I really appreciated the speech about gravy. We’ve seen a lot of gravy in the last six years. My question was just simply: Of all the flavours of gravy that we’ve seen in the last six years, what was your favourite flavour?

I want to thank the member opposite for his speech. He’s always very well researched and he knows his stuff.

He’s talked about removing tolls on the 412 and the 418—great. But there is a portion of the 407 that is still tolled by the province of Ontario. Now, since he is so much against the tolls on highways, I know he must be screaming in caucus meetings, “Why aren’t we taking the tolls off that part of the 407?” So tell us, why isn’t the government, if they’re so against tolls, removing the 407 tolls that are part of the provincially owned portion of that highway?

It’s always great to hear the member. His speeches are always very personal, and it’s always a pleasure.

I just wanted to ask: I know that you were asked a question about enforcement, and I’ve already asked one about enforcement as well. But if you really want to change bad behaviours or bad practices, can you talk a little bit about why it’s more important—or it’s as important—to increase the chances of being caught by having enough inspectors and having active inspections, and not just doubling or tripling or even quadrupling fines, but making sure that there are inspectors out there and getting the job done?

Thank you very much for that question. Absolutely. I spent a lot of my speech talking about the needs of renters, and many that are nowhere near being able to purchase a home and are struggling even with rent.

The government has the power to build housing themselves. They can look past the philosophy—again, some members have referred to it as “communism”—to say to themselves that it is possible to build affordable housing themselves. It is within their powers to do so because all of their legislation thus far is to try to incent certain things to be built. But they have the ability to pick up the shovels themselves and do it. I’m hoping they will, because so many across this province are counting on them to do that.

By the way, I know I talked about the governments of the past, but it was the downloading that we’re still seeing to this very day in the late 1990s that has helped put these municipal governments in a very tough bind.

I appreciate the question. There needs to be so much more investment, and governments need to do whatever they can to help our great municipalities do and deliver the services that their residents are counting on every day.

With regard to mass timber construction, I’m proud to say that the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority headquarters is located in my constituency, and it is one such building—maybe not 18 storeys—that has relied on that technology in terms of construction. And it is something good to see in your bill.

As I said, there are some elements of the legislation that are good and some elements that are worth supporting.

On the topic of universities, considering that students in Ontario pay the highest per capita tuition across all of the country, I hope that this government will bring the investments to universities, to put us at a level where other provinces and other jurisdictions will be looking at us enviously to say, “Wow, look at the amount of support and investments that are coming from the province of Ontario for its universities.” So if this is something that this government cares about, I hope it will really take us down that way so those students will be able to congratulate them and feel that support they’re getting from the government.

I thank the government member for her speech. It’s always a pleasure to work with her in this chamber.

Yesterday, I met with a constituent who was a PSW, and she was very concerned. She had just retired as a PSW, and she said that she is very, very afraid of her future as a renter, as a tenant.

All of the initiatives that the government tables here always have to do with the purchase of individual homes, but they’re not willing to take action in terms of rental. Now, I know what the response is going to be, that they’ve had many rental housing starts, but it’s a chicken-or-an-egg thing, because with rents at $2,500 to $3,000, yes, there’s an interest in building more units, but that’s actually the problem. Why are this government’s initiatives when it comes to housing not willing to visit rent control? Because people like this PSW just don’t have a future to wait for when it comes to their housing.

I want to commend the member for her speech and for focusing on her own community.

My question is about value for money. My question is simple: Does the member believe that, at a cost of a billion dollars, this was good value for money for nursing, when instead of paying public nurses a better rate, they went out to agencies—at a cost of a billion dollars—to get one third of the hours they would have got from public nurses in our health care system?

I want to thank the members for their very thoughtful speeches that really got to the point of the matter.

Something that I heard a lot about in 2018 was this mantra that Ontario was the most indebted subnational jurisdiction on earth, and I want you to expand on their solution to that—by adding more debt to that subnational jurisdiction.

Being a veteran member in this Legislature, you’ve seen many budgets. Have you ever been so underwhelmed?

I want to thank the member for his always-eloquent speech. I wanted to ask a question of him: When this was first debated at second reading, a government member got up and spoke that tolls weren’t the way to go; that it was actually gas tax that was the way to go, that it was sensible, that it was smart. A PC Conservative Ford government member said that the gas tax was the way to go. In fact, he sits way over on that side. I just wanted to ask what the member thought about this Conservative government member talking about gas tax being the way to go.

I want to thank the member for her great speech.

I have a question, and I think I know the answer to it—at least the first part: Does the member believe that finance, the ability to pay, should be a barrier to justice in Ontario? And if she doesn’t believe that, which I’m sure she doesn’t believe, why won’t her government properly fund and increase legal aid so that everyone has access to the justice they deserve?

