I wanted to know if the member from Perth–Wellington can acknowledge that when people at committee, for instance, are asking about child care or asking about health care or asking about their parents being separated in long-term care or access to take-home cancer drugs or access to autism services, and he comes back and says, “Well, the carbon tax”—I don’t know if you understand how insulting that is for people who have genuine concerns about the well-being of their family, and you come back and talk about the carbon tax.

I mean, you did talk about health care somewhat. You didn’t reference how the Minister of Health says that she’s not concerned about the diminished supply of doctors. This has to be worrisome for you, because rural communities are suffering.

And you certainly didn’t reference the doubling of the costs of the Premier’s office and staff.

Meanwhile, they continue to make very poor policy decisions that impact your—

I’m so pleased that you asked me that question, because 1,326 sexual assault cases got thrown out of court in 2022 because you are underfunding the court system. This tough-on-crime government are allowing literally rapists to walk free. So that program that you were just talking about—you spent all that money rambling up this convicted criminal, but if that guy goes past 18 months, he walks. That’s the system that you’re so proud of.

Interjections.

You cited some stats around people making distinctive choices not to go into that sector because the working conditions are so tense and so hard, and they’ve been made more difficult by this government. But I always think about the existing resources in health right now. My concierge at my building, a block away, is a renal specialist from Pakistan. He would like to be a practising doctor in Ontario. So I would urge the government to look at all avenues to ensure we have the appropriate health care professionals working in Ontario.

The base funding that was included in this budget is already allocated to Bill 124. It’s already spent.

This is—22 hospitals in Ontario are running deficits. So this budget allocation, unfortunately for all of us in all of our ridings, misses the mark so profoundly. It truly was a missed opportunity to hear the acute message that we heard from acute care and allocate the appropriate funding. That did not happen.

I was pleased to see the government do that with midwives a little bit. So why not expand the scope so that actually we can meet the needs of health care? I will say my future daughter-in-law—I’ve told you my son is getting married. She’s a nurse at Grand River Hospital—

Interjections.

With every passing year, that hole gets bigger and bigger, right? This comes back to inflationary costs. But the fact that hospitals right now are—22 are running deficits. It should be a red flag for this government that the funding is not keeping pace.

But also, when you inject that 30% for-profit part, that 30% is a huge carve-out in a multi-billion-dollar budget item. So what I would have to say is that I guess I’m going to have to see you on “the dark side of the moon,” because things are not going very well in the hospital sector.

They’re mad. They’re sad. They’re confused. They thought it was very un-Canadian to displace—some of the most productive farmers in Ontario are in Wilmot township. The farming sector contributes $47.8 billion to the economy of Ontario, and this government wants to pave over those 770 acres.

One of the farmers said, “Listen, I don’t even know what to say to you.” He goes, “I don’t even know if I should plant my seeds this year,” because the organization from the United States that came to do the dirty work, Canacre, said, “We’re going to offer you $29,000 an acre, and if you don’t sell to us, we’re going to take it.”

What does that sound like? Does that sound very democratic to you? I would say no. Are we getting any answers from the various levels of government? I would say no. Although, the Premier said he fully supports it, and they put the call out for these kinds of expropriation, mega industrial sites. You can’t eat an EV battery; I’m telling you right now. This is sort of the greenwashing that we’re seeing, what’s happening in Wilmot township.

And farmers, let’s be honest, vote for the Conservatives, traditionally. They have. But, boy, do you know what? When you break the trust with a farmer and that relationship is compromised and then you are part and parcel of the stealing of his or her land, they’re not going to vote for you anymore. And they have long memories, I’ll tell you this much. I know a farmer. He’s a dairy farmer. He’s our House leader. He’s got a long memory.

So, for some reason, now the Premier needs $6.9 million just to run his office? This is what Jay Goldberg says: “I think that we’re paying a lot more but we’re not necessarily getting more.” Well, isn’t that the truth?

“The increase—136% in five years—also eclipses what Wynne’s Premier’s office spent on staff.” And then they go into what the previous Liberals—and I do remember the outrage, because I was here and so was my colleague from Niagara and so was my colleague from London, is that if the previous Liberal Premier had done this, the Conservatives, who all sat here, would be furious. There are some people who would be—

Interjection.

Interjection.

And then also, this is a government that has given—almost everybody has parliamentary assistant status. A few people have got King’s Counsel status. These are good titles if you can get it.

Just for reference, we as MPPs, our salaries here have been frozen here for 14 years. But we come here every day and we work really hard. But for some reason, the Premier has found a nice little workaround on these salaries.

This is the final line: “At the same time, nearly every member of the Ontario Progressive Conservative caucus has been named as a cabinet minister or parliamentary assistant, topping up their MPP salaries by thousands....

“Goldberg said the ‘runaway spending’ is a sign that costs at Queen’s Park need to be reined in.” Well, I think this is something that we could totally agree with, across party lines. If the Premier wants to reduce his staffing in the Premier’s office, we fully support that. We will work hand in hand with you to help make that happen.

What we will not do is allow the government to say everything is great in education, when we see how many students are being removed from their educational experience, especially special-needs students; when we still have a broken transportation funding model. Kids should not be on buses for an hour and a half one way just to save a few bucks. So if the Premier wants to divert some of that $6.9 million to a breakfast program, we’re 100% in support of making that happen.

It does tell a story, and this is really the important part of having a budget and transparency. I am worried about transparency, I will just say, because a new bill was just dropped today that’s going to be looking at the FOI process. One of the only ways that we as legislators have been able to access information from this government has been through freedom-of-information requests. It takes a long time. We’ve really benefited, I think, from the Canadian Press, when they actually disclosed how many nurses are needed in Ontario and how many doctors are needed. The government wanted to prevent people from knowing that information. If you were on this side, you would be incensed by that, because these are numbers that should direct where funding goes, that should direct resources to ensure that we can stabilize the health care system, for instance. That’s where we are with that, Madam Speaker.

And even though we bring solutions, like the caregiver motion that my colleague from Niagara had brought forward—you don’t want more people going into the emergency room with acute health care needs. You want to make sure that people can stay in their home as long as possible. People need financial resources and support to do that, because the long-term-care system is 100% a mess in Ontario.

For me, whenever I talk about long-term care, I have to talk about Jim MacLeod and his wife, Joan. Jim just called me on Saturday morning, and, you know, your heart breaks—it really does. He said, “I’m really sorry, Catherine, to call you on a Saturday morning, but what’s happening? Why can’t they call Bill 21 at committee?” You’ve said that if it’s not a perfect bill, then let’s find a solution. Let’s find a compassionate solution. If we all agree that separating seniors who have been married for years in the last years of their lives—Joan and Jim MacLeod have been married for over 65 years, but they’ve been separated for the last five and a half. Jim is a tough guy. He comes from the insurance sector. He used to chase money. He’s used to the fights. He’s a strong guy. But let’s be honest: They’re running out of time.

In the last shuffle, the member from, I think, Mississauga has now been transferred over to that file. Listen, whenever you want to talk about it, whenever you want to try to fix it, we’ll come to social policy. The bill needs to be called, though, because spousal reunification is good for the health care system, first and foremost. If you want to make the economic argument, keeping spouses together, having them care for each other in long-term care, is good for both those people, but it’s also good for the entire system.

But also, we take this oath when we get elected. We say a prayer every morning. We talk about using our power wisely. We talk about putting the people who we’re elected to serve at the centre of that conversation.

We can fix this. We can fix and design a long-term-care system with care campuses, so that Jim doesn’t have to drive all the way to Hilltop, which takes about half an hour every day, to see his wife Joan. He should just be able to walk down the hallway, where she has different needs, because he’s more independent, because people don’t age at the same time. This is not new information.

But it does come down to priorities, I would say. And I personally will be reaching out to the new committee member from Mississauga Centre, MPP Kusendova, who now is on that committee. Maybe two women can get this done; I don’t know. But I am just urging the Minister of Long-Term Care to call the bill, to find a solution. If you want to rewrite it, call it a different name, I don’t care. I just want the government members on that side of the House to understand that this is an urgent issue because they are running out of time to be together. And it’s time.

From the Pink Floyd album Dogs, there is this quote that says, “You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to.” It is a very powerful quote for a song lyric, because I feel—and I don’t know if you feel this way—that people are starting to lose faith in this place.

Oh, the other reversal was the Hazel McCallion Act, where they were going to make Mississauga stand-alone, and now they’ve just sent the bill for efficiencies and I think it’s at about $6.9 million right now. You can’t even make this up. The story was very interesting, because this was all happening in the Premier’s Office, and the transition committee that is earning six figures—all of them—could not get a call back from the Premier’s Office. So I would say the $6.9-million budget you’ve got going on there, you’re not getting good value for; let’s be honest. So that was one of the other reversals.

But this line is very powerful, because I am genuinely concerned about our democracy in Ontario. Moving to make the freedom-of-information process less accessible is problematic. Think about all of the times we have had to go to court to get mandate letters or fight unconstitutional legislation like Bill 124. You didn’t even just lose one time in court on Bill 124, when it was deemed unconstitutional; you did it twice. You doubled down on an unconstitutional piece of legislation, which really—I think the impact of this Bill 124 is going to be felt in this province for a long time, because trust was compromised.

And there are some people who, I think, have become comfortably numb—also another Pink Floyd lyric—but we are not that. We’re coming here each and every day to propose some solutions, be they on housing, in the face of the epic failure on the housing file, I would have to say—I mean, even on housing, one of the first steps that should happen is that at least those people who are renters—give them some consistency. Give them some surety, if you will. But when we’re seeing these above-guideline rents just become the norm, then that destabilizes even the renters.

