I’d like to welcome a good friend and my political assistant from Ottawa who is joining us here in Toronto today: Dave Williams.

Good morning, everyone, and Merry Christmas. Christmas is, of course, the season of love and hope. Last week the Premier professed his hope for Toronto, the city he grew up and the city he loves.

I grew up in Ottawa and I love my city, and our city has problems just like Toronto. We have problems with homelessness. We have problems with transportation. We have problems with our city running deficits. In recognition of the season of love and hope, when will this government show some love for the city of Ottawa?

Now that there is a precedent to upload highways to the province, will the government commit to uploading Highway 174 back to provincial responsibility so the city can spend that money improving local roads, investing in public transit and reducing commute times for Orléans residents?

It’s a pleasure to rise and discuss this new deal for the city of Toronto. It’s great to see everyone this morning—a little bit warmer today than it has been in the last couple of days here in the Big Smoke, and maybe that’s because of this deal that the city has now entered into with the province and is trying to get through.

I think, if I was a resident of Toronto, which, of course, I’m not, or if I was a politician in Toronto, if I was a member of provincial Parliament from Toronto—especially one from maybe downtown Toronto—and I was a New Democrat and my New Democratic mayor had just negotiated this deal with the Premier of Ontario, I would with think that this is a really good deal, because it’s going to support investment in affordable housing. It’s going to support investing in transit. It’s going to upload highways off of the backs of property taxpayers in Toronto and free up even more cash for the mayor of Toronto to be able to do with as she and her council pleases.

Unlike other New Democratic leaders, the mayor of Toronto has demonstrated that she can bring disparate elements together into a common cause. There are Conservatives, Liberals, New Democrats and probably others on Toronto city council that she’s been able to bring together. Obviously, she’s made a deal with a Conservative Premier in Ontario. I think that’s an example for other New Democratic leaders in the province who are currently having a little bit of difficulty bringing people together, who are having a little bit of difficulty keeping the team rowing in the same direction. I think there are some lessons that could be learned there.

It’s a very good sign, this legislation, that the Premier and his government are open to investing more in municipalities. We’ve seen over the last five years—and certainly since the pandemic began and is now behind us, we hope—that cities are struggling. They’re struggling with declining public transit ridership because of the nature of people’s workplace. There aren’t as many people travelling into downtowns of our cities and, therefore, there’s an enormous reduction in the number of people using public transit.

We’re dealing with an affordability crisis where the price of groceries is up, the price of provincially regulated hydroelectricity is up, the price of provincially regulated natural gas is up. The price of most of the things in our lives is up, and so the ability to provide some financial relief to Toronto taxpayers, whether that is through some kind of property tax action or investing in social services that will help people, is obviously very good for the city of Toronto.

But my question, as someone who lives in the city of Ottawa, is, does the government understand that there are more cities in the province than just Toronto? The Premier was very clear that he made a one-sided deal. He made a great deal for the city of Toronto, which he admitted was one-sided, because he loves his city. And I don’t blame him for loving his city. He grew up here. He represents a part of Toronto. I think we would all be silly to not say that we love our cities. Of course we love the communities that we all represent and the communities that many of us were born in.

The real question is, though, are other cities going to see some love? The city of Ottawa is the second-largest city in the province. There are a million people in Ottawa. If you include the metro region and if you include Glengarry, Prescott and Russell and going to Kemptville, and heading out into the Ottawa Valley into Renfrew, Nipissing, and Pembroke, you’re getting into 1.2, 1.3 million people. So, there are a lot of people in eastern Ontario as well that would like to see some love from the Premier, and I think part of our ongoing frustration is that over the last number of years, it doesn’t seem like that love has been there. There was an absence of love.

There was an absence of presence during the convoy protests. The government really didn’t take notice of what was happening in Ottawa and didn’t really say anything about the protests overall until the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor was being blockaded. That’s when the government decided to talk about the convoy situation.

When the derecho windstorm ripped through eastern Ontario in the spring of 2022, there was an absence of love from the Premier then. He came to Orléans. He came to the fire station on the Charlemagne Boulevard. It’s a fire station I know very, very well. He thanked those firefighters for their efforts in the recovery and he said that he would be there for the city of Ottawa. He said to the mayor that he would be there for the city of Ottawa. And as of the city’s budget process, which is ongoing right now, we’ve heard from the president and the chair of Hydro Ottawa that they’ve received no funding from the province to cover the—I think it’s $30 million or $40 million in costs they had to clean up from the derecho. The city of Ottawa itself has received no funding to help with its cleanup costs for the derecho. So again the question is, where is the love? Where is the love for Ottawa?

