Thank you very much. Funding for courts is in the budget, so it is relevant. It could have gone to committee after today. It could be changed and altered in committee, so there was no reason, really, to deny all of those people who were coming here the opportunity to have their experiences validated and to have a larger public know how the justice system is failing those people.

Perhaps I won’t be allowed to say all of these things, but I’m very concerned about the approach—and I only have a few seconds left—of the government toward issues that affect women. First, the midwives had to go to the Human Rights Tribunal—and they won—about systemic sexism in terms of their salaries. Then we had Bill 124, which constrained the wages of workers in largely female-dominated professions.

Then there was the bill to remove charter rights. It was interesting that the member from Mississauga Centre was waxing eloquent about charter rights, when in fact it was this government that tried to take away those charter rights from the largely female workforce of education support workers.

They voted down the private member’s bill to hold city councillors accountable if they were found guilty of sexually assaulting their employees. They voted down extending WSIB support for PSWs working in home care, a largely racialized and female workforce, many of whom were in the gallery to hear this debate. And, of course, today they made sure that 100 survivors would not be attending the Legislature today.

So I am very concerned about what is not in the budget in terms of justice. I want to point out that it’s not acceptable to be talking about being tough on crime when perpetrators are walking away after committing sexual assault.

I will be sharing my time with the member from Parkdale–High Park.

I’ve heard quite often in this House, from the government side, “No other government in the history of the province” etc., but I would like to put a different ending on that. No other government in the history of the province has had a criminal RCMP investigation brought against it. No other government in the history of this province has had to roll back as much legislation as they have. No other government in the history of the province has had, I believe, six class action lawsuits brought it against it in regard to long-term care, and a class action lawsuit against the former Minister of Long-Term Care.

One of the things that I find is also remarkable is how much is promised, how often big numbers are put out, when, in fact, the amounts are less—the amounts going for supports for key things like health care, education, are actually less.

In terms of health care, in comparing 2023 interim actuals with the plan in this budget, the government plans to spend $1 billion less. And then we have all the money that’s going to private nursing agencies—that is gutting hospitals across the province, putting them into deficit.

I want to take a moment to talk about nurse practitioners in our riding. We have one of the oldest nurse-practitioner-led clinics. It is not-for-profit. It is a fantastic, holistic clinic, team-based—the kind of thing that we hear from this government that they want to support.

And yet a report came out in 2012 saying that nurse practitioners were grossly underpaid, and that has not changed—there were incremental changes since 2016, but not the pay that they need. Nurse practitioners, because they can’t make a solid living there, are moving into private, for-profit practice, or they’re leaving the province, or they’re going to the United States, where they can make more, or they’re going to Botox clinics, where they can make a decent living.

I’ve heard twice from the member from Thunder Bay–Atikokan that somehow he doesn’t know about the for-profit clinics in our community. That surprises me. There is a for-profit nurse-practitioner-led clinic in his riding and one in my riding, so I’m quite surprised he’s unaware of this—he should be. This is what is happening.

It has been known for so long that nurse practitioners need to have an increase in wages. They have an enormous scope of practice. And I must say that the Minister of Health completely ducked the question when I raised this before, by talking about scope of practice but not talking about wages, which is actually the issue in question. This same Minister of Health, of course, is also making remarks about not needing doctors, that it’s not a problem. Well, we have about 45,000 people in the area of Thunder Bay who do not have access to primary care.

This government talks a lot about job creation. I would like to talk about job destruction, and that is taking place in education. It has certainly been taking place in health care. But let’s talk about education, where there’s actually a cut of $1,500 per student—5,000 fewer education workers in the schools.

I just received a letter today from a constituent, from a father who has a special-needs child. That child, unfortunately, is continually being sent home because there’s no one in the school to support the child, so it’s not safe for the child to be there. He said, “For various reasons, people just don’t want to work in education anymore. There’s not enough supply staff to cover, and shortages are occurring way too often. Something needs to change. Investing money in upgrades and building new schools doesn’t really benefit the students if there isn’t enough staff inside for them to even attend.”

Well, we know there’s nothing in the budget, or certainly nothing in the education minister’s plans that is actually going to increase staffing, and that is tragic because the violence taking place in schools is enormous.

