I would like to thank the member from Algoma–Manitoulin for this bill. It’s a very important bill, and it certainly matters to people in Thunder Bay–Superior North, where I am. I think the problems with the inadequacy of the Northern Health Travel Grant keep the people in my office very, very busy.

The amount for kilometres is 41 cents a kilometre. It hasn’t been adjusted since 2007. I think the hotel amount was adjusted in 2017, but there are very few places—I believe the hotel amount is a $100 a night but only to a maximum of $500. We know it costs an awful lot more than that to stay in a hotel these days.

I’ve got a few specific examples. For seniors in Greenstone—Greenstone is 250 kilometres, I think, from Thunder Bay, and the cost of travelling to Thunder Bay for seniors is something that they worry about quite a bit.

I was actually just up in Greenstone and met with a group of seniors, and the Northern Health Travel Grant was the top of the list for their concerns. People can take a van from Greenstone or from Geraldton to Thunder Bay for $350, but the Northern Health Travel Grant only covers $184, not including hotel accommodation. Imagine if you have to travel regularly to Thunder Bay for dialysis; the cost is going to be in the thousands of dollars. In fact, a couple from Kenora—this was an issue a few months ago—had to stay in Thunder Bay over an extended period of time. Well, it was cheaper to actually rent an apartment than stay in a hotel, but it still cost them $9,000 to cover their dialysis treatments.

I recently heard from a constituent in my riding who is now out $20,000 because they had to travel from Thunder Bay to Toronto for a kidney transplant at the Toronto General Hospital. This required staying in a hotel from November 21 until checkout on January 6. They’re actually only eligible for $555 for accommodations. Then, there was of course the travel and so on, which was very high, partly because of the medical condition and having to sit in first class and so on to accommodate that condition.

The thing is that we are supposed to have equal access to the health care that we need where we live, and if we have to travel to get it, then the support needs to be there so that we can have equitable access to health care. The set-up of the Northern Health Travel Grant doesn’t meet those needs at this time, so I think the recommendation to have a table to actually really work out what’s going on and how people can be supported is important. I support the motion, and I would like to pass things over to my colleague from Sudbury to add.

I want to thank the member, our NDP member, for bringing forward this motion to create and fund a public housing agency called Homes Ontario to finance and build 250,000 affordable and non-market homes on public land over 10 years.

It’s really important to recognize that in many municipalities in my region of northwestern Ontario—I warrant this applies in eastern Ontario as well—it is not profitable to build housing. It’s extremely expensive to build housing because of the distances. You might be able to build in Thunder Bay, but you cannot build in the communities along the north shore, nor can you afford to build in the communities on Highway 11, because the cost of transporting the materials, of bringing in the workers, is so high it’s prohibitive, and they’re not getting housing. That’s merely a thing of ignorance, I think, that’s not there, that’s not recognized, that it’s not going to happen without support.

Now, we’re supposed to have a Building Faster Fund, and a portion of that fund was supposed to be allocated to single- and lower-tier municipalities that have not been assigned a housing target, including small rural and northern communities, in order to address their unique needs following municipal consultations. Unfortunately, we’re still waiting. Where is that fund? How much is it going to be? What’s the criteria? What are the deadlines? Municipalities are desperately waiting for that.

But in the meantime, Ontario has announced the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund. And guess what? No increases: It was reduced in 2020. It’s at the same amount now. But interestingly, eight years ago, the Conservative government was complaining about how unfair it was that this fund had been cut. So not only did they not increase it, they cut it, and then it’s at the same amount, and it’s simply not enough for municipalities to do anything. They just cannot do the work that they want to do. I have municipalities coming to me saying they want to build housing for seniors, supportive housing. There is no money for that. If they could, they could move seniors into those supportive places. There would be more housing available in the communities. They know jobs are coming to those communities; there’s nowhere to put them. There’s nowhere to put health care professionals. We’ve been hearing this for a very long time.

I just want to refer to something that apparently puts the fear of God into members on the other side of the floor, and that is to talk about co-operatives. Some 45 years—

Interjection.

Some 45 years ago in Thunder Bay, a need was recognized for affordable housing. Decent affordable housing was in short supply. As they noted, this was the case in 2002. Guess what? It’s still the case in 2023. This has been incredibly successful. It is still beautiful. This is 45 years ago. There’s a five-year waiting list to get into this co-op. We have a second co-op in the neighbourhood. People love living there. They have real communities. It’s a successful model. Frankly I’m surprised that people on the other side of the House have no concept of how successful those models can be.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.