Speaker, through you to the Premier: Every year, workers in Ontario are hospitalized because of heat stress. Some of them die.

Last year, you carried out a consultation on new heat stress regulations and you didn’t increase protection for any workers. This year promises to be another summer of climate-driven record heat. You can increase protection for workers right now. Will you do it?

Speaker, to the Premier: Last Thursday, Canada released its annual report on greenhouse gas emissions. Ontario is showing sharp increases in GHGs since they bottomed out at the beginning of the pandemic. The report showed the increases in Ontario’s emissions were the largest in Canada.

The Conservatives’ inadequate climate plan is headed towards failure. When will the Premier take action to sharply cut Ontario’s emissions to protect our standard of living?

To the Premier: Earl Grey Senior Public School in my riding is supposed to offer extended French, but because of cutbacks and disrespect for teachers, we have a severe teacher shortage. That has meant that students in extended French have gone without teachers for months at a time. This is increasingly a problem in many of our schools.

Why won’t the Premier provide the funding to Toronto schools to actually have teachers in class?

Speaker, following the lead of my colleague from Hamilton west, I’d also like to welcome Erik Schomann, Donna Deneault and Verne Deneault from Save Our Water Tiny township, and the Thomas Moore from Simcoe County Kairos. Welcome to the Legislature.

The bill gives the government the authority to set up affordable energy Ontario to finance and organize the deep retrofit of homes across Ontario and the provision of distributed energy, primarily solar, to homes and communities across Ontario. And a gripping bill, it is, Mr. Speaker—a gripping bill it is.

MPP Wong-Tam moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 173, An Act respecting intimate partner violence / Projet de loi 173, Loi concernant la violence entre partenaires intimes.

Well, it shouldn’t be shocking—

What’s happening with this is that the government has decided that they do not want an energy board that actually regulates based on rules, regulations and evidence. They want energy decisions made based on lobbyists and influencers who get to cabinet ministers and the Premier. That’s the basis of what’s going on.

I do find that shocking because I thought after our experience with the Liberals and them playing around with the energy board that this government, even if I disagree with them, might have more interest in a regulator that actually functions—

Interjections.

He’s clearly the minister for Enbridge—there’s no two ways about it—just as the Liberals were the ministers for TransCanada Energy. They were the ministers for whatever power producers wanted to build a gas plant. That’s who they were the ministers for. Yes, this is the minister for Enbridge. He’s looking out for Enbridge. He’s not looking out for you. He wants you to pay more. He wants you to have a higher gas bill. That’s the reality.

No, I don’t support the 20-year time horizon. I think, increasingly, it’s going to be unpredictable how long those lines will actually be functional. I think to be fair to gas consumers around the province who will have to pay more to subsidize this, they shouldn’t be the ones who take the risk that there will not be repayment.

As I noted earlier, coal use in this province for residential heating collapsed within a decade. Frankly, as we see improvements in other technologies and if heat pumps see substantial advances in the next few years, I can see mass abandonment of the Enbridge gas heating system. That would mean that in 20 years, it may not be there as an investment that you can collect on; it may simply be gone.

So zero seems the appropriate risk level—

No, I thought the point was really good, that he was endorsing it, that it worked and it worked well. I think that’s what we need for people across Ontario, something that works well that they can afford.

Interjection.

He wants to keep heating costs down. Well, look at the evidence. The evidence is that to keep heating costs down, you go to electric heat pumps. The technology is changing rapidly.

One thing that people should be aware of is that in the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act that’s in place now is investing heavily in advancing the technology for heat pumps so that heat pumps that already are quite functional at minus 30 will be even more efficient, more effective in the years to come. Places like Norway—Norway, people know about it, near the Arctic Circle—60% of the households have heat pumps. That’s how they heat themselves—60%. Finland, pretty close, around 50%. Sweden I don’t have the number for, but my guess is it’s in that range. They seem to be able to function, and they’re up by the Arctic Circle. If you want to be practical about cost, if you want to be practical about a system that gives you a more predictable kind of heat or energy basis or security, go to heat pumps.

He was talking about how this decision would discourage developers from using cost-effective and efficient gas. Well, frankly, it would encourage them to use cost-effective and efficient heat pumps. They’re going to put in an electricity line anyway; let’s face it. So if you’re putting in an electricity line, don’t worry about the gas, unless you’ve got a customer who really wants gas. Then you can offer it to them. It isn’t barred by anyone. If Enbridge believes what it says in its filings, in its claims, it’s certainly happy to invest in it. They can do that. They don’t have to come to us, the other gas customers, to pay for it.

