In Thunder Bay, there are 42 methadone and suboxone clinics, an amazingly high number for a population of about 90,000. Because most of these are for-profit, people are kept dependent for years on end on what are meant to be transitional drugs.

OPSEU’s mental health and addictions workers are advocating for increased capacity in publicly funded, publicly run treatment centres, because they offer far better health outcomes and cost savings. They’re also advocating for mobile crisis response teams supported by ongoing operating funds so that communities can count on these crucial services. These workers also recognize that systemic racism leads to high levels of mental distress amongst racialized people, along with their over-incarceration. For this reason, mental health court diversion programs need to be developed, implemented and promoted.

Being homeless and poor causes significant mental and physical harm. Supportive housing with 24-hour staff care needs to be expanded, and OW and ODSP rates must be increased so that people have the help they need to move on to permanent housing.

Finally, in support of the mental and physical well-being of the workers providing these crucial services, Bill 124 must be rescinded.

Participants in the NDP’s round table who have disabilities shared that they would love to be working, but they can’t because of their disability. Parents who are full-time caregivers for children with disabilities are forced to live on Ontario Works, unable to even buy diapers or other supplies for their children because the rates are so low. This government’s policies are forcing people with disabilities to live in deep poverty.

But as Paul, an ODSP recipient, said, “Becoming disabled can happen to anyone. It could happen to you.” Why is the government making people with disabilities live in poverty instead of doubling the rates?

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas there are over 900,000 Ontarians who are forced to rely on social assistance;

“Whereas Doug Ford’s Conservatives promised to raise Ontario Disability Support Program ... rates by only 5%, and have provided no additional support for those who receive Ontario Works...;

“Whereas inflation is at a 40-year high and people on fixed incomes are forced to make sacrifices every day just to survive;

“Whereas both ODSP and OW recipients live in legislated deep poverty, a meager $58 increase to ODSP and no additional support for OW recipients will do virtually nothing to improve the lives of people living on social assistance;

“Therefore, we the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to immediately double social assistance rates, so that people can live dignified, healthy lives.”

I support this petition, will sign it and give it to Alex to submit.

Last year, the Premier promised workers at the Alstom plant in Thunder Bay, “We will make sure anything bought in Ontario should be produced in Ontario.” But this government secretly lowered the Canadian content rules for the Ontario Line from 25% to 10%. The Ontario Line contract went to a Japanese consortium, and $2.3-billion worth of subway car manufacturing jobs are leaving the province.

The United States requires 75% American content for publicly funded transit vehicles, and this government won’t even commit to 25%. Why did the Premier break his promise to Thunder Bay workers and send their jobs overseas?

Will the Premier commit to announcing their financial support for the new TTC cars before the new year, and further, will the Premier commit to maintaining at least 25% Canadian content in all future light rail projects, ensuring that our world-class manufacturing facility in Thunder Bay not only survives, but thrives?

Thank you for mentioning supportive housing. I appreciate that and look forward to seeing more of that in our region.

In Thunder Bay, there are a multitude of for-profit methadone clinics in the business of keeping people hooked on methadone. As for-profit medical practices, it is in their financial interest to keep people on methadone indefinitely. In contrast, not-for-profit clinics work with clients to gradually reduce dosages until the person is drug-free.

Will the government investigate these exploitative businesses and commit to supporting community-based, not-for-profit mental health and addictions treatment that includes mobile crisis response teams and the building of supportive housing—which I’m glad you intend to do.

My question is to the Premier.

Front-line mental health and addictions workers have been clear that we are in an acute crisis, with record numbers of opioid deaths in Ontario. This crisis is particularly acute in Thunder Bay, where we have four times the provincial average of deaths.

Will the province increase community-based addiction services, including harm reduction and supportive housing, and increase capacity in publicly funded, publicly run treatment centres in our communities?

I would like to say that I think this is a positive step forward.

The member spoke about quite a few other things during her talk, and I’d like to address one of them. Students, during COVID, received increased grants from the federal government through OSAP; however, if they were on ODSP—in other words, they were struggling to have enough money to go to university, and they had a disability—their money was clawed back. So students who didn’t have a disability were able to keep the entire amount of the grant, but students with a disability actually had to give some of that money back. I’m wondering if the member is able to speak to that at all, because it did put students with a disability at a further disadvantage.