And it has continued since then. We know that Ottawa, as the second-largest city in the province, isn’t represented in the Premier’s cabinet. There are many—well, maybe not many, but there are certainly a few government members from Ottawa and the Ottawa region, and yet we don’t have a cabinet minister in the cabinet. We don’t have someone who can be that cabinet champion for investment in the National Capital Region, who can be on the phone with the mayor every week or occasionally to talk about the issues that are important to the city that relate to the provincial government and how they might move forward on them. We don’t have that representative who can be in contact with the federal minister for the National Capital Region to work on those issues collaboratively. So again, residents in Ottawa are wondering, where’s the love for Ottawa there?

An important part of this deal that the Premier has made with the mayor of Toronto is, of course, the uploading of the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway. I think that’s a very good deal for the property tax payers in Toronto. Property taxes aren’t really designed to pay for urban expressways like the DVP and the Gardiner, and that money that’s used on policing those highways, that’s used on repairing those highways, that’s used on snow-clearing for those highways, that’s used for lighting those highways—all of that money could be better spent on local roads, on side streets and collectors and main arteries that perhaps don’t get the care and attention that they need. Those policing resources can be better spent in the community to deal with the increase in violence that we’ve seen around the TTC and other areas of downtown Toronto. So there’s a great benefit to the city of Toronto and to taxpayers in Toronto for that upload.

Again, though, I ask, where’s the love? Because in Ottawa and in eastern Ontario, we have a very similar situation. We have an urban expressway, Highway 174/17, that travels from the centre of the city of Ottawa all the way out to basically the border of Quebec, through Orléans and through the riding of Glengarry–Prescott–Russell that is the responsibility of property tax payers of Ottawa and Glengarry–Prescott–Russell. That’s a highway that takes millions and millions and millions of property tax dollars each and every year to maintain. It requires additional policing. It requires an additional snow-clearing operation. When there are major events like the flooding we experienced in Ottawa or the sinkhole that we experienced on Highway 174, we’re talking about tens and tens of millions of dollars in both unforeseen but enormous costs to maintain that urban expressway, which is really a regional highway. The 174/17 in fact used to be part of the Trans-Canada Highway system, which I think should just in and of itself tell everyone that that’s not the kind of road that property tax payers should be paying for with property taxes. Property taxes should be used to pay for your local infrastructure: for the street that you live on, for the streets that your bus drives on, for the parks around the corner and for the rec centre your kids learn to swim at. It should not be paying for urban expressways.

So the upload of the Gardiner and the DVP in Toronto, I think, is a very good step. It’s a step in the right direction. It’s obviously a very good deal for the residents of the city of Toronto. But for the residents in Ottawa and the residents of other cities across the province who have similar situations, I think they are and will continue to ask, “Where is the love for our communities?” Because we have these same financial pressures.

I want to continue to talk about the city of Ottawa a little bit more because the government doesn’t have that member in cabinet to maybe share with their caucus the challenges that Ottawa is facing. I want to spend the next three or four minutes sharing some of those.

OC Transpo, which is the second-largest transit agency in the province, is running a $40-million deficit this year. They are cutting back bus routes—and I’m not talking about a bus route at 11:30 at night that’s got one person riding it; I’m talking about suburban connection routes that feed into the hub-and-spoke system of OC Transpo, two in particular in Orléans that travel past a community rec centre. It travels past a library, and it travels past a high school. These are the kinds of bus routes that are now being cut in the city of Ottawa because of the financial challenges that the city is facing.

The city is also facing challenges when it comes to affordable housing. In fact, right now, as the city is going through its budget process for the next fiscal year, it is contemplating and debating the purchase of those white military refugee-style tents. Imagine that—

It was great to hear the presentation this morning from my colleague from Ottawa. I was, however, slightly confused during parts of the presentation, because on one hand, the member rails against one of the primary features of the deal between the Premier and the mayor of Toronto, which is the completion of the Ontario Place partnership and the building of a water park and what he describes as a luxury spa, and on the other hand, he tries to take credit for the NDP in negotiating such a great deal with the Premier of Ontario. That’s certainly the tack that the leader of Ontario’s New Democrats has taken the last number of days.

So I’m wondering, is he going to vote against the bill and support the leader of Ontario’s New Democrats, or is he going to vote for the bill and support the most powerful New Democrat in Ontario, the mayor of Toronto?

Thank you for your presentation. The other day, the Premier said that this was a very one-sided deal but that he was willing to do it because he loves his city so much. I love my city. I think we all love the cities we’re from and that we represent. So I’m wondering, when is this government going to show some love to the city of Ottawa? Because it got no money to repair from the derecho. It got no money to support from the trucker convoy. There’s a bill before the House to upload Highway 174, which is similar to the Don Valley and the Gardiner in Toronto. So when is the government going to show Ottawa a little love?

