I noticed that the member made reference to keeping costs down and affordability. I had the opportunity to read the budget document, and in particular, pages 71, 72, 73 and 74. I noticed that there were a host of affordability measures in the budget, including—to me, and most importantly, in my view—keeping the price of gasoline reduced. This budget commits to extending the gas tax reduction, which is an 11-cent-per-litre reduction, extending it until December. I thought that was a very important measure to be taken in this budget because it saves a person who is driving a car 11 cents per litre on the price of gasoline, and that adds up, especially when you’re from a rural area and there are no mass transit systems.

Now, I’m from a rural area called Essex, and I know the member is from a rural area. I’d like to know whether she thinks that that 11-cent gas tax cut is going to help her rural residents.

Good morning, Speaker. My question to the member—it’s always interesting to hear you rise in the House. We’re neighbours, and so I like to hear what’s going on in your riding.

You talked about how this government purports to be fiscal Conservatives, but, as you had noted, right now Ontario has the largest net debt per capita in the country. Right now, the debt per capita is $19,436, so every Ontarian essentially owes that much money.

So this government has the largest debt and deficit ever, and the largest in Ontario, while at the same time, they are pulling up the rear when it comes to per capita spending in health care. Can you square this? How is the government underspending in the things that matter to us—health care and infrastructure in rural communities—at the same time that they have the largest deficit in the history of the province?

My question is about hydro access to farmers. When I was at ROMA this year, a lot of farmers complained that they don’t have access to phase 3 electricity and that for a lot of farmers, it’s hard for them to decarbonize. It’s hard for them to turn their farming enterprise into bigger business, to scale bigger business, because of their access to this kind of infrastructure. I wonder if you could speak to what that really means to your agricultural sector.

The money spent on transit has gone a long way to help those who are most struggling with affordability, because we know that affordability isn’t just for people who own cars, but it’s also for people who use transit. And so this expansion of transit is the best way to use our dollars and to reach more people.

The infrastructure money helps us build more housing. We know that this is a gap that cities are struggling with. Not only is there a big price tag on the inflation on construction, but also the cuts to municipalities have led to our municipalities facing massive financial strains and possible cuts.

But while I’m glad we’re building hospitals, I’m glad we’re building schools, I’m glad we’re building infrastructure, we can’t just spend money on ribbon-cuttings. Just like all of us who maybe have bought a home, you don’t just buy a home and then stop paying the bills. We need to fill in the gaps and make sure we fund properly the operating costs of running this province.

Things that I don’t appreciate are the $10 billion spent on Highway 413. We know that this will save a mere 30 to 60 seconds for people in their daily commutes, and we know that it’s cheaper and more cost-effective and will serve more people to expand GO, like creating a Bolton line. That way, we could preserve 2,000 acres of prime farmland and we could preserve 400 acres of the greenbelt.

There are five pages on auto insurance and a mere two paragraphs on the climate crisis. Again, the climate crisis is real, and it has devastating consequences for my kids and all future generations. I hope to see more than a mere 0.01% of the budget spent to discuss the climate crisis that is barrelling toward us.

While I’m glad to see the 2.7% increase in funding for education, that is essentially a cut, because that is below the rate of inflation. We need to ensure that we have progress in retaining and recruiting more education staff, and that we address the violence that staff and I, as a school social worker, see in schools and the mental health crisis facing young people, often due to many things—consequences from the COVID crisis.

When it comes to health care, there is nothing to address our drug toxicity and to improve operation costs for our ER departments. So while we do see money—

I was making earlier reference to certain pages in the budgetary document, and I was specifically making reference to pages 71 and 72 and 73. On page 72, there is what I would describe as a very good program that was introduced. We call it the One Fare program. The One Fare program will essentially lower costs on people using public transportation, and it means that the average user of the public transportation system here in the urban Toronto area, and perhaps the greater area as well, will save approximately, it’s estimated, $1,600 per year. And I think that’s wonderful. I think it’s so wonderful, sometimes I think to myself that I wish that there was a One Fare program in Essex county that we could use.