We heard from ETFO, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, yesterday. They brought with them statistics, and the statistics are shocking, with 80% of students and educators experiencing violence. That really affects people. For anybody who has experienced a lot of violence in their lives or experienced violence in their homes, they know that that becomes part of your body. It becomes part of how you see the world, and you start to approach the world with fear, wondering when the bad thing is going to happen again.

These schools are even experiencing evacuations. This is something that was unheard of certainly when I was a student. It is happening because there just aren’t the people in the schools to do the work, and there aren’t the people in the schools because the working conditions are untenable. The money needs to be put into the schools.

The minister started his discussion when he spoke here the other day by saying how much money they put in, but later, in fact, he admitted that he wants the boards to do much, much more with less. But when it comes to students and student needs, overcrowded classrooms, you can’t do more with less. I have been in those classrooms, and I know how hard it is to pay attention to all the students. They have such different needs. If you have half a dozen high-needs children in your room, you can’t look after them. You can’t look after anybody else. You can’t actually do a lesson. It’s impossible, and it’s tragic.

The money should be going into our education system, and it’s tragic that it’s not. That is a piece of the budget. This is why I say that I see this government putting out big numbers, but the reality is that they are continual cuts to the services that people depend on. I call that job destruction because people are leaving the profession because they just can’t cope.

I have a couple of minutes left. I want to talk a little bit about justice or the lack of justice. We hear from this government that it’s tough on crime, but it’s not tough on crime against women. It’s not tough on crime if it’s about sexual assault. A hundred people—survivors—had booked off time, had paid air fare and transportation to come here in order to hear a debate as a way to heal and have their experiences validated and to hear a bill put forward intended to really address some serious gaps in the justice system. Yet the government chose to dispense that bill, denying the opportunity to have those debates. What difference would it have made to allow the debate? The government could have voted in favour—

This petition is entitled “Let’s Fix the Northern Health Travel Grant.” I will say that there have been improvements to the Northern Health Travel Grant, but there are also some gaps, and these petitions address those gaps.

The mileage fee is still at 41 cents, whereas our mileage fee as MPPs is around 60 cents a kilometre, so I think that needs to be changed. Also, the rates for hotels are far below what it actually costs, so people who are using the Northern Health Travel Grant are still going to be out of pocket.

For that reason, I support this petition and I will give it to Kai.

Thank you to the member from Ottawa Centre for your remarks. A couple of things that stood out to me: $19 million for the CEO of Enbridge and profits at 1,000%. That represents a lot of money, and we are continuing to subsidize that. Now, I should say that in my region, there’s a lot of desire to have natural gas. The chamber of commerce has said they want natural gas. They want to have that access. They want that subsidy to remain. I appreciate that, but it’s also installing an older technology that we know is going to become more and more expensive. The problem in our region is there’s no investment in the electrical lines to carry the volume of electricity needed in order to have heat pumps and EVs in our communities. That, to me, would be a very valuable investment of some of this money that’s going into a much older technology.

I want to thank the member from Ottawa Centre for your words.

There are a few things: We know that the resources aren’t there to support the mental health of students when they’re in crisis. We also know that campuses are places of very lively debate, and sometimes very intense debate. You spoke a bit about creating opportunities for dialogue.

What I see in this bill is that the minister is actually going to have unilateral powers to intervene, which makes me very uncomfortable. But there is a real need to have fora where students and professors can talk about really difficult issues and bring the temperature down at the same time. Can you speak to that, please?

I will try to be brief.

We heard a lot of very audacious comments this morning, where we heard that funding has increased, when, in fact, it has decreased. And then, at some point, the minister said, ‘Well, actually, no, we do have less funding, but we’re expecting more, we want more for less,” which, of course, means that no, you did not increase funding; you’ve decreased funding. Did you increase staff? No, you have decreased staff.

There’s constant magic with numbers from this minister in particular. People need to look at actually how those numbers play out in the individual schools and individual classrooms, because teachers are suffering, kids are suffering. Everybody I hear from, whether it’s the board, administrators, teachers, parents, students, they’re all frustrated. Classroom sizes are too big.

I want to think about the great Cindy Blackstock, who always says you show what you care about by where you put your money. The money is not being put in public education. I would love to see the mandate letter for this minister because, again, the people I know working throughout the system—and I have taught in the system and I have taught in the faculty of education. I do know something about pedagogy, and I believe this minister has no idea. What’s in the mandate letter? I would really like to know what’s in the mandate letter.

