I’m pleased to rise today to speak to motion 22, the budget motion, especially since my remarks on budget day to the media following the Minister of Finance’s statement in the government press room are not available.

There has been a lot written about this in the media over the last few days. Apparently this government spent $310,000 of taxpayer money on this media press room. And so because either the media room isn’t working or because the government is withholding the video—I have asked but I haven’t had a response yet—I don’t have that video.

That aside, I also only have 14 minutes to speak to this motion. Let me say that if the House leader is listening, he might say I should be grateful to the government for being given this time as an independent member. Speaker, I disagree, because his premise is absolutely wrong. I’m only considered an independent member because it was this government that chose to change the rules of the game and therefore made Liberal members independent.

There are only two possible explanations that I can think of: They don’t believe they should be held accountable to the residents of our ridings, or they’re afraid to hear what we have to say. Either way, the outcome is the same. They are suppressing opposition voices.

Speaker, 14 minutes really is not enough time to highlight one by one all of the issues in this budget, all the people and organizations it lets down, specifically those who struggle to afford a home, those who struggle to put food on the table because the government cancelled the Liberal government’s planned increases to minimum wage. Because they constrained wages for workers with Bill 124, there are kids going to school hungry.

I need to say that I respect the Minister of Finance, and I like him too. He’s a person who I believe wants to do the right thing for the people in Ontario. He had a career in finance, so he probably knows that this budget is a disaster in waiting for this province. I expect that he may have even tried to tell this to his Premier. He likely knows that this $9.8-billion deficit and forecasts for deficits for three more years before maybe having a balanced budget is actually at risk.

One reason for this, of course, is that this government has a terrible track record for their forecasts. The deficit projections in nearly every budget tabled by this government have been off by billions. The second reason is the government’s misguided decision to implement Bill 124 and restrain wage increases for nurses and education workers, mostly women, to 1%. The government has already had to pay catch-up payments of $6 billion and will likely have to pay another $7 billion more. By the way, Speaker, this government’s budget is so lacking in transparency that I don’t even see the $7 billion planned for in this budget, even though they know these payments are coming. It might be hidden in the contingency fund, but, of course, we don’t know because they only show the contingency fund amount for the coming year.

Another reason this outlook is at risk, of course, is because, contrary to their rosy ads declaring how rosy things are in Ontario, which cost $8 million dollars during Super Bowl, things are not okay in Ontario. By the time they plan for a surplus, did you know that if the minister’s forecast for growth is off by even 30 basis points, 0.3%, we would have a $7.5-billion deficit instead of a modest surplus of half a billion? The agencies who rate our province’s economic health will now be in the throes of evaluating this huge deficit budget and the huge amount of debt the government is adding to our books. If these agencies lower our ratings based on this poorer economic performance, that will mean higher interest costs for the government’s $160 billion in debt they will have added to our books.

Earlier this week, the minister took us on a proverbial drive across the province while delivering his budget remarks. Well, Speaker, I want to take you on a stroll through the green meadows of the greenbelt, the very one owned by their insider friends, the very one that this government is now under an $8.3-billion investigation for. It’s also the greenbelt that they want to pave over to build their $20-billion Highway 413, which will also make a few of their rich developer friends, some of the same ones who would benefit under the greenbelt giveaway, even richer.

The Conservatives believe that less government is better for the people, and so they like to say that if you believe in less government, then less money will be spent on government, and therefore, that they are fiscally responsible with taxpayer money. We have a Premier that says the worst place you can give your money is to the government. I think what he meant to say is the worst place to give your money is to his government. This budget puts the fallacy of fiscal conservancy to bed. In this budget, we see a government that is spending $214 billion of taxpayer money to run this province, and we see they’re running it into the ground.

They brag about saving people a few hundred dollars a year on things like licence fees, but they’re actually costing us thousands of dollars a year because they’re paying their friends and supporters. For example, I would estimate that about half a billion dollars of taxpayer money is being paid out in profits from the public purse to private nursing agencies, like those owned by their insider friends, including those who sit here in this House. And to make it worse, they’re financing this with debt. They’re paying another half billion dollars to build a parking lot for a foreign-owned spa and financing that with debt.

So what do we have to show for this record level of debt and $10-billion deficit? We have record high rents; we have record ER closures; we have record numbers of people without a family doctor; we have record numbers of people lined up at food banks; and we have record numbers of problems in classrooms.

Speaker, can I just take a moment here to mention the TDSB? They’re looking at how to balance their budget given the underfunding by this government. One of the things they’re looking at to do that is cancelling seniors’ learning programs because it isn’t core programming for kids K to 12. Many of my Don Valley West constituents have written to me about this. The government needs to step up and pay the few million dollars for this program to the TDSB so that seniors get the programs that they need, but it’s not at the expense of our kids’ education.

This budget and this government have failed those people. This budget takes taxpayers’ hard-earned money—more money than they’ve taken ever before—and gives little in return. That’s just the day-to-day running of the government. Let’s talk about the rest of the taxpayer money they’re spending.

