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October 30, 2024

43rd Parliament, 1st Session

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Hansard Transcripts

vol. A

Hansard Transcripts

vol. B

Votes and Proceedings

Orders and Notices

Hansard Transcript 2024-Oct-30 vol. A (PDF)

L175A - Wed 30 Oct 2024 / Mer 30 oct 2024

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE DE L’ONTARIO

Wednesday 30 October 2024 Mercredi 30 octobre 2024

Orders of the Day

Affordable Energy Act, 2024 / Loi de 2024 sur l’énergie abordable

Members’ Statements

Lajpat Rai Prasher

Baboth family charitable donation

Health care

Government spending

Events in Kitchener South–Hespeler

Replacement workers

Remembrance Day

Community Living Guelph Wellington

Sarnia-Lambton Rebound

Hospice Face to Face campaign

Introduction of Visitors

Question Period

Government’s record

Home care

Government spending

Manufacturing sector

Health care

Taxation

Government advertising

Health care

Infrastructure funding

Missing persons

Health care

Seniors’ services

Energy policies

Northern Ontario development

Introduction of Visitors

Introduction of Government Bills

Building Ontario For You Act (Budget Measures), 2024 / Loi de 2024 visant à bâtir l’Ontario pour vous (mesures budgétaires)

Introduction of Bills

1485997 Ontario Limited Act, 2024

Statements by the Ministry and Responses

Economic outlook and fiscal review

Petitions

Child care

Social assistance

Highway maintenance

Addiction services

Supportive housing

Social assistance

Doctor shortage

Doctor shortage

Organ donation

Caregivers

Economic development

Orders of the Day

Affordable Energy Act, 2024 / Loi de 2024 sur l’énergie abordable

The House met at 0900.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Good morning. Let us pray.

Prayers.

Orders of the Day

Affordable Energy Act, 2024 / Loi de 2024 sur l’énergie abordable

Resuming the debate adjourned on October 29, 2024, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 214,

An Act to amend various energy statutes respecting long term energy planning, changes to the Distribution System Code and the Transmission System Code and electric vehicle charging / Projet de loi 214, Loi modifiant diverses lois sur l’énergie en ce qui a trait à la planification énergétique à long terme, aux modifications touchant les codes appelés Distribution System Code et Transmission System Code et à la recharge des véhicules électriques.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Further debate?

Mr. Peter Tabuns: I’m pleased to speak in this House—I always am—but I have to say, I’m not pleased by this bill.

As you are well aware, Speaker, all governments are imperfect, and I would argue this government is more imperfect than most.

If you are a person who is trying to balance your budget; if you’re a person who is trying to cover your household bills, worried about your electricity bill or your gas bill or your insurance bill, worried about what you’re paying for groceries; then I have to tell you, you are not going to be happy about this bill—notwithstanding its title, which, I have to say, should be recognized as

an act of creative genius, given how little it actually applies to the legislation before us. The bill that has been introduced is deeply flawed, and I want to touch on some of the key issues, and then I’m going to go into some depth.

First of all, I think we all recognize that Ontario’s energy needs are growing—not a question. Now, more than ever, we need a government that keeps a focus on affordability, reliability and sustainability. You may or may not be surprised, Speaker, to find out this bill doesn’t require that those factors are actually taken into account in the plan that this bill will provide a framework for. They may be touched on, but they don’t have to be addressed in the plan.

Any serious energy plan needs to shift to non-emitting sources and stop the overreliance on gas as we confront impacts of climate change. That’s not in this bill. And if you’re worried about higher grocery prices because drought or flood are affecting the crop-growing regions of North America, this bill is not one that’s going to help protect the price of food and future, because it is not one that explicitly uses the energy system to meet our climate goals and help the rest of the world protect itself.

When it comes to large infrastructure projects, this government’s track record raises serious questions, especially on transparency and financial accountability.

I would ask, when was the last time anyone in this building took a ride on the Eglinton LRT, or when did you last hear of the completion date of the Eglinton LRT?

Delivering the goods and being open about what’s going on—not the forte of this government, and that is reinforced in this bill.

With the right energy plan that’s grounded in evidence—I have to emphasize “grounded in evidence”—and transparency so that the public can actually see the basis for the decisions that are being made, and with the expertise of workers in the energy sector—and we have a very sophisticated workforce here in Ontario, people who are second to none globally—we can ensure that our province has the energy we need for a thriving economy in the low-carbon future ahead of us.

It is key that we actually make sure that we continue to invest in the workers who develop our energy systems and support them in doing the critical work that they do to make sure the lights are on.

However, this bill takes us in the wrong direction when it comes to transparency and depoliticizing our energy planning decisions. We’ve seen it before. We saw it under the Liberals. That politicization of energy planning was one of their signature calling cards. That was a huge problem. This bill reinforces that Liberal tradition of ensuring that things are not properly examined and that evidence is not presented or made available to the public. We’ve seen the dangers of politicized energy policies from previous governments.

This bill’s attempt to cut out the independent regulator takes us further away from a future where energy policies are based in evidence and transparency. Again, I would say, with that direction, this government is the true inheritor of the Liberal tradition.

Time and again, we’ve seen this government push legislation forward that takes away guardrails and accountability. This bill is no different. Bill 124 is an example of a bill that didn’t look after the people of this province, that did not actually reflect the legal framework that we operate in. This is a government that does not think that protection of your legal rights under our Constitution or charter is a really significant matter.

