My question today is for the Minister of Health. Today, I’m asking for support for a constituent of mine, Noor Ayesha. Noor has a rare form of cancer, and her doctors have told her it can only be treated by a drug named Pemazyre. The drug is approved by Health Canada; Quebec and other provinces are close to funding the drug; and it is the standard of care in the United States, United Kingdom and China, yet not covered here.

Noor’s family applied for funding under the CBCRP program but were denied. Having access to this treatment could mean more time for Noor to spend with her 18-month-old daughter.

So my question for the minister: With Noor’s doctors and experts asking for approval, why are Noor and others with this rare cancer being denied access to this life-saving drug?

Again to the Minister of Health: While some drugs save lives, there are others that have no place in our ORs. For example, desflurane, also known as des, is an anaesthetic gas that is being banned in jurisdictions across the world and in Canada because of its negative environmental impact and the availability of more cost-effective alternatives. Several hospitals in Ontario have banned this gas. Health Sciences North in Sudbury saved $250,000 last year, and Trillium Health in Mississauga saved $125,000 last year, all while slashing emissions.

My question for the Minister of Health: Will you take an important step today, ban desflurane and save hospitals thousands of dollars, cut emissions while also ensuring good patient outcomes?

Thank you to the Solicitor General for the response. The public safety of Ontarians is of paramount importance. That is why we are calling for the removal of a tax that only adds more obstacles for the front-line workers who keep our communities safe.

But, Speaker, the same cannot be said for the NDP and the Liberal members in this Legislature. They continue to ignore the harmful effects the carbon tax has on our day-to-day lives. Unlike the opposition members, our government is standing firmly behind our first responders. We won’t stop fighting until this tax is abolished.

Can the Solicitor General tell the House why the federal government must scrap the tax?

I see that, over here, my friend Lisa has come to join us. I’d just like to welcome Lisa Arnott to Queen’s Park.

Supplementary question.

There being no further business at this time—

Interjection.

The House recessed from 1146 to 1500.

Welcome to the Legislature. We’re delighted to have you here today.

Mr. Schreiner moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 206, An Act to establish an electric vehicle strategy and to make related amendments to the Building Code Act, 1992 / Projet de loi 206, Loi pour établir une stratégie relative aux véhicules électriques et apporter des modifications connexes à la Loi de 1992 sur le code du bâtiment.

First reading agreed to.

I’ll come back to the member for Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas to continue.

This afternoon, I’m presenting, yet again, a petition entitled “To Raise Social Assistance Rates.”

We know, as all of the people in Ontario are struggling to afford to put groceries on their table, the people that are living on OW and ODSP are struggling even more. They are living well below the poverty line. Those rates have been frozen in time, and it’s well beyond time that we address the kind of suffering that those people and families that rely on this income are struggling—

This petition to raise social assistance rates has been signed by thousands and thousands of people across Ontario. We have been presenting them here. They’re the hard work of the Hamilton Social Work Action Committee and Dr. Sally Palmer.

We think that these rates that have been frozen in time are unfair. People are struggling, living well below the poverty line, so I agree wholeheartedly that we need to address this injustice. We need to raise the rates and we need to help people that are struggling, including children living on social assistance and ODSP.

Thank you very much. I’m going to give it to page Victoria to take to the table.

This bill enacts the Affordable Electric Vehicles and Accessible Charging Act, 2024. The act requires the Minister of Transportation to establish an electric vehicle strategy that aims to increase the affordability of electric vehicles and the accessibility of charging stations.

The bill also amends the Building Code Act to provide that no person shall construct a building for residential occupancy unless they ensure that charging stations for electric vehicles are installed in accordance with the building code.

The petition raises significant concerns about the number of people waiting for complex spinal surgeries and also raises concerns around the compensation formula to access spinal care in Ontario.

The petition is calling on the Legislative Assembly to address the increasing wait times and to make complex spinal surgeries available in a more timely manner. It also calls on us to improve access to surgery for complex spinal conditions and to immediately address the inefficiencies and inequities in the OHIP compensation process for complex spine cases, and to resolve it in a fair and timely manner.

I support this petition and will ask the page to bring it to the table.

