Speaker, I rise today as the transit critic in this House for the official opposition. This is my first one-hour lead in response to transit legislation proposed by the government. Before I get into the substance of my remarks about Bill 131 and its two schedules, I have a few people to thank because I needed to be a quick study this week. I found out about the bill on Monday and I am blessed, as the transit critic, with some great resources both inside this caucus and inside this great province, and I want to take the moment to thank them first.

First of all, I want to thank the member for University–Rosedale, who did incredible and impressive work on transit policy for this caucus through the current Parliament and in the previous Parliament. I want to thank her very much.

Secondly, I want to thank the hard-working people at Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113, who get Toronto’s folks moving, who move people around all over this city—13,000 people.

Interjections.

I want to thank, in particular, ATU 113 president Marvin Alfred and strategic consultant Ian Fellows. I want to thank ATU national president John Di Nino. I’ve had occasion to have many conversations with them, Speaker, and I’ve learned a lot about what happens every single day on the public transit system in this great city of Toronto and, through John, right across the whole country.

Before I jump into the substance of my remarks, Speaker, if you’ll permit me a little sidestep. Someone important in my life passed away four days ago, a professor I studied with at York University: John Saul, one of Canada’s experts on human rights in the continent of Africa. He spent a lot of his time supporting the freedom struggle launched by the global giant Nelson Mandela as an American and Canadian citizen. I know a lot of us who were graduate students who worked under John were blessed to have Africans come to York University, where I trained. I want to thank him, and I want that to be read into the record of this place. There are many human rights champions in Ontario and John Saul was one of them. So I’m thinking of you, John, when I’m reading out this speech today.

Let’s get to the substance of Bill 131, and its two schedules, and what it does. I had occasion this morning to listen to the Minister of Infrastructure, who I’m glad to see here today. I also had occasion to listen to the Associate Minister of Transportation’s remarks supporting this legislation.

As I understand it, this bill is attempting to do two things. On the one hand, it seeks to align service integration between transit agencies. It’s amending the City of Toronto Act, as the government purports, to make sure that the Toronto Transit Commission is simpatico in its relationships with other transit authorities from outside the TTC’s boundaries, because the TTC has a monopoly in providing transit service for within the TTC’s boundaries. That’s what I understand the first schedule of this bill to do.

The second schedule of the bill is about building more GO Transit stations, which, for those folks—like my friend from Oshawa—who come to this place representing communities outside the downtown core, is a really popular thing. This is something I have heard in my short time as transit critic in this place. The government is proposing a mechanism that municipalities would have to defray the costs of them themselves, taking on the responsibility of building provincial infrastructure. That’s what I understand this bill to be doing, the specific task.

But, Speaker, I feel it important to talk about Bill 131 in a much bigger context than those two things, although I will get into them in great detail this afternoon. I have heard members of this House often say that public transit and active transportation are priorities for Ontario. I heard it from the Minister of Infrastructure this morning and the Associate Minister of Transportation. Making transit and active transit a priority is certainly something that bears repeating, and why? Let’s get to the context. Speaker and friends in this place today and folks watching at home: We are living in a climate emergency. That is not hyperbole. It is proven by science. We must take bold steps to put our province on a sustainable path for our children and grandchildren. That’s the context for a conversation about public transit.

We saw it this summer—didn’t we, Speaker—all over Canada, in the historic wildfires that happened here. If you can believe it, there’s been a study done to measure the impact of those wildfires. Over two billion—billion—tonnes of carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere as a consequence of those wildfires, and some are still raging. As Canadians, we like to get out into the wilderness to find peace and solace and to reconnect with nature. Those trees that we reconnect to, that land we reconnect to, are a giant carbon sink that is supposed to provide that role of helping balance off the benefits of industrial modern life. But as a result of those wildfires this summer—which are linked, according to scientific efforts, to lack of progress in our country on the climate emergency—we released three times the value of that carbon sink, two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere. It bears mentioning.

We know—and the Minister of the Environment, previous and current, has mentioned—that extreme weather is linked to these things. We celebrate the first responders who run to those communities to help people. But we also know that our climate action plan has to include public transit. Public transit is part of that. It’s part of our focused effort to reduce emissions.

We know that one third of Ontario’s emissions comes from our transportation sector. Anyone who has braved a commute on our major highways has seen what that looks like, the congestion, the smog and, let’s face it, the frustration on our roads. Many people are hurt by the violence that results often from that frustration. I want to name, for the record, sadly, a tragedy that happened not far from my community in downtown Ottawa yesterday. A 63-year-old German cyclist, a tourist to our country, was critically injured on Highway 17, south of Pembroke.

