government is not able to rein in—grocery prices skyrocketing—the list goes on and on and on. They seem to be willing to let industry themselves write their policies for them.

That is the case in auto insurance, because the only people lauding this government when it came to changes in auto insurance have been one of the biggest auto insurers, that literally came out and said—I guess I won’t read the entire quote, but they essentially said that their decisions on auto insurance, the direction they’re taking Ontarians in, is the right choice. The auto insurance companies—of course, they wrote it for this government.

The reality is this: Where they’re taking auto insurers—and the Liberal government before them can tell you this. The auto insurers are going to tell you, “Do what we say, or we’re going to leave, and then what are you going to do?” And what they say is, “Give less and less coverage to those in need, and we’ll reduce rates.” Do you know what happened after years of Liberal governments? Rates just continued to increase, just like they have under this Conservative government.

Now it’s like the final nail in that coffin. Their choice right now, to tell people that they need to opt into necessary and essential coverages as a solution to bring down rates, is going to be extremely dangerous for many drivers, I would say, especially those in areas where they are being discriminated against because of where they live. They are going to be forced to make a tough decision: “Do I eliminate all my coverage just so that I have insurance, so I don’t get pulled over by the police?”, and then white-knuckle their steering wheels as they’re driving, hoping that nothing bad happens.

This government is spending more money than we’ve ever seen—over a trillion dollars in the last six years. And when you ask everyday Ontarians—I’ll tell you this: They’ll tell you every day, and they tell me, that their lives are only getting harder.

If this government wants to help people, they know what they need to do: Make their investments count, protect our public systems, protect our public health care and stand up for everyday Ontarians, like they say they do, because right now, Ontarians are hurting in a way they never have had before.

Questions?

Report continues in volume B.

Through you, Speaker: I listened to the member from Humber passionately speak. I appreciate what he brought to the table—but he brought something that was very interesting to me. He talked about health care.

This government is acting quickly to alleviate the pressures facing health care systems in our province—one of which is going to be built: a health care system, a teaching facility right adjacent to a hospital at Cortellucci, which is just about 10 minutes north from where the member from Humber is, and it’s just a few minutes north from where Thornhill exists.

This creation of a new medical school in Vaughan is a positive step forward—retaining more doctors in the midst of family physician shortages. This is exactly the kind of action that this province needs to take in order to continue building healthy communities in the future.

Speaker, every budget has good and bad. And if you’re going to ask the official opposition to support a budget, then consult us and make the budget as perfect as it can be.

We are sitting in a moment, right now, when there are over two million Ontarians who lack a family doctor today.

Solutions in the far future are not going to help the people of today.

The fact that this government is spending a billion dollars to hire agency nurses at three times the cost that it would be to just respect and pay public nurses the money they deserve is not fixing health care in this province. There are things that this budget is doing that are an improvement, but this is not the change that Ontarians deserve and need to fix health care in this province.

Even before this period of hyperinflation, our most vulnerable Ontarians were suffering, and now they are living in such dire need that it’s unimaginable what many of their lives are like, and to not support them is going to lead to even more problems—more problems for them and more problems for this government and, ultimately, more spending in the end if you don’t address proactively problems that people are facing.

If a person has a big bank account, if they’re a company like a major company or a big money interest, they have a direct line to the people closest to the leadership of this party. But if you are one of the most vulnerable people in the province of Ontario, good luck in trying to get that phone call, good luck in trying to get someone to listen to your dire needs because ultimately, for the most part, they are not going answered by this budget.

As I said, there are gong to be elements of the budget that are positive.

But the reality is, Ontario students pay the highest tuition, and Ontario universities are being forced to make tough decisions on how and what they spend their money on, under this government.

Here and there, they’ll give a little money—a little bit here, a little bit there—but at the end of the day, they are underfunding post-secondary education in this province, just like they’re underfunding education in this province. So much more needs to be done, and they’re just not willing to do it.

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

Thank you to the member from Humber River–Black Creek for his debate portion today.

Throughout this process, and throughout the pre-budget consultations, we heard from the citizens of Ontario very clearly about their needs and their wants and things that were necessary for themselves and their communities to thrive.

We heard from Community Living, who were begging for 5% to ensure that our most vulnerable residents with disabilities had a safe space to live. They didn’t receive it.

We heard from social assistance advocates asking for Ontario Works and ODSP benefits to be raised, to be doubled, so that people could live in dignity and have food in their fridge—never happened.

We’ve seen 67,000 children on wait-lists for autism services—that’s not there.

There are complete failures time and time and time again in this budget. Could the member please tell us—

What would he say the grade would be for this government’s vulnerable residents score?

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to ask the final question, Madam Speaker.

The member is very passionate about York University.

You talked about it on March 26, and my question is—with this budget, we are bringing a medical school. If you support York University, you have a chance now to stand up and vote in favour of this budget and support the university you love. Would you support us?