This petition is entitled “A More Affordable Life in Spadina–Fort York,” and it’s addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

It talks about how housing, groceries and gas are unaffordable in Ontario. The five largest grocery corporations are making record profits, as are the oil corporations. Rents aren’t affordable. The cost of buying a home is unaffordable. So the people who have signed this petition, they’re asking the Legislative Assembly to take immediate action on this affordability crisis by building 250,000 units of affordable housing, including co-ops, social and supportive housing.

They’re also asking that residential development on public lands, including the Ontario Line stations, mandate 30% of those units be affordable units, because it would be such a lost opportunity if they’re building those stations on public land and there’s no mandate for affordable housing with them—and also to take on price gouging by the oil and gas corporations that are causing both the prices to skyrocket and also inflation to skyrocket.

They’re asking that we keep our public services, particularly health care, public, so that people pay for their health care with OHIP rather than their credit card.

I fully endorse this petition. I will affix my signature and pass it to page Ruby to take to the table.

The funding for ODSP is around $1,300 per month, out of which $556 is for housing. But $556 does not provide any housing anywhere in this province, so the ODSP rates are pushing people with disabilities in this province into homelessness.

The Ontario Works rates are $733 per month. That’s for housing and for all costs. Nobody can live on that amount in this province.

The petition points out that the CERB program during the pandemic gave $2,000 as the minimum that was needed in order to keep body and soul together in this province, and they’re asking for an immediate doubling of OW and ODSP rates.

I fully endorse this petition, will affix my signature and pass it to page Aislyn to take to the table. Thank you so much.

Spadina–Fort York.

—Spadina–Fort York just brought up that this government has had to rescind seven bills. I would say that that part of the record also speaks for itself. That’s a lot of getting ’er done and then thinking “oops.” That’s a record. Your record speaks for itself, that you are the undisputed, unqualified get-’er-done kings and queens. No other government has put forward such egregious legislation that the same government has had to say, “Oops. Oops. We’ve got to get that undone, because we got caught.”

Again, we disagree with some things on philosophy. You won a majority government; I get that. I get that. We’re not disputing that. But some of the things that you do, you know it yourself. You know it yourself and you still let it happen. And that’s why, when I’m listening and listening to the minister say, “Our track record speaks for itself”—and those seven, these weren’t little things.

I can talk about a couple. The famous blue licence plates: That’s not going to change the world. Actually, no; it could change some people’s lives, because as soon as those things came out, you realized that you couldn’t see them at night. That’s a bad thing, right? And that wasn’t one of the seven bills. So then it was, “You know, okay, yes. Our careful planning and changing the colour to the Conservative blue—yes, okay, we’ll get rid of those.”

I have a friend who bought a car in that period—and I’m going to talk about cars later, because we all want to have the car industry be very robust in this province. He bought a car, a brand new one, with the blue licence plate, and I said to him, I remember—he’s a good friend of mine. I said, “Do you know what? The government just said that these things are no good, but when they send you the new one, hold on to it, because it’ll be a collectors’ item, kind of like a penny that wasn’t minted correctly.” And we waited and we waited, years and years and years, and then the government came out with their plan how they’re going to get rid of the blue licence plates: They’re just going to wait until they fall off. That is the plan.

Interjection.

That’s just a little thing, but some of the things that you’ve had to rescind—the greenbelt grab—it was obvious right when it happened, right when you announced what you were doing. It was obvious to almost everyone in the province that that wasn’t going to fly. It just wasn’t, and it didn’t, and you had to back up on your legislation. There are still problems, and I’m not going to dwell on it, but you have a few hangovers from it, particularly an RCMP investigation, so obviously this isn’t a philosophical difference. That’s much deeper than philosophical—much deeper.

So when you say that your track record speaks for itself, I would say you have to take that with a huge—not a grain of salt, but a big cube. I always use farm references, and I’m not going anywhere where people think I’m going, but anybody who has ever been on a farm—cows need salt, and farmers buy big blocks of salt. You can buy white ones, blue ones or red ones. So when this government says that they have this track record that speaks for itself, you need to take it with a big blue block of salt.

