As soon as we were notified by Group Health Centre that they were going to be separating themselves from some of their patients, we energized, we motivated and we got the member from Sault Ste. Marie, who has been working non-stop on this issue—he’s actually issuing some very good news for Mike and others in the community today. We are increasing our investments in Sault Ste. Marie.

We’ve been able to do this because we have set aside and invested in primary care and multidisciplinary teams across Ontario: 78 in total, two in Sault Ste. Marie and more good news coming today from the member from Sault Ste. Marie.

Are we going to take the first proposal that comes forward? No. We’re going to assess. We’re going to review and look at them, and make sure that they are patient-focused. The announcement that the member from Sault Ste. Marie is making today is exactly that.

La semaine dernière, j’ai rencontré un avocat francophone à mon bureau de Vanier qui s’est déplacé de Glengarry–Prescott–Russell pour me faire part de multiples exemples décrivant de sérieux manques de services en français à la Commission de la location immobilière—je parle du Landlord and Tenant Board—des histoires d’Ontariens qui ne parlent que le français, mais qui voient leur dossier confié à un adjudicateur unilingue, anglophone, ou des francophones qui sont accusés de créer des délais simplement parce qu’ils demandent des services en français.

La réalité sur le terrain, c’est que chaque jour, la commission viole les droits linguistiques des Franco-Ontariens. Le fait d’être francophone ne devrait pas mettre en péril leur droit à l’accès à la justice.

Donc, ma question pour le procureur général : que fait ce gouvernement pour assurer que dans les 26 zones désignées par la Loi sur les services en français les francophones puissent réaliser leur droit à une audience en français?

Let me begin: I want to congratulate our Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing for negotiating a great deal for Ontario. The National Housing Strategy: We’ve got our rightful $357 million that are going to help the most vulnerable in this province. So well done, sir.

Our government is committing to getting more homes built faster. We’ve seen more homes built in the last three years than we have since the 1980s. We’ve seen more purpose-built rentals started than in years—actually a record.

But Speaker, as a federal MP, Bonnie Crombie supported the carbon tax. I know that’s a surprising fact, but it’s true. As a mayor, she said no to housing. She had the worst housing record, one of the worst in the province of Ontario.

So I wonder, Speaker, are the Liberals going to continue to raise taxes? Are they going to continue to support taxes, or are they going to support us by helping get needed infrastructure on the ground and getting homes built faster?

When I think of the budget in 2024, Speaker, I really call it an infrastructure budget. When you think of it, we added a billion dollars in housing-enabling infrastructure. We quadrupled, thanks to the Minister of Infrastructure, the Housing-Enabling Water Systems Fund. We added $1.2 billion, as you know, to the Building Faster Fund. That’s over $3 billion, Speaker, that we’ve invested in our communities, with our municipalities, to get shovels in the ground faster.

What is driving us crazy is this carbon tax. Infrastructure is key to getting homes built, and the cost of the carbon tax is punitive, especially in our rural communities. Rural communities that—it takes longer to get infrastructure there. Transportation costs become punitive.

So, Speaker, let’s use the line—it rings true—scrap the tax.

We want school boards and TDSB to do their job. The member opposite—

Interjections.

Interjection.

Stand up to TDSB and demand better for your students.

Interjections.

My question is to the Minister of Education. Humberside Collegiate in my riding is in desperate need of major repairs. When it rains, the roof leaks, the basement gets flooded, entire sections of the building must be closed off. A classroom ceiling has caved in. These are the conditions that students and teachers are learning and teaching in. It’s also a serious health and safety issue.

Minister, you know the problem very well. You have underfunded school repairs for years. Now, we’ve reached rock bottom. It doesn’t get any worse than this when it comes to building maintenance.

If the images and videos I’ve shared don’t lead the minister to fix the schools, I don’t know what will.

I want the minister to fix the schools. Are you going to fix it?

Interjections.

What I want the minister to do is take the time, go to the school and fix it. You are the Minister of Education; the buck stops with you. Fix it.

My question is for the Associate Minister of Housing. Last month, the federal government increased the carbon tax by a staggering 23%. It is the cruellest April Fool’s joke the province has ever seen.

Speaker, the federal Liberals, with the full support of their provincial counterparts, want to triple this tax by 2030. It’s not right, Speaker. This disastrous carbon tax is burdening Ontarians and adding more obstacles in housing construction, leaving more young families waiting to achieve their dream of home ownership.

The people of this province cannot afford the carbon tax and that’s why we are calling for its complete removal. Speaker, can the associate minister explain how the carbon tax is driving up the cost of building new homes?

