I will always appreciate that the member from Waterloo refuses to be comfortably numb in the face of the evidence. A lot of us got out to see nurses in our communities, because it was Nursing Week last week.

I had occasion to visit with a bunch of nurses for breakfast last Friday. What really disturbed me is a lack of investment, in particular—it’s across the nursing sector—for community health centres. We talked to nurses who are working—because they can’t get enough hours, can’t get enough compensation from the community health centre, they’re working shifts at our hospitals and making 30% more doing the same work.

I’m wondering if this is something you’re hearing in the pre-budget hearings across the province. Why wouldn’t we not be comfortably numb and help those nurses?

Bill 28.

Any of the members opposite can answer this question. I’m wondering why Ottawa didn’t get the funds we needed for mental health supports. Let me talk in particular about something we brought up in pre-budget consultations. Counselling Connect: This is a program that runs at about $600,000 a year. It provides, within 48 hours, immediate help of up to three psychotherapy sessions for people in immediate crisis. This was a plea that the Pinecrest-Queensway Community Health Centre made to the government: “Could the province assume responsibility for this?” What we got instead, unfortunately, is a province of Ontario office in our city that’s going to cost three times the amount this particular program costs—we’ll take the office; we’ll use whatever means we have to lobby the government.

I would ask any of the members opposite: Why not take on that responsibility provincially so we could get every single person in our city—and, why not, every single person in Ontario—access to mental health support within 48 hours?

I just want to thank my friend from Kitchener Centre for focusing on climate policy and just give her this time to elaborate on anything she would like the government to focus on if we were going to elevate the amount of investment in climate policy.

I thank the member for Essex. What I’ll say in response is that this is the 72nd edition of the Ottawa tulip festival. It acknowledges the sacrifice of 7,600 Canadian soldiers who lost their life in liberating the Netherlands. The gift in return that the country of the Netherlands gives our city is 100,000 tulips. If you haven’t been to our city to see the blooming of the tulips, you really should. It’s very important for Jo Riding, who is the festival director, for it to be no cost so the children can learn about that military history and the sacrifice of those veterans but also appreciate the beauty of those tulips and what they mean. You can go to the Man with Two Hats statue, which is right in Commissioners Park, which is literally geographically facing the same statue in the Netherlands. Princess Margriet of the Netherlands joined us to unveil that two years ago.

The fact of the matter is, I would love this government, in its budget, to invest heavily in libraries because it creates opportunity for people to better themselves, to learn more about their community. We should be investing in that, for sure.

No, I’m not. I’ve been on the record here many times saying that we actually have, in our city, the opportunity to cover 30,000 people with primary care through our community health centres and through some family health team proposals before the government, but we’ve had just one proposal funded, at 30% of its ask, in the downtown. I think we can do better than that.

One thing I do want to say for the record about our health care system and John Bell is that John had that resurgence of creative activity because he got a double lung transplant, thanks to public health care. So that’s important—

It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of the good people of Ottawa Centre to talk about the government’s budget bill, Bill 180, this morning. As I do, I was hoping that you and the House would permit me a little latitude as I get started, because it’s been an interesting week for me. I had my family here for the first time in six years on Monday; that was lovely. But I also had an opportunity to eulogize in a member’s statement a great Ottawan, Voula Sardelis, who we lost, whose celebration of life I missed on Monday, but I had the opportunity to eulogize Voula, and I just wanted to talk a little bit more about her if you and the House will permit me to do that.

I also wanted to talk about another great Ontarian we lost, a journalist, John Bell, who used to actually be in the press gallery in this building. So I’m just wondering if you and the House will permit me a few minutes to do that before I get into the substance of comments I have about Bill 180—just full disclosure.

Voula Sardelis, as I mentioned on Monday, was a truly remarkable woman. What I didn’t have a chance to talk about is her story in arriving to Canada. I focused instead on the collaborative work that I had done with her and her daughter in putting forward a motion on the floor of this House, motion 129, which confirmed that we all believe that seniors and persons with disabilities who live in retirement homes, long-term-care homes and congregate care homes—group homes—have a right to see their powers of attorney, their caregivers, their families and friends. They have a right to receive visitors.