When I recently had occasion to ride my bicycle from Ottawa to this great city of Toronto and stop along the way, I met with people in big communities and small communities who were telling me the same thing as vulnerable road users: They do not feel safe. But at the same time, they are trying to do their part for the climate crisis.

Let me be very clear, Speaker: By taking the bus, the train, the streetcar or some mode of active transport like a bike, a wheelchair, a walker or even a good old pair of shoes, you’re taking action. It’s an act of hope for our future, notably our children’s future. This House, by encouraging public transit, as I understand the Minister of Infrastructure is purporting in this bill—we have to support that choice. We are obliged to support that choice. We have to make public transit and active transportation much more attractive and viable for a greater number of people. So that is my departure point for my comment on this legislation today.

When I think about that, I think of the great Brazilian novelist Paolo Coelho, the author of The Alchemist, who once said, “The world is changed by your” actions, “not your opinions.” We’ve had a lot of talk about public transit in Ontario. I’ve occasioned to learn thanks to the member for University–Rosedale about a lot of the research she had done that she shared with me in my preparation for today. We’ve had a lot of visions, but we haven’t necessarily had enough follow-through, and I’m going to be talking about that this afternoon.

Four years ago, Matt Gurney, who’s a columnist who frequently comments on public transit, summed up Toronto’s transit woes this way: “Elections,” Mr. Gurney said, “come and go, politicians are elected and serve out their terms,” Toronto “and its sprawling suburbs keep growing—but precious little transit ever” gets built.

That’s why, Speaker, this opposition supports efforts to broaden access to public transit—we do—to improve service levels and to improve the quality of the transit we have by supporting the operating funding of those systems. And I have good news for you, Speaker. It’s important to talk about good news today because some of these challenges we are talking about are serious. This is what the city of Toronto has just accomplished under the leadership of their new mayor, Olivia Chow. The city of Toronto was dealing with a massive deficit in its operating infrastructure for the TTC. Transit systems all over the world have been struggling during the pandemic to recover. And I’ll acknowledge the government has done its part to make moves in helping transit systems in this province recover.

But what Mayor Chow just committed to was to put the TTC on a path to 91% of pre-pandemic service levels. That’s a big boost. The way that her team is doing it is by utilizing funds that were otherwise allocated to manage the failing Eglinton Crosstown system.

So we have a civic leader managing the urban community around this great building who has taken a purposeful decision to make significant investments in the operating lane—not necessarily new visions and ribbons to cut and all of that important stuff—I’m talking about helping those trains, those streetcars, those buses show up on time and respecting the people who drive and fix them. So it is possible to do better.

The Premier said this in question period yesterday: “We have to find ways to get people out of cars and into other modes of transportation.” I want to say off the top, if that is what Bill 131 is intended to do, that is a worthy goal. But I’m going to explain this afternoon, Speaker, that I find aspects of Bill 131 need work if that’s the goal. I’ll outline these now and I’ll get into more detail as I go through them one by one.

First, the responsibility to build and operate transit at the moment, in my opinion, is not being appropriately shared between provincial and municipal governments, and Bill 131 has the potential, although it doesn’t have to, to make that situation worse. Schedule 2 of this bill, as I mentioned, allows municipalities, pending approval of the Minister of Transportation, to assume the financial risk of building GO Transit stations, which is provincial infrastructure normally built by Metrolinx. So they assume the debt for the infrastructure, but they charge, as the minister said this morning, a station administration fee to recoup that cost. They charge that fee to developers who are seeking to build housing—which, I take the point, we urgently need, particularly affordable housing—and other amenities around GO Transit stations.

But this option being offered by the government through this schedule in this bill is coming at a time when the government has also dramatically reduced the revenue capacities of municipalities through its controversial Bill 23. Bill 23 withdrew a billion dollars of potential revenue for municipalities across Ontario, and it was one of the reasons why the Association of Municipalities of Ontario said loud and clear at their most recent meeting that they wanted to see those powers restored. It’s also the reason Mayor Chow proposed to the Premier that Toronto have some new revenue-generating powers to pay for some of those needs She has yet to persuade the Premier. AMO has yet to convince the government to walk back some of the moves it made under Bill 23.

The 440-odd municipalities in Ontario are short a billion dollars, and they’re being told, “If you want to build a new GO station, a provincial piece of infrastructure, you take on the costs and we’re going to give you the tool to defray that cost after the fact.” It’s voluntary, my friends in government are saying, but, Speaker, I want to submit to you, that’s rather like telling an asthmatic that their puffers are voluntary. You know? Because we need public transit.

