Good morning, Speaker. This question is for the Premier.

This government knows how to spend big on vanity ads and projects that favour their friends. In fact, their fiscal plans are going to see Ontario’s deficit triple this year. Across Ontario, meanwhile, people are wondering what they’re getting for that money. Rural emergency rooms are closing, northern highways are shutting down, and schools are running out of buckets to catch the leaks.

How can the government justify spending nearly a billion dollars to break a Beer Store contract that is already set to expire?

It’s the Premier’s priorities that are completely out of whack with where Ontarians are at. If he spent some time talking to them instead of for them, he might learn something.

I want to take that Beer Store contract again, for example—even people who are looking forward to having beer in convenience stores are asking why we would ever fork over as much as a billion dollars to make it happen when the contract is going to expire anyway. They want to know why there’s no money to fix the air conditioners in their kids’ schools, but they have hundreds of millions of dollars for that.

Does the Premier think that this billion dollars is money well spent?

Interjections.

Anyway, back to the Premier: In February, we saw the loss of 300 school board positions that support children with special needs in Mississauga, in Brampton and in Caledon. A new report from People for Education found that nearly half of our schools are experiencing a shortage of educational assistants every single day.

Students with disabilities have a right to education in safe and supportive classrooms. So my question to the Premier is, why are children in Ontario being shortchanged by this government?

You don’t need to wait for a coroner’s inquest to start right now to make sure that kids don’t die at school. So my question back to the Premier is, what changes will this government be making today to ensure that no other parent has to go through what Landyn’s mom, Brenda, is going through right now?

Interjections.

The minister hasn’t even said Landyn’s name. He is not a data point; he was a child and he was Brenda’s child.

There is a theme here of a government that is cutting funding and programs that support children. We used to have a children’s advocate in this province until this government got rid of him. Families have been coming here to this place for the last six years warning about the risks and the consequences of this government’s choices.

I want to ask the Premier: Will he contradict his minister and agree that you do not need to wait for a coroner’s inquest to do right by Landyn and other kids like him?

This question is for the Premier.

This afternoon, thousands of people from all across Ontario are coming to Queen’s Park to stand up for public health care. They’re standing up for seniors who are being charged thousands of dollars for cataract surgery, for patients who are being charged an annual fee just to get primary care. The minister knows that these practices are illegal under the Canada Health Act, but she refuses to investigate or take action. Instead, she’s blaming patients, saying that extra billing is their own “misunderstanding.”

So how many misunderstandings need to happen before this Premier finally stands up for patients?

There are busloads of people who are coming here to get answers from this Premier and this minister. At the same time, there are going to be rallies all across the province, in Ottawa, Cornwall, Sault Ste. Marie, North Bay, Dryden and Thunder Bay. I hope the government has some answers, because patients and families and our overworked and overburdened health care workers have had enough. Hospital departments—closed. Emergency rooms—closed. Urgent care clinics—closed. While this government enriches their shareholder friends, Ontarians are literally paying for it.

What is this government going to do to protect public health care—or are we going to see more pay-for-it health care?

—we have barely built, get this, 1,000 new affordable homes. One way we could move that forward is building fourplexes. So I want to ask the Premier to stop blocking new housing and commit to authorizing fourplexes as of right across this province.

Interjections.

My question is for the Premier.

Survivors of sexual violence travelled from all across this province to hear this House discuss the crisis in our justice system yesterday, and their government betrayed them. They didn’t just kill the debate on an important bill; they wouldn’t even allow a discussion about the thousands of sexual assault cases that are being dismissed right now in our broken court system.

Will the Premier stand in his place and explain to survivors of sexual assault why they are not only losing their day in court, but also losing their day in this Legislature?

Interjections.

We are asking, actually, about accountability, and we are asking about clearing the backlog for sexual assault cases. Our courts are so overwhelmed that in one year alone, over 1,300 survivors had their cases dismissed, thrown out. There is no justice in that. And you don’t need to study it. It is a fact.

But once again, the government is playing procedural games on a very important issue.

So I want to ask the Premier—you are in government. You have the power. How about you be decisive for once and do the right thing?

Interjections.

