It’s always an honour to rise on behalf of the members of Ottawa West–Nepean and to be their voice in the House. This morning, I’m speaking about the government’s budget implementation act.

Last week, I spent time door-knocking in Ottawa West–Nepean and I heard from my constituents that this is a really difficult moment in Ontario right now. People are struggling to afford their rent or find a decent place to live. They can’t afford to put food on the table. They don’t have a family doctor. They’re waiting 12 hours or more at the hospital for emergency care. Their children can’t get the supports that they need in school. And yet this government is running ads using their taxpayer dollars telling people everything is fine in Ontario. It reminds me of that meme of the dog sitting drinking coffee while the flames are rising around him, saying, “This is fine. Everything is fine.” The government wants people in Ontario to believe that everything is fine as things are crumbling around them and they’re struggling.

What we really needed, Speaker, was a budget that met the moment that we are living in, a budget that showed that the government actually gets what people are experiencing right now, when people are in desperate need of a government that gets it. Instead, we have a budget that completely misses the moment.

I attended the pre-budget hearings in eastern Ontario, and we heard loud and clear from witness after witness that people are struggling, and the government is more focused on talking points than actually doing something about their struggles. The organizations that provide care to people and that fill in the gaps are struggling because they are so underfunded that they can’t keep up. Demand is growing for their services, but these organizations are losing staff and having to cut back on services because they do not have the funds they need to keep operating.

We also heard about the incredible waste that is happening on this government’s watch and because of this government’s poor decisions. There are people in hospitals—and hospital care costs $720 a day on average—because home and community care, which costs only $36 a day, isn’t available. And why isn’t it available? Because the government will not fund it. There are people who are in hospitals today because there is no place for them in a home for people with developmental disabilities, so when their parents can no longer provide care at home, a hospital bed is the only place for them. The government has frozen funding to the developmental disability sector for over 10 years. There’s 1,200 people on a wait-list for this care and yet the government has offered them no support at all.

The government is also downloading costs onto the individuals in our province who can least afford it. We see this in education, where children with disabilities and learning exceptionalities are being forced to pay for this government’s cuts to education. They just cannot receive the supports and services they need in order to be able to learn, but also to be able to be safe at school. There are seniors who have lived in their own homes for decades who are seeing their property taxes go up and up because the provincial government keeps downloading costs onto municipalities, refusing to invest in the kind of infrastructure that people need in order to live in their homes but also to be safe in their communities. We see aging parents struggling to provide care for their child with developmental disabilities, unsure of what will happen to them because there is no space available for them.

It was very clear from these presentations that this government is incredibly bad at managing money, Speaker. Doris Grinspun, the head of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, used a phrase at the Belleville hearing which has stayed with me ever since, which was “waste through poor planning.” And we see example after example after example from this government of waste through poor planning, where we are spending more because the government is failing to make the important decisions that we need, the systematic decisions that would actually provide the people of Ontario with the supports that they need but also save us money in the end. The lack of investments in primary care is a perfect example of that, where when we don’t provide primary care and address a problem before it becomes an emergency, then people end up in the emergency room; they end up having a problem addressed only once it’s become much more severe. And, again, that hospital visit is $722 a day, when a primary care visit is much less expensive, Speaker. So we are making foolish decisions in the province that are costing the taxpayers of Ontario more.

But we also heard from the witnesses at the pre-budget hearings that there are solutions in place. There’s incredibly good work happening in eastern Ontario in health care, housing and community supports, and I saw this with the leader of the official opposition in Ottawa when she came recently and we met with the Pinecrest-Queensway Community Health Centre, the Centretown Community Health Centre, CHEO, Ottawa Community Housing, that there is incredibly innovative programming happening, usually held together by a shoestring budget and lots of goodwill, and the government is failing to support these organizations in delivering these solutions, refusing to invest in the kind of care and supports that we desperately need.

A great example of this is Counselling Connect. So 30 health care organizations, community support organizations in Ottawa came together during the pandemic to form Counselling Connect, where there’s one number, there’s one website. Anybody can go there, no matter what your age, no matter what your challenge is, and you can select an appointment with a counsellor that will happen within a matter of days, and you can receive a counselling appointment that provides you with immediate care and they will also make a referral on to other support services.

It only costs half a million dollars to provide this care in Ottawa, yet their funding is about to run out. When they came and testified at the pre-budget hearings, they received nothing but praise from government members and, in fact, government members were saying, “This is amazing. How can we scale this model across Ontario?” And yet, there’s no funding for Counselling Connect in the budget.