I was going to ask the member if she would like to comment on the One Fare program and whether she thinks that’s an awesome program, the way I think it is.

My apologies to the member. You’re out of time.

Questions?

Further debate?

I would like to see One Fare come to our region so that we can go to Hamilton and it not take three hours. It’s a 50-minute drive. It takes two hours for somebody from downtown Kitchener to get to downtown Cambridge—two hours—and we live 20 minutes apart.

I would like to see investments in more light rail transit, like has been created in Kitchener-Waterloo. Let’s expand that to Cambridge. Let’s expand that to other municipalities.

To me, spending money on a highway doesn’t make any sense. We know that when people have to spend two hours driving to Cambridge, we are shoving people into their cars. A young lady who rents a room in my house, who is from India, just bought a car. It’s very unaffordable for her, but she can’t handle four hours in transit every day.

So we need to look seriously at our investments in highways and shift them over when they don’t make sense into transit options.

I am not confident that we have a good plan in place. We know that for every dollar spent on mitigation, every dollar we spend on adaptation, we will save more than $10 in both of those categories. We are not looking forward. We are putting Band-Aids on. The $5 million that’s spent right now on forest fires doesn’t even come close to what other provinces and other jurisdictions are doing to invest in prevention. Alberta, for example, can anticipate when the fires are coming. They use AI. They’re going there, and they’re investing. They’re getting new technology, not just trying to keep up.

We are behind on shelter beds, behind on climate disasters and behind on the future of climate readiness.

I just want to thank my friend from Kitchener Centre for focusing on climate policy and just give her this time to elaborate on anything she would like the government to focus on if we were going to elevate the amount of investment in climate policy.

It’s always a privilege to take my seat on behalf of the good people of Algoma–Manitoulin, and to speak to, particularly, the 2024 Ontario budget that this government has brought forward. From my seat, now, I bring a different lens. As an independent member and no longer part of the opposition, I look at reasons why I could potentially support the bill. But one thing I want everybody back home to remember is that I will never forget why I’m here, and that’s to bring the issues that matter most to people across Algoma–Manitoulin. So I will touch on the shortfalls and what’s not in this particular piece of legislation that this government has brought forward.

Having said that, I’ve looked at this budget very closely and—it’s hard to look for new things. There are things that are there that are substantial for people across Algoma–Manitoulin, like replacing the Little Current Swing Bridge, the key to Manitoulin Island, which is very important, and the investment that is required to making sure that the service, the products, the economy continues on Manitoulin Island. So it was nice to see, again, the reannouncement of this particular piece of infrastructure that’s going to be done. I think this is the fourth or fifth time that the government has announced this infrastructure fund—I think if we follow what the previous government had done, it’s normally about seven times that they announce it before it actually gets put in place. I’m hoping it’s going to get done fairly soon because people on Manitoulin Island deserve a reliable route, and this infrastructure needs to be done.

In the forestry industry, we see that there’s going to be $20 million over three years in the forest biomass program. I do know several communities that are going to be benefiting from that. Wiikwemkoong First Nation has been leading a lot of initiatives towards this, and they are looking at community projects that they’re going to hopefully be able to utilize to stimulate the economy and diversify their employment opportunity for community members there as well.

The new school that is being built in Blind River—okay, this is number four, but it’s already in the process of being built. So that was a new announcement. I have to give a shout-out to the Algoma District School Board and the Conseil scolaire du Grand Nord, who really put so much work in getting this to move forward.

There are a few other nuggets that are contained within the context of the budget, so I’ll give credit where credit is due—the $10.9 million to bring improved Internet access across the northern communities and First Nations of Ontario. Get it done. It’s long overdue. We’ve been announcing this over and over and over again. Let’s get the shovels in the ground and get this work done.