On health care: As we pointed out, the fact that the Minister of Health is on the record saying that there is no concern around the lack of doctors—I mean, is it intentionally starting a fire? I remember back in the 1990s, in 1995, when Snobelen said, “I want to create a crisis,” because, boy, when you create a crisis, you can get away with a lot of things, Madam Speaker. You don’t have to create the crisis, though, anymore, because the crisis is real. The crisis is successful years of underfunding and policy inconsistencies, which has destabilized both health care and education.

And then when I go back and I look at the advertising money that this province is spending, including—very good connector piece—with ACTRA today, where the government is employing non-unionized advertisers in the face of a two-year lockout for ACTRA. How can anybody in this very expensive Premier’s office think that this is a good idea? How can you defend that expenditure when you are intentionally undermining the very people that are a part of that creative economy, which is also very undervalued by this government?

Finally, I just want to say, on the post-secondary education file, I have two universities in my riding, the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier. I also have Conestoga College. That sector was looking for real leadership from budget 2024. They were pretty clear that there are no vast reserves, as has been suggested by the minister. This is what they said: “The budget is a death knell for the post-secondary institutions, and so many are at risk of going under, under this government’s watch.”

So if you step back and you look at how this government has made very specific and targeted funding announcements for specific communities and projects which benefit the very prominent people of the development sector, for instance—you are prioritizing that work in the face of the fact that we are seeing breakfast programs cancelled, for instance.

The mental health piece: When I met with the Associate Minister of Mental Health on the need for more alternative destination clinics so that people are not going to emergency rooms when they are in crisis—I hope that we can agree that a hospital room, a busy, chaotic hospital room, is not the best place to go when you are in crisis. Alternative destination clinics—your own minister supports them, but the money is not there.

So the way that you actually demonstrate that you understand these issues and that you actually care about these issues is that you have targeted resources allocated, and I would even say enveloped, in this budget for mental health.

I didn’t get a chance to talk at length about municipalities, but there was nothing in this budget to make them whole. Right now, we are seeing councils hire former staffers out of the Premier’s office so that they can gain access to the Premier’s office. This is today’s story, where people are making money by selling—opening the door to the Premier’s office, a little seat at the table.

Everybody in this province should have a seat in this House and access to their government representatives. They should not have to buy access, Madam Speaker. They should not have to, especially municipalities, because there’s a lot of rhetoric around how they are our partners and we’re working with them; meanwhile, you undermine their planning decisions at every single turn.

I think I will just leave you with one of the greatest quotes from Pink Floyd, which says, “Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?”

The silence that we hear from the government members on some of these truly, I would say, unethical funding decisions, around funding priorities around where the money is going, really tells the true story of what’s happening in that Premier’s office, even as the staffing allocation explodes.

We, on this side of the House, truly believe that the province of Ontario is worth fighting for. That is why we show up here every single day. Our goal is to hold the government to account, especially through this budget process, to make sure that you know that you are missing key areas to make the lives of Ontarians better in this province. And I have to say, it shouldn’t surprise you at all: There is no way that we will ever be supporting a budget that misses the mark so profoundly.

“We don’t need no thought control,” yes. I’m just really channelling Pink Floyd a little bit today.

This is what they said: “The job has changed in such a way that teachers are leaving the profession in numbers we’ve never seen before.” They are leaving the profession because of the conditions of the system.

And these are young teachers too. I just want to say that my husband, Dale, teaches at Waterloo-Oxford. He’s a mentor. He’s a department head. He has got some young teachers there, and they cannot believe the pressure and the responsibility around the mental health piece in particular, because not all teachers have a degree in psychology. That’s not why they’re there. There used to be social workers. There used to be child and youth workers. There used to be educational workers who were trained to adapt to this new world.

And there’s no doubt that social media has impacted this. There’s no doubt that social media has an impact on mental health. But having cameras around the schools is not going to solve the problem of unravelling some of that tension and that anxiety. And so, we value quality trained staff. We know that quality trained education staff keep kids safe.

Let’s be honest: The education system, in so many ways, fills those gaps for so many children. The fact that this morning our leader was talking about a breakfast program that’s being cut in Hamilton—boy, Hamilton is hurting. There is some pain there. There’s an adjustment after that industrial sort of push. They are modernizing, but the gentrification in some of these communities, where people can’t afford to live in their neighbourhoods where they have lived for years, is real.

When I was a school board trustee, I used to go to these breakfast programs—because not even the Liberals would fund the administrative cost. They would fund the materials, but they would never fund the operations. It had to be volunteers. I guess the Liberals and the Conservatives still haven’t got the idea that when children are hungry, they are not going to learn. It’s not going to happen.

When I was a trustee, I remember going to one breakfast program one year, and there were stair-step kids. There were three stair-steps: grade 6, grade 4 and grade 2. They were there at that breakfast program a half hour early, and they were hungry. The ladies who volunteered to distribute the English muffins and the cheese said that they would wrap them up for their lunch and for their supper.

The thought that this breakfast program is going to be cancelled—I mean, surely this is a good investment. It’s a good strategic investment to ensure that children have the appropriate nutrition, that they can reach their potential. If you’ve ever seen me hangry, you would also agree that it impacts behaviour, as well, and it does impact classroom management when kids are hungry. There’s no doubt about it.

Just to finish off on the teacher shortage—why are we facing a teacher shortage? It’s about the working conditions. People are completely burnt-out because the job continues to get harder and harder. Teachers are burning out, quitting or retiring. And the teachers who stay are taking more sick leave, but the supply shortage means fewer teachers are available to fill in for those who are off sick—so the failure to fill, I can tell you, in high schools across Ontario is changing the whole culture of how we talk about wellness in our workplace and how we respect the people who are on the front lines, for sure.

I do want to say, I have examined where the money is going in this budget, and one of the most egregious areas that we’ve seen an increase in, which really surprised me a little bit, was the Premier’s office, his cabinet office.

This piece is from earlier in April, and it reads, “‘His Own Gravy Train’: Cost of Staffing Doug Ford’s Office More Than Double Kathleen Wynne’s”—well, so much for streamlined and tightening the belt and reducing the expenditures, and even being careful, even going through the optics of being careful about where money is going. This government is not even concerned. Their hubris on this issue is profound.

“The cost and size of the Premier’s office in Ontario has ballooned” under this government. “Despite promising to be careful with public money, Ford’s office is much larger and more expensive than his Liberal predecessor....” Well, isn’t that interesting? It is about priorities.

Budgets are supposed to be moral documents which tell the people we’re elected to serve about the—it demonstrates our priorities. For some reason, now the Premier’s priority is his own office, in the face of breakfast programs closing up, in the face of record use of food bank use, in the face of record demovictions and renovictions, in the face of above-guideline rent increases that are displacing seniors out of their homes and out of their communities. And for the 77% of renters in Ontario, it further destabilizes the economy, because a vast majority of their take-home pay is now going towards rent, which is arbitrarily being raised, and that is not good for the economy.

There is a serious productivity issue in this province. When people are constantly concerned about how they’re going to afford food, how they’re going to afford their rent, how they’re going to make sure that their children have the supplies that they need to go to school, this destabilizes the economy.

There was an opportunity in this budget to stabilize. That’s what we should be focused on right now, because it is so precarious out there, especially for the part-time workers in Ontario.

I haven’t seen too many members on the government side defend the Premier for his vastly expensive office, so I’m going to be curious to see what some of the members say about this, because this is not your traditional fiscal conservativism: “The cost of staffing the Premier’s office ... has more than doubled since 2018, according to public salary disclosure data, spending that has far outpaced” the former Premier Kathleen Wynne.

“Public salary disclosures of those making $100,000 or more, also known as the sunshine list, for 2023 show the total number of staff in the Premier’s office ... along with the number of people earning six figures, has grown since 2019....

“The increase in spending is a departure from the government’s initial declaration that Ford was ushering in a ‘new era of fiscal responsibility and respect for taxpayers.’”

When people show you who they really are, you should really believe them. Their actions, obviously, are more important than the press releases.

“The Premier said that under his stewardship, his government would search for savings while remaining mindful of how Queen’s Park was spending public dollars.”

Yes, that’s what was said. But in 2019, the first full year in office, they had 20 employees who made the sunshine list, and there was a cost of $2.9 million in total compensation. In 2023, the number of Premier’s office employees on the sunshine list more than doubled to 48—48—with a combined compensation of $6.9 million.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a group that I’m always surprised that I’m quoting—just as I am surprised to be quoting Pink Floyd—they say, “‘That’s unacceptable,’ said Jay Goldberg.... ‘Is the Premier’s office two or three times more effective than they were just a few years ago?’” I think not, especially with some of the legislation that you’ve had to reverse, even in Bill 185.

You’ve spent a vast amount of energy and money reversing decisions, right? You got caught on the greenbelt. There was a mea culpa, but you still found a way to dig away at the greenbelt, especially around Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass. It’s happening in Windsor. It’s going to happen in Ottawa. It’s certainly happening in Waterloo, Waterloo region, where this government is condoning and encouraging the expropriation of 770 acres of prime farmland—so much for respecting farmers. If you see the testimony for these farmers—

I know, right? It’s quite something.

That was the first introduction of the omnibus bill. These omnibus bills are very problematic, because you can actually have some good things in them, but then you always have a poison pill and so we obviously have to vote against it. They actually were referenced during those 1996-97 years as bully bills.

It’s funny, because Alvin Curling stood in his place in this House—

Interjection.

I want to actually thank Steve Paikin for posting that, because I find that sort of stuff interesting.

Our own Peter Kormos also was successful in, I believe, doing 21 hours of a filibuster at the time. Of course, we can’t do that now; if we did, we would be here all the time, I have to tell you, because the legislation—including even this latest Bill 185, this so-called “build more housing, cutting red tape” bill, which is going to create so many problems for our municipalities across this province.

