What I noticed about the Get It Done Act is the move to make it easier to expropriate farmland to build new transportation projects. I think about Highway 413, a $6-billion highway that will be travelling through some of the most fertile, productive farmland in North America. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. And studies show that it might save people a minute in their commute times.

If we’re looking at helping people get from A to B, what other transit or transportation solutions would you like to see in Bill 162?

Thank you to the member for Ottawa Centre for your presentation. I want to raise some concerns that the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies raised. They talked about how, while this bill does something to improve people while they are in care, there’s nothing in the bill that addresses why children end up in care in the first place.

Can you speak to what you’ve heard from stakeholders or from your own experience in your riding about what we can do keep kids safe and loved in their families, in their homes?

This petition is called “Urgent Family Doctor Shortage in Chinatown in Ontario.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas there is a looming primary care provider shortage in Toronto’s Chinatown area, impacting many Chinese Canadian residents;

“Whereas a significant number of doctors in downtown Toronto who provide service in Cantonese or Mandarin are nearing retirement or have retired, leaving thousands of residents without a family doctor;

“Whereas the lack of primary care is forcing residents to rely on emergency rooms for basic medical needs, contributing to the overburdening of our hospitals; and

“Whereas over 2.2 million Ontarians do not have a family doctor, and that number is expected to increase to 4.4 million by 2026;

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

“—guarantee everyone in Ontario has access to a primary care provider;

“—increase investment in primary care in the next provincial budget;

“—expand primary care options in Chinatown and other areas with service gaps by investing in primary care, as well as non-profit and public health clinics;

“—make it easier for internationally trained doctors and nurses to work in Ontario’s health care sector;

“—cut the administrative burden on family doctors to make the profession more attractive;

“—ensure the government will cover translation fees for minority-language-speaking groups.”

I support this petition, and I am affixing my signature to it.

My question is to the Minister of Health. Yan Ping Ye lives in the Chinatown area, and she doesn’t have a family doctor. After not sleeping and feeling dizzy for four days, she had no choice but to go to the Toronto Western emergency room, one of the busiest hospitals in Ontario. Yan waited seven hours overnight, but eventually left without a prescription or help because there was no one in the emergency room who spoke Cantonese or Mandarin, and Yan is not fluent in English.

Minister, do you think it’s acceptable that thousands of people in the Chinatown area have to go to an emergency room for non-urgent care because they don’t have access to a family doctor?

The family doctor shortage in Toronto is bad and it is getting worse. In Chinatown, five doctors have already retired and two more are about to retire, which means over 7,000 people are going to be without a family doctor.

I am worried that this government is driving the primary health care system into the ground.

Minister, what is your plan to address the worsening family doctor and primary care provider shortage in underserved areas like Chinatown?

I’m very pleased to be standing up here this afternoon on a Thursday to speak to the Conservatives’ new bill called the Get It Done Act. When I read the bill, when I think about what this bill is going to get done, I think this bill is going to spur the construction of expensive and very large single-family homes that very few people can afford and it is going to make it easier and quicker to build a multi-million dollar highway, Highway 413, that no one is recommending be built. I’m also concerned about what this bill reveals about this Conservative government’s terrible approach to addressing climate action because, instead of moving forward with a price on pollution, this government wants to politicize action on climate.

I want to first talk about sprawl. I feel like I’m watching the same movie again and again and again. When I open up this bill, Bill 162, and I look at it again, what I see is the same movie playing out once again. The movie that we are talking about is the move by the Conservatives to meddle with planning processes again and redraw municipal boundaries of Halton and Waterloo and Peel and York and Wellington county, areas that abut some of the most productive farmland in North America. They have rezoned this land in order to green-light development. That is what is happening in this bill.

This is a government that is being investigated by the RCMP for allegedly making secret, sweetheart deals with a very small handful of developers to rezone their land so they can make a whole lot of cash extremely quickly at the expense of the environment, at the expense of farmers and at the expense of the greenbelt. It looks to me like this bill is going to be doing the same thing, but you’re hoping that having the municipality officially request it makes it all look okay and it makes all the dodgy stuff go away.

We are already seeing reporters go through the rezoning that is now going to be happening because the municipal plans have been rewritten and then rewritten again and then rewritten again and now, they’re rewritten again. Reporters are already going through this new rezoning that’s happening and they’re seeing some—I don’t know—interesting stuff.

For instance—I’m going to read at this point—there is a residential development in Caledon that will now proceed on a patch of green space in an “island” of housing in a sea of warehouses. This land—surprise, surprise—is owned by big donors to the Conservative Party. Okay. Coincidence?

Interjection: I think not.

Interjection.

Okay. Protections will now be removed from agricultural land to build 120,000-square-foot industrial building with an approximately 400-to-500 truck-and-trailer parking near the future Highway 413. So, when we’re talking about land speculation, maybe this could be it. Once again, the land is owned by a Conservative Party donor. Is it a coincidence? Let’s let the RCMP decide.

Then there’s a golf course that is now going to be rezoned to allow for residential development, and this golf course is owned by—

Interjection.

The golf course is owned by a PC Party donor with links to the De Gasperis family. Once again: Is this a coincidence? Let’s let the RCMP investigate and find out, because chances are, they will. It looks kind of fishy.

My question, and this is a question that a lot of Ontarians are asking, is that is this government making decisions to help the people of Ontario or is this government making decisions to help their developer-donor friends? Which is it? Because that’s the question that a lot of people are asking. Is this the Get It Done bill or is this the “go to prison” bill? I don’t know.

What I would like to hope for is I would like this government to move forward on the kind of laws and policies that are going to address our housing affordability and our housing supply crisis. That’s what I would like to see. That’s what I would like to see in this bill. That’s what I would have liked to see in Bill 23 and a whole lot of the other bills that you’re introducing.