Now let’s talk about what’s not in this particular budget. Things that I wish this government would have listened to is—early in October, I found out the dire need of the hospital situation. I knew they were in rough waters, but I didn’t appreciate how bad it was in hospitals. So I took it upon myself, once I received correspondence from the 25 northern hospitals, to reach out to all 11 hospitals across Algoma–Manitoulin—and, yes, I said “11 hospitals.” Algoma–Manitoulin is a very vast area. The consensus within these hospitals is, at a bare minimum, they need, at the very least, a 10% increase to their base funding in order for them to address a lot of their financial needs that they have in order to continue to provide the services, to keep their emergency rooms open and so on. We didn’t see that in this budget. We see a mere pittance that won’t even keep the hospitals in line with the cost of inflation.

I’m not sure what this government is not grasping in regard to the dire need of our hospitals and the fact that they need some additional funding in order to meet the services and meet the demands of individuals across this province, but they’re not. And that’s frightening, Speaker.

I’ve sat with many of the administration, and I’ve asked them. I said, “What’s missing here? Why aren’t they listening to you?” And everybody just seems to step back and say, “We don’t know. We get head nods from the government, and saying, ‘Yes, we understand, but keep going.’” They’re lean. They’ve cut everything. There’s no more integration that they can do.

But again, when the ask is there, it’s falling on—there’s silence from across the table. The fact that they have to deal with the enormous costs of agency nursing, which is required—they have to have a certain level of professionals within the context of the hospital. Nothing in this budget to deal with agency nursing regulation, nothing on capping—hospitals are paying three to four times more to have this coverage done.

Nothing on enhancing the administrative wages—why would somebody in a hospital setting—if I’m a nurse within the emergency department, why would I step up in an administrative role when there are no compensations for those individuals because there are no base funding increases to their hospital?

Why did we not see the 5% increase in the base funding in developmental services, such as what we have throughout this province as far as Community Living?

The elastic is stretched so much there is no more stretch. That elastic has broken.

Over the weekend, my son and I, we enjoyed a hockey game up in Blind River—go, Blind River Beavers. I hope that you guys can pull off—you’re down 3-1. I’ll be at the game on Thursday night in Blind River.

After we had supper with my son—my son is one of the individuals that works with developmentally challenged individuals. And I’ve always said he’s a special boy. He’s got this knack of identifying someone in the crowd. It doesn’t matter if that someone is four years old, 14 years old, 24 years old, 44 years old or 64 years old; he has this ability of identifying someone that’s in need. And what he does: He zeroes in on that person and makes them his priority. He’s always had that knack. When he was a young boy, while he was in school, we often heard from teachers that, “You’ve got a special one. Don’t change him.” And it was such a pleasure for me seeing him going through high school and getting through his education up at Collège Boréal and coming out as a social worker.

The fun part for me is, as much as I love being part of this building—going into his workspace and his office and him showing to me what programs that he does and the activities that he sets up for all of his clients is amazing. But he’s limited, because those services have not been recognized by this government. And there’s no investment that has been done into that particular field. So, in developmental services across this province, the elastic is broken. I’m looking at this government, and I’m imploring this government to recognize the benefit of these services and make the proper investments that are needed.

Highway improvements across northern Ontario: I drive up from Elliot Lake every week, and I see that big billboard, bulletin board for the 413/Bradford Bypass investment, and I see the big billion-dollar investments that are coming in there. But highways such as 551, 542 or 637 going into Killarney—I don’t see that same kind of recognition or investment that is being done out of this budget from this government. And that’s unfortunate.

Highway 519 into Dubreuilville was just done, I would say, about five or six years ago. Not a stitch of additional work was ever done to maintain that road. That brand new road is washing out. What’s embarrassing to watch is, since when has it become a standard operating procedure to replace gravel from a washout with a cone? When does that become a standard operating procedure? When does the gravel go back in? It is so bad, Speaker, that there’s this one area where the guardrail posts are hanging void, with no gravel there, and this happens time and time again. It’s not only in my area; it’s across northern Ontario. We really need to look at our service providers that are responsible for returning the gravel to their shoulders.

