To reply, the Minister of Education.

Minister of Education.

Speaker, my question is for the Premier.

A recent Ombudsman report has revealed fatal gaps in youth support and has made 20 recommendations to York children’s aid society.

Mia, a 16-year-old young girl, repeatedly cried out for help. She needed a foster placement, and she wanted to return to school, which are all within her rights. Mia’s rights were ignored, and she was shockingly told to go to a shelter.

Premier, are you going to adequately fund our children’s aid societies, or are you going to continue to leave children like Mia behind?

Speaker, time and time again in this House, your government has made promises to children and youth in care. Two weeks ago, legislation was introduced outlining small steps in the child welfare system—small steps in a system that Mia tried to navigate herself while in emotional crisis, a system which turned its back on her and broke its promise to keep her safe, housed and protected.

Back to the Premier: What has your minister done to ensure there will never be another Mia anywhere again in this province?

My question is for the extremely busy Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade.

Last week, our province welcomed a historic investment in my riding of Simcoe–Grey. Honda’s $15-billion investment in Ontario is the largest auto investment in Canadian history. This general investment will create jobs not only for my constituents in Simcoe–Grey but right across our great province.

Premier Ford has called Minister Fedeli the architect of the Honda deal, and not surprisingly, Minister Fedeli has credited the Premier as being the best closer you have ever seen. The reality is that this dynamic duo got it done for Ontario.

Speaker, can the minister take us behind this historic deal?

But now our province is landing investments that were unthinkable six years ago and bringing back jobs by the tens of thousands. Can the minister explain what this new investment will mean for Ontario’s economy?

Mr. Speaker, we’re increasing funding by over $745 million for the coming school year because we believe in restoring focus, discipline and some common sense back in Ontario schools. And that’s why we’ve increased the funding for the coming school year to the highest levels ever.

We’ve also committed and we have hired 9,000 more education workers, 3,000 additional front-line educators. We have 900 additional teachers being hired for literacy and for math. Mr. Speaker, this is a historic investment, underpinned by a reform to the curriculum that infuses life and job skills, that actually ensures financial literacy and coding and phonics has returned to the norm in Ontario schools.

We know there’s more work to do, but I would hope members opposite would join our government and our Premier in increasing the funding and the staffing and the expectations in Ontario’s publicly funded schools.

If we want to listen to the people we represent, then the overwhelming majority of parents will say, “Go back to basics. Remove the distractions and the nonsense, and make sure my kids are proficient in literacy and in math,” and that’s exactly what we’re doing. The Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act repatriates that power back to the people, puts parents in the driver’s seat, ensures transparency on school boards and benchmarks their performance according to academic achievement, which is what education is supposed to be about.

We have increased the funding, we’re increasing the expectations and we’re adding more staff to make sure that students are set up for long-term success.

Speaker, Honda’s $15-billion investment is a game-changer for our auto sector and for our entire province. This would not have happened without Honda’s long-standing history here in Ontario and especially with the dedicated team of workers at Honda, who produce some of the best-selling vehicles made in Canada; Premier Ford, as you heard, the best closer at the negotiating table, and a strong team—thank you to them—our team, who were introduced earlier, with their deep understanding of the auto sector; the officials in our ministry and their tremendous work and countless hours; and every member of this government—treasury, finance, infrastructure, energy, mines, labour. It was an all-of-government effort.

Speaker, this is a new chapter now in Ontario’s auto sector. We are an EV manufacturing powerhouse.

We are the EV-manufacturing powerhouse.

I thank the member for the question.

The death of any child or youth is a tragedy.

We’ve reviewed the report, and we take it very seriously. We agree with the Ombudsman. The best interests, protection and well-being of children is paramount in the child welfare system, and our government expects York CAS and every children’s aid society in the province to ensure that children’s and youth’s voices are heard in their decision-making and their well-being.

We will never waver from our commitment to keeping children and youth safe, regardless of their circumstances. That’s what’s driving our comprehensive redesign of the child welfare system—that’s the most recent bill that I introduced last week, the children’s futures act, which the member debated on. We saw that it was passed in second reading. Through the redesign, we have initiatives to improve out-of-home care to make sure that we hold bad actors to account.

Once again, let me make it very clear: We will never waver from our commitment to making sure every child, every youth is safe in this province.

In the recent bill that I mentioned earlier, the Supporting Children’s Futures Act, which we introduced a couple of weeks ago—here in this bill. Mr. Speaker, we are going above and beyond what we’ve already introduced, and I made it very clear in the bill.