When we’re talking about fixing the housing supply and housing affordability crisis, I think about the recent bill that the leader of the Green Party introduced—a plan that is also in our own election platform, that we advocate for ourselves, which is to allow fourplexes on residential lots in towns and cities across Ontario. Three parties support it. Where are you? When we’re talking about building more housing for Ontarians—families, newcomers, students, people who want to downsize, people who want to buy their first home—building more homes and apartments in areas that are already zoned for development will give people more affordable housing options to rent and buy. And this government, when we ask them this question, it’s absolute crickets.

How about increasing density on transit routes, building more apartment buildings near transit routes? This government has given a whole lot of good talk about that, but the city of Toronto has been waiting two long years for this government to approve Toronto’s official plan so that Toronto can build more density as well as affordable housing near transit stations. We’re still waiting for that. I would have really liked to have seen that in this bill.

And it would be amazing if this government fast-tracked affordable housing projects—

I’d like to say hi to two members of our excellent staff team, Kirsten Snider and Madeleine Vogelaar. Welcome. Hello. They do excellent work.

My question is to the member for Spadina–Fort York. You mentioned that the BC government is taking a really bold and sensible approach to the housing crisis, and we see that starts in BC are up by 11%. At the same time, housing starts in Ontario are actually going down. What is the BC government doing right? What lessons could the Conservatives learn from what the BC government is doing?

We recently hosted a town hall in our riding, in the Chinatown area, and the top issue that came up was that people are losing their family doctors. If you are 75 years old and you don’t have a family doctor, then your health could be at risk. We decided to investigate the problem. We did a review of the number of doctors in downtown Toronto who could provide service in Cantonese or Mandarin, on the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario website, and we discovered a very concerning fact: Of the 24 doctors operating in downtown Toronto, 80% of them have been practising for 43 years or more, which means that they are about to retire. And that is what we are hearing in our community. Five doctors have just retired, and there are two more who are about to retire. That means there are thousands of residents in Chinatown who have just lost their family doctor.

This is not an issue that is unique to Chinatown. We know that 2.2 million Ontarians do not have access to a family doctor, and that number is expected to double in just two years.

Our health care system depends on people having a primary care provider, or a family doctor. Residents should not have to go to the emergency room at Toronto Western just to get a prescription for antibiotics because there is nowhere else for them to go.

This is the message from Chinatown to Queen’s Park: Fix the family doctor shortage in Chinatown and across Ontario by investing in primary care.

Today I’m here to talk about child care. Parents across our riding, across our city, rely on child care. I think of Liz McLaughlin, who works as a nurse at Princess Margaret Hospital. I met her when her child care centre, Carmelite, announced they were closing, forcing her and 175 families to look for new child care options in a city that has very few available.

A typical wait-list is the kind of wait-list that exists at St. Alban’s child care. There are over 100 people waiting for a spot at St. Alban’s. I asked St. Alban’s, “Why don’t you just expand to meet the need that is clearly available?” They said, “We’re struggling to even survive.” Last year, St. Alban’s operated at a deficit because the federal-provincial arrangement doesn’t allow them to raise child care fees; however, they’re not provided with enough money to cover costs. They have lost more staff in the past year than they have lost in the previous 25 because they cannot recruit or keep workers, because wages are too low and housing costs are too expensive in our city, so people are moving and leaving. It is a huge problem.

As the need for child care rises, our child care system is not able to meet the need—or even, in some cases, they’re struggling to survive. I worry that the provincial-federal child care program is at risk.

I urge this government to look for real solutions to keep child care a reality in Ontario.

In May, a resident of University–Rosedale, Lateef Baloch, attended the annual general meeting of Barrick Gold. Mr. Baloch attended the AGM because Barrick Gold has just signed an agreement to mine in the province of Baluchistan, his former home, without informing or consulting local residents. Instead of answering questions, the CEO undermined and discredited Mr. Baloch, using his refugee status to distract the shareholders from the company’s actions. He told Mr. Baloch to go back to Baluchistan.

Mr. Baloch is a law-abiding resident of Canada and has every right to be here. If he did go back to Baluchistan, he would face persecution for his work as a human rights advocate standing up against oppression and the forced disappearance and killing of people.

Canadian companies have a responsibility to not escalate conflict in regions around the globe and Canadian companies have a responsibility to secure free, prior and informed consent from impacted people and governments before beginning a mining project in Canada and around the world. That is what I am calling on Barrick Gold to do.

My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Last Thursday, we heard from 18 witnesses about Bill 39. Fourteen of those 18 witnesses spoke against the bill. They represent the overwhelming public outcry against this government’s unprecedented attack on local democracy. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario made this very point, saying, “Bill 39 will disenfranchise elected councillors and potentially destabilize and undermine the authority of municipal government.”

AMO is not alone in its understanding of this matter. It has been expressed clearly and repeatedly by countless media outlets, leading scholars, political commentators, and others who care about democracy and good government. Minister, will you listen to Ontarians and withdraw Bill 39?

My question is back to the Minister of Health.

Elliot’s doctor won’t perform these services without a $20 e-transfer or a yearly subscription fee of $125.

Accessing public health care shouldn’t require e-transfers or credit cards. Those unable to pay could start avoiding their family doctor and wind up in emergency rooms.

What is your plan to ensure Ontarians can get the health care they deserve using only their OHIP card?

Minister, SickKids and hospitals don’t just want to imagine; they want the investments so that they can deal with the very serious issues they’re facing right now.

Yesterday, SickKids began cancelling surgeries to cope with surging demand in its ICUs in its emergency department. SickKids already has a surgery wait-list of more than 3,400 children waiting beyond the clinically acceptable time frame. What is this government’s plan to help children get the surgeries they’re waiting for?