For a community like Bowmanville that has had occasion to go through—they are so excited for the prospect, and the member from Oshawa can confirm this better than me, of their new GO station. There are other communities that want them too. Let’s dispense with that—it’s not voluntary. I said earlier, about the context, we have to build public transit. There’s no choice. But we’re asking municipalities to do it with dramatically less revenue. We’re asking them to shoulder more debt after having gone through legislation previous to this bill that reduces their revenue.

The other thing that concerns me, Speaker, on a related note—and I’ll get into more detail later—is that the government has said, without a lot of detail, that municipalities can charge these station administration fees to developers building housing projects and other amenities around GO stations, provided some kind of an incentive is given back to the developer for the privilege of using this incentive.

This morning in debate, I heard the minister say it could involve being flexible with municipal requirements for parking for large buildings, because, as the minister said—and I take her point—we want to be building infrastructure not premised upon the single occupancy vehicle or single vehicles. We want to encourage people to utilize the transit that’s right at the new building. Okay, I could see a rationale for that case, but what is the scope of other incentives that are proposed by this bill? What’s going to be determined in regulation? Often what we’re dealing with, when we’re talking about the developers who will be building these amenities around GO stations, are some of the most profitable companies in the home-building industry and commercial building industry in our province. I’m not necessarily convinced that we need to bend over backwards to reduce their cost. We certainly need to work with them. We certainly need to work with them, but I’m worried about the scope creep of this particular thing, and I’m going to be talking about that today.

Thirdly, Speaker, I want to persuade the government—and this is where I would like everyone’s focused attention because it’s an urgent priority—that schedule 1 of this bill needs to be repealed because I don’t think it’s necessary. I don’t think it’s necessary because it concerns an amendment to the City of Toronto Act that would render the contracting-out provisions of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113’s collective agreement null and void. It would basically say that when the TTC collaborates with another transit agency, there is no complaint that could be brought to bear based upon the negotiated achievements of those transit workers around reciprocity of service, around wages, around standards of vehicles that could be used.

I can tell you, my phone has been burning up a bit today and yesterday, Speaker. People are concerned. The leadership of ATU 113, Marvin Alfred and the gang, are in Alberta right now, visiting some of their colleagues and talking about transit policy for the country, but they found time in their schedules today and yesterday to talk to me and our leader at length about this.

There’s good news here, Speaker, and I was mentioning this to the minister earlier today. There is a provision within the ATU 113’s collective agreement with the TTC and the city of Toronto that allows for service integration between the TTC and other transit agencies. It already exists because pilot projects have already been started because riders want it; workers want to collaborate and be flexible; and the massive achievement that people in this place have fought for, on all sides of the House, the notion of eliminating double or triple fares that the Associate Minister of Transportation was talking about this morning, bringing down those costs for transit riders. Everyone has agreed on that, and this is the service end of that, but—and this is a big “but,” Speaker—we can’t, from this place, from this House that our grandparents built, open up the collective agreement of a transit union whose responsibility is to negotiate not with us but with the TTC, and ultimately the leadership of the city of Toronto. That can be construed as interference in the collective bargaining process. And I’ll tell you something, in the time I’ve had to get to know transit workers, I wouldn’t want to mess with them. I wouldn’t want to get them angry, because their jobs, every single day, is dealing with conflicts. Sometimes our neighbours are in their worst position when they jump on the bus or the subway.

Can I just look around the room today and see, have people had that experience? When you’ve been on public transit, you see someone is having a really hard time. They could be homeless, they could be dealing with an illness—there could be any number of issues that require our attention. I have risen in this place, and I’ve spoken about the violence on public transit. This is what the women and men who work for the TTC have to deal with every single day, and they do it with dignity and they do it with honour, but if they get a sense that, from this building, we’re going to diminish the integrity of decades of work at the negotiating table—the member from Sudbury has lived his life doing this sort of work, and other people here have. They are not going to respond terribly well.

The good news is, we don’t have to go the road of schedule 1. We don’t need it. If the government’s objective is to merge service agreements between transit jurisdictions as the Associate Minister of Transportation said this morning—riders don’t care what the colour of the bus is. They just want to get on in Durham and get off in Oakville or get off in Markham, wherever the case may be. I take the point, but we want to make sure that all the hard work that’s gone into making sure that bus is in good shape, runs on time, is driven by a competent professional, is repaired by a competent professional—we want to make sure that all of that work is maintained and there is no backsliding, because safety comes first. Safety for everyone comes first.

