Well, here’s what I’d say: I think the people of Ontario and the people of Ottawa would be better off if the Conservative candidate who didn’t win in Kanata–Carleton didn’t get a six-figure job and didn’t have an office that costs $1.7 million annually.

I’ve got a feeling we should have a poutine party here. I think we should have a poutine party in the Legislature, and we should have a bunch of different types of gravy. I’ll take any recommendations as to what kind of gravy or names for gravy that we could test out. I’d like to do that, if people are willing.

I know the Premier wants to make a nice announcement. I know he wants to be a good guy and make everybody happy, but you’ve got to deliver the things that people need to know so they don’t actually end up getting penalized. And that was the problem.

I can do that. Oh, wait—damn. You blew it. Okay.

Thank you very much, Speaker.

When you say “no tolls” and still charge tolls on a road that you own, or forgive a billion dollars when maybe that billion dollars could be used to make schools better, make our health care system better or help people build more housing—that would be, to me, the thing that we want and that we need, that all of us want in our communities. We want people to be successful. We want to make sure that people just get that bit of help that they need. I don’t see that here.

The reality is, in a few short years—we’ll put it that way—we may not be here, and our kids will have to live with whatever’s here. And there is a climate crisis. Unless we do something to address that, we’re going to be leaving them short. However we do it, generations that came before us made sacrifices to make sure that we do okay, and we may be called upon at some point to make some sacrifices to make sure that things are okay for those people who come after us.

I love afternoon debate, because you’re all so lively. Hopefully, we can get to some really interesting questions.

But I’m really happy to be able to say a few words about Bill 162, which could be named as well the getting it undone act. Here’s the interesting thing: The most interesting thing I find in this bill is schedule 5, followed by schedule 6.

I’ll go to schedule 5 first. Now, schedule 5 says “Protecting Against Carbon Taxes Act, 2024.” So there would have to be a referendum if there’s going to be a carbon tax, but the Premier of the Conservative government—well, you’ve got your own carbon tax, the industrial carbon tax: $2 billion going up by 23%, I think, next January. You’ve got your own carbon tax. You’re saying to people, “We’re going to prevent it,” but you have one. I don’t really understand how that makes any sense. So are you legislating against yourself? Are you legislating against maybe your future desire to do that again? You’ve already done it.

We hear about the carbon tax all day long in question period, but we don’t hear about the Conservative carbon tax. Next January, it’s going up 23%, the industrial carbon tax. While consumers may not be able to see that on their bills, on their invoices, on their grocery bills, it’s still there. It’s still there. And you guys put it in. You’re trying to pretend that you’re against it, but you’ve done it. How could anybody support a bill that did that?

But here’s really the one that sticks out. The members from up just past Oshawa, up towards that part of the 407 that the province owns? You’re going to do a referendum on tolls—you’re going to ban tolls—but you’re not going to do anything about the road that we own. The tolls—

I understand the other piece of that road, the 407, was something that your government—not your government, but your party sold off some 25 years ago. You sold it off 25 years ago.

Interjections.

Interjection.

Not only did you sell the road for a song—like a song, literally a song. Guess what? They owed us $1 billion, and you said, “That’s okay. Don’t worry about it, folks. Keep it. Keep the $1 billion.” That’s what I call the 407 gravy train. It’s not one that people know well. It’s that gravy train where they said, “Here’s $1 billion for you folks. You know what? You can have it. Don’t worry about what you owe us. And you know what? We’re not going to try to lower tolls on that road.”

If you were so against tolls, like you’re saying in this bill, why would you not do that? I thought you were about the people, saving people money. No. Come on, guys. Speaker, we’re going to ban tolls, but they keep the tolls, and they keep the tolls on the road that they own. Then they forgive $1 billion. Come on. Who are you kidding?

You did freeze licence fees, which is good. And you did finally get around to figuring out the licence plate stuff, which was causing some people some grief, because their Premier made an announcement that you didn’t have to pay anymore, but nobody told anybody that you had to keep registering, until you figured it out some three months later. I have a number of constituents who had received fines because it wasn’t clear. It was communicated once and then not very well at all after that. The government did not spend any time reminding people, “You’ve still got to do it.” You’ve still got to do it today because this bill hasn’t passed. That’s totally unfair to people.

It’s nice to get a good story. I love it when the Premier says, “We’re going to stop doing this, Speaker, because it’s good, and I’m for the people.” But you don’t tell them that they’ve got to keep doing it for three months, and it costs them 500, 600 bucks—if you’re out of province, $1,000. That’s not saving people any money.

