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—

Thank you to the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane. I always learn a lot about farming and agriculture when you speak. I wonder if you can talk about how the frequent closures of Highways 11 and 17 affect farmers and their products.

I think it’s great that the member from Peterborough–Kawartha mentioned his daughter’s connection to the legislation. It shows that farming is a family business and it’s something that we should be protecting.

What’s happening in Wilmot township, actually, right now, though, is the forced expropriation of 770 acres of prime agricultural land for industrial use. We will never be able to foster the $48 billion in economic development in the farming sector if we lose farmland, so I really wanted to give him an opportunity to talk about how we should be respecting farmers in Ontario, protecting the land and fostering that stewardship of prime agricultural land which right now is being forced through expropriation by the region of Waterloo in our community.

So you have a good piece of legislation before the House, which we are supporting, which is focusing on research and modernizing and building on that $48 billion of economic development in the farming sector, and yet you have another piece of legislation which makes it a bit easier to add to those 319 acres of prime farmland that we lose every single day in Ontario.

So I ask the member: How committed, truly, is the Ford government to farmers in Ontario when you have a piece of legislation which is undermining the farming sector?