I’m going to circle back to health care.

During the pre-budget consultations, we heard from so many organizations, and the language that they were using, I personally have never heard before. They said, “We’ve hit the wall. We are well past the tipping point. There is a tsunami of broken people in our communities. We do not have the medical staff to take care of them.” On the mental health file, never have I seen the anxiety around the lack of mental health resources to be so profound.

In our northern and rural communities, these problems are highlighted, I would have to say. We still, obviously, are fighting for culturally appropriate health care so that people have a connection with their doctor. But in northern communities, it is very dire.

I want to thank our northern members, including our amazing health critic from Nickel Belt, who has been just tracking the money—because it doesn’t matter all of the press releases that you quote; when you start believing your own press releases that you wrote, this is a problem. But at the end of the day, it really does matter where the money is going. And of course, the figure that’s contained within the budget also includes the compensation for Bill 124.

You’re very proud of saying, “This is a historic amount of historic funding.” I’ve never heard the word “historic” used in such an unhistoric way—and incorrectly, I might add.

Where we are right now is a standoff with doctors in Ontario—and where we are right now is, we have a Minister of Health who is not concerned, she says, about the diminished supply of doctors. This is a very dangerous standoff, I just want to say. We’ve seen this play out, actually, even in our education system, where the out-migration of teachers from that sector has been—I would say, obviously, we’ve never seen that many teachers—usually teachers are moving into the system with great enthusiasm, because it’s a calling; teaching is a calling, to be an educator. But now, even following this debate and listening to the minister really diminish those concerns that exist in the system, and then not acknowledge the impact of the learning and working conditions of our classrooms and how that is impacting people staying or leaving the field—this is basic common sense: If your work experience is dreadful, if you aren’t able to actually meet the needs of your complex students in your classroom because of underfunding, because of a lack of human resources, that is going to impact whether or not you stay in the profession. This is not a complicated concept here.

This is an article from Allison Jones from the Canadian Press: “Arbitration with province’s doctors over compensation in dire shape”—and this is the Ontario Medical Association. Listen to some of these things that the minister has actually said. I’ll set the stage for you:

“Recruitment and retention of doctors in Ontario is ‘not a major concern,’ the Ministry of Health suggests in arguments it is making in arbitration with the Ontario Medical Association over physician compensation.

“The argument from the province comes as the OMA, which represents Ontario’s doctors, has repeatedly warned that more than two million residents don’t have a family doctor and thousands of physician jobs are going unfilled.”

This reminds me of that Pink Floyd lyric; you know the one—I always listen to Pink Floyd. Nobody believes that, but this is it—“Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?” That’s pretty relevant, eh? I mean, Pink Floyd is amazing, I have to say. But literally, you’ve called these people heroes, and yet when you sit down with them in arbitration, the conversation becomes less respectful, I would say.

“But the talks are going so poorly that an arbitrator is now being asked to determine compensation levels for the first year while the two sides work on the 2025-2028 period”—so they’re pushing this down the line. There are no solutions here, because there’s no respect, and you’re not going to get to a stabilized place with doctors in Ontario if you do not respect those doctors.

It goes on to say, “Things are in such dire shape that that’s the fastest way to get money out the door to stabilize family doctors’ practices”—by pushing it down to 2025-28. And this is coming from Dr. David Barber, the chair of OMA’s section on general and family practice.

In between, in these articles, there’s old titles, and one of these titles says, “Want More Family Doctors in Ontario? Pay Them Better” and “Can’t Find a Family Doctor? It Might Be Because They’re Busy Doing Other Specialties”—you know where they’re going? They’re going to the private sector, because this government has said, “Listen, it’s the Wild West out there right now, and we’re really friendly towards these medical businesses versus public health care.” It’s very clear where the resources and the talent are going.

So David Barber, who is the chair of OMA section on general and family practice:

“The government’s arguments in its arbitration brief are unlikely to improve relations, he said.... It’s really quite insulting.”

How can this government, after all of this time, after seeing what happened in the education system, after seeing what happened to the nurses, not acknowledge that doctors will walk? They will go to other sectors. They will go to other provinces. If we have 2.2 million Ontarians right now who do not have a family doctor, in five years we’re going to have 4.6 million Ontarians that do not have a family doctor.

Why I should have to explain that family doctors are the gatekeepers to the entire medical system—that is the way our system is designed. You don’t want more people going to the emergency room to access basic medical health care when those hospitals, those acute care centres, are already overrun, in a state of chaos and in a state of crisis—and also running a deficit. There is a cost to not dealing with doctors in a respectful manner, and this cost is increasing costs in other parts of the system, instead of just having a respectful dialogue around arbitration.

Barber goes on to say, “The numbers are one thing, right, but ... the government’s approach here is their briefing essentially says there’s nothing wrong. I get there’s posturing, but this is actually quite dangerous posturing on the side of the government.”

This is coming from the Ontario Medical Association, calling your rhetoric on the state of medical care, the state of doctors in Ontario—they are calling your actions as a government dangerous. And it’s dangerous for so many reasons.

“The average physician income adjustments compared favourably with other settlements where retention and recruitment is not a major concern,” the ministry wrote. And this is a direct quote: “We will illustrate that there is no concern of a diminished supply of physicians. Across Canada, Ontario has the best record in attracting medical graduates to train in Ontario. Further, Ontario has enjoyed a growth in physicians that far outstrips population growth.”

This is what the government is saying at the Ontario Medical Association arbitration. Can you believe this? Can you believe that the government has one in four people in a few years who is not going to have a doctor, and the Minister of Health is saying, “There is nothing to see here. There is no concern.”

In order to address a problem, you need to at least acknowledge that the problem exists. In Kingston recently, there was a lineup of 200 to 300 people just trying to access urgent care. In Kitchener-Waterloo, 70,000 people do not have a doctor—between 60,000 and 70,000 people. And this is with the chamber of commerce working 100%, every single day, trying to recruit more medical professionals into our region. Because—I shouldn’t have to explain this—when you have access to medical facilities and when you have access to really great schools, this social infrastructure draws investment into our communities. They are dependent upon each other.

So this rhetoric that’s coming from the Ministry of Health during what most people would acknowledge, especially if you don’t have a family doctor, is a crisis, is such a dangerous game, and it feels like a bit of a game from the Minister of Health.

I’ll just tell you an example of how it impacts people. It’s certainly impacting the people in Minden, right? People aren’t going to buy a house in Minden if they don’t have access to an emergency room. I want my parents, Allan and Sheila, to move from Peterborough to come to Waterloo. They can’t move because they can’t find a doctor. This also impacts quality of life.

You know, you don’t see this in the commercials that the taxpayers pay for: “It’s all happening here.” Yes, it’s all happening here: 2.2 million Ontarians don’t have a family doctor. That’s not something that the government wants to acknowledge or even pay attention to, it seems like, because, according to the Minister of Health, this is not of great concern to her. I’m telling you right now, this is a huge concern for the people of this province, and for very good reasons.

Ontario right now is short more than 2,000 doctors—2,000 doctors, right? Sure, start a medical school. That’s great. It takes almost 10 years from beginning to end to become a doctor in Ontario. Very few doctors want to go into family medicine anymore. They are looking where the money is.

The government has sort of carved off a whole market share on eyes, on hips. So you’ve created a whole new market for for-profit health care. You have created a very competitive sector where, if you’ve got the money, you can get to the front of the line. When the Premier once said, “You’ll never have to use your credit card”—this is factually incorrect. People are using their credit card to access health care in Ontario. In fact, we continue to bring stories to the floor of this Legislature because we believe truly in maintaining what we have left, anyway, of the universal health care system, and it shouldn’t depend on how much money you make, especially with a growing population—the demographics in this province, more and more seniors on fixed incomes. Them going to access health care and getting a bill is very stressful. We hear about it all the time in our office in Waterloo.

So this is where we are. Our health critic says the government needs to work with doctors to address the issues that are driving physicians out of family medicine. Amen. That’s exactly what needs to happen. “Over two million people don’t have a doctor.... Instead of trying to solve this problem, the government wants to ignore it.” We agree with the Ontario Medical Association that this is a very dangerous game to be playing on health care.

It is interesting; I have actually never seen this before, but the Ontario Union of Family Physicians have started a petition to call on the minister to resign. I’ve never seen doctors become this political, ever, in Ontario, so that is historic. I guess I can say that. That’s the correct use of the word “historic.” This is what they say: The Ontario Physician Services Agreement—they entered into arbitration between the Ontario Medical Association and the Ministry of Health, and then they go on to say:

“We have now learned through the publicly released details of the ... arbitration briefs that the government has no intentions on taking appropriate steps to address the family medicine crisis in Ontario. In fact, the Minister of Health ... response to the worsening crisis in family medicine is to outright deny there is any crisis at all. Her comments state ‘there is no concern of a diminished supply of physicians’ and that ‘retention and recruitment is not a major concern.’ This is a slap in the face to Ontarians, particularly to the 2.3 million in Ontario who do not have access to a family doctor and for those who have recently or will soon lose their family doctor due to inadequate funding and increasing administrative burden. The Ontario College of Family Physicians projects that by the year 2026, one in four Ontarians will not have a family doctor.”

You can avert this crisis, but you need to get back to the table and you need to be more respectful. They go on to say that “these comments are insensitive and dangerous. They also signal that the Ontario government has abandoned addressing the health care needs of Ontarians and is akin to denying to recognize Ontarians’ basic right to access universal health care.” So they are calling for the immediate resignation of the Ontario health minister. “Our current health care system is simply unacceptable. Ontario deserve better.” We agree, 100%, and until you redesign the system, doctors are key to accessing the health care system in Ontario, full stop.

