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.

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—

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.

Yes, it may be helping that economic outlook, but there’s a significant problem. First Nations communities, many affected by mining projects, are not being consulted. They’re coming to Queen’s Park—they’ve come to Queen’s Park three times already and have been refused meetings. That’s one piece of it.

My colleague also pointed to another piece where hundreds of mining claims are being put on Indigenous territory that’s actually protected, which means that those companies are actually going to lose everything they invest, because they will never ever have access to those claims.

So there’s some significant problems and gaps in how the government is handling the development of critical minerals.

We also know that these are the best models of health care that are out there. The one in Thunder Bay takes the most difficult patients, because they won’t be taken elsewhere. They have a team-based model. It’s an incredible place, and they should be supported better. All of those clinics need to be supported better.

Thank you very much for the question.

Wage parity is critical. We know that physician assistants have two years of training and make quite a lot more than nurse practitioners, who have six years of training. So nurse practitioners are very unsettled in their positions right now because they don’t have wage parity with peers, or even with peers with less training than they have, and therefore, they are leaving. They’re either setting up private practice or they’re leaving the province altogether.

I will say, absolutely, the NDP supports the development of mining and the attempts to bring more industry that may lead us to EVs and heat pumps and so on. There are a lot of things that stand in the way of that. But, again, if the government is not prepared to get free, informed, prior consent from all impacted First Nations, they are not doing their job; they’re not doing their due diligence. So lots of these things may never happen, because you’ll be tied up in lawsuits. So, yes, I’d like to see these things happen, but I have concerns that they won’t under current policies.