Heck, I spent an entire day with an Amish and Mennonite group, travelling roads in a horse and buggy on Highway 17, and I tell you, Speaker, if you haven’t, I would suggest that each and every one of these members in this room experience that first-hand because that will be an eye-opener for you. There is something that we need to learn in this province: that we all need to share the road, and that road, for many of us, is only between the white lines. Well, there’s a shoulder and then there’s gravel, and there’s a lot of people that are using those roads.

Again, there’s a lot of things I didn’t get to touch on within the context of this budget, but there’s a lot of things that are missing. I take great pride in looking at why I could be supporting this bill, but there are too many things that are missing out of this budget that would be very valuable to people from northern Ontario.

Questions?

Question?

I want to thank the member from Algoma–Manitoulin for his address this morning. I also want to congratulate him and commend him for doing what we all do here, and that is to stand up for the people who send us here each and every time there’s a general election, the people in our constituencies, because that is and must be our first priority.

No budget solves all of the problems individually, and he has pointed out some of the things. We have challenges in our own ridings that we would hope there’d be enough money in this budgetary session to take care of, but we also know that we have to be patient and many things take longer than we’d like.

But the member did say—and I do want to congratulate him on Elliot Lake being chosen the winners of Hockeyville. That’s a great honour, and congratulations to the member and to all of us here in Ontario. That’s two years in a row that Ontario has had the Kraft Hockeyville.

But can you tell us some of the things that you do like in the budget? Because you are considering voting in favour of it. I’d love to hear that from the member.

Well, first, what I will tell the member is, you’re darned right. Elliot Lake and actually Team Ontario—there are so many individuals that pool together to support Elliot Lake with Hockeyville, and I tell you, it was great for the community to win the $250,000, but what you can’t put a price tag on is the sense of community that came out of that initiative for Elliot Lake and the fact that it brought people together—not just Elliot Lake, but the region, like, from Gore Bay all the way up to Wawa. I got calls from people in Windsor who said, “Listen, I’m voting for you.” Heck, I even got a call from a member of the opposition saying, “We’re voting for you, Mike. We’re going to get this done.” Again, I want to thank you for supporting that initiative.

You’re right, there are some things that are a reannouncement. What I made in my initial comments is, yes, there are going to be funds for the swing bridge on Manitoulin Island. Yes, there’s $50.5 million that the government permitted me to do the official announcement about in Blind River, which I was surprised there was no official government representative there at the announcement. But it just goes to show you that—

I don’t know how much clearer I can put this to this government, but northern hospitals, they are in crisis, and this government needs to take action in order to assist them.

At the last hour, once again, we got this government to extend the locum incentive program. But by the time you made that announcement for the hospitals, those hospitals, who were looking forward to hopefully securing that funding, were trying to secure doctors, but those doctors that would have been available to the communities have now moved on, are now scheduled for other communities. So they’re scrambling, once again, to make sure that their hospitals and their emergency departments stay open over the course of the summer.

Well, just to follow up on his comments, my entire family voted for hours at the time for Elliot Lake to win. I now know every part of a bicycle, every part of a bus because, every now and then, they would ask you to do that again. I’m really proud that Elliot Lake won.

Something that I’m less proud about is the 25 small rural northern hospitals. Eleven of them are in Algoma–Manitoulin. They serve people who often have very low other access to help; the hospital is it. They do not have a family physician. There’s no nurse practitioners around. You depend on the hospital for pretty much all of your care.

Those hospitals have seen 280 emergency room closures. They have seen 1,200 hospital program closures. Most of them come from small and rural hospitals. I’m curious to see, did you see anything in the budget that will reassure the people of Algoma–Manitoulin that they will have access to care when they need it?

Further questions?

I know that there was something that the member from Nickel Belt and also you have shared has been essential for your constituents. I wonder if you can share a bit more about what you were hoping to see in terms of the northern travel health care funding.

Well, thank you very much, and my partner from Kitchener kind of stole my thunder a little bit on that question. Because I know you’re very passionate about the northern Ontario travel grant, you and I have talked about this previously. I’ve had some family experience with it as well, and sometimes it can be a little bit cumbersome, but I think there are some good things on the way.