There may well be elements in this bill that are worth supporting. The problem is that the government continues to do omnibus bills, and in an omnibus bill you’re forced to take it or leave it, even though there may be very significant parts of that bill that are offensive and will not be working in the best interests of the people of Ontario.

One of the things I didn’t talk about was the carbon capture section of this, which I think of as probably the poison pill of this legislation because we don’t see any scientific evidence, no consultation with environmental groups. We don’t actually know what the consequences of carbon capture will be, and that, I think, is a very serious concern.

So I think that we need a registry, but we also need changes at other levels so that, if the WSIB was doing what it was supposed to be doing, employers would not be looking for a way to escape from their responsibilities. They would be paying in knowing that their responsibilities would be covered by the system that was originally intended to do that.

The other piece is that there’s no business prosperity without worker safety. One doesn’t come without the other—or there’s no social prosperity. I could say individual businesses, yes, they can make lots of money, but social prosperity needs a balance between the two.

I heard the members opposite talking about “smarter for business and for people.” I’m not sure about the “smarter for people” part. Government services faster, better, easier—it depends on which services you’re talking about.

The WSIB is part of this bill, and there are some references made to it. First of all, I’m very proud to say that the very first injured workers’ support group was founded in Thunder Bay in 1985 as a way to support injured workers, because, even at that point, the WSIB was actually undermining the health and well-being of injured workers. It required a support group that is ongoing, and there are support groups now across the province and the country that have become absolutely essential to survival for people with permanent disabilities.

In terms of the experiences of workers who get hurt or ill through their work, we have seen the first part of what was one of the original social safety nets, workers’ compensation, now known as the WSIB, turned into a short-term disability scheme that largely abandons workers who experience work-related permanent injuries.

Created over 100 years ago, Sir William Meredith, the one-time leader of the Conservative Party and father of workers’ compensation in Canada, laid out key principles known as the Meredith Principles. These are compensation as long as the disability lasts; collective liability—the employer pays into the fund; no fault; an independent agency; and non-adversarial.

The reason for this compensation board was to remove the need for employees to sue their employers. It was far too costly for employers and employees, so this compensation system was set up. It was meant to be no-fault and always to be there to support workers so that they could live out their lives in dignity.

Meredith believed that if you treated workers fairly, especially when injured, social and economic stability would be the result. Unfortunately, these principles have been systematically eroded and, increasingly, workers are calling for the ability to sue their employers for injury and disease, so we’re back to where we were 100 years ago. The evidence is overwhelming that people with disabilities face major barriers to employment, with some 50% of people with disabilities not able to find paid employment.

Deeming was introduced into Canadian law starting in 1979. It is a departure from human rights norms on income security. Deeming allows the adjudicators of employment injury benefits to cut income security benefits. These decisions are based on laws that permit the assumption of employment when, in practice, injured workers have not secured any employment and remain unemployed. Deeming permits dramatic cuts to employee injury benefits and causes economic hardship for people with disabilities while employers pocket the savings. Deeming laws are based upon stigmatizing people with disabilities. In Ontario, stigma is institutionalized in law based on the idea that people need to be incentivized to return to the job market—I’d like to hang on to that word “incentivized.”

Employment injury benefits are critical lifelines to ensure that people living with work-acquired disabilities are able to live a life with integrity and dignity. Employment injury benefits have, for over 75 years, been recognized by the United Nations multilateral system as an indispensable and irreplaceable type of income security that is an essential element of social security.

The International Labour Organization’s Philadelphia Principles on income security provide a baseline, defining what constitutes dignified treatment in employment injury benefit systems, and yet cost containment for the business community is continually prioritized over a human right to essential income security. Indeed, the workers compensation system envisioned by Meredith and practised in Ontario for most of its history has been utterly changed over the last 25 years. Instead of being there to help injured workers access support, the WSIB now functions like a private insurance company doing its utmost to deny claims in order to return money to employers, but this was never the intent behind creating a workers compensation system.

Just to remind the members on the other side, we’re talking about incredible red tape, regulation after regulation, barrier after barrier, after being forced to appeal before somebody with a permanent disability can access any form of support. They can’t work, they have no income—it takes six months to get on ODSP, which we know is not enough to survive on—and so on. The barriers are endless and cause enormous distress in families, enormous psychological distress, and, of course, physical abandonment. People don’t have the money to live. They can’t pay their mortgages. Families break down. The consequences are very, very significant.