I do want to move on just very quickly to education, because we did have a really painful debate, I have to say. To listen to such a—we’re so far apart on the education file. It’s like you’ve never stepped foot in a public school; you’ve never talked to a parent whose child has special needs and has had to be sent home because the staff are not there. When we talked about special education staff having to wear protective equipment like Kevlar, you laughed. Every year since 2018, I have to say, it’s like death by a thousand cuts.

I also want to point out that traditional conservatives acknowledge that inflation pressures are real. Inflationary pressures are not fictional. The FAO has clearly outlined the gap in really addressing the costs of education in the education file. But boy, you know, as someone who got involved in politics because of education, I will always show up for education, because it is always worth fighting for. People have said that it is the great equalizer. I have to say, I fully, 100%, agree with that.

The fact that the Minister of Education, earlier today, would not acknowledge that learning conditions and environments are working conditions—when we talk about educators—teachers were not mentioned in the budget bill, by the way. Whatever increase is in there is really allocated for Bill 124 costs, so you created a problem and now you have to pay more for the problem. You also created more problems because of Bill 124, and that was the out-migration of staff.

I fully support what our leader said during this debate when she said students in Ontario “deserve better than basics.” They deserve all of our attention and all of our energy and strategic investment in ensuring that children in the public education system can reach their potential. But when you see how many people—there are huge concerns around the number of non-teachers working in classrooms. These numbers have skyrocketed under the leadership of this minister. That’s nothing to be proud of, I must say. Schools can’t find enough supply teachers, so they’re using non-teachers to be in those classrooms.

In the Waterloo Catholic District School Board, about five years ago, it was maybe 100 times a month, very random, over the course of those 30 days. Now that number is 899 non-teaching staff in those classrooms. That’s nine times more since that point.

In the Waterloo public, it was 600 days a month over the winter to use non-teachers in the classroom, and on average it’s about 200 to 300 days a month now when no teacher was available. And I think that this is the key piece here, that educators—I call them educators because they are educators. I don’t call them union bosses and insult them to their face. That’s actually not good for morale, I just want to say.

There’s that Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall: “We don’t need no education”—

Yes, that’s good. Thank you very much.

Say what you want; we punch above our weight in the research department, I can tell you, usually out of necessity. But we put in a dissenting opinion that has never been this long, because the grievances are so real.

And really, Madam Speaker, when you go through the process of engaging the public on what they would like to see in the budget and then you essentially ignore everything that they asked for, this is insulting, and we can do better as legislators. We’re so far apart on so many issues, but there’s no willingness even to compromise on those investments that would save the health care system money down the line, for instance. And this includes access to medication or even oxygen. We heard from several organizations about the cost of oxygen and the availability of oxygen as medicine, and this government refused to even entertain increasing the availability and reducing the cost to people who require oxygen to live. I think it’s very symbolic, Madam Speaker. We can all agree, I would hope, that oxygen is one of those key factors in staying alive—but not with this government.

The other thing I do want to say is that during the consultations in Oakville, we were at the Holiday Inn ballroom. We’re all set up there, and the Canadian council of universities started their deputation to us. It was a big ballroom; there was a lot of room for people to come and watch us listen or talk—more listen, I would say—and then a leak started to happen in the ballroom. As the council of Canadian universities kept moving forward with their presentation, the leak got more profound and more water started to come in. And just at the moment when the CEO of the Canadian council of universities mentioned the infrastructure deficit on our campuses, the ceiling came down and we had to suspend the pre-budget consultations—again, very symbolic. However, the ignoring of the original leak proved to be very meaningful at that very moment.

I just wanted to reference the fact that, today, this is actually a historical time in this Legislature. It goes all the way back to the Mike Harris years—1996, when the first omnibus bill was brought into this Legislature, and it was by the previous Premier, Mike Harris, who had his slogan, “Make Ontario Great Again.”

I’m so pleased to be here today. I’m going to say it like I mean it: I’m really pleased to be here today. This budget, budget 2024, we have been very vocal about the gaps that we see in this budget and I’m going to talk about some of the amendments, but I’ve been listening to some Pink Floyd recently, and I’m going to try to get some Pink Floyd quotes on the record because it’s very applicable to this current culture of this government.

I’m really doing this for my own amusement, but at third reading, we need all the help we can get, especially having gone through an extensive pre-budget consultation process where myself and my colleague from London North travelled around the province, and our colleagues met us in Hamilton and northern Ontario. Although, I must point out to the government members who are so happily here, as well, that no Toronto pre-budget consultations were scheduled. This government left Toronto off the pre-budget agenda. And I have to say, I know that there is some bias towards the GTA area; certainly earlier, the Minister of Health was talking about how we’re just downtown New Democrats, even though I’m from Waterloo and we’ve got people from Windsor; we’ve got people from northern Ontario; we’ve got people in the Ottawa area.

Toronto matters. It really, really does, and the fact that this government intentionally removed Toronto delegations from the budget process was very problematic, because this is the economic engine of Ontario. The connectivity with our various communities truly does matter, and if you are trying to design and craft a budget that meets the needs of the people who we are elected to serve, then you need to include Toronto. I wanted to point that out.

I also wanted to say that we did try to make this budget bill better during committee. We introduced two significant amendments. We’re, of course, limited, just so you know, in what we can do. This obviously is not the budget that I would have designed, by a long shot. But I do want to say, we did try to make it better and, very quickly, we introduced a couple of amendments.

One of the amendments proposed an emergency room emergency fund, because we have had so many emergency closures across this province. When those small rural hospitals are shutting their ERs down—in Durham, there was emergency room closures, as well—I think there were 203 over the course of the last year. That’s another record in the province of Ontario—check—for this government. We’ve never seen these kinds of closures for emergency rooms ever in the history of the province of Ontario, and it is impacting the health and safety and well-being of the people that we’re elected to serve; make no mistake about that.

So what we did is that we created a new schedule to create an emergency room emergency fund, to keep ERs open that would otherwise be shut down due to the lack of funding. And do you know who actually recommended this? They came to committee, and I want to thank the good folks from Minden, because that community got blindsided as this government allowed and permitted and fast-tracked the closure of their emergency room in Minden. It’s heartbreaking for that community. They have been tracking the deficits of the hospitals in this province, and you would have to be literally with your head in the sand to not know how dire the situation is for our acute-care hospitals in Ontario. So we proposed this; of course, it went nowhere.

And then one of the schedules, of course, renames the infrastructure bank to the new Building Ontario Fund. The infrastructure bank was introduced originally in the fall economic statement; it’s copying the federal Liberal infrastructure bank, which has been an abject failure. So instead of this government actually looking at a mechanism that would assist with infrastructure development, do you know what they did? They just rebranded it. They just called it a new name.

We tried to really get at the heart of what this new Building Ontario Fund would look like: What are the parameters? What’s the framework? We don’t have a lot of confidence in this government’s ability to create legislation, or even regulations, well, and so what we did is we introduced an amendment that would ensure that the Ontario Infrastructure Bank—or the Building Ontario Fund, now—would not allow for public dollars to be used for private, for-profit projects that would otherwise get built. This makes a lot of sense, because, as my colleague has pointed out, this province is in massive debt and with an ongoing $9.8-billion operational funding shortfall, which was not predicted even in the fall economic statement.

So people are paying the price for your poor policy decisions, for your poor legislative decisions, and the costs for Bill 124 in total, the FAO predicts, are at $13.7 billion. I’d like to point out that that is money you put your hands in the pockets of Ontarians for, because this government talks about pockets a lot. You put your hands in the pockets of Ontarians when you introduced Bill 124, an unconstitutional piece of legislation which caps wages at 1%, then you called everybody who was working during that pandemic—the nurses, the front-line health care workers, the doctors—heroes, but you capped them at 1%, which is a contributing factor to the out-migration of those health care professionals in Ontario—100% for sure it is.

So what we wanted to make sure with this new Building Ontario Fund—how would the implementation happen? Because reduced public financing for long-term-care facilities or affordable housing that are normally privately financed that would not otherwise get built is an issue. And public financing is a big part of our Homes Ontario plan, because this government has to get back in the business of building truly attainable affordable housing. The Ontario Chamber of Commerce has encouraged this government to build that kind of housing, not market share. This is truly affordable attainable housing, because that is the stabilizer for the economy, right?

And we now know, after five and a half painful years of this particular government, that housing starts are down. It is very disturbing to see these numbers decrease in the face of people living in tents and temporary shelters across this great province. That crisis is real.

If you were serious about stabilizing the housing market, you would get back into the business of building non-market housing. We have a plan. We presented it to you in the face of a really positive solution, one part of the solution to address the housing crisis. This government said no. They’re very good at saying no to us, as they just did earlier, on the education funding.

However, it would not be worthwhile to allow costly private financing to displace affordable public financing. So, we tried to get some clarity on this, because, I have to tell you—I mean, there’s a lot of talk about the gravy train in this place, but we’re really focused now on the gravy stains, because you keep leaving a path of destruction and, quite honestly, really poor fiscal decisions which we are going to end up paying the cost for.

So we tried to make the bill better. It didn’t go very well for us, because it’s a supermajority here at Queen’s Park. We did put a dissenting opinion, though. This is a record-long dissenting opinion; I believe it’s nine pages long. I do want to thank my staff in my office, Karissa Singh, who is my legislative assistant, and Steffi Burgi, who is an OLIP intern—they’re doing amazing work—but also Caitlin Hipkiss, who is our researcher.

Interjections.