I listened intently to the member, and he’s certainly an expert in his field. I know he cares deeply about the people of Ontario and his community, and I was so impressed with his speech. I heard him say that he believes the most efficient way forward is a gas tax, obviously. That is the most equitable way. Could you tell us a little bit more about why you believe that’s the case?

I want to thank the member for his presentation and his speech today. The member was here when the Conservative government, their members, were actually in the official opposition at the time. And at the time, they were very, very critical, from what I hear, about the politicization of energy, energy delivery, the entire energy system. Liberals at the time used a lot of politics to influence decision-making, not listening to experts, not listening to regulators, just making decisions based on phone calls possibly from donors and others.

How do you feel, considering what the Conservatives are doing now in light of their criticisms before?

I listened intently to the government member’s speech, and I have to admit I was a little surprised to hear that quote—“The OEB is a regulator, not a consumer protection agency.”

My question is this: Do you believe that the job of a regulator is to simply look at the interests and to benefit the interests of the people they’re regulating and not the actual people of Ontario, who in many cases are the consumers? What the OEB said in their ruling was that this was not in the best interests of consumers. Why does this member think that the decisions of the OEB should be so much in favour of the energy providers and not at all for the consumers themselves? Please explain this.

I’m going to take us a little off-topic. It’s nothing for the minister to fear what’s going to come out of my mouth. Actually, I’ve noticed when the minister speaks, he always has quite a delivery. He sounds very proud about the legislation that he is bringing forward, and I’ve always found that an interesting delivery when he does so. I’ve also noticed that he’s always talked about the daily vitamin; I think he’s said that in a number of his speeches. He sends to the Premier every morning a new business and he talks about it—I’m not sure what’s in that vitamin. I’m curious what he sent this morning.

I have to say that it’s been a real pleasure to hear the speeches this afternoon, to hear so many new members share their life stories. Sometimes there were jokes and laughs, and sometimes there were tough times and emotional times. We heard about losses of people dear to them.

Unfortunately, we lost an hour of it. And that’s part of what it means to be a legislator; things like that happen here. An hour of it was lost, and in turn we heard a lecture from the House leader. I must say, and I say this humbly and with greatest respect, he’s an incredible speaker. And I do enjoy those lectures. They make me laugh sometimes. But I would like to offer sincere, humble advice, and my advice is directed to the new members in this chamber, particularly the Conservative ones. Because I’m a new member too: I’ve just been here a term, just got re-elected. I remember what it was like for the last four years. And I know why every government, not just yours, wants to silence the opposition: because we make your job harder. And sometimes you may feel like you want to take it personally, what we say. And I’m sure for those members that were here—I don’t know how many are in the chamber were here under the last government—I think you know what I’m talking about. And again, I am a new member.

I watched after the last election how there were standing ovations for literally everything. Sometimes I felt that you guys were up on your feet—well maybe not the new members—more than you were answering questions at all. Constantly, the Speaker would have to get up and say, “Stop the clock.” There was a lot of boasting. We hear it. “We won! We won! You lost!” We heard that a lot. We continue to hear it. And you know what I saw? I watched the polling numbers just like you, and this is what I saw, just like this: Eventually the government, your government, about three years ago reached the popularity of the government before you, the team you called the minivan party. And then the pandemic happened and things changed. That’s where you were.

I think there’s something we should all address and consider: We have gone through an election where people felt hopeless. They were filled with despair. I know you know this; you heard it. There were not many people rushing to vote. They felt like the future was very scary to them and their loved ones, and so we saw the lowest turnout per capita in Ontario’s history. You won. You won a majority and you gained seats, and you did so with 18%—with a loss of half a million votes. And sure, we lost votes. We lost more than you. But what is out there is a feeling of disenfranchisement that I’ve never seen before, not to this level. And it’s scary. All of us need to consider this, and I hope that you consider it, too. I hope that despite what we hear sometimes in this chamber, when you’re in your caucus rooms talking and thinking about it, that you actually think about what’s actually going on.

I know that it is difficult for you as a government. It must be very hard for ministers. All I’ve ever known is opposition; I’ve been here for just one term. To get up and have to answer questions when we bring out stories of individuals that are not the exception, because in many cases the exception is the rule—people suffering in many different ways, and you have to get up and scramble and give an answer. I know it’s not easy. I get it. I know your job is hard.

Listen or don’t listen, but people out there are suffering. I want to say, you might want to shut us down and keep us quiet, but we have options and ideas to help. You will hear those amendments when things get to committee. I think a third of all the material may, in fact, go to committee. We can fix a lot of the things that you are dealing with. We can help you. It is your choice to listen to us or not.

