I’m pleased to be able to rise today and speak to motion 69 and understand the government’s genuine concern for people by writing this two-sentence motion asking somebody else to do something. In my opinion, maybe it’s worth the paper that it’s written on, because it’s in a big book here right now. But honestly, folks, really?

First of all, you know how impractical what you are suggesting is. You know that it’s neutral. It’s great politics—sounds good—but when you start digging in, not so good. If you really were concerned about affordability, you would return rent control. People can’t afford to pay their rent. And when they do pay their rent, they can’t afford to buy their food, carbon tax or not, whatever you’re trying to do.

You know it’s not going to work, but you do like to say, “Hey, we’d like you to do something. We’d like you, this government over here, to do this,” or, “It’s their fault,” or, “They did this thing.” Five and a half years, no responsibility for anything—incredible.

But here, I want to help you. I do. I want to help you. Here’s how you could help: return rent control. Make sure people have enough money to buy their groceries. That would really help, and you can do that. The minister can do that. We talked about that this morning. The member from Scarborough–Guildwood mentioned that.

If you can’t do that, if you’re unwilling to do that, why don’t you just raise social assistance rates? The people who are most impacted by grocery price increases—I spent 22 years in the grocery business. I go into grocery stores all the time. It’s hard, so you’re right in that part of it. But the action you’re suggesting is, let’s be clear, abdicating any responsibility.

If you can’t do that, if you can’t do rent control and raise social assistance rates, let’s try something else maybe a little easier—a little easier for the government to swallow, apparently. That’s not a food joke but it just ended up happening. What about the Ontario Child Benefit? One year ago, we said you need to raise the Ontario Child Benefit. For those families—and there are a lot of families that are captured by that—it would help them pay for groceries. Fifty, 100 bucks a month is going to help.

You could’ve done that. You’ve done nothing. You didn’t even entertain it. Why not? I don’t understand. Given your genuine, deep, abiding concern with people’s ability to buy their groceries, I just can’t understand why you haven’t increased the Ontario Child Benefit. It’s something I think we could all agree on. I think it would be fair. But you know what? Now’s our opportunity. We have an opportunity here today. You have an opportunity here today.

Speaker, I would like that the motion be amended by adding at the end: “And that, the government of Ontario, move to raise the Ontario child tax benefit.”

Speaker, I would like to ask for unanimous consent for this motion to be considered by the House.

As a matter of fact, it was shorter than your motion. It was shorter. But I’m going to tell you one thing: This motion is worth way more than the paper that it’s written on. And it’s important to families and it’s a serious thing. I know I’m chiding you and I know I’m smiling, but it’s serious. Think about this—think about this when you go back to caucus, think about this when you go back to cabinet. Think about it.

Okay, let’s try for something else. You can throw me an idea from behind or over there if you’d like, I’m good. Hey, why not give a tax credit to families who are trying to put their kids in extracurricular sports, or something after school so they’ll have a bit more money to pay for the groceries because they’re trying to make sure that their kids have the activities that they need to be healthy, and they can have the food to be healthy. Why not that?

I’m not going to put forward another amendment on that because I want you to remember the last amendment. I want you to remember the last amendment, because you can do that. You can do that in the fall economic statement. You’ve got a couple of days to figure it out. It’s going to help a heck of a lot of families.

Okay, so, it’s clear, to me anyway, that it doesn’t look like the government wants to take any real action, any kind of meaningful thing that they can do. They don’t want to pick up a hammer or a screwdriver or anything—to do anything to help families with their grocery prices. I spent 22 years in the grocery business. I know how it works.

If they’re so concerned about grocery prices—I mean we saw the bread-fixing thing. We know that happened, and it wasn’t just bread. There’s more stuff in there. I go into a lot of grocery stores because I like to, because I love what I used to do, so I know how the prices are. So I really don’t understand why the Premier, the Premier for the people, the little guy, isn’t running to write—well, actually, if he started with writing, I think there’s too much letter-writing and motion-writing going on here—but if he wrote the grocery CEOs and said, “Get your act together. Stop putting it to the people of Ontario. Stop doing the things that you’re doing and profit-taking and think about what’s happening to families right now.”

Maybe he could write a letter to the Competition Bureau, maybe he could dig a little deeper. But you know, the stuff on the surface, that’s so easy. Writing a 12-word motion that says, “Hey, you, over there. You need to fix this thing, and we’re not even going to tell you how to do it.” With all due respect to the member, I understand the politics and I understand why you’re doing it, but you know what? It ain’t putting food on anybody’s table. Whether it passes or whether you write the letters that you write—you know, write the Governor of the Bank of Canada—tell him to do something and he’s going to totally ignore you. Come on, guys, this is a serious place. We need serious motions. We need serious things like raising the Ontario Child Benefit.

So, think about this, if you leave this debate today, if there’s only one thing you remember, one single thing is that if you raise the Ontario Child Benefit, you’ll be putting food in front of children right away, not writing a motion that is essentially meaningless.