Also, the pragmatic approach of the government to energy: Interestingly, the Electricity Distributors Association and the Royal Bank of Canada, who are not noted, again, as particularly radical organizations, both said that when it came to dealing with the immediate crunch in Ontario for meeting demand, it was far more cost-effective and far faster to invest in conservation and efficiency—both of them—and not just faster and more effective, but substantially cheaper. This government has totally ignored that advice. The Independent Electricity System Operator has said numerous times that energy efficiency is cost-effective. It is a great deal. That minister is ignoring the electricity distributors who, frankly, know a fair amount about electricity in this province, and the Royal Bank of Canada, that has an interest in this matter. His own organization, the IESO, has talked about the value of conservation and efficiency in terms of low cost and the ability to deliver quickly the sorts of reduction in demand so that we don’t have any power shortage. So I can’t say that his approach is really that pragmatic.

And just briefly about difficulties in both Alberta and Texas for failure of electricity systems in deep cold: In the most recent problem in Alberta, two gas plants went off-line in the middle of that crunch—two gas plants. They couldn’t be depended on. And in storm Uri in Texas, when they had those blackouts, again, it was the gas system that couldn’t handle the cold. The pumps for the gas systems were frozen. So in both cases we’re talking about problems with the gas infrastructure; that was the biggest issue.

I’m going to wrap up, Speaker. Don’t forget; this is really plain: The government wants you to pay more on your gas bill. It wants to raise your gas bill. It wants to ensure that Enbridge has higher profits. It wants to take money out of your pocket to the tune of 300 bucks over the next four years. Everything else is just smoke. All the other arguments are strange-looking scenery and don’t bear on the guts of it. This government wants to raise your gas bill. That’s it.

The OEB didn’t say, “No. You can’t put your money in and supply people with that 40-year loan.” Go ahead—no sweat. But you can’t take it from the existing gas customers. They are tapped out. So I say to you right now, your government should go to Enbridge and say, “Look, you’ve got big pockets. You put the money out. You try and collect it over 40 years.” Because 25 or 30 years from now, that system will have shrunk dramatically, and whoever is left holding the bag is going to have very big expenses, and I think Enbridge knows that.

As my colleague expressed, it’s shocking, the thought that a multinational corporation that makes huge amounts of money by squeezing cash out of homeowners and tenants might mislead people. I know it’s incomprehensible to many here but, in fact, it could well be true.

The National Observer reports, “Enbridge has a new fight on its hands as Competition Bureau Canada officially launches an investigation against the gas giant over allegations the company is misleading customers about the role of gas in the energy transition.

“Specifically, Enbridge has promoted new gas hookups as the cheapest way for Ontarians to heat their homes, while branding natural gas as ‘low carbon’ and ‘clean energy.’”

That’s being challenged by the environmental organization Environmental Defence.

The National Observer reports, “‘Enbridge’s dishonest marketing is duping people into’” installing new gas hookups and spending thousands of dollars on new gas furnaces and other appliances, “‘falsely claiming it’s cheaper than heating with electricity, which is just not true,’ said Environmental Defence program director Keith Brooks in a statement.” It’s good that the Competition Bureau has agreed to investigate Enbridge.

“The complaint filed by Environmental Defence, Ontario Clean Air Alliance, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and a group of Ontario residents” in September, “accuses Enbridge of falsely claiming gas is the most cost-effective way to heat homes. Enbridge has made this claim online and in communities it has pegged for expansion in an attempt to increase its customer base.”

Environmental Defence summarized the situation this way: “Enbridge is misleading consumers into connecting to its gas system using false and misleading representations.... Enbridge is telling potential customers that gas is the most cost-effective way to heat their homes and suggesting”—and this I find totally entertaining—“that it is ‘clean energy’ and ‘low carbon.’ None of these representations are true.” That lack of honesty about what’s real and not real when it comes to home heating is something that people should keep in mind.

But the other issue—and this is a big one because, as the minister has said, we’re moving away from gas heating in our homes: People get caught paying as gas heating fades away. People are increasingly deciding to save money and protect the climate by switching from gas to electric heat pumps. As this process expands, the cost of the gas grid for those who stay with gas is going to increase, and new gas lines, installed to service new customers, will increasingly not have customers to serve. That was a finding by the Ontario Energy Board.

