My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. New government documents obtained by Global News reveal that this government continues to underfund affordable housing. The Conservatives have cut funding to community housing programs even though the wait-list for an affordable home has ballooned to well over 65,000 people.

My question to the minister: Why is this government cutting funding to affordable housing at a time when the homelessness and housing crisis has never been worse?

School boards in Toronto are facing a funding shortfall because of this government’s failure to properly fund education in Ontario. The Toronto District School Board is short $27 million. Parents often contact me about how this underfunding is affecting their kids’ education.

I think of Adhi. His son is in a developmentally delayed class at Clinton school. His son has been attacked twice by another child. He has been scarred physically. The school knows they need another skilled educator in the room to keep kids safe, but they don’t have the staffing allocation.

I think of Janice and Christine at Kensington. They’ve just learned they will have a grade 4/5/6 class for this coming year. That means a teacher will have to explain three different classes all day, every day. That’s a very difficult task. It means that older kids will sit there in the class and be bored, and it means younger kids will sit in the class and feel completely overwhelmed.

Stories like this come into my office every single week. Every school is having to do more with less, year in and year out.

The TDSB has asked the ministry to fund schools properly and to account for the extra costs they must shoulder because of provincial and federal directives, because of COVID, because of inflation. How does this ministry respond? How does the minister respond? They look the other way.

I want schools to be properly funded. I want our kids to have an excellent public school education. The TDSB is asking for a new funding deal, and I support these requests, and I hope the ministry and the government support these requests as well.

The federal budget came out yesterday, and I’m worried Ontario is going to miss out because the Conservatives are failing to be bold on housing. There is federal housing infrastructure funding available for provinces that say yes to fourplexes and legalizing gentle density, which means this government has two choices: You can either continue saying no to more housing, or you can say yes to fourplexes, to ensure Ontario gets its fair share of infrastructure funding. What is this government going to choose?

Ontario wants you to show leadership on the housing file, and for that to happen you need to make a deal. Is this government going to make a deal with the federal government? Yes or no?

My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. The Conservatives have until tomorrow to submit a better affordable housing action plan or miss out on $357 million in federal funding. The minister likes to say this is unfair, but the facts speak for themselves. This government is on track to build just 8% of the homes they said they would build by 2025.

My question is this: Is this government going to submit a better affordable housing action plan tomorrow, or are Ontarians going to miss out?

Ontario has the worst housing crisis and homelessness crisis we’ve had in decades. It has never been more expensive to rent or buy a home; even your own budget says that.

My question is this: Is this government going to fix up and resubmit a credible affordable housing action plan, or are we all going to miss out?

Interjections.

My question is to the Premier. The Conservatives are on track to lose $357 million in federal funding because this government is failing to meet its own affordable housing targets. This government has two choices: Submit a credible plan to the federal government to build more affordable housing by Friday or explain to Ontarians how this government plans to account for the loss of $357 million earmarked for affordable housing in this year’s budget. Which choice are you going to make?

Premier, can you commit to submitting a better housing action plan by Friday so we don’t miss out on this federal money?

Interjections.

This government cut $9 billion in infrastructure funding because of Bill 23, and that’s on you.

My question is back to the Premier. Mississauga, under former Mayor Crombie, was denied funding by this government because they failed to meet their housing targets. Now, we’ve learned that the federal government is looking at denying the Conservative government funding because they failed to meet their affordable housing targets. We are on track to lose $357 million in federal funding because the Conservatives couldn’t get their act together to build enough affordable housing.

My question is simple: Can this government present a credible plan to build enough affordable housing to address our affordable housing crisis?

My question is to the member for Mississauga–Erin Mills. Bill 23, just to be clear, has removed the fee that developers have to pay to affordable housing projects. Every development no longer has to pay the fee for affordable housing projects, and that part of Bill 23 is in force. What that has meant is that municipalities have lost funding for affordable housing and shelter at a time when we have a homelessness crisis. The city of Toronto has lost $200 million in funding just for affordable housing and shelters.

My question to the member for Mississauga–Erin Mills is, what is this government going to do to make municipalities whole so there’s funding available for affordable housing?

My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Earlier this week, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing hosted a housing round table with municipalities. Municipalities told the minister very clearly that they were ready to cut red tape to get more housing built, but they needed more funding for growth-related infrastructure.

