It’s a pleasure to rise in the House today to debate the issues that matter most to Ontarians.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the issue that matters most to Ontarians is—

Interjections.

Interjections.

The scale of the suffering across our housing sector is enormous. We have people living on the street; leaving the province, with out-migration to the tune of 70,000 young people per year; others living under precarious and unsafe conditions; and more people delaying major milestones in their life—things like families having kids, young people moving out from their parents’ basements, or seniors downsizing into smaller homes. This catastrophe is happening in the midst of an out-of-control housing crisis. Home prices are at never-before-seen levels, rent is out of control, and the Landlord and Tenant Board has become virtually inaccessible—all of this within the backdrop of a government that cancelled rent control, that tried to pave over the greenbelt, that can’t make a single decision without subsequently walking it back because they never do their homework. Amidst that, one might expect that we would have a government that would try to finally take action, that would try to do something. But their record over the last six years has been abysmal.

Construction began on only 5,589 homes in Ontario last month—the lowest that it has been in over six years. Anthony Passarelli, CMHC’s lead economist for southern Ontario, said, “Over the rest of the year, we expect [housing starts] to continue to trend down in the province and particularly in the GTA.” So, of course, cue the excuses, right? Number one: It’s someone else’s fault—probably the federal government, because of high interest rates. But British Columbia is building two and a half times more homes per capita than we are and yet are subject to the same interest rates.

The government will say that they’re making progress despite the fact that they are falling well behind their target of 1.5 million homes per year and subsequently are being forced to change the goalposts to have a hope of being able to save face. They will try to argue that the government is on track, but they would have to build 38,000 homes per quarter to meet their annual housing target, and last quarter, which just ended a few months ago, they only built around 15,000—not even 50% of what they need.

This is the kind of bill that could have been forgiven if it was introduced in year one of their mandate, not year six. For all their talk about housing supply action plans, this bill is big on talk and so small on action. Two years after their own Housing Affordability Task Force report came out, they’re still consulting, essentially kicking the can down the road so they can say they’re doing something without actually doing literally anything. And when the Premier tweets about his government’s accomplishments, it’s telling that addressing the housing affordability crisis usually doesn’t make it on the list.

So let’s talk about this bill. I want to begin by explaining what has been neglected in this legislation.

There is nothing beyond a line in the preamble in Bill 185 that directs municipalities to actually plan for 1.5 million homes. I’ll say it again: This government is talking about but not planning for 1.5 million homes. It’s hoping for 1.5 million; it’s praying for 1.5 million, but there is absolutely nothing in this bill that requires municipalities to actually plan or build 1.5 million homes. That’s a bold goal—1.5 million homes by 2031. Mike Moffatt would say that number is already out of date and should be higher. Anyway, 1.5 million—that is a target that this government set, and that is a target that this bill abandons. It does not direct municipalities to plan for that. It does not fix zoning laws to make those homes possible. It does not legislate the necessary infrastructure to support those homes. For this reason alone, this legislation is unworthy to be presented before this House. But it’s worse: Bill 185 neglects the power, the responsibilities and the duty this government has when it comes to building homes.

The Premier and Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing are keen to blame their lack of progress on everyone and everything else, but they won’t make the major policy changes needed to drive real change. Their neglect amounts to an abdication of duty, and here’s how:

The government convened the Housing Affordability Task Force; they have since completely ignored it. Bill 185 does nothing different. The government benefited from mountains of consultation, but they are now killing time by doing more consultation instead of enacting the recommended policies.

Bill 185 overlooks the opportunity to end exclusionary zoning. It refuses to legalize fourplexes as-of-right province-wide. It does not directly strive for greater density around major transit areas. It does not make converting commercial real estate into residential real estate easier—something many stakeholders are begging this government to do. It does nothing to address the myriad of problems bogging down the Landlord and Tenant Board. It does nothing to address the many roadblocks standing in the way of getting more housing built, like angular planes, setbacks and minimum lot sizes. Does the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing even know what an angular plane is, or has he neglected to learn that too?

Bill 185 neglects those who have used the appeal system in good faith by entirely banning third-party appeals in one fell swoop, as opposed to reforming the system to proactively prevent abuses.