The Official Plan Adjustments Act: I don’t know at what stage of doing or undoing this schedule comes in, but it’s certainly part of the doing/undoing that has been the whole scandal around—well, let’s put it this way: the whole scandal around urban boundaries changing for no discernible reason, other than maybe somebody made a donation or somebody knew somebody. Because it does seem like the well-connected insiders do well when it comes to anything that has got to do with land or property—see the 413; see the greenbelt. I think that that’s a fair assessment of that schedule that seems to be undoing a thing that you did that got undone.

I do want to add that it’s really not right that you’re saying you’re going to protect the people from carbon taxes when you have one, or that you’re going to ban tolls when you keep the tolls on the road that you own, and when you forgive $1 billion of the road that you sold for a song. It makes it impossible to support this bill.

I’m trying to run the clock here so I can make sure that I get 10 minutes’ worth of questions, because I know you’re all going to want to have fun. So I might divert a little bit into something different.

I did talk about the 407 gravy train. There’s a greenbelt gravy train. Now there’s a carbon tax gravy train in there. So there’s a lot of gravy going around.

I think, if we wanted to save the taxpayer money, it would have been better for the Premier not to have increased the staff in his office making over $100,000 a year—the Premier’s sunshine staff list—from 16 to 48. It’s now 49 because we’ve added somebody in Ottawa, a new regional minister, a new office in Ottawa. He’s got a six-figure salary too. I don’t know whether we could have addressed something like that in this bill—which is, the Premier’s office should be more modest instead of so bloated; lots of gravy going there.

Here’s the other thing: Now they’re going to spend—so the Conservative candidate that lost in Nepean-Carleton, that candidate just got a six-figure job because he lost. And guess what? They’re going to spend $1.7 million every year to keep him in a job there in Ottawa. Why are they really doing that? Because they want him to run again in Kanata. That’s a lot of taxpayer money.

So, when we talk about protecting the taxpayer, who is going to protect the taxpayer from that? I mean, that’s kind of gross. I think most people would say, “Why would you do that?” Why did the Premier’s office budget for staff—just sunshine staff—go from $3 million to almost $7 million? That’s $4 million. Now, you throw the other $1.7 million on that, you’re getting close to, what, $6 million? And God knows what else.

Really, folks, I’m trying to get to, like, four minutes, because I want the 10 minutes of questions. So, I’ve got all this stuff. If you have any other topics that you want me to discuss, I’ll throw it in. It’s just—anyhow.

I could go back on the toll thing, because the toll thing is hilarious. It’s like, “We’re going to ban tolls, but we’re keeping ours. We’re keeping the tolls on the road that we own. We’re going to keep—but we’re banning them. And by the way, the highway that we sold? Guess what? We’re going to forgive them a billion dollars.” If that’s not a gravy train—I mean, that’s a billion-dollar gravy train: “Here, guys. Forget it. I know you owe us the money. It’s okay. Nobody’s watching.”

Come on. It’s like, you’re not really against tolls; you have them. You’re not really against the carbon tax; you have one. So why are you putting this in the legislation? Are you trying to fool somebody—as I say, pull the wool over their eyes? I don’t know.

Guys, I’m getting down there. I’ve only got 12 seconds left. I’m just going to stand here in silence for 10 seconds.

Earlier in debate, I was talking about this omnibus bull—uh, bill—and I wanted to mention that omnibus bills usually are heavier and thicker, and, well, you can’t actually grow things with this omnibus bull. But in it, what happens here is that the government is banning tolls but not banning tolls. They’re freezing licence fees, but they’re not returning money to people. They’re saying, “Trust me on the environment, because we have such a good record,” when you look at the greenbelt and the MZOs and all the favours for land speculators.

So, there’s this piece about referenda stuck in the bill. Again, that’s something else. It’s future, farther down the road, but it’s not putting any money in people’s pockets. What do you think of the referendum?

Speaker, just a quick question: I heard in the last debate we were talking about tolls, and the government owns part of a road that they’re charging tolls on and they don’t want to take them off. Now they’re worried about breaking a contract? The government that has broken so many, so many contracts and gone in reverse so much on things like MZOs and the greenbelt and the “notwithstanding” clause and green energy—I don’t really understand, Speaker, why the government is concerned over breaking contracts.

I agree with the member from Thornhill. This government is certainly digging. They’ve been digging a hole for a long time, and deeper and deeper it gets.

But I want to ask you about tolls. The government says we’re banning tolls. A big news release goes out all across Ontario with the news headlines saying, “We’re banning tolls.” But in actual fact, they’re part of a party that ensured there would be tolls on the 407 in perpetuity and that they would increase. But here’s the kicker: They’ve got a piece of highway from Brock, not quite going up to Peterborough on the 115, that they own, so they’re outlawing tolls except they’re not outlawed on the piece of road that they own. Can you explain that to me?

The premise of the question, that we didn’t do anything, is nonsense, because if you even look economically, we led the G7 in jobs and growth for five years until 2018. We were top three for foreign direct investment. We had historic investments too in public transit, in hospitals—all sorts of things.

