I want to thank the ACTRA members who are here today. I had a good conversation with a number of them prior to question period. Speaker, I think it’s important to note—while I did mention to them, and I will say to the members opposite—this dispute is currently before the Ontario Labour Relations Board, which is a quasi-judicial body, and I know that that member wouldn’t ask me to interfere in that work.

Having said that—

Interjection.

Interjections.

However, I recognize, as I’ve said in my first answer, that government and the subsequent agencies and the ads that they’re hiring are having an impact, and that’s why I’m going to be calling all three agencies following question period. We want a deal here between both bodies. I recognize the important work that Chair O’Byrne and the OLRB are doing, but I also recognize the perception here with these three agencies, and so we’ll be speaking with them after question period.

Members of the nurse practitioner association came to Queen’s Park today. They came to share solutions with the Minister of Health for the 2.3 million Ontarians without access to primary care. They are ready, willing and able to care for thousands of orphan patients. Unfortunately, although all 24 nurse practitioner-led clinics are willing to help, they represent only four of the 78 teams announced by the minister.

Will the minister listen to the solutions brought forward by NPAO, open positions for nurse practitioners and give Ontarians access to primary care?

When will the minister start showing respect for hard-working nurse practitioners and, at a minimum, close the salary gap between nurse practitioners in hospitals and other care settings?

I remind the members to make their comments through the Chair.

The Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development.

Supplementary question? The member for Sudbury.

I’ll remind the members to refer to each other by our riding name or ministerial title, as applicable.

The next question.

Thank you to the member opposite for the question. We have invested significantly into primary care. We invested $110 million, and we’ve topped that investment with another $546 million over the next three years to expand to another 600,000 Ontarians to have primary care.

We’ve also expanded the Learn and Stay grant, which pays for tuition, pays for the books and pays for supplies for nurses and other health care workers who work in underserved areas after graduation.

We’re also funding the largest expansion of medical school spots in over a decade, adding 1,212 undergraduate and 1,637 postgraduate seats across Ontario. Speaker, 60% of these spots will be dedicated to family medicine.

We’re building a new medical school at York University, specialized in training family physicians.

We have a plan to rebuild Ontario’s health care, and we won’t stop until everyone receives the care that they need when and where, Speaker.

Speaker, under the Liberals, propped up by the NDP, they cut the amount of residency school spots. We are 1,000 doctors short, combined between the NDP and the Liberals, when they cut their residency school spots by 10% and 50 spots under the Liberals. We will continue to ensure that the people of Ontario have the health care they need, when and where they need it.

Right now, currently, almost 90% of Ontarians have a family care doctor or primary care health team. But we know there’s more that needs to be done, and we will continue doing what needs to be done to ensure that all people of Ontario have the health care they need, whether it’s in the north, east, west or south.

The question is also for the Premier.

Speaker, for more than two years, thousands of ACTRA Toronto performers have been locked out by the Institute of Canadian Agencies. For more than two years, the Conservative government has continued to use taxpayer dollars to buy government ads from the advertising agencies who have locked out these workers. And for more than two years, I have asked the Premier, several times, to stand with these workers and stop buying these ads. He keeps failing them.

It has been 25 months, more than two years. Enough is enough.

My question is, will the Premier finally side with the thousands of ACTRA commercial workers, stop buying government-funded ads from the advertising agencies who have locked out these workers—not just a phone call, but stop buying them, stop supporting them, get on the side of these workers?

Speaker, it’s no surprise to anyone, especially the member from Oakville, that the federal Liberal government’s carbon tax is making life more expensive for the people of Ontario and the people of Canada. That’s why we’re taking a different route. We’re procuring clean energy.

Just last week, I was down at the Power of Water Canada conference in Niagara, announcing a new small hydro program, a new northern hydro program, for 10-megawatt facilities and larger. It’s why I was in Cornwall with the great member from Stormont–Dundas–South Glengarry on Friday, announcing that we were refurbishing the Saunders dam, a huge facility connecting Lake Ontario and the Great Lakes system to the Atlantic Ocean and providing clean electricity for over a million homes in our province. That work has started to refurbish that facility. Last week was a busy week when it comes to procuring clean energy for our province.

The one thing that our Powering Ontario’s Growth plan doesn’t include is a carbon tax because we don’t need it. All it does is punish the people of Ontario.

There’s only one party in this Legislature that’s opposed to a carbon tax, and that’s Premier Ford and our team. Instead, we’re doing the kinds of things that I talked about earlier: procuring new clean, non-emitting generation. That includes refurbishing our nuclear facilities that we have across the province, including at Pickering and at Darlington and at Bruce, and building small modular reactors at Darlington.

Last week, we had the largest procurement in Canada’s history for clean energy storage. Another 1,800 megawatts are being added right across our province to ensure that our system remains clean and reliable. Our plan, Powering Ontario’s Growth, which is working—

Interjections.