Furthermore, all the developers and home builders who have spent years working on housing projects and finding ways to make those projects pencil—Bill 185 neglects them all, by flip-flopping over and over again, going back and forth to no end on whether or not there will or will not be a five-year phase-in period on development charges.

The Premier and Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing have neglected to secure an environment of predictability and long-term stability in the housing sector. That is very clearly resulting in fewer housing starts.

Lastly, we are now seeing this government’s wilful neglect of our health care system—particularly rural hospitals like Durham hospital, resulting in developers cancelling their housing projects.

The extent of this government’s action has really been limited to simply printing novelty-sized cheques to give to municipalities, but this is not a substitute for real planning backed by actual laws and regulations, and the Minister of Housing knows it.

Also missing from the bill is a commitment to make municipalities whole after Bill 23 pulled the rug out from under them, particularly for infrastructure. Sure, the provincial budget has offered a paltry $1.6 billion as an olive branch, when the projected shortfall is significantly closer to $5 billion. Municipalities are now left on the hook while the Premier’s gravy train instead spends just over a billion dollars for the sole purposes of delivering beer in convenience stores just about one year early—priorities, right?

The final thing that’s missing from this bill and, frankly, from this government is common sense. They could have committed billions in infrastructure funding. This government could have committed a billion dollars for securing primary care, keeping hospitals open, expanding home care, or even building homes. Instead, they prioritized beer—$1 billion.

Anyway, to touch very concretely on the details of this bill—I’m going to touch on the four major areas, titled euphemistically as follows:

(1) Building homes at lower cost;

(2) Prioritizing infrastructure for ready-to-go housing projects;

(3) Improved consultation and greater certainty for more homes built faster;

(4) Building more types of homes for more people.

I’ll dive into each of these.

So let’s talk about building homes at a lower cost. This includes things that indicate just how out of touch this government is. For example, it removes minimum parking restrictions around MTSAs, which is a bare-minimum policy and one that doesn’t have much to give at all in places that are already highly car-centric, as developers will still build parking in these places. But that’s not actually the question that home builders and developers have been asking. The real question they have is, how much density can go around MTSAs? That answer is not in this bill.

The minister will say that he’s consulting—so let’s look at the draft PPS. But why is he still consulting two years after the Housing Affordability Task Force already answered the question? And to make things even more infuriating, the government has already been stalling on that by saying they’ve been consulting with municipalities.

This is where life gets really bizarre. In related announcements, the government just said they will allow mass-timber construction for up to 18 storeys, but the development community is not clamouring for that. They’re clamouring for clarity on restrictions that make it difficult to build that tall in the first place, such as clarity around angular planes. Similarly, there’s a promise of consulting with fire safety stakeholders about single-exit stairs in small residential buildings, but this was something that Bill 109, two years ago, under the last Minister of Housing, had promised to do. So why are we still consulting?

The next major area of this legislation is prioritizing infrastructure for ready-to-go housing projects. This is where I really begin to feel bad for builders, developers and municipalities. The lack of foresight, planning, coordination and courage of this government has led to an environment in which no one can plan and, therefore, no one can build. First, development charges were off the table, throwing municipalities province-wide into chaos, causing property taxes to skyrocket and resulting in developers planning their construction accordingly—now an unexpected walk-back.

Interest rates are affecting housing, admittedly, from coast to coast, but it’s telling that new construction is falling the fastest and hardest in Ontario compared to places like BC and Nova Scotia. As a result of all of these walk-backs, there is now a complete and utter lack of confidence in this government. When hundreds of millions of dollars are on the table, people don’t know what they can expect next month, let alone next year, in terms of policy continuity and clarity of direction. No one can make investment decisions in such an environment, and certainly not municipalities planning for infrastructure.

The next section of this bill is improved consultation and greater certainty for more homes built faster. I’ll say, where do I even start here? As I’ve already said, they’ve been consulting for the past two years and seem caught up in this as a way of delaying.