Many workers who experience permanent injuries while on the job are, indeed, forced into poverty and homelessness because the WSIB has a routine policy of turning down claims, forcing injured workers to launch appeals that take years to resolve. How do they survive in the interim? Their lives have been utterly changed because of the injury or because of being poisoned in the workplace, yet, instead of getting the financial support they need and are entitled to, they are forced to apply for ODSP, and, as I said, even that can take up to six months.

Costs that should be borne by businesses through the WSIB are off-loaded onto the public. Injured workers are abandoned and the public picks up the cost. I think the message is quite clear: When a worker becomes permanently injured, they are disposable. When people have disabilities acquired through birth, accident, disease or through the workplace, they are treated as social pariahs, as fakers unworthy of income support. I don’t believe this should be the case in a society as wealthy as ours—it shouldn’t be the case in any society—but it is the norm, and a norm that this government continues to propagate.

After years of appeals, if an injured worker finally does get support from the WSIB, they can then be blindsided by having their claims drastically cut through the practice of deeming. The member from London North Centre spoke about this yesterday in his discussion of Bill 46, but I would like to reiterate the absurdity of deeming practices.

Let’s take the example of a former mine worker with an incapacitating injury who is deemed to be able to work as a parking lot attendant at $16 or $18 an hour, or whatever the going rates are in cities with parking lot attendants. As in many other places, a worker in Thunder Bay was deemed to be able to be a parking lot attendant, and his income supports were drastically cut as a result.

But guess what? There is not a single parking lot that uses a parking lot attendant in Thunder Bay. We don’t have them.

No matter; the worker was deemed able to do this job, so therefore he had to lose a large percentage of his WSIB income. If you think this sounds like the script for a Franz Kafka theatre-of-the-absurd novella, you would be right. Once you have been deemed, you are dumped, and there is no way out.

Last week, the Minister of Economic Development had the temerity to brag about cutting employers’ WSIB premiums by 30%. Then, at the same time as injured workers are being forced onto ODSP, he gave a so-called surplus of $1.5 billion back to employers.

Imagine if that money was going to injured workers or other people trying to live with a disability. How many more people could live in dignity and remain integrated in their communities? Instead, though, bad actors of the business world receive huge payouts and are continually incentivized to deny that injuries have taken place at their workplaces.

This year, injured workers were betrayed yet again when their cost-of-living allowance was set a full 2% lower than stipulated in law and in WSIB policy. Once again, injured workers support groups are having to rally together and come up with a means to appeal being shortchanged by the WSIB.

Why should they have to do this again and again? Why should injured workers have to organize themselves to fight against the organization that was created in order to support them? There’s something very foul about the entire set-up.

This brings me back to Bill 46, a grab bag of different housekeeping changes. While some of these are useful, there is so much that needs to be done to make the WSIB responsive to those it was intended to serve.

It’s really, frankly, hard to accept that the WSIB was mentioned at all, because the really important critical elements of the WSIB and its purpose are being ignored and not addressed. Certainly, current WSIB practices are examples of red tape run amok, with injured workers having to hold themselves together physically, financially and emotionally while experiencing the institutional violence that is now the norm for the WSIB.

I must say, there is a lot of excitement in this government about getting more people into the trades, especially young people. But we should be aware that the rate of permanent injuries in Ontario, by the WSIB’s own accounting, is about 15,000 people annually, and I am deeply concerned that many of these new workers won’t know what hit them when they discover that, rather than being there to support them in what might be their greatest time of need, the WSIB will be trying to save money for employers by treating them, if they’ve received a serious injury, as an adversary to be defeated.

Welcome to the trades, boys and girls. Learn worker safety, but if anything goes wrong, there’s a good chance you’ll be thrown under the bus as yet another disposable disabled person. Is this really what this government wants to be known for?

I was listening to the radio this morning, and I heard an interview with a doctor. He was talking about changes to medical assistance in dying—MAID—that are coming up, that will be making it easier for people with mental health challenges to choose to die. What he said was very, very disturbing. He said that he could get permission for somebody to choose to die in two weeks, and yet people are pushed into those states of mental crisis because they are not receiving the supports they need to actually survive. People are choosing death because they can’t afford to live, and that is, indeed, a crime—a crime that is being perpetuated by policies of this government.

