The member from Timiskaming–Cochrane rightly points out the concerns around this government’s infrastructure bank in Ontario.

In fact, I’m reading from a Conservative press release that says, “Trudeau’s bank invested $655 million in a $1.7-billion project to build an underwater electricity cable that is now dead in the water due to financial volatility....

“What’s worse is that there has been no transparency” with the federal infrastructure bank. “Only when Conservatives demanded answers last week in Parliament did the government or the bank provide any update on a massive project.... That’s unacceptable for a taxpayer-funded bank.”

This government has a criminal investigation by the RCMP. Who on that side of the House thought that creating a new bank while you’re under criminal investigation, which is unprecedented, was a good idea? What does the member say to that?

Thank you very much, Speaker—and good morning to my colleagues, from across the floor. I want to preface my comments by saying I’ll be sharing my time with the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane this morning.

The budget was released a week ago. I think it’s safe to say that as the information contained within that budget, or not contained within that budget, is hitting our communities, as you peel back the layers on budget 2023, we’re learning all sorts of things that weren’t in the speech that was given last Thursday by the finance minister as he went on his road show across the province of Ontario—his virtual road show, if you will.

One of those things really just came to our attention yesterday morning—and I am going to start off my comments by giving this a bit of a theme. For us, this is a budget that’s “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Unfortunately, sometimes, in these circumstances, even when you’re trying to do something good, you’re so stubbornly attached to the bad that it turns very ugly for the people of the province that we serve.

Yesterday morning, we found out that doctors across Waterloo region were receiving notices from public health informing them that it was now their responsibility—these are family doctors in Niagara, in Hamilton, in London, in Timiskaming–Cochrane who were told that it is now their responsibility to arrange the courier and the transfer of vaccines from public health to doctors’ offices. Yesterday was March 29. For some reason, this became the news of the day yesterday for medical doctors.

The doctors who came to us through the Ontario Medical Association, during finance committee, were so frustrated, and they did make some proposals around streamlining their work, reducing the administrative burden that they face on a day-to-day basis, in the interest of ensuring that they could see more patients. This was actually in Windsor—when the Ontario Medical Association came to speak and proposed a solution around ensuring that the administrative overhead could be lightened for doctors so that they could see more patients. This is actually in the interest of all Ontarians. They came to that table in good faith, I think.

There are 2.1 million people in this province who do not have a family doctor, and the family doctor is still the gateway into the health care system—you need those referrals to see specialists, for instance. Family doctors ensure continuity of care. Family doctors are trusted people in their communities.

And this is not just COVID vaccines—I want to make sure people know this; this is childhood vaccines, MMR, influenza, shingles, for those of us who are in our fifties.

Usually, what has happened in the past is that because vaccines needed to be carefully transported, they needed to be refrigerated. There’s an audit on those vaccines. Someone is keeping track, one hopes, of the dates and expiry dates on those vaccines, and you need a central place to take care of that information. Usually, a courier would deliver through cold chain transfer from public health into doctors’ offices, where people who need vaccines would happily go and get their vaccines.

This trickle-down downloading of health care costs on to family physicians makes zero sense. We should have learned during this pandemic that people need access to vaccines. We should be reducing all barriers to vaccines. I hope that this is a non-partisan issue people are facing.

This particular doctor let me know that the burnout level for family doctors is already at a breaking point. This is also something that the finance minister heard during his separate consultation processes, and that we heard as a committee, loud and clear—that doctors want to do more, they can’t do more, and you shouldn’t be asking them to do any more. And now they have to arrange for vaccines to be couriered and managed from public health down to the local office. He said, “I think what this government should be afraid of ... as a physician base we are already frayed and barely holding on. So more and more physicians will be leaving the profession. The frustrating part is lack of consultation, which is a pattern”—with this government. This came out of nowhere. It caught people by surprise. It makes zero sense. The cost savings for the government are nominal at best. He said, “How does this make sense?” It doesn’t.

One of the other issues that came to the fore, and we’ve been questioning the health minister this week on it, is those people in this province who do not have insurance for health care. That health care piece is really determined by having identification, having an address, having a health card.

With so many people in this province—now a growing number of evictions, a growing number of homeless people. We have encampments in Peterborough. We have encampments in Sudbury. We have encampments here in Toronto. In Waterloo region, in downtown Kitchener, there is a tent city. It is Canada. People in this province, in the winter, should not be living in tents.