They asked the minister to allocate funding under the Building Faster Fund, based on housing permits, which they can control, rather than housing starts, which developers control. Why did the minister say no to these municipalities?

My question is back to the minister. Earlier this year, the Regional Planning Commissioners of Ontario pointed out there were hundreds of thousands of development-ready homes in Ontario that were approved for construction but remained unbuilt. No matter how fast a municipality issues a housing permit to a developer, they cannot force the developer to build.

This is my question to you, Minister: Why is this minister withholding infrastructure funding from municipalities for something they cannot control?

Interjections.

I’m pleased to be here today to rise and speak about Bill 98, the Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act, 2023. I also want to thank the member for Ottawa West–Nepean for her exceptional and hard work on this bill.

It was very enlightening listening to the member speak today and demonstrate her significant expertise on this file. Her knowledge is also based on the fact that she has children in the school board system, so she can share her expertise and her personal experience with our school board system.

This bill was introduced at the same time as the Grants for Student Needs funding envelope was released for the year, and that’s deliberate. It is pretty typical for the government to present a bill with some ugly things and some good things in it at the same time as they’re presenting an announcement which has far bigger implications on the quality of the schooling that the children in Ontario receive. That’s what happened with Bill 97, a bill that I’ve been working on for some time, and it also happened with Bill 98.

The reason I want to talk about not just Bill 98 but also the larger issues with our school system is, when we’re thinking about how we want to improve the quality of education our kids receive, we need to talk about funding and we need to talk about what is actually happening in the classroom. There’s a big difference between what this government says—its rhetoric—and what is actually happening on the ground in schools and in classrooms across Ontario.

I think about what is happening with the Toronto District School Board, because that is an area I represent. I very carefully read the Toronto District School Board’s announcements. I’ve read their long-term growth and accommodation strategy that looks at where we are going to put our schools and whether our schools have the capacity to deal with the 30,000-plus students who will be enrolled. There will be an increase in enrolment of that amount in the coming years. I also look at how they’re preparing for the 2023-24 year, and from the school board’s perspective, from the parents’ perspective, from the teachers’ perspective, from the education workers’ perspective, it doesn’t look good. What we are hearing is that the TDSB is looking at cutting 522 staffing positions. At a time when we have had year after year after year after year of cuts, it’s another round of staffing position cuts.

Interjection.

This is a petition that reads, “Fund Ontario’s Public Schools.”

“Whereas the TDSB has a deficit of $63.2 million for the 2023-24 school year due to continuous underfunding by the Ministry of Education;

“Whereas the Ministry of Education has not reimbursed the $70.1-million TDSB reserve used to cover pandemic expenditures;

“Whereas the deficit and pandemic costs combined result in forcing schools to reduce special-needs assistants, educational assistants, clerical staff, teachers and vice-principal positions at TDSB schools;...

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“Whereas continued underfunding means that students receive less one-on-one time with educators;

“We, the undersigned parents, guardians, caregivers, students, staff and community members, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to:

“(1) To adequately fund and strengthen public education in Ontario so students and education workers get the support they need;

“(2) To reimburse schools and the TDSB for the costs of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Many students and parents in my local school of Clinton have signed this petition. We did lose a vice-principal last year. It’s common, and it’s concerning. I fully support this petition and will be assigning my signature to it and giving it to the page.

Overall, in terms of the structure of this one-hour chat today, I will be giving a little bit of a response to what I heard the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing and the associate minister say in their lead. Then, I’m going to provide an overview of the bill. And then, I’m going to go through the amendments and then conclude.

Overall, there are a few comments that the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing said in his opening remarks that I think are worth drawing attention to. One is that the minister congratulated the Attorney General’s work to improve the Landlord and Tenant Board. Let’s be very clear: The Ombudsman has done a deep dive into the Landlord and Tenant Board and has concluded, after a very lengthy investigation, that the Landlord and Tenant Board is “moribund.” It is broken. It is not fulfilling its basic duty of providing fast and fair access to tenants and landlords in order for them to get their day in court and their issue resolved—maybe it’s a tenant who is not paying their rent; maybe it’s because a landlord is trying to illegally evict them. It is a tribunal that is not working. It is also Ontario’s busiest tribunal. Over the five years that this government has been in power, the wait-list has not decreased; it has increased. And the wait-list after the worst of the pandemic has subsided has also increased, so that excuse can’t be used anymore.