This has been a hotly debated topic, certainly during the COVID-19 pandemic but since, when there have been disagreements over the conditions of life and the conditions of care. There have been a minority—and I want to stress that for the record, a minority—of care home operators for vulnerable persons who have decided to, instead of negotiating disputes with powers of attorney and family caregivers, issue trespass act notices to keep those wanted visitors out of homes.

For all of us who have family members in congregate care facilities—I do; I’m sure most of us here do—the presentation of a visitor on any given day is the highlight of our family member’s day, week, month—maybe, if it’s a great visit, the year. So I just want to, again, for the record, congratulate Voula and her daughter, Maria, on that victory, but I also want to talk a little bit about Voula’s story because I think it tells a little bit about Canada as a country and the kind of province and country we want to build through the government’s budget bill.

Voula Sardelis arrived to Canada in 1954. She arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax. I’m sure many of our families have these stories. She was immediately head-counted, assessed by immigration officials and sent on a bus to Montreal, where, because of her training in her homeland of Greece, she became a seamstress. She worked for a tailor in the city of Montreal. She later moved to my city in Ottawa, where she was both a seamstress and a nanny. And her husband, who she knew from the old village, came to join her in Ottawa.

What is remarkable for me, Speaker, about Voula is that this is a woman who came to Canada without any family connections, without the capacity to speak either of our two official languages, who simply took a risk on herself at 33 years of age because, as she told Maria, she was tired of not having shoes. She was tired of not having shoes and tending to animals in the field and, in some cases, she talked to Maria, and related the story to me through Maria, about having her feet hurt because of walking on ice in the small amounts of frozen time in the year in that country, Greece.

It’s the immigrant story; it’s the striving immigrant story that so many of our families have, Speaker. I think those—they could be genetic; they could be learned tendencies passed from mother to daughter. When I had the opportunity to work with Maria, I just remember meeting someone with such an indomitable spirit because—think about this for a moment: If you were separated from the person who is most important to you for 316 days, if you miss Christmas, you miss her birthday, you miss Easter, you miss Thanksgiving, you miss all the important things, you’re hurting. But at the end of that 316-day period, Maria decided to defy the trespass act. She decided to defy it. She called the Ottawa police ahead of time and she said, “I will be compliant with your officers if they’re deployed to the scene, but I believe this care home operator is abusing their power under the Retirement Homes Act. I’ve contacted the regulator. I’ve had no progress.” I had worked with her, and she had had no progress.

So think about the courage it took Voula Sardelis to come to Canada without any capacity in English or French, without any family connections, to start a life in 1954, and think about how those skills were passed on to her daughter who had that same courage to take personal risk and to test the law. Let’s be gratified that we as a House agreed to support the right for Voula and every other person in a congregate care facility to receive their loved ones as guests. God bless you, Voula; God bless you, Maria. Thank you, House, for the opportunity to talk a little bit more about that.

I also want to talk about John Bell, who has got a funny story too. I don’t see any London, Ontario, members of the House here, I don’t think—oh, pardon me. My goodness, the friend from London North Centre is here, sorry. So, John comes from your city, my friend, and he’s the son of a nurse; he’s the son of a high school teacher. I met John when I was a graduate student in the city, Speaker, because he was part of the press gallery in this building, but part of the press gallery from a source that I don’t think many Ontarians know about. He wrote for a socialist newspaper called the Socialist Worker, and it was something that I had seen around York University when I was a campus member, and I thought it was a pretty outspoken publication. When I met John, he was somebody who I thought was an interesting person. He had a mind of his own.

What I remember from the celebration of life—John passed away on March 28—is that he was one of those people on the left in the early 1980s that was changed by the Polish ship workers strike of 1981, because at that time the people who called themselves the left, the Stalinist regime, was putting down the shipyard workers strike, and if you were to advocate for those Polish shipyard workers in this city or any other Canadian city, you were accused by the so-called left of being agents for the United States or some other surrogate that is supposed to be anti-left. But John had the courage, as a student in the early 1980s to say the following words, and I will repeat them for the record of this House: “Either you backed the workers or you backed the generals and their tanks trying to smash the strike. Shamefully, most of the left backed the tanks, characterizing rebellious Polish workers as agents of the CIA or the Vatican.”

