Good morning, Speaker, and welcome back. It’s good to be back here, I think.

This question is for the Premier. Throughout the break, I was travelling all around this province. It’s pretty clear that people all across this province are hurting right now. They’re feeling the rising cost of everything from utilities to mortgage payments, groceries, rent. For workers in our hospitals, in our schools, in the broader public sector, they’ve also had to contend with their own government fighting to suppress their wages with Bill 124 and then with the costly legal battle and campaign to defend that bill. But the workers won, and the courts have ruled once again that Bill 124 was unconstitutional. It was an unconstitutional attack on the rights of working people and their paycheques.

So my question to the Premier is: Will he apologize to Ontario’s hard-working nurses, PSWs, teachers, educational assistants and all the public sector workers for suppressing their wages with Bill 124?

Interjections.

I’ll tell you, Premier, that did not sound like an apology to me. The government not only used their power to cut the wages of health care and education workers during a pandemic, they spent untold amounts of dollars fighting those workers in court for years, only to be told what we already all knew: The bill is and always was unconstitutional.

Speaker, through you again to the Premier—do-over—how much did this government spend on legal costs to keep down workers’ wages on Bill 124?

Interjections.

Bill 124 deteriorated conditions in hospitals, in long-term-care facilities, at the worst possible time. We were already struggling with rampant hallway medicine when this government came into power, and they managed to make things even worse. Burned-out nurses, health care workers have been leaving the sector in droves. They can’t get out of here fast enough with this government in power. And guess what, Speaker? Private nursing agencies, the friends of this government, have been ready to jump in and fill the gap, bleeding our hospitals dry at the same time, and demanding exorbitant fees for exactly the same work.

Speaker, back to the Premier: Will he admit his choices worsened the crisis facing our health care system and, once and for all, please, apologize to Ontarians for Bill 124.

Interjections.

Welcome back, Speaker, and colleagues.

This summer, people across the province of Ontario were feeling the strain of the rising affordability crisis, a cost-of-living crisis, a housing affordability crisis, and meanwhile, they’ve watched their government lurch from scandal to scandal, crisis to crisis. Now we’ve seen the resignation of three cabinet ministers and two senior staffers so far.

Speaker, my question is to the Premier: How can people trust this Premier to work for them when he has spent the last five years putting his friends and insiders first?

The government said they were going to clean things up. That’s what this Premier ran on, and now he’s embroiled in a scandal that has seen ethics laws broken. Three cabinet ministers have resigned in disgrace or ran for the exits. Staff in the Conservatives’ inner circles are leaving under a cloud of suspicion, and they’re lawyering up, Speaker. The Premier has said the buck stops with him, so let’s hear from him.

Will the Premier finally come clean and explain his personal involvement in the greenbelt scandal?

People out there thought something was wrong, and now we have two independent officers of the Legislature who have confirmed it. The Conservatives rigged the system to benefit their friends. I mean, it’s so bad that it’s being turned over to the RCMP.

Speaker, my question to the Premier is, has he spoken to the RCMP about the circumstances of the greenbelt carve-out?