I’ll also say that included in this section, the bill institutes a near-universal ban on third-party appeals that is simply heavy-handed. There’s no mistake that the current system of appeals is problematic, between long waits at the Ontario Land Tribunal—because it’s underfunded and the significant number of political appointees, it has become a process creating more barriers to reasonable housing than are necessary. But a blanket ban that ignores the root causes? Clearly a more nuanced and calculated approach is necessary, which the Housing Affordability Task Force called for. But where a scalpel was required to address this issue, this government came with a machete.

I’ll skip ahead a few moments just to touch on why this bill will not make a dent in the housing crisis. It won’t get us close to 1.5 million homes, because it has nothing that will make a material difference to our housing efforts. We needed a major home run on housing, and all we got was a swing and a miss.

I’ve been talking to stakeholders, and they were ready for a big housing bill from this government. A new minister, a fire under his feet—the housing sector had its hopes up. But the lack of audacity from Bill 185 has resulted in some of the most profound disappointment I have ever seen from stakeholders since my time in office.

We have government MPPs getting up on stage at conferences, touting their out-of-touch vision for housing in Ontario. The Associate Minister of Housing was recently caught stating that he just wants “everyone to be able to have a detached house with a yard” and that “no one wants to bring up a child in downtown Toronto.” Well, say that—

It’s always a pleasure and an honour to rise in this august chamber to discuss the issues and the challenges that are facing Ontarians that they are struggling with the most. Many will know that I come from a clinical background. I’m an emergency doctor, but for many years, I’ve also had a number of leadership roles in homeless shelters here in the city of Toronto. And so, I’ve seen first-hand the critical importance of addressing housing affordability, making sure that we’ve got supportive housing environments and ensuring that we do everything possible to get housing right in this province, lest people end up having no choice but to turn to shelters.

Over the course of my remarks this afternoon, I’m going to touch a little bit on the scale of our crisis right now, what we really needed and were looking for in this legislation, what we actually got, my reaction to that and then where to go from there.

Currently, as I alluded, we have a housing and homelessness crisis. The scale of the suffering is difficult to describe. We have people sleeping in tents. We have fully employed personal support workers who cannot afford rent or a home to call their own, so they go to sleep in shelters. We have hospitals that have gone into the game of development because as they try to attract nurses, they don’t have anywhere for them to live. In our colleges and universities, we’ve got students living 25 people to a home because they can’t find anywhere else to live. And we have a massive out-migration from our province because young people cannot afford to live here after they finish their education.

Now, amidst that background, we have a government that purports to be ambitious. It says it will build 1.5 million homes by 2031. My first question is, is that even the right number? Mike Moffatt came out last week with a study saying we actually need 1.7 million homes. Regardless, even if we accept that “1.5 million homes” number as gospel, the government is failing even to keep up with that number. They’re falling thousands of homes behind on an annual basis, so much so that they’re forced to scramble to redefine what a house is in order to save face. We’ve got dorms and long-term-care beds now that are getting redefined as new housing construction—anything to distract from mismanagement and to pad the numbers.

Call it incompetence, call it self-interest, call it cowardice—call it what you want, but at the end of the day, housing starts have declined for the last three years in a row, missing provincial targets by 70,000 in 2022 alone. For six years now, we have had a government that has been driving in reverse. What we have needed is one that takes serious action. Instead, this is what we got.

Every few months, this government comes out with a new piece of housing legislation that usually walks back something that was in the last piece of legislation. Take it for the greenbelt, urban boundary expansion, development charges, and then, outside of housing, even looking at Bill 124 and Bill 28. Even if some of those ideas were good—and to be clear, there have been many bad ideas that have deserved to be walked back—within the context of housing, how are builders and municipalities supposed to have any confidence or ability to plan their construction whatsoever?

And so, with so much incompetence and inaction, you can imagine my excitement when a new housing minister was announced. Some of you may not know, but last time, the housing minister stepped down as a result of the greenbelt scandal.

The Premier tasked a single staffer, who quickly and quietly started removing lands from the greenbelt owned by his developer friends, and the housing minister—the last one—says he didn’t notice. So now he faces an RCMP criminal investigation, and that housing minister was forced to resign.

Now, thankfully, with this greenbelt giveaway, the people of Ontario were able to stop that. They looked at the evidence. The evidence showed they could build the homes that were needed without threatening our greenbelt, and here we are. So, a greenbelt flip-flop—with so many other flip-flops and failures, we have been left billions of dollars in the hole and years behind.

