I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak to the budget bill, Bill 180. As we know, this government is not fond of hearing feedback from the opposition Liberals, so I don’t take this time for granted. But it is an opportunity for me to share the concerns of my Don Valley West constituents with this budget and this government, Speaker—and believe you me, they had a lot to say.

The finance minister talked about this budget as one that sticks to their plan. It certainly does stick to their plan of fiscal irresponsibility. So my constituents were not surprised to see this budget continue the government’s plan to divert money away from public services to private businesses. By the way, they’re still upset about the ServiceOntario location operated by an independent service operator that serves my Thorncliffe constituents and those in Don Valley East, that’s going to be closed down and their business given to Staples under a sole-source contract. I do wonder if the Premier would advise his business friends to do business that way.

Anyway, Speaker, they’re not surprised that a government that added $93 billion in debt—15% more debt than the Liberals did in their last six years, when they spend hour after hour talking about that Liberal government here in this House—is going to add another $60 billion—$60 billion—in the next few years.

I’d like to say I’m surprised by the lack of new measures to address urgent problems in our province, whether it’s skyrocketing rents, ER closures, family doctor shortages, student mental health crises, overburdened food banks, bankrupt post-secondary institutions—the list goes on. It’s really just a continuation, though, of the reckless spending of this government that gives money to their rich friends while telling people they are putting more money into the pockets of Ontarians.

The government does indeed like to make reference to the former Liberal government, but Conservatives will not be able to grow their way out of the debt problems they are giving to this province. GDP growth under this government is lower—1.5% on average—than it was under Kathleen Wynne’s government, which was 2.5% on average, all while government spending is higher than Kathleen Wynne, and services are worse.

When Liberals spent money, they did things like give us all-day kindergarten and free education for low-income post-secondary students, which improved their chances of success and improved their quality of life.

When this government spends billions more of our taxpayer money, it’s only their rich friends who benefit, so I’m not surprised. Overspending on initiatives that help their friends, big budget deficits, and inaction on key files have all become hallmarks of this Conservative government. Nonetheless, I am still disappointed and, frankly, shocked that in the days leading up to the release of the budget, the government labelled it as one of a cost-of-living budget. When I heard that I thought, “Wow, they’re finally hearing the message that there are people struggling. Maybe there will finally be some help for those households. But instead, it was a real shame that there was not one new measure to help people dealing with the cost of living.

There’s a long list of this government’s broken promises, policy flip-flops, and failures. In fact, it seems that they think that by moving quickly from one mess to another, they hope to confuse the public and make it hard for us all to keep track.

But Speaker, we are here to hold them to account and make sure that their record, such as the scandal of Bill 124, the most damaging piece of legislation to our publicly funded health care system—let’s not forget the RCMP criminal investigation into their $8.3-billion greenbelt giveaway; their sole-sourcing of contracts to American companies while putting independent Ontario operators out of business; giving away the park at Ontario Place to a foreign-owned spa, and then giving that spa a half-billion-dollar parking lot to boot. Then, there’s the broken promise to middle income families for a tax cut, now broken for over 2,000 days.

The real shame is that there are no new measures to deal with the many crises that this government has orchestrated, no measures to relieve the administrative burden on family doctors—a 10% reduction in that could free up time for an additional two million patients a year—no new money to ensure hospitals don’t have to spend another billion dollars next year on private nursing and staffing agencies; no new money to ensure that teachers get the support staff in classrooms that they need to help those students who need extra help and help reduce the rising violence in our classrooms.

Ontarians are tired of this government and the crises they created in our public services. They’re tired of stagnant growth. They’re tired of hearing about how they’re building homes when they are way off their plan. Instead of owning up or stepping up on their housing record, they fudged the numbers by adding in long-term-care beds in the hopes that the people of Ontario will not notice.

A number of my constituents and others across Ontario who reach out to me as the Liberal finance critic wonder how we have the largest spending budget in Ontario history, under a Conservative government no less, yet the province is experiencing crises after crises. Never has a government spent so much to deliver so little. But the answer has to do with priorities. The government prioritizes their friends and insiders rather than the people of Ontario. I’ve been hearing from constituents about how the TDSB is having to choose between cutting education programs for seniors to prioritize their main mission, of course, which is serving kids, and those seniors are worried about those programs being cut.

I would have thought this government could have found a few million dollars in their budget to make sure that that school board was able to keep delivering services to their seniors without jeopardizing the success of their educational curriculum.

This government is indeed spending more than any government in Ontario’s history, yet, despite this, real spending on the things that matter to Ontarians—health care, education, child care, long-term care and post-secondary institution—remains stagnant in real dollars or have even declined.

According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, real spending on education has declined $1,200 per student under this government. Similarly, compared to every other province, Ontario continues to spend the least per capita on both health care and post-secondary education. That is not the path to a successful future, Speaker. Ontario’s universities and colleges, the backbone of our economy, have actually been allocated less funding in this budget than they were last year. This is before accounting for inflation and it’s just not sustainable. The blue panel’s recommendations were crystal clear: Ontario’s colleges and universities need an additional $2.5 billion to remain financially stable. This government has committed less than half of that funding, so it’s not a surprise that one third of our institutions are still projected to be in the red this year.

We’ve known for some time now that this government and the Premier are fond of helping their friends: for example, developers who own land near the greenbelt; they own land near Highway 413; they own private nursing agencies; they are long-term-care developers. We have former staff members and American-owned companies. And yet with this budget, they have taken helping their friends to a new level.

