I would like to welcome Natalie Mehra and the 6,000 people from the Ontario Health Coalition who will be on the front lawn of Queen’s Park right after question period. Please come and join them. They come from all over the province.

I’m delighted to invite the House and everyone listening to Downtown Milton SummerFest this Saturday.

Just to give you an idea, the small stretch of main street that hosts this festival was built for a town of 3,000 to 5,000 people, and yet, every year, we welcome 35,000 attendees at this festival. In addition to food, drinks, vendors and everything else, we also have eight different concerts—not at the same time.

I would love to see my colleagues and everyone listening out there come out to Milton and enjoy some of the hospitality my community has to offer.

On a point of order, I recognize the member for Peterborough–Kawartha.

Speaker, after 34 remarkable years of public service, assistant deputy minister Karen Glass at the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services will be retiring tomorrow.

Karen, on behalf of the people, I want to thank you for your service. Thank you for everything that you’ve done for the province of Ontario. Enjoy your retirement.

I’m very pleased to be able to welcome my husband, Matt Helleman, and my daughter Mira Pasma-Helleman to the House today.

Thanks so much for coming to spend time with me, guys.

Each year, our government invests nearly $50 million to connect hundreds of thousands of Ontarians to primary care through 25 nurse practitioner-led clinics across the province. Ontario is the first jurisdiction to use the nurse practitioner-led-clinic model of care, and we will continue to use this innovative way of delivering publicly funded primary care to connect hundreds of thousands of people across the province to the care they need.

Speaker, this year, we invested a record $110 million to create 78 new and expanded interprofessional primary care teams; and then in this year’s budget, which the opposition voted against, we’ve expanded that to $546 million over the next three years, to another 600,000 Ontarians to receive primary care.

While the opposition continues to stand in the way of our innovative ways of delivering publicly funded health care, we will continue to do what’s needed to get the job done for the people of Ontario.

Speaker, if someone is wrongfully charged for health care services, we will investigate it. That has always been the case.

We’re investing a record $85 billion into our publicly fund health care system this year, which is a 30% increase from when we took office in 2018. We’ve invested into our primary care expansion of $546 million over the next three years—to expand our primary care to another 600,000 Ontarians. We’re also investing in hospital infrastructure, with over 50 projects under way, with $50 billion associated with that.

Ontario has the most internationally educated nurses in Canada, with internationally trained nurses now making up 41% of the new applications to the College of Nurses.

Speaker, in Ontario, we have a plan and it’s working. And the opposition will continue to vote against our plan.

Last year, we registered 2,400 new physicians, with 1,000 of them being internationally trained, which the opposition voted against.

Speaker, Ontario is the first province to have a publicly funded nurse practitioner-led clinic.

In addition, the new Practice Ready Ontario program will add 50 physicians this year. The new and expanded teams are the results of a province-wide call for proposals that took place in 2023.

Ontario leads the country in how many people benefit from the long-term, stable relationship with a family doctor or primary care provider. Since 2018, the province has added over 80,000 new nurses and 12,500 new physicians, which is actually outpacing the growth of the province.

Well, Madam Speaker, the member is right about that. We’ll keep voting against the privatization of health care every single time. You can be sure and you can count on that.

The government keeps repeating the same line over and over again—that people are paying with their health card and not their credit card—but it’s simply not the case. You will, as Ontarians, have to pay for this, and you’re already doing it—countless publicly reported examples of patients who are having to pay for upgrades before they’re eligible for OHIP-covered services in private clinics. Over and over again, it’s happening right now. It’s costing patients, it’s costing their families, and it’s happening at a time when the cost of living has become absolutely unbearable for most people.

So I’m going to ask the Premier again: Why is this Premier expanding pay-for-it health care?

I was in a school, last week, where I asked grade 4 and grade 5 kids what their dreams are for their school. I asked them, if they could have anything at all in this school, what would they want? Do you know what they said? They said, “Can you bring back the soap in the soap dispensers?” That’s what their dreams are right now.

That is the state of education in the province of Ontario right now—no soap; leaky roofs.

This government is failing the future of our province.

Can the Premier explain why his Minister of Education thinks the learning conditions of Ontario’s students are not his problem?

Meanwhile, Ontario is facing a whopping $16.8-billion school repair backlog. We know both Liberal and Conservative governments have left our schools crumbling. Students are left to learn under caved-in ceilings or in classrooms with garbage bins that are collecting the rain. We’ve all seen it on this side—boy, have we.