I’ll also just mention for the government that there has been a recent interest arbitration ruling by Justice William Kaplan, who said very clearly, and I will pull out my weapon of mass distraction here to read out the words. This is the award that Justice Kaplan mentioned—because the TTC management had been pushing for this particular flexibility. He said, “Having carefully considered the proposals of the parties and with the foregoing observations being borne carefully in mind, I direct that a note be added to the collective agreement called E-27 pilot project. This will allow the parties, in the limited time remaining during the term of the current collective agreement, to test the cross-boundary integration. The pilot project will provide that the TTC may implement cross-boundary integration on any or all of 50 Burnhamthorpe, 105 Dufferin North, 49 Bloor West and 25 Don Mills.” These were the nodes being proposed for inter-jurisdictional transit. “I note that these routes were identified by the TTC involving roughly equivalent service hours to the number of hours some TTC buses”—and again, identified by the TTC—“are currently being driven outside the city. These, or equivalent cross-boundary routes will continue so long as this pilot project is in effect.

“There will be no layoff or termination resulting from the pilot project. The TTC will not directly engage in any third-party contracting for the provision of vehicle operation. Actual language of the provision will be remitted to the parties.” That is to say, if you want to change it, change it in bargaining. “The parties are further directed to regularly and jointly monitor any cross-boundary staffing operational matters that arise when these corridors are established so that they can be fully informed by the actual implementation of this pilot project, and thus addressing the issues that may arise in the next collective bargaining round, including expansion of the number of corridors. No finding, needless to say, is made about the best manner of general implementing reciprocity, which will undoubtedly continue to be a feature in future cross-boundary service integration.”

The conclusion line reads: “At the request of the parties, I remain seized with respect to the implementation of this award.”

What Justice Kaplan is saying is that the legal reading of the collective agreement is, we can have pilot projects around service integration, but we can respect the collective agreement at the same time. That strikes me as a very good path. It strikes me as a path that doesn’t require schedule 1 of this bill.

I also want to say, fourthly—and this is based upon information I received as recently as an hour and a half ago—that something not covered by this bill are the partners provincially we are continuing to work with in building public transit in Ontario. Phil Verster, the CEO of Metrolinx, just got up before the province of Ontario—the people of Ontario rely on those services—and told us that there remains no deadline for the completion of the Eglinton Crosstown project. This is a project that is going on three years late. Speaker, it’s over a billion dollars over budget. There have been lawsuits between the consortium building the project and Metrolinx that now exceed over $500 million. But meanwhile Mr. Verster’s salary has increased from the $200,000 range to now almost a million dollars a year—a million dollars a year.

Speaker, when my friends in government campaigned in the 2018 election and they said, rightly, that under the Liberals the $6-million man ran our hydro system into the ground and criticized the governing Liberals of the day for that, I thought there was a lot of credence to that. One of the first things the Premier did was let that executive go, because you couldn’t have a situation in Ontario where people had to choose between heating—if they had electric heat—or eating, and it was obscene that we would have at the top of our power authorities someone making that kind of money in that kind of context of energy poverty. Well I would submit to you, Speaker—and I will get into details this afternoon—that Mr. Verster’s time should be up too. It’s time for him to go. The official opposition has said it clearly this afternoon; the people around the Eglinton Crosstown who have been dying for this transit service deserve it.

Let me get into some comments that I made—because I think it’s related—at committee to the transportation minister of the day. I went over two different reports from the Auditor General into the Eglinton Crosstown LRT. I noted that Metrolinx as a company has 59 vice-presidents—59 vice-presidents. I noted, in fact, that there are 19 C-suite executives—the “C” being the CEO, CFO, the C-whatever-O. The amount of executive bloat in this organization truly defies belief. So I asked the minister at the time, does she think that Metrolinx needs 19 C-suite executives and 59 vice-presidents to deliver a project that, at that time, was not operational and was a billion dollars over budget? I didn’t get an answer to my question.

I also asked—because this concerns this bill, Speaker. It concerns who we’re working with to build public transit in Ontario, these GO stations we want to build. I also asked because, as you know, in Ottawa Centre we had a very strong community movement to fight for a public inquiry into our own failing light rail system, and I was glad that the Premier decided to listen to us, respond to our call and declare that public inquiry, and Justice William Hourigan’s report is now public. But a name that keeps coming up in that report, Speaker, is Brian Guest. It keeps coming up, and it’s because this fellow, who lives in Ottawa, had never, before the Ottawa LRT phase 1, been involved in building a transit system anywhere in the world, let alone Ontario. Mr. Guest had not only played the critical role in stage 1 of our LRT, he had gone on to advise Metrolinx as a vice-president in the construction of the Eglinton Crosstown.