We’ve had these transitions before. This is not unique or novel in the world. Most of you have not followed energy history. I am a strange person; I actually look at the history of energy in this province. About 1958 or 1959, the TransCanada pipeline came through to Ontario from Alberta, bringing natural gas. This opened a whole new way to heat homes that was cleaner, more convenient and probably cheaper than coal. From 1960 to 1970, the portion of homes that used coal for home heating went from 30% to 1%. Within a decade, 30% of Ontario homes no longer used what had been a very popular fuel.

So I want to say to people here that you can have a very rapid transition from one technology to another, frankly, probably, with very little in the way of government programs in this case. People looked at, “Hey, we can spend all this money on coal, or we can go with an option that we don’t have to shovel, that is more convenient, that is just a flick of a switch on a thermostat in the wall. I’m going to go with gas”—a decade. And I have to tell you, just in that same report I looked at, that 1% at the end? Man, they were spending a fortune, because the whole of the coal delivery infrastructure shrank and became a much more expensive fuel to get. I don’t know why those 1% held on, but they did.

We’re facing a situation in Ontario where as we move away from gas home heating, something that the minister has said we’re doing, people who stay on the gas system, who get sold on to the gas system, are going to be stuck with much higher bills, and the pipes that are put in the ground are going to be paid for by those who can’t afford to buy a new heating system, ones whose furnace is eight years old. They’ve got about a 15-year lifespan. If your furnace is eight years old, you’re not going to get rid of it and buy a new furnace. Mostly, people can’t. They only buy when they have to, and they will get stuck with those higher bills. That’s a risk for homeowners and tenants. That is a problem that people are going to face in the future.

Frankly, continuing the subsidy from the existing consumers—and remember, Premier Ford wants to increase your heating bill. He wants to drive up your gas bill. He wants you to pay more so that he can create deeper problems for you in the years to come. I want—

Interjections.

Speaker, it came out just the other day that this government is paying substantial bonuses to private clinics for surgery that is done in public hospitals. It was revealed that the payments to the Don Mills Surgical Unit, part of the Clearpoint Health Network—it is getting paid almost double the amount that public hospitals get paid for cataract surgery, double the amount for knee surgery.

This government is engaged in a straightforward project of privatizing our health care system. That project is one which will result in less medical care for people; which will result, ultimately, in people being able to pay for their surgery and health care if they have the money and having to go without if they don’t. It is a disastrous course of action.

I call on the government to end the privatization of our health care system, to stop paying bonuses to private clinics, and to actually protect the health care of the people of this province.

The Toronto Star this morning reported drops in housing starts, with more drops expected, notwithstanding claims made by the government. This is dire news. It’s bad for all. It’s very bad for tenants of corporate landlords who are being mercilessly squeezed.

A constituent wrote to me the other day about the 5.5% rent increase she and others in her building are facing. As she said, “Our salaries are not increasing. Many of the people in our building are on Old Age Security, CPP or on social support.” They can’t afford an increase like that. She noted that units two years ago in that building rented for $1,300 a month and are now going for $2,000 a month.

It is no wonder that tenants—people, generally—trying to deal with the housing crisis are facing those really difficult decisions about having a roof over their head or buying groceries regularly. It’s no wonder that when I go to food banks in my riding at the invitation of those who are running them that I see large numbers of people.

Speaker, we need action on housing. We need a restoration of rent control with the end of that practice of having unlimited rent increases when a tenant moves out, we need a ban on above-guideline increases and we need substantial direct government investment in housing. People are hurting. We need the action now.

Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity. A question for the government: You’ve talked about this bill; you’ve talked about your housing plans. Can you tell us what percentage of the homes you expect to be built will be targeted to those in the bottom half of income earners and what percentage of their after-tax income you expect they will be spending on these homes?

I have a question for the minister. She references the transit-oriented development at Gerrard Street, in my riding. As far as I’ve been able to tell, so far there is no allocation of affordable units in those towers that are planned; the city of Toronto councillor I deal with can’t find any evidence of it. I know that in my riding people support more housing, but if they can’t afford it, if they are simply going to be locked out of it—it doesn’t really help the people who are right now stuffed into basement units, not being able to afford anything else. So I want to know—in case that information is incorrect—how many of the units in those developments are going to be affordable, what is affordable defined as, and when will people be informed that they can buy or rent a unit in those places?

Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to welcome to the House Nathan Zhu, Sharon Ho, Pixie George-Benjamin and Jennifer Volk, along with a number of others here today to defend education.

My question is to the Premier.

The Premier’s plan to move the Ontario Science Centre to Ontario Place and cut its size by 50% has caused concern across Ontario. The Ontario Science Centre has a 20,000-square-foot workshop building world-class exhibits that are shipped around the world—Kuwait, Thailand, China, and here in Ontario, Science North. This Premier is cutting the centre in half, and it’s a pretty safe bet that the exhibit-building facilities won’t be part of the new package.

Why is the Premier putting at risk a critical piece of museum infrastructure, the Ontario Science Centre workshops, that is a point of pride for the people of this province?

Speaker, the Ontario Science Centre is not just a source of pride for educators, academics and parents, but it’s also a place where skilled Ontario workers—carpenters, electricians, electronics designers—provide science exhibits to science centres around the whole world. If the government destroys the ability to create new exhibits, then you can’t regularly upgrade and revitalize the centre with new exhibits as time goes by.

Is it the plan of the government to move the centre, let it deteriorate and then wipe it out completely at another date?

Petition to “Protect the Greenbelt.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the government has removed 7,400 acres of land from the greenbelt;

“Whereas the government says it will replace the lost land with land elsewhere—but many of the proposed additions are already protected;

“Whereas the government has eroded environmental protections to make it easier to build badly planned housing developments;

“Whereas Ontario is already losing 319.6 acres of farmland daily to development;

“Whereas the government Housing Affordability Task Force found there are plenty of places to build homes without destroying the greenbelt;

“Whereas the government’s repeated moves to tear up farmland and bulldoze wetlands have never been about housing, but are about making the rich richer;

“Whereas green spaces and farmland are what we rely on to grow our food, support natural habitats and prevent flooding;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to stop all plans to remove protected land from the greenbelt and protect existing farmland and sensitive wetlands.”

I agree with this petition, I affix my signature and I give it to page Maya for the table.

I just want to note that I think I fully understand now what the health strategy is for the Conservative Party. We saw yesterday, with the information about people having their eye examinations reduced, that obviously people with problems are going to have to pay. I now can see where the future is.

When people go to hospital for a hip replacement—you’ll go in, and there will be a menu at the door that will say, “Hip replacement surgery: covered by OHIP; anaesthetic, extra. What’s it worth to you? Post-surgery recovery: nurse prices vary—but for free, we’ll pin a note on your gown saying, ‘They just had surgery. We urge you to be cautious.’ Hallway: free, but to get into a room, you’ll have to pay extra.”

Speaker, that’s where we’re headed. The sleight of hand, the shell game with this government is, they’ll cut the services; they’ll cut the services; they’ll cut the services. You’ll get something or other covered by OHIP, but everything else will be like an American hospital, where you pay for each juice and each Aspirin. You will be skinned.

I urge people to reject the direction this government has taken, because we know it will be a disaster for the health care of the people in this province.

The minister knows that if she actually put the money into the hospitals as they are now and opened up OR times, people would be getting the surgery they need now.

Ms. Visanji takes powerful painkillers to deal with her pain. She’s frightened she might become addicted to them. She can’t get the surgery she needs right now, and what the minister says is she’s going to have to wait for this bill to pass. That doesn’t help her today.

I’ll give you her phone number. Will you commit to talking to her personally, helping to address her problem or explaining why she has to suffer needlessly?

Speaker, as you know, there are many parts to the housing crisis that people face in this province. I want to talk this morning about the soaring rents that people are facing and the crushing burdens that it places on them. Landlords right now can reset the rents at whatever the market will bear when a person leaves a unit, and that means that they do set those rents as high as they possibly can. What’s the impact? It means that young people can’t move out of their parents’ homes when they want to. It means that parents who have a new baby can’t afford to rent a new unit, because the new units will be far more expensive than the one they’re in. It means that there is a huge incentive for landlords to push out tenants so they can put in place huge rent increases.

Speaker, I call on the government to bring in real rent control, to bring in a system so that rent levels are retained at the point they were set for when a tenant was there and are not increased when someone moves out. The province needs this. People need this. The government needs to act.

I thank the member for Essex for the question. It’s a good one. I don’t know what the optimal number is. I do know that the agencies that are listed, generally speaking, have negligible holdings. And I do know Infrastructure Ontario in 2017 was the object of a scathing report by the Auditor General on poor practice.