What is also very interesting is that the Ombudsman pointed out that the number of adjudicators at the Landlord and Tenant Board is actually higher than it used to be. So I don’t know what is happening with that at LTB right now, but it is not working. I am calling on the Attorney General to get control of the LTB again and fix it, because it’s important for many people.

The second thing I wanted to just briefly respond to was the minister and the associate minister’s insistence that they’re very concerned about first-time homebuyers. I’m concerned about first-time homebuyers too. But the challenge I have with what this government is doing, when they focus on supply and nothing else, is that they’re ignoring the reality that it’s less and less first-time homebuyers who are buying these homes. It’s less and less that the type of homes that are being built are being built for first-time homebuyers. Increasingly, they’re being built for investors to make maximum profit, and they’re being bought by investors to then rent out to an individual who would prefer to be paying off their own mortgage instead of someone else’s third mortgage. I don’t hear this government talk about the need to make it easier for first-time homebuyers to get that home. That’s what we really need in Ontario today.

So there are the two comments I had from the presentations that I heard.

Now I want to give an overview of Bill 97. We’ve been debating Bill 97 for a little while. In short, it’s a bill that has some modest improvements to renter protections. It makes it easier for developers to pave over farmland with expensive sprawl. That’s the essence of Bill 97. The reality, also, is that this bill is not going to solve our housing affordability crisis or our housing supply crisis. They’re two issues we have right now—and this bill doesn’t effectively do either.

When I think about the Conservatives’ track record with solving our housing affordability crisis, the thing that constantly comes to mind for me is, I look at how expensive it is to rent a home in Ontario—and it has never been more expensive. And I look at how expensive it is to buy a home in Ontario—and it has never been more expensive. That’s the Conservatives’ legacy. Until housing gets more affordable, the housing affordability crisis has not been fixed.

In committee, we introduced many amendments in order to improve the bill. Our focus was multi-pronged. We wanted to bring in amendments to really clamp down on the big increase in illegal evictions that we’re seeing. Because as housing prices go up, as mortgages go up, as interest rates go up and as rent prices go up, the incentive for a landlord to illegally evict and move in a tenant who can pay more than what a long-term rent-controlled tenant can pay—that incentive goes up too.

There’s a reason why the number of evictions that are taking place in Ontario today is on the rise. Some of them are bad-faith evictions. Some of them are genuine—a landlord wants to move in because they just bought a home; they are a new, first-time homebuyer—but some of them aren’t. Unfortunately, the laws in Ontario today don’t protect tenants who are facing an illegal eviction.

We also are looking at bringing in better measures to build more affordable housing, to end exclusionary zoning, to protect our farmland, and to increase density and intensification so that we build homes in areas already zoned for development. We increase density in these areas in municipalities in order to build right, in order to build in a sustainable way, and also to build in a more efficient way, because it is far more cost-effective for a municipality to service a new home if it’s in an area already zoned for development than it is to pave over farmland and service a whole new area; it’s far more efficient.

I’m going to be going through these amendments in turn. What we found, overall, is that the Conservatives are not very interested at this point to really tackle the issues that we’re seeing in the housing sector. Unfortunately, the amendments that we introduced were turned down. That is unfortunate, because we’re not going to give up and we’re going to keep organizing on these issues.

That’s the overview of the bill.

Now I’m going to turn to what actually happened in committee itself.

I want to thank the many individuals and organizations who came to committee to share their expertise and discuss how this bill would affect them. Those people include the Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario; Megan Kee, who works at the Niagara Community Legal Clinic; Rebecca Murray, who also works at the Niagara Community Legal Clinic; Dania Majid from the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario. They also gave an excellent submission, which I’m going to dive into a little bit during my presentation.

We also had the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, Peggy Brekveld. I do hear in the letter that Minister Clark just sent to the OFA that it does seem that there has been some movement. This government has recognized that protecting farmland is important and that it is time to slow down and pause and make sure they get things right.

The Building Industry and Land Development Association, BILD—thank you. Kevin Love; AMO—the president, Colin Best, and Lindsay Jones came in. Rescon, the Residential Construction Council of Ontario—thank you for attending. The Toronto Region Board of Trade came and they had some very interesting remarks about Bill 97’s move to change how employment lands are protected. Don Valley Community Legal Services, Mortgage Professionals Canada, and the Ontario Home Builders’ Association came in and spoke. We also had many submissions.

Thank you for taking the time to make these bills as good as they can be.