So you can imagine, Speaker, my reaction, and the reaction of people in Ottawa. We have been through the wringer, most recently with our LRT, if you can believe it—we have a fantastic music festival in the summer; it’s called Bluesfest. Part of what we encourage people to do—patrons of Bluesfest—is to not travel with their cars into the downtown. Utilize the LRT. But guess what, Speaker? We had a 28-day shutdown, because engineers told us the station was over-utilized. The Ottawa police told the community not to use our LRT station on Canada Day because the police assessment of the major stations was that they were not appropriate—get ready for this, Speaker—for high volumes of people. That is the level of deficiency with the Ottawa LRT, and the architect of the Ottawa LRT was spreading this madness to our friends here in the city of Toronto with the Eglinton Crosstown.

So I asked the minister—given that Mr. Guest’s name keeps popping up across these Metrolinx projects and that Mr. Verster has overseen all of this at the executive level—in this place in question period and I asked at committee, “Are you going to investigate Mr. Guest?” At the time, if you remember, we pushed hard enough that the minister let Mr. Guest go under a cloud of suspicion. But that’s not enough. For our friends here at the Eglinton Crosstown, who are relying on that transit project to be viable, we wanted to know what decisions were made. We wanted to know what was going on.

We asked the minister responsible, “Have you done an investigation into Mr. Guest and what he has done or not done for the Eglinton Crosstown project?” We were told—let me find it for you, Speaker—on two separate occasions at committee: “An internal review was done.” On another occasion, the minister said, “A review was done internally, and it was concluded that everything with respect to the procurement that you are discussing of those services was fair and competitive.”

So we, as the official opposition, did a freedom-of-information request for any records pertaining to the minister, the minister’s staff, the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Infrastructure about any investigation of Mr. Guest. What came back to us was a field that said “zero records.” That doesn’t inspire confidence for me. It doesn’t make me think that Mr. Guest was held to account at all, and it makes me seriously worried about what the good people of Toronto are about to experience because frankly, Speaker, I have seen this movie before.

What we learned—not at today’s press conference that Mr. Verster stumbled through—at his last press conference was that there are 260 deficiencies at least with the Eglinton Crosstown project and that some of those deficiencies relate right to the rails that are put into the system. If we think about the virus that has spread from Ottawa to Toronto—and I hope it’s not the case, but I worry that it is—this is precisely what we’re dealing with in our city. There is a stretch of the track for stage 1 of our LRT from the Tremblay Road station that crosses the Rideau River that if you stand by that river and you listen to the trains go across the track, the screeching of the wheels is piercing to listen to.

The engineers I’ve had occasion to speak to off the record privately, who do not want to talk publicly for fear of their own employment, will tell me that for a working light rail system, the wheels of the undercarriage of the trains have to be bespoke to the rails. They have to be absolutely perfect, like a perfectly fitting suit. But what I was hearing, the engineers told me, was a lack of fit between wheel and track.

I’m rising this afternoon to speak to Bill 46 which, if I understand it from my friends in government here, is about reducing red tape. In my remarks this afternoon, I want to focus on three schedules of the bill. I want to focus on schedule 5 and schedule 6 to highlight what the bill could do more on taking the climate crisis seriously. The member from Guelph spoke about this earlier this afternoon. I also want to begin by speaking briefly about schedule 9, the changes to the WSIB from an angle you may not expect, Speaker, and I hope you’ll give me a little latitude with this.

We had a significant event last week in the province of Ontario. On Thursday last week, the province of Ontario saw the election of the first Black Somali Canadian disability rights activist to this chamber in this place’s history: Sarah Jama. The people of Hamilton Centre elected Sarah Jama to take her seat in this place, and she’ll be doing that next week I’m excited to tell members of this House. For those of you who haven’t had the chance to meet Sarah, you’re in for a real treat, and for those of you who are from the great city of Hamilton, you know about Sarah and you know about the work she’s tried to do to help people with disabilities, and beyond that, just to be an incredible community organizer in her own right.

I had occasion to talk to her earlier this afternoon; she came and caucused with us for the first time. I asked Sarah as we were getting ready to move into that caucus meeting, “What are you feeling right now?” She said, “You know, I’m feeling the burden of a responsibility.” The burden of a responsibility as someone coming from a physical disability, coming from the legacy city of Hamilton—a significant amount of folks in the city of Hamilton live with physical or mental disabilities or challenges all the time. She told me, “I feel a responsibility to come into this place and not just criticize the government but to bring something positive home to my community and do something with the resources we’re given in my community.” I thought how fitting to be debating what this government could be doing with this bill to reduce red tape for people with disabilities.