Anyway, thankfully, we have a new housing minister, and I am genuinely very excited. This was an opportunity to right some wrongs, to get things right. But regrettably, we have been let down. This bill could have been a shining debut, a moment to introduce landmark legislation to leave an indelible mark on the future of our province. But instead of courage, we have cowardice; instead of ambition, we have apathy; and instead of foresight, we see failure.

This is the kind of bill that could have been forgiven if it was in year 1 of this government’s mandate, not year 6. For all the talk about housing supply actions plans, this is being touted as a red tape reduction bill, and that’s not surprising because this government has never been about action. Two years—two years—after their own Housing Affordability Task Force report came out, they’re still talking, essentially kicking the can down the road so that they can say they’re doing something without actually.

I’m going to take some time now to reflect on the bill within the broader context of many of the other housing announcements that have come at the same time. I want this government to be successful because my constituents in Don Valley East and Ontarians across the province need it to work.

This bill purports to cover four areas, euphemistically titled as follows: building homes at a lower cost; prioritizing infrastructure for-ready-to-go housing projects; improved consultation and greater certainty to get homes built faster; and building more types of homes for more people.

I’ll dive into each of those four pillars, if you will.

Let’s start with building homes at a lower cost. This section includes things that indicate just how out of touch the government actually is. For example, it purports to remove minimum parking restrictions around major station transit areas. But if you listen carefully to municipalities and the building and developer network, the question that they’re asking isn’t about minimum parking requirements. The question they’re asking is, how much density can go around an MTSA? There is no answer.

Now, I understand that the minister will say that he’s consulting and will refer me to the draft provincial planning statement. But why are we still looking at consulting two years after the Housing Affordability Task Force already answered the question of density around MTSAs? And to make things even more infuriating, the government has already been consulting on that recommendation for the last two years as well with municipalities. So yet again, we’re repeating an announcement, kicking the can down the road to create the impression of action when none has been taken and there is no intention of doing so.

But on this, on these repeated talks of announcements that have already been getting announced, already getting consulted upon, this is where life really begins to get even more bizarre.

In related announcements, the government has said they will allow mass-timber construction up to 18 stories. All right, it’s not a bad idea. It’s good for supporting our forestry sector in our province, allows for more housing options, great, but the development community isn’t asking for 18 storeys for timber construction on that kind of construction. Instead, they are clamouring for clarity around restrictions that make it difficult to build that, like guidance around angular planes. None of that is in this legislation.

Similarly, there’s a promise to consult fire safety stakeholders about single-exit stairs in small residential buildings, but this was something the last housing minister said he was consulting on two years ago, around the time of Bill 109. So yet again, we’re announcing more consultations on things that were deemed to be a priority literally years ago.

The second pillar of this housing ambition was around prioritizing infrastructure for ready-to-go housing projects, and this is where I really begin to feel bad for builders, developers and municipalities: The lack of foresight, planning, and courage of this government has led to an environment in which no one can plan and no one can build.

First, development charges were off the table, throwing municipalities province-wide into chaos, causing property taxes to skyrocket and resulting in developers adjusting their construction accordingly; now, an unexpected walk-back with no warning whatsoever.

This government is introducing a complete and utter lack of confidence through precisely the kind of circular thinking that leads the housing community to have zero confidence in this government. When hundreds of millions of dollars are on the table, and people don’t know what they can expect next month, they cannot get in the business of constructing.

The third pillar of this is improved consultation and greater certainty for more homes built faster. Where do I even start? As I’ve mentioned, we’ve already been consulting. The government has already been consulting for the past two years and seems caught up in it as a way of delaying, but they certainly don’t consult with these stakeholders when it counts, on things like development charges or whether they’re going to walk back on that.

One of the most worrisome elements of all of this is that the bill institutes a near-universal ban on third-party appeals. That is heavy-handed. Make no mistake about it. We do see abuse of the Ontario Land Tribunal. We do see that there are long wait times—of course, it’s infected by political appointments—but a blanket ban that ignores the root causes of the appeals process in the Ontario Land Tribunal? That is heavy-handed, and what we need is a nuanced and calculated approach, and the Housing Affordability Task Force gave us that approach. Whereas this government is taking a machete when a scalpel is needed, the Housing Affordability Task Force made some great recommendations to prevent abuse of the land tribunal, like waving appeals on affordable housing, like having to show merit in a case that is intended to be brought to the tribunal, and increasing filing fees.