It’s a great pleasure to rise and speak to the budget measures act for fiscal year 2023-24 this afternoon.

Although the province faces skyrocketing costs of living, unaffordable housing and a health care system in crisis, budget 2023 offers no relief as more and more Ontarians struggle each and every day just to get by. It’s a budget that tells Ontarians that they’re on their own.

I want to start by discussing how the residents of Ottawa are once again being forgotten by this Conservative government. In the 2023 budget, there was announced $202 million per year in new funding for supportive housing and homelessness projects, but the city of Ottawa’s allocation is disproportionately small. Ottawa is, of course, the second-largest city in Ontario, only after Toronto. Although the city of Toronto has a population three times the size of Ottawa, it’s receiving 60 times more funding than the nation’s capital. It’s absolutely unacceptable that Toronto has received over $40 million for the same program, while Ottawa is set to receive a comparatively measly $845,100. The Premier ignored Ottawa during the occupation, he abandoned farmers after the derecho storm left them in crisis, and he is now, once again, abandoning the city as we have people who need affordable housing options and are living on the street. This insufficient funding could force the city of Ottawa to cancel 54 supportive housing units that were expected to become operational over the next 18 months, and it will severely compromise Ottawa’s 10-year housing and homelessness plan to build between 570 and 850 new affordable housing options. According to Ottawa’s mayor, based on Toronto’s allocation, Ottawa should be getting in the range of at least $16 million, but they’re only receiving $845,000. Ontario’s second-largest city should be treated fairly and should be provided with sufficient funding to meet the needs of its residents.

The 2023 budget also does not include any funding for the victims of the 2022 derecho storm in Ottawa—one of the most notorious storms in Canadian history. In fact, the storm was ranked as the sixth-costliest natural disaster in Canadian history, amounting to over $875 million in damage. The storm caused widespread damage to residential and commercial property, farms and public utilities, killing 11 people and leaving 1.1 million without power. To put it in context for some of the members from the GTA, the derecho surpassed the damages incurred during the devastating 2005 flooding here in Toronto. Buildings in these Ottawa-area communities like Navan and Carlsbad Springs still have holes in the walls or are without roofs because of the lack of disaster relief from this government. We’ve heard a lot from this government about how they support small, rural communities, but when it comes to rural communities in Ottawa, that support is non-existent. And let’s not forget: In addition to denying homeowners and farmers the opportunity to apply for provincial disaster relief funding, the Premier has yet to fulfill his promise to the city of Ottawa or to Hydro Ottawa to help with the costs of cleanup. The city and hydro have spent upwards of, if not more than, $50 million to recover from the storm, without any provincial support. Despite the Premier stopping in to station 53 in Orléans during the election to thank firefighters for their cleanup efforts, he still hasn’t put a single provincial dollar behind it. So what’s the message being sent to first responders? “I’ll come for the photo op, but I won’t deliver the goods.”

The cold shoulder being shown to Ottawa doesn’t stop there. It’s even bigger. Ontario is facing—and Ottawa is facing—a massive shortage of family doctors and a high demand for primary care.

Just to list a few challenges that family doctors are facing across the province and in the nation’s capital: human resource challenges; shortages of nurses and administrative staff; a rise in the severity of illnesses due to deferred procedures or delays in seeking treatment throughout the pandemic; and ongoing financial pressures as commercial rents go up and up and up.

These problems, in addition to many other factors, are affecting the quality of care for patients and contributing to emergency backlogs in our hospitals, and the government continues to do absolutely nothing to support primary care in Ottawa.

Instead of addressing the lack of family doctors, the government has announced their plan to increase private, for-profit medicine. And while the long-term impacts of this are not yet clear, what is evident is that it will not help address the shortage of family doctors or the decision many of them are making to close their practices. There is nothing in the budget to help family doctors continue to do what they do and what they love to do, and that’s help us stay healthy.

Un autre échec important dans le budget de 2023, c’est le manque de financement pour le MIFO, le plus grand centre culturel francophone de l’Ontario. Le MIFO offre des programmes artistiques et éducatifs à la communauté francophone, et le bâtiment actuel est extrêmement obsolète, madame la Présidente, et ne répond pas aux besoins de la communauté. Le MIFO a un projet d’expansion audacieux qui lui permettrait de fournir des services plus efficaces à un plus grand nombre de personnes dans l’est de la ville et, vraiment, tout partout dans l’Ontario. Ce projet est essentiel à la croissance de leur organisation et au succès de la communauté francophone d’Ottawa. Le MIFO a fait de nombreuses demandes au gouvernement pour les fonds nécessaires pour cette expansion, mais jusqu’à date il n’y a aucune réponse positive de ce gouvernement.