So if you’re in fact moving real estate holdings, and maybe relatively small ones, to an agency that has been found—let’s be generous—wanting by the Auditor General, I have to ask, why on earth are you doing it? Why are you not taking steps in this bill to set standards for management of real estate so that we aren’t paying millions of dollars for vacant properties, so that we aren’t over-housing our workforce, so that we aren’t mixing our capital on our operating funds? If you were doing that, I think that would be a far more interesting debate. I don’t think 14 or 20 or five is the critical thing; I think the critical thing is, do you have good management practice? I have no assurance that, in fact, is what will come out of this bill.

You may well be aware, Speaker, that within the past few years, in New York City, a very severe storm caused about a dozen people to drown in their basement apartments. So if you do not actually pay attention to environmental standards, environmental issues, you put at risk life and property—and health, may I add. So undermining those protections that, over decades, we’ve built up makes no sense at all.

I’ll just note, again, if I have time, the recent example in East Palestine, Ohio, where the railroad disaster, in many cases, is being attributed to deregulations by the Trump administration. Environmental assessment, health and safety regulations are all part of the same package. If you neglect them, you put people’s lives, property and health at risk.

I was talking to a small landlord last night. He’s got a condo on Carlaw Avenue in my riding, and he can’t get a hearing at the Landlord and Tenant Board. Why is that? Because you guys didn’t appoint people at the level necessary to have proper functioning of that board. That’s not efficiency; that is neglect. That means tenants are getting beat up. That means that small landlords are getting beat up. That’s not efficiency. You know what that is: That’s chaos.

When you bring forward a bill that says that you’re going to sort out the real estate issues, do you actually have standards within the bill saying that you can’t have a huge portfolio of vacant buildings that we’re paying for? That we’re going to have a standard for space per employee that doesn’t mean we’re overhoused and, thus, wasting money—which is what you’re doing. You’re not setting a standard. You’re turning it all over to an agency that the Auditor General raked over the coals.

If you want efficiency, set smart standards and enforce them. When you actually start doing that, I might think that you’re trying to deal with efficiency. Right now, all you’re interested in is deregulation, and making some people incredibly wealthy and making other people eat that in terms of risk to their lives and property and in terms of their health.

Again to the minister: What should have been part of this government’s plan all along was a plan to address the root cause of our health care crisis—that’s staffing issues. This government can take tangible action right now to retain health care workers. Will the government commit to not appealing Bill 124?

Yesterday it was a family in eastern Ontario who struggled to find a hospital that could accept them for labour and delivery. First they tried their local hospital, but the birthing centre was closed due to staffing shortages. The next hospital they tried didn’t have room, so finally they returned to their local hospital. That situation should never have happened. The mom, Kendra, said this afterward: “I’m just afraid ... that health care will fail me again, fail [my son].”

What does the minister have to say to parents like Kendra who are scared for the future of our health care system?

My question is to the Minister of Health. The Minister of Health has risen in this House countless times over the past few weeks saying that the government had “prepared” for the surge in respiratory illnesses. And yet, just this past weekend, CHEO in Ottawa has had to call in the Red Cross to help. That is not what a well-resourced and prepared health care system looks like, Speaker.

Does the minister think it’s acceptable for a hospital to have to call in the Red Cross?

Ontarians deserve a health care system that provides the care they need when they need it. CHEO has already had to cancel surgeries, open a second pediatric ICU and transfer teenage patients to adult hospitals. It’s now clear that this government hasn’t done enough.

Why didn’t the minister do more to ensure that the province was prepared for the respiratory season?

The FAO has shown that in the first half of the year, the government underspent in health care by nearly a billion dollars. To add insult to injury, the government plans to appeal the ruling on Bill 124, which has already driven countless health care workers out of our system. The government continues to underfund and degrade our publicly funded health care system.

Why is the minister letting the situation in our hospitals get so bad?

Why is the minister betraying the public’s trust by removing these farmland protections and giving away this immensely valuable public investment to powerful land speculators like the De Gasperis family?

The Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve Act was passed in 2005 to reverse this betrayal of public trust. Why is the minister repealing the act and once again betraying the public trust?

The minister is about to remove protections from the preserve, giving billions of dollars’ worth of public wealth to private interests. Why is the minister enabling this betrayal of the public trust?