The member for Thunder Bay–Superior North has spoken about it in a number of the question she has posed this afternoon. I think about the penalties assessed to persons with disabilities when they enter into a romantic relationship with someone—even with a modest income, immediate penalties in their income. You and I both know, Speaker, as people who live in Ottawa and work with people with disabilities, that they live in crushing poverty already. People are living in crushing poverty already, and there should be no penalty for falling in love. There should be no penalty for making administrative errors on one’s account, for missing a letter.

But right now, I want to impress upon this government that a way you can improve this bill is by dealing with the incredibly suffocating amount of red tape that people with disabilities and their loved ones and their families and their friends, through them, face every single day.

And do you know what is also related to that, Speaker? I want to impress upon the government that working for this government right now are thousands of caseworkers who work with folks on ODSP and OW who would like to see their talents put to better use. In Ottawa, Speaker, it is common for an ODSP caseworker to have a 400-to-1 ratio. You heard that right: 400-to-1. How is one supposed to be an empathetic voice, an enabler of opportunity to someone when you have that kind of caseload? You can’t. You do triage. You do communication by email, by text, by happenstance. That is an army of folks, available to this government, that could be sent out into the community to actually help people find opportunities in their lives.

I just want to impress upon the government that if you want to reduce red tape, if that is the intent and purpose of this bill—I was listening to the member from Durham in his remarks, and I appreciated an opportunity to talk to him off-line; I know he and other members of this government care about people with disabilities—think about the red tape that you could do to reduce the burdens in people’s lives so they can embrace those opportunities the member was talking about.

Second—and this is another diversion, Speaker, so you’re going to have to maybe give me some latitude. Maybe our friends in government won’t call me on a point of order and I can get this out. I think something that’s missing in this bill is help for local and amateur sport. And I had occasion just earlier this afternoon to briefly talk to the minister responsible. As you know, Speaker, I came to this chamber, still kind of surfing and glowing because the Carleton University women’s and men’s basketball teams both won the national championship last weekend. Speaker, I’m not trying to—I know the University of Ottawa is in your riding and it’s a great university with great sports teams, including basketball teams. But as I took in that national championship on YouTube in the basement of our family home with both of our kids that play in the Ottawa system, and both universities draw heavily upon the amateur system, something occurred to me that I think is red-tape-related.

So the women played their national championship against Queen’s University Gaels—fantastic team, had the fewest points allowed this year, 515; great team, tough game—in Sydney, Nova Scotia. It’s a great place—I got family in Nova Scotia—but it’s far-flung.

The men played their game in Halifax in front of 9,000 fans. Quite a disadvantage for our squad, I have to tell you, Speaker, because the STFX X-Men that played the Ravens men’s team this year, who have appeared in 17 consecutive national championships, had 9,000 screaming fans in there, and they played a heck of a game. But what struck me as red tape in that viewing experience as a lifelong basketball fan, as a sports fan and as someone who really believes that sports is an enabler for our youth—and for people of all ages, frankly, but particularly for youth—is that the women were playing hundreds of kilometres away from the men in a tiny stadium at the same time as the men. And I said to myself, “That seems ridiculous.” If we want to travel this national championship around, absolutely—let’s give that economic opportunity to different places. But I want to see an Ontario that platforms women’s sport as much as it does men’s sport. I want to see 9,000 people out to cheer the women on, not just the men.

It’s the case locally in Ottawa, Speaker, where we have a harder time finding volunteer coaches in the women’s basketball programs, more cancelled games. And I want to say to any of the friends opposite, if you go on our website, I wrote an update. My last column was on this historic weekend—the first time in 38 years that one university has captured women’s and men’s national championship. It’s a really incredible achievement to coaches Taffe Charles and Dani Sinclair—an incredible accomplishment. But my daughter remarked to me—we watched the women’s game in its entirety and then we switched to the men’s, as it just happened to be going into overtime. I said to myself this game, as every game at the university you and I serve, Speaker—we always have both games there so fans can celebrate both teams.

So I want to invite my friend in government who I know takes sport very seriously and that responsibility—let’s pursue that conversation with youth sports and the people who regulate basketball, because I certainly was so proud to be a Carleton University Ravens basketball fan, but there was a little sting in the tail there as I took that in, and I think we can improve that. I think that’s something we can maybe work on together at committee.

