I’m pleased to be able to stand in my place on behalf of the fine folks from Oshawa and speak on the 2024 budget. This is the supposedly—well, the named Building a Better Ontario Act, and I’m looking forward to sharing some of the perspectives from my community, although, I will say, Speaker, that the community perspectives that I’m sharing are going to sound familiar because we are hearing it from across the province.

Unfortunately, this is a budget that misses the mark. Folks from across the province don’t see what it is they need to get by in this budget, and if folks are looking for change, it isn’t in this budget. If people are looking for a family doctor, they’re not going to be reassured with this government’s plan. A young person trying to find affordable housing is going to come up short with this budget. If people are struggling with the cost of living, there isn’t anything in this budget for them. Unfortunately, this is a budget that is out of touch, and it would seem that they’re out of ideas, doubling down on policies that have been failing people. So I’m glad to be able to rise and point out a few specifics that we would have wished to have seen in this budget.

While I am the member for Oshawa, I am the only non-government provincial member in the Durham region. There are seven MPPs that have been elected to represent the entire Durham region, and I’m the only non-government and that’s been true for the 10 years I’ve been elected. I’ve always been this little orange island in—for a while it was in a sea of red; now it’s in a sea of blue. Regardless, it would seem that I have the only voice that can rise up against the government of the day and perhaps challenge them. I hope that my colleagues from the neighbouring ridings that are government members are indeed advocating in the backrooms or to the Premier, but publicly, I guess it’s up to me.

One of the things that I have raised in this House, and we’ve talked about in our community is the need for investment in health care and the need to invest in the future for access to health care, specifically a hospital in the Durham region. Oshawa would like that hospital to be in Oshawa. Every community wished that it would be chosen and put in their community, but there was a panel and a task force put together by Lakeridge Health and Whitby was the chosen site.

So the Premier of this province had said on our local radio about that hospital in Whitby, “Is it going to be tomorrow? Not tomorrow, but down the road, very shortly, we will be issuing the planning grants. Right now, for a short period, we’re not issuing any planning grants, but is Durham right in line for the next go-round? One hundred per cent they are.” He had said also, “There’s going to be a Whitby hospital.”

There isn’t any planning grant in this budget. There wasn’t in the budget before. The government has said, “Oh, we don’t put planning grants in the budget.” Well, where the heck do you put them? Put them somewhere. Tell us if that $3 million, or whatever it is, is coming so that folks in Durham can look to the future and know that at least some of their health care needs will be met. We continue to put this at the feet of the government, that the people of Durham region need medical investment, need medical care, need a hospital.

But hospitals, Speaker, are under pressure—part of the reason that we are looking to the future and need to see that that is moving ahead. The government is spending $1 billion less on health care and people are facing longer wait times, ER closures. The galleries were filled today with folks from Durham—not Durham region, Durham. There’s another Durham, and they’re losing their emergency room. They’re losing their hospital. They’re here wearing shirts saying, “Save the Durham Hospital.” It’s a reminder of what the folks from Minden went through. In their yellow shirts, they came here asking that their health care access be saved. It feels like déjà vu. It’s a year later, and it seems to be following the same script. So I would say that all communities across the province need to brace themselves, because this is not a government investing in a stronger future for health care. They’re actually pulling it away. And the folks who came from Durham are probably entering the next chapter of their lives, where they’re actually reaching for more health care.

So, Speaker, we’re seeing that hospitals are under pressure. Certainly, unfilled nursing vacancies, they’ve more than doubled since the start of the pandemic. I want to share from ONA. The Ontario Nurses’ Association had put out a piece called, “Ford’s Budget Promises Cannot Be Trusted to Improve Care in the Public System, Says Ontario Nurses’ Association.” I will quote from the ONA provincial president, who said, “There are several actions this government could and should have taken to address the health care crisis it has created. Instead, Ontarians will see their taxpayer money flowing to for-profit, private corporations as the public health care system falls further into disrepair.” She goes on to say, “This meagre one-year increase does not begin to address Ontario’s hospitals’ budgets, some of which are using lines of credits to pay off their debts.” That is a sad state of affairs, and that’s from ONA.