Merci, monsieur le Président. Je vois en haut mon interne qui était ici, Kaitlin Gallant, qui va finir bientôt; mais aussi, mon assistante qui va nous laisser bientôt aussi et qui s’en va travailler ailleurs. Merci pour tous les services que tu m’as faits et tout l’ouvrage que tu as fait pour la législation. Encore, merci d’être ici.

I just wanted to let members know that Disability Without Poverty also has a reception at noon today. So there are many places to visit over the noon hour today. I hope you can make it.

Very quickly, I would just like to invite everybody to Diabetes Canada. They’re in 230 today and they would like to see as many of you as possible.

As you know, Speaker, people, students, businesses rely on the Internet to go about our day, whether it’s for your business to conduct your business, for students to study, for people to communicate with their community.

Unfortunately, the program that the government has put into place is a program that is 100% privately delivered. The government gives the private sector a lot of money to build infrastructure and run Internet. This does not work in many parts of northern Ontario, where there are no providers who want to set up shop. It doesn’t matter how much money the government wants to give them; they do not want to set up shop in northern Ontario because there is no money to be made. But the people of northern Ontario, we need Internet access, just like everybody else. We want it to be affordable and we want it to be high-speed. We want to be part of the connection that the Internet brings.

So I fully support this petition. I think it’s very much needed, and I will ask my good page Myah to bring it to the Clerk.

This petition comes from a small business person who lost his business during the pandemic because he paid his workers too much and can’t restart it because he’s working 24/7 to take care of his parents. He’s a family caregiver.

This petition calls on the Ontario government to support 24/7 family caregivers, including through financial compensation, so that those who are caring for their loved ones can have some relief from financial distress and the resulting mental stress.

I’m so eager to present this petition. I received it from Sally Palmer. She’s a professor at McMaster University, and she’s very passionate about OW and ODSP. With the cost of living, it’s so much more important, more than ever, for this petition.

What it’s asking for is that they want the rates for Ontario Works, because they have been frozen since 2018, and their small increases in the Ontario Disability Support Program—it has really left recipients struggling well below the poverty line. So they’re advocating for doubling of the ODSP and the OW rates. That’s what they’re asking this government to do.

I have a lot of signatures on this petition, and I want to thank Sally Palmer, the professor at McMaster University, for sending these through and making this a very important issue in this Legislature.

I fully support this petition. I will sign it and give it to page Jasnoor to deliver to the table.

Point of order.

Pat has served for 39 years as a school board trustee, of which 31 years were as the chair of his school board and the last six as the president of the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association. This man is a leader in Ontario.

He is joined by the bishop of Hamilton, Bishop Crosby. I want to welcome you, and Lorena and Nick and Anne and your family. Thank you for your leadership for the people of Ontario.

It’s simple, Mr. Speaker: Every dollar to fuel a vehicle in public safety—and public safety is very important to this government; it’s important to Premier Ford morning, noon and night, and it’s a priority for this government.

When you look at the numbers, 18 cents per litre for gasoline is just the carbon tax portion. If you look at the fact that an average SUV for public safety is 100 litres, you multiply it per year and it’s a minimum of $6,500.

When I met with Chief Jason Bellaire, also last week in Windsor—a great police service that keeps Windsor safe—the chief told me that the bill for their fuel is almost $1 million. That means with the carbon tax portion, they could put another constable on the road to keep Windsor safe. Bonnie Crombie—

Interjections.

This petition is entitled “Fight the Fees!” It talks about the increases of tuition since 1980, going up from 215% for undergrad and by 247% for domestic grad tuition. They also say that it takes almost 10 years to repay that debt after students graduate.

They talk about international students, as well, where their average tuition is over $14,000, compared to just over $3,000 for domestic students and the need for student financial assistance. They also want to ensure that students have legislation to protect their rights to organize, and funding for student groups.

The calls for action they have are: (1) free and accessible education for all; (2) grants, not loans; and (3) legislate students’ right to organize.

I want to thank the students from Canadore College and Nipissing University who collected these.

I support this petition. I’ll affix my signature and provide it with page Myah for the table.

I support this petition, I’ll affix my signature and provide it page Jasnoor for the table.

Basically, the people who are signing this who are literally from across the province are concerned with the closure, or potential closure, of six of the 11 Public Health Ontario labs. They point out the inequities in northern Ontario and rural Ontario as well, and that the cost of water testing would be $150 if these labs were to close.

