Questions?

It’s always a pleasure and a privilege to take my seat on behalf of the good people of Algoma–Manitoulin, talking to the budget bill this morning. As I’ve always said, I try to bring a northern Ontario lens to the floor of the Legislature, and that’s what I’m going to be doing this morning, talking about particular matters that were not addressed for individuals in my riding of Algoma–Manitoulin.

I want to start with Donna Benke from Elliot Lake, who is an ODSP recipient. Donna is a huge advocate for fairness. She has shared many of her life stories with me, and her struggles that she has. She doesn’t want to wish anything worse for anybody else, but she does want to be seen; she wants to be heard, because as a single individual without children at home, she has not benefited in any way, shape or form from some of the benefits that have come from this government. She wants to be heard and is saying, “What about me? As an individual who is hurt, who cannot work, who cannot supplement my income, why aren’t there any supplements for me?” That’s one of the individuals.

I want to talk about Roslyn Taylor. Roslyn Taylor owns a small sawmill on Manitoulin Island. Roslyn has shared her hydro costs for her small mill with me. She employs about 20 to 25 employees. This has gone on with this government and the previous government—that I brought it to their attention. Her usage fees, on average, range somewhere between $700 to $800. Her delivery fees are always in excess of double what she is utilizing. I’ve worked with the minister—and I actually was with the minister at a reception just a couple of days ago, and I asked him once again, “When will your ministry reach out to Roslyn at Taylor Sawmill?” I wanted to provide him with her direct contact and say, “Hey, what can you do?” The minister, to his credit, indicated to me that it would take some major policy changes in order to address her issues. Okay. Well, that’s why you’re in government: to make those changes. We didn’t see those changes in this budget. Roslyn is still receiving those high costs for her sawmill, and the 25 jobs that she provides for individuals on Manitoulin Island are at stake here. So I’m hoping that, finally, the government will reach out to Roslyn, or Hydro One, and look at some of the savings that they can provide for her so she can continue doing the operation and the work that she enjoys doing.

The other thing that wasn’t addressed in this budget is a serious doctor recruitment and retainment program for rural and northern communities. I didn’t see that in this budget.

I see this government making some investments. I see legislation which is opening up more opportunities for the privatization of certain surgeries in this province. I see this government creating an environment where we’re going to need more agency nurses. I see this government creating, again, an environment where we’re going to be losing a lot of our public service workers—our doctors, our nurses, our PSWs and so on—to going towards the private sector. I see a lot of nurses who were burnt out due to a lot of decisions that were made by this government during the COVID pandemic, which now—these individuals have left and are now reappearing as agency nurses at a much higher cost. I don’t see how they’ve addressed that in the budget. I don’t see how they’ve addressed the need for locums in northern Ontario.

The hospital up in Wawa has been looking to this government and trying to get this government to continue with the locum days that they’ve had there. They’re down another doctor, and they do not have the proper coverage that they had. What is going to happen? The three remaining doctors who are there are going to get burnt out, and they’re going to move on, and they’re going to leave, and then Wawa is going to be left out.

This is the exact position that is happening on the west end of Manitoulin Island and Gore Bay. There are three doctors there: There’s one doctor who is holding down the basic practice that is there; and there’s a husband and wife, but they’re looking to move on because they’re at an age where they need to retire. That has not been addressed. Again, a serious doctor recruitment and retainment program is not addressed in this budget.

I will always give credit where credit is due, and I want to thank the Minister of Transportation, because she has actually responded to the need for a turning lane and investments in highways, particularly on Highway 17, as you turn in off Goulais River into the trading post and also the LCBO that is there. There’s a family, there’s an individual who passed away a few years ago. We’re finally going to make the investments to improve that area and add a turning lane, making it a little bit safer.

There are some investments that went into Manitoulin Island, as well, with those highways, but the resurfacing that was done just last summer—I was out on those highways this summer, and they’re already starting to deteriorate. So there are going to be some major improvements that are going to be needed to be done.

Highway 637 into Killarney is an absolute mess.

There are more investments that need to be done into those areas, and are they on this government’s radar?