I will continue sharing voice from nurses, from RNAO. They have highlighted that the number of Ontario nursing vacancies unfilled for 90 days or more have more than doubled since the start of the pandemic. This number has remained around 10,000 since the last quarter of 2022. And they have recommendations.

They have said, “To address Ontario’s nursing crisis, barriers that stand in the way of retaining and recruiting nurses, and advancing their career pathways, must be removed. This includes action on compensation and workloads. Policymakers must also leverage opportunities to pave the way for a brighter future for nursing in Ontario. This is the only way to emerge from this crisis with a stronger nursing profession and health system.” And their specific recommendations, on “Barrier: Compensation,” they’ve said to:

“—increase compensation for Ontario nurses in all roles, domains and sectors so it is competitive with compensation in other jurisdictions, including the US;

“—address pay disparities among nurses working in different sectors, including home care and long-term care, by harmonizing their compensation upwards.”

Some of their other recommendations: regarding workloads, “ensure safe and healthy workloads for nurses by increasing nurse staffing and supports all across sectors”; provide mentorship supports; provide leadership training; increase career development opportunities; register internationally educated nurses; increase nursing education seats and funding; expand nursing education pathways; return nurses to the workforce; eliminate racism and discrimination. Those are a whole whack of very clear able-to-be-implemented recommendations. We don’t see in this budget what we would want to in terms of funding to be able to act on those recommendations. We should be listening to nurses.

Speaker, I have another article here, from CBC, called “Ontario May Not Meet Long-Term-Care Direct Care Target Due to Staff Shortages.” We just talked about the systemic shortage of nurses. But as of this year, there’s a need for 13,200 additional nurses and 37,700 PSWs in Ontario, and this is a document, referenced in this article, that was prepared for the long-term care minister. Sharleen Stewart has said, “Every time the government announces that they’re going to have all these thousands of new beds, we’re sitting on the sidelines, saying, ‘Who’s going to staff those homes?’” Referring to the PSWs, “Some of them, they don’t last six weeks,” says Stewart. “A lot of them go in and say the workloads are just too heavy, the conditions are unsafe, and they move on. So we’ve had reported close to 50% of new hires leave within the first between six months and definitely after a year. So it’s a continuous revolving door.”

This is from a document that the minister has in front of him. The government knows that they’re dealing with a shortage. They’re getting information. So where do we see in the budget that we can rectify these challenges, that we can address compensation and workload and training for PSWs? We don’t see it.

I want to take the opportunity to highlight a success story in our riding. During COVID, a lot of our communities had stories of folks who came up with creative solutions, who rallied to meet a changed need. One of those stories in our community is Mission United, which was housed at the Back Door Mission in downtown Oshawa. This is a partnership across many organizations to support street-involved community members. Especially during COVID it started, but it has continued. It has grown; it has changed; and it’s meeting the acute medical needs of those who would otherwise not have access to medical care. It is building relationships with them so that they can perhaps connect with a service partner in the community they otherwise wouldn’t have known about.

It is having success; it is also having challenges and struggle. I want to say that when I had flagged this issue, and I’ve done it a few times because their funding has almost run out now twice—I want to thank the Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions that when I raised this issue, he listened. He acted and actually came at my request to the Back Door Mission, to the Mission United project in Oshawa, saw for himself and also listened to community members, listened to the partners and, I’ll even say to his credit, came back another time unannounced so that he could see—just wanted to make sure that it was indeed what they said that they were. The government funded it so it can continue.

Then, we were in the same position again where the funding was about to run out. Again, we got that one-time funding. Remember, this is to meet the medical needs of street-involved community members.