Speaker, 10,000 patients are going to lose their primary care in Sault Ste. Marie by the end of this month, in just a couple of weeks, including retired steelworkers. Do you know why that matters? It’s because those retirees founded the Group Health Centre, and they took a pay cut; they took their hard-earned dollars to build themselves a world-class, world-renowned clinic in their hometown. In exchange, they were promised health care at that clinic for the rest of their lives. But now that’s being taken away, and this government has no plan to help them.

I’m going to ask the Premier: Is he going to make sure that his health minister finally acts here, or is the loss of primary care in the Soo not a major concern either?

Interjections.

Interjections.

I just want them to answer the question. They know perfectly well that they’re not addressing the current issue.

Access to primary care shouldn’t depend on where you live.

If these patients in Sault Ste. Marie lose access to their primary care doctor, do you know where they’re going to end up? They’re going to end up in emergency rooms that are already overcrowded. And there’s only one emergency room in the Soo. The next closest one is Sudbury. That’s four hours away.

So what is this government’s plan to address the urgent crisis in primary care in Sault Ste. Marie before the end of the month?

This question is for the Premier.

Brighton council approved a six-month agreement for $60,000 with Atlas Strategic Advisors. I want to remind everyone, Atlas Strategic—or Atlas Strategies—is a company led by the Premier’s infamous Las Vegas-massage-table-loving principal secretary Amin Massoudi—boy, that’s a mouthful. Atlas Strategies has now dropped the contract after they were exposed by recent reports for boasting about their relationship with the Premier’s office.

The question is, where did this town in the Minister of Labour’s riding—the same minister with connections to Mr. X—get the idea that in order to get action from this government they needed to hire a friend of the Premier to lobby for preferential treatment?

I guess what happens in Brighton doesn’t stay in Brighton.

Is the Premier really okay with his government’s reputation of catering to insiders in the backrooms?

This government made such a reputation of catering to insiders and the Premier’s friends that local governments are using it as a strategy.

One councillor said this: “This government sometimes talks to its friends more than other folks, it might as well work for us from time to time.”

Backroom deals, Vegas massage tables, RCMP criminal investigations—I’m going to ask again, is this Premier going to tell us today whether he is okay with that being the legacy of his government?

Interjections.

One of the first things that this government did was to take away rent control for tenants living in new buildings, allowing these big corporate landlords to raise the rent to whatever they wanted.

Last year, a tenant here in Toronto faced a rent increase of $7,000 per month. Why does the Premier think that corporate landlords should be allowed to raise rent by $7,000?

Back to the Premier: Global News has just reported on the chaos and confusion that surrounded the Premier’s reckless decision to restructure and dissolve Peel region and then his—of course, we’ll all remember this—partial reversal, another giant flip-flop just months later. Billions of dollars in taxpayer costs were at stake, and the Premier either didn’t care or had no clue.

It seems like neither the transition board nor anyone in the ministry had any idea where the Premier was going with his plans for Peel. So when it comes to the restructuring of Peel, does this government have any idea what they’re doing?

Is the government solving problems for the people of Peel, or just insiders and land-hungry developers?

Interjections.

Good morning, Speaker. My question is for the Premier. The government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force strongly recommended the legalization of fourplexes across the province over two years ago, but now the Premier is saying not in his backyard.

So my question is, why is the Premier blocking people who can’t afford a single-family detached home from the communities they want to live in and work in?

Interjections.

Good morning, Speaker. My question is for the Premier.

Yesterday, this government had a chance to show their commitment to ensuring that primary care for everyone is a priority, by supporting our motion to put patients first. They voted against it. Instead of working with health care professionals, they are making weaker funding announcements that amount to a drop in the bucket, and it is a leaky bucket. Doctors and health care workers say it shows the government doesn’t understand the scale or urgency of the problem.

So my question is to the Premier: Why are you refusing to listen to the clear demands of patients and doctors?

Back to the Premier: We gave you the solution. So to the Premier: Why did you vote against the solution that everyone else supports?

Interjections.

Back to the Premier: How many more emergency rooms and urgent care clinics need to close before this government takes this health care staffing crisis seriously?

So, to the Premier: When will this government implement safe staffing ratios in Ontario, like the NDP government in BC has done?