John had a mind of his own. He was raised by a teacher and a nurse. He was raised also by an aunt who was a librarian. He thought for himself. He thought deeply. And he, like many Canadians, decided to back the shipyard workers in the early 1980s, despite the names he was called. I saw that same independence of spirit. He decided to devote decades of his life afterwards to writing a column—I encourage any member of this House to look up—called Left Jab. In Left Jab, he wrote about fascinating topics that were political, cultural. One of my favourite columns John wrote was about the great Charlie Sifford, who is often referred to as golf’s Jackie Robinson. He passed away in 2015. He was the apparent mentor for the great Tiger Woods, the golfer Tiger Woods.

Through John’s column, I learned a lot more about my country, I learned a lot more about major figures in history, but always from a very independent streak. This is what I want to mention about John. He was somebody who thought for himself and he wasn’t afraid to ruffle the feathers of others if it was called for. This is a guy I truly believe could have had a great career as a mainstream journalist or as a professor, but he decided to devote his life to writing for a socialist publication and working on contract.

In 2018, after a debilitating lung illness that John had lived through, he got a double lung transplant, and his productivity as a columnist went through the roof. I remember that. I remember him publishing once a week to publishing twice a week, commenting on social media frequently, and very much enjoying his work. But in November 2023, unfortunately, he had a fall, he broke his hip, he was admitted to hospital. That was the moment I remember of John’s columns when he talked about the risks persons with disabilities faced in the COVID-19 pandemic, being immunocompromised, and how getting sick could often mean the end of his life. Unfortunately, John lived out that example himself. He passed away on the 28th of this year, but he lived a remarkable life, and I’m glad that I’ve had a few moments to talk about him and what he contributed to debate in this country.

I also want to thank the Ottawa Festival Network. This is my substantive contribution for the debate—surprise, I only have 25 seconds left. I thought I had more. I do want to put a nod, because my friend the minister responsible is here. The Ottawa Festival Network has a great pitch in front of him and his ministry for the tulip festival that’s happening on the 10th to the 20th of this month, which is our opportunity to celebrate veterans’ history and the important sacrifice that 7,600 Canadians made to liberate the Netherlands, and the gift that the country of the Netherlands gives us. My pitch to the government in the budget bill: Don’t forget our festivals.

I want to thank the member for Don Valley West for her presentation. I’m wondering, because I know the member has expertise in financial management and a financial background, and you’ve commented a lot on what you believe to be the deficiencies from a financial perspective in the government’s budget—spending a whole lot, as the member from Ottawa South often likes to say, for not a lot.

Transit: I’m looking at a government that—unless you look at the city of Toronto, thanks to Mayor Olivia Chow—we don’t have a lot of money for operating the buses that we operate in many of our municipalities. Certainly in Ottawa, we’re 74,000 service hours short for OC Transpo this year because of government cutbacks. But meanwhile, the cost of building transit under the Conservative government has climbed to a billion dollars per kilometre for the Ontario Line, that I know you care about in this city. The Eglinton West Crosstown: 3 years overdue—a billion dollars over budget.

Can the member talk about the financial mismanagement of transit projects under this government and, from your perspective in Don Valley West, how much would putting more money into transit operating funds all over the province matter to you?

Thanks to my friend from Durham for those comments. I do have a question for him, though, because it is a common refrain I hear from friends in the government that they’re all about never increasing the costs of living through regulation and taxes. I’ve heard it often.

But, Speaker, to the member: What do we call the refusal to extend public programs and, when that refusal to extend those public programs happens, the cost of living goes up?

I’ll give you a case in point: We desperately need primary care, nurse practitioners, family physicians in the city of Ottawa. In this latest round, there is talk of one nurse practitioner proposal being funded in the market—a terrific one; I’m very supportive of it—but there are 160,000 people in the city of Ottawa who do not have a family doctor or nurse practitioner. So what do they do? They go down the road to one of these clinics that is, frankly, I believe, breaking the rules of the Canada Health Act, charging people $400 membership fees, charging women $110 to get a Pap test. Those are costs that are borne by the taxpayer because the government doesn’t extend services. I’m wondering if my friend—