Now I want to talk a little bit about the amendments that we introduced—and we did introduce a few. The first one that we introduced was around the rental replacement bylaws. This is an issue that came up in Bill 23. The government made a decision to bring in some laws that would allow them to weaken or eliminate municipal rental replacement bylaws. It was very concerning for many residents in Toronto, because we have a fairly strong residential replacement bylaw. It made a lot of people very scared.

Essentially, what the municipal residential replacement bylaw means is, if you are a tenant and you live in purpose-built rental and a developer comes forward and says they want to turn your purpose-built rental into a condo, you have some protections in that scenario where your building is going to be demolished. Municipalities monitor that process. They ensure a renter gets compensation as they’re waiting for that building to be built. Sometimes it takes a few years for these buildings to be built. They also ensure that the renter can return to the building and return to their home at about the same rent once the construction of that new, bigger building is complete.

In most cases, these purpose-built rentals are turned into condos. Usually, the final building consists of a percentage of rental units that are managed by the property manager; then there’s a percentage of units that are sold off as a condo—so it’s a mix of a building. It’s fairly common in Toronto.

The challenge with Bill 97 is that you’ve reintroduced this power to gut municipal rental replacement bylaws. You’ve put in a little hopeful spark because you’re also giving yourselves the power to strengthen them, which is good. I hope you expand on that. But it has made a lot of tenants very, very worried.

We introduced an amendment—we introduced a few. The first one was to create a strong provincial standard for all tenants who are facing a demolition of their building. It doesn’t matter where they live—Hamilton, Ajax, Sudbury, Peterborough, Ottawa, Toronto—this strong provincial standard would guarantee the right of return to that tenant into the new building and also ensure that there’s compensation for the tenant so that they can still afford to live in the neighbourhood that they call home while the construction of that building is complete. I think that makes a lot of sense because it’s a compromise; it’s a balance. It allows new supply to be built, especially if it’s near transit stations. But it ensures that we preserve our affordable private-market rental stock. It doesn’t hold up renters as being victims and sacrificial lambs—we just toss them out in order to meet the demand for new housing. I don’t believe renters should be sacrificed in order to meet the demand for new housing. We can do both, and we should do both. Our proposal to create a provincial standard would allow us to do both. The government chose to reject that amendment. My hope is that when I see the final regulations that come out, they are strong, because there are a lot of people who really care about this issue.

I think about an individual I work with right now called Pat. She’s in her early eighties. She lives in the Annex, a very expensive area. She wouldn’t be able to afford to live in that area if she had to move. When she found out her building was being demolished, her instant response was, “I have no idea where I’m going to go. There’s nowhere for me to go. I’m a senior. I’m on a fixed income. I have some pension. I can afford the rent. But if I have to move, my rent is going to go up from about $1,500 a month to $2,500 or more a month, and I can’t afford that.” So she’s terrified. I think Ontario has a place for Pat. Bill 97 and the regulations you introduce can either help Pat or they could evict Pat. My hope is that you help Pat. We introduced those amendments; they got rejected. Let’s see what the government does with the regulations.

The second move we did was around removing the provision requiring the city to provide a refund for a non-decision of a site-controlled application. Let me explain. With Bill 23, the Conservatives decided it would be a really good idea to continue to not look within themselves but to blame municipalities for the housing crisis. They said, “We’re going to make it so that if you don’t approve a building permit or a site plan application or a zoning application within a set period of time”—very truncated periods of time, especially for big buildings that require provincial and municipal approval, multiple-department approval, public consultation, stakeholder input, traffic studies—these are valid. If they don’t meet these very short time frames for approval, then the city has to give the development fee application funding back. The challenge with that is that sometimes, it’s not the municipality’s fault if the application is delayed. Sometimes a developer hands in an application that’s half done, so the city has to turn around and say, “In order for the clock to start ticking, we actually want a completed application, because the reason there’s a delay is because of you, not us.”

The other thing we heard in committee is that sometimes it’s the provincial government or another department or another issue that’s outside the municipality’s control that’s holding up this application for a zoning change or for a site plan application change. So we said, “Okay, there shouldn’t be any refunds at all. Let’s treat the municipalities like the partners that they are. Let’s do something like what the federal government is doing to provide additional funding to municipalities to hire the staff they need to speed up application processes. But let’s not punish municipalities; let’s help them.” The government didn’t like that.