Highway 551, Highway 542—again, there are more investments that need to be done in those areas.

Were there home care investments—a real strategy for this government to invest into home care. If we are actually going to prevent and help long-term-care homes, we need to have home care investments, major home care investments, because people want to remain staying in their homes.

In the short time that I had, these are the shortfalls that I’ve identified from a northern Algoma–Manitoulin lens, and unfortunately, this government has failed to meet these needs of Ontarians in the budget.

Thank you so much this morning to the member for explaining the real lived lives of people that are on the street. The solutions aren’t simple and they’re not, in some ways, the bumper statements that we’re hearing in the House today, so we need to come together and understand the continuum of supports that we need.

In Hamilton currently, we can tell there are 1,500 people who are homeless, living on the streets, and we have 500 shelter beds. We’ve seen the closure now of three agencies, the kind that you described in Ottawa, that were serving people living on the streets, including Hamilton Mental Health Outreach, that were dealing with people right on the street, serving them where they’ve managed to find some shelter.

And so, can you speak a little bit further to all of our communities, how cutting that kind of service, as you said, is not good for anyone? It lands on municipal taxpayer dollars, and it lands on the police budgets that should be directing their resources elsewhere.

Speaker, what I’m going to rise in this place and defend all the time is community safety. The member can engage in any number of culture-war statements he wants, but what I’m going to ask him and what I’m going to ask every member in this House is: What does that accomplish by the day’s end? What does that actually accomplish? Will it bring back the lives we’ve lost of first responders? Will it bring back Sergeant Mueller? Will it bring back Carl Reinboth? Will it give people a new lease on life, or is it just about scoring points on Twitter?

I’m not here to score points on Twitter. I’m here to fight for my community. I’m here to make sure that we do right by people living in crisis, and comments like that? It’s just performance. I’m interested in actual solutions. Believe it or not, Speaker, I’ve found that there are times members of this government will do that. I invite this member to talk to those members of this government, because those are people actually engaged in serious work, not games.

I began my life as a community organizer, Speaker, in this city, working with the great Jack Layton to make sure people didn’t freeze to death on the streets of this city and got access through a housing-first program. We convinced a Conservative mayor, Mel Lastman, to invest millions of dollars in a housing program called the Streets to Homes program, that the city currently has, which needs another tranche of reinvestment.

But there are solutions that exist, Speaker. We don’t have to keep throwing money at the problem in ineffective ways and putting people in difficult situations. We can and must do better.

The member from Ottawa Centre asked about specific investments in the budget. The specific investment that I’m referring to is the $13.4 million to continue the Guns, Gangs and Violence Reduction Strategy, which of course, as we know, is the primary way of busting up the drug supply chain, so that the drugs don’t reach people on the street and the people who the member from Ottawa Centre was talking about.

So my question to the member is this: Given that he wants specific investments in the budget to assist the people he spoke about, will he support that specific measure, the $13.4 million to bust up the drug supply chain, or will he be continuing to promote the NDP “defund the police” policy?

Further questions?

My question is to the member for Ottawa Centre. Thank you for your speech. I know you very much care about the residents of Ottawa Centre.

My question is focused on housing. When you look at this budget, do you believe this budget adequately addresses the housing affordability crisis that you see in your riding?

Based on that note of housing—thank you very much for raising that—will you support what we’re proposing with the increase in investment in the Homelessness Prevention Program and Indigenous Supportive Housing Program by over $200 million annually? I can tell you for a fact that in my community, York region, this meant a 76% increase. I’ll be meeting with them soon because they said they want to meet with me and talk to me about the great things this is going to do for York region.

I would hope, based on that feedback, and knowing it’s $200 million annually—I would have to say to the opposition member, please support us with this initiative.

Thank you to my friend from Ottawa Centre for his passion for community safety. I wanted to ask him, if there was one thing that was missing in the budget that would really contribute to community safety in Ottawa, what would that thing be?

Further questions?