The government is also failing Ontario’s municipalities by leaving them high and dry with Bill 23. Last fall, when the government introduced Bill 23, experts and planners warned the government that there would be consequences with removing development charges without compensation for municipalities. Development charges are what municipalities use to build complete communities. They help pay for new roads and new sidewalks and new parks and new rec centres and new fire stations and police stations. It’s what helps cities build complete communities.

And once again, the government didn’t listen. The government, in November, said that they would be conducting audits in municipalities and, based on those results, may step up and help support them financially for their loss. But six months later, the only audits announced are those in—guess what?—Toronto and Peel region. Once again, Ottawa is ignored, and there’s no indication whether or not municipalities, including the city of Ottawa, will get their audit in order to evaluate the loss of revenue as a result of provincial policy.

So as you can see, Madam Speaker, budget 2023 will not make life more affordable for anyone. Ontarians are in desperate need for support during these challenging times of runaway inflation and the affordability crisis that we’re all facing, but this government is turning a blind eye. With the cost of groceries going up, with the cost of hydro going up, with the cost of gas going up, with the cost of everything Ontarians buy each and every day going up, the government has done nothing. They’re saying you’re on your own, and that’s what getting it done looks like, Madam Speaker.

I have a petition regarding homelessness in Ottawa.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas, per the 2023 Ontario budget, the province of Ontario has allocated $48 million in additional funding to address homelessness in Toronto, yet only $845,100 for the city of Ottawa;

“Whereas this amounts to 60 times more funding for Toronto, despite being just three times the population of Ottawa;

“Whereas this shortfall in funding for Ottawa will severely compromise the city’s 10-year housing and homelessness plan;

“Whereas this will result in the cancellation of 54 housing units scheduled to be completed within 18 months, and hundreds more over the next 10 years in the second-largest city in the province;

“We, the undersigned citizens of Ontario, petition the Legislative Assembly to provide Ottawa with its fair share of funding to address the homelessness crisis and alleviate the suffering of its most vulnerable” residents.

I agree with this petition, will sign my name and pass it on to Randall.

What’s clear is that middle-class families are feeling the pinch. Under this government, their hydro rates have gone up, not gone down. Their grocery prices are higher. Rent and housing is more expensive. In the last five years under this government, the costs for families are higher, and in this budget, there was an opportunity for the government to present targeted measures to help families, to help individuals deal with the rising costs that they’re facing, and the government chose not to do those things.

We’re seeing a government in Ottawa that’s choosing to make targeted tax measures in their budget, Madam Speaker. I’m not sure why this government here in Toronto chose not to do the same thing.

It’s clear that, as you said, this budget doesn’t meet the moment. It does nothing to make life a little bit easier for middle-class and suburban families that are struggling every day to pay the basic costs of utility bills and groceries and all the other costs in their lives that have gone up.

When we talk about rent, we have a government that removed rent controls on new builds after 2018. That’s something that’s affected me. My rent for my condo here in Toronto went from $2,100 to $2,600. That’s outrageous. And I’m fortunate: We have an allowance that pays for that, and I’m a person of means and can afford to absorb that. Most families couldn’t absorb a 20% or 25% rent increase.

Imagine if you’re, then, amongst the lowest-income earners in the province, those who are on ODSP and other social supports. How are they supposed to get by? This budget does nothing to make life a little bit easier for those individuals and others who are struggling with high costs as inflation is running rampant.

It was ruled out of scope, not late. It was ruled out of scope, Madam Speaker, for the bill. So, if tracking the supposed results stemming from a piece of legislation is out of scope, then I don’t know what we’re doing. If we’re not going to track the results of what we do, what are we doing at all? It was ruled out of order because even the government knows that this is not a housing bill. It was ruled out of scope because it doesn’t address housing and the amendment was about housing. So even the government knows that this isn’t a housing bill. It’s a municipal governance bill, and one that doesn’t address the most important governance issues facing Ontario municipalities.

Given that this bill is about the city of Toronto and the city of Ottawa, the first thing they should do is to approve Ottawa’s official plan: to bring new lands into the urban boundary, to change policies around intensification and density around transit, to address the missing middle, and to help Ottawa build more and better 15-minute communities for all the residents of the nation’s capital.

I know that the mayor was caught off guard. We were at the Navan Fair a day later, and he told me that he had yet to be called about this bill.

Certainly, if you’re going to make change and work collaboratively with municipalities in Ontario, the easiest thing you can do is pick up the phone and have a chat before you go to a microphone.