In BC, they’re taking action and they’re getting results. They’ve seen improvement in recruitment and retention among health care workers. They are only the second jurisdiction in North America that has implemented these same staffing ratios, but here in Ontario, it’s pretty clear that this government is not taking this staffing crisis seriously at all. That is not only having an impact on those overworked health care workers, but it’s having an impact on the patients that they serve.

I want to go back to the Premier again: Will Ontario join BC and become a leader in health care by implementing staffing ratios, or is he content with the status quo?

Good morning, Speaker. My question is to the Premier. Everything old is new again. Just over 10 years ago, the official opposition discovered that the government had been using code words to cover up misconduct. That was the Liberal government, and they were found to be using the term “project vapour” as code for their gas plant cover-up.

Now we know that the current government also used code terms, like “G*” and “special project” to cover their tracks on the greenbelt grab. So my question to the Premier is, is special project “G*” this government’s “project vapour?”

We have emails with “special project” in the subject line sent between Mr. Amato and Mr. Sackville, and it is clearly the $8-billion greenbelt scheme. They sent emails with details about the scheme, like removal criteria, but they never actually say the word “greenbelt.”

So my question to the Premier again—I think the people of Ontario would deserve a response from the Premier himself. Did anyone in the Premier’s office direct that government officials avoid or destroy any paper trail that could expose their greenbelt discussions?

It’s a question of integrity. It’s a question of accountability. The use of code terms is evidence of intent to conceal. Someone was trying to cover their tracks, and that’s not all. The Auditor General found that political staffers were not just deleting emails related to the greenbelt; they were also using their own personal emails to avoid detection. The Premier himself conducts government business on his personal phone, but refuses to disclose his phone records as required by law.

When the Liberal government got caught covering up a scandal during project vapour, someone went to jail. And guess what? It was the Premier’s chief of staff. Why is the Premier following the Liberal government down the same path of code words, cover-ups and criminal investigations?

This Premier refuses, again, to take accountability and responsibility for anything. Our court system is collapsing, and he is blaming the judges?

The government spent a billion dollars on a new Toronto courthouse—

Interjections.

Our court system is collapsing, and he is blaming judges?

The government spent a billion dollars on a new Toronto courthouse only to have it dubbed “a monument to failure.” Courtrooms are forced to close every single day in this province because of understaffing. Their chronic underfunding means that people never get their day in court, and it means that victims will continue to be forced to watch their assailants walk free under this government.

Will the Premier finally take responsibility or will he continue to look for scapegoats for his own failures?

To the Premier: Why was a multinational accounting firm with little to no experience with software development handed this contract without having to compete?

Despite what the government members say, ministry and tribunal staff say timelines and milestones are repeatedly delayed, and the costs just keep growing.

To the Premier: Can you explain why you’ve let the costs balloon to over $26 million when they cannot seem to get the job done?

People are not getting justice at the Landlord and Tenant Board. They have been plagued with delays since this government came into office six long years ago. There are now more than 38,000 people waiting for their cases to be heard. People are waiting months and sometimes years for their hearing to be even scheduled.

And while Ontarians are stuck in this chaos, this government’s solution is to hand out more multi-million dollar contracts to their insider friends and giant corporations.

So one more time to the Premier—and I’m going to make it simple: Why was only one company considered for this contract, and why is it 26 times more expensive today than it was when it was signed?

This question is for the Premier.

Yesterday, the Premier tripled down, I guess, on his decision to interfere in our judicial appointments process. He described an epidemic of crime happening on his government’s watch. His solution: appointing Conservative insiders to the committee that appoints judges.

Ontarians don’t want an American-style partisan judiciary. They do not want judges picked because they are “like-minded” with a government that is under criminal investigation by the RCMP. They just want a system that works.

Will the Premier rescind these appointments and start reversing the damage that his neglect has had on access to justice in this province?

The newly appointed chair of the judicial appointments committee is a registered lobbyist who lobbied the government as recently as last week—among their clients, American gun manufacturers. Yesterday, the Attorney General seemed to say this was all business as usual, and I have to say, unfortunately, I don’t disagree, because under this government, business as usual means that insiders, donors, people with access come first every single time.

Back to the Premier: Will he rescind these appointments now or do we have to wait another month for him to backpedal on this latest scandal?

