Thank you for that question. It’s astounding to me that after 20 minutes of me commiserating with the government side, actually not blaming them for bad decision-making individually, and saying collectively that the decisions are made somewhere high up by a PR guy and by special interests, they get their feathers ruffled instead of saying, “Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. It really sucks.”

But that’s exactly what the reality is of this. They may not want to admit it today, but they know—they know—what I’m saying is true. They absolutely know that what I’m saying is true. They’re just too scared to say it themselves.

Health care Tory math: You want to talk about numbers? You? Under this government, hospitals are being forced to pay double the amount to hire agency nurses than have their own nurses. At the same cost, they could be doubling the amount of nurses in our hospitals. These are things not to be proud of: escalating costs of everything, an affordability crisis, skyrocketing costs of literally everything under this government; claiming that they’re going to fight a housing crisis, and all they’re doing is making land speculators rich while people struggle, while workers struggle. How is this something to be proud of?

But again, I don’t blame the member, because it wasn’t him. It was the people making the decisions that they’re all forced to have to walk in line with and follow. I get it: It ruffles feathers—ruffles feathers to know that you made it to government and you’ve got no power, individually. That’s why I commiserate with them, and I wish that they would stand up to their leadership and have an opinion.

I was called out by a government member saying that I wasn’t sticking to the topic. I’m not really sure how that comes into play about the current bill or even what I was saying. Respectfully, I was talking most recently about the privatization that this government is wreaking on health care and what the effect is, that it is bad Tory math, that they take spots—instead of paying nurses and respecting them so that they stay in hospitals, they stay in their long-term jobs, private agencies are coming in. We’re paying double the cost. A quarter of that at least goes into administration—their profits. This is our taxpayer money. Health care is spiralling out of control. They’re making rich friends and donors richer and richer and richer. That money, as the Tory cycle of life, comes back into their coffers.

This has to stop. I hope these members of this government in caucus somewhere get the ministers aside. Shake them. Tell them, “Stand up to the leaders. Stand up to the special interests and the PR guy and do what’s in your heart. Do what’s in your conscience.” Because I know a lot of you are not happy.

Thank you to the minister for that. I’m just trying to commiserate with the government. The reality is, I’m telling them, Speaker, individually that it’s not their fault, because they had nothing to do with the decision-making process. Because they never do—they never do.

So was it this government? Was it a minister? Do they have power or not? Well, we’re going to find out as the RCMP continue this investigation on who knew what. But these are exactly the issues that we’re facing from this government. They’re not accountable to the people because the people making the decisions claim they have a mandate. It’s not them. It’s not the people that put their names forward, fighting to make change for their community, who get to make any decisions here. It’s PR guys and special interests. That’s it.

Now, the “notwithstanding” clause: Again, this is a measure that is supposed to be brought in, I mean, literally, under extreme circumstances. Well, these guys are using it to change toilet paper in the bathroom—for anything. It doesn’t matter. Do you know why? Because if they can’t get their way, they will break it out.

And you don’t know the amount of flack they got for that. And I was getting flack on their behalf, people calling and saying, “I can’t believe this is even happening.” They thought this is inside baseball; nobody is going to know. Do you know many lawyers and judges were rolling their eyes at the abuse of this government with regard to the “notwithstanding” clause?

The licence plates—I’m going to get into it again. What an embarrassment, right? Vanity plates that can’t be read. They can’t be seen in bad weather. They can’t be seen at night. They can’t be seen in the sun. Get it undone. Then they announced a plan to do nothing about it. That was the plan: Don’t do anything.

One of the first times this government had to backtrack was on the autism file. They won’t listen to the advocates—autism advocates. They’ll pick up the phone call from Enbridge. So they came in here and they made changes, and families and individuals were out by the hundreds, if not the thousands, on the front lawn, and they had to again get undone the damage they did to the system.

Public health, e-learning, class sizes: I mean, the pandemic taught us how successful remote learning can be in some of these cases. But these were things that they all talked about. A French university—they lost a member over this. They took aim at French-speaking people in Ontario. And then they had to go back on it.

Legal aid: Tear that up too, right? Imagine, at a time where they want to talk about law and order, and there are victims of crime, they don’t even want to support them. It goes on and on and on.

And in the time I have left, I won’t be able to get into schedule 5 much. I already talked about Enbridge, how Enbridge called them up and said, “Guys, we’re paying you. We want to charge customers. It’s not going to come out of our bottom line. It’s not going to come out of our profits.” Well, guess what this government did? They passed it—

But I’ll get on to the final thing, in the minute left: schedule 6. And there’s not much time. The 407, highway tolls—the only time tolls have ever been collected on the 412 and the 418 was by this government. So they’re removing tolls from highways that in other cases don’t have tolls, and then in other cases, the 407, which under the past leadership—and I won’t blame them individually—allowed the cost of the tolls on the 407 to balloon to the highest-cost toll highway in the visible universe. That’s what we’re facing. Do something about it.

In the 30 seconds left: They had an opportunity in the last session of government, a billion dollars that the 407 owed the people because they breached their own contract. They did not reach the level of cars that they were supposed to. This government could have taken them to the cleaners and said, “You owe us a billion dollars.” Do you know what the government did—why? Because the 407 sits right here on that shoulder of special interest. They said, “Keep the money. The people of Ontario don’t need a billion dollars; you have it. Make more money on the backs of Ontarians.” That’s what this government’s been all about.

Interjections.

Interestingly enough, we went to a place where I wanted to ask the question—when power gets expanded in one area, it always comes at the expense of something else. In this case, it comes at the expense of councillors. People go to the polls to vote for mayors, generally, for a vision overall, but, ultimately, for councillors to make local decisions.

Can you expand again a little bit, briefly, on why it’s important that councillors have a say, are respected and have power to be able to make decisions?