Good afternoon, colleagues. Promoting Leisure Activities for Youth Act, 2024, PLAY: It’s very simple. We all remember the joys of playing growing up. Over time, we’ve learned more and more about the physical, mental health and academic benefits of play. For our kids, it can be as easy as running around outside or picking up a ball and bouncing it with their friends. But participating in sports and extracurricular activities as a child can help set you up for a healthier lifestyle as we age. And while it is sometimes harder for us old guys to play, it remains a critically important life skill and health habit, one that is much easier if it’s developed at an earlier age.

As a dad, one of my greatest joys is seeing the important life lessons my son takes away from his participation in sport: important lessons about fitness, about teamwork, leadership and commitment, the ability to persevere through difficult moments, to remember that it’s never over until it’s over.

In fact, Madam Speaker, one of the important benefits of sports was recently brought to my attention, and I think it is particularly important and poignant given what’s happened in the Legislature this week: 94% of women in the C-suite played sports, including 52% of them playing high-intensity university sports. Three quarters of women in leadership surveyed said that a background in sport can help accelerate their careers.

En tant que père, l’une de mes plus grandes joies est de voir les leçons de vie importantes sur la condition physique, le travail d’équipe, le leadership et l’engagement que mon fils apprend grâce à sa participation aux sports.

During the pandemic, too many of our kids were forced to put the ball down. They were forced to stop playing. Recess was nonexistent; organized sports were cancelled or seriously watered down. Many kids were stuck indoors, and their physical and mental health suffered.

Coming out of the pandemic, families are facing an affordability crisis not experienced in a generation. With higher grocery prices, higher mortgage payments, higher energy costs, families are tightening their belts. And while we could debate until the cows come home the cause of the affordability crisis, one thing is for certain: It’s impacting our kids, and it’s making it harder for families to afford many of the extras. Families of all shapes and sizes, of all income levels, are looking for ways to save. For some, this means cutting out the little extras. For too many, it means cutting out essentials. But we must do everything that we can to ensure that our kids’ physical and mental health doesn’t suffer as a result.

Fee inflation is pushing too many kids out of sports. Too many families can no longer afford to participate in organized sports and extracurricular activities.

Nous devons faire tout ce qui est en notre pouvoir pour que la santé physique et mentale de nos enfants n’en souffre pas. Trop de familles n’ont pas les moyens d’inscrire leurs enfants à des activités sportives et extrascolaires organisées.

In Ontario, the richest province in the country, one in four kids from middle-class families don’t participate in any organized activity or sport—one in four. That number gets worse as income levels go down. Think about it: One in four middle-class kids don’t participate in any organized activity or sport. What could be more middle class than waking up Saturday morning, getting the kids to the rink with a hockey bag in one hand and your Timmy’s in the other, or heading to the field on Friday night to see the human cluster of kids surrounding a soccer ball as it criss-crosses the field? That, for many, is the Ontario dream, and one in four middle-class kids can’t participate. With skyrocketing fees, too many families can’t afford to keep their kids playing.

Moreover, in a recent report by ParticipACTION, only 39% of children and youth ages five to 17 in Canada met the recommendation of 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity of physical activity every day—39%. We need to get more of our kids playing. Making it easier for mom and dad’s pocketbook is a great place to start. Giving parents some financial relief, making it financially more viable to put their kids or to keep their kids in sports and extracurricular activities can make a real difference in their lives. It will make our kids healthier. Healthier kids mean healthier adults; healthier adults mean reduced burden on our health care system.

We know the strains that our health care system is facing at the moment. We have 2.2 million Ontarians without a family doctor. That number is going to double in the next three years. We have emergency rooms that are closing, sometimes for a couple of hours, sometimes for a couple of days, sometimes for a couple of weekends, sometimes, we fear, maybe permanently. Everything we can do to create a healthier population we should be doing.

We need to start to view children’s sports and physical activity as a critical and integrated part of our health care system, because if we can be healthy and stay healthy, we can stay out of the doctor’s offices and we can stay out of the hospital.

Nous proposons de permettre aux parents de choisir plus facilement de faire participer leurs enfants à des activités de loisir. Nous voulons que le choix soit un peu plus facile. Si elle est adoptée, la loi sur la promotion des activités de loisir pour les jeunes créera un crédit d’impôt non remboursable de 1 000 $ pour les activités extrascolaires pour les enfants.