The minister can blame the school boards all he wants, but they at least are legally bound to balance their budgets. And it’s basic math—when the minister underfunds them by millions of dollars, they are forced to make cuts, and they are not going to be able to make repairs.

So I want to ask the minister again—and the Premier: When is this Premier going to make his minister take some responsibility—

The TDSB alone is facing a deficit of $26.5 million.

In Thames Valley, classroom supplies are scarce amidst an $18.5-million deficit, the largest they’ve ever seen.

Ottawa-Carleton is facing $70 million in deficits.

The minister says there’s historic education funding, but a budget that ignores inflation is a budget that ignores reality. The only thing historic is the fact that our kids are now lobbying us to fix the roofs of their classrooms, to bring back soap in the bathroom, and to keep the lights on in classrooms.

I want to ask the Premier, do we need to hire a lobbyist or reach out to you on Gmail to get some answers?

I recognize the leader of the official opposition.

My question today is for the Minister of Energy.

Do you know what? It has been two months since the federal government increased the carbon tax by a whopping 23%, and everything seems to be getting more expensive. Speaker, while the Liberals like to blame everyone else for the damage they’ve caused, Ontarians know that their costly tax has driven the cost of living to record highs.

The carbon tax queen, Bonnie Crombie, along with her Liberal caucus continue to prop up their federal buddies’ costly measures, despite witnessing the financial hardship Ontarians are facing. I hear this every day when I’m knocking on doors.

On the contrary, our government has been opposing the carbon tax since day one. We want to keep costs down for Ontarians and deliver real affordability.

Speaker, can the minister please explain why the carbon tax must come to an end?

Life is harder under the Liberal government and its flawed policies. The federal government and the Liberal members sitting in this Legislature must come to their senses and give a break to Ontarians who just want a vacation this summer.

Speaker, can the minister please explain how the carbon tax continues to hurt every single person living in this province?

Honestly, it’s an unfortunate question from the member opposite, because the member would know that members on all sides of the House would take this very seriously, and to assume anything less really is beneath the dignity of every member in this place.

The member, who is a long-time member of this House, would also know that the government does not direct committee business. The member would also know, being a long-time member, that there is a subcommittee that works on each committee, and that subcommittee is made up of a member of the NDP, and it is made up of a member of the government party. So what I would suggest the member opposite do is reach out to the subcommittee member from her party on that committee to call a subcommittee so that they could bring a study forward. I know that they have been working very closely together, in fact. The NDP member of the subcommittee and the member for Kitchener South–Hespeler have been working very closely to put together a very thorough study on this, and I trust that—

My question is for the Premier.

On May 14, this government chose to silence the voices of survivors by sending Lydia’s Law, Bill 189, straight to committee without debate, claiming it expedites the process.

Yesterday morning, I asked the Chair at justice committee if they had received instruction to review Lydia’s Law at committee. The answer I got was no. They had received no instruction. There is no timeline for when this bill will be called.

There were 1,326 sexual assault cases thrown out of court in 2022. I hope that we can agree that rapists should not be walking free in the province of Ontario.

My question to the government: Why did you silence survivors on May 14, and when will you call the bill to committee?

This government is knowingly and deliberately starving the system, and sending a message to survivors and families across Ontario that they do not care about the lived injustices that women have experienced.

If expediting was the goal of the government, why hasn’t the committee been instructed to call the bill? If you had read Lydia’s Law and if you had read Lydia’s victim impact statement, you would never have deferred this piece of legislation to committee, where it is languishing.

Lydia asked me, “Why would women report, knowing how broken the system is?” This is our opportunity to correct that system. We need to change the justice system because the status quo isn’t working, and change begins with transparency.

My question, again: When will the government call the bill at committee so that survivors can get the justice they deserve in this province?

I recognize the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Health.

On May 10—this is to the Premier—last year, this government’s Minister of Health stood in this House and said, “The Minden hospital is not closing.” Yet, two weeks later, on June 1, they took down the hospital sign and they rolled the beds out in a minivan, and that hospital has been closed ever since.

The community warned this government that closing that emergency room was going to take lives.

Last summer, a father had a heart attack in Minden. He was rushed in an ambulance to the next nearest hospital, in Haliburton. He died of a cardiac arrest five minutes from the destination.

A girl with a fish hook in her eye in Minden had to be transported 30 minutes to Haliburton.

Two weeks ago, the Haliburton hospital—the one remaining emergency room in the community—was without a doctor for at least four hours.