The Minister of Transportation also said that bumper-to-bumper traffic is tough on your mental health. I agree with that. I come from northern Ontario. I don’t do a lot of bumper-to-bumper traffic until I drive here. My trip here, if traffic here is good, basically from Queen’s Park to my home, is six hours—if traffic here is good. If traffic here isn’t good, it’s six-plus hours. I get bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Now, the government is very aggressive on Highway 413. We disagree philosophically. But bumper-to-bumper traffic is happening now, so even with the things this government is trying to do with the 413—actually, some of them might slow things down, because when you don’t do your due diligence, people push back much harder. If you’re going to do a quality, qualified environmental assessment, it might seem like it’s taking a long time, but if you don’t do it, you’re going to run into protests and it’s going to be much tougher. I’ll get back into that with the Mining Act.

So let’s say it takes—anybody got a guess? How long is it going to take to actually start and complete the 413? Twenty years? Ten? Let’s go for 15.

Interjection.

So we’re talking about the 413, the planning, blah, blah, blah. Who owns the land around the 413 also might run into some investigative problems. But all that time, people are still in bumper-to-bumper traffic. So although we differ philosophically completely on the 413, there’s something that the NDP proposed that we could do tomorrow and would help people’s mental health tomorrow—

Take the tolls off the 407 for trucks. The government forgave the company that owns the 407 a billion dollars in fees because, during COVID, they couldn’t come up with them. So, instead of forgiving that billion dollars, say, “Okay. We want, as a start, a billion dollars of coupons for trucks,” and get the trucks off the 407 so people can actually get home on the 401. That’s something that would help people tomorrow. The 413 is going to help them—if it helps them at all—20 years from now. The government is very opposed to that. We put that forward—maybe they’re just opposed to it because we put it forward, the official opposition put it forward.

Something else that the Minister of Transportation said is that we are opposed to everything. Actually, that’s not true, but I am very proud, extremely proud that we voted against every one of those bills that you had to rescind. We’re very proud that we had nothing to do with the bills that are causing that RCMP investigation—very proud.

We vote against your budgets because there are always financial measures in those budgets that we are opposed to. But when this government puts forward—and amazingly, I give credit where credit’s due. Sometimes they put forward legislation that moves the bar forward in certain areas, and we support them, as much as some days it pains me. But if legislation moves the bar forward, we’re happy to vote for it. That’s our job. It’s our job to criticize, to oppose, to propose, to hold the government to account, and also, when the government puts forward legislation that we agree with, to support. But that is not, it appears to us, the way the government operates.

Again, the Minister of Transportation said that we have some of the most congested highways in North America. We have them today, I think we could all agree, except for the 407. It’s not congested. The 407 was actually—if I remember, they didn’t actually sell the 407, right? A previous Conservative government didn’t actually sell the 407; they leased it out for 99 years. Didn’t they just lease out something else for—oh, no, Ontario Place. They only leased it out for 95—only 95. Nothing to see here, folks. Nothing to see here at all. What could go wrong with a 95-year lease? I’ll tell you what could go wrong. A 99-year lease on the 407, that could go wrong. We can’t change that because you can’t—any good government, you have to live by—I guess, when a government makes a law, when that law is passed and when companies base their decisions on those laws, you can’t retract. That’s the way our system works.

Actually, this government did for the first time—at least the first time since I’ve been here. I’ve been here a while, Speaker. Like, I’m not one of these 30-year-type people, but I’ve been here 12 and a half. In dog years that would be a lifetime, but in legislative years it feels like a lifetime, too. If it was 12 and a half years of Thursday afternoons, it would be tough, and as the Speaker sitting here Thursday afternoon, you know that, Speaker.

Now, I’ve completely lost my place. Oh, yes, now I know where I am. Okay. I do actually have notes for this speech; I just haven’t got there yet. I just haven’t got there yet. I’m just hoping that nobody does a point of order that I have to stay to the speech, because I can get really quiet and dry if you want me to. Okay.

But when this government was first elected, if you will recall, the former Liberal government was not actually supported by the NDP, because the only time the Liberals were supported by the NDP was between 2011 and 2013 or 2014. That’s when I first got elected, in the minority. And after that, there was an election, and do you know what happened in that election? The people of Ontario picked the Liberals over the Conservatives and over us, and they had a majority. And then they did it again. So, that had nothing to do with the NDP supporting the Liberals for those two majorities. That had to do with the people of Ontario making a decision. I didn’t agree, either. I didn’t vote for the Liberals in those two elections—obviously, I hope.