I do want to acknowledge that in Bill 97, you’ve chosen to delay when the refunds come in, because you heard from municipalities across Ontario that the draconian and drastic measures you’re taking to change how planning works and how buildings are approved are putting municipalities into chaos; they’re having difficulty keeping up. We actually heard from municipalities that said, “All these changes that you’re doing, especially around the refund piece and the reduction in development fee charges, are slowing down our ability to approve applications, and slowing down our ability to provide the necessary infrastructure to get new homes online,” so that they’ve got the sewage, they’ve got the electricity, they’ve got the roads, they’ve got the daycares—all the services they need for the new residents who are moving in. They can’t keep up, and some applications to build, like in Waterloo region, are being delayed. It’s having unintended consequences. So we brought in amendments around that; the government rejected them. It’s a pity. But let’s see—maybe in a future bill. Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised by some of the amendments we see in future bills.

I’m going to move on with that one.

My question is to the Premier. Maria, her husband and their four-year-old daughter have been living at the Christie refugee centre, a shelter, since February. The family found a rental home, applied for funding to help cover the cost of rent and were getting ready to move in when they were told that funding to this rent supplement program had been cut by the Conservative government and the program is no longer available to them.

Premier, what is your plan to help families like Maria’s move out of the shelter system into rental homes so they can build their lives here in Canada?

The city is asking for $20 million in funding from the Ontario Conservative government to help shelter residents move into permanent rental homes so they can rebuild their lives. Can this government say yes to the city of Toronto’s request?

“Petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from the Elementary Teachers of Toronto to Stop the Cuts and Invest in our Schools.

“Whereas the government cut funding to our schools by $800 per student during the pandemic period, and plans to cut an additional $6 billion to our schools over the next six years;

“Whereas these cuts have resulted in larger class sizes, reduced special education and mental health supports and resources for our students, and neglected and occasionally unsafe buildings;

“Whereas the Financial Accountability Office reported a $2.1-billion surplus in 2021-22, and surpluses growing to $8.5 billion in 2027-28, demonstrating there is more than enough money to fund a robust public education system;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“—immediately reverse the cuts to our schools;

“—fix the inadequate education funding formula;

“—provide schools the funding they need to ensure the supports necessary to address the impacts of the pandemic on our students;

“—make the needed investments to provide smaller class sizes, increased levels of staffing to support our students’ special education, mental health, English language learner and wraparound supports needs, and safe and healthy buildings and classrooms.”

I support this petition. I’ll be affixing my signature to it and giving it to the page.

Thank you, Speaker. I’m the member for University–Rosedale.

I have a question for the member for Thornhill. In the budget, when we’re looking at how much funding is going to elementary schools, middle schools and high schools, we have a lot of concerns. With the TDSB, there is an over $60-million funding shortfall. The TDSB is looking at removing 522 staffing positions at a time when we know kids need as much help as they can get to catch up to the learning standard they need to be at for math and STEM and writing and reading. Do you think the amount of money in the budget for schools is enough? Because I personally don’t think so.

My question is to the member for Ottawa Centre.

Thank you so much for your comments about what’s happening in transit today. It concerns me, as well.

When I look at this budget, I see an increase in the amount of funding that’s going to independent health facilities, which means this government is doubling down on the delivery of for-profit surgery; in my opinion, at the expense of public health care.

Can you explain what’s happening at Ottawa Hospital right now? What is our future if they continue down this path?

My question is to the member for Mississauga–Erin Mills. I noticed in the budget that there is an increase in the amount of funding that is going to be earmarked to for-profit health facilities. I am concerned about this because I am seeing what’s happening in Ottawa, and I’m seeing planned cancer blitzes, cancer surgeries for people who are in life-threatening conditions—many of them are—being cancelled because there’s not enough nursing staff available because they’re working for the for-profit clinic that operates on the weekend and can pay nurses more.

What commitments is this government going to make to ensure that Ontarians get the absolutely life-saving surgery that they need and that it is not threatened by the arrival and expansion of for-profit health clinics?

Thank you to the member for that question.

We are already seeing the impact of this. We did a look at the projected property tax increases for municipalities all across the GTHA, and they’re seeing an increase of upwards of 7%, 8% in property tax increases at the same time as we’re seeing service cuts and infrastructure cuts.

AMO estimates that, overall, municipalities will lose about $5 billion in infrastructure revenue over the next nine years because of Bill 23, and it’s already impacting housing development and housing starts. Waterloo has a development that they have had to delay because they don’t have the funding to provide the necessary infrastructure to hook that subdivision up to the broader community. So it’s affecting your own goals.