Your throne speech doesn’t go far enough. I can’t match the words of the member from Spadina–Fort York. And to your credit, the questions that were asked of him and the compassionate speech that he gave were very respectful. How can people live on a 5% increase in ODSP when we are facing this inflation? It is impossible. I know you know this.

You look at the throne speech, and I get it—I did a Ctrl-F on the word “environment.” I found it three times. Two times, it had to do with the business environment.

Health care crisis: Each day we get up and we say, “We need to deal with this. Let’s call an emergency discussion and debate on it. Unanimous consent.” It fails every day. Why do we criticize you? I know it’s not easy to hear. Because there are things that we observed—at least, I observed—in the last four years that could have been done so much better.

Privatization: We don’t have to raise it. You raise it. You call it “innovation.” Conservative governments have a pedigree, a history, of ripping apart and tearing down public services and institutions. You did it to hydro and we saw the rates go up. You sold the 407. I get it. That wasn’t you, new members; it was the government before. But last year, when the 407—the people that own it—owed a billion dollars to you and the taxpayers, this government said, “Keep the change. We don’t need it.” Imagine.

The list goes on and on, and sometimes it feels—and we all know that there are people out there always waiting to turn a profit on a crisis.

Long-term care: I’d like to talk about long-term care a little bit more. I must say, and it is not an insult, that until the pandemic happened, I do not believe it was a priority for this government. We tabled bills like the Time to Care Act where we said, “Give at least four hours to our loved ones to take care of them.” It was ignored. You heard, just like I did, PSWs and nurses come in, file into our offices and, through tears, tell us that they had to help residents—dozens, for one nurse, one PSW, dozens who needed to be changed, who needed to be fed, an impossible task. It’s not just about creating the beds. It’s about hiring the workers and giving them the time, the respect, to be able to help the people who are entrusted under their care.

In 2019, before the pandemic: 626 homes. How many proactive inspections do you think happened under this government? Nine. Most of the inspections happened because it was a phone call—someone in a crisis. You would have heard it: nine proactive inspections. And during the pandemic, those proactive inspections were suspended, I think, as far as into last fall. I’d have to do a little more research to see if it’s still happening as we speak right now.

What a past government did—I don’t blame you who are sitting in this chamber—was open the doors to privatization. I’ve heard the stats: For every dollar invested in long-term care, 49 cents in private long-term care goes to direct patient care, but in non-profit public, it’s 79 cents. Is the solution to continue to build private beds, private beds, private beds? We all know that the majority of people who were suffering the worst during this pandemic were in those facilities.

If there was more attention spent in that first year, PSWs—having multiple shifts, rushing in and out of long-term-care facilities, some of them with full outbreak going place to place—would that have happened? Would the training have been there? Would the PPE have been there to save lives? I’m not putting this all on you individually, but as a system the people have been failed.

I’m going to talk a little bit more now about my own portfolio as NDP auto insurance critic. I have to say that I think so much more could have been done in the last four years. It’s unbelievable. When the pandemic started, there was—and I did the math; I reached out to Toronto police—a 74% reduction in automobile accidents in the city of Toronto, and the government’s response at the time when it came to auto insurance was what? Let them give rebates. In fact, what did these insurers do? Since most people couldn’t even drive, a lot of them just parked their cars at home. They switched their coverage to things like fire and theft, and what happened as a result of that? Of course, in those instances, they paid less. Again, what did the government do? It felt like PR. The former finance minister, your guy, came out and it felt like he was doing PR for the automobile industry. They were giving out peanuts, if anything, to drivers.

What else happened? We would always wait on the quarterlies when the auto insurance companies would report if rates were going up—rates were going up. Well, this government hid it. Your government—not you new members—hid that fact, and about a year later we learned they were preapproving auto insurance increases. I honestly think sometimes that right there in that nice green space, the government should plop a chair and sit an auto insurance executive right here because sometimes I feel what this government does around automobile insurance—there’s got to be executives watching on TV, just nodding. I want to see them sitting there in the room, nodding their heads. It’s just unbelievable. What did they tell the last government? They said, “Reduce automobile insurance accidents and we’ll reduce rates.” Guess what? Rates went up.

I see in the government’s Bill 2 that you talk about fraud, and that’s something the insurance companies will always tell you. They’ll say, “Why are the rates so high? It’s fraud. It’s all fraud. Everybody is lying.” That’s why, if a person is catastrophically injured, they will be getting lawyers out and telling them they’re lying; for sure, they’re lying.