I did want to hear a little bit more from you as to what you think some of the changes or beneficial changes could be. Obviously, seeing the accommodation amounts go up to $175 is a good start. What are some other things that you would like to see that are real, plausible, tangible things that we might be able look at in the future?

Well, again, I will say there was a nugget when it comes to the Northern Health Travel Grant, but it’s a small nugget. It sounds big; it sounds like the government is putting some significant amount of dollars—which is $45 million—towards accommodations for individuals, which will mean instead of getting $100 on their first night of accommodation, they will get $175, and that will be reduced on subsequent nights.

Now, if the government wanted to do something substantial to the Northern Health Travel Grant, they could have looked at increasing the travel mileage. Heck, we don’t have a problem doing that for the people that are in this room. Why can’t we do it for those that are most vulnerable? Because most of those individuals that are most vulnerable are the ones that need it the most.

Merci à mon collègue. Ce matin, quand tu as parlé des routes dans ton allocution, on voit qu’il y a tellement d’investissements dans les routes dans le Sud, mais quand ça arrive aux routes comme la 11, la 17 et, encore pire, les routes secondaires comme, tu as mentionné, Dubreuilville—je peux penser à Hornepayne; je peux penser à la 655, la 144, que le monde du Nord utilise beaucoup—bien là, l’investissement n’est pas autant. J’ai aimé ton—quand on voit les cônes et on voit les poteaux. Ça, on voit ça souvent sur les routes secondaires.

J’aimerais entendre que l’investissement—et on sait qu’avec tout le développement du Nord, les ressources viennent du Nord; elles ne viennent pas du sud de l’Ontario. Et qu’on voit nos infrastructures, nos routes, nos ponts, tout ce qui est entouré pour ramener ces ressources-là dans le sud de l’Ontario, puis que le Nord soit oublié—j’aimerais entendre plus là-dessus.

Ce que je veux dire par ça : c’est de l’infrastructure dont on a besoin dans le Nord—nos routes, nos ponts, nos chemins. C’est ça qui nous donne accès à nos emplois. C’est ça qui nous donne accès à nos événements récréatifs. C’est ça qui nous donne accès à nos soins de santé. Puis, on ne les voit pas. On voit des pratiques qui ne sont pas idéales pour les gens du Nord.

Puis, je pense—il y a eu une demande. Ils vont être ici, là, dans une autre deux semaines : Good Roads. Good Roads vont être ici. Et dans leur demande, ils ont demandé que le gouvernement fasse une revue en général de l’infrastructure de tous nos chemins. Est-ce que nos chemins sont bâtis pour accommoder la transportation et puis les gens, les équipements qui sont en train d’utiliser nos chemins correctement aujourd’hui, avec les capacités qu’on a aujourd’hui? Ça, c’est une bonne suggestion que j’encouragerai ce gouvernement de prendre. C’est une bonne revue de tous nos chemins à travers la province.

I’m thoroughly enjoying the debate this morning on the budgetary measures in the province of Ontario.

I am going to start my remarks today at a point where the member from Mississauga–Lakeshore left off. I had heard him making remarks not particularly on this specific motion, but on budgetary items, and they were one-hour remarks. Right at the very end, he said something that I found very important, and I’m going to elaborate on that.

Before I do that, though, I did want to make some comments about the member from Mississauga–Lakeshore, because I find that in this assembly there are many interesting people with fascinating qualifications and backgrounds, and we don’t spend enough time talking about those fascinating backgrounds and qualifications.

I wanted to take an opportunity to just tell the assembly a little bit about my colleague from Mississauga–Lakeshore, who has been inducted into the order of the Knights of Malta. The order of the Knights of Malta is a very ancient order; it’s a thousand years old. It started in the city of Jerusalem. The Knights of Malta were attacked and expelled from the city of Jerusalem, and then they took up residence on the island of Cyprus. They were attacked again and expelled from the island of Cyprus. From there, they took up residence on the island of Rhodes. They were then attacked again and expelled from the island of Rhodes and took up residence on the island of Malta. They were then besieged in what is known as the great Siege of Malta of 1565, which they withstood, and withstood the test of time and survived today as a charitable organization doing good works for people around the world.