What does this bill do? This bill proposes to make it a little bit easier for parents to choose to keep their kids in leisure activities. We want the choice to play to be a little bit easier. If passed tonight—and I hope the government will join us in voting for this—the promoting leisure activities for youth act would create a $1,000 non-refundable tax credit for children’s extracurricular activities. We want this to be as inclusive as possible. These activities would range from anything from hockey and football to drama and art. Our goal—and as I mentioned, it’s a goal that we hope the government will join us in—is to help families to keep their kids playing.

Over the last number of months, Ontario Liberals have proposed an array of affordability measures to help families. Before Christmas last year, we proposed removing the HST from home heating. That proposal for a common-sense tax break was rejected by the government.

We are debating here tonight a proposal to create a $1,000 tax credit for families to keep their kids physically fit and engaged in extracurricular activities. We hope the government will join us in that.

Earlier this week, we proposed a massive tax cut to small businesses, a small business tax cut that could save those businesses up to $18,000 a year—over $1,000 a month, Madam Speaker, to help small businesses, which are the heart of our economy, to continue to invest in their communities, to continue to invest in human resources and skills development in our communities across the province, to ensure that we have that workforce that we need to ensure that those services are being provided in our communities, and to ensure that the economic benefits are achieved from all of their hard work and their creativity as entrepreneurs.

Ontario Liberals are proposing common-sense tax measures to help Ontarians during these difficult economic times, and we hope that the government will join us in that common sense approach. Cost, Madam Speaker, should not be the barrier to the academic, the mental health, the physical health and the social benefits that extracurricular activities provide.

It is my honour to rise to speak to this bill, promoting leisure activities for youth. I didn’t realize the acronym: PLAY. It’s pretty clever. I think that a good bill needs a good acronym.

Before I address the merits of this bill, I want to just talk to the MPP for Burlington, who talked about his government’s fiscal record. I think I would like to remind the member that this government, this provincial government, this Ford government is the most indebted—in debt, in deficit—in the history of Ontario, and they’ve increased that every year since they took office. But at the same time, when it comes to spending per person on the things that are important, especially to low-income families like this bill is addressing, this government is last when it comes to per capita spending in the province. And so he did say that his—

The member from Oakville did also say that your government’s record speaks for itself; I couldn’t agree more. Because under your government’s watch, more families than ever before are living in poverty. Under your government’s watch, 2.4 million people don’t have access to a doctor—and that includes kids. There are more food bank users in this province than ever before, and the vast majority of people that use food banks are children.

So it’s very disappointing to see a government that has failed children in this province and continues to fail families in this province not supporting a bill that was trying to give parents that are already struggling the ability to look after their kids and do right for their kids.

This private member’s bill does propose a new non-refundable tax credit to allow Ontario families to help cover the cost of enrolling their kids in physical activities, arts programming, tutoring, camps, all the things that kids need. And we know, during the COVID pandemic our kids suffered greatly. They lost many years. They’ve lost out on schools and graduations. Their families are struggling. So we should all join in this House to support anything—anything—that can help kids in this province. I don’t understand why the government wouldn’t want to support a bill that’s aimed to help children in this province.

We know there’s an affordability crisis in this province. I stood here in my place the other day and asked the government what they were going to do about families that cannot afford baby formula in this province—baby formula. Do you know what they talked about, Andrea? Carbon tax.

I don’t think they get it. I don’t think they understand that parents are doing everything they can to give this advantage that’s very important to families. They’re cash-strapped. They can hardly afford to keep a roof over their house or afford groceries, but they still want to do right by their kids. You would think this government would want to support a bill like this that does that.

I mean, we did have a tax credit like this. Unfortunately, the Progressive Conservative government failed to renew the children’s activity tax. Reinstating this would have allowed us to pick up where we left off in making kids’ extracurriculars more affordable and accessible.

We all know—parents, grandparents—that we need to make it easier for kids to get active through extracurriculars like sports, music, arts and other programs. We know that there is a mental health crisis in our province. We know that there’s a two-year waiting list for kids to be seen when they have mental health concerns, under this government. These kinds of programs support kids and help kids feel healthier, both physically and mentally. I don’t understand why this government wouldn’t want to support that.

This provides for families that are stretched thin, as I described. They, just like all of us, want enriching experiences for their kids. Extracurricular activities teach vital skills, and I agree with what the MPP from Orléans said about the importance of these activities.

I also want to address the fact that newcomers in our province struggle not only financially but also to integrate their kids in programs that provide connections and community, and that’s what extracurricular activities provide. By voting against this, this government is choosing to turn their backs on newcomers who are trying to integrate into our communities and provide their kids with an opportunity.