I want to take a moment to explain why banning all third-party appeals is dangerous. Sometimes developers appeal other developers because one plan can actually stop them from building even more housing. So we need to be careful that appeals, which can absolutely be important—we need to make sure that they are allowed to function in a reasonable manner and, if done so, we can protect our environment and actually increase the number of houses that we have in our province.

And finally, the fourth pillar of this intended legislation and plan is to build more types of homes for more people. And here, one of the landmark elements of that is to exempt universities from the Planning Act to accelerate student housing and put them on a level playing field with publicly assisted colleges. But here’s the thing: Colleges are suffering too, and putting them on a level playing field doesn’t necessarily solve the problem for universities nor for colleges. What might actually help is funding them properly.

There is much more to be said, but with my time waning and only 90 seconds left, I will reflect briefly on what others have said.

John Michael McGrath points out that this legislation is “broad but shallow, covering many different areas but not pushing too hard in any one place. It does not enough of too much.”

Martin Regg Cohn from the Star points out this collection of anti-climactic legislative proposals made news only because it “codifies a series of climbdowns over screw-ups of the past.”

So how could it have been better? Because I believe firmly we must be, on our side, a group of proposition, not just opposition. Well, in keeping with the legislation I introduced weeks ago, this government could have allowed construction of at least four units and buildings on any residential lot—by-right, province-wide multiplexes, exactly as the Housing Affordability Task Force recommended; introduce minimum height and density requirements around MTSAs; invest in the Landlord and Tenant Board; and require home builders to include at least 20% long-term affordable units as a condition of sale of all provincial surplus lands for housing development, but none of these things.

It saddens me that we have a government so allergic to the concept of real action on housing and on gentle density that they are willing to forgo billions of dollars from the federal government because they are ideologically opposed to fourplexes. We are in a housing affordability crisis. The current situation demands strong leadership and courage, but this government is flying by the seat of its pants. We deserved a bill that would solve our crisis, and we didn’t get it.

I’ll be sharing my time with the member from Don Valley West. It’s always an honour to rise in the House to discuss matters of importance to the constituents of Don Valley East and, more broadly, across the entire province. Today, of course, we’re discussing Bill 146 and the fall economic statement, and I have to admit that it is clear this government has been so busy covering its tracks and reversing its commitments that they have not been able to focus on the matters of real importance to Ontarians. Indeed, they’ve been so preoccupied with a range of things—the greenbelt debacle, an RCMP criminal investigation, a special prosecutor, an urban boundary flip-flop, three ministers resigning—that they have not been able to take meaningful action on real issues relating to affordability.

For example, they could have instituted rent control. They could increase the Ontario Child Benefit. They could look into potential collusion around grocery prices. But no, sadly, they have failed to do any of these things. Indeed, it is so clear that the Premier is a conductor on his own gravy train on which he’s yelling “all aboard” to donors, friends and people who stand to benefit from for-profit private corporations.

Now, as it relates to the fall economic statement, very clearly this government has not taken action. Rather than dealing with real issues, they proposed a $3-billion infrastructure bank with very, very questionable prospects.

As it relates to health care, we have a number of issues. Amidst the FAO reporting a $1.7-billion period of underspending in the last financial quarter—no action. They are leaving hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government on the table rather than raising the wages of health care workers such as PSWs. It was actually really difficult to hear the member across speak about the government’s so-called work on increasing hospitals in our province as we see unprecedented emergency department and hospital closures ever since this government took power.

In fact, on health care the number of things the government has done has been, frankly, minuscule. We saw a $72-million investment that is targeted specifically towards private, for-profit clinics. And just yesterday, we learned the consequence of investing in this manner. We learned that a private, for-profit hospital is being paid two to four times what the public hospital is being paid to provide the same service—the same surgery, the easiest surgery with the least complex patients at the most convenient times with the least oversight, and yet they are making the most money. This is how our budget is being mismanaged.