I know I need to be very brief. The transportation funding: There’s a lot of magic with numbers there, because it says it’s increased, but actually something else was put into that portfolio, so it’s not comparable anymore. Students in my region are going to be walking very long distances on roads with no sidewalks, in 30-degree-below-zero weather, on streets that aren’t plowed, and when there are sidewalks, half the time they’re not plowed either. It is not safe. Children are having to cross the Trans-Canada Highway in order to walk to school. It is not acceptable.

It’s time for me to stop, so I will just say I completely support this motion. It’s time that the government acknowledge that they’ve been steadfastly cutting funding to education.

Thank you also for talking about WSIB. There’s some irony, because I’ve been fighting very hard to get WSIB coverage for wildland forest fighters. But there are many, many problems with WSIB: 46% of permanently injured workers live close to or under the poverty line; 9% live in deep poverty. We also know that this government boasts frequently about a 30% cut to WSIB premiums to employers and then a return of $1.5 billion to employers.

And what really worries me, and perhaps you can comment on this, is that the government talks about having cut costs to employers, so they’re talking about bringing in all these new industries. Sounds great, but they’ve thrown workers under the bus. That’s what it sounds like. So, what protection is going to be there for workers when we already know that they are not being supported for injuries that they have now? There will surely be injuries in these new workplaces, and there’s not going to be anything there for them. Can you please comment?

Thank you to the member from Kingston and the Islands for your comments. Wildland firefighting—there used to be permanent jobs there, so I don’t think it’s going to be hard for them to figure out how to use them over the full year. One thing they could do would be to update the training manual so that workers aren’t told to wear a bandana as a way of protecting themselves from smoke inhalation.

You’re talking about retention, and we heard from the speaker earlier that the wages are actually quite a bit lower than they were years ago. They’ve been offered bonuses, but there’s a difference between a bonus and a wage increase. I wonder if you could just talk about what that difference is in terms of retention and really attracting people to stay.

Thank you to the member from Ottawa Centre for your remarks. I want to go to the beginning of what you were talking about. You were talking about very precarious workers, racialized workers, immigrant workers working in very unsafe conditions that could be prevented.

I want to talk about commercial truck drivers. There are many, many immigrant commercial truck drivers and they are dying on the job. They are dying because they are not receiving any training. I know this because I’ve met with them. They are putting up as much as $40,000 for training they never receive. They have very precarious immigration status, which is why they can be pressured. They’re like indentured servants, really. Wage theft is rampant.

I see that higher fines are in this bill but I also know that those fines are rarely applied. It’s also a complaint-based process, which puts the entire burden on the workers, who are already vulnerable. I think they’re begging for inspections. So I’m just wondering if you see some way that we could be helping those workers in revisions to this bill.

Aujourd’hui, j’aimerais rendre hommage aux francophones qui vivent, travaillent et font du bénévolat dans ma région de Thunder Bay–Supérieur-Nord.

Il y a des francophones qui vivent dans le nord-ouest de l’Ontario depuis très longtemps, et ils continuent de travailler dur pour rendre l’enseignement en français disponible dans toute la région. Mais, aussi, depuis quelques années, il y a des francophones de différents pays d’Afrique qui vivent dans notre région et qui sont bien établis dans nos communautés. Par exemple, cet automne, il y a eu la toute première célébration des entreprises africaines, qui comprenait un grand marché et un merveilleux dîner de gala.

Pour soutenir toutes ces activités et accueillir les nouveaux arrivants est le Centre francophone de Thunder Bay. Cet organisme travaille très fort pour rassembler les francophones et bâtir une communauté. Ils offrent leurs services et accueillent autant ceux et celles qui apprennent le français ou qui essaient de récupérer leur héritage francophone, comme moi, et ils contribuent au développement des activités sociales, culturelles, éducatives et socioéconomiques en français.

Je tiens à remercier tous les francophones de Thunder Bay pour la richesse des cultures françaises que vous soutenez dans notre région. Merci beaucoup, meegwetch and thank you.

During the hearings, the issue was raised on behalf of Unifor workers that when there are methane leakages, Enbridge often uses private contractors in order to bypass the regulatory process.

So I’m wondering why the government really would have voted against an amendment put forward by one of my colleagues providing for the monitoring and prevention of methane leakages and for the publication of reports on such leakages. I’m wondering why on earth the government would vote against letting the public know and making sure that Enbridge always reports on any leakages that are taking place.