As well, they point out the important work that Public Health Ontario labs do for medical testing, which helped us keep up with demand during outbreaks. They would like to prevent the public health labs in Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie, Hamilton, Peterborough, Kingston and Orillia—their asks are to stop the closure and to invest more in public health.

I support these petitions. I will affix my signature and provide it to page Maya for the table.

Ms. Ghamari moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr45, An Act to revive 1828469 Ontario Inc.

I’m pleased to present this petition on behalf of one of the caring parents in my riding who, regrettably, has become a victim of an apparent contradiction in some of the rules in our province.

On the one hand, anyone is entitled to adequate time to unload themselves or passengers from a vehicle. But at the same time, if a vehicle is struck while the door is open by another vehicle, the parked vehicle with the open door is the one that is found to be at fault. This becomes deeply problematic for people who are unloading children from car seats in the back of their vehicle, and, indeed, this caring parent was a victim of that.

So the following petition, supported and signed by over 4,000 people and which has received significant media coverage, calls for an amendment of the legislated fault determination rules in our province to ensure adequate protection for parents in parked vehicles as they buckle and unbuckle their children so that they are not inappropriately found at fault.

I fully support this petition, am pleased to sign it and to hand it to Paige.

I’d like to thank Sally Palmer and the group from McMaster University, and I think it would be fitting, today of all days, on Disability Without Poverty day, to read this petition. It’s a petition asking us to double OW and ODSP rates.

During the COVID pandemic, CERB, basic income was found—the income to survive was $2,000 a month. People are living in legislated poverty, and it’s time we recognize this and double ODSP and OW rates and stop the clawbacks.

I support this petition. I will sign it and hand it to page Grace.

I support the “Stop Bill 166” petition. I will sign it and hand it over to page Tristan.

This is a petition that comes from high school students in my riding of Kingston and the Islands and asks the government of Ontario to provide mandatory standardized training for all employers and employees regarding anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the workplace, as well as understanding Judaism and Islam.

I would like to thank Louise Laplante from Hanmer in my riding for this petition. It is called “Blood and Plasma Donations Not for Sale.”

Speaker, you will remember, in the 1980s, 30,000 Canadians got infected by HIV and hepatitis through blood products; 8,000 Canadians died. There was a Royal Commission of Inquiry led by Justice Krever, who made recommendations. His number 2 recommendation was to make sure that we never pay for blood and blood product donations.

In Ontario, we passed the Voluntary Blood Donations Act that forbids the privatization of blood product collection and payment. But right now, Grifols has a contract and is opening up pay-for-plasma donations in Ontario, which will not only supposedly help with our supply, but they also sell Canadian plasma, Ontario plasma, back to the States. I think this goes completely against the Voluntary Blood Donations Act of Ontario, and so do the people who have signed the petition asking us to respect our own laws.

I fully agree with this petition, and I ask my good page Sophia to bring it to the Clerk.

Comme vous savez, monsieur le Président, les francophones de l’Ontario ont le droit constitutionnel à une éducation dans la langue française. La demande pour des écoles françaises continue d’augmenter et ça fait qu’on a besoin de près de 1 000 nouveaux enseignants et enseignantes à chaque année. Malheureusement, le système en Ontario n’en éduque que 500 par année.

Il y a une étude qui a été faite et un rapport qui a été rendu au gouvernement pour aider avec ces défis. Donc, ils demandent au gouvernement de financer le rapport du groupe de travail sur la pénurie des enseignants et enseignantes dans le système d’éducation de langue française, et de travailler en partenariat avec eux pour résoudre le problème pour que tous les enfants francophones de la province aient accès à une éducation de langue française de qualité.

J’appuie cette pétition. Je vais la signer, et je demande à Farhan de l’amener à l’amener à la table des greffiers.

Thank you, Speaker. And I just want you to know that I will be sharing my time with the member from Humber River–Black Creek.

I cannot tell you how happy the people of Nickel Belt were when the Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act was announced. They actually promoted it. There was a clip on the local television to talk about it, and everybody thought, “Yes, finally, we will be able to get more homes.” Because, you see, Speaker, the demand for homes in my riding is really, really high.