Getting back, when this government was first elected, the Liberal government prior had created the Green Energy Act and they tendered contracts for private companies to create power, wind and solar, and do you know what? Those contracts were far too high. I think we can all agree. They were not good contracts, but they were tendered by a duly elected government, and then this government made legislation to cancel those contracts. Again, a government can do that. But what this government did, and it should never be done, is they had a clause in that bill that the companies involved who lost those contracts could not sue or could not have remedy to keep themselves whole.

So, if you’ve got a great deal on a wind turbine or on solar panels and the government was wrong enough to do it, or miscalculated to do it—and then the next government says, “Okay, you got that deal. You spent untold millions of dollars building those windmills,” and then the next government says, “We’re going to cancel that, and do you know what? You can’t even sue us to get that cost back.” It said that in the legislation. I know it did; I had a long talk with the President of the Treasury Board at that time. That is the kind of rash decisions of a new government, kind of like the blue licence plates—much worse than the blue licence plates. And this government didn’t actually learn, because after that is when they started taking these big bills and then having to rescind them—basically things that they saw that the people of Ontario rejected wholeheartedly and completely.

Something else that the Minister of Transportation said in his speech—and I’m taking all these subjects, Speaker, from the minister’s speech, not directly from the legislation, but I listened intently to his speech. He talked about how the government was going to upload the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway from the city of Toronto. That’s something that we understand. I think I would agree with that. Those aren’t really city streets; they’re major provincial thoroughfares. But coming from northern Ontario, there are miles and miles—or, okay, we’re metric now, right?—kilometres and kilometres and kilometres of former provincial highways that were downloaded by a former Conservative Premier, Premier Mike Harris. Kilometres and kilometres—imperial is not unparliamentary, eh? No.

But anyway, I’ve got the town of Iroquois Falls. It’s got more kilometres of former provincial highway per person than anyone else in the province, and they’re having to close bridges, because do you know what? Their tax base just can’t maintain it. Does it make sense for the province to upload major thoroughfares that actually aren’t really part of the city’s infrastructure? I’ll give them that. But in farm language, we have what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. So if it’s good for Toronto—and Toronto is a huge part of the GTA. When you’re from northern Ontario, we basically think of Toronto as anywhere south of Barrie, really. I didn’t really start to differentiate until I got elected, because for us, that’s where it starts to get busy. We get it. For a northerner who doesn’t go south very often, we start to get really nervous around Barrie, because that’s where it gets busy—not from the people, but just the congestion. So we just think of that as Toronto.

But now I’ve been here for 12 and a half years, so I live here six months a year, and now I know. I know there’s a big difference between the downtown and Scarborough and Milton and Mississauga. I know there’s a big difference, and I’ve learned a lot, actually. I really enjoy the Legislature for that, because when I listen to other people’s speeches—and I do the same thing, right? We all focus on the places we’re from, and we do that for our own reasons too, so the people know that we are representing them. But it’s really interesting, if you listen to what drives different places. I really find that interesting.

Something else I really find interesting is listening to people—what they did before; their pasts—because there’s a lot of lived knowledge. It really makes a difference.

But getting back to the roads: You want to upload the Gardiner and upload the Don Valley? Go to it. But how about we also look at uploading roads not just in—I know northern Ontario, northeastern Ontario. I know my part in northern Ontario. Northern Ontario is a big place. But what about those roads? It’s easy to forget.

Another issue: I wasn’t going to talk about this very deeply, but I think I’m going to. There was a big announcement today about Honda EVs. I think everyone in this House wants to have a robust car industry, and right now, we’re in a transformational change between fossil fuels and EV. I don’t think there’s anyone here opposed, at all. But there’s a few—not “buts”; we’re not opposed at all. But it’s our job to say, “Have you thought about this? Have you thought about this? Have you thought about this?” That’s our job too, because we come from all across the province.

I think one of the reasons why big companies are coming here and making investments in battery plants and car plants is that we have a stable society—which we do. Compared to much of the rest of the world, we have a stable society, which I’m very proud of. And we should have access to natural resources, to supply—and the government’s good at talking about this, and I agree—the supply chain. I agree with that. But parts of the supply chain, you haven’t fully thought through.