Will this government acknowledge its mistake and reopen the Minden emergency room?

Durham hospital in West Grey is this government’s next Minden. On Monday, their emergency room will close 14 hours per day, and all in-patient beds will be closed. West Grey town council had to declare a state of emergency. South Muskoka Memorial Hospital is going down the same path, looking at closure. And the hospitals in Chesley, Clinton, Almonte, Arnprior, Campbellford, Hawkesbury, Listowel, Mount Forest, Palmerston, Seaforth, South Huron, Walkerton, Wingham—their list goes on—are not far behind.

How many rural hospitals does this minister intend to close?

For a decade under the Liberals, supported by the NDP, they underfunded the health care system, closing hospitals and hospital beds, firing nurses and cutting medical school residency spots. Our government inherited a health care system under severe pressure due to the actions of the previous Liberal government.

Under the leadership of Premier Ford, our government has made record investments in health care. We’ve grown our health care budget by over 30% since we took office in 2018, with a record investment of $85 billion into our publicly funded health care system.

Continuing their legacy of not supporting health care across the province, both the Liberals and the NDP constantly vote against our innovative investments and the bold action our government is taking to rebuild our health care system after years of neglect.

We’ll continue to make the investments that are required to ensure that we have the best publicly funded health care system across Canada.

Last year alone, we had a record number of new nurses: 17,500 new nurses registered in Ontario, with another 30,000 nurses enrolled and studying at a college or university. But we’re not stopping there. We’re investing over $740 million to address the immediate staffing needs, supporting the expansion of over 3,000 new nursing seats at Ontario colleges and universities.

We have also expanded the Learn and Stay grant, which the opposition voted against, which pays for tuition, books and supplies for nurses and other health care workers.

We’re also funding the largest expansion of medical school spots in over 15 years, with 1,212 undergraduate and 1,637 post-graduate seats.

Thanks to the member from Etobicoke–Lakeshore for the question this morning.

This is the number one issue that we’re hearing about across the province—the increased cost of living in our province, but also across our country, and the impact that the federal carbon tax, supported by the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, is having on their household bills. Gas bills for their vehicles, home heating, grocery bills—they’re all going up, and they’re all a result of the increasing federal carbon tax year after year.

We’ve taken a different approach in Ontario. We’re lowering the cost of living, the price of gas, taxes, fees. We have reduced taxes across the province. And our plan is working.

As a matter of fact, this morning, the Premier and the health minister and the Minister of Economic Development announced another major investment in health sciences, at Sanofi in north Toronto.

We’ve done as much as we can to lower the cost for those folks in the GTHA to get around with One Fare that the Associate Minister of Transportation has introduced, saving those who take transit up to $1,600 a year.

We’ve cut the gas tax by 10.7 cents a litre here in Ontario, but at the same time, the federal carbon tax continues to drive up the price at the pumps, which makes it really difficult for people to get out and visit beautiful parts of our province like Prince Edward county and Kingston and Essex and Windsor counties and, in northern Ontario, beautiful places like Kakabeka Falls that are wonderful this time of year.

It’s the federal carbon tax that’s making it more difficult for those people.

We should all, in this Legislature, be supportive of Premier Ford’s motion to scrap that tax in Ottawa.

Order. Order.

Interjections.

The member for Hamilton Mountain will come to order. The government House leader will come to order. The member for Waterloo will come to order. The member from Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas will come to order.

Question?

I’ll tell you what we’re not doing: We’re not driving 300,000 manufacturing jobs out of this province, like the former government did and which a punitive carbon tax would continue to do.

Instead, we have hard-working members like the member for Whitby, who is building up his community and building up Ontario, building on transit—this member takes GO train transit every day—and that’s a vision our government wants for all Ontarians.

We’re getting more cars off the road and more people into transit. If it was up to the opposition, the cost of these transit projects would go up. But no fear, Speaker: Instead, this government will continue to build transit, and we’ll lower fees by introducing the One Fare program for all Ontarians, making it more economical to get more cars on the road and to transit.

In addition, just next door to the member’s riding, we’re building the first urban provincial park. If it was up to the opposition, the cost of building this park would also go up.

But don’t worry, Speaker. This government is lowering the cost of gas by 10 cents a litre. In addition to that, we’re building the EV infrastructure by putting EV charging stations in Ontario parks and making sure we’re using clean, green steel to build these electric vehicles—again, creating jobs and building up our economy.