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Joel Harden

  • MPP
  • Member of Provincial Parliament
  • Ottawa Centre
  • New Democratic Party of Ontario
  • Ontario
  • 109 Catherine St. Ottawa, ON K2P 0P4 JHarden-CO@ndp.on.ca
  • tel: 613-722-6414
  • fax: 613-722-6703
  • JHarden-QP@ndp.on.ca

  • Government Page
  • May/17/23 9:10:00 a.m.
  • Re: Bill 85 

I’ll be honest in my response to what the member has said. I’m not interested in playing culture war games in this place when it comes to community safety, and I would invite the member opposite to consider the same. We can try to play “gotcha” politics in this place by using catchphrases, or we can make the community investments we need to make to keep our community safe. I talked about specific investments we can use to make the community safe. I note the federal Conservative leader was playing similar games in the House of Commons yesterday in question period.

We have to be driven by evidence. We have to be driven by effective solutions that work. The case I was making this morning that I didn’t hear any evidence or response to from that member—I hope I hear it in debate—is, are we making the right investments, are we helping first responders and are we helping neighbours in crisis? Those are the pertinent questions.

Housing, supportive housing, and support for people with mental health and addictions—I heard the associate minister of the government yesterday praise those initiatives, and I’m glad to hear that. I’m glad to hear that, in this place, we’re following the evidence and not the culture wars.

I’m glad the program’s working for your community. Jury’s out for me on whether I’m going to support it. I need to make sure there’s enough money in the bill to support all communities.

We need the government, we need the public to make sure we incentivize and figure out ways to help people get housing. It doesn’t always mean cranes, either. Supportive housing can be repurposing existing rental stock, supportive housing could be wrapping services around places like rooming houses, but we can’t do that on $800,000 a year with the Homelessness Prevention Program, and we can’t do that with the limited resources currently allocated towards public and non-profit housing in this province. We need much, much more.

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  • Nov/29/22 9:20:00 a.m.

As I was listening to the comments from my friends in government this morning, I’m mindful that we are living in a climate emergency. We just had an international conference talking about the need for everyone to take up their responsibility.

I’m looking at schedule 5 of this legislation that’s talking about the capture of CO2 as a solution. I’m wondering if either one of the members who spoke could comment about what either of these initiatives are doing to meet our climate emergency targets, because what I’ve seen so far is a government ripping up the greenbelt, suing the federal government unsuccessfully around carbon mitigation measures. I’ve seen them literally tear EV charging stations out of GO station transit and now promote them later. I see a government caught in contradictions on climate change.

I’m wondering if either member could explain to me what schedule 5 does to get Ontario back on track to take the climate emergency we’re living in seriously.

171 words
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