Okay, let’s get to the topic of the week as far as I’m concerned, and that is the climate crisis. Schedules 5 and 6 of this bill deal with two different acts, two different statutes, that I think will be really important in the actions this province takes on climate change—not the only statutes, but important. In schedule 5, the government is making the case that carbon sequestration is going to be an important part of our ability to mitigate against climate change, to address climate change. My friend the member from Sarnia talked earlier about how important carbon sequestration is in his community, and I take his point to heart on that. But I just wanted to make sure we read into the record—and I believe the member from Guelph did it earlier, but I want to do it again because some things bear repeating.

The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said yesterday in a press conference to the world: “Our world needs climate action on all fronts—everything, everywhere, all at once.” And there were three particular demands he put forward to the world, because as I am going to talk about in my remarks this afternoon, this is not all doom and gloom. I think too often when we think about how we can change our economy and our society, we get trapped in doom-and-gloom conversations and people tune out. We can’t do that as politicians. We have to make people excited to embrace the challenges and opportunities presented to us by the climate crisis we’re living in.

There were three things Secretary-General António Guterres mentioned we absolutely cannot do. One was we absolutely have to stick, hard and fast, to the goal of ensuring net-zero electricity by 2035; two, we have to stop any expansion of existing oil and gas reserves all over the world; and three, we have to be shifting subsidies from fossil fuels to a just energy transition for folks who work in the fossil fuel industry, something I think is critically important.

I say that, Speaker, because there are people from our families, from our great province here in Ontario—my own family—who have gone out to work in the oil sands in Alberta or on the east coast on oil rigs. They are incredibly skilled people. I often say to myself, as a researcher, what do we do with these skilled trades folks? What is their future, going forward? Because when I look at their own industries, whether it’s the enormous dump trucks that are driven in the oil sands or whether I look at the servicing of the oil rigs on the east coast, increasingly all those jobs are being automated, like so many other jobs in our world. The fossil fuel industry does not care about those workers. The fossil fuel industry is increasingly finding ways to get rid of those workers. But we urgently need those workers to plug into the green energy transition in our economy. That is essential.

You and I both live in Ottawa, Speaker, and just for the benefit of everybody else here, I’ll repeat an example I mentioned in debate with the minister—the minister; maybe one day he’ll be a minister—the member for Guelph. I said to him, “Ottawa-Gatineau has a particular contribution we can make to bringing Ontario to that finish line of net-zero electricity by 2035 that Secretary-General Guterres was talking about yesterday, and that is by renewing the energy partnership we currently have with the province of Quebec.”

The province of Quebec right now has more power than it knows what to do with. We are—and I think this is a positive element of what the government has been doing recently—encouraging investments in electrical vehicle manufacturing in Ontario. I give the government credit for doing that. But the question is, we can encourage the manufacturing of these products here, but how do we make sure that those products are going to be able to be used here in Ontario?

On this note, I speak from personal experience, because the summer before last, my partner and I, we took the leap; we bought the same vehicle the member from Guelph drives, a Chevy Bolt EUV. It’s a great car, but in the winter, you get a range of about 200 kilometres to 250 kilometres on that car. You need to know where all the charging stations are. Forget driving to Toronto; that is a tricky enterprise, potentially, if you need to stop and recharge. I often take the train. But if the members opposite are serious about the electrification of transport in Ontario, which I think is a fantastic goal, we have to build the infrastructure to sustain that.

What hydroelectricity in Quebec represents, as some advocates have said—think of it as a giant battery, a giant battery beside our existing hydroelectricity system, our existing, though not large enough, renewable energy system and the way the grid functions with nuclear power. Thinking about that opportunity with Quebec that costs, depending on whose estimates you believe, five cents to seven cents per kilowatt hour, that is an enormous opportunity for us.

But instead, what I’ve heard the Minister of Energy—who is someone I’ve enjoyed debating and talking to over the years. But I’ve heard him say, recently, “No, Joel, we’re going to be moving out of this permanent agreement with Quebec. We are going to be moving into spot markets.” That’s kind of transactional, in the moment. That’s not a commitment. So what does Quebec do? Well, Quebec says, “If Ontario is not serious about taking our power, let’s sell it to the United States.” In some cases, depending upon the amount they’re cranking out, they may be selling that at a loss.

But here we are, their neighbouring province, desperately in need of this power. Depending on whose estimates you believe, we have to have either a 75% increase or double our electrical capacity in Ontario if we want to electrify buses, if we want to encourage more electrical heat pumps in people’s homes or if we want to do that in larger buildings—or if we want to have more electric buses running in our streets, as I know the great city of Toronto is doing and Ottawa is trying to embrace, and I’m sure other cities. We need more power for that. So Quebec presents an opportunity for us to explore that relationship further, Speaker, and we’re not taking it. We’re not taking it.