Back to the Premier: Can I just say, if this was such a great idea, why did they work so hard to keep it secret for so long? I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it, and I don’t think the people of Ontario buy it. They know there’s something dirty about this deal.

Earlier this year, the NDP released an FOIed secret document showing that the government had already decided to pay for a new parking garage for Therme as early as January 2021—again, nearly two years before the public found out. We know they planned to move the science centre also nearly two years before the public found out.

We can wait for the Auditor General’s report tomorrow or the Premier can set the record straight right now: Is he building a half-sized science centre on top of the Therme parking garage to justify spending 650 million public dollars on a private luxury spa?

Speaker, while this government is busy planning for a luxury spa in downtown Toronto, the people of Brampton are facing property tax increases up to 34% next year—wild. That’s because the government’s plan to dissolve Peel region is estimated to cost the city of Brampton more than $1.3 billion. So I’m going to ask the Premier, how can he justify the largest tax hike in Brampton’s history in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis?

So back to the Premier of this province: What does he have to say to the people of Brampton about their 34% tax hike?

This question is for the Premier.

This government is fast-tracking its luxury spa bill, Bill 154. Last week, the opposition tried to find out why exactly the government is trying to pre-emptively block people from suing them for misrepresentation or misconduct when it comes to the Ontario Place scheme. We didn’t get much of an answer from the minister, so I’m hoping the Premier can shed some light on this.

Why does his government need the power to commit acts of misfeasance, bad faith, breach of trust, and breach of fiduciary obligation while building this luxury spa at Ontario Place?

Speaker, Ontario’s Environmental Bill of Rights gives the public the right to be consulted and heard on matters that affect our environment—matters that would include exemptions to the Environmental Assessment Act that are being included in the luxury spa act, Bill 154. But in an extraordinary step, the government won’t even send Bill 154 to committee for public hearings.

Why is the Premier so afraid to hear what the public has to say about this bill?

Speaker, this government’s luxury spa act, Bill 154, is another attack on democracy and basic norms of lawfulness and good governance. It specifically blocks people from suing the government for misrepresentation or misconduct. It specifically blocks remedies for people who have been harmed by this government. What’s more, it gives a new minister the power to issue ministerial zoning orders, which this government has already, as we know, widely abused.

With this government currently under active police investigation by the RCMP, why is the Premier fast-tracking a bill to give his government the power to ignore the law?

Speaker, when the NDP brought forward positive solutions like paid sick days and free contraceptives, the government seemed to signal some support for those things. When push came to shove, though, they said no.

To the Premier: Don’t Ontarians deserve better than a government mired in scandal and focused solely on their insiders?

The NDP put forward a proposal to close the loopholes that let unscrupulous landlords gouge tenants. The government said no. We tabled a motion to invest in desperately needed non-market and affordable housing options. The government said no.

To the Premier: Why does he keep saying no to solutions that would actually help people keep a roof over their heads?

Interjections.

Interjections.

This question is for the Premier.

The Conservatives have had to roll back major policy after major policy because they got caught rigging the system for their friends. And while they promised to be more transparent around land use planning after the greenbelt scandal, here we are again, a few weeks later, and the Conservatives are muddying it even further when it comes to Ontario Place. They’re doing everything they can to ram their private luxury spa through, even skirting their own rules. They’ve proposed exempting the project from environmental assessment laws and the heritage act.

To the Premier: Is he overriding his own rules to avoid accountability under the law?

To the Premier: Is he just making it easier to give preferential treatment to his friends?

Back to the Premier: Why is this elite luxury spa his number one priority?

Interjections.

This government can pat themselves on the back all they want, but they know as well as we do that this was never about Toronto. The fight has always been right here at Queen’s Park to protect public interests and expose their dirty deals.

The government is spending over half a billion dollars on a luxury mega-spa to hand public funds directly over into the profits of private companies. If this isn’t about giving preferential treatment and avoiding public accountability, surely this government has a plan to invest in other municipalities.

To the Premier: Which other municipalities will get a deal from this province?

This question is for the Premier.

As this House well knows, this government is under criminal investigation by the RCMP for their decisions in the greenbelt scandal. We now know that a special prosecutor has been appointed and interviews have started.