I would just like to say that, in Hamilton, we had a program called Skate the Dream. We know that hockey has got to be one of the most expensive sports for parents. We had a low-income neighbourhood in Hamilton where they almost had to close the hockey program there because parents couldn’t afford the enrolment fees. They couldn’t afford the equipment. It’s really expensive. We had a program called Skate the Dream that we fundraised for and volunteers to help make sure that kids in that low-income neighbourhood who loved to play hockey, who showed up—kids, on their own, showed up with their hockey equipment over their shoulder, on the bus, to play. That’s how much they wanted to do it. So we wanted to help them out.

Parents, volunteers, community groups, they’re playing their part to help kids. Why is this government not playing their part in showing that they care? By passing this bill, we’ll be investing in the health and development of the next generation. We know and we’ve heard that this fosters community engagement and an active lifestyle, and we know we need to do that at an early age. The early years are so important, zero to five. Those are fundamental for kids’ well-being and for positive outcomes in later years. It’s about healthy childhood development, and this extracurricular activity plays a critical role in that. Why are we limiting these enriching experiences to children whose parents can afford this? We know that, as a community, we want all children to have this opportunity.

So I appreciate the member bringing this forward. I think it’s an important bill. It addresses a gap where children are being left behind and ignored by this government. I hope, despite what the member from Oakville said, that the government will change their mind and support this important bill.

I’m pleased to rise today to debate Bill 178, the Promoting Leisure Activities for Youth Act, the PLAY Act, especially since I was not given the opportunity yesterday to debate Bill 180, the budget act. Thank you to my colleague from Orléans for his excellent debate and presentation on this very important bill.

Speaker, this government promised during the 2018 election to give middle-income families a tax break, a promise that remains broken six long years later. Bill 178 is an opportunity to help fulfill that promise by supporting children and their families to make extracurricular activities for kids more affordable.

This government has shirked their responsibilities and spent much of the last six months talking about what more the federal government should do to make life more affordable, because this Conservative government cancelled cap-and-trade. By the way, under this government’s non-existent plan to protect the environment, the amount of green energy in our grid had decreased from 92% under the Liberal government to 86% under this one—and oh, by the way, the Liberal government eliminated smog days, which still benefits the health of all Ontarians, including the kids we’re talking about today in Bill 178.

What this government does not talk about are all the things the federal government has done to make life more affordable, like introducing $10-a-day child care, the rollout of which has been completely bungled by this government; or the Canada child benefit, which has lifted over 400,000 children, many of them here in Ontario, out of poverty; or the Housing Accelerator Fund, which granted Ontario municipalities hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to expedite the development of affordable housing. So today we’re here to talk about something this government could do that was not done in their budget, which I was not allowed to debate yesterday, that would help them keep their broken promise to give middle-income families a tax break right here at home in Ontario.

Speaker, we know that extracurricular activities are important for children’s development. We know that children suffered during the COVID pandemic from a lack of in-person learning, and also a lack of access to friends and learning opportunities at their extracurricular activities. So supporting kids by helping more families access extracurricular activities is even more important now, as more and more kids are struggling with mental health challenges. This bill is a fantastic opportunity for this government to support Ontario families by making their kids’ activities more affordable. Whether it’s a sport, music, arts or STEM programs, Bill 178 will help make those activities more accessible to kids and families by making them more affordable. That will help kids develop and grow, and it will support their mental health.

Bill 178 would encourage extracurricular activities and the well-being of children at a time when so many children are struggling with mental health, in an environment where digital fatigue and social media burnout are becoming increasingly common, because phone usage is up post-pandemic, impacting their ability to engage meaningfully with the world and their peers.

Regardless of party, I believe all members want the children of Ontario to thrive and be healthy, mentally and physically. Research has found that engaging in extracurricular activities helps reduce stress, improve mood and provide a sense of purpose and fulfillment for students. It develops students’ cultural and social capital, says the People for Education of Ontario.

With the affordability challenges our province is facing post-COVID, we must not neglect extracurriculars for children. This bill will provide an incentive for families and allow children to participate in the activities they want to participate in. Giving up to $1,000 back to families would help offset the fees that may prevent them from being entered into sports, arts or outside opportunities.

The education minister proposed measures relating to restrictions on cellphone use and vaping. Bill 178 complements these efforts to reduce distraction in classrooms by giving kids more opportunity for positive activities to engage in. I encourage all members to support Bill 178, to support our kids and families by making extracurricular activities more affordable. Where the budget failed to support kids with after-school programs, this bill steps up to do just that.