The member calls it small steps. Mr. Speaker, I said that this bill is just one of the many steps that we’re taking. The child welfare redesign, Mr. Speaker—never took any action by the previous government, and this member was here. It was our government that said, through the child welfare redesign, we will make sure we won’t leave anyone behind. That means introducing fines and making sure that the bad actors are held accountable. None of these provisions included before; none of these children and youth were being cared for, were being looked after. We’ll make sure that through this bill and other initiatives—

Thank you for the question from the member opposite.

Our government’s dedication to protecting the environment is clear. The report confirms that Ontario continues to lead the country with 86% of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emission reductions. We’ll continue to build on this success by making Ontario a global leader in electric vehicles and investing in clean steel production, reducing emissions by the same amount as taking two million cars off the road.

We will continue making critical investments to get Ontarians where they need to be, such as the Ontario Line, that takes another 28,000 cars off the road every day. In addition to those historic investments, we’ve also invested in conservation through the Greenlands Conservation Partnership, which has protected over 420,000 acres of land.

We’ve proven we can protect the environment without imposing a costly job-killing carbon tax on—

It is an absolute pleasure to tell you how well we are doing in Ontario, in Canada, with our health care system.

We have our second match of CaRMS. What is CaRMS? CaRMS is matching residency students with their first choice, and we have all of those residencies now matched in the province of Ontario—unprecedented here. It means that students who are training and want to practise in Ontario got that match with CaRMS. So please, congratulate them.

And I have to say, the outgoing president for the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, Sarita Verma: congratulations. Fifty-one per cent of your students at Northern Ontario School of Medicine have chosen family practitioner as their number one specialty residency.

We are making progress. We will continue to invest in our health care system because we know, whether it’s hospital capital, whether it’s health human resources, offering those opportunities for students to train—

Speaker, to the Premier: Last Thursday, Canada released its annual report on greenhouse gas emissions. Ontario is showing sharp increases in GHGs since they bottomed out at the beginning of the pandemic. The report showed the increases in Ontario’s emissions were the largest in Canada.

The Conservatives’ inadequate climate plan is headed towards failure. When will the Premier take action to sharply cut Ontario’s emissions to protect our standard of living?

I can do that. Through Powering Ontario’s Growth, we’re going to ensure that we have the clean, non-emitting, reliable, affordable electricity that we’re seeing right now. But into the future, this type of affordable, reliable non-emitting energy is what has actually allowed us to land the historic multi-billion-dollar Honda deal, which Minister Fedeli was just talking about last week: a $15-billion investment at four different plants across the province.

Through Powering Ontario’s Growth, we’re ensuring that we have a small modular reactor not just being talked about but under construction at Darlington right now. Three more SMRs are going to be going in at that site. Mr. Speaker, we have the first large-scale build that’s about to get under way at what’s already the world’s largest nuclear facility at Bruce Power. We have a non-emitting procurement that’s under way with the IESO. We have the largest battery storage procurement under way—

But in spite of that, we’re continuing to move forward with non-emitting resources like our nuclear facilities, hydroelectric facilities, battery storage facilities and renewables that will work better because we have the storage that we need in the province. As a matter of fact, according to the 2024 greenhouse gas registry—

Interjections.

The people in Milton, the people in LKM disagreed with their proposals last week: They got 6.76% in the by-election. We’ve got two new Tory members because people are opposed to the federal carbon tax and they’re opposed to Bonnie Crombie, the queen of the carbon tax.

My question is for the Minister of Energy. My riding in Richmond Hill and everyone knows that the Liberal carbon tax does nothing to reduce emissions. It is fueling the cost-of-living crisis Ontarians are already going through and burdening families with one tax hike after another.

Speaker, Ontarians won’t be fooled by the Liberals’ tax-grabbing measures. Unlike the NDP and the independent Liberals, our government knows that a carbon tax is not a solution. That’s why, under the leadership of Premier Ford, we have shovels in the ground on new clean energy infrastructure.

Speaker, can the minister please explain our government’s affordable approach to ensuring that Ontario has sufficient energy capacity to meet growing needs without a carbon tax?

As Ontario moves towards an electric future with a strong electric vehicle supply chain network, the need for reliable, low-cost and clean power has never been greater. Unlike the federal government’s carbon tax disaster, our government has a real plan to ensure that our energy supply will continue to meet the needs of a growing population and industrial expansion.

Speaker, can the minister please elaborate on what our government is doing to build a stronger Ontario and strengthen the competitive advantage?

Thank you very much.

The next question.

Supplementary question.

The next question.

The supplementary question.

My question is to the Minister of Housing. We have an affordability crisis, and housing is a big part of it. Tenants across Ontario are experiencing drastic rent increases simply because they live in buildings built after 2018. For example, in Livmore High Park, last year, rent was raised by 14%, and this year, rent is going up by 13%. With stagnant wages and rents skyrocketing, the cost-of-living crisis is pushing people out of their homes.

Why won’t this government provide stability to tenants in the midst of an affordability crisis?