The Integrity Commissioner’s report found that the former Minister of Municipal Affairs violated the Integrity Act for his conduct, and the Integrity Commissioner recommended reprimand. The report stated that the minister knowingly chose to “stick his head in the sand” when this government started its chaotic and reckless process.

Is the Premier concerned about what might be revealed about his former minister’s involvement in the greenbelt scandal?

The Integrity Commissioner has confirmed that they’re waiting on the RCMP to conclude their investigation before looking into the NDP’s complaint about that fateful boys’ trip to Vegas.

Is the Premier concerned about what cabinet documents and interviews might reveal about another former minister’s involvement in the greenbelt scandal?

While the Premier puts up the government House leader to tap dance around this issue, around everybody in this House, we all know that all roads lead to this Premier. You’ve got land speculators handing Conservative staff brown envelopes with their greenbelt removal requests. You’ve got, the very next day, the Premier meeting with the major players in the scandal—a meeting that he conveniently “doesn’t recall.” And then the day after that, those removals ended up at the ministry for government policy changes.

Back to the Premier: Are members of his caucus worried about what would be revealed in their interviews with the RCMP, and are they concerned their Premier may be implicated?

Interjections.

Speaker, last week, CityNews revealed that the government transition binder for the new Minister of Children, Community and Social Services refers to the new federal Canada Disability Benefit as a way to “mitigate costs” for the province.

People are living through seriously tough times, and this government is looking to cut funds to the programs that the most vulnerable people in our communities rely on.

To the Premier: Will you pledge now to not make any cuts to ODSP?

Speaker, I’ll help the Premier. Do you know where the money is going? It’s going directly out of the public coffers and into their friends’ private pockets. That’s where it’s going.

This is a government that continues to spend more for less. New data shows that the private surgical clinics this government was so keen on expanding are charging OHIP 138% more for the same surgery. It’s also making wait times longer, all while public operating rooms sit with the lights off.

Back to the Premier: When will this government admit that their private, for-profit surgery scheme is increasing the cost to taxpayers and worsening wait times?

Public operating rooms sitting empty, emergency rooms closing, affordable housing wait-lists decades-long, more people with full-time jobs going to food banks than ever before—all while this government has been so preoccupied with their shady, backroom deals, spending more for less in health care, $650 million on a private luxury spa, hoarding billions in their rainy day fund; all while Ontarians are struggling.

Back to the Premier: Five years in, people are worse off now than before. The rainy day is here. When will this government finally invest to make life easier for Ontarians?

Interjections.

My question is to the Premier.

Speaker, this side of the House has spent months trying to get to the bottom of just how widespread the alleged corruption which the RCMP is investigating goes. Public accounts revealed that the Premier’s former principal secretary, Amin Massoudi, after leaving the Premier’s office, was paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars to do the same job, only this time through his private company, Atlas. Yet this government has refused to answer questions on just exactly when that contract started.

My question is to the Premier. When did the contract with Atlas Strategic Advisors start with the Conservative caucus?

The Premier’s office told the Toronto Star that this government paid Mr. Massoudi’s firm at least $237,300 from about July 1, 2022, through to March 31 of this year.

Back to the Premier: Can he confirm that the contract with Atlas Strategic Advisors started in July 2022?

Did the Premier’s friend double-bill the taxpayers for speech-writing services because he was, indeed, a close friend of the Premier?

This question is also for the Premier.

While our public services, like health care and schools, are crumbling across this province and housing is getting more and more out of reach, somehow this government brags about spending more than ever.

To the Premier: People who are stuck in longer and longer waits in the emergency room or being treated in hospital hallways want to know, where is the money going?

Speaker, I really hope that the Premier will answer this time. I’m going to go back to the Premier.

This government gave preferential treatment to insider greenbelt speculators, enriching them to the tune of $8.3 billion at the public’s expense, without building a single new home. It included the Duffins Rouge farmland, which was supposed to be protected. The Conservatives’ scheme undid those protections and made their insider friends $6.6 billion richer.

The government is already three ministers down. To the Premier: How many ministers will have to take the fall before he fesses up?