Moving forward, we now also see a number of so-called investments on home care, supposedly $569 million, which is, by the way, not at all a new investment into home care. It is merely a recommitment of hundreds of millions of dollars that were already supposed to be spent.

Let’s not forget that this government is merely dragging its feet. There is much more that I could say around the fall economic statement’s shortcomings on northern development, on Indigenous affairs, on colleges and universities, but I’d like to surrender the rest of my time to the member from Don Valley West.

I rise on a point of order to welcome two outstanding Ontarians, Charles Taylor and Marilyn Heintz, who are visiting us from Burlington today.

Thank you for joining us. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Ontarians deserve a government that acts transparently, with accountability and in their best interests. Yet time after time, it feels like that hasn’t happened. We’ve seen it with broken promises to protect public health care, with broken promises to protect the greenbelt. And now we’re seeing mounting concerns about backroom deals to build a spa at Ontario Place while demolishing the science centre. The residents of Don Valley East won’t stand for it.

When this government walked back its decision on the greenbelt after getting caught by the Integrity Commissioner and the Auditor General, the justification was that they made a decision not supported by the people of Ontario. That’s an understatement. Here’s another decision not supported by the people of Ontario: the decision to demolish the science centre in my riding of Don Valley East and instead build a private spa at Ontario Place that has a sprawling mega-garage subsidized by taxpayer money.

These are major decisions created without any consultation. And in case there is any doubt about it, these decisions are vigorously opposed by Ontarians. For example, we’ve already submitted petitions with nearly 35,000 signatures, and we’re not done yet.

Today, I join my constituents in calling on the government to act with integrity and transparency, to listen to the residents of Don Valley East and the citizens of Ontario, to save our science centre and to stop the spa.

My question is for the Premier. It seems that every time the Premier makes a major public policy decision, wealthy well-connected insiders always seem to come out on top. We saw it with the greenbelt, where a small group of insiders became billionaires overnight. Are we really supposed to believe that this decision was about 1.5 million homes and not about $8.3 billion? Accordingly, when it comes to the Premier’s expansion of private, for-profit health care, can we blame Ontarians for wondering where his priorities truly lie?

Mr. Speaker, this week, a walk-in clinic in Ottawa is operating that will charge patients desperate for primary care $400 a year just to have the privilege of paying for visits. We know that’s not the only one of these kinds of clinics popping up in Ontario.

To the Premier: While cash-for-access arrangements may be commonplace within this government, is it fair that he expects the people of Ontario to count this as the norm within their own health care system?

But I’d like to remind the Premier of a saying he has burned into the minds of Ontarians this year. He said, “All you need is your OHIP card—never your credit card.” It kind of reminds me of that famous video where he promised not to touch the greenbelt, and then he did.

History is repeating itself. Walk-in clinics like the one in Ottawa are just the beginning. Bill 60, which was executed swiftly just like the greenbelt, was said to be about clearing the surgical backlog, but it’s just another cash cow. It opens the floodgates for private clinics to profiteer on publicly funded surgeries, meaning the people of Ontario will be bankrolling clinics that have a financial incentive to provide the lowest-quality care possible.

Mr. Speaker, the Premier said that real leadership is about being able to admit when you’ve made a mistake. Will he reverse his decision on private, for-profit health care, the same way he reversed his decision on the greenbelt?

Last Wednesday, I had the opportunity to hear Prince Hussain Aga Khan at the Ismaili Centre in Don Valley East, speaking about his seminal work documenting the fragile beauty of our living seas. His remarks and photography were inspiring and humbling—a stark reminder of the vulnerability of our marine ecosystems. In its wake, I am reminded of the critical need to preserve our environment and fight against climate change.

This weekend, Ontarians made their voices heard in one of the largest volunteer-run referendums in our province’s history. The referendum, organized by the Ontario Health Coalition, was on the issue of whether our public surgical and diagnostic services should be handed over to private, for-profit interests. Mr. Speaker, hundreds of thousands of votes have been cast. When so many people take the time out of their busy lives to vote on one of this government’s most controversial and consequential policies, we should all take note.