I did get asked in a scrum about a week ago about this, and yes, the government decided that they needed another media studio. It’s a cost of $300,000 to $350,000. It’s a very controlled environment, where the media can only ask one question and one follow-up question. The media as a whole feel like this is just another way for the government to avoid accountability and transparency—which, this government is now fully embracing the lack of accountability and transparency. And so, no, the people of this province did not put out a call-out for a bunker media studio over in the finance building, where the media have to go in order to hear what the government is doing. That is not how an open and transparent government works. One would even say you’re not even open for business on the media part.

I will say that what we heard is that municipalities, through Bill 23, identified a $1-billion loss every year for infrastructure. So the fact that the government is coming back with $1.3 billion is really a bit of a shell game, right? You’re taking that $1 billion a year away from municipalities through the loss of development fees. Developers are happy about that. But then you’re subsidizing that infrastructure cost with taxpayer dollars, so people in Ontario get to pay twice, really, for these infrastructure promises.

What I will say is that there’s so much room for improvement with municipalities right now. They are hungry for some leadership. But they are also, as I indicated with Wilmot, moving—the lack of transparency around housing developments right now is a real problem, and in Wilmot, paving over 770 acres of prime agricultural land is very problematic for us.

Whatever.

The cap-and-trade program, honestly, was very focused on the highest industrial polluters and then that funding would go back to the greening—investing back in those businesses, in that manufacturing. I mean, based on how few times we’ve seen climate change in the budget, it’s almost like you’ve got your head in the sand on this one, because the smart money is on conservation, the smart money is on strategic investment.

And the lack of transparency around the funding in this place—really, I’m just going to circle back to this—is very key to the undermining of our democracy, which I see and I feel we are seeing in real-time at Queen’s Park; way worse than the Liberals I have to say—way worse. When you have a Minister of Energy overriding public good to benefit a corporation like Enbridge, you have lost the plot and this budget does not meet the moment. If you were looking for support from this government around affordability, it is not in Bill 180, I give you that much.

Let’s remember that the Auditor General has one job, and that is to follow the money that has been spent, right. The female or the male auditor does not have purview of looking at where the money was spent well or where it was spent where it was needed. The mandate of the Auditor General has been challenged many times by this government. In fact, I would ask the member why has this Conservative government doubled down on the watered-down advertising policy that you criticized the Liberals for?

The Auditor General can only work within their mandate; I will tell you that much. Why is it that the Financial Accountability Officer and their expenditure monitor say that when you say you’re going to invest $5 million to the Alzheimer’s Society and that money doesn’t flow for 2021, 2022, 2023, that number is an atrocious record of this government? You say you’re going to invest and then you don’t get the money out the door. I mean, that is a failure of leadership, if I’ve ever seen it.

If a government has a choice before them to do the right thing for the people who we’re elected to serve, to make sure that the public as a whole is getting good value for money, that the money from a return on investment is ensuring that we have healthier people in the province, why would they then look to agency nurses, agencies who—many are publicly traded. Why would that be okay with the government to pay that nurse three times what a hospital nurse or acute-care nurse is making on the floor? In what Conservative fiscal world does that make any sense, paying three times as much for not having consistent care?

I mentioned my future daughter-in-law works alongside agency nurses. The agency nurse comes in as a temp, right? There’s no team. There’s no coordination of care. And she’s dealing with the smallest, most vulnerable babies in Waterloo region. It makes no sense, and it’s fiscally irresponsible, I would argue.

There is no doubt that you are moving completely in the wrong direction, and at the end of the day, this budget does not meet the needs of Ontarians. In fact, you’re doubling down on natural gas, which the independent regulator has said will leave us with stranded assets. You are setting this province up to fail on the energy file, and it should come back to bite you.

Immigrants and settlers, yes. And yet the Premier can stand in his place and start talking about these international students that are taking up these spaces.

Let’s be really clear and back the bus up a little bit here, because the reason that post-secondary institutions, colleges, moved to accelerate and commercialize international students is because the public system was so fundamentally underfunded, to the point of crisis. It started under the Liberals, and it continued and accelerated with this government.

Even your own blue ribbon panel had said, “Listen, you have to come to the table with operating funding.” Even when the Minister of Finance met with the editorial board of the Toronto Star, they said, “Listen, this is not sustainable. Your $1.3 billion that you’re going to put back into the system—that you’ve already taken out—is not going to cut it.”

So, post-secondary institutions started to look towards international students to generate revenue. This is a fact. It’s well-documented. It’s actually in your own blue ribbon report. So, to hear the Premier use this kind of language—and, listen, I know that the media show up every time, because you just really never know what’s going to be said by this Premier.

This morning, when the member from Oshawa asked a very legitimate question about the planning grant for the Whitby hospital, what she got back was just complete broken-telephone, grade 6 excuses. It’s so irresponsible, and I don’t know if it’s a personal thing, because sometimes get pretty personal with this Premier, but the fact that, if you want to be responsible and you know that the population is growing and you know that the population is aging and that, from a demographic perspective, we are going to have to have the resources and the people to take care of future generations, then the planning grant is really just a common sense first step, right?

Waterloo region received $25 million, I think, in the last budget. We’re going through the process of site location. It’s not going to be on 770 acres of farmland, I’ve been told. And we’re doing our due diligence. You want communities to do their due diligence, right? It’s the responsible thing to do, but is that happening? Did we get an answer from the Premier this morning to a very basic, common sense question around planning for future health care needs? No, we did not. We got some name calling, we got some generalizations, and I have to say it was—sometimes it’s just dumbfounding for me.

One of the other issues, as it relates to international students, Madam Speaker, which is really rearing its head in places like Kitchener-Waterloo because we have Laurier, we have University of Waterloo, we have Conestoga College, is that folks who are coming to Ontario—maybe sometimes they’re doing a PhD, they’re here and they’re doing their research and they have spouses, they have partners, and those partners sometimes are pregnant. But what we’re seeing is that these uninsured patients, international students who do have CIHIP or UHIP and then—this also is inclusive of Old Order Mennonites, Low German-speaking folks working in Ontario—they’re required a $5,000 deposit before they will take an initial visit.

So you want to talk about barriers to health care: $5,000 for an initial visit, even though you’re insured, is a true barrier. Additionally, Grand River Hospital is now requiring a $10,000 up-front deposit for delivery. Now, you have to remember that if you’ve travelled from, say, Nairobi, and you are specializing in nuclear physics at University of Waterloo and your spouse—but you’re still a student, you’re not making a lot of money, you’re still studying. Five thousand dollars just to see a doctor and $10,000 to guarantee a delivery of a baby—is this the Ontario dream? Is this the Canadian dream that we’ve talked about? It is not, remembering that all of us are settlers here in Ontario.

My office has been really great. We’re focused on this issue, we’re trying to find some solutions, we’re trying to find the disconnect. A letter went to the minister around what’s happening. But this is important, that the college of physicians and surgeons say that there are no rules around what they can charge uninsured folks. There are no rules, but it feels like they’re prioritizing uninsured folks who can pay rather than OHIP folks. This is a growing, emerging issue. I wanted to raise it today in the House, something very fundamentally unfair, unjust around asking $5,000 just to see an OB/GYN and then also to charge $10,000 cash to deliver a baby.

In keeping with the theme now, it’s pretty dark out there right now, and that’s keeping with our total eclipse of common sense here at Queen’s Park.

I’m going to move into the affordability piece. Also, just on the groceries, there’s a recent survey that showed that when people go to get food, they go to Food Basics, they go to Loblaws, more and more people are shopping for groceries at the dollar store. That stock is doing pretty well, I just want to tell you, More than 31% of Ontario residents voted price gouging as the top reason for escalating food prices.

So there are legislative options that this government could take around addressing price gouging and there was some pretty tough talk from this Premier during the pandemic. I mean, when he held up that bottle of $20 Windex—"I’m not going to take it anymore,” you know. I mean, lots of talk. Talk is so cheap, right? But actually, at the end of the day, when you say that you’re going to do something around price gouging, we would encourage you to act on it. Because those legislative tools are there; this government can do this.

This is a fundamental consumer protection issue, and the discrepancy between prices is real. And it’s a cost pressure that’s impacting the quality of life of the people of this great province, I would say particularly for seniors. I’m definitely seeing more and more seniors in my office, and more and more senior women, I find, because they certainly do not have the financial independence to secure housing, to secure the kind of food that they want, to actually have the kind of quality of life that they were considering, they were thinking about, that they thought Ontario would offer.

I do also just want to raise the issue around where certain grants are going for this government because my job is to follow the money. Sometimes it goes right down to a very dark hole. And I will say that one of the most egregious issues that we’ve learned about is around Indigenous communities and the agencies that care for some of those children really accelerating their pricing and their gouging of those costs.

Indigenous communities in northern Ontario have been told on several fronts that agencies that are in the caring industry are actually using First Nations’ contracts and viewing those children that come into care which they describe as “cash cows.” Now, this is something—forget even the concept of reconciliation, but these agencies in mostly northern Ontario have been caught overcharging and then delivering very poor care for Indigenous communities. This is a doubling down on an abusive pattern that we saw first in residential schools. It’s systemic racism and really is colonialism in 2024, I would say. Especially I know that you know that my colleagues have raised some serious issues around mental health. Children are actually being removed from their communities because those mental health resources are not there. I hope that we can agree that we can do better.

