Thank you for the question.

I think the member has nailed it on the head here when he says that people are on their own.

Again, that money is basically being stored away for a rainy day and potential risks that the government talks about. Well, again, those risks are here. As you’ve mentioned, children are suffering from the pandemic. Their mental health is suffering, and they’re being told, “Here’s a couple of hundred dollars to go get some tutoring help.” That will not advance their learning. Seniors are being told, “Wait for your eye care appointments.” People are being told to keep waiting for their surgeries.

That money could be invested in our economy, invested in our health care system, invested in helping the homeless, whom we know are struggling, and that’s affecting all of us more broadly in our economy.

The member is quite accurate in saying that that money could be better spent under many different programs, instead of squirrelling it away for a rainy day.

Certainly, investing in new immigrants to Ontario and to Canada is important.

I know the government likes to point out that if we vote against the budget, we’re voting against the whole thing. I certainly don’t think that’s the case.

I think the focus really needs to be on keeping the workers we do have. The government is focused on finding new workers. That’s because they’re driving away workers. They’ve driven away workers in the health care sector. They’ve driven away education workers. And they’re driving away daycare workers, so that’s actually preventing us from achieving the full potential we can around the federal government’s program for daycare.

While I support supporting new immigrants to Ontario, we need to also make sure that we’re fighting for the workers we have today.

It was really heartbreaking to hear the interview with the mother of the 16-year-old boy who died. She was very brave and spoke up about the need not only for investment in our transit systems but for investments in the people who are vulnerable—the homeless man who allegedly killed her son.

So I think that, on two fronts, this budget lets us down. It is not investing in our transit systems. There are broken promises related to new lines that the previous budgets have laid out that are not here.

We know that the TTC is having to cut service, and that only leads to more unsafe conditions on our transit systems, because with fewer people around and longer wait times, we know that that can lead to more issues.

Absolutely, the member is correct that we should be investing in public transit and the surrounding supports to make sure the homeless are supported.

We need to be making sure that if we build transit, we actually can run it. We can’t run it without sufficient operating budgets. We know that the TTC is one of the most underfunded transit systems in North America, and I expect that’s probably the case for others, like in Ottawa.

Again, having government support for that transit system will provide safety, but we also need to talk about how many people are homeless, what kind of supports they need, what kind of housing they need. Let’s look at things like small homes that can be affordable, that can be done quickly, to put a roof over their heads so that they can then get the help that they need.