Now I want to move—I’ve got a few minutes. Yesterday, the member from Huron–Bruce said: “The intent of this legislation—our ninth red tape reduction bill since 2018—is to ... ensure Ontario remains competitive in the global marketplace.... That impact is significant, so we need to take a look at our supply chain and determine how we can best build in resiliency.”

The member further said that “a made-in-Ontario solution is the best route.”

But I’m wondering whether this bill might have been an opportunity to redress something that was quietly brought in by this government during the last session, and that is the dropping of the requirement for Canadian content in manufacturing from 25% to only 10%.

The manufacture of mass transit in Thunder Bay has been a significant contributor to good-paying jobs and economic stability in our community for a very long time, but the boasting about procuring contracts in Japan for mass transit has me questioning this government’s commitment to Ontario workers.

When the member from Huron–Bruce spoke about building in resiliency, I immediately thought about how supporting our own world-class manufacturing facility in Thunder Bay could provide that resiliency.

Alstom—the great manufacturer of subway, streetcar and GO trains we enjoy, right at this moment, in this province and in the city of Toronto—is at risk of shutting down permanently by 2024 if new contracts are not in place very soon. Once a contract has been signed, it takes a good two years to put all the pieces in place to have the factory tooled up and the skilled workers sourced and hired. Thinking about maybe doing something at some vague point in the future isn’t good enough. They need to be able to bid on contracts now.

Upholding the 25% Canadian content requirement on all upcoming contracts would help Alstom remain competitive and win the contracts they need for future viability. This is something that needs to be redressed by this government, and I regret that it’s not in this particular bill. It’s not good enough to talk about all the great manufacturing jobs that will be coming up when the government is unwilling to support the manufacturing of mass transit by one of the best facilities anywhere in the country and, I believe, anywhere in the world.

I’ve got a few minutes left. In the briefing notes, in the preparatory notes to this bill, the government talks about funding to universities. I’d like to point out that this government is claiming to support colleges and universities, but Ontario has the lowest post-secondary funding in all of Canada. It would have to be raised by 46%—not to be first, but just so that Ontario would not be last place.

On a per-student basis, public funding has been on a downward trend in Ontario since it last peaked in 2008-09. Since then, per-student funding has been declining. On a per-student basis, Ontario universities’ operating funding is 40% lower than the rest of the Canadian average. Provincially sponsored research funding is 55% lower, which makes me wonder where the innovation is going to come from if our colleges and universities do not have the research funding that they need in order to do proper research.

For years now, Ontario has had amongst the highest tuition fees in Canada for domestic students at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and the highest tuition fees in Canada, by far, for international students.

To make up for low levels of per-student public funding, post-secondary tuition fees have been allowed to increase. The persistent underfunding of colleges and universities ignores long-term planning and investments that are needed to support universities’ educational research mandates. The exponential rise in tuition fees is a clear barrier to access. So to further make up for the shortfall in budgets, of course universities and colleges have been directed to aggressively recruit international students.

It’s wonderful to have international students in our schools. However, the fees that they are being charged—most of those students actually come because they hope to become permanent residents. So I think it is quite reasonable to say that these are actually head taxes, that these exorbitant fees to attend university or college here—amounting in the $25,000, $30,000, $40,000 to get through a program, which they then have to spend years and years to pay back. They work minimum wage jobs for a few years, and then, oops, they get let go just before they’re able to apply for permanent residency status. So it’s a pretty twisted scheme, I would have to say.

I’m running out of time. I would love to talk about the fact that universities and colleges are now largely staffed by contract workers—contract workers with PhDs, contract workers with years of teaching experience who are paid basically minimum wage. It doesn’t matter what their qualifications are, the pay remains the same. The teaching load can be 20, 40, 60, a couple of hundred, whatever, and then you reapply every year. It is undermining students’ ability to access support from faculty, and it certainly puts the lie to the notion that if you get more and more education, you will get a better job. In fact, the irony is that the people teaching at colleges and universities, who are highly educated, are amongst the lowest-paid workers in any field in the province.

That is something that students then come to recognize, and ask themselves, “What does this mean? I’m paying all this tuition. The people who are teaching me aren’t making a living wage.” They have no job security, no benefits, and this has become the norm at universities and colleges.