I’ll be honest in my response to what the member has said. I’m not interested in playing culture war games in this place when it comes to community safety, and I would invite the member opposite to consider the same. We can try to play “gotcha” politics in this place by using catchphrases, or we can make the community investments we need to make to keep our community safe. I talked about specific investments we can use to make the community safe. I note the federal Conservative leader was playing similar games in the House of Commons yesterday in question period.

We have to be driven by evidence. We have to be driven by effective solutions that work. The case I was making this morning that I didn’t hear any evidence or response to from that member—I hope I hear it in debate—is, are we making the right investments, are we helping first responders and are we helping neighbours in crisis? Those are the pertinent questions.

Housing, supportive housing, and support for people with mental health and addictions—I heard the associate minister of the government yesterday praise those initiatives, and I’m glad to hear that. I’m glad to hear that, in this place, we’re following the evidence and not the culture wars.

I’m glad the program’s working for your community. Jury’s out for me on whether I’m going to support it. I need to make sure there’s enough money in the bill to support all communities.

We need the government, we need the public to make sure we incentivize and figure out ways to help people get housing. It doesn’t always mean cranes, either. Supportive housing can be repurposing existing rental stock, supportive housing could be wrapping services around places like rooming houses, but we can’t do that on $800,000 a year with the Homelessness Prevention Program, and we can’t do that with the limited resources currently allocated towards public and non-profit housing in this province. We need much, much more.

To the member from Ottawa Centre: The supply chain of illegal drugs which is reaching the people he spoke about on the street doesn’t come from the street. The supply chain of illegal drugs that is harming people on the street and causing the problems of which the member from Ottawa Centre spoke comes from the supply chain established by organized crime. For example, the RCMP seized 60 bricks of cocaine at the Ambassador Bridge in April of this year. One of the ways you save people on the street is you bust up that supply chain.

So my question to the member from Ottawa Centre is this: Why is he abandoning the people on the street by promoting a “defund the police” policy?

We’ll now have questions to the member for Ottawa Centre.

In my remarks on the budget this morning, what I would like to do is continue the conversation in this chamber we’ve been having about community safety. As I do that, I’m mindful of the fact that this is a challenging moment in our province, certainly challenging in eastern Ontario back home.

Today is one of the days that we are going to be remembering Sergeant Eric Mueller, who was tragically killed in Bourget, Ontario. I know members of the government are going to be going to the funeral service today. I’m glad they are. I just want to say from my perspective, as an eastern Ontario politician, days like this are hard. But I want us to think about how we preserve community safety and honour Sergeant Mueller and his family.

I also want to be thinking about Carl Reinboth. Carl Reinboth was a street outreach worker from the Somerset West Community Health Centre, one of three terrific community health centres we’re blessed to have in our community, who was tragically killed as well in a truly tragic accident—a gentleman in a psychotic episode.

We miss Carl. We miss Sergeant Mueller. We miss all people who devote themselves to public service and first response. There are so many first responders, Speaker, and today I just want to begin my remarks on the budget thinking about community safety by paying respect to Sergeant Mueller and to Carl.

What I want to ask, Speaker, is a rhetorical question, before I get into some details on two aspects of what the government has proposed in this bill: How do we keep each other safe? It’s a rhetorical question I asked in my community column last Friday. We publish a newsletter every week online—I know a lot of members do—and I asked community members to give me their two cents about what we could do as a province to keep each other more safe. I got a lot of comments back from people remarking on the amount of neighbours in our community in Ottawa who are suffering openly in the street, living in the street.

What we know is that, in Ottawa at least, there are 1,400 people in Ottawa every day who are homeless, about 8,000, if you think about the city in the course of the year, who interact with that position and find their way out one way or another. What we know is those neighbours—and they are neighbours, Speaker—who are living on the street are disproportionately drawn from certain communities as opposed to others. About 2.5% of our city in Ottawa are Indigenous, but 24% of the homeless population are Indigenous. About 6% of our city are Black Canadians, but 21% of the people who are homeless on the street are Black.