On Friday, I travelled the province, lending my support to various voting stations across southwestern Ontario. I visited Brampton, Guelph, St. Catharines, Welland and Niagara Falls, and in every one of these locations, people had been impacted by emergency room closures and out of control wait times. Our health care system is headed in the wrong direction, guided by a faulty set of priorities.

On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of Ontarians who came out to vote to save our health care, Mr. Speaker, I ask of the government, please, for all of us, put your priorities back in the public interest.

For the Premier: Bill 60 is reckless, incomplete and poorly conceived. It ignores the root causes of the problems in our health care system and fails to prioritize patient health over private wealth. Bill 60 could have been salvaged, but of 45 amendments I proposed, all were thrown out. When the government was asked to ensure that the bill allow Indigenous consultation, they said no. When they were asked to establish conflict-of-interest rules for directors who issue licences, they said no. They said no to protections against upselling, up-charging, profiteering and cycling of health workers out of the public hospitals.

Ontarians are outraged. I know this. I know government members are hearing it from their constituents, because when their constituents don’t hear back from them, they reach out to me instead.

So to every government member: Who will have the courage to listen to the people of Ontario and vote against Bill 60?

And to the Premier: Since this government isn’t serving the interests of Ontarians, whose interest is it actually serving?

My question is for the Premier.

The alarm bells have been ringing for a while now. The cost of living continues to rise astronomically. Grocery stores are raising food prices. Landlords are raising rents. People are falling behind, and they’re now turning to food banks in record numbers.

In Toronto, for example, the number of people relying on food banks has quadrupled over the last three years. At the Daily Bread Food Bank, there were nearly 270,000 visits in March alone—a record. One third of visitors actually have full-time employment, but they cannot make ends meet. For the first time in 25 years, under this government, the number of children using food banks is going up. One in four visitors at the Daily Bread Food Bank is a child.

Ontario is experiencing a crisis of food insecurity.

We’re talking about hard-working people who can no longer keep up with the skyrocketing cost of living.

Why is this government failing so spectacularly at protecting Ontarians from falling victim to food insecurity?

When the level of food insecurity has reached the epic proportions we are seeing now, it is a clear sign of this government’s failures. We are literally talking about parents and children struggling to eat—even parents who have full-time jobs, making more than minimum wage.

We need to adequately address the historic levels of inflation Ontarians are experiencing with proactive financial relief.

The rising costs of things like food and housing have vastly outpaced this government’s half-hearted measures as they pay lip service to the struggles of Ontarians. For a government with $44 billion in contingency funds, $12.5 billion in excess funds over the next three years, and a well-documented underspending habit, you would think they could find some room in their budget to address the most essential needs.

Something isn’t right.

How can this government run a province, let alone an economy, if hard-working families with full-time jobs can’t even afford to feed their children?

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.

It’s an honour to rise in this august chamber, and specifically as the member for Don Valley West glares at me. I’m very pleased that I’ll be sharing and splitting my time with her over the next, roughly, 12 minutes.

I also want to thank the member from Don Valley West for the outstanding work she does for the members of her riding and specifically for her outstanding leadership on analyzing and guiding us through this budget, which I sadly must admit is thoroughly underwhelming.

As has been articulated before, this is a budget, sadly, that very clearly tells Ontarians that they’re on their own, that this government does not have their backs, and that for the things which matter most to all of us, the things that matter most to Ontarians, they should just figure it out themselves. Unfortunately, this does not come as any surprise. As a young child, I was taught in my family to do what you say. If you promise something, then you have to deliver on it, and this is something, sadly, that this government struggles with.

For example, this government said all fall that they would accelerate the credentialing of foreign-trained family doctors, and we’re still waiting. I have no confidence whatsoever that this bill will or can deliver on the unambitious promises that it makes. You have to do what you say.

The recent reports from the Financial Accountability Office do nothing to reassure me that this government will do otherwise. In successive quarters, we have seen consistent underspending across all of the major ministries: $1.3 billion less in health than promised, $844 million less in education, $175 million less in post-secondary education and $458 million less in children and social services—the funding that goes to deliver services to those who need our help the most. Do what you say. This budget simply inspires no confidence, because the members haven’t even delivered on their last budget.