So we have efforts to remove red tape when it concerns a particular part of the business community, but otherwise, we have endless barriers to survival for people with disabilities, for people who receive injuries while working, for people working in white-collar jobs who actually can barely keep a roof over their heads in spite of having received 10, 12 years of education.

I will leave it at that. Thank you.

The answer is simple: Oil and gas companies that continue to rack up huge profits are gouging people in the north. Just ask the Minister of Northern Development, who said last week, “I can’t explain the price variations” in the north. “It’s a bit of a Wild West phenomenon.”

Will the Premier rein in the companies that are gouging northerners and end gas price gouging in Ontario?

Gas prices remain far higher in northern Ontario than in the south. In the northwest, the average cost of gas was 30 cents more per litre than in the greater Toronto area. Even in the north, the price can range drastically from town to town for no discernible reason.

Can the Premier explain to northerners why there are such huge differences in the price of gas across the province?

Many workers who experience permanent injuries while on the job are forced into poverty and homelessness because the WSIB has a routine policy of turning down claims, forcing injured workers to launch appeals that take years to resolve. Instead of workers getting the financial support they need and are entitled to, they wind up trying to survive on ODSP. That’s off-loading the financial responsibility of employers onto the public—a free ride for employers and a lose-lose situation for workers and the public.

Yesterday, the Minister of Economic Development bragged about cutting employers’ WSIB premiums by 30%—and then, later that year, at the same time as injured workers are being forced onto ODSP, he gave $1.2 billion back to employers.

This year, injured workers were betrayed yet again when their cost-of-living allowance was set a full 2% lower than stipulated in law and in WSIB policy. While this government thinks nothing of showering businesses with money intended to support injured workers, they are happy to rip off workers by deliberately shortchanging them on their cost-of-living increase. This is disgraceful and cruel.

Your treatment of people with disabilities is unacceptable.

The member from Mississauga–Erin Mills mentioned that the clock is ticking.

I have mentioned before that there are two shovel-ready, not-for-profit projects in Thunder Bay. We’re still waiting to hear or have some kind of response from the government about how they will support those projects.

My question is actually about farming and farmland. You’ve talked about the increased population that will be coming to the province. What is the province’s plan to replace the food produced on the farmland that is being lost? How do you intend to feed this growing population?

I believe the government shut down our proposal earlier this week, so, unfortunately, you didn’t get to hear the NDP plan for housing.

What are these barriers? You haven’t actually given any evidence at all that municipalities are resisting having development. What they are resisting is having irresponsible development on wetlands, sprawl, and wasting farmland, which is needed to provide a secure food network for ourselves so that we get to survive. We need those farms, and we need that farmland. I’ve seen nothing in anything that the government has said that actually gives a reason for stomping all over democratic rights and wasting our farmland.

First of all, I will note that most of the organizations that I cited are run by volunteers.

Secondly, we all agree that there’s a housing crisis, but is the crisis an excuse for overriding democratic principles, democratic practices? It should never be permissible to make those kinds of—they’re not just compromises; they’re breaches of really fundamental principles that are going to exclude the people of Ontario from participating.

We’re not opposed to building more housing. We know we need more houses, but we also know that those houses can be built on land that has already been zoned for building.

First of all, we’ve probably all read the articles pointing to who owns the different parts of the greenbelt, who seem to be influencing decisions.

I will say that the association of municipal organizations—again, many of us attended their annual conference, something that’s seen as very, very important. Speaker, 444 municipalities shut out from being part of the conversation about this bill—I find that shocking and appalling. I know that the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association has also not been consulted at any time. So I don’t know who is being consulted when the municipalities directly affected are not given a voice.

You will find that most municipalities are already saying that they can infill. They don’t need to be expanding into wetlands. They certainly don’t need to be expanding into conservation lands, which—the bill also requires conservation authorities to identify parkland to suddenly turn over into housing land. The problem almost everywhere is not a shortage of land, and their own advisers have told them that; it is a matter of getting homes built. We do not need to trample democracy and we don’t need to use wetlands to fulfill those objectives.

We have also been talking about housing, and I spoke yesterday about not-for-profit housing and how I don’t see anything in either bill that supports this.

As I said yesterday, we have two shovel-ready projects ready to go in Thunder Bay. They’re not for-profit. All the planning has been done. All the permitting has been done. But there’s no provincial support, so it remains a large gap in the planning.

