My question is to the Premier. Your government has failed to implement the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care program. Child care operators, stakeholders and advocacy groups have been raising red flags that your minister has not delivered the $10-a-day child care spaces that were promised. Ola, a child care provider, pulled out of the program, citing a broken funding model.

Everyone wants to know where the money is being spent. Your budget doesn’t even mention the words “child care.” Will the Premier commit to requesting the Auditor General provide a full report of government spending on the $10-a-day child care program?

Families, Speaker, are paying the price for this minister’s lack of action and his failure to implement the $10-a-day child care spaces. Wait-lists keep growing, and parents can’t access affordable child care.

Families have lost trust in this government’s ability to deliver affordable child care. This government won’t even publicly report on how many of the 41 child care spaces they created in 2019 are subsidized spaces—they won’t even report on that.

This government has not met with their own advisory group on the funding issue since last June. Families and child care providers want to know why this government continues to hide, and when will they finally come up with a funding formula that will work for kids?

Our government, under the leadership of Premier Ford, has done more for transportation and transit infrastructure, and also making transportation more affordable, than any other government in the history of this province. Our government continues to provide funding for all the municipalities through a gas tax program and millions of dollars for transportation, repairs and expansion.

When we brought legislation to make sure that we built the Ontario Line, the Yonge North subway extension and the Scarborough subway extension, the Liberals and the NDP said no and voted against it. When we brought the One Fare program, which saved $1,600, the Liberals and NDP said no and voted against it—not just once; they voted against this twice.

Interjections.

In Scarborough, we are building the Scarborough subway extension. We are building a brand new hospital in Scarborough. They voted against it. We are building the first-ever medical school in Scarborough after 1983, and the Liberals chose to vote against it.

We won’t take lessons from the Liberals or the NDP, who did nothing for Ontario. Twelve years ago, they decided to shut down the Northlander. Guess what? Under this government, under this Premier’s leadership, we are bringing back the Northlander—

Interjections.

Thank you to the member from Oshawa for her comments. I was very happy to see the investments in health care in this budget, and I think all of us share an interest in making sure we have the best health care available for our constituents. I know the member mentioned that she was pleased that the minister of mental health had worked with her to ensure that a community group was getting ongoing funding.

There are some great investments in the budget, including an extra $2 billion over three years for home and community care; a 4% increase in hospital funding; the first new medical school in Canada focused on training family doctors; and also the primary care investments—an additional $546 million for more primary care interdisciplinary teams.

The member said she expects this budget to do things to help people, and I wanted to ask: Don’t you think these are important investments to help people in your community and all of ours?

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.

A question to the members opposite: Part of this budget includes Critical Minerals Strategy funding—it’s part of this budget.

The Ontario Mining Association puts together a report every year. It’s called the State of the Ontario Mining Sector. They are forecasting gross domestic product from the mining industry to grow between the years 2020 to 2025 by 25%. I’d say that’s a good thing. I think that it’s, in part, attributable to the Critical Minerals Strategy that’s part of this budget and part of the previous budget as well.

And so, to either of the speakers who spoke on this issue, I would like to know: What are their views on the Critical Minerals Strategy? And do they think that the Critical Minerals Strategy is, in part, helping to grow the domestic product of the mining sector in Ontario?

I thank the member from Thornhill. First, I want to say if we truly all agreed on wanting the best outcomes, then it would be reflected in this budget. The Conservatives say that they want the best outcome. Then how come we are cutting education funding and we are continuing down the path of privatization of health care—among the many, many examples that are contained in this budget?

Yes, with regard to, very specifically, the family doctor shortage, we need to create more spaces. We need to train more medical doctors. We need to encourage family medicine as a practice. There are a number of measures that can be taken. A lot of this is down the road, but this problem is urgent and there needs to be an immediate solution, as well.

One of the things that we have proposed in the NDP is to reduce the administrative burden that family doctors are experiencing so that they can spend more of their time seeing patients—a recommendation that has been put forward by family physicians themselves. And yet this government voted it down.