We are lucky that the member from Mississauga–Lakeshore is actually a member of this august order, the Knights of Malta, and I did want to take an opportunity to recognize him for that and congratulate him for that.

At the end of his one-hour presentation with regard to financial matters in this House, he touched on something which I felt was very, very important. He said, if I may paraphrase what he said, that in 2018, the total revenue for the province of Ontario—that is to say, the treasury of the province of Ontario—was approximately $150 billion. And today, the total revenue for the province of Ontario—that is, its governmental operations—stands at over $200 billion.

The member from Mississauga–Lakeshore properly observed that that is an increase of over one third in revenue, and that has been accomplished entirely without raising a single tax and without raising a single fee. That is quite an accomplishment. To raise the governmental revenues by one third over the course of six years without raising a tax and without raising a fee is an accomplishment and a very good one and a very important one.

I’m sure if the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade were here, he would give a very brief, succinct and very good explanation of how that was done. I’ve heard him give that explanation before, and I’m going to try to give that explanation now, because it’s important. I think that the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade would say that we were able to increase the revenue of the government of Ontario without raising taxes and without raising fees by doing some very specific things. He would start by saying, “First, we lowered the cost of doing business.” And by saying that, he would give examples, such as reducing the cost of WSIB premiums and other costs associated with doing business in the province of Ontario, to the point where we attracted so much business into the province of Ontario that many, many, many companies—from small ones to large ones to multinationals—are now investing in the province of Ontario, creating jobs, creating economic activity, and thereby increasing the revenue that is being collected by the government of the province of Ontario.

That would be a great success story, and I think it is a success story. I think it’s the success story of the last six years, encapsulated by the fact that this government has not raised a single tax or fee in six years. In fact, we’ve done the opposite.

That brings me to the budget that’s before us now. I have made some reference earlier to pages 71, 72 and 73, which set out a brief host of affordability measures that the government has undertaken, and, by doing so, demonstrating that not only have we simultaneously increased revenue but, at the same time, decreased taxes and decreased fees.

I would like to take this opportunity to mention just a few, and the one that I refer to most commonly is the reduction of the gasoline tax, which saves approximately 10 cents per litre on gasoline. That’s particularly important for people in the riding of Essex and, I would suggest, very important to people in other rural parts of Ontario, because we don’t have mass transit in Essex county. In fact, it’s impossible to deliver mass transit in Essex county because of the rural nature of the riding. And so people have to rely on their cars and their trucks. Every time you fill up your truck or every time you fill up your car and every time you take a trip, whether it’s to the grocery store or whether you’re bringing your kids to the arena or the soccer field, or whether you’re bringing your kids to dance class, you have to take a private automobile of some sort. There are a few exceptions, but very small exceptions to that rule.

And so every time somebody drives across the county of Essex to deliver their kids to wherever they’re going, there’s a cost involved in that, and we’ve reduced that cost by 10 cents per litre, which, accumulated day in and day out, really makes a difference for people, because I can tell you that the most common expense that people have is to put gas in their cars.

Related to the transportation in rural areas is also the cost associated with owning a car and licensing a car and permitting a car. Those costs, as we know, Madam Speaker, have either gone down or been frozen. For example, we removed the fee for the licence plate sticker on automobiles, which saves the average family approximately $240 per year. And that’s an important measure, because that’s an extra $240 per year that people now have to put their kids in soccer or to buy dance classes or simply to celebrate a birthday.

I think that’s an important cost-saving measure. It’s an affordability measure and it helps everybody. It doesn’t help just a certain group of people; it helps everybody who owns a car or a truck, and certainly helps my constituents in the county of Essex. I just thought I would highlight those two measures, which I thought were particularly important.

On that, Madam Speaker, I move that the question now be put.

No further business.