The question is for the Premier. The people of Ontario see a pattern of preferential treatment for this government. The former Minister of Health, who got the ball rolling so that private companies could profit off of our public health care services, is now a lobbyist for the largest chain of private surgical centres anywhere in the country. A clinic she actually represents is now receiving more funding to provide the same services that are delivered in public hospitals, and that’s exactly what we have been warning was going to happen.

So to the Premier: Why is the province paying private, for-profit clinics as much as four times more than public hospitals for the same procedures?

Interjections.

The former Minister of Health would have been responsible for transferring licences for publicly funded surgical services to for-profit clinics. Under her watch, funding for one private, for-profit surgical centre—Don Mills—has quadrupled since 2018, reaching $5.2 million by 2022-23. The same cataract surgery that costs $500 in a public hospital costs more than $1,200 at Don Mills.

To the Premier, and I hope he will answer this question, how is hemorrhaging public funds innovative or cost-effective health care? Tell us.

Here’s what’s really going on. Clearpoint is a wholly owned company of Kensington Capital Partner Ltd. That’s a private equity firm. They’re not health care experts or medical professionals; they’re a for-profit corporation. Their priority is to maximize profits for their shareholders. There profits come from over-billing patients, from charging unnecessary fees, from cutting costs by compromising quality.

Back to the Premier, why does this government keep prioritizing patient profits over—sorry, private profits over patient care?

Interjections.

My question is for the Premier.

Yesterday, I asked the Premier about the ongoing RCMP investigation into his government, but we didn’t get much of a response. The Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing did say that the government would assist the RCMP, the Information and Privacy Commissioner and the Integrity Commissioner in their multiple investigations of this government.

If the Premier has nothing to hide and wants to assist the privacy commissioner, then why is he sending government lawyers to block the disclosure of information about government business that’s being conducted on his personal phone?

Yesterday, the Toronto Star quoted anonymous government staffers who said the former Minister of Municipal Affairs and his former chief of staff were not the real masterminds behind the sketchy $8.3-billion greenbelt grab. They said, “Everyone knows” they “were doing what they were told.”

To the Premier: Was it the Premier who told them what to do?

Yesterday, the government House leader took all the Premier’s questions—so I was going to try again, to see if the Premier will actually address the disastrous situation he has landed his government in.

Every month, people are struggling to make ends meet. People need a government that’s going to help them, but instead they are seeing one mired in scandal.

Speaker, the revelations from the government’s $8-billion greenbelt grab are getting more and more serious every single day, and people deserve answers.

Can the Premier confirm that his government is currently under criminal investigation by the RCMP?

Speaker, to the Premier: How can the people of this province trust their government when it’s under an active RCMP criminal investigation?

When a government is embattled in this much scandal, it is bad for businesses; it is bad for the economy.

What kind of precedent does it set if people think that succeeding in Ontario is about your connections rather than your merit? It is shameful.

I made this point yesterday, and I want to remind the government again, that the special unit at the RCMP that is investigating the Premier and his government’s actions investigates elected officials on “fraud, financial crimes, corruption and breach of trust.”

Back to the Premier of this province: How can the Premier maintain the confidence of the people when his government is being investigated by the RCMP?

Interjections.

I’m going to get very specific here, Speaker. On September 14, 2022, a senior staffer for this government received greenbelt removal packages from developers at a dinner. The next day, this staffer sought clarity directly from the Premier, his chief of staff and the former housing minister. The Premier and his chief of staff claimed they don’t recall this meeting.

Will the Premier let us know what was discussed in that meeting with Ryan Amato on September 15, 2022?

Interjections.

We have a Premier who still won’t come clean or answer that question.

Over three days in September, this government went from a rough notion of a policy framework on the greenbelt to specific properties being identified for removal. Day one: the BILD dinner where developers identified properties for removal from the greenbelt. Day two: a meeting with the Premier and housing minister and their staff on the greenbelt—mysteriously, no one can recall the details of this meeting. Day three: The Ministry of Housing moves forward with site-specific removals and identified three properties. These properties accounted for 91% of the land this government attempted to remove from the greenbelt, and two of those properties were identified by developers at the BILD dinner.

Speaker, I’m going to ask again: What caused this government to make a policy 180 on the greenbelt file from September 14 to September 16?

Interjections.