Given the destructive effects of Bill 124, it is no surprise that senior health care workers have left their hospital positions and that even new nurses are being drawn into the nursing agency vortex—a situation that is pushing almost every hospital in Thunder Bay–Superior North into massive debt.

What is the government doing to attract nurses back into full-time positions and stop the flood of health care dollars going to shareholder profits?

When will the government address the wage gap identified in the Hay report and bring nurse practitioner wages up to levels appropriate to their skills and responsibilities?

I’m really pleased to be able to speak on housing today and to speak in support of our motion.

Housing as a commodity or an investment is very problematic. It has cut so many people out. It has created inflated prices. It has allowed the disappearance of affordable housing to short-term rentals. It’s kicking seniors out of their homes. Two hundred seniors are losing their homes as we speak. It’s pricing seniors in Ottawa out of the market. It is dire and not how we should be providing housing for people or thinking about housing. So I’m very much in favour of the idea of housing Ontario and, really, the importance of building mixed housing and the importance of having these low-cost loans.

In the case of Thunder Bay, we have two projects: Suomi Koti for seniors. We don’t even need public land. They have the land. If low-cost loans had been available, if this government actually had something to support not-for-profit housing, Suomi Koti would already be half built by now. Giwaa On Court is another example of a rebuild of the post office. No need for public land, but they need affordable financing in order to build. It’s still on stall. Both of these projects were presented to the government. There’s been zero support, and I’m so looking forward to the implementation of our bill because these projects could actually be built, and that would be 104 units available immediately in Thunder Bay.

Co-ops: we have a long history of co-op housing in Thunder Bay. In fact, co-op everything. We’ve had co-op bakeries, co-op food buying groups. Castlegreen Co-op has been there. It is still there, and it is still a prime place to live; Superior View, newer co-op housing. What is wonderful about this co-op housing is that they are mixed income.

So we have problematic low-income housing that has wound up being a magnet for the gangs coming to the city. But when you are able to move out of there and into a co-op, where you’re no longer ghettoized, with many people who can’t afford a place to live, then you actually can become part of a community and it really doesn’t matter that you don’t have a ton of income. Those programs have been very successful, and they have moved people into those safer environments, and we really need that.

I’m thinking of another co-op which is Centre francophone de Thunder Bay, another co-op. It’s deep-rooted in northwestern Ontario.

Modular housing: There’s lots of talk of this, but we have to remember that there are different standards of modular housing. Some of them will keep to the current building code, but there’s modular housing available that goes well beyond this and is actually designed for different climates. It’s designed not to off-gas so that people with environmental sensitivities can live with it. It is designed to not have mold, a problem that is in many homes on First Nations’ communities because they were poorly built and poorly thought-out. So again, there are many, many rich opportunities available to us.

Finally, the idea of fourplexes: Why is this such a frightening notion? I’m quite sure I lived in a fourplex in Toronto. There’s lots of them around. There’s lots of them in Thunder Bay. This is not a frightening thing. It’s not suddenly an eight-storey monster in the middle of nowhere.

I will end my remarks there by saying there are solutions. There have always been solutions if you’re not afraid to embrace them. Public land or private land, but affordable financing, and we can get that housing built.

Thank you to the member from Ottawa South.

I also want to thank the member from Ottawa Centre for your words earlier.

I want to put out a problem that I’ve encountered. I don’t know whether you can answer this or not. I’m aware of a family who was raising kind of an adopted niece—so it was sort of family. The niece got in trouble eventually, as a teenager, and needed addiction services, but the only way the family could get access to those services was to make her a ward of the crown. They could not access those services as the family who was actually caring for her. I’m wondering if you can speak to that, or perhaps this is something that could be discussed when this goes to committee.

First of all, I want to thank my colleague for his words, and I also want to thank him for pointing out that for-profit has no place in the child welfare system. It’s a poor motive for providing the really important help.

I’d just like to mention Feathers of Hope, a program that Irwin Elman had in northwestern Ontario. This was where Indigenous kids who had been in care had a safe place to come together and talk with each other, and they also presented to the leadership of the community and told us their stories. It was extremely important.

Can you tell us anything else that a child welfare advocate would bring if we were to have that position again?