The member from Kiiwetinoong asked a very important question this morning. I’m here asking it again, and it’s not something I fully understand either. But free, prior and informed consent, not just from one or two First Nations, but from the First Nations that are involved—obviously I’m not First Nations and I cannot speak for them, but I can speak for how we’ve gone through this cycle in northern Ontario too.

I come from a mining area, and I’m very proud of it. We have great mining companies. One of our biggest mining companies is Agnico Eagle. They’re very good to work with. They have a very good environmental record. But it has been that the minerals come from the north, the industry is in the south, and then when something changes, the north is just left. And no one knows that better than First Nations because it’s happened time and time again. I’m sure that the companies that you’re dealing with need the assurance that those minerals are available, and we have them. But I’ll tell you something, and this was very early on: When the Premier said that if the road wasn’t quick enough, he’d get on the bulldozer himself, that sent a chill through northern Ontario, because what that said is, you know what, we don’t really matter. If the south needs it, it’s going to happen. That is not going to speed things up.

I’m not saying this to—we want this to succeed, as Ontarians. We all want this to succeed, but when you’re going to pick one or two and leave three or four behind and say, “Oh, we’ve consulted everybody,” you’re going to run into problems, perhaps much bigger problems than you’ve ever envisioned, and that, that is a problem—I’ve said problems a couple of times. That could potentially slow this down, slow your EV supply chain down way more than some of you are considering, and we don’t want that to happen.

So we need—please, when someone asks if it’s going to be free, prior and informed consent, it means something. It really means something, because for First Nations in northern Ontario, they’ve signed treaties that no one has ever lived up to. So having us say, “Trust us, we’ll give you this and this; just trust us, everything is going to be fine,” they’ve heard that song and dance before. Northerners have all heard that song. And as a white son of an immigrant, I can’t speak for First Nation people at all, but as a northerner, I can speak to this: that we have all heard that song and dance before.

We need to make sure that the people of the north are actually partners, true partners. And I think that the companies we’re dealing with want that too. I heard the Minister of Transportation talk about mining and how they’ve changed, they’re removing the red tape. And the mining companies I’ve talked to—it does take too long to permit a mine in Ontario, right? We’re not disagreeing with that. But changing, removing the red tape and regulation isn’t actually the problem.

So one of our major mining companies in my area—they have gold mines in my area—Agnico Eagle, they also have a gold mine in Nunavut. Nunavut has stronger environmental regulations than Ontario—much stronger—but the permitting process is much faster. So that’s the issue, because modern mining has a good reputation. Mining didn’t always have a good reputation. We have lots of old mines in our area that left environmental degradation, lots, but modern mining now doesn’t. They need to protect that reputation, and that reputation is protected by regulation, so I’m not sure that you’re actually solving the problem. I’m not sure, because for mining to be accepted in a region—and we have lots of mines; we have some new ones being built—everyone has to be confident that everyone will be protected by the regulations.

Saying that we’re going to get rid of red tape and get rid of regulations is not actually doing that. Saying that we need to make the permitting process faster—have actual hard dates for mining—that’s really important. I’m sure it’s really important for the EV companies too, that they have hard dates, because when they’re talking about billions of dollars—the government is putting in billions of dollars—they have milestones and goals that they have to hit, because they also have to have major investors. This is a tough gig, so you need dates.

You don’t want surprises. I’ll give you a little surprise: You want to get to the Ring of Fire? You want a road to the Ring of Fire? Okay. But the road we have now from North Bay to there will never handle the equipment you need to get there.

I hear the Minister of Transportation say, “We’re going to improve Highway 11.” On Highway 11, to the former Minister of Transportation’s credit—Minister Mulroney—she actually got the 2+1 passing lanes approved. I give credit where credit is due. She did that. We worked very hard along with the GEMS committee to get that done, but that is not going to help you get to the Ring of Fire. You’re going to need millions—billions—of dollars. I don’t know how much it costs to build good roads, exactly, but from North Bay north you do not have the roads. Forget where you don’t have a road at all—you’re going to have to build a lot there too—but the roads from North Bay north aren’t going to get the stuff there either. That doesn’t come from me, that comes from the president of the Ontario Road Builders’ Association.

