SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Peter Tabuns

  • MPP
  • Member of Provincial Parliament
  • Toronto—Danforth
  • New Democratic Party of Ontario
  • Ontario
  • 923 Danforth Ave. Toronto, ON M4J 1L8 tabunsp-co@ndp.on.ca
  • tel: 416-461-0223
  • fax: 416-461-9542
  • tabunsp-qp@ndp.on.ca

  • Government Page

My thanks to my colleague for his presentation today. I would ask him if he could talk a bit more about the impacts of this budget on his riding with regard to health care and education. You were just talking about education, but perhaps you could expand further.

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  • Jun/7/23 10:20:00 a.m.

Speaker, there are a lot of questions for the Minister of Education. His ministry is responsible for TVO, which has done high-quality programming work for years on public affairs and children’s programming. In the last four years, funding to TVO has been frozen or dropped while inflation has relentlessly driven costs upwards. The budget for content and programming at TVO dropped by well over 10% between 2021 and 2022, and this year’s estimates from the Minister of Education are certainly nothing to be happy about.

I have to ask, why is TVO management trying to starve TVO programming? TVO public affairs programming and children’s programming are literally award winners in this country. And yet, both the ministry and TVO management seem to be committed to slowly—maybe not so slowly—making it more and more difficult for programming to be made here in Ontario. What do they have against high-quality programming being made in this province?

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  • Mar/27/23 10:10:00 a.m.
  • Re: Bill 85 

My question for the member is—as they may well be aware, the city of Toronto’s transit system has just announced very significant cutbacks. Those cutbacks reflect the financial difficulties the city finds itself in. It reflects the difficulties that the Toronto Transit Commission finds itself in.

I don’t see relief in this budget for the city of Toronto or its transit system. The members are well aware that as people use less transit, they will be using more cars. It will drive up greenhouse gas emissions in this province. Frankly, as you’re also well aware, these cuts will disproportionately hit the people who are most vulnerable, the people with the lowest incomes, the people we depend on to actually make sure that this society runs.

What steps are you going to take to amend this budget so that the city of Toronto and the Toronto Transit Commission are protected?

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