It was really interesting to hear the Minister of Health talk about this because she said, “This was a plan that the Liberals put in, and we are going to go back to that Liberal plan,” essentially. That Liberal plan, which does not fund the full health care package for those who are homeless or who don’t have identification, was the status quo prior to the pandemic. Because of the pandemic, some dollars came in, and people realized that if we don’t take care of those who are homeless, who need those extra wraparound supports in their community, there actually is an extra cost down the line. Also, it’s the compassionate thing to do, one would say, maybe; the humane thing to do. What we heard is the health minister say, “No, we’re not cancelling it. We’re just going back to what the Liberals had brought in.” Well, what the Liberals had brought in wasn’t good enough then, and it’s not good enough now for those who are uninsured.

I sense some defensiveness on behalf of the government members.

Yesterday, a member got up and did a statement on the virtual health care resources for those who are uninsured and homeless. Well, let me tell you: You don’t get very good WiFi in a tent in an encampment.

This is something that has frustrated me now, going into five years—that there is a level of privilege that determines how policy and legislation is made in this place. It’s a disconnect between this Pink Palace, this fortress of so-called democracy, when the transparency in our dollars is seriously undermined through the budgeting process. That dissonance was actually really well captured in the Toronto Star editorial about the budget. This is a direct quote from the editorial: “Overall, there was clanging dissonance between the budget’s palpable self-satisfaction and the economic anxiety, rising interest rates, soaring prices, health care concerns that have hit Ontario residents hard.”

This is why my comments on budget day a week ago were, “I’ve never seen a government so gleefully celebrating mediocrity.” When you have the funding, when the funding is there in an unallocated contingency fund; when you have higher, increased revenue coming into this place—sure, you didn’t plan for the high revenue, but that high revenue is generated through high inflationary costs of services, and that is generated by the people of this province. The least that this government could do in budget 2023 is alleviate some of those cost-of-living pressures that Ontarians are facing around housing, around food and—as you’ll hear later on—around health care costs that are going up, private health care costs.

While I’m on the editorial, I think it warrants a second round. This is what the editorial said:

“Thursday was a complacent mishmash.

“But if it was uninspired and unimaginative, it was also largely unmemorable....

“The Premier—who often empathizes with the many serious problems facing Ontarians—seems to have been sufficiently comfy with things as they are that he and Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy proposed to do nothing particularly dramatic” to address them.

At finance committee, we heard from people who are at the breaking point. They have hit that tipping point. We heard about people saying they just can’t do it anymore. We heard it from doctors. We heard it from nurses. We heard it from educators. We heard it from child care folks, who are saying, “Come on, how are you ever going to achieve $10-a-day child care if you don’t have the people to actually take care of the children?”

Bill 124, the unconstitutional piece of legislation that this government brought forward, which caps workers’ raise of pay at 1% per year, is driving very good people out of this province. Out-migration is a huge issue for the province of Ontario. It doesn’t seem to be on the government’s radar. They sometimes talk about getting people back and getting those nurses back into our health care system, while Bill 124 is still being fought in the courts. The courts have deemed it unconstitutional. They have said it’s a violation of charter rights. It should never have come to the floor of this Legislature. This was, I think, the 15th court case that this government has had to be dealing with, and yet the government is still fighting Bill 124 in the courts.

If this was House of Cards, people would say, “No, even this is too much.” Maybe another show, like—anyway, I’m not going to go there, because I’m trying to be polite today.

Obviously, our leader and our team feel that this budget does not meet the moment. It doesn’t recognize the urgency, the need to address the cost of living. It doesn’t address the cost pressures that folks are experiencing. It doesn’t even address the number one issue—other than housing—that we heard during finance committee, which is health care. You’ve created this parallel health care program that is for-profit, which will actually further undermine the public health system that we care about and that we think is worth fighting for.

This editorial from the Toronto Star went on to say, “With ... plenty of runway until his next appointment with voters,” the Premier “might have been expected to use this window for bold initiatives.” We agree.

“But there was no such sense of urgency that the crunch facing Ontarians was more than they should be expected to bear.”

And then this is the good quote: “If this budget were a Christmas present, it would be a three-pack of white socks. Not entirely useless. But an exercise in going through the motions.” I know my colleague from finance committee was defending the white socks. Socks are very usable. Everybody needs them. But if there’s a flood outside, socks are not helpful. I would invest in some rubber boots, if I had to make a comparison.

Clearly, for many regular Ontarians, this budget fell flat, and also for seniors, I would say. Aside from picking fights with the nurses, the PSWs, the ECEs across the province—I suspect you’ll have the doctors discussing this whole downloading of vaccine transfer very soon. We’re putting out a call to the OMA to find out how widespread this is.

This is actually a lesson in how not to design a budget and how having a press release and having various media announcements—as we saw through some other pieces of legislation, around the presumptive coverage for firefighters for instance. That’s not in one of the—what bill? Bill 79?

Interjection.