They’ve added $93 billion in debt since they came into office. They’re on track to add $60 billion more according to this budget. Interest payments are ballooning under this government, meaning every tax dollar goes more and more to servicing debt than supporting the people of Ontario. We’re over-leveraged on inefficient projects and bad policies: half a billion dollars for the foreign-owned spa at Ontario Place; $375 million in federal funding that they’re leaving on the table because they just don’t believe in affordable housing. How else could we explain this? Do you know why? Because their rich developer friends won’t get richer.

They’ve created conditions where hospitals are spending $1 billion on agency nurses instead of retaining public staff. They’re subsidizing private long-term-care facilities that are failing to address the needs of their residents, simply because they’re owned by friends of Ford. Billions and billions of taxpayer dollars are going out the door to private companies and the Premier’s friends. That means people who trust us with that money are losing while the Premier’s friends win.

These are just a few of the big mistakes they’ve made. We can’t forget the pointless and broken change of the Ontario licence plates that can’t be seen in the dark, nor the $1 billion in penalties this government failed to collect from the operators of the 407. They spent $230 million breaking renewable energy contracts during a climate crisis, then spent millions of dollars taking nurses to court. They sole-source projects rather than finding the best deal for the people of Ontario. All of these examples show how they’re taking money from taxpayers in this year’s budget and beyond, borrowing money from taxpayers to pay out to the companies of their rich friends. This is fiscal conservatism.

We’re over 200% net debt-to-revenue—that means we owe $2 of debt for every $1 we collect—the debt-to-GDP ratio is creeping higher; growth is low and slowing; that’s what the Minister of Finance told us this week; unemployment is rising—all the things that credit agencies look at to determine our borrowing interest rates.

We can’t grow our way out of this problem. Under this government’s failed leadership, GDP growth has only been 1.5% on average for the last six years, and it’s not projected to improve. By the way, it averaged 2.6% under Kathleen Wynne.

I’m not surprised they’re failing to handle the taxpayers’ money well because they don’t take their own promises seriously. They promised buck-a-beer; we don’t see that. More importantly, they promised a middle income tax cut—haven’t seen that yet either in the six years they’ve been in office. That tax cut would have saved people hundreds of dollars a year, according to the Conservatives’s own claims. They promised to not touch the greenbelt. Well, we know how that one went. It’s probably not what the voters expected.

Let me bring it back to where I started. Why are Conservatives considered to be good fiscal managers? How could they possibly be considered on the taxpayer’s side? They can’t; they are not. They’re wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and giving little in return.

These failures make life harder for the people of Ontario. They have real consequences for the people of Ontario. Their failure to respect and manage the public’s tax dollars means that people have less support.

I don’t believe this is simply a mistake or incompetency. I believe the government is deliberately stifling funding for public institutions like health care so they can justify the expansion of private services that enrich their friends. I believe we’re seeing that with the expansion of nurse practitioner-led clinics. They’re charging fees because there’s a market need. The market need has been created by this government underfunding family doctors. For everyday people, that will mean fewer resources and higher costs. That might just be the theme for this government: fewer resources, higher costs. Never has a government spent so much to deliver so little.

Speaker, there are things that are very unsettling in this budget. I feel very unsettled, but there are things that could be done to help people and build prosperity in Ontario:

—investments in the economy;

—spend that $40 million to continue the Digital Main Street program instead of cancelling it effective March 31;

—implement an “IP box” tax credit to help keep innovative ideas here in Ontario;

—provide incentives to small businesses to adopt new technologies to save time and improve productivity; and

—prioritize the use of the already allocated $3-billion infrastructure fund in the Ontario Infrastructure Bank away from programs that already have capital and use it to incentivize new high-growth communities in Ontario.

Let’s build healthy communities by prioritizing capital funding to the highest-growth, most beneficial projects, like building health care and making sure they’re staffed; building affordable housing; repairing the schools where workers of tomorrow are learning; funding our universities and colleges so that those kids have a bright future in whatever trade or field they choose; prioritizing the support of the public services Ontarians need rather than subsidizing private services that provide fewer services at greater cost; and immediately helping those community service organizations that need 5% to survive.

We need to address the affordability crisis. We could do things like giving $28 million to the Ontario Student Nutrition Program, which will serve over 761,000 meals to students in the province each day.

Stop playing the blame game and blaming everything on the federal government or the Bank of Canada and take action now by providing immediate financial relief for Ontario families by returning the provincial portion of HST related to home heating. Allow fourplexes province-wide to help improve gentle density and increase housing supply.

This government’s bad decisions and fiscal mistakes spell trouble. I know it’s not popular to cast gloom on our future prospects, and I don’t really want to, but I feel compelled to speak out against the position this government has put us in. There’s a fundamental issue at the heart of our provincial finances that’s leading to a fundamental breakdown of our public services and the quality of life in our province.

The Conservatives may claim to be prudent fiscal managers; they’re not. They’re populists, plain and simple—populists making short-term decisions in order to stay afloat for just one more term so they can extract as much money as they can from the public coffers before Ontarians realize what they’re doing and throw them out of office in 2026.