The carbon tax is impacting each and every Ontarian who is looking to buy a home. It not only drives up the cost for home builders, but it is making it more expensive to build the critical infrastructure that each community needs to meet its growing housing demands. If we want to be able to build more homes and make housing more affordable for Ontario families, we need the federal government to remove the carbon tax.

Speaker, can the minister please explain how the carbon tax is also raising the costs of building housing-enabling infrastructure?

I’m very pleased, in fact, to stand alongside the minister responsible for francophone affairs. We’ve expanded French services throughout Ontario not only for interpretation for individuals, free of charge; for filing documents at any court counter across the province. We do actively recruit all the time for adjudicators who are qualified, who are bilingual. We look for them vigorously.

Just yesterday, I sat down with the Windsor-Essex Bilingual Legal Clinic to hear how things are going for them in front of the Social Benefits Tribunal, the LTB and the other tribunals. So Mr. Speaker, not only are we on the job, we’re getting the job done.

Mr. Speaker, we actively seek out bilingual individuals when it comes to justices of peace as well, because that’s a very important component of our system. But I know, the member opposite—we share the same goal, which is robust services for the people of Ontario. So I’m always open to ideas or to know where the gaps may be, and I look forward to continuing to work with you to solve some of those challenges.

La Loi sur les services en français oblige le gouvernement à offrir de façon proactive des services juridiques en français. La loi est claire : la qualité des services gouvernementaux doit être la même en français qu’en anglais.

Cependant, les expériences des francophones démontrent que dans nos cours de justice et nos tribunaux administratifs ce n’est pas le cas. Les francophones sont trop souvent traités comme des inconvénients et des boulets, et forcés de naviguer des processus en anglais. Ils sont obligés de remplir des formulaires en anglais, d’écouter des réponses à leurs questions en anglais ou d’attendre très longtemps avant que du personnel francophone soit disponible pour les aider.

Il est clair qu’il existe un manque cruel de juges et de personnel bilingue dans nos cours et tribunaux administratifs. Donc, au lieu de dépenser plus d’un milliard de dollars pour prioriser l’accès à l’alcool aux Ontariens, ce gouvernement va-t-il investir les fonds nécessaires pour embaucher plus de juges et de personnel francophones dans nos tribunaux pour que les Franco-Ontariens puissent accéder aux services en français auxquels ils ont droit?

One more time, I’ll remind the members of the House to make their comments through the Chair.

Interjections.

The Minister of Education may reply.

Interjections.

Interjections.

Start the clock. The member for Haldimand–Norfolk, next question.

My question is to the Premier. There are 2.3 million Ontarians currently without a family doctor, and no admission from this government that this province is headed into a perfect storm.

On Monday, the health minister, in response to a question, suggested the member sit down with hospital CEOs to learn the truth. I’ve sat down with hospital CEOs and they are clear that health care in Ontario has never looked as grim as it does today.

Last week, I was contacted by a mayor, represented by a government member, who said that in the near future, one third of the population this mayor represents will be without primary care. “We are desperate now,” this mayor told me, and yet the minister is on record as saying recruitment and retention of doctors in Ontario is not a major concern.

Speaker, through you to the Premier: If 2.3 million Ontarians without a doctor or a third of a town’s population without a doctor is not a major concern, then what constitutes a major concern with respect to health care in this province?

I was on a call recently, and there were government members also on that same call, where a mayor expressed frustration that this government expects him to welcome more and more people through new builds, and yet his local ER is constantly shuttered.

If everything is fine, why are 2.3 million Ontarians without a doctor? Are the hospital CEOs not telling the truth? Are the mayors I speak to being dramatic? What about constituents lining up for hours at walk-in clinics or at ERs? Are they faking it? And why are there thousands of Ontarians set to converge on Queen’s Park tomorrow for a health care rally?

Ontarians need a doctor, not rhetoric. Speaker, again through you to the Premier, who is telling the truth: this government, or the very people who rely on an ailing system each and every day?

I thank the member for her interest in northwestern Ontario. Yesterday I shared with colleagues our annual ritual where myself, my sweet precious Abigail Mae and darling Poppy Kate, and their friends Whisper and Adele joined us in our leap into Lake of the Woods, at 48 degrees.

Interjection: Wow.

Mr. Speaker, the message is clear from those tourism operators: The federal government needs to scrap the tax, and our provincial counterparts need to stand with us in keeping costs low so that these folks can make an honest living.

I want to remind the members of the investments that our government has made under the leadership of Premier Ford. In February, we announced expansions and 78 new primary care multi-disciplinary teams.

What’s happened since February, Speaker? Couchiching Ontario Health Team is already taking on new patients. The Barrie Area Native Advisory Circle is already taking on new patients. Unison Health and Community Services in Toronto is already taking on new patients. And it goes on and on. In Kingston, in Minto-Mapleton, in Lambton, we are making progress.

