Thank you to the member from Waterloo for her presentation. I’m just wondering—I remember the Premier saying earlier today in debate, and I’ve heard him say it before, that he’s never increased the cost of living for anyone. But I remember, as I listened to your remarks and as I did my research for today, I note that the average rent in my city of Ottawa for a two-bedroom apartment in 2018 was $1,301, and in 2024, the average is $2,488. I also note that this government removed rent controls on buildings built after 2018.

So the Premier can call it whatever he wants; I call that jacking the rent. I’m wondering if the member from Waterloo has any comments about how this government has jacked the rent on people in Ontario.

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—

My question is for the Premier. Recently, Metrolinx put out insulting ads that were called, See Beyond the Construction, that ran in movie theatres across the GTA—Speaker, those are the ads you see when you to go a film. But these ads mocked transit riders who were legitimately complaining about broken deadlines and massive cost overruns in the Eglinton Crosstown LRT. But following public outrage and loud groans in movie theatres—believe me—the ad campaign was yanked from Metrolinx’s YouTube page. But we have since discovered that this ad campaign alone cost $2.5 million.

So, Speaker, will the Premier rise in this place today and apologize to transit users, apologize to the taxpayers of Ontario for this terrible ad by Metrolinx?

I’ll just be succinct and ask my colleague from Oshawa, given that this bill is supposed to be about making things more efficient, could she take a stab as to why the cost of subway construction under this government has tripled in the last five years?

I would tell the Premier and the minister, if she will respond to the second question I have here, that you can’t have financial disclosure in the dark.

This is what we know: We know the southern portion of the Ontario Line, as the government has currently proposed, is going to cost nearly a billion dollars per kilometre—nearly a billion dollars. But the Spadina subway extension that was completed in 2017 cost $384 million per kilometre. So what has happened? We can’t simply blame the pandemic, because an April 2020 report reported that subway costs had doubled under this government.

What I see, sadly, at Metrolinx and Infrastructure Ontario are a lot of public-private partnership consultants—former staff members of this government who seem to be enriching themselves at the expense of the Ontario public.

So I ask the Premier, are you going to rein in these private consultants, these P3 financiers, and get our subway costs under control?

My question is for the Premier—

Interruption.

This week, Global News revealed that the government is withholding information about the Ontario Line transit project, a public-private partnership which has skyrocketed past the government’s original cost estimates—from $10.9 billion to $19 billion.

Yesterday, the Premier said, “We aren’t hiding anything.” But his officials have redacted documents, so financial disclosure on the Ontario Line is impossible for people from Global News.

I have a simple question: Why won’t this government disclose the financial costs of the Ontario Line?

I want to thank the member for Ottawa West–Nepean for that excellent presentation.

I’m wondering if she could elaborate again on the derecho and how that impacted our community. I understand that our friends, through this bill, are wanting to be reducing the capacity for environmental assessment, but sometimes, it would seem to me—and I welcome what you think about this—that when we reduce the capacity to properly assist environmental risk, we invite incredible costs down the road. The derecho cost Ontario $875 million—that is the sixth most expensive storm in our history—and our own city $19.5 million. So are we achieving efficiencies in the short run for huger costs down the road? I’m just wondering if you have Ottawa West–Nepean stories about this.