What I hear from community service providers, when they talk about folks who are chronically underhoused, chronically homeless, and folks who for whatever reason, for whatever trauma they are carrying around with them, as people have told me, live their lives in plain sight all day, all times of year—what life is like for them. People who wrote me after my column last Friday were saying they were noticing alarming behaviours that researchers tell me are linked to the toxicity of the illicit drug supply in our streets, alarming behaviours that are linked to the mental health crisis in our community.

Ana from old Ottawa South wrote me about a neighbour she knew who had been assaulted outside a coffee shop and is still in hospital after receiving several injuries, including a face fracture that people believe may not fully heal. I also know of another neighbour outside Hartman’s grocery store—you know Hartman’s, Speaker, in Somerset West, at Somerset and Bank—who was just walking to get her groceries and encountered a neighbour in significant psychotic duress and was assaulted as well.

In each of these situations, what we know is that the first-response capacity we have in our community is overtaxed. What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is, at the moment, what the Ottawa Police Service tells our community is the cost of interactions with homeless folks in our community—there are about 60,000 interactions per year—is $25 million. But if we think about the amount of money we are spending taking police first responders into interactions with homeless neighbours, when those are the exact folks we need when there’s a pileup on the 417, the exact folks we need when we have a major weather event like the wind storm that hit our community last May—the police so aptly and efficiently and effectively ensured our safety in that moment for neighbours trapped in their homes. They were terrific. Police are the ones who have the responsibility, with the monopoly on the use of force, to keep us safe in moments of significant public duress and safety.

What police officers in Ottawa Centre tell me is that they don’t want to be the first point of response for 60,000 interactions with folks who are chronically homeless. In fact, I hear again and again from our community officers that they feel the province and the city could do a lot more to support them.

I want to talk about some of those community services—because in the budget, with the Homelessness Prevention Program the government announced, the increase of $202 million, we have opportunities for the province to invest—that have been making inroads to deal with those 60,000 interactions and to take our police into a direct public safety response, instead of constant interactions with neighbours who live with trauma and who are homeless.

I want to talk about the Salvation Army in Ottawa, who maintain several vans that are fully equipped to deal with any number of needs homeless neighbours have. It could be a pair of socks, it could be a cup of coffee, it could be a first aid interaction, or it could be a ride to a home or a shelter or a drop-in facility that our city maintains. The cost of that program, which runs from 11 a.m. in the morning to 3 a.m. at night, seven days a week, is around $500,000 a year. I mentioned that the cost of asking our police force in Ottawa to interact 60,000 times a year is $25 million. What the Salvation Army tells me is, for them to staff up with an additional van could be half the cost of the allocation they currently have—$500,000—and what that would make is a meaningful difference in the lives of people who are living and struggling with trauma, and it would also follow the advice of officers I’ve spoken to who want that help.

I also want to note the Somerset West Community Health Centre, who maintain several programs, and I want to name a couple that could benefit from what the government has announced in this budget. They have a crisis outreach program that was operating during the pandemic—and it’s operating now—that doesn’t just deal with situational responses in neighbourhoods. When there’s a homeless neighbour in crisis interacting with a small business or another resident and that person, that business doesn’t feel safe, they can call the Somerset West Community Health Centre. They’re proactive: This outreach program goes into rooming houses, goes into supportive housing, goes into low-rental, and visits neighbours sleeping outside in the street, to get them the support they need, for a cost of $315,000 a year. If we invested another $226,000 a year, what the Somerset West Community Health Centre tells me is, you could employ a full-time nurse practitioner and a dedicated community worker for this program. And I can tell you, those folks would save lives. They would make sure people found out where they could go to get a decent meal at one of our community kitchens. They could connect, perhaps, spiritually, if they’re Indigenous, to some of the fantastic Indigenous cultural organizations we have in our city, or spiritually if they have faith of other kinds. Speaker, $226,000 compared to $25 million is a significant difference.

I also want to say that every time we give someone an opportunity to do something other than end up in a paramedic ambulance, a police cruiser, a jail or a mental health bed in a hospital, we don’t just achieve dignity for the person; we achieve something stupendous for economic circumstances for the province. It is cheaper and it is more efficient for the government to take aspects of this $202 million and its Homelessness Prevention Program and put it into direct community services. I’ve worked already with members of this government to connect them directly to leaders in our community who can put this money to good use.