Minister, will you reinstate the protections you removed and protect tenants from unlimited rent increases?

My question is for the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade.

Honda’s historic investment in Ontario is being talked about across the world, across this province, and certainly across my riding. Global automakers and competing jurisdictions know now: Ontario’s auto sector is back and stronger than ever. Demand for electric vehicles will continue to ramp up in the coming years, and we are making sure the supply of made-in-Ontario vehicles is here. This is a massive economic opportunity in front of our province, and one that this government intends to seize. There is not one US state that has secured more auto and EV investments than Ontario in the last four years.

Can the minister explain how, with so many competing jurisdictions vying for this investment, Ontario was successful?

Tens of thousands of good-paying jobs are being created right across our province, and investments in our auto sector will strengthen our economy for decades to come. Under the previous Liberal government, that sector was hollowed out and signalled to companies that they should make things abroad rather than in Ontario. No one could have imagined at that time how we have bounced back.

Can the minister explain to this House what our government has done to position Ontario as a jurisdiction where automakers need to be?

That answer had nothing about PSWs, nothing about nurses and nothing about the shortage of physicians in our province.

This government has allowed our health care system to fall into such dire straits that a little transparency would threaten our economic prosperity. This government is terrified that public sector workers will have more bargaining power than they will. They’re terrified that even the private sector, flourishing under their protection, could soon be holding them over a barrel, demanding higher rates.

Why? Because this government’s mismanagement has resulted in the highest demand for health care workers in our province’s history. If it sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same trademark mismanagement that’s got the demand for housing—pardon the pun—through the roof. This government can’t make progress on housing, and they can’t make progress on health care. All they can do is hide from the damage they’ve done and try to save their own skin.

Mr. Speaker, will the Premier give Ontarians a straight answer and tell them how many front-line physicians, nurses and PSWs our health care system is missing?

Thank you. Supplementary question.

The next question.

Here’s the straight answer, Speaker: Two years in a row, we have registered more registered nurses in the province of Ontario in Ontario’s history. How have we been able to do that? We have been able to do that by directing the Colleges of Nurses of Ontario and the physicians and surgeons of Ontario to quickly assess, review and ultimately license, when appropriate, internationally educated clinicians.

We are making progress. We are working with our partners. We are ensuring that not only capital investments—over 50 different capital builds in the province of Ontario at our hospitals: new, expanded, renovated hospitals. We are doing it with expanding the number of residency positions, the number of positions; seats that are available for our nurse practitioners, for our registered nurses and for our PSWs.

We are making the investments, and we are seeing those changes impacting our communities, not—

Deals of this scale and of this calibre, they’re not made over night; they take time. Our first EV discussion with Honda was in Tokyo almost two years ago. We knew, going into these negotiations, that everything was going to be about relationships and trust. Honda already knew that we have the talent, the clean energy, the EV ecosystem, the minerals and the investment track record; they knew all that, and now, quite frankly, the whole world knows that.

Through many meetings in Tokyo, here at home, multiple meetings at the Premier’s own home, we cultivated that trust with Honda’s leaders—leaders like president and CEO Mibe-san, Honda Canada president Jean Marc Leclerc, Ozawa-san and Miyamoto-san. With the Premier at the table, leading those negotiations, they knew Ontario was serious about Honda. So thank you, Honda, for this wonderful—

Companies are choosing Ontario because we have everything global leaders need in EV production; 70,000 annual STEM grads, 700 parts makers, 500 tool and die and mould makers, 400 connected and autonomous companies—the full EV ecosystem—but, Speaker, most importantly, we have the best talent in the world.

In fact, what we’ve been doing since day one is recognizing the fact that for over 15 years there were very few purpose-built rental housings built in the province of Ontario, which has led to the challenges that we are now facing. We started back in 2018, as the member talked about, putting incentives in place so that we could build more purpose-built rental housing, and the results have actually been quite staggering, exceeding our expectations. But there is more work to be done.

As you know, we have the highest level of purpose-built rental housing, not only in the last couple of years, but frankly, in the province’s history. Bringing more supply online will help us ensure that we can bring stabilized rents and eventually bring those rents down.

When you talk about affordability, of course, it is our government that has brought in measure after measure after measure to make life more affordable for the people of the province of Ontario, whether it is reducing taxes, fighting the carbon tax every step of the way, the measures that we have brought in place to actually make it cheaper and more affordable to build rental housing. We’re going to continue to be focused on that because it’s the right thing to do for the people of Ontario.

The NDP government at the time said that they had to do it because the previous Liberal government was so disastrous. I and my colleagues, we copied that great program from the NDP government. We’re doing it now. We’re building more than ever before.

Thank you for your advice on that policy. We’ll continue that policy, because it’s working—