Oh, sorry. I am quoting something—

I’ll continue: “To be honest, it would mean a death sentence to the greenbelt as a whole.”

Apparently, Minister Clark says the class 1 agricultural lands will be swapped out for 9,400 acres that will eventually receive greenbelt designation.

“Used in conjunction with Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act ... which upends conservation authorities’ powers and the province’s wetland protection system, the Ford government is playing a dangerous shell game with ecologically sensitive areas and precious farmland. Progressives and environmentalists know that this is not going to end well.

“As if those changes weren’t bad enough, the provincial government overturned Halton region’s official plan amendments ... which contained development within the existing settlement boundary to 2051.”

So the concern that’s raised in this article, primarily, is sprawl—the spreading of housing and creating very expensive houses that require more transportation, more infrastructure and more cost to municipalities to actually provide that infrastructure, while doing nothing to actually produce affordable housing and have more dense housing within already existing planning zones

I’ll go back to the letter that had so many signatures:

“The government’s proposed changes would damage our existing neighbourhoods, towns and cities as well as the farmland and natural areas that sustain them, which in turn, would harm our ability to feed ourselves, protect ourselves from flooding, and address climate change risks.

“Taken together, the changes would:

“—do little or nothing to address the shortage of truly affordable housing;

“—facilitate expensive urban sprawl and inappropriate high-rises at the expense of more diverse housing types designed for all stages of life and ranges of incomes;

“—divert limited construction materials and labour away from building mixed and affordable housing, and direct them instead towards sprawl development, creating fragmented agricultural and natural landscapes;

“—remove from the greenbelt thousands of acres of valuable natural areas and agricultural land, and turn them into sprawl development;

“—undermine the protection of wetlands, woodlands, rivers, streams and wildlife habitat across Ontario;

“—destroy key land use planning processes that Ontario municipalities, conservation authorities and residents need in order to protect, manage and plan for climate-resilient ecosystems and communities.”

I’m going to move ahead to a specific concern from a lawyer in my riding:

“I ... want to bring to your attention the Lempiala gravel application to insert a new industrial use of aggregate extraction next to the cottage/residential uses at Trout Lake.... Removing existing rights of appeal by Trout Lake landowners will mean that our fight against this proposed intrusive use will be at an end, and the peace, serenity and natural beauty now enjoyed at Trout Lake will be forever lost.

“Premier Ford is saying that our multiple-year battle with Lempiala is retroactively wiped out as of Oct 25/22, all for the purpose of building houses faster in southern Ontario. It makes no sense. It is a long-standing principle of planning law in Ontario that neighbours have the right to comment and appeal proposed new uses nearby their lands. Buffering between conflicting uses is an important planning principle that will lose all meaning if citizens lose their appeal rights.

“Adjacent to the McIntyre River (Trout Lake is the source lake) ... is an area that has been noted as provincially significant wetlands.... The proposed Lempiala aggregate operation will no longer have to set back its extraction operations from the potential PSW lands which are partially found on the Lempiala lands. It is quite obvious that the Ford government’s Bill 23 favours land developers instead of residents nearby and entirely disregards PSW lands.”

I will move to conclude. I’d like to think about the International Plowing Match, where we had the opportunity to meet with so many farmers. One of the strong messages that I certainly heard from farmers was the need to protect farmland, to not lose any more farmland to development, and to do whatever we could to stop urban sprawl. We are seeing exactly the opposite of that taking place with Bill 23 and then with Bill 39.

We have a responsibility to our constituents, to our citizens, to be thinking about climate change, to be really protecting the future—for our children, for our grandchildren, for ourselves—from environmental degradation. Climate change is a real threat. We need more parkland. We need more wetlands; we need to preserve those wetlands. They protect us from flooding. In my region, flooding is a very serious concern, and we can’t pretend that it’s not there.

So I respectfully request that the government retract those elements of Bill 23 that undermine democratic participation, that undermine commitments made to protect the greenbelt, and that undermine the capacity of communities to manage their own flood lands and land planning processes.

Thank you, Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on Bill 23.

It is apparent that this government has a deep fear of democracy, because with every bill that has come before this House, the government has attempted to undermine core democratic processes, shifting power and resources away from ordinary working people and their elected representatives to those with deep connections to the Conservative Party.