Let’s be clear, helping their friends does come at the expense of taxpayers and the people of Ontario. This Premier is spending more than double what Premier Wynne spent to staff his office—double, Speaker. That’s taking money away from the services that they could be providing to our citizens, our residents, and instead they’re putting it into the pockets of the Premier’s staffers.

Furthermore, despite grandstanding about how they’re helping “the little guy,” this government has also decided to give every member but one of its own caucus a promotion and therefore a pay bump. I don’t hear them bragging about that in their “sunny day” ad campaign. But I could almost hear it now. Here it goes: “What if you lived in a place where every member but one of your government’s MPPs earned more than every other MPP? Well, you do. It’s happening right here in Ontario.”

Speaker, let’s be clear: It’s just another one of the ways this government changes the rules or gets around its own rules to make their friends richer. Let me remind the government that they put in place a law where MPPs across the board could not get a raise while there was a deficit. So what do they do instead? They have a $9.8-billion deficit, then give raises to their MPPs by making sure that all but one are ministers or parliamentary assistants: 77 out of 78 MPPs in caucus. Shameful. Unfortunately, this is the kind of special treatment for insider friends that we’ve come to expect from this Conservative government.

But let’s get back to the numbers in the budget. This government has added over $90 billion in debt since coming to power in 2018 and are projected to add another $60 billion, and for what? What are we getting for the record amount of money being spent by this government? Speaker, I’ll tell you what we’re getting: We’re getting a record number of crises in every sector.

In health care, we have record ER closures. Under this government and this Minister of Health, we had three more rural ERs close just this past weekend. We have a wait-list for family doctors that’s record high and growing; 2.3 million Ontarians do not have access to a primary care provider. That number will skyrocket to 4.4 million as soon as 2026. And, Speaker, who benefits when people don’t have a family doctor they can access through the public system with their OHIP card? It’s the for-profit clinics that provide care you pay for with your credit card.

But instead of solving that problem, this budget only makes provisions to provide an additional 600,000 Ontarians access to a family doctor, and only by 2027. That means we will hear more and more in the years to come about Ontarians who are accessing care via for-profit clinics. I hear about that every week in my constituency office. In fact, hospitals in my riding are trying to find solutions for this because they know that 80% of people living in assisted living in my riding don’t have family doctors, and so they end up in the ER. That’s not good government.

This government hasn’t had the courage yet to say it, but they are defunding our public services—basically privatizing our public services—because we have a Premier who doesn’t actually believe in public services. That’s why he says the worst place you can give your money is to the government. In our public schools, we have growing staff shortages. According the recent Annual Ontario School Survey, 24% of elementary schools and 35% of secondary schools report facing staff shortages on a daily basis—record high staff shortages—under this government. Teachers and principals have cited several reasons, like mental health. Students are suffering from mental health. Young people are not doing well in this province, and it’s having an impact on our schools to function as safe places where kids can learn.

Yet this budget barely even touches on this issue, proposing only to spend a paltry $8.3 million over five years on youth mental health hubs. With about two million students in Ontario, that’s about 83 cents a year per student. That’s not going very far. There is no plan to expand access to mental health services in schools, where they are needed most.

So again, Speaker, where is all this record spending going, if not towards education and health care? It’s going to things like moving the science centre; to building Highway 413, a highway that will cut through more valuable farmland and only benefit private developers who are looking to build more car-dependent suburbs. The budget did find half a billion dollars to build an underwater parking garage for a foreign-owned spa. Those are the kinds of priorities of this government, not education and health care.

We shouldn’t forget about the hundreds of millions in federal dollars that this government has turned down because they won’t allow fourplexes as of right across this province. They wasted millions on fighting public sector workers in court and millions wasted on partisan Super Bowl ads. There is a pattern, Speaker, and it’s not a good one. The government is spending billions, costing Ontarians billions with their mistakes, and they’re mortgaging our future to pay for it all.

Last week, while answering questions about the budget, the Minister of Long-Term Care referenced my advocacy for a not-for-profit care home in my riding, and I did not have time to answer it, so let me summarize here. It seems the minister was upset I’d asked for help from his office to meet with that home, to provide clarity regarding their current contract, so they can have certainty to build new beds. But it seems that the not-for-profit sector, despite providing better care at a lower cost, always seems to be last in line.

Speaker, Ontario does have a bright future, but it’s not with a budget like this that adds billions to our debt and puts the future of Ontario at risk.

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.

I’m grateful for the chance to speak on International Women’s Day, despite the government’s attempt to prevent the independent members from speaking and representing their constituents. They misused their power to silence opposition, contradicting the democratic principles they were elected to uphold. It’s wrong that we had to fight for the right to speak on behalf of our constituents in the Legislature today, and it was wrong when the government did not first give us unanimous consent on the first request to speak.

When you do the wrong thing, the right thing to do is apologize. I’m calling on the government to do that today.

But I am thankful, and I’m encouraged by the solidarity that I’ve seen here today among our independent colleagues, our NDP colleagues and the men who stood with us. That is what has always advanced women’s rights.

Now I’d like to focus on women’s issues in my community of Don Valley West. Supporting women benefits the economy and our society. Fair wages for nurses, who are mostly women, will improve our health care system.

My mother was a retired nurse and she was asked during the Harris years to work for free due to budget cuts, and that underscores the need to respect nurses. I stand here today for her and others like her, and to ensure my daughter and all of our daughters do not experience the same thing.

We can do more to support women, and we demand that support today from the government. I hope the government listens to these women’s voices.