Speaker, every budget has good and bad. And if you’re going to ask the official opposition to support a budget, then consult us and make the budget as perfect as it can be.

We are sitting in a moment, right now, when there are over two million Ontarians who lack a family doctor today.

Solutions in the far future are not going to help the people of today.

The fact that this government is spending a billion dollars to hire agency nurses at three times the cost that it would be to just respect and pay public nurses the money they deserve is not fixing health care in this province. There are things that this budget is doing that are an improvement, but this is not the change that Ontarians deserve and need to fix health care in this province.

Even before this period of hyperinflation, our most vulnerable Ontarians were suffering, and now they are living in such dire need that it’s unimaginable what many of their lives are like, and to not support them is going to lead to even more problems—more problems for them and more problems for this government and, ultimately, more spending in the end if you don’t address proactively problems that people are facing.

If a person has a big bank account, if they’re a company like a major company or a big money interest, they have a direct line to the people closest to the leadership of this party. But if you are one of the most vulnerable people in the province of Ontario, good luck in trying to get that phone call, good luck in trying to get someone to listen to your dire needs because ultimately, for the most part, they are not going answered by this budget.

As I said, there are gong to be elements of the budget that are positive.

But the reality is, Ontario students pay the highest tuition, and Ontario universities are being forced to make tough decisions on how and what they spend their money on, under this government.

Here and there, they’ll give a little money—a little bit here, a little bit there—but at the end of the day, they are underfunding post-secondary education in this province, just like they’re underfunding education in this province. So much more needs to be done, and they’re just not willing to do it.

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.