First, there was Bill 7, which forces people to move where they don’t want to live, far away from their families and their support systems. In the north, they can be moved up to 150 kilometres away. But guess what? Since there isn’t a single opening in long-term care anywhere in the entire 93,000 square kilometres of my riding, and the law provides the option to send folks even further away, they could wind up anywhere—in Toronto, in Niagara—who knows? How gracious of this government to shove people wherever there is an empty room. Is it any wonder that there are now charter challenges being brought against this bill?

While speaking of disrespecting fundamental rights—

Following Bill 7, there was Bill 28, which tried to override the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It took the threat of a general strike to wake up the government on this one.

But sadly, even after being forced to rescind Bill 28, this government continues to go full tilt at eliminating democratic rights, with Bill 23 and Bill 39, which really put the politics of bullying into law. We have before us two bills that say, “It’s good to rule by minority fiat. Hooray for the iron fist of the Conservative government”—and then there’s the destruction of the greenbelt that benefits key Conservative supporters.

I must say, I find it disturbing that members on the government side of the House are so cavalier about democratic rights. You were sent here—we were all sent here—to solve problems, not to appoint yourselves as bullies and enforcers who get to decide which democratically elected representatives will be heard and which will be ignored. What shocks me is that so many of you are willing—

Interjection.

Perhaps democracy is something Conservatives are happy to put aside whenever there’s a convenient excuse.

Apart from disliking democracy, it’s also apparent that this government dislikes science and those with scientific expertise, as the government seems to be determined to cut out the role of conservation authorities in assessing the suitability of lands for housing, and they are doing this in spite of the imminent threat of climate change.

In the case of Bill 23, More Homes Built Faster Act, the government gives developers a free ride, removing fees that municipalities and conservation authorities need to fulfill their mandates, thus downloading the costs onto already overburdened municipalities. In fact, this is a repetition of a pattern going back to the mid-1990s, possibly during the Mike Harris years, when provincial governments started downloading responsibilities to municipalities while withholding the money needed to fulfill those responsibilities. Is it any wonder that so many municipalities, certainly those in my region, are struggling to maintain basic services?

I have received an unprecedented number of briefs from organizations and letters from individuals deeply concerned about Bill 23. These organizations include the association of municipal organizations—an organization that represents 444 Ontario municipalities, which, shockingly, was denied a hearing by this government—the Ontario conservation authority, the Ontario nature conservancy, Ontario Nature, Citizens United for a Sustainable Planet, the hunters and anglers of Ontario, the Thunder Bay Field Naturalists, and the northern Ontario municipal association, along with many individuals who took the time to write extensive analyses of the bill. The feedback has been remarkable in the consistency of the concerns raised and the efforts to be heard.

I would like to read excerpts from a number of these letters and reports.

From Thunder Bay resident Bryan Mackay:

“While I understand the need for additional housing in the province, I don’t feel it should override the liberties of citizens and organizations trying to voice their opposition and appeal decisions being made that can impact their quality of life.

“Bill 23 will restrict the rights of individuals and citizen groups to appeal land use permits. This is a right that I feel I should have under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Allowing Bill 23 to restrict the fundamental freedoms of individuals and citizen groups to appeal legislation is undemocratic and appears to be more authoritarian in nature.

“I’m also concerned when an elected representative of the people of Ontario doesn’t seem concerned at all about taking away their freedoms in the name of economic development.”

And he quotes from Hansard, so this is a government statement: “We would also place a limit on appeals from individuals and community groups, for instance, that would further hinder the progress of official plan amendments and zoning bylaw amendments.” He said, “This comment supports my concerns.”

He also agrees with the concerns of Gravel Watch Ontario about Bill 23, and they wrote, “Shifting the municipalities’ and conservation authorities’ responsibilities weakens the long established regional planning framework and represses the technical expertise which is critical to the review of development applications. In addition, amendments to the Ontario Land Tribunal contravene its purpose to provide justice and fair, principled resolutions for land use planning conflicts.”

