Mr. Speaker, this morning the Premier showed his true colours when it comes to building affordable housing. This Premier doesn’t care about getting people housed in homes they can afford.

Just this morning, while standing in front of massive single-family homes that the majority of Ontarians can’t even dream of affording, he completely ruled out allowing four units as of right in communities across the province. Such units would supply more housing to families, renters, students, downsizing seniors and anyone else struggling to find an affordable place to live in their community. After today’s revelations, will the Premier finally admit that he doesn’t actually care about building affordable housing?

Mr. Speaker, the minister might want to look at a city that elected a Liberal member, the city of Kingston, that’s leading the tables in building housing. Ontario Liberals want to treat housing affordability like the crisis it really is for so many people in Ontario. That’s why we want to allow four units as of right, province-wide.

We believe this is a crisis. People across the province feel the pain. The Conservatives are just pretending to be worried. We must, and the people expect us to, build housing differently, with mixed neighbourhoods and gentle density while preserving green spaces. Many of the answers are right under the Premier’s nose in his own task force report, like four units as of right, province-wide.

Through you, Speaker: Premier, why are you giving up? Why can’t the people of Ontario count on you to believe we’re facing a housing affordability crisis?

Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

I’m very pleased today to talk about Bill 171 because quality veterinarian care is essential to Ontario. I want to commend the government for going ahead and modernizing veterinary care legislation, which hasn’t been updated since 1989. The nature of veterinary care, both technologically and organizationally, is changing, and its legislative framework needs to reflect that. Team-based care is becoming more common in veterinarian practices, and this act’s recognition of vet technicians is a step forward in addressing and regulating the reality of team-based care and taking full advantage of the expertise and the energy that we can tap from that resource.

There is a shortage of veterinarians in this province, and that’s been known for years. The shortage is due, in part, to a higher demand for veterinarian services and the type of practice vets are choosing, with notably fewer choosing livestock care in favour of companion animal care. In 2021, the College of Veterinarians wrote that, “In Ontario, the demand for veterinarians, as indicated in job postings, reached a new record high each of the past four years, and continues to rise.” The shortage is especially true in rural and northern communities, which have been underserviced for years.

One of the veterinarian college’s recommendations was to enable veterinarians to better utilize the knowledge and skills of vet techs. By bringing in vet techs under the umbrella of veterinarian professionals in this bill, the province is formally recognizing the growing importance of vet techs, their scope of practice, their place in team-based practices and the need to include all of that and support it in legislation.

There are incentives to encourage students to go into large animal or livestock care rather than companion animal care, and I want to see how it works out. The former is harder—irregular hours; more travel—but it’s also more essential to the $50-billion-a-year agri-food sector. That’s why incentives are needed.

I was hoping to see that this act had a specific section on climate change preparedness and veterinarian care for livestock. In the climate change report commissioned by this very government, published in January 2023—so just a year ago—there were stark warnings that Ontario’s livestock will be at high risk by the mid-2050s. Well, I think we have to admit that they are at risk now. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Ontario this summer will experience abnormally hot heat waves or plumes of toxic wildfire smoke drifting by our nostrils that could severely affect the well-being of livestock.

So we must help the agri-food sector, our largest economic sector here in Ontario, prepare for climate change, but I don’t think this government takes climate change seriously enough. The Ontario Veterinary College has taken steps already to begin researching how certain types of dairy cattle can better endure heat waves, but I think the Ontario government should lead by example by working collaboratively with the OVC to prepare all of the veterinarians for climate-change-related incidents—incidents more likely to occur in the future.

There are new accountability measures in this bill that will push veterinary professionals to hold themselves to a high standard, and that is good. It introduces new reporting measures. For example, members of the College of Veterinarians of Ontario must report if they learn that a veterinarian’s fitness to serve is impaired. Changes like these could ensure the veterinary field maintains its solid reputation and that all professionals are exercising safety around themselves, their colleagues and animals.

At the forefront of modernizing legislation is ensuring means of accountability. The previous Veterinarians Act was introduced 35 years ago, and since then, Ontario’s veterinary profession has not had legislated reporting requirements or a quality assurance committee. They did not have a public register to show the status of members.

Much of this bill’s details needs to be revealed later in regulations, which are not yet specified. Regulations still need to determine what exactly the quality assurance committee will do, what exactly the scope of work will be for vet techs and even what the practice of veterinary medicine is defined as. This bill is a good start for ensuring accountability, but we are still waiting for the clarifications.

The quality assurance program has many elements to it that need to be thoroughly investigated as to how and by what specific mechanisms it will enforce the ends it is trying to achieve. Many of these directives have the potential to ensure that the veterinarian industry is an ever-improving, safe and caring place for the animals we love and care for. However, I’d like to see more direction from the minister about what exactly they are looking for. It is the elected minister’s duty to ensure that their mandate to the College of Veterinarians of Ontario is as clear as possible.

We’ll support this bill. The nature of veterinary medicine has changed since 1989, and legislation needs to reflect this. I am hopeful that this bill will positively impact veterinary professionals and the communities they serve, yet this bill has left lots of work to be done in addressing the complex challenges facing Ontario’s veterinarian sector.