So what I want to say is, after the back and forth and the advocacy and the understanding of the minister, I want to actually say thank you because there is funding now that is not year to year. It still is short term, but it allows us to figure out our next chapter. That’s not a small thing, but that is a perfect example of a community that came together and created a solution that the government recognized was a positive thing.

There are positive things happening across communities, and we hope that the government would indeed fund those as they come across them. Recognizing the opportunity to appreciate that, I’m going to say thank you, and I’m going to continue to do the work alongside the partner agencies with Back Door Mission, Mission United, CMHA. I want to thank Dr. Ho, Dr. Meunier. I want to thank Stephanie, the folks at Back Door Mission and the ED and just everyone at CMHA who have been working so hard to help very real people with very real needs.

I’m hoping to be able to continue to work with the Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions to address the needs that are not being met in our community for youth and youth mental health. I’ve been reaching out with community partners, and we’re hoping that that could be something, maybe in the next budget, to address mental health needs of youth in Oshawa, in our community.

While I’m talking about health care and kids, I had the opportunity to meet with a pediatrician, Karen Mandel, and Maureen Cuddy, who’s a neonatal nurse practitioner. They’ve been doing unbelievable work in our community, and they have put together a proposal, the KidsKare pediatric health team.

There is a very real need. It’s strange to imagine that babies aren’t getting the health care that they need. They’re so vulnerable. They’re brand spanking new, and there’s no doctor who will take them. Very few doctors will take on newborns. Numbers wise, there aren’t enough family doctors, and very few are setting up practice, because they can’t make a living. That’s another conversation.

What I’ll say specifically about this KidsKare pediatric health team—it was an application, a vision for children’s care in Durham region. The Ministry of Health had a call for proposals for new models of care—partnership models. They were due in June 2023. We’re coming up on a year. Some places have heard that they have received funding; others have heard nothing. We’ve heard nothing on this particular model. It’s a really impressive model. It has sort of loosely been working out of a pediatric clinic right now, but they’re looking for that funding to grow it to serve babies—well child visits, routine visits for health maintenance. It doesn’t need to be done by an MD; it could be a nurse practitioner, someone who can teach and care. We’ve got young parents with a brand new baby who don’t know what to do with this child. They’re seeing people who, for five or six months, with a new baby, have never seen a doctor. Imagine that for a moment. I have not been a new mom, but all of us can imagine that when you have a brand new baby, you want to ensure you’re doing the right thing. But when there aren’t doctors, when you cannot have those wellness checks, we’re missing a step.

So this is a plan, this was an application that’s before the government, and it’s just lost. I don’t know where it is. They haven’t heard anything—it was received, and that’s the only thing that they’ve got. This is a good idea—and if it’s not, if the government has a problem with some part of the application, work with them. We have need for babies, newborns, to be receiving medical care. They have got so many cases they’ve come across, as this pediatric clinic that is lucky enough to have a neonatal nurse practitioner who draws from years of experience, and they’re hearing that bad things are happening. So I’m hoping that someone in the ministry is watching this and can find that application and work with them, fund them.

Speaker, I want to talk a bit about homelessness.

Rent is so unbelievably high. In Oshawa, it’s really bad—it’s bad all over. We are hearing from tenants who cannot find affordable rent.

People who aren’t actually legally considered tenants but who are boarders will answer an ad to share a room—or answer an ad for a room in a home for maybe 800 bucks, and they get there and there’s another adult on the other side of the room, a stranger they are meant to live with. They’re not tenants. They’re not protected by the Landlord and Tenant Board, which is not being appropriately funded. The backlog is wild.

We have so many people who are struggling, and we don’t see the money in this budget to address our housing challenges. The budget admits it has never been more expensive to own a home. Young families and newcomers have been totally priced out of home ownership. And that’s going to continue to rise.

This government is not meeting their own goal of building 1.5 million homes. The government lumped long-term-care-home beds into their overall housing count to bump up the numbers, but even with that, they’re still falling short of the target.