I wish that Bill 180 provided better. I hope that as this bill moves through the House, that the government is amenable to fixing this bill, because it needs to be fixed and there needs to be dedicated resources that are enveloped particularly in the not-for-profit sector, which is basically holding the very social fabric of Ontario together. I don’t know how they’re doing it. There was this very poignant moment during pre-budget consultations when we were at the Holiday Inn down in Oakville and the PSE sector was before us. I think it was the president of the council of universities, and he was saying, “Listen, we can’t do it anymore. We’re at a tipping point. We’re at a breaking point on infrastructure on campuses across Ontario.” And, at that point, there was some rain coming through the ceiling and so the really good staff from broadcast came together and they covered their equipment, and we just kept talking about how bad things are getting in the post-secondary education sector. Then, it started to rain a little bit heavier—this is in the ballroom during pre-budget consultation. Then at one point, I think Steve Orsini said that the infrastructure is on the brink of collapse, and that’s when the ceiling did collapse in the pre-budget consultation. I’ve actually never seen anything like it, but I thought it was also very symbolic as well.

So the post-secondary education sector, as our critic outlined this morning, is on the brink of really having to make very tough decisions around class sizes, around training of staff, around retaining some staff, and you know, if we can agree on a few things, it’s that when you invest in future generations, that return on investment through education pays back in huge dividends. It really does. Just like the core infrastructure piece around Enbridge and ensuring that we’re not saddling future generations with these stranded assets of gas lines. I mean it deserves an honest answer: Why are we subsidizing the building of gas pipelines for Enbridge? That time has come, and it has gone. Yet, we have a Minister of Energy who is firmly supporting the use of tax dollars in those subsidies.

I do want to say, “Environmental Defence Condemns Ontario’s Move to Overrule OEB Decision to Benefit Enbridge.” It’s also worth noting—and this is actually by Keith Brooks, who is the program director. This is a quote about the legislation that the Minister of Energy brought in, which is going to keep your gas bills higher: “This legislation would be bad for new homeowners, bad for existing gas customers ... bad for the environment. The only one that benefits is Enbridge Gas.” Then it goes on to say, “This is all too similar to the greenbelt scandal: The government is legislating against the public good in the services of a few private interests, namely Enbridge and housing developers.”

So no lessons have been learned from the greenbelt. If you’re looking at what’s happening in Wilmot right now, the government is really doubling down on those backroom deals that are actually ensuring that sprawl becomes the new reality for Ontario. We can’t afford sprawl. We need to be very strategic around investments, especially around energy.

Listen, the potential of actually good local jobs on conservation—that reality really is there, and there is a consumer protection perspective. If you are focused on conservation, where the smart money is, those good local jobs to replace the windows, to do the heat pumps—those are local trades. You can’t outsource those to China. Then, you also have tax credits, which people will apply for because these exchanges are not happening in the underground economy. They’re actually happening in real time by qualified, skilled people, which also ensures that the work is done to a standard which is commensurate with the talent of the people who are doing the work. It is like a win-win-win-win all around. You think this government’s doing that? No, they’re not.

Also, with regard to Enbridge and this Minister of Energy fighting the independent legislator, it says, “This legislation also sets a dangerous precedent: This is the first time any government of Ontario has overruled a decision by the independent Ontario Energy Board. The board’s mandate is to keep energy costs down, and that’s what drove this decision.”

So you have a Minister of Energy fighting an independent organization that has a mandate to keep your energy bills down. He’s fighting that agency. That is a perfect microcosm of what’s happening in Ontario right now around who this government is working for and who they are leaving behind. What a lost potential and opportunity in a budget of $214 billion to keep focused on those corporate profits and not on keeping costs down for the people of Ontario. It truly is. You really are out-Liberaling the Liberals, I have to say.

There were a lot of things I wanted to talk about, but I do want to mention the justice file, because we met with the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association recently to talk about the backlog in the courtrooms, and I sort of started this with Emily, who was here a week and a half ago, whose rapist walked free, and also Cait, who never even got her day in court because the timeline to deal with the criminal charges had expired. These are perfect examples of how broken the system is. When people have the courage to come forward after being sexually assaulted and talking to police about what they experienced, everyone who we’ve spoken to references the re-traumatization of their whole experience by going into the police station and also going through the court system and then, obviously, seeing their perpetrator walk away. That’s not tough on crime.

Having a justice system that deals with these very serious issues in real time, that keeps people safe, particularly women—we do have an amazing motion, a PMB that’s going to be coming forward later this week, which is calling on the government to recognize that intimate partner violence is an epidemic. Why not acknowledge that? I mean, with the number of women who have been killed most recently in Sault Ste. Marie, a whole family, because often children are also victims in these cases, what would be the harm for this government to acknowledge that this level of violence against women and against partners exists in Ontario? Is it just pure ideology? Because even when we ask questions of substance around the response of the justice system and of prevention of violence against women, the government will come back and say something about the carbon tax.

Let me tell you, if you know someone who’s gone through that court system, who has experienced that kind of violence, and we ask a serious question about the lack of response, the lack of dignity, the lack of integrity that these women experience as they go through the justice system and you come back with, “Well, why aren’t you writing a letter to the federal government about the carbon tax?”—ironically, even though we have a carbon tax in Ontario because this Premier cancelled cap-and-trade and the federal backstop came into play, the only reason we have a carbon tax in Ontario is because of this government, Madam Speaker; right? The cap-and-trade program—

Interjection.

Is there a siren?

The Premier, though, has really taken a very principled stand on a very important issue. When you go to the LCBO tomorrow, you’ll be able to get a brown paper bag. This is where his focus has been. He has asked the LCBO to reverse the fact that they weren’t giving you brown paper bags. This is—

Interjections.

When I tell people and sometimes show people what’s actually happening in this place, honestly, it doesn’t instill a lot of confidence.

Never fear, though; we’ve got some really good commercials—and it’s all happening here. You’re footing the bill for it, Ontarians.

I’m sure when you are one of the people who is waiting an average of 12 hours in an emergency room and that TV up in the corner is just on replay and you see this commercial where people are buying their first house or even moving into a rental place or—

I don’t know what is actually going on over there around priorities, but this province has never spent so much money and given so little to the people of Ontario.

The cost of where you are, the cost of these poor decisions on the people of this province—particular y in education, I want to say, just for a second—is having a huge impact. Our critic on the post-secondary education file, this morning, asked a really excellent question of the Premier because his comments last week, when they were opening another medical school, were—sure, this is great. We do have qualified people in Ontario that have come from other countries that can’t be working in the medical field.

I’m thinking of the head of security at my building here in Ontario; his name is Mohammed. He’s a renal specialist from Pakistan. When I first met him—six years ago now—that’s exactly when the government froze the minimum wage. We calculated how much he lost by that freezing of the minimum wage: $7,000. He has five children and he’s a doctor, okay? He’s a doctor working as a security officer, and he wants to go back to medical. He wants to get his qualifications here in Ontario.

Do you know how hard it is in Ontario if you’re a foreign-trained medical professional to access your potential? Is this a place where the government is focusing some energy and some resources and some funding? Of course not, no, but a shiny new medical school with a ribbon cutting is going to be great.

But at that ribbon cutting, the Premier had some very strong words when he was mentioning international students that are training. I can’t remember the exact quote, but he was like, “I just want kids from Ontario to go to these schools.”

It’s important to remember that all of us are immigrants in Ontario, except with First Nations Indigenous people—and cue my colleague from Kiiwetinoong walking by as I say that. They’re the first peoples; the rest of us are immigrants.

I know it’s bad. It’s bad, and it’s in history now.

I see my colleague from Kitchener–Conestoga is get-ting ready for the total eclipse of the sun—and hopefully he doesn’t break out into song.

There are a couple of areas that I really want to highlight, just to pull us all back.

There is a tendency of this government to side on behalf of the private sector, which is ironic, because as parlia-mentarians we take an oath to serve the public with integrity and we put the public first.

One of the issues that has really resonated—and this kind of reminds me of back when the former Liberal Premier was saying, “We’re never going to sell off parts of hydro,” but then they did. Then, the hydro costs continue to go up because of the cost escalation.

My friend and colleague from Toronto–Danforth, who is our energy critic, has been following what has been happening with Enbridge and the decisions that this government is making on the energy file.

It would surprise most people in the province of Ontario to learn that the government is subsidizing energy costs to the tune of $7.8 billion. It’s steadily going up. It’s across the board. Everybody gets the subsidy. If you are a super rich person or if you’re a super poor person, you are getting the same energy subsidy. I’m pretty sure Galen Weston can pay his own energy bills. The government has never considered even a sliding scale to address true affordability measures.

What they are doing—and I’m just going to read directly from one of the op-eds that my colleague wrote—is that they’re busy breaking their own promise on energy and housing affordability. In the latest twist, this government “plans to pass legislation in February”—which is now before the House, before the committee, even today—“that will raise energy bills across the province and make life more expensive for new homebuyers.” Does this sound like a common sense thing to be doing in a cost-of-living crisis? Of course, it does not. Two of the highest drivers, really, for people in Ontario are the cost of housing, and then, of course, the day-to-day costs, like groceries, and I’m going to talk about that.

So this government is reversing an excellent decision by Ontario’s independent energy regulator, and I talked about this on the budget motion, because it defies all sense. Why would you not listen to the independent energy regulator when they’re saying this is in the best interests of the province of Ontario, which you should be interested in as well? It all goes back to a subsidy that most gas customers do not even know that they’re funding.

Right now, your gas bill is funding a huge subsidy worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year to cover the cost of expanding gas pipelines into new developments. Most people in Ontario don’t know this. On December 21, the Ontario independent energy regulator decided to put a stop to the subsidy because it raises energy bills for existing customers and new homebuyers, while also increasing financial risk for the whole gas system. In fact, the independent regulator highlighted stranded assets—because we’re building an energy sector in a way that they used to in the 1950s, not in 2024.