There are a lot of things that we’ve got to do and that we would support you on, but let’s really talk about this.

Before I run out of time, I actually better look at some of these notes. There’s one other thing—and it’s in the notes too. I do believe the actual name of the bill has something about carbon tax, that there’s not going to be any new carbon taxes allowed without a referendum or something.

This government is very opposed to the federal carbon tax, as the NDP has never been in favour of federal carbon tax, by the way—ever. We think it’s regressive. We did vote for cap-and-trade. This government scrapped it. The minister said, “We got rid of cap-and-trade. We took the government to court on the carbon tax.”

Just for the record, the federal carbon tax is a backstop program. If the province has its own program and it meets the goals of taking carbon out of the atmosphere, you don’t have to pay the carbon tax. Quebec doesn’t pay the carbon tax. Please correct me if I’m wrong, because I’ve been known sometimes to have the occasional misinformation—not on purpose—but Quebec doesn’t pay the carbon tax because they have cap-and-trade.

The province cancels cap-and-trade, then fights the federal government on the carbon tax, spends millions of dollars and loses the court battle. Now it’s basically become a political battle. They’re helping their federal friends and they’re blaming every problem on the carbon tax. Again, let’s make it clear: We are not in favour of the carbon tax.

Now they have in this legislation that if another government wants to put any other carbon pricing system in, they have to hold a referendum. The only carbon-pricing system that’s exempt from that is the one that this government itself implemented. They have a carbon tax. It’s an industrial compliance fee for carbon.

I’m not going to say who said this, but I had a conversation with one of the members. And when I asked him about it, he said, “Well, it’s more than two words. Nobody will understand it.” But this government has an indirect carbon tax. So because of this government, Ontarians are paying two. They’re paying a federal one, which we don’t agree with either, but they’re getting rebated for most of that. But for the industrial compliance fee, there’s no rebate.

Some of the government’s arguments I believe. The government continues to say that if you had a cap-and-trade system, the extra costs of cap-and-trade will filter through the system and end up making things cost more. You know what? That’s fairly good logic. So the government’s own industrial compliance fee for carbon—that cost will also filter through the system and make things cost more. So there’s no rebate for that.

I really would like a good debate on this. Don’t quote me on the number; I don’t have it in front of me. But I believe last year it was $140 million, $150 million, what the government brought in. Where does that money go?

Again, I think people have figured out by now that I’m not—we have a few PhDs in economics; I am not. I use farmer economics. Since the federal carbon tax is a backstop program—if you have your own program, you shouldn’t have to pay the federal carbon tax. To me, the government has that program, the industrial compliance fee for carbon. Maybe it’s not robust enough to meet the goals. I’m not qualified to say that. Maybe it’s not. But you would think the government is also spending quite a bit of money to change the Hamilton blast furnaces to electric, but that also reduces carbon, and all the EVs. Couldn’t the government actually use that to make the argument that we have a robust enough program so we wouldn’t have to pay the carbon tax? Like, put some horsepower behind it to actually do that?

I’m seeing a lot of noes, but the fact is, we do have a provincial compliance fee, which is very similar to cap-and-trade—very similar. So you cancel cap-and-trade, and you put in something else, but you don’t talk about that. Nobody wants to talk about the compliance fee, but it’s there. It’s there. So even if you make the argument: “You know what? We’ve already got our own system. Maybe we should pay less carbon tax than the other provinces because we already have at least a partial system”—but you don’t want to admit that you actually have a system. That’s crazy, because you should be proud of anything you do to reduce carbon, even if we disagree on how you’re doing it. For the life of me, I don’t understand.

You go through the theatrics of trying to tie a future government—or maybe your own government, because this government has been known for flip-flopping. So maybe you have in your caucus a big bunch of people who are pro carbon tax, so you’re trying to stop yourselves from putting in another carbon tax. I don’t understand. But the referendum—I really don’t understand what you’re trying to do, because you have your own carbon tax and you’ve exempted your own program from the referendum. What are you doing?

There are things in here—we’re going to get back to the 407. We’re not going to have any tolls. I didn’t know this coming from northern Ontario, I didn’t know this until very recently—I always thought that when the massive mistake was made to lease out the 407—that the whole 407 belonged to some private—is it a Spanish company? I don’t know where they’re from.