The affordable housing commitments are shockingly low. They’ve just built 8% of the affordable homes that this government said that they’d build back in 2018—the number I have here is 1,187 homes in six years that have been built. That number might be a bit different today, but it’s not enough. People don’t have places to live.

There’s such a struggle for people, also, to have remedy if something goes sideways. I’m hearing from tenants, and I’m hearing from neighbourhood landlords.

Roxy, who I heard from in my riding, has a home that she rents, and she has had a really rocky journey with bad tenants, in this case—has been through the Landlord and Tenant Board. The tribunal has issued the eviction notice. But did you know that in Oshawa we only have one sheriff? So it has taken, my understanding is—not in that case, but in others—four months for that sheriff to be able to go and enforce that eviction. That’s a long time for a neighbourhood landlord who’s trying to make ends meet and who’s also trying to be a part of the solution to housing people—we’re talking basements; we’re talking a small home. These aren’t corporate landlords. These are our neighbours. But nothing is working for anyone with the LTB right now, and that is not okay, and the money is not in this budget to address this, to fix it.

Speaker, it’s no surprise to anyone here that I’ve run out of time. I have so much—I’d like another 20 minutes, if I may, on education. No? Perhaps during the questions and comments, my colleagues would be so kind as to ask me about education, because I have thoughts to share.

Before I wrap up, Speaker, I want to say that this is a budget that missed an opportunity. And the thing is, I do believe the government members read their emails and speak to people in their community, and they know that things are tough for real people, so we would have expected to see some real solutions that will have that impact on people’s day-to-day lives. It’s missing from this budget, so I’m encouraging the government to do better.

It’s my honour to rise on behalf of my constituents in Parkdale–High Park to speak to budget 2024, as presented in Bill 180.

Speaker, the Conservative government is out of touch and out of ideas. With budget 2024, they had the opportunity to provide real solutions for Ontarians, solutions that Ontarians are seeking: solutions to skyrocketing costs of living, the affordable housing crisis, the family doctor shortage, the massive funding shortfalls that are damaging our public schools, universities and hospitals. Instead, the Ford Conservatives are doubling down on policies that have failed people.

An NDP budget would deliver the homes, health care and hope that people are looking for. It would help families get child care by fully funding the $10-a-day child care program. It would secure faster and better health care, without leaving patients with a bill. It would build affordable housing in the communities that people want to live in, and so much more.

Speaker, a budget is more than just numbers and percentages; it’s a statement of values and priorities. If the Ontario government, the Conservative government, is working for the people, then the budget should reflect the values and priorities of Ontarians. It’s that simple.

As Ontario geared up for budget 2024, I listened to my constituents about the needs and priorities of Parkdale–High Park. I held multiple pre-budget consultations with local stakeholders to gather insights on spending priorities, policy directions and investment needs. I met and heard from residents, service providers, small business owners, parent councils, local community members and advocacy groups to learn what a budget for them would look like. My constituents spoke passionately about the need to address issues related to housing, health care, education, the environment, small businesses, affordability and reconciliation. I compiled that in a report summarizing their insights and shared it with the Minister of Finance, in the hopes that my constituents’ priorities and perspectives would help inform budget 2024.

Speaker, the report was not very different from what we heard from communities across Ontario. But after reviewing this Conservative government’s budget, I’m disappointed, Speaker. It’s not for the people. What would have been for them? Speaker, here are some main priorities and perspectives shared with me by Parkdale–High Park residents that are not reflected in budget 2024.

My constituents want increased funding for child care. Too many times in this past year, families in my riding have been left scrambling as lack of investments have led to program closures, facing higher fees, and have put them at risk of losing the child care they rely on. Families at Ola Day Care faced an $800-to-$900 per-child increase when the operator had to withdraw from the $10-a-day child care program due to the Conservative government’s poor implementation.