My question is for the Premier. Speaker, the public still remembers the bread price-fixing scandal where grocers reached a secret agreement to inflate the cost of bread for more than 14 years. They said they were sorry, but since then big corporations’ profits continue to reach all-time highs while Ontarians’ monthly budgets get tighter, and shrinkflation means we’re literally getting less for our money.

Speaker, something just doesn’t smell right in Ontario’s grocery stores. Can the Premier tell Ontarians what he’s doing to hold big corporations accountable and put a stop to price gouging?

It’s time to stop cozying up to powerful billionaires and start taking a much closer look at their business practices. Speaker, what is the Premier doing to investigate price gouging and make sure Ontarians aren’t getting ripped off on groceries?

Speaker, let me tell you, the most expensive Premier’s office in the history of this province was the one that preceded this government, the Kathleen Wynne Premier’s office. You know why? Because it cost us 300,000 jobs. It cost us massive amounts of economic development. It cost us job creation. It cost us trade. It hurt our students.

Remember when our students were discovering math instead of learning math? That was under the previous Liberal government.

You know all of those doctors that aren’t practising right now? That was because they closed the medical schools. Instead of thinking about it 15 years ago, they closed the medical schools. They didn’t hire nurses; they laid them off.

We built long-term-care homes. We’re building more hospitals. We’re building roads, transportation—700,000 people have the dignity of a job who didn’t under the previous Liberal government.

That member can talk about gravy train all he wants, but the only thing we’re doing is building an economy out of the ashes of what was left behind by the previous Liberal government.

My question is for the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade. The Trudeau Liberals continue to hike taxes and raise costs, despite businesses and workers pleading to them to stop. You would think that when people are struggling to deal with higher costs, governments would act to lower costs and provide relief, as our government has done.

Instead, the Liberal solution to higher costs is to make things even more expensive with their carbon tax. They’re running the same playbook as Ontario’s previous Liberal government, but it seems they haven’t asked them how it worked out for our province, and particularly for my community of Windsor–Tecumseh. Can the minister explain to the Liberals why keeping costs low is crucial for economic growth?

We need the federal government to recognize that the Liberal experiment of high-tax policies has repeatedly been tested and has failed each and every time. At 17 cents a litre, the carbon tax is already putting a strain on household budgets, while forcing businesses to make difficult choices. Can the minister explain why the Liberals should scrap their carbon tax and focus on measures that reduce costs, not raise them?

Supplementary question.

The next question.

If the Liberals need any proof that lowering taxes and reducing costs create the conditions for economic growth, they can look right here at Ontario. In April, Ontario led the nation in job creation, adding 25,000 new good-paying jobs, including 5,800 new jobs in our manufacturing sector. Manufacturing employment is now at its highest level in 15 years. That’s what happens when you lower taxes and reduce 500 pieces of red tape.

Can you just imagine if the Liberals came along with us and reduced taxes instead of adding taxes like they’re doing? We are showing the Liberals the way, and we need them to come around to our side and scrap the tax today.

The new listing of all active cranes in North America just came out, and Toronto is leading North America. We have 221 active cranes. To put it into perspective, that is more cranes than all 12 major US cities combined.

That’s the power of what’s happening here in Ontario, and that’s what happens when you lower taxes. We need the federal Liberals to follow our lead and scrap the carbon tax.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, through you to the member opposite, for that question. I know the member opposite follows our budgets very closely. That’s why, back in 2022, this government acted early to combat the affordability crisis by cutting the gas tax. With that measure, along with others—10 cents a litre, Mr. Speaker.

And guess what? Cutting the gas tax doesn’t just help all those people who can’t take subways or public transit, who have to take their kids to school or drive to work or get to the hockey rink; it helps the people who grow the food. It helps the people who grow: the great farmers in this great province.

Mr. Speaker, you also have to distribute the food to get to the distribution centres. That costs money, gas money, and we’ve reduced that. In fact, what you should do is go call one—I’ll stop there—but one Jagmeet Singh up in Ottawa and get them to lobby the federal government to cut the carbon tax.

This is a government that believes in cutting fees. Do you remember those licence plate stickers? Well, they’re done. They’re gone. Right, Premier? They’re done, they’re gone, putting 120 bucks for those who have to drive.

But it doesn’t stop there. One Fare from this minister, one integrated fare for the daily rider—that’s saving up to $1,600 a year. That’s real money so they can buy groceries, pay the rent, pay the mortgage and, yes, pay for gas, which is now over 10 cents a litre cheaper because this government took action and took action early.

We’re going to be voting on the budget very soon. I would like to implore this member opposite and the whole team to support our—

Interjection.

Thanks very much to the great member from Mississauga Centre for the question today. She’s absolutely right; the federal carbon tax is driving up the price of everything in our province, and the Bank of Canada has confirmed it’s even having an impact on inflation in our province.

The queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, the former mayor of Mississauga, supports the federal carbon tax, the NDP want to have the largest carbon tax in the land and the Greens are in full support of a carbon tax as well. We’re not. Premier Ford and our team are making life less expensive by cutting gas taxes, bringing in One Fare for our transit riders in Mississauga and other communities across the GTHA, cutting tolls and cutting taxes. We’re about making life more affordable and making this a friendly business environment.

The carbon tax: The member talked about the impact that it’s having on businesses. There is $1.3 billion owed to small businesses as a result of the carbon tax in our province. That money has yet to flow to them.

We already have one of the cleanest grids in the entire world, but we can continue to clean that grid, grow that grid, so we can grow businesses in our province by investing in nuclear, which we’re doing at Bruce and at Darlington and at Pickering, but also refurbishing our hydroelectric fleets that we have across the province, energy-efficiency programs—a billion dollars in that program—procuring new energy storage. The largest procurement of energy storage happened here in Ontario last week—another 1,800 megawatts there.

We can get the power that we need, and we don’t need a costly carbon—

The supplementary.

The Premier can reply.

The next question.

The member for Stormont–Dundas–South Glengarry.

Our government is making the investments that Ontarians need to ensure that there are options for home care in Ontario. After years of neglect by previous governments—the Liberal government propped up by the NDP, which that member was a member of the party—we are investing over $1 billion in home care, and in this year’s budget, we’ve added another $2 billion to our home care over the next three years. Our landmark investment in home care will ensure that those who choose to stay in their home will be able to stay longer with the care they need.

Speaker, as we announced this year in our budget, we are also expanding our primary care. We are investing $543 million over the next three years to ensure that over 600,000 Ontarians get the care they need when they need it.

We’ll continue to invest in our hospitals by committing close to $1 billion to ensure that they have the tools they need to supply convenient care close to home.

Strong home and community care is part of the government’s plan for connected and convenient care. That is why we passed the Convenient Care at Home Act, to streamline the home care system. In partnership with hospitals, primary care and Ontario health teams, Ontario is expanding and improving access to home and community care. We’re investing $2 billion over the next three years in home care. That is on top of $1 billion over three years in the 2023 budget. We are taking bold and innovative action to ensure Ontarians can connect to the care they need, where they need it and when they need it.

My question is for the energetic Minister of Energy. The federal carbon tax is raising the cost of everything: heating, eating, driving and even recreation. Yes, Justin Trudeau and Carbon Crombie want to tax your family for simply having some fun. Unsurprisingly, this is also forcing businesses to pay more taxes. It is clear that the carbon tax is punishing the very people it claims to protect: our families, our businesses and our future generations. That’s simply not acceptable.

Can the minister please tell the House how our government is providing Ontarians with clean, affordable energy as we fight against this disastrous carbon tax?

Speaker, Ontario families are feeling the squeeze. They want the federal government to scrap the carbon tax now.

Can the minister please explain what our government is doing to protect Ontarians from the costly carbon tax?

Mr. Speaker, I just find it very ironic coming from that member when he bankrupted the province. He lost 300,000 jobs. The largest expense ever—ever—was under Kathleen Wynne.

Just a little FYI, through the Speaker: I’m the only Premier in the history of this province who has never expensed a penny—not one penny. Not a chocolate bar, not a Coca-Cola, nothing. Zero. The only Premier in the history of this province who has never expensed anything.

My question is to the Premier. Speaker, on Thursday, I introduced my motion to create a direct financial benefit to unpaid caregivers in the province of Ontario. It has support from several advocacy groups, from the Canadian Cancer Society to the Alzheimer Society to MS Canada.

I’ve heard directly from my constituents, including John, a caregiver for his wife, who lives with dementia. John told me he is going through hell, and he said caregivers deserve the recognition from this government.

Will the Premier and his party support my motion to help John and the other 3.3 million caregivers across the province of Ontario?

Back to the Premier: Our office has received support from people right across the province of Ontario on our motion, including Karen from Grimsby, whose sister is the primary caregiver for her husband, who lives with ALS. Because of her caregiving responsibilities, she has lost their job, and now they are burning through their savings and struggling to survive.

I also heard from Nicole from Scarborough Centre, who can’t work because of her caregiving responsibilities, but she is not eligible for financial assistance.

Speaker, again, will the Premier support my motion to help the 3.3 million caregivers with stories like this right across the province of Ontario?

Interjections.

Despite that answer, they’re still swimming in gravy.

This gravy train doesn’t actually end in the Premier’s office; it runs right through it. When staff leave, it’s like a return trip, this time as a lobbyist. The Premier’s former chief of staff, Amin Massoudi, he was famous for that Vegas trip. We all remember. We don’t have the story quite straight yet. Here’s the thing: As if that greenbelt gravy wasn’t enough for Mr. Massoudi, we learned last week that he tried to engage the town of Brighton in a lucrative contract to lobby the Premier’s office. It was only after he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar that he declined the contract.

If the Premier won’t stop the gravy train that is his office, could he at least stop it from running right through it?

Interjections.