I’m going to share my time with the members from Timiskaming–Cochrane and Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas.

I came here this afternoon, quite frankly, because I was upset that you were going to not meet next week. Then, I get here, and I hear a motion come forward that we’re not going to sit now until October 21. That’s absolutely disgraceful.

Every one of you that are sitting here today and the two over here that are sitting should be ashamed of yourselves. How do you go back to your constituents and say, “Everything is wonderful in the province of Ontario; we don’t need to sit, we don’t need to hear from the opposition and we don’t need to hear from the Liberals or the Green Party”?

You know what? In the province of Ontario, everything isn’t wonderful. Today, right here in the province of Ontario—and you guys have been in power for six years, six years too long. But you know what? Just outside these doors, not far from here, there are homeless encampments that have families right there under your watch. When I got here 10 years ago, do you know how many encampments there were? None. In six years, they are everywhere. They’re in Niagara Falls—

I went to the St. Catharines Collegiate. I was in a four-year course and I stayed six years just because I liked the place. But you know what? We had a saying: When the going gets tough, the tough get going. And what is this government doing? When the going gets tough, what are you guys doing? You’re running out of this Legislature, not only a week early, but you’re now filing out until October 21.

I’m going to look right into that camera right there: How many people today are suffering to pay their groceries, suffering to raise their families, suffering to pay for their rent and for their housing—that don’t have a house? I’m looking right at you and I’m going to say that it’s happening all over the province of Ontario. And the reason why we sit here—because we have a little media up here—they get, at least, a message out. And you guys, what do you do? We’re not going to sit until October 21.

I came today for one reason. I was mad about—I’ll tell you, I was pissed off about losing a week to challenge you guys—sorry, I’ll retract; I apologize.

In my own riding of Niagara Falls, the tourist capital of the world, we have high homelessness. We have homeless encampments just down from the tourist sector in Fort Erie. My urgent care centre, which used to go 24/7, is now only operating 12 hours a day—or 10 hours a day, because in the last two hours, they don’t take new patients. That’s happening not only in Fort Erie, it’s happening in the north, it’s happening in London—it’s happening everywhere. We’re shutting down rural hospitals. Everything is not wonderful, so how couldn’t you guys support it?

Because you’re all sitting here—not all of them, by the way; some aren’t here, but I won’t mention who’s not here because I can’t do that. But the ones that are sitting here: You’ve got to go back to your ridings and you say, “Oh, we don’t need to sit. We don’t need to have question period. We don’t need to have debate on bills that are important.” I brought a motion forward just the other day. You talk to the Minister for Seniors—he’s here—and I talked about a caregiver bill, that we should have a direct payment for caregivers to take care of our loved ones—most of them are seniors; some are kids. We should be having those debates. Instead, what do you guys do? We’re going to shut the Legislature down. It’s absolutely terrible.

And what’s going on in the province of Ontario, as you guys stand up and you blame everything on the carbon tax? Let’s talk about groceries. Put your hands up on that side—even on this side—if you guys are listening over here, put your hands up: Who is having trouble paying for your groceries? I am. How many of your kids and your grandkids are having trouble buying groceries because they’re being gouged by the Weston family? How many are having trouble paying their rent?

In Niagara Falls, the average rent is $2,200 a month. What young person, having their first job, can afford to pay $2,200 for rent and then pay for groceries? Who can do that? And in Toronto, where a lot of you guys are from—not all of you, but a lot of you are from Toronto—do you know what the average rent is? It’s $3,400. Yet, you know what? Let’s just shut down for almost six months because there are no issues out here in the province of Ontario.

And then you go and take a look at gas prices. People can’t afford to pay their gas. They can’t afford their rent. Why don’t we have rent control? I’m telling you guys, come and tell me what you hear over the next six months, by the way—it’s close to six months that we’re shutting down: six months. When I ran here, and it’s been four terms, at no time did I say, “Do you know what? Is there any way you could shut the Legislature down from June until October? Is there any way you could do that?” How many people out there are working every day? I came out of the General Motors plant, where I worked for over 30 years. And do you know what I got? Three or four weeks of vacation as seniority grew. The company didn’t say we were going to shut down for six months because we don’t want to listen to the customers.

What are you guys doing? What are you thinking? Who came up with this idea? Was it all you guys? Put your hand up who had a vote on it. You’ll have a vote pretty soon and you’re going to have to defend it in your ridings. You can’t defend it. It’s undefendable. It’s absolutely disgusting, what you’re trying to do here to democracy in the province of Ontario.

I mentioned health care. I was at the hospital just two days ago, and the doctor told me he was dealing with patients who had been sitting in that emergency for over eight, nine and 10 hours as he came on shift at 6 in the morning. He told me that they’re short-staffed. They don’t have enough nurses, they don’t have enough people to take care of us. But what is this government doing? “We’re going to shut down health care. We’re going to shut down the Legislature. Everything is wonderful in the province of Ontario.” I can tell you it’s not.

I want to talk about our food banks. We have more people using food banks today than at any time in our history—in our history. And what are we going to do? “Oh, we don’t need to meet until October 21, from today, June 6.” It’s absolutely terrible.

Do you know what the hard part about the food banks is? Listen to this—25% of that is kids going to food banks right here in the province of Ontario. What people don’t talk about is that we are the richest province in the country and we’ve got kids going to bed hungry, going to food banks.

We have homeless encampments just outside these halls here—I got a note. My time is up.

Anyway, I’m going to close by saying—and I’ll try to keep this—yes, even the Clerk is giving me that eye. I’m going to tell you, you guys have to go back to your ridings—it’s undefendable, what you’re trying to do here this afternoon. Every one of you should be ashamed of yourselves for what you’re doing this afternoon—not just for the week that we’re going to close here early, but to stay there until October 21 and not come back here and be held accountable, when we know we’ve got all these crises, in health care, education—everything. It’s absolutely terrible. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.