Only half a million dollars to provide counselling to over 27,000 people a year in Ottawa and yet, there’s no funding here, and so these people end up on wait-lists for other forms of mental health care while their problem becomes more serious and they need more care, instead of just investing in these kinds of innovative solutions. And half a million dollars is less than a rounding error in the government’s health budget. These kinds of decisions just make no sense.

We’re also seeing record demand for food banks right now. In my riding they’ve had to extend into evening and weekend hours to serve those who are employed full-time but still need to use a food bank.

Last Monday, I was at the Ottawa Mission serving Easter meals. This year, the Ottawa Mission served a record 17,400 meals across Ottawa between two food trucks, plus the Easter meals served at the Mission on Easter Monday. This is just an incredible expansion of the demand for food within Ottawa.

When I was knocking on doors last week, affordability was the number one issue that I heard about. People are not able to make their rent, let alone being able to pay for food. I spoke to one woman who is deeply upset that she can no longer afford the apartment where she lives but she doesn’t know where else she will go because everything else is even more expensive.

I’ve heard from Sharon, a senior living on a pension, who in the last eight years has seen her rent increase by more than the guideline seven times. The Landlord and Tenant Board keeps approving the increase even when it’s being imposed because of repairs, which aren’t supposed to qualify, so Sharon, who’s living on a pension, is now looking for a roommate or a new place to live because she can’t afford her housing. And what did this government offer people like Sharon in the budget, the people lined up at food banks who are working and still need the food banks, the many folks eating Easter dinner at the Mission? Nothing.

There are no measures to address rental affordability, no increase to ODSP or Ontario Works. They promised to raise minimum wage in October of this year but there’s no funding in the budget to support that, and even their increase in the minimum wage falls $4 short of a living wage in Ottawa so it’s still going to be difficult for people to afford housing, which is why so many people who are employed are going to food banks. There was no crackdown on price gouging, and in fact, the government is allowing people to be gouged by private, for-profit health care providers.

Let’s talk about that lack of access to primary care. Connie, who is one of my constituents in Ottawa West–Nepean, says:

“We are both 68 years old in very good health. We do everything to protect our health—we eat well, we exercise regularly, we see our dentist regularly, we are active in our community and have a good circle of friends and family. We live in our own home and hope to remain independent as long as possible.

“We’ve signed up with the Ontario government site that promises to match us with a doctor. We’ve approached several medical offices and clinics to ask if they’re taking new patients. We’ve networked with friends and relatives. We have a niece who is a nurse practitioner and have sought, and followed, her advice. At this time, we are on one waiting list and were warned it was likely at least a three-year wait.

“The thing that baffles me is how we got to this place. Surely you understand that every year we remain healthy, independent and living in our own home is a win for Ontario and our collective budget. The cost of the occasional GP visit to maintain our health, versus the cost of an extended hospital stay to treat a complicated illness—well, there is just no comparison.”

And Connie is right. This makes no sense. It is wasteful. It is absolutely short-sighted. The only explanation is that it is deliberate.

Some 2.3 million people have no family doctor, like Connie and her husband. The NDP offered a plan that would provide primary care coverage for almost all of them and the government voted against it. The budget offers funding to provide primary care coverage for only one quarter of them by the end of three years. Yet the Ontario College of Family Physicians is saying that by 2026, 4.4 million people will have no family doctor. This is literally fiddling while Rome burns, Speaker.

And what happens when people have no family doctor? A few weeks ago, one of my constituents, Angela, cut her finger so badly that she needed stitches, but she didn’t have time to wait 10 hours in the ER. She initially wanted to go to a local Appletree clinic but she was told she would be charged $69 to see a nurse practitioner, so in the end she had a roommate who was trained in first aid stitch her finger. That’s what we’ve come to in Ontario, Speaker: roommates stitching wounds.

And let’s talk about those wait times at hospitals, because the government recently cut funding to the Queensway Carleton Hospital for the ER, so the Queensway Carleton is down 10 physician-hours per day, every single day. Earlier this year, one of my constituents who was experiencing extreme pain went to the ER. She couldn’t move, yet she sat for 15 hours before finally seeing a doctor. Here’s what she said:

“I was not the only person who had waited 15-plus hours to be seen, and if it had not been for the encouragement and advice from other patients in the waiting room, I believe that I would have gone home without care. Many people left as they could not handle the wait.”