Then there was the High Park YMCA, which was forced to suspend its infant care program in January due to the shortage of early childhood educators. Despite being warned for years about the staffing crisis in the child care sector, this Conservative government still does not take the issue seriously, even as it is leading to the closure of desperately needed child care spaces.

In April, I received an email from a registered ECE in the High Park area who was distressed that the minimum wage increase that she and other ECEs were promised in January wasn’t coming until June, nearly half a year after the Ford government said it would kick in. At a time when many child care workers are struggling to buy groceries and pay rent, this delay was incredibly hard to deal with. The lack of investments also means that the $10-a-day child care program is under threat.

My constituents want proper investments into our public schools, our education system. Despite the Conservative government’s claims about historic spending, the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association confirmed in a report that this year’s funding is the lowest level of per-student funding in more than a decade. This budget continues the trend of education cuts in every year since the Conservatives have been in government. Education funding is down by over $1,500 per child since 2018.

The only historic thing about education is the number of families who are putting their children into private school. Speaker, people are not stupid. They can see right through the government’s actions. They are starving the public education system so that they can replace it with a privatized system. It’s happening in health care and it’s also happening in the education system.

School boards are getting less money year over year. The Conservative government is simply ignoring the struggles that our kids, parents, teachers and other education staff are dealing with. There is an extreme teacher shortage across all schools in this province: 24% of elementary schools and 35% of secondary schools are reporting teaching staff shortages every single day. There are students who require additional support who are being sent home from school because there are not enough staff available to help them. Parents are having to find and pay out of pocket for supplemental educational support that their children need.

These were the things that we used to be able to count on our schools to provide. It’s all boards: big school boards; small rural district school boards. They’re all facing deficits. They’re all having to make cuts and find the money somehow. The TDSB is facing a $26.5-million budget deficit this year, and this is after $17 million in cuts already. Outdoor education programs, language programs etc. have been cut.

In other programs, like the IB program, fees are being introduced now. Parkdale Collegiate in my riding is one of the few schools in Toronto that offer the IB program, and I want to read to this House a letter from a constituent of mine. She writes:

“My son is graduating from Parkdale this year, having participated in the IB program. He chose to participate in this program himself, and from what I have seen has been able to broaden his mind and perspective in a way that would not have happened if he was not part of it. I have seen how his view of the world has been challenged and how he and his fellow students have been enabled to think ‘differently’ and do more with what they have. I am proud of him for participating and grateful to his school, PCI, for making it available to him. I would hate to see this taken away from future students.

“The fact that the concept of charging for a special program in the public system goes against the entire idea of public and barrier-free education. The best part of the TDSB’s free IB program currently is that it creates an equal opportunity for all students to receive a university preparatory education and has a lack of barriers to access, to apply and attend, no matter family income. To charge for the IB program would remove the IB program’s most important feature.”

And as you hear from this parent, she continues, finally, to say, “I write to you in the hope that you can help put pressure on our government to fund education, as this is the most meaningful way that our province can progress and grow.”

Speaker, the Conservative government is denying equal learning opportunities for kids everywhere.

I only have about a minute and a half left, but I want to also share very quickly that obviously when it comes to health care, the residents of Parkdale–High Park also want to see a budget that is prioritizing increased investments into our publicly funded and publicly delivered health care system. Constituents have shared stories about their experiences in emergency departments, in accessing family doctors, and just the number of challenges that they are experiencing in terms of access to care.

Housing is another very important issue. The residents of Parkdale–High Park want the government to address the crisis head-on and to make safe, affordable homes accessible to all.

In the last few seconds that I have, I want to close by calling attention to Parkdale–High Park residents’ steadfast commitment to reconciliation. Constituents in my riding want to see meaningful reconciliation that goes beyond land acknowledgements. We need to make sure that First Nations are given the decision-making powers over their own lands.

Speaker, among the many things, they want to see an enforcement of the moratorium on the province’s staking of mining claims and requiring free, prior and informed consent from Ontario’s Indigenous people before mining in the Ring of Fire region, something that this budget does not do.