I think we all agree in this House that that is an issue, and I’m happy that the OSPCA is saying, “Yes, this is a good step forward.” We just feel that the bill could be stronger than it is and that it’s not fully addressing all of the issues that are there that are allowing puppy mills to proliferate.

So we need more inspectors working for PAWS, and we need to be looking at what’s going on within that organization, because there aren’t enough inspectors, but there is more money being spent.

Thank you for your comments. I also hope to see similar results. The part that worries me is that—you might be right; perhaps that is why the number of charges has gone down. It’s difficult to say.

What I’m concerned about is the number of inspectors and what’s going on in PAWS, because it sounds to me like all is not well and that the cost has gone up, but the well-being of people doing the inspections is not being looked after. And then there are geographical gaps where there is no service whatsoever.

Again, it’s always in the application. Do we have the tools to make sure that the mills are stopped, that they’re found and that it’s possible to actually observe what is going on? That’s really my concern.

I rise to talk about Bill 159, preventing unethical puppy sales. We know this is a serious problem and that, in these cases, the dogs are treated simply as commodities, and it’s all about profit. We do see this happening also with seniors, I have to say, with housing and long-term care, that there’s a lot of that mixed in there as well—profit taking. According to advocates, the key piece to any statute or regulations will be on the enforcement and inspection end. I will come to talk about how that’s happening on the ground right now a little bit later.

We do know that provincial animal welfare inspectors are badly understaffed right now. We also know that the abuse of animals doesn’t begin and end with puppy mills but also with other animals that are bred illegally and sold and not kept well.

One of the things that really struck me right away with this bill—and I think there are ways to improve the bill and I think that requiring licensing is one of those ways. But I’m struck by the contradiction with the section of Bill 91 that slipped in this thing about train and trial areas, which had been actually outlawed in 1997. There were only 24 of these areas left in the province, and then all of a sudden, in a bill that was about something completely different, we have a section that allows that business to expand again. It’s a very cruel business that traps coyotes, foxes, rabbits and uses them as bait and trains the dogs to rip them to shreds. It does seem like a contradiction that some animals we care about and other animals we’re prepared to let them be ripped to shreds. It struck me as a favour to somebody, because it had nothing to do with anything else in the bill at the time.

I’d like to look a little bit at what’s going on in Thunder Bay. Robin Ratz, founder and board chair of Murillo Mutts—Murillo is a small community in Thunder Bay–Atikokan, and it’s a specialized rescue facility. She says:

“‘Unfortunately, I guess my question would be is “What are the consequences, or how are they going to find out about these puppy mills?”‘”

And: “She said there are multiple puppy mills in the Thunder Bay area, including one that Murillo Mutts had a ‘really bad experience’ with last Christmas.

“A local resident had obtained a dog from a breeder, only to find out that the pup was extremely ill.

“‘In order for us to assist people like that, we have to have them surrender their animal to get care without our vet. Unfortunately, the puppy was too sick, and died. The breeder ended up contacting our rescue, and she had a second sick puppy and promised she would get it to the vet. The next day, she called and acknowledged she had no money to pay for vetting, so we brought that puppy into care as well. Between the first dog and the second dog, fees, stuff we had to throw out because it was parvo [virus], we lost about $7,000 worth of stuff.’”

This is a volunteer rescue organization.

“She questions whether the government’s proposed crackdown goes far enough, pointing to a clause in the new legislation that would prohibit breeding a female dog excessively.”

The question is: “‘How are you gonna tell that a dog’s been bred more than three times in two years?’ she asked. ‘I don’t really think it’s going to stop. It’s going to take a lot of people getting those $25,000 fines.... It usually takes an outcry before anything happens, and by then how many animals have already suffered, and how many people, like I said, at the hands of an unethical breeder?’”

So there are definitely people in the Thunder Bay area making a living off of puppy mills.

“‘It’s just wrong to do that to an animal. Some of them just over-breed them, and they live in horrible conditions ... the laws don’t protect the dogs, so they just keep going on.’”

Further: “She recalled a local situation where provincial animal welfare services was informed about pups in distress, and visited the breeder to give advice but left all the dogs behind.”

I’m going to get into a case where there was an attempt to bring in supports to deal with the abuse of animals. This is what the ministry says: “Generally speaking, the most urgent calls are responded to on the same day, where possible, but there may be times when it takes longer to respond due to when the call may have been received or because an inspector is already responding to other urgent matters.”