But there’s more to it than that, Madam Speaker. You don’t just have to do what you say; you have to say what you do. This government has consistently committed to doing one thing, only to actually do another. For example, this government is funding a housing plan, but they promised in the process that they wouldn’t touch the greenbelt, and now they’re carving it up. They promised that they would protect our public health care system, and are now funding a plan that is so poorly conceived that it will lead to the corporatization and profitization of our health care. And so, as much as I am underwhelmed by this bill, I’m also concerned about just how much it is not talking about.

In health care, for example, the budget mentions nothing about eliminating hospital surge funding for COVID, even though it is getting eliminated tomorrow. It mentions nothing about access to hospital care for our most vulnerable and marginalized uninsured patients in Ontario, even though that also is getting eliminated tomorrow. Say what you’re going to do.

The government has also made a profoundly short-sighted decision in eliminating paid sick days, which will actually hurt our businesses and economy when sick people are forced to come to work and infect entire workplaces.

Most upsetting of all, there is no attention whatsoever to health care worker retention, even as this remains one of the biggest challenges that we face in health care right now. Say what you do. Not only is there no mention of health care worker retention, outside of this chamber this government is pursuing avenues to fight courts that have told this government that Bill 124 is unconstitutional legislation that infringes on charter and worker rights.

On Indigenous issues, I am most disturbed at the growing chorus of Indigenous people and communities who say they have not been adequately consulted on so many of the proposed changes in the budget. I have heard from Indigenous stakeholders, for example, that the government’s plan for integrated community health services centres is being implemented without their input. And we all witnessed yesterday how Indigenous people share their concerns about the Ring of Fire. We must listen to Indigenous people, particularly the ones who are most at stake.

I have more I could say, but in the spirit of respecting the time of my colleague, I will simply mention that on the challenge of education, this government has dropped the ball, focusing upon things like infrastructure, like buildings, instead of supporting teachers by making sure that they are adequately funded. On this issue, along with so many more, the bill is very clear: People in Ontario are on their own. They don’t matter, and this government does not have their backs.

With that, I turn it to the member for Don Valley West.

My question is for the Minister of Children, Community and Social Services. One of the most important jobs of government is to preserve and protect the well-being of its citizens, particularly its most vulnerable. On this fundamental task, there’s near-universal agreement that this government has failed over and over and over again.

My perspective on our health care system is of course well known. But I’m equally stunned at the manner in which the Ontario Autism Program has essentially collapsed. Consider this: There are well over 60,000 children waiting for services on the OAP. The OAP wait-list has more than doubled since 2018, and the government has fallen so far behind on its commitments that it has thrown up its hands and stopped reporting on statistics anymore. Families are spending tens of thousands of dollars to access services, selling their assets and putting their lives on hold.

Without bringing up hollow promises, can the minister explain to the autism community and Ontarians how the Ontario Autism Program has become such a failure under this government’s leadership?

The minister can try to revise history as she wants, but the reality is that MCCSS is failing to meet its own required operating standard—

My question: How will the minister resurrect the Ontario Autism Program that has withered on the vine under this government?

Last week, the Minister of Health finally admitted what the people of Don Valley East have been saying for months, that the status quo in health care is unacceptable. What my constituents have meant is that ER wait times, when ERs are accessible at all, are unacceptable. Not having a family physician for 15% of us is unacceptable. And because of this government, there are too many foreign-trained health care workers in my riding who are not getting credentialed. This is unacceptable.

Now, the status quo that the Minister of Health opposes is our publicly funded, not-for-profit health care system. Though she asserts that Ontarians will be able to access health care with their OHIP card, make no mistake, the plan for private, for-profit delivery of health care will harm the people of this province.

We have already seen the harms from for-profit long-term-care homes in Ontario that had significantly higher mortality than not-for-profit. We have learned the harms from for-profit outsourcing of public health care in the United Kingdom, which led to significant preventable mortality, and we have learned the harms from for-profit dialysis centres in the United States. We have learned the harms from all around the world, as reported in Scotland, Australia, Italy, Ireland and even the World Health Organization.

The lesson in all of this is consistent and clear: Health care must always be about patients first and not profits.