It’s not just our patients who are sitting in primary-care waiting rooms and ER waiting rooms who are suffering. We’re also seeing incredibly important services to people with developmental disabilities—residential and day programming—being cut or being put in jeopardy by this government’s underfunding.

As I mentioned, the funding for this sector has been frozen for over a decade. So L’Arche, which operates a number of homes in Ottawa West–Nepean, has made the incredibly painful decision to close one of their homes. The other organizations, like the Ottawa-Carleton Association for Persons with Developmental Disabilities; TCE, Total Communication Environment; and Tamir are also having to face incredibly painful financial choices. And Christopher, one of my constituents, talked about what closing a TCE home would mean for his brother Jamie:

“For somebody like my brother Jamie, who has an intellectual disability, to then have to change where he’s lived for over 20 years would be devastating for him. He’s very high-needs, and he has his same routine every day and has his house set up in a way that supports his needs—and it’s everything that TCE has done with the eye of” being “person-centred. His needs are always at the forefront, and everything that we do is to ensure that his needs are taken care of. So to upend him like that, to have to close a home and to move him into a home where his needs might not be met would be very devastating for him. He’s very immobile, so he needs a place that’s accessible.”

I have another constituent whose son has been on a wait-list for supportive housing for 15 years, and he’s currently in a hospital bed because there is no place for him.

This is truly waste through poor planning. The sector asked for a 5% increase so that they could continue to support people with developmental disabilities, and this budget gave them nothing. Who even are we as a society if we cannot provide care for the most vulnerable members of our society?

And speaking of the most vulnerable members of our society, Speaker, we need to talk about education, because what this government is doing to education funding is appalling. The minister’s favourite word is “unprecedented.” In fact, when his term as a minister comes to an end, I’m probably going to give him a plaque that says “unprecedented” so he can stare at it every single day.

But let’s look at what actually is unprecedented in education. The levels of violence are unprecedented. The mental health crisis is unprecedented. The shortage of teachers and education workers is unprecedented. In fact, we are seeing teachers leaving, retiring and resigning in the middle of the year, some of them in September, because they just can’t take it anymore—

In the past few years, Ottawa has experienced multiple severe storms that have taken out power for multiple days. Every time this happens, people on fixed incomes have to throw out a fridge or freezer’s worth of food, food that they can’t afford to replace. Seniors and people living with disabilities who live in multi-storey apartment or condo buildings are being trapped in their own homes without access to food, water or medical care. Those who need life-saving devices struggle to find power sources.

We’ve been incredibly lucky, so far, that every one of these storms has been followed by reasonably temperate weather, but it’s only a matter of time until we have freezing cold or severe heat while the power is out, putting lives at risk.

Thankfully, there is a way to address the risks of power outages while also fighting climate change and making life more affordable. Bill 172, the Affordable Energy Act, would save Ontario residents on their hydro bills by investing in deep retrofits, reducing the amount of electricity needed to power a home. It would also oversee the creation of community energy sources, known as distributed energy; such as solar panels on roofs or over parking lots. These would provide energy credits to the owners of the solar panels while offering a cost-effective source of power to the grid. These community sources of energy would also mean that homes and communities will have a local power supply when the grid is down, keeping the lights and heat on for residents of Ottawa.

The Affordable Energy Act will be up for debate on Thursday, and I hope that all MPPs, regardless of party, will vote to support this plan for more affordable, climate-friendly and resilient electricity in Ontario.

J’aimerais remercier Kieran Murphy, un élève au Collège catholique Franco-Ouest, et aussi tous les élèves et tous les enseignants au Collège catholique Franco-Ouest.

I’d like to thank Kieran Murphy, a student at Collège catholique Franco-Ouest, who collected all these signatures from students and teachers on a petition which addresses the Student Nutrition Program and the First Nations Student Nutrition Program—

Thank you very much, Speaker. When the debate ended this morning, I was speaking about the unprecedented situation we have in our education system right now because of the government’s underfunding of education. There’s really no part of our education system where that’s more true than special education.

We are really seeing our kids with disabilities and learning exceptionalities being put in an impossible position within our school system because of the funding shortfall. Teachers and administrators are telling me stories about principals having to pull kids with special needs around the school with them all day in a wagon because there’s nobody else in the school who’s available to take care of them.

Earlier this year, we had a situation where a student eloped from his school, a student with autism, and no one realized he was gone for over 30 minutes, even though the student is supposed to have one-on-one support at all times, because the government’s underfunding of special education means that schools are being put in a position of making impossible choices.