This is a story that took place in Rossport, Ontario. It was a case where there were seven dogs in a house. Some of them had escaped, and there was constant barking, and so many, many people tried to reach the provincial animal welfare officers.

On September 2, OPP officers came and tried to help with the dogs. There was a “public safety issue of unattended aggressive dogs running at large and attacking each other.

“The Ontario Animal Protection Call Centre was called by numerous residents” the next day, September 3, “as the dogs in question had been left unattended in high heat for over 24 hours. The call centre staff in Sudbury could not locate Rossport when I called, despite the community having a unique postal code, and was triaged as an emergency.”

Let’s just think about this for a minute. Because the person at the end of the call for provincial animal welfare officers was in Sudbury—that’s about 12 hours from Thunder Bay and 10 hours from Rossport, and they had no idea where Rossport is. Anybody who has travelled on the North Shore of Superior would know Rossport. It’s what’s called an unorganized community, but it is very much a community and clearly a community that cared, because so many got on the phone to try and address this issue.

So on September 3, they called the OPP again and “were told the OPP would not respond as animal welfare was the responsibility of the animal welfare service. The humane society was also called and the resident was told they would not respond outside of Thunder Bay city boundaries.” Rossport’s about two hours outside of Thunder Bay so it doesn’t qualify. “As it was, the two OPP officers who responded on September 2 ... did an admirable job in capturing the aggressive dog running loose in the community....

“The situation was a total breakdown for the protection of animals that were in distress and constituted a public safety situation in an unorganized community. As Rossport does not have bylaws or enforcement officers to deal with these situations, residents must rely on provincial agencies to deliver their mandated duties....

“By not having an officer respond on September 3, they are not going to be able to view first-hand the conditions the dogs were left in (it’s like having the police show up 48 hours after a murder and allowing the scene to be sanitized).”

The other piece of this was that when they did finally reach someone, the officer said, “Well, the next day is a statutory holiday. Today’s the 4th. We’ve got a statutory holiday, so we’re just not going to come.” I can’t actually imagine anybody coming all the way from Sudbury to Rossport.

So there is a problem of not having animal welfare officers where they’re needed throughout the region.

Now, the next letter I’m looking at is from somebody who works for PAWS. He’s on leave for mental health stress, and that stress has come from not being able to rescue animals he knew were in distress. So cumulative post-traumatic stress disorder is what he’s dealing with.

He says, “Ontario public service ... has been nothing but incompetent due to me and my children having to go without pay for months at a time due to ... lack of communication with other entities.”

So, apart from the specific incidents that he’s talking about, the bulk of what he’s talking about is that this changeover from the OSPCA to PAWS has not resulted in better care; it’s resulted in worse. What we know is that the cost for PAWS is actually quite a bit more than it was before, but we’re seeing fewer results, we’re seeing fewer charges, and we are seeing traumatized workers.

So partly, he writes, “It has taken OPS a year to pay employees back for expenses” and the process at this time still had not taken place. “In Thunder Bay, where I was based since 2014, veterinarians and boarding facilities will not work with animal welfare services now because they don’t pay their bills or the processing times are ridiculous” and “this is province-wide, and their stats and information sent to the government are made up.”

Now, obviously, something like this letter is hearsay, but it does suggest that there are problems in the service that need to be addressed and need to be addressed at the Solicitor General’s level.

He goes on to say, “They were pushing inspectors to write more orders, seize more animals, and lay charges.... I’ve been doing this since 2014 and many others who were let go at the beginning because they spoke out against upper management on the legalities....” Again, I won’t go into that too much, because it’s a specific case.

But he does go on to say, “The government states they care about their staff and their first responders, but it seems to be all talk. It’s said by the remaining staff we are not saving any animals, just processing dead bodies.

“I waited five months for a warrant which, as per the legislation, I didn’t even require because the senior staff didn’t know what they were doing. I had to tell my senior investigator how to lay a charge which I had to send mine to him for approval, but they didn’t know ... how to write one....

“The warrant never came, and my partner was let go because he questioned the managers,” but he says he “was one of the best inspectors in the province.”