In the last minute I have, I just want to mention one other thing, and that is the housing allocation that Ottawa has received. What we know is, we have an increase of $800,000 with the Homelessness Prevention Program allocation for our city. We were on track to expect $16 million to $17 million. What that would have done is create 54 units of supportive housing in our city. So, working with organizations like Salus, Options Bytown, Somerset West, Carlington Community Health Centre, Sandy Hill Community Health Centre, I’m pleading to this government to make sure that Ottawa receives a good allocation here, because if we don’t, what we’re going to have are more criminal justice interactions with police first responders, which is not what neighbours are telling me we need to make sure we can give people dignity, give people respect and—let’s hope, for the most part, after the prayer we had this morning—a new lease on life.

Thank you to the member from Hastings–Lennox and Addington. The member talked about working for workers, and I’ve got to tell you, that bar is really low. It is the “low-hanging fruit” bill. I want to know, in this bill—he talked about how, during the election, what he heard most was people talking about the government debt. What I heard most was people talking about the affordability crisis, talking about putting food on the table, putting gas in their cars.

So I want to know, in this budget, are you happy? Are you happy that more working people than ever before—every single year, that number increases—are having to use food banks to make ends meet? Does this make sense in this budget?

Thank you to the member opposite. Yesterday, there was a member from the opposition who, when I asked a question about Moody’s, which is a financial rating service, where they’ve upgraded the province’s debt, said that it was irrelevant, that it didn’t matter, that it was of no relevance to people walking down the streets in her community. I was shocked, quite frankly, by that statement. That’s financial illiteracy.

I’m wondering if you can talk to why it is important that Ontario have a strong debt rating and is financially sound and how this budget is moving in that direction.

While I appreciate the member’s question, I have to respectfully disagree with the idea that “all” only includes the wealthy. “All” includes all of the people of Ontario: the people that are in business, the entrepreneurs; the people that are struggling; the people that are doing well—all the people of Ontario.

This government is applying extra attention to those areas where people are struggling the most. We can talk about the ODSP—I mentioned it in my previous answer. We can talk about the Guaranteed Annual Income System: We’ve doubled the value and we’re adding 100,000 new people to the eligibility for that. This government continues to not just increase business but also increase the available supports for the people who need it most.

Just like governments, all of us have a credit rating and it affects our ability to do the things that we want to do. It affects our ability to get a mortgage to buy a house—which is the goal of this government: to make sure that everybody has an equal opportunity to afford their own home and, if they can, to actually buy a house.

That’s why this government kept putting money back into their pocket, whether it’s cancelling the tolls on the highway, whether it’s putting money back into their pocket from the licence plates. All of these things are pieces that go back to affordability. We’ve continued to lower the price on gas. That is an incredible boon, especially to the people in the member’s and my ridings, who have no choice but to use their vehicles a lot because we live in the rural environments. It is important that we continue to use these tools to make sure that people can afford to live every day.

I appreciate the member quoting John F. Kennedy—“a rising tide lifts all boats”—but we know that neoliberalism is a failed strategy. We know that it has shown to result in higher incidents of poverty and health care costs for the average person anywhere that notion was applied.

My question to you is, what do you say to the people that have no boats? What do you say to the people that, in fact, see this government supporting people with the big boats? Corporations, the for-profit health sector—to look at companies like Therme, who are getting a 95-year lease. They’re doing well. Their boats are being raised by this government. But people in the province, moms that have kids with autism, people that are using the food banks—this is an aphorism that is an insult to them when they themselves see that they are suffering and you are just saying that if we support the bigs, they will profit, when it’s not the case.

Next question?

Report continues in volume B.

Through you, Madam Speaker, I was very interested in your very detailed statement, and I appreciate that. We talked about different methods to create a more, let’s say, balanced approach to this Ontario economy and create more jobs, which is so important. Could the member talk a little bit more about the tax credits that are available to businesses that are so important to creating a thriving economy?