The biggest expense that people have today is housing. When I look at the cost of housing in Ontario, when I look at the cost of rent, the legacy of this government is, it has made it extremely difficult for people to get by. Over the last five years, housing prices have gone up, the price of a mortgage has gone up, the cost of rent has gone up, and that is exactly what is making it difficult for people to find a home, live a good life, pay the bills, raise their children. That legacy is on you.

The government’s response to addressing the housing crisis has been abysmal.

In order to address the housing affordability and housing supply crisis that we have, we certainly need to build 1.5 million new homes in areas zoned for development.

We need to end exclusionary zoning—so going further than the government went in Bill 23.

We need to stabilize rent prices, because 30% of Ontarians’ rent—and they’re paying more on average now, in some cities, than people are paying in a mortgage. They can’t save up enough money for a down payment because rent is so expensive.

We need to clamp down on investor-led speculation—so we build homes for people who intend to live in them.

And we need to establish a public builder to construct affordable housing on public land at cost.

We have long called for a public builder to construct affordable housing on public land at cost. When you look at—

Interjection.

Interjection.

That is a very different approach than what this government is doing, where they’re selling off land in secret contracts to for-profit builders to build luxury condos. That is not the—

This is a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario about stopping the cuts and investing in the schools, as students deserve.

“Whereas the ... government cut funding to our schools by $800 per student during the pandemic period...;

“Whereas these massive cuts have resulted in larger class sizes, reduced special education and mental health supports and resources for our students, and neglected and unsafe buildings;

“Whereas the” FAO “reported a $2.1-billion surplus in 2021-22, and surpluses growing to $8.5 billion in 2027-28, demonstrating there is more than enough money to fund a robust public education system;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to:

“—immediately reverse the cuts to our schools;

“—fix the inadequate education funding formula;

“—provide schools the funding” they need “to ensure” there are “supports necessary to address the impacts of the pandemic on our students;

“—make the needed” improvements and “investments to provide smaller class sizes” to our children.

I fully support this petition. I want to thank the Elementary Teachers of Toronto for collecting these signatures and sharing our concerns to stop the cuts and invest in our schools.

I recently met a mom in my riding, Amy. It was very hard to listen to Amy’s story because it felt like her life was impossible. She’s a working parent, she’s a single parent, and she’s also a parent of two children with autism. Her oldest is eight and he is very high-needs. He cannot be left alone.

Amy was very clear with me when I talked to her that what she is desperately needing is stable and regular funding for therapy so that her children can reach their full potential. She needs funding for summer programs for kids with autism, which she has a hard time finding, so that she can keep her job and pay the rent. She emphasizes it is essential for her economic survival that she get help. Without support, Amy describes her life as “living in hell.”

She has been waiting months for provincial funding she is eligible for and it has not arrived. I will make sure to follow up with the minister opposite to inquire about her case because she is in distress. She is not alone. There are thousands of people like Amy.

I recently spoke to Surrey Place. It is a provider of excellent autism programs in my riding of University–Rosedale. They emphasized to me in that meeting that the need for autism programs is growing, while their ability to provide for this need is shrinking. There are more children waiting for preschool speech and language programs, and that is unacceptable. I want to see something in the 2023 budget—

Minister, we need to build more housing supply and more rental stock but not—

Interjections.

Interjections.

My question is back to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

This government wants to reduce and exempt development fees for some homes. These fees pay for transit, for daycares, for parks, and for the services that residents need. They also help build new affordable housing. Toronto is already experiencing a funding shortfall of more than $800 million.

What is this government’s plan to help municipalities make up for this massive loss in funding?

My question is to the Minister of Health. In August, I asked your government to help SickKids hospital address their staffing shortages, their $45-million funding shortfall and their growing surgery wait-list. SickKids has a surgery wait-list that has over 3,400 children waiting beyond the clinically acceptable time for their necessary surgery, putting their long-term health at risk.

Minister, three months later, the crisis is getting worse. On Thanksgiving weekend, SickKids ICUs were at full capacity. My question is, why is your government failing to help SickKids meet the demand for care?

Minister, this is my question: What is your government going to do—concretely do—to ensure that all departments, including the ER and the ICUs, have the funding to fully staff their departments so that the health care needs of children can be met?