It’s in here, and it’s hard to not be cynical. It says that you want—or this government, it seems, wants to authorize that your regulators will be able to get more information when it comes to the issue of automobile insurance fraud. It’s hard to not be cynical and think, are you going to use this information to help drivers or not help drivers?

This afternoon, I and colleagues of mine that are here in this chamber, the member from Scarborough Southwest and the member from Davenport, introduced a bill, a bill we voted on unanimously before the election happened and it said, “Let’s deal with postal code discrimination in the GTA.” Drivers in Ontario, especially the GTA, pay not just the highest rates in Canada, they pay the highest rates in North America. All the while, last year, do you know what the return on premiums was for the auto insurance industry? 23%. Can you imagine the amount of money? So if someone on your side gets up and says, here’s a person who saw a rate decrease or not—and I’m not hearing it. The proof is in the premiums. Ask the people in your constituency. If you represent an area in Scarborough or Brampton or Vaughan or many of the areas—in fact, the Premier’s own riding in northwest Toronto, my neighbour—people in our communities are getting crushed in this affordability crisis when it comes to automobile insurance.

Home warranties—and we’re going to hear a lot about it. They’re going to build a million homes, right? And this government I don’t think has ever seen a bad development. Those of you who’ve been on a city council have. Sometimes it’s great—we all, for the most part, unless we built our home, live in a development—but sometimes there’s a little bit more work that needs to be done to get it right.

So if you’re going to build a million homes, wouldn’t you want to get the warranties right? We had an opportunity to fix new home warranties in Ontario. It was an honour and a privilege to travel this province when the government said they had a plan to do better than the Liberals before them. And the consumer protection advocates, many of whom were not facing problems with a new home warranty, but were so traumatized by things that may have happened even as far as 20 years ago that they’re fighting for people, gained nothing. They put in time and money to help others after them.

We travelled the province, and I’ll tell you this: Every single consumer advocate, everyone going through or suffering from a new home that has gone wrong, said that this legislation didn’t go far enough. Do you know who liked what your government was doing? Just one: the representative of the development industry. They said, “Keep the status quo.”

The Auditor General—and again, I get it; it’s not easy to get those reports, right? The Liberals didn’t like it. You probably don’t either. She pointed out—it felt like literal absurdity—the level that the development industry was controlling the regulator of the time. I mean, think about this. I travelled to Ottawa, to a subdivision that is still experiencing difficulties to this very day. People who bought new homes as a dream—beautiful homes, when you looked at the brochure. I went into a person’s home, a family’s home; their entire basement was ripped up. It looked like a bomb had gone off in their home.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars of repair, fighting Tarion, trying to get lawyers, all of it—it’s so many people, and when people do this, because this is a huge investment on your part, it’s a big risk. Because when you go and tell everyone, “My home is in bad shape,” what do you do? Some people see it and sell, and another person picks that up, and they’ll never know until, years down the road, something absolutely terrible can happen.

There was an opportunity to change it. Still, I sat in on the last Tarion board meeting, and it’s same old, same old: the same old complaints. And so when I hear targets that the government talks about, I can only hear them as aspirational: “We’re going to fix home warranties. We’re going to build these homes. We’re going to fix it.”

Long-term care: Now, all of a sudden, because it’s a big issue—I’m not going to get into all of what we’ve heard recently. Of course we have concerns. Where are you sending people? You’re now, all of a sudden, going to charge them for a bed unless they get out of hospital? Why do you think, under this system of long-term care, people want to stay in a hospital?

I brought up the question of a gentleman named Vibert. I brought it up last year, before the election: a poor gentleman in a hospital bed. The only person advocating for him is his dear sister. He had bedsores that looked like horrific wounds. I brought images—they were very difficult to see—and I shared them with some of the ministers on your side. Months later, it’s the same situation, if not worse, and where is Vibert? In and out of the hospital. People there don’t have time. They don’t have the luxury of time to wait. They need solutions now. It’s life or death for them.

And I get it. We bring it up; don’t throw a dart at me and put it on my back and blame me. I know you don’t want to hear it, but it’s life or death for people. People don’t need aspirational targets in a year or two, three, four, five or six years. They need the help now.

I’m the critic for consumer protection, and the last thing I’m going to talk about is this: I don’t believe there’s the kind of consumer protection that we need in Ontario, that people here deserve. If you face—

Congratulations on your election and your wonderful speech. It was very noble of you to bring up Percy. Certainly we miss him, but we of course welcome you here in the chamber.

I was also really pleased to hear that you come from an engineering background. I have studied the sciences, and I’d love for you to share with us maybe what unique perspective having a background in engineering and science brings to politics.