Ending the subsidy would save gas customers over $1 billion over four years in avoided pipeline subsidy costs, which comes to almost $300 per customer, plus interest profit payments paid by customers to Enbridge Gas on those amounts. Is this what the government is doing? No, they’re not doing that. They’re not going to try to save you $300 a year.

“Ending the subsidy will also encourage developers to install heat pumps”—which we heard at pre-budget committee would actually speed up housing starts. Is this government having great difficulty meeting your own housing start targets? Yes, you are. Do you need some help? You definitely need some help—“in new homes, which provide much cheaper heating and cooling, instead of gas,” for new homebuyers. So not only would these heat pump installations actually fast-track housing starts, which is a good thing; it would also provide cheaper heating and cooling for new homebuyers. Is this an affordability issue? Of course, it’s an affordability issue.

“Ending the subsidy would be a win-win-win-win,” said my friend and colleague from Toronto–Danforth. It would lower energy bills for existing customers. It would lower energy bills for new homebuyers. It would lower carbon emissions, and avoid even more cost down the road to convert away from fossil fuel heating in the houses built with heat pumps from the start.

This is a good plan that the independent regulator came forward with for Ontario.

There is, however, one loser in this whole issue, and that is Enbridge Gas. It would lose millions of dollars in profits, and shareholders might not make as much money as they wanted to. But Ontarians would save money. Who are we elected to serve? Ontarians, right?

So here we are. Enbridge Gas is right here. They were here this morning. They’re lobbying hard against the decision and have launched two challenges, so this government is going to be back in court, I guess. Its court challenge boldly complains that the decision will mean that, “Enbridge Gas has no right or ability to invest and earn a return on capital for new customer connections.” In other words, it will reduce their profits. So they are a company that is fighting for their profits.

I ask you, who is fighting to keep costs down for Ontarians? Not this government, because they have clearly sided with Enbridge Gas. In fact, the minister, MPP Smith, has announced that they will pass legislation to overturn this decision. The Ontario government seems to have been convinced that the change will reduce housing supply and affordability, but developers can just forgo gas and install heat pumps instead for little or no additional cost and sometimes even a savings. This could actually be good for developers as well, if developers are dedicated to actually building housing. But the question remains: Why should every other gas customer in Ontario be forced to pay to subsidize them to install this fossil fuel infrastructure and then be forced to pay Enbridge profits on top of that? Is this a fair situation for Ontario voters, for Ontario citizens? Absolutely not. Is the government truly showing their hand by siding with Enbridge? Absolutely.

This is what we also know—you can’t really get a clear answer from the government on this, but this is where we are right now: Gas is no longer the cheapest heating source. Investing in gas pipelines for heating is financially foolish because they will become obsolete as we decarbonize buildings. It is 2024; we should be talking about this. The government’s own expert electrification panel noted “growing indications that it is unlikely that the natural gas grid can be decarbonized and continue to deliver cost-effective building heat.”

Our neighbours—we hear a lot from the Premier about Texas, which always makes me want to break out into a Beyoncé song—like New York state and Montreal are prohibiting gas in new construction. I want to re-emphasize that: New York state is prohibiting gas in new construction.

Passing legislation to reinstate a subsidy is completely out of step and risks financial disaster down the road.

The Minister of Energy has clearly shown that he is on the side of Enbridge and not on the side of Ontarians who will face higher gas bills, instead of providing an opportunity of $300 in savings. Unfortunately, there are obviously major misconceptions about the broader issues, in part due to a great deal of misinformation. Right now, this is happening in committee, where this debate is happening.

Enbridge is fighting for their profits. We need the government to fight for the people, to keep those costs down.

We definitely think that the Ontario Energy Board made the right decision, based on evidence, to lower your energy bills. And we’re going to continue to raise these issues in this House.

What a perfect example, though, to clearly demonstrate who this government is working for.

We’ve seen some other escalations, if you will, in other ministries—particularly on health care. My God, we cannot afford to privatize health care any further. We’ve got to hold the line and we’ve got to walk it back; there’s no doubt about it. When this government spent $1 billion last year on agency nurses instead of hiring nurses in our acute-care and community care centres—this is not only fiscally irresponsible, but it is actually failing to meet the needs of communities.

I’ve talked about my future daughter-in-law. She’s a nurse—excellent, top of her class—working in the NICU, working with those little babies. Grand River Hospital is not hiring nurses. How can it be?

Clearly, choices are being made here around where the money is going to be spent or where the money is not going to be spent, but it certainly isn’t being invested in our health care human resources crisis.

The minister can talk about all the numbers she wants. Three emergency rooms were closed this weekend in southwestern Ontario. If you’re in a community and you need to go to the emergency room, you need that emergency room to be open. Surely we can agree on this. But in order for that emergency room to be open, you need to have nurses and medical professionals there.

What we have seen in Ontario is a mass migration of these very talented people, some of whom studied here, some of whom received support to study here, some of whom are very invested in medical research and the life sciences file. They’re leaving Ontario because Ontario is such a hostile place right now, in the health care sector.

When you talk to people who are in the health care system and they have an agency nurse working right alongside them and they can’t get a full-time job, but this nurse beside them is making twice or three times as much money—can you imagine what that does to morale? It is counterproductive. It’s counterintuitive. It’s fiscally irresponsible. I said this to the Minister of Finance—that we cannot afford $1 billion in agency nurses.

Let’s invest in human health resources in this province. Let’s demonstrate that we’re committed to retaining these people in the system, but also recruiting into the system. In order for that to be successful, the system can’t be broken; the system has to be a healthy place. That’s how you recruit back into the health care system.

These are very conscious, very committed decisions that the government is making. They refuse to close the loopholes on these private health care agencies that see the market here in Ontario because 2.3 million Ontarians don’t have a doctor. They see the loophole. The government sees the loophole. And now they’re charging anywhere between $450 a year to have access to a doctor, all the way up to $4,900.

In the public session in the public accounts earlier today, our health critic brought forward a motion and she said, “Let’s have the auditor look into this. Let’s follow the money.”

These agencies, let’s also remember, are being subsidized by OHIP, as well. So the taxpayers are funding the profit margins in these health care agencies. This is happening in Ontario. In fact, these health care agencies are popping up just as much as cannabis store clusters—Waterloo has about nine in a three-block radius; I don’t know what’s going on, exactly, with that. These businesses see a market share here in Ontario that has been intentionally created by this government.

When you purposefully create a crisis by not funding health care, you are, in turn, creating a whole new market share for for-profit health care. So that is happening.

In fact, we even have for-profit plasma centres opening up in one of the poorest areas in Hamilton. A European company has said, “Do you know what? They’ve done such a terrible job of promoting and supporting blood services in Ontario and in Canada that we’re going to go there and we’re going to offer to pay for plasma and pay for blood in the poorest neighbourhood, where people are the most desperate.” They’re the most desperate. They’re looking for some revenue because they’re poor. They’re easily—the argument can be made to them that they’re doing something good, but this is the new culture of Ontario, where we’ll buy anything. Anything is for sale in Ontario,, and it’s quite a development, I have to say.

The other thing is, here you have a government defending Enbridge and trying to hold their profit margins at a certain level through legislation, which even undermines the government’s own initiatives. And then Enbridge goes and cuts off rebates, leaving some homeowners on the hook for thousands in green renovation costs. This is bold. This is so bold, I would have to say, that Enbridge has said, “Do you know what? We’re not going to honour those rebates.”

This was just in the paper last week—that “most Ontarians’ carbon footprint is dominated by natural gas heating.” One lady decided to swap out her furnace for a heat pump. She applied for the government rebates. “Knowing there were $10,000 in government rebates available from the federal government and Enbridge Gas”—this was a partnership; it was a collaboration—they “went further with their renovation” to reduce their carbon footprint. They changed out their furnace for a heat pump; they upgraded some windows. And then what did Enbridge do? “We applied and we got confirmation to go ahead”—great, but then, when things were done and they had made commitments to contractors and thus, Enbridge said, “No, we’re not going to honour that commitment.”

So is this the new normal, where the government is not even protecting consumers on policies and programs that the government has negotiated?

One homeowner said, “This is a significant upfront cost to the homeowner. We’re not talking hundreds of dollars here”—we’re talking thousands. “Times are tough. Inflation is insane. Everyone’s mortgage is up for renewal and they’ve just put thousands of Ontarians in a really tough position to be able to manage these costs that they were not anticipating.”

So the energy minister is defending Enbridge, and then Enbridge is saying to people that they have agreed to have a contract around reducing their gas costs, that they’re not going to honour that commitment anymore. But who is the Minister of Energy going to bat for? He’s going to bat for Enbridge. You can’t even make it up.

This is an ongoing issue for Ontarians, who really feel abandoned by the government. The government is making very poor choices on the energy file, which is a huge cost to the province of Ontario. This speaks to priorities—and I feel like it’s getting darker. I think that it’s actually happening, and it does feel very symbolic to me, I have to tell you.

I’m going to talk a little bit about—and this is along the same theme of how the government is making decisions. We have all agreed in this House now, for years, that at 319 acres a day—the fact that we are losing these acres every single day in Ontario is not sustainable, nor is it a practice that any government should be endorsing or condoning.

In Wilmot township, farmers in that township just outside of Waterloo—not in my riding—in January, were approached by some developers who heard that 770 acres of prime agricultural land would be rezoned. It wasn’t in the official plan. If this sounds familiar—I’m already calling it greenbelt 2.0. The fact of the matter is that these farmers knew that they weren’t part of the official plan for development. The region has traditionally had a very balanced and positive relationship with farmers. We are an agricultural community. We believe that farmers feed cities. The citizens love the fact that we had a countryside line around the region which would focus our attention on building up, building smart, investing in the needed infrastructure, but not being wasteful with sprawl—more and more and more sprawl. So when this government rolled back their Bill 23 and the urban boundaries, and said, “Do you know what? We’re really, really sorry”—I just want to tell you, Madam Speaker, they weren’t that sorry, because they’re still carving out parcels of land and they’re making it available, bypassing the provincial environmental strategy, bypassing municipal plans, quite honestly. So this government has been very complicit and a willing participant, even though they were very sorry. They were sorry about the $8.3 billion in land acquisitions that some developers were going to benefit from. And we also know that this was never really about housing; right?