The Ontario Autism Coalition has warned that with this funding shortfall, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when some child is going to be seriously hurt because of the lack of supports, and yet this government put only $18 million towards special education in this budget. That’s equivalent to the deficit of only two school boards in the province: the Greater Essex school board, which has a deficit of $10 million, and the Halton Catholic District School Board, which has a deficit of $9 million—so it’s actually less than that deficit. What about the other 70? Where’s their funding to support students with special needs?

The problem with not supporting these students is that then they fall through the cracks. There are students who are sitting in a classroom but who are not getting any support with learning at all. One mom told me her son is looking out the window all day. Others have told me their child is being given a worksheet and some crayons instead of having the opportunity to learn.

We’re also seeing this erupt in frustration and violence from children who are not getting the supports they need, along with students who are not getting the mental health supports they need. I just want to read this message from an education worker from Hamilton, who said:

“My EA team is burnt out, we’re attacked on a regular basis and we’re short handed almost every day because there are not enough supplies to pick up open jobs. We are all juggling way too many high needs students, we are struggling to be effective in our roles because all we’re doing is putting out fires.” The Minister of Education “has done nothing to make schools safer and stability is a thing of the past at this point, things keep getting worse ever since the pandemic.

“The students are not okay and we don’t have the manpower or the properly skilled professionals to meet their needs. We need mental health professionals, more social workers and more self contained classes for the students who are not able to function safely in regular class. We have had five staff sent to hospital this year because of the violence of just one of our spec ed students.”

A teacher from Waterloo sent me this message: “I’m in a K-6 school. This week so far we’ve had a non verbal student elope and run off campus, three different students trash three different classrooms, one staff member get assaulted by a student, and two class evacuations. And it’s only Wednesday.”

And yet what did the government put in this budget to address violence in our schools? There’s $30 million for surveillance cameras and vape detectors, but nothing for additional mental health supports, educational assistants, admin staff, professional development for teachers and education workers on de-escalation and addressing violence. Apparently, our schools are just supposed to watch on video as students, teachers and education workers get attacked, without being able to do anything about it.

Another area that the budget fails to address is the teacher shortage. We are seeing teachers burnt out and struggling. They feel like no one cares what happens inside of our schools. They’ve dealt with the indignity and the insults of Bill 124 and the incredible disrespect of this government throughout the past four years as they’ve been doing incredible work throughout the pandemic, and so teachers are leaving the system, unable to take the conditions any more, able to earn more money in a less difficult situation outside of the sector or in a different province. And so we have unqualified teachers in our classrooms. We have classes that are congregating in the library for the day because there’s no teacher for them. High school students are telling me there’s an absenteeism problem because why bother going to school if you’re not going to be taught anything for the day, and yet the government failed to even mention this in the budget, let alone even address it.

I could go on for another 20 minutes, Speaker, on just everything the government failed to do on education in this budget, but unfortunately, I’m out of time, so I hope I get lots of questions about education.

Merci à ma collègue de Nickel Belt pour cette question.

It’s a very important question because the mental health of our children really is suffering, and sadly, the resources just aren’t there.

So 95% of schools in the province say they need more help with mental health than what they’re getting. Only 9% of schools have regular access to a regularly scheduled mental health professional, and half of schools have no access at all, and unfortunately, francophone schools are overrepresented in that half of schools with no access at all.

When I speak with directors of education and school boards within the francophone system, they tell me it’s incredibly challenging to recruit French-speaking mental health professionals and the kind of support they’re getting from the government is just inadequate to address the task.

Unfortunately, French-speaking children get no assistance with their mental health, even though they’re dealing with the same challenges that English-speaking children are dealing with, and it’s completely unacceptable in this province.

I’ve spoken to parents who’ve felt like they can’t enroll their children in our publicly funded schools for that reason. I’ve spoken to other parents who say their heart is in their throat when they send their kids off to school every morning because they don’t know if they’re going to be safe.

We are failing these kids and unfortunately, it’s a larger pattern on the part of the government towards people with disabilities. This is how they’re treating kids in our provincial schools. This is how they’re treating older adults in our developmental disabilities sector. This is how they’re treating people on ODSP—

And with regard to high schools in Ottawa, the CEPEO, the Conseil des écoles publiques de l’Est de l’Ontario, has been asking for funding to support a public French high school in Centretown. They have land that the NCC has committed. All they need is the government to step up and commit funding, and unfortunately, the minister has refused to even meet with them, so I would encourage him to do that immediately.