I was really proud, last Wednesday morning, to attend the grand opening of the Iamgold Côté Lake gold mine, which was just across the street from the community of Gogama in my riding. The Minister of Mines was there, and many dignitaries from all over. People from Japan, people from all over were there. There are over 1,800 workers who come and work at this mine and all of them are looking for housing. Right now, they sleep in bunkers. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure to sleep in bunkers; it’s not exactly desirable. But they go to Gogama, and they see that there are many, many beautiful homes that nobody lives in. I have pictures here. I’m aware that I’m not allowed to show you those pictures, but I can talk to you about some of those properties.

There’s the home at 52 Conrad Crescent that has been there. It has a beautifully treed backyard. There is the home at 8 Low Avenue—a beautiful white home kind of up on a hill—that is available, that is empty. There’s the home at 56 Conrad Crescent, a nice little bungalow with huge parking. There’s about a dozen or so—one at 11 Low Avenue, a very nice home with a nice balcony. We have 34 McGowan Street. We have many, many empty houses.

You know, Speaker, that those houses are empty because there used to be a huge Ministry of Natural Resources office in Gogama, so they had houses for their employees to live in. They also had lots of garages and lots of infrastructure for them to do their work. The ministry comes with big trucks and a place to fix them and all of this. And all of this sits empty and belongs to the province.

In many parts of the north, we have no municipalities. We have what is called a local services board or a local road board, but they do not have the power of a municipality. So when a property such as a house sits empty—people don’t pay their taxes; it just sits there—then the property, if you were in a municipality, would go back to the municipality. But given that you’re in northern Ontario and we have no municipality, the property goes back to the province.

In September 2020, I was really proud when we did the sod-turning ceremony for the Côté gold mine. The Premier was there, the Minister of Government and Consumer Services, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Northern Development and Mines—anyway, the names of the ministries have changed since, but there were, like, six or seven ministers from the Ford government who came to the sod-turning ceremony.

Understand that this gold mine was being developed, that it would create hundreds and hundreds—really, thousands—of jobs to mine that gold that they had found at Côté Lake, that it was just across the street from Gogama, that there were lots of empty buildings that belonged to the provincial government in Gogama that people could buy. I made sure that I mentioned all of this to all of the ministers who were there, to make sure that they would quickly be up for sale. I guarantee you, if you put them up for sale today, they will be sold by the weekend. But nothing happened. So on January 6, 2021, I wrote a letter to Premier Doug Ford and to his chief of staff—that was Jamie Wallace at the time—to tell him:

“I am writing to you about the economic potentials of Côté gold mine for my constituents and for the community of Gogama. Gogama is a beautiful, small, isolated northern community in my riding of Nickel Belt. It was once home to 1,200 residents.” There are now many empty homes, and I named the homes, and I gave them the pictures and explained to them how those homes became the property of the provincial government and asked him if he could quickly put those homes up for sale.

This government says that they are for police, but not in northern Ontario. They closed the police forces, two of them, in my riding. The OPP does not have an office in Gogama anymore, so the police station is closed, and the homes where the police officers used to live just next to the police station are beautiful, beautiful homes with a stone fireplace and nice big trees—anyway, beautiful homes. They also sit empty since the Ford government closed the OPP station in that community. I explained all of that to the minister and said, “People need homes. Please put those homes up for sale.”

That was on January 6, 2021. But I also—on January 7; it took me one more day—wrote to the Minister of Government and Consumer Services, basically telling her more or less the same thing. I also wrote to the Minister of Finance, because apparently, when the houses are first repossessed, they could belong to the Ministry of Finance. But people didn’t know for sure, so I also wrote to the Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry. I also wrote to the Minister of Infrastructure, because I figured those are infrastructure and it will be the Minister of Infrastructure who will eventually put those houses up for sale. I wanted to make sure that everybody knew.

The grand opening was in September 2020. I wrote to all of those people in 2021, and it took a year and a half before I got an answer back. The answer back came to say, “Estimated timeline is a minimum of 12 to 24 months, due to the complication with resolving” the issue of who owns what property.