The point is, it’s funny that they “could write warrants in” their “sleep before ... and they were always approved by the senior justice of the peace at the courts and didn’t need a five-month approval process where animals go on suffering and dying of starvation. And yes, this is still ongoing” now. He was “finally given the approval and went to the property, and I walked into a barn full of dead and emaciated pigs. It haunts me to this day, the pain these animals suffered needlessly.”

I met that gentleman. He did come to our office, and those are stories that are very hard to hear, because he already knew that this was taking place and because of mismanagement—who knows what—he wasn’t given the means to actually address the problem and now has to live with what he saw and the pain and suffering of those animals.

“Other advocates have voiced frustration about PAWS since it was created in 2019, taking over for the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals....

“In animal abuse cases, some enforcement tools at their disposal include orders, provincial charges or criminal charges.

“But according to data obtained by CBC Hamilton through a freedom-of-information request, PAWS investigations are leading to far fewer orders and charges compared to when the OSPCA oversaw animal welfare.

“Ross, from the Ministry of the Solicitor General, didn’t give possible reasons for the drop in the number of charges ... but said the team is ‘highly trained,’ and some requests fall under the jurisdiction of police or local bylaw enforcement.”

But we saw in the case of Rossport that, in fact, there wasn’t really coverage. There wasn’t anything there to support those animals or help the people who were aware of what was happening to those animals to do something about it, because there was also no food and water for them.

From 2015 to the end of 2018, the OSPCA conducted 64,000-plus investigations and issued 16,000-plus orders, and laid almost 2,000 provincial and criminal charges. From 2020 to June 30, 2023, I believe this is, PAWS conducted at least 70,000 investigations, almost 7,000 orders, but only laid 667 provincial and criminal charges.

Now, it’s pretty clear to me in reading about the Rossport case—it’s laid out in quite a bit of detail—that charges would have been warranted in that case, but there was nobody there to actually follow through again and look after the animals.

PAWS has an annual budget of roughly $21 million, far more than the $5.75 million budget of the OSPCA. That is really the question: Why is PAWS, with a vastly larger budget, issuing fewer orders? The data suggests the province needs to provide more support for animal welfare services and be more transparent—so it might not be about more money, it might be about money better spent.

Jennifer Friedman, a former OSPCA lawyer who now practises privately says that it’s troubling to hear the drop in charges and orders, especially given what many of her clients are telling her.

What needs to change? Coulter says that PAWS needs far more than its roughly 100 inspectors to thoroughly and quickly investigate cases across Ontario. She noted that the Toronto Transit Commission has more inspectors, with 110. But the TTC is located in Toronto, so if you compare that to having 100 inspectors over the entire province, you can see why the law is not being applied even as it is without even this new law in place. She added that more training and protective measures for inspectors are also needed. I think that’s probably a good place to stop.

I do want to note and thank the member from Kiiwetinoong for his comments on the situation in First Nations communities with dogs and the lack of access to veterinary care. I was really pleased to hear about Matawa’s pilot project, and I hope that part of that pilot project is training community members to be able to give vaccinations. We know that having fully trained veterinarians available to go to communities as often as needed is difficult, even though we will be getting more veterinarians trained in Thunder Bay. One of the suggestions that’s come to our office is that if more community members could be trained to administer those vaccinations—obviously they can’t do spaying which requires a different level of skill and training, but to at least give the vaccinations, then they could be eliminating the spread of parvovirus and other parasites and problems.

In regard to the bill itself, it’s a step forward. I would like to see it have more teeth, and I’m hoping that when it goes to committee that will be possible, and that the idea of having licences for dog breeders is really thoroughly considered and hopefully put in to the legislation before it comes back for third reading. I think there’s a very practical aspect to having those licences, in that, if you go to a place, it’s easy to see a licence, it’s very quick to determine whether it’s a legitimate facility or not.

I think I’ll stop there. Thank you for the time and the opportunity to speak to this bill.

According to a recent Insurance Bureau of Canada report, new commercial truck drivers with inadequate training are putting the safety of Canada’s roads and highways in jeopardy, validating what we have been saying all along.

Premier, this is the reality: Immigrants are being charged up to $40,000 for training they never receive. Many are simply given a licence and sent on the road, with red tape and green tape on the pedals to indicate stop and go.

Licence testing must be done by the MTO.

When will this government finally do something to protect these workers and all other road users from preventable accidents?

When will you institute company inspections with harsher consequences for employers breaking the law?

On a point of order, I would also like to welcome Brian Crews from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.