And you know what? When we did those investments, guess who voted against it? Not you guys, but there are a few who did vote against it on the other side. So let’s not—

Interjections.

Here’s the other thing: I know you guys are big on auto, but guess what? In 2009—the bailout, the crisis—we had a vote in this House. Guess who voted against the bailout? Your party. So don’t throw that stuff out. It was a good question, but forget that stuff, because you guys voted against as many things as we did, and far worse.

Yes, the government is collecting tolls while it’s outlawing—okay. Did I say that? They’re collecting tolls while they’re proposing a law to outlaw them—collecting tolls but outlawing them.

There’s a solution to that: Amend your bill; take the tolls off the 407 east. And you know what? You’ll get support from all of us.

And I think the member from Scarborough–Guildwood just said, “Look, I was up north. I heard this.” She doesn’t live there. Those aren’t her constituents. She’s not searching for votes up there. There’s a big problem.

I just said earlier, if you hadn’t sold the 407 or if the tolls were lower or if you took some of the tolls off it, maybe you wouldn’t need quite as much as you’re building right now. That’s the kind of thing you have to think about.

I would just say to members of this House, go and take a look at the map of who owns all the land on the 413 and their connections to the government. You might find some of the same names that you found in the Auditor General’s report—

Thank you.

There we go. I didn’t want to miss out on the questions, guys. That’s the best part. I want to hear great questions.

Have I gone over 10 minutes yet? Can the table—have I gone over 10?

Interjections.

I don’t want five minutes of questions. I want 10 minutes of questions, and they better be good questions, guys.

Again, “omnibus bill” sounds like it’s this heavy-duty thing that’s coming down on all of us, and we will not be able to sustain the weight of the omnibus bull—bill, or bull. Actually, that’s it: It’s the omnibus bull. That’s the best way to put it. My God, sometimes your mistakes work out.

Pardon me, Speaker. Pardon my irreverence.

In this—and I’m not going to stop saying it—omnibus bull, they’re not doing very much. At least with certain kinds of bull stuff, you can grow things—but not with this bill.

Anyway, I digress. Sorry. I’m off on a bad spot. Now it feels alive in here, folks. You feel alive.

We’re here, it’s Thursday afternoon, and we’re talking about really important things to Ontarians, like road tolls that will never exist but ones that will continue to go up; or licence fees that won’t go up, but somehow that’s putting money in your pocket; and referendums about things that governments should just damn well figure out for themselves. We have one—I’ll support it—every four years. Right? So it gives you the power to make decisions. The problem is you can’t over-read your mandate. If you want to look at it as a referendum, I think a plurality is something over 50%. And I’m not going there. You guys are the government; you earned the right; you worked hard. But as a referendum, it didn’t give you carte blanche to do whatever you like.

Anyways, I think I’ve gone over my 10 minutes, so I’ll get 10 minutes worth of questions and they better be good, folks. Thank you.

Now, in fairness, that happened when we came into government. So here’s the thing: The north needs safe roads. The member from Scarborough–Guildwood, who is not from the north, can see that. She saw that when she went up north and that’s why she mentioned it.

Now the 413—because I’m trying to get this in under a minute—if we actually still owned the 407, maybe you wouldn’t need the 413. So the things that I get concerned about are the same things I saw in the greenbelt giveaway, aligning along 413, so I would hope that it’s not about land speculation.

It’s a pleasure to get up and speak to the Get It Done bill, the predecessor to the “get it undone” bill, which will be the predecessor to the Get It Done bill and then to the next “get it undone” bill. So, backwards and forwards they go; backwards and forwards we go.

When I came in here this afternoon, it kind of felt like church. It was very quiet—almost holy. It felt like a place of sanctuary.

Let’s just start with road tolls. Newspaper headlines across the province: “Ontario Banning Road Tolls.” “They’re banning it.” “We’re doing it; we’re getting it done.” But the tolls are still the same on the 407, the piece we don’t own and the piece we do own. Is that right? Somebody can answer this when they get up in questions, but I don’t think you’re taking tolls off the provincial portion of the 407. And I think most Ontarians, when they looked at that, probably thought, “Oh, good.” But there will be a sad reality when they find out that they’re still paying tolls.

The members across the aisle like to bring up history all the time, like to throw stuff back in people’s faces. What your government did while saying you want to ban tolls is you forgot that your party ensured that road tolls will be on the 407 and continue to increase in perpetuity, forever. You sold it. You’ve got no control. As a matter of fact, you forgave a billion dollars. So I don’t think you’re for drivers.

You know, that billion dollars would have been really handy. It would have prevented a lot of Ontarians from having to decide, “Do I need my credit card, or do I need my health card? Which one?” I’m not holding up the cards. I’d love to be able to do that, but I know the Speaker would let me know that that wasn’t right. I want to be on my best behaviour this afternoon. Which one, folks? Which one?