He went on and cited a number of other points from Gravel Watch Ontario:

—restricting public access and involvement to the municipal level only, denies public access to legal recourse;

—restricting access to justice is contrary to governments’ role to protect the public interest;

—allowing appeal rights for “specified persons”—that is, government agencies and major corporate entities—erodes public trust in government and perpetuates land use conflicts;

—arbitrarily awarding appeal costs without request;

—empowering the minister to order an amendment to an official plan if the minister is of the opinion that the plan is likely to adversely affect a matter of public interest;

—removing the two-year moratorium placed on official plan and zoning bylaw amendments from pits and quarries, which, I must say, is a major issue in my region; and

—finally, structuring the Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force without representation from municipalities, conservation authorities, environmental groups or the public.

Mr. Mackay concluded by saying: “I am asking you to find a more creative solution to building additional housing that still allows voters to use their democratic right as citizens to appeal planning decisions.”

Another constituent, Kyla Moore, wrote: “Bill 23 eliminates regulations that empower conservation authorities to effectively steward and conserve lands and watersheds to balance human, environmental and economic needs, while shifting massive costs and fees onto municipalities and taxpayers instead of having growth pay for growth.

“Bill 23 disempowers municipalities and undermines democracy by giving the minister the power to override planning decisions, and makes changes to public reading requirements, appeals processes, and restricts the public’s participation in decisions which affect their communities.

“Bill 23 erases and replaces policy which protects our natural heritage systems with policy designed to facilitate development, it rewrites the rules for designating wetlands as worthy of protection” thus ensuring very few will be protected, “and provides a high-risk ‘pay to slay’ option for unproven and historically unsuccessful land trade-offs (e.g., pay into a fund to destroy a natural area on the promise to rebuild it elsewhere).

“Bill 23 represents another broken promise to Ontario’s Indigenous communities. Indigenous peoples are connected to nature, including wetlands that support culturally significant plants and species. The provincial government should step back and make a genuine effort to learn from Indigenous approaches to sustainable management of land and waters, and this bill should be redesigned and implemented with Indigenous participation and consent.”

She quotes from the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: “Reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians, from an Aboriginal perspective, also requires reconciliation with the natural world. If human beings resolve problems between themselves but continue to destroy the natural world, then reconciliation remains incomplete.”

I will now read from another document. This one was signed by a couple of hundred people. I imagine this went to all MPPs:

“In late October and early November, the Ontario government announced two dramatic and fundamental changes to how we design and build our neighbourhoods and communities, and protect the environment of Ontario.

“Bill 23 (and related regulatory and policy changes) and a proposal to remove 7,400 acres of precious class 1 farmland and natural areas from the protected greenbelt. The Premier claims these changes would build more housing more quickly. He is wrong. The proposed changes would not solve the housing affordability and supply crises. Any new supply of truly affordable housing units would be offset by the loss of affordable units through redevelopment of existing rental housing for other uses. And a new supply of diverse housing types would not begin to meet the rising demand as our population increases.”

I’d like to move to an article that showed up this morning from Rabble media. This is a quote by Phil Pothen, land use planning lawyer and Ontario environment program manager with Environmental Defence: “It would absolutely, without a doubt be an out and out lie by the Premier if he were to go ahead and proceed”—

My office has been overwhelmed with phone calls and emails from organizations and residents of Thunder Bay–Superior North expressing their deep concern at the environmental damage that Bill 23 will bring. I will read an excerpt from one of those constituents:

“By far the greatest and most significant threat facing Ontario today is the threat of climate change and loss of biodiversity. Sacrificing wetlands to provide more housing start locations is a very short-sighted solution to an immediate housing issue but will result in much more significant long-term impacts on the future of the Earth for us and for my children and my grandchildren.”

Will the Premier remove the parts of Bill 23 that undermine regional conservation authorities’ ability to protect wetlands needed for everyone’s survival in the face of climate change?

Bill 23 is a direct attack on the well-being of all communities for the short-term benefit of those who will profit from building where they should not build. I can tell you, the builders will be long gone when the consequences of these bad decisions come knocking.

Again, I ask: Will the Premier restore the ability of conservation authorities to fulfill their mandate to protect the integrity of local watersheds?

It’s apparent that this government has a deep fear of democracy because, with every bill that has come before this House, the government has attempted to undermine core democratic processes, shifting power and resources away from ordinary working people and their elected representatives to those with deep connections to the Conservative Party.

I have a question though, because in Thunder Bay we have two shovel-ready not-for-profit projects. My question is: Is there anything in either of these bills that would provide the necessary financial support so that these projects could go ahead? Because they could be building in April, and the province is missing in action.