I want to make sure that members of this House are aware of some of the news from yesterday because, as I said earlier, sometimes when we talk about the climate crisis, it can be doom and gloom. Here’s the truth. The truth is, in 2015 the countries of the world met in Paris and made a collective recognition that we have to try to limit the growth of emissions, we have to stop the heating up of the planet, we have to stop it at 2 degrees Celsius. In 2018 they revised that estimate and they said it needs to be 1.5 degrees Celsius.

We were on track at that point to get to 3.5 degrees Celsius of a warmer planet—3.5 by the end of the current century—and we know what that means. In Ottawa, we’ve seen it: five major massive weather events, two once-in-a-century floods and two massive windstorms. This has been devastating for farmers, devastating for homeowners, devastating for our electrical system. Tens of millions of dollars of damage. So that’s where we were on track, but actually, if you look at what the scientists are telling us, given some of the changes countries around the world have committed to, we course-corrected to some extent to 2.5 degrees Celsius warmer, which is still way too hot.

But if you look at what was recently negotiated in the last round of the global Conference of the Parties discussions, we are now back on a track potentially of 1.7 degrees Celsius. So these commitments and the changes some countries are making are making a difference. I want people watching at home to know that that does matter. Writing me and writing any politician in this House, pressing with your employer, pressing with your community organization to embrace the climate crisis: All of that work has led us to something. We’re on track. But it’s not far enough.

The big step Ontario made was phasing out coal-fired electricity. That was an enormous step we made, and I give the previous government—previous to this government—credit for doing that, having been pushed, of course, by environmental advocates.

But what we cannot do, what we absolutely cannot do, is what my friends in government have currently proposed, which is massively increase the footprint of gas-fired electricity in this province. As the member from Toronto–Danforth said earlier in question period, that will erase all the benefit that this government has attempted to do with major manufacturers, major emitters like Dofasco or Algoma Steel. Any of that work you’ve done with the EV industry in attracting that investment is all wiped out if you increase gas-fired electricity by 300% or 400%, depending upon the estimates you believe. Don’t just believe the socialist from Ottawa Centre; look at the scientists that are informing the UN report and the IPCC report from yesterday. They—

Interjection.

Again, returning to my friends from the Liberal caucus: I think it is worth thinking about the context of the last four years. We’ve been asking this question about environmental assessments and the importance of them. We’re seeing that schedule 1 of this particular bill gets rid of that 30-day waiting period, and I’m wondering if you have any examples from your own communities about when having that 30-day waiting period could actually add some value—in seeing that moving ahead with something may not be in the public’s best interest.

I want to congratulate the member from Spadina–Fort York for, as I think the member for Brantford–Brant said very well, his calm compassionate remarks. But I want to make an attempt to answer the question you posed and hopefully get some debate in this House, because it was a great question you posed about what’s the line. What’s the line for any one of us that, in our own caucus, we may stand up and say, “No, I can’t consent”?

I want to point out, Speaker, through you, the legacy of Peter Kormos, who was expelled to that chair right over there when then-Premier Rae imposed the social contract. It became very, very controversial, and Peter decided to filibuster for 17 hours because his constituents were telling him, “Peter, we don’t agree with this.”

And that’s democracy. Democracy in this place is that when someone proposes something you disagree with, you should stand in your place and speak against it. I would hope that there are members over on that side, Speaker, through you, that, when faced with the idea of minoritarian rule—there’s got to be debate in that caucus. So that’s the legacy of our party. That’s what I would say: Peter Kormos is the legacy of our party.

What do you think about that, my friend? What’s the advice you’d give the government?

I want to thank the member for Oshawa for that presentation.

To the member, through you, Speaker: I’ve been grappling with this notion of minoritarian rule, as the member said. I’m grappling with the notion that a 30% vote is now a majority in the mentality of this legislation and, I’m going to presume, with the government.

I just want to reflect on the fact that in the last election, 10% of the electorate voted for this caucus; 10% of the electorate voted for your caucus, Speaker, the Liberal caucus; in addition, a part voted for the Green member and the Green member elected; and 20% voted for this government. If this Legislature is actually reflective of what the people of Ontario voted for, we would be a majority. It would seem that if Bill 39 is to be believed, the NDP currently could be in government with the Liberals. How does the member feel being in government—if the government applies this principle?