We see, for two years in a row, a historic registering of both nurses and physicians in the province of Ontario. Why? Because people want to live here, they want to work here and they want to practise medicine here.

But I think that the most important thing that we are doing is actually building our health care services through the students, through the young people. A new school for medicine in Brampton will be taking students on in September 2025. In York region, a brand new medical school will actually focus on family medicine.

We are doing the work. There is more work to do, but we’re getting the job done.

Mr. Speaker, this is not about lack of funds; it’s a lack of will of the TDSB to do their job. You should stand up to the school board who is literally sitting on $350 million of maintenance funding. What do you not understand about this problem? They have literally a quarter of a billion dollars in cash that they’re supposed to spend on maintenance that they don’t spend and they keep banking year over year. They became such an outlier—

Interjection.

Stand up to the boards of education who are hoarding cash, who do not in any way uphold their obligations under law to make sure—

Interjections.

Interjections.

My question is for the Minister of Indigenous Affairs and Northern Development. At a time of high interest rates and a rising cost of living, the federal Liberals decided to hike the carbon tax by another 23%. The disastrous effects of this costly tax are being felt in communities across Ontario, but especially in the north.

Northerners already pay more at the gas pumps and at the grocery stores as compared to the rest of Ontario. They should not be punished with more tax hikes. Our government will always advocate on behalf of Ontarians. We will continue to call on the federal Liberals to end the tax now.

Speaker, can the minister please explain to the House how our government is supporting northern communities instead of imposing unjust tax?

Speaker, we know that unlike other parts of our province, the north faces unique challenges that should be recognized, not taxed. The federal Liberals and their provincial counterparts need to respect northerners and finally get rid of this disastrous tax. Speaker, can the minister further explain why families and businesses in the north cannot afford this costly carbon tax?

Thank you for the question. In Ontario, all retirement homes are regulated by the Retirement Homes Regulatory Authority, or RHRA. This retirement home is responsible for submitting a transition plan to the RHRA before ceasing operations. The RHRA works with all retirement homes to ensure compliance and that residents receive support in the event of a closure.

We encourage the home to continue to work together with the community organizations and the local government to resettle residents and ensure all are able to live comfortable, healthy lifestyles.

We encourage the retirement home and others involved to keep working together to ensure all residents have a safe and comfortable place to live.

Thank you for the question. I’m not aware of the file that the member opposite is talking about, but as he well knows, we have an independent tribunal that will hear complaints, that will hear issues for landlords. We also have a robust legal aid clinic that will likely be able to help the individual.

I can’t get into specifics of individual cases, because it is an independent tribunal—it’s a quasi-judicial entity—but there are rules in place and those rules will be enforced. I’m happy to hear more of the individual’s experience, but we can’t wade into an independent process.

But we also have a tribunal that’s independent, with independent adjudicators, with rules that can be applied, and that can issue orders. At this point the board is issuing orders within 30 days 90% of the time, from the time of the hearing.

So there are resources. There is also legal assistance, whether it be legal aid clinics or others. I would encourage the member to steer them to the resources that are available, rather than just politicizing the situation of individuals.

I beg leave to present a report from the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs and move its adoption.

My question is to the Premier. Residents at 435 Nelson Street in London are dealing with a terrible landlord. The owners, who call themselves the “House Hustlers,” have pushed tenants out so they can drive prices up further. A government that truly cared for people would pass Bill 25, the Rent Stabilization Act, and end the financial incentive to kick people out of their homes. Why does this government allow bad landlords to renovict and make the housing crisis even worse?

Back to the Premier: 11 tenants are left at 435 Nelson Street. One started chemotherapy just last week. In an email to residents, “House Hustler” Amanda claimed to have “started the permit process to demolish,” yet city records show that no permit has been requested or issued. It’s clear: They’re trying to scare people into leaving their homes.

When will this government actually stand up for renters and pass legislation to stop renovictions before they happen?

Speaker, I’ve spent the past couple of weeks chronicling the happenings among the carbon tax nobility, and it’s quite a cast of characters. Of course, you’ve got the bafflegab coming from the junior ranks: Prince Carney and—I don’t know what you would call Jagmeet Singh; maybe duke of the carbon tax. Nonetheless, no clear position on this tax; it’s one of convenience, when Canadians speak out against the crushing impact it’s having on their everyday lives, Mr. Speaker.

But one thing is perfectly clear: The king of the carbon tax and the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, are unrelenting in their position. They see this as an environmental policy, when everybody else knows it isn’t. What families and small businesses in northwestern Ontario know is that it costs too much to live, it costs too much to operate a business. That’s why we need to scrap the tax.