So I had written in January 2021. They’re telling me it’s going take 12 to 24 months, so 12 months later, I wrote back to all of those good people and heard nothing. Twenty-four months later, I wrote back to all of those ministers and said, “Are those homes going to be up for sale?” And on August 11, 2023—so you’re talking three years after the sod-turning, two and half years after I had written to everybody, followed up 12 months later, followed up again 24 months later—I got a letter from the Ministry of Infrastructure, signed by the Minister of Infrastructure, telling me that the “Estimated timeline is a minimum 12 to 24 months” to put those homes up for sale. We are now in June 2024 and none of those homes have been put up for sale.

How much red tape exists in government? It is so hard to understand. The government owns those properties. Some of those properties, like the property that the Minister of Natural Resources used to use, have not been used for 11 years. The OPP station has been closed for four years. The rest of the homes that people have abandoned, they were abandoned in, I would say, early 2012. They’ve all been empty for 12 years.

Don’t get me wrong, the government pays to maintain them. They pay people to come and cut the grass and trim the trees. They pay people to come and shovel the driveways. They pay people to make sure that the home, the water pipes and all this are taken care of.

The government knows that they own these properties, they pay to maintain them, and yet, after writing to all of those people, after there are 1,800 people across the street that are looking for a home, there is too much red tape to put those homes up for sale.

We’re not talking million-dollar homes here. In my riding, most of those homes would go for, I don’t know, $250,000. How could it be that they can make decisions about billion-dollar greenbelt homes in three weeks’ time, and they cannot make a decision to put 12 homes that they own, that they maintain in Gogama, up for sale in four years? If that’s not red tape, I don’t know what to call this—that they don’t care about northern Ontario? I think they do.

I was at the grand opening of the gold mine. I got to try to lift the first gold nugget that came out of the mine. Did you know, Speaker, that a gold nugget about that big—I couldn’t even lift it. It is very heavy. I was pretending that I was going to lift it and put it in my pocket—you know, gold. I couldn’t even lift it. I had to ask the member from Sudbury to come and help me lift it so I could take a picture pretending.

Anyway, that being said, the Minister of Mines was there; he gave a beautiful speech. He knows about this situation. Anybody I talk to on the other side knows that those homes should be put up for sale, and yet, four years later—I stopped counting the number of letters that I have written, but we are over 30 letters that I have written about this, pictures that I have sent. How many times have I spoken about this in the House, and yet nothing has been done?

So my view of the Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act is that people have to realize that the province is not only southern Ontario. Northern Ontario is beautiful. Northern Ontario is part of Ontario. When you put a piece of legislation forward that talks to something that is really, really pertinent to northern Ontario, you have to make sure that we are included in this.

But I would say the present legislation, Bill 185, Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act, the way it is written right now, it’s not going to help northern Ontario. We face housing issues the same way that everybody else does. As I said, when you open up a new mine, when 1,800 new workers move to a new mine, they move their family. They need a place to stay. They need a place for their spouses and their kids to go to school, and all of this is available right there, belongs to the provincial government, and I cannot get them to put it up for sale. All I get is more or less the very same letter that was sent to me in 2021, 2022 and 2023, but there has been a change of minister—I mean, it’s still the Minister of Infrastructure. There’s a new Minister of Infrastructure on the different answers that I get, but it is the same answer—copy and paste from one year to the next. How could it be, Speaker? Those people matter.

They fully agree that mining is important to northern Ontario. Well, mining means that when you open up a new mine—were there a lot of people at Côté Lake before? No. There were five camps, one of them in pretty poor shape. There were a few people with trailers around Côté Lake. That was it; that was all. Now it is a fantastic facility. You wouldn’t believe it.

There are trucks that are—how can I explain? Bigger than—oh, I don’t know how many feet up, but they are huge, huge, huge trucks that you have never seen. I got a picture of myself beside the tire. I’m not even 25% of the size of the tire, never mind the truck. All of those are self-driving. They go 50 kilometres an hour down to the drilling. The drilling, again, is directed off-line. There are no workers there. Everything is done remotely. It is a fantastic gold mine.

They still need workers. Workers still need a place to live. Don’t get me wrong; many of them live in Timmins, many of them live in Sudbury and travel, but many of them come from Gogama, come from Mattagami First Nation, from Biscotasing, Westree, Shining Tree, areas around there. They want to be able to rent those homes. They want to be able to buy those homes, and the government has so much red tape that they cannot put them up for sale.

I know that I was sharing my time with my good colleague, and I’m sorry I took too much of my time, but I’ll sit down now.