In Waterloo region now, we have farmers who are being forced off their land. They received lowball offers, somewhere around $35,000 per acre. But as soon as that one acre turns into an industrial proposition, it goes to $1 million? This is exactly what happened in the greenbelt—someone told someone who happens to be a developer that this land was now going to be industrial land, so it’s for economic development.

We also strongly believe that rural communities can be a strong partner in economic development, but, boy, it shouldn’t come at the cost of 770 acres of some of the best farmland in Ontario. These six farmers on this 770 acres—one of those families has been there since 1861. Out of nowhere, not part of any official plan, not part of any public consultation—no transparency whatsoever—farmers got a fellow, a third party from the States to come to them and say, “I’ll give you $35,000 for each acre, or you’re going to be expropriated by the region.”

Imagine being a contributor to the very fabric of our country and of our province and of our community, the very people we all espouse to say we respect and honour—this time-honoured tradition and profession of being stewards of the land and feeders of the city, and it’s $35,000 or you’re off, you’re expropriated. Forget that these are also six really productive family businesses.

Farming is a hard life; we can agree on this. There are not too many farmers in here, although I have worked with a couple over the years. They have to be tough, because it’s a tough profession.

The region has looked at the Get It Done piece of legislation, and schedule 1, which eases the onerous red tape—I guess, if you will, or blue tape—of expropriating land without an environmental assessment that meets the needs of the conservation authorities. They usually are consulted. Of course, the conservation authorities in Ontario have really been cut off at the knees, if you will. They’re not even consulted on key environmental decisions that are happening. Nobody even asked them, “What about the flood plain? What about the aquifer?”

I just want to say at the very top of this that economic development does not have to come at the cost of prime agricultural farmland. This is a false choice, and it’s a choice that this government doesn’t want to even talk about. Most of regional council have signed nondisclosure agreements, so these farmers don’t even have anybody to ask a question like, “What’s going to be developed on there? How thorough was the environmental assessment?”

While this 770 acres is not directly over the aquifer, it’s 200 metres away from it. And I don’t know if you know this, Madam Speaker, but water doesn’t just go down; water moves. We know this.

We have the knowledge, we have the power to make the right decisions, and yet this government brings forward legislation that is so open to the overriding of basic rights.

I’ve said this: Something is fundamentally unjust about what’s happening to farmers in Wilmot right now. I don’t know how you would feel if someone came to your farm and said, “Do you know what? An undisclosed industrial project is needed, and therefore you must leave your land.” It would be cartoonish if it wasn’t so very serious—because 80% of the drinking water that Waterloo region accesses is from the moraine; it is from the ground. So we are very protective of our source water protection; we have to be. We cannot afford to have a pipeline to Lake Erie or Lake Huron. Nobody wants that. The smart investment is to ensure that we become true stewards of the land.

In 2024, the fact that this government is so complicit in the paving of 770 acres of prime farmland, knowing the history of what has happened around water in the PC Party is astounding to me. It is so—it’s not even the 1950s; it’s like the 1850s here. Do you know what I mean?

I’ve written to the Premier. I know the Ontario Federation of Agriculture has asked the province to intervene, to pause and take a sober second thought, because once this land is gone, it is gone forever.

No consultation; no transparency; strong-arming farmers; no environmental assessment that we can see, that we can build some confidence in; and also a lack of process. Like, where else could this rumoured electric vehicle battery plant go? Do you know what I know for sure? You can’t eat an electric vehicle battery.

We definitely need to be focused on food security. If we’ve learned anything from the pandemic and having to be dependent on other jurisdictions, we need to be self-sufficient as a province. We need people to understand that the province is supportive of farming and of farms. We need new generations to look at that profession and that trade with some confidence that this is going to be something that the province of Ontario actually supports. We’re moving in the opposite direction—and it is getting darker, just on cue, for sure.

I think it’s so symbolic that I get to start my one-hour lead on this particular budget for 2024 just as a solar eclipse will be hitting southwestern Ontario.

Interjection: Dark times.

Bill 180 obviously will have an impact on the people of this province.

I’m listening to the government members as they talk about the highways and the infrastructure; they leave out people a lot.

You can talk about opening a bed, but you certainly can’t open that bed without a nurse or without a health care worker.

So complicated is this relationship now between the people who serve the public and the Ford government that they’re actually moving further and further apart.

If you really want to build a strong province that’s inclusive, that’s reaching its potential, that’s meeting its climate change targets and that’s actually building on the spirit of the people of this province, you have to talk about people. And those people are still feeling the impacts of your unconstitutional piece of legislation, Bill 124. In fact, I would say that this province is going to be feeling the negative impacts of that wage theft—really, wage theft, and also wage control—in Bill 124.

It has been quite a day. I just want to start off by saying it was really powerful this morning—I was really pleased to welcome the Roth family to Queen’s Park. It has been emotional, because we all care so deeply about mental health. It’s one thing to care about an issue, but that caring and that compassion need to also translate into direct investments, into resources. As I’ve said many times in this House, when people have the courage to come forward and to ask for help, the system has to be there for them. We’ve done a lot of work on the stigma around mental health and mental illness, and so now people do feel like they can actually talk about their feelings, whether they’re farmers or construction workers or young people like Kaitlyn Roth. And those resources need to be there.

I want to thank the minister responsible for mental health. He did meet with the family after today’s question period. This is the third time we’ve met with that minister. I will tell you, as the Waterloo rep, the MPP, and also the finance and Treasury Board critic, I want that minister to have access to the funding that the government is promising, I want that funding to flow, and I want it to be a smart investment.

That’s why we’re so committed to the alternative destination for those who are suffering from mental health issues and a crisis. The emergency room is not the best place. From a basic, common sense perspective, I would hope that we could all agree that if you are in crisis, going to the emergency room and waiting 18 hours, with police there, with people in pain, with people in crisis—it’s not the best place. Let’s work together on this and redirect people to these alternative destination clinics, where people are trained, where they’re going to be met with compassion, where there’s going to be some empathy, where there are going to be some special strategies so that people feel supported—like Kaitlyn. When people fall through those cracks, we lose our potential as a province. I think that’s probably one of the most painful things about suicide. Kaitlyn was so talented and so smart. She wanted to work with special-needs children. Lord knows, we have a wait-list of 60,000 people who are on the autism spectrum who need that resource and need that compassion.

So I want to thank the members who were supportive this morning, and I want to thank the Roth family.

I also want to say a special happy birthday to my daughter. She’s 23 today. She’s navigating the world of retail. She’s a business leader with an American company here in Canada. And let me tell you, it’s not the best place to land as a young worker, but she’s learning some good lessons, and I’m very proud of her.

As I mentioned, the eclipse is set to happen very soon. I hope that everybody is being safe with regard to that. I want to thank the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo for sending me some guidelines and sending me some fancy glasses that you literally cannot see anything out of, which I think is the idea. We’re lucky to have the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo region as an anchor company that is doing some amazing work.

I do want to say, as we talk about this budget—and some members have heard me talk about this. Budgets really are moral documents. They really, truly tell the story of the priorities of the government of the day. They tell the story of where the money is going and/or where the money is not going. There are a lot of places, with this particular government, where the money is not going, where it needs to be going, which would actually save the province money down the line, and I’ll get to that in a second.

The need for government transparency is akin to the darkness before a solar eclipse, so you’re going to see how I’m going to tie this all together. What we have here in Ontario is a solar eclipse of common sense. And when I say common sense, there are good places to—

Interjection.

If I start singing Bonnie Tyler, we’re all in trouble here—which will not happen. A total eclipse of the sun. The hair in those days was really special.

The need for government transparency is akin to the darkness before a solar eclipse, highlighting the importance of shedding light on the government’s actions, for public scrutiny.

Boy, I’ve never seen a government that is so resistant to sharing what’s actually happening in Ontario—aside from the commercials that we’re all paying for that tell us this fairy tale where people can afford housing, where people can find jobs, where people can find a doctor, or ensure that you can go and get the appropriate mental health resources that you need.

This decline in transparency, particularly with this government, based on what I’m hearing from people in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, is a loss of trust. That loss of trust really started right from 2018, when the government who said, “We’re never going to interfere with municipal governments,” cut city council in half—during an election, at midnight, no less.

This was a government that said, “We’re tough on law and order,” and yet, we have a justice system that is failing to meet the needs of both victims and the accused, I would say, where a record number of court cases have been stayed. I’m particularly concerned about those sexual assault cases.

Last week, our critic to the Attorney General hosted a press conference here and had two victims of sexual assault come to this place and talk about how they were denied justice in Ontario.

When you deny justice, it’s really hard to be talking about being tough on crime, as this government likes to espouse.

And so, just as the solar eclipse reveals the hidden layers of the sun, this budget reveals that the government is failing to meet the needs of the most vulnerable in Ontario. I believe that to be true. I believe that when I tell people in Waterloo and demonstrate how this government is failing so—I would say they’re overachieving on the failing perspective. The people in Waterloo hear it. They see it. They feel it. They’re experiencing it. And I’m going to talk about some of those people.

Just as a little joke—how does the man in the moon cut his hair? Some people say, “How?” Eclipse it; they eclipse it—

Interjections.