To the member for Don Valley West: I must admit I found it very amusing to see the taxpayer-funded advertisements by this government trying to sell their mismanagement as prudent financial work.

Could I ask you to elaborate a little bit on how their poor fiscal mismanagement has contributed to this province’s paltry economic growth?

Thank you very much for that question. The message very clearly is universal in this budget: Ontarians are simply on their own. The services that they need, that have been underfunded in the last quarter, as per the Financial Accountability Office—they’re not there. They weren’t there before; they’re not here in this budget; they’re not going to be there in the future.

We as legislators and parliamentarians have an obligation to look out for the little guy, or the little gal. We need to have compassion, integrity. To respond to the member across, we have to collaborate with each other—with other levels of government but with each other right here in the room. Let’s have a conversation, talk about the issues that actually matter to Ontarians. Affordable housing is inaccessible. There are over 62,000 people that cannot get access to autism services. What we’re looking for, and what is entirely absent in this budget, is a government that has compassion for people who need help the most.

Interjections.

To exactly the point that I made: There is no plan for the retention of health care workers.

As we continue to see mass attrition and a mass exodus of health care workers across multiple professions—physicians, nurses, PSWs and all of the amazing health care workers who work at the front lines and behind the front lines—this budget does not have a solution to the empty hospitals that this government is proposing and hoping to build.

We need staffed hospitals, not empty ones.

My comments were intended to highlight the fact that there may be some investments here that are intended to look at addressing that crumbling infrastructure. But in this budget, it is to the exclusion of the people who are essential to enable our education system to thrive. So thank you for allowing me to clarify that comment. I don’t think that we disagree on this.