Thank you to the member for Essex for that excellent question and for his advocacy for his community.

The Minister of Finance well appreciates that these announcements are province-wide, but we see the results on the ground in Essex. We see the results on the ground in Durham. It is a record investment: $50 billion to build and upgrade new hospitals, investments by the millions in new family doctors for better primary care across the province in each district of the province, and, of course, investing in the ability to have primary care by way of nurse practitioners. This is innovation in health care and with the investments made in this budget.

The same old ways of doing things are not adequate. We need the investments. We have the record investments. We’re seeing them in each riding and district, and we’re seeing it done in innovative ways. When we speak of primary care, we speak of not only more family doctors, but more nurse practitioners. We speak of empowering pharmacists to work with the customers they know best with the 13 common ailments. Investing in innovation, investing in people, is the right way forward. We’re doing that.

This builds on last year’s budget commitment. We’ll continue to build. We’ll continue to invest for all the people in Ontario. We’re enhancing primary care, and we’re innovating and investing at once.

People have to be able to make choices. When it comes to the gas taxes, we have maintained a cut to provide for affordability. We have brought in and extended other measures so that people do not have to make the choice to not drive their cars.

We, on the other hand, with auto insurance, have left the choice for affordability up to the individual citizen by providing the opt-out option to provide lower premiums. It’s not an opt-in but an opt-out. If a particular person with their insurance broker determines that they have more insurance than they need for a particular aspect of their lives, such as an income replacement benefit, this budget will provide for a program by way they can opt out of that. Why should they have to pay for insurance twice? That creates affordability by choice and that’s a key aspect of our auto insurance initiative in this budget.

I stay in touch regularly with people in my riding and across the province, and I hear it from nurses on the front line and from physicians. I was with health care professionals yesterday at an event in my riding for Autism Home Base and they applaud our government’s smart investments, our innovation in how health care is delivered. And that is the answer. That is the way forward.

I am thankful for our dedicated professionals, our doctors and our nurses and others—

I thank the excellent member for Carleton for that question.

I am very pleased to confirm that our Progressive Conservative government, as of January 2024, will be permanently waiving fees for changing names for residential school survivors and their families aiming to reclaim traditional names altered by the residential school system. As part of this initiative, fees are also waived for registering a delayed registration of death for children who were enrolled in residential schools. Additionally, this government is permanently eliminating fees for death registration searches, certificates and certified copies of death registrations. These permanent fee waivers are providing ongoing financial relief for impacted Indigenous communities and families during an already difficult time.

Also, under the leadership of our Premier, the Honourable Doug Ford, our Progressive Conservative government will always stand by our First Nations communities by taking meaningful action that ensures support every step of the way toward reconciliation.

These changes build on recent initiatives by my ministry that provide easier access to government services in remote and Indigenous communities. In July 2022, ServiceOntario and the North Shore Tribal Council worked collaboratively to launch the first Indigenous-led ServiceOntario centre at the Serpent River Trading Post in Cutler to deliver photo card, driver’s licence, vehicle and health care cards and other services. Then, in October 2022, we launched the first mobile service unit within the Robinson-Huron Treaty area, and then Pickle Lake, November 2023, we restored services at the municipal office there. I was very proud to be there with the member opposite representing that constituency.

I’d like to welcome to the House today an excellent lawyer from Durham, Ms. Kelli Preston, and her son Liam, a major in political science.