Here’s a suggestion: I think a member across the aisle could say, “You know what? I’m going to make an amendment to this bill, and I’m going to take tolls off the provincial portion of the 407.” I challenge you to do that. That way, you would really be battling road tolls. I know you can’t do anything about the mess that Mike Harris left us with the 407. You’d all have to agree that that was a mess, selling it off. I’ll forgive you that—not that you’d forgive me anything that we didn’t do such a good job on—but you guys really messed up on that one.

Maybe when we get to committee, we can see an amendment on the bill that says, “You know what? We’re wiping out the tolls on the provincial portion of the 407, all the way from”—it’s about Whitby, right? Is it Whitby or Brock? Someone correct me. Somewhere in there, that portion—I don’t know how long it is. The tolls aren’t as much. It’d be nice if you did something about tolls right now that actually meant a plug nickel in somebody’s pocket. I’d be more enthusiastic about supporting this bill—if I could support this bill. I’m not saying whether I will or I won’t, because there are some thing in there, like referendums—they aren’t a bad thing.

I think we should have had a referendum on carving up the greenbelt. I think we should’ve talked about that. If you like referendums, maybe we should have had one for that. Do you think maybe we could have had a referendum for for-profit health care, letting private, for-profit clinics take services out of hospitals? Or, hey, maybe a referendum for whether we should actually put some measures of control on temporary staffing agencies in health care, something that the government said they’re going to do for two years. They’ve got time for a nice show, but they can’t actually guard the taxpayer dollar by putting some guardrails around temporary health care agencies. Why don’t we have a referendum on whether we should have that or not?

We could have tons of referendums. What the heck? Every big government decision that you make, put it to a referendum. I don’t see you doing that. I see you talking about it. It’s nice. It’s great talk. They’re great headlines, guys. They’re great headlines. But actually, government isn’t about creating headlines on a daily basis.

Interjection.

Interjection.

Honestly, guys, you want to change environmental protections. What you’re saying is, “Trust me. No, I really wasn’t carving up the greenbelt for my friends. I really wasn’t changing urban boundaries for some of my friends or signing MZOs for some of my friends—really. But trust me, I’ll protect the environment, because that’s what’s top of mind in our government.” That’s what you’re trying to say here.

It’s hard to trust you on this. It really is. I’d like to say I trust you—

Interjection: But you can’t.

My gosh. It says it’s an omnibus bill, but usually the omnibus bills I used to see were like this thick. This thing is probably about this thick. I don’t have it here with me right now. It’s only omnibus in the sense that it’s not doing lots of things; it’s doing a whole bunch of not really big things, but some things that will have real impact and some things that will have no impact at all—because they’re all about the news release; they’re all about the thing you want to say, like “We’re banning road tolls.” That announcement didn’t put one plug nickel, one penny, any money into people’s pockets, and it never will. As a matter of fact, to go back again, that 407—those tolls are going to increase in perpetuity, but you can prevent that, at least on the part that we own, so I challenge the government to put forward a clause and take it off. Because do you know what’s supposed to happen with a toll highway? A toll highway lasts for 30 or 40 years. You pay the highway—then you plan to take the tolls off, or you extend the highway or you improve it. But we don’t own it anymore. Somebody else owns it. I don’t think that’s good politics. But you’re banning road tolls.

Licence fees being frozen—yes, I think that’s a good thing. I can support that. But we have to make sure that we don’t nickel and dime ourselves so that we can’t invest in mental health as much as we want to, or primary care or cancer surgeries. It’s all about choices. So when I see something like that, I’m happy that people are getting some support. But if they’re making that choice—which one?—I’m not sure that makes any difference. It’s good that you’re not going to raise the fees, but you’re not putting any money in their pockets. It’s not happening. You’re just not taking any more. That’s a good thing.

The question is, are we actually putting money into the things that matter most to people?

I’ll go back to primary care. Almost two million Ontarians don’t have a family care practitioner. That’s serious. It messes up our whole health care system—

Stick a fork in it; it’s done.

It was the member for Oshawa’s private member’s bill—I just want to put that on the record.

But since we’re talking about tolls, we heard these big stories, these huge stories: “Ontario is banning tolls.” I was on the 407 a little while ago—actually, both parts: the one that we don’t own, that you sold, and our part—and there are still tolls. But you’re banning tolls. So it’s this story that sounds like you’re saving people money, and not one plug nickel is going into anybody’s pocket. And you can be guaranteed that at least on the big part of the 407, those rates are going to go up.

So that wasn’t really an affordability issue, but let’s get on to referendums. Since we’re on the topic of referendums, why didn’t we have a referendum about taking the 407 that we own and making it not a toll road? That would be a great idea. What do you think about that, Minister?