There is no question that our energy needs are growing, but you have to be very careful about how you plan for meeting those needs and how you deliver. We’ve been here before. Ontario has previously heard projections of huge growth and energy demand and found that the projections fell far short of reality.

I am saying there will be more electricity demand. There is no question we are moving away from fossil fuels, from oil and gas and coal, and as we do that, in the operation of our economy, people will be using more electricity. We’re going to see enhancements, growth, and digital capacity in Ontario that will require more electricity, but the question for all of us is—the need to get it right.

It will be critical to avoid overbuilding, because that’s very expensive. Everyone who has gone through the experience of the last two decades under the Liberals will know from their wallets how expensive that is. We’ve all experienced that. On the other side—and there is no doubt about this—underbuilding is a problem, because then we face supply problems.

As Yogi Berra has been quoted as saying, “Prediction is hard, particularly about the future.”

That is the difficulty that we are going to face in sorting out what goes on here, which is why it’s critical that the public get the opportunity to examine all the data that is being used to develop a plan, and get to question those who have put forward that data in an open hearing.

We need to go into this with our eyes open, with all the information on the table for public review and assessment. Let’s be humble. I know that’s tough. I know it’s really tough. But previous projections have regularly been wrong.

I’m just going to do a little trip down memory lane for those who may not have been deeply scarred by this information already.

In 1976—man, I was a young guy then—Ontario Hydro was projecting a 7% annual growth in electrical demand and calling for a vast building program of new power plants. None of the plants they called for in that year were ever built—zero. Peak power demand, two decades later, in 1997, was 22,000 megawatts, not the 57,000 that hydro had predicted. So they were a bit off. They were tens of billions of dollars off in their projections of what we needed to spend. I want to say to people, $10 billion here, $20 billion there, $30 billion over there—after a while, you’re talking real money, and it shows up on people’s hydro bills. So that was 1976.

In 1989—let’s go forward—all of that is sort of forgotten. Ontario Hydro called for an aggressive program to build new power plants, as they had in 1976. Hydro was forecasting that peak demand would track economic growth at 2.5% per year and top 35,000 megawatts by 2014, 50% above its 1989 level. What happened? In 2014, peak demand was lower than it was in 1989, when the plan was hatched.

So those are two occasions when what I would say were pretty bright minds got the numbers wrong dramatically.

In 2005, I want to say to all of you, the Liberals actually decided to go whole hog. The newly formed Ontario Power Authority forecasted that peak demand for electricity would start growing nearly twice as fast as it had over the previous 15 years, reaching 30,000 megawatts by 2025. Worried that a gap might develop between supply and demand, the government expedited approval of new gas power plants, and we all know how that went.

I actually had the opportunity—I don’t know if the member from Renfrew-Nipissing was on the committee as well, and if he wasn’t on it, he was certainly around for the gas plant inquiry. We got a chance—

Interjection.

Mr. Peter Tabuns: Those were the good days, my friend. Those were the good days.

Anyway, we were dealing with a $1-billion scandal for two gas-fired power plants that the Liberals had commissioned with the argument that, if they weren’t built, lights would go out in Oakville and the west end of the GTA. As you know, those plants were never built there. We put out about a billion bucks. The plants were built in Napanee and down in Windsor, and frankly, the power crunch that the Liberals were projecting at that time didn’t appear.

In fact, in 2023—and I looked it up last night; and I thank my teacher who taught me how to read and use a computer—the top demand day in 2023 was 23,713 megawatts, slightly above where we were in 1997.

So I urge everyone in this room to be cautious. We have to be sensible. If you don’t build enough capacity, there is a real problem. We all know that. But if you overbuild—and we’ve lived it through our wallets and our purses; we’ve lived it through the bills that have landed through the mail slot—it’s awfully pricey.

The government is basing its approach on the Independent Electricity System Operator, and they’re forecasting a dramatic increase in peak demand by 2050 for Ontario to successfully decarbonize its economy. I think decarbonizing the economy makes tons of sense; it’s critical for us. And they could be right. But if we look at predictions in the past, we have to be humble about our ability to project. The IESO puts the price tag at meeting that demand at about $400 billion, and it’s the only number we’ve got. We haven’t had one from the government on its electricity plan.

But if you look at the vision paper that the previous energy minister put out and you look at the IESO plan, there’s a lot of overlap—so let’s say in the $400-billion range over the next 27 years. That’s just for the big generating plants. I’m not talking about the transmission lines that take that power across Ontario.

If you’ve gone out on the 401, out to Clarington, you see those big transmission lines. If you go past Pickering, you’ll see the big transmission lines. If you go to southwestern Ontario, you’ll see those big transmission lines. I want to tell you right now: They’re not cheap. They are pricey pieces of hardware. So if you’re talking about a big ramp-up of the electricity system, everyone out there who owns a wallet today could well find it thinner and lighter in the future, if we get it wrong. With $100 billion here, $100 billion there, soon you’re talking real money.

It stands to reason that the shift to electric vehicles and heat pumps will add new electricity consumption to the system—that makes sense to me—although it’s interesting; the EV manufacturers and EV charging station suppliers have been to committee in the past, and they predicted a fairly small increase in the need for capacity. They said, “You have huge overcapacity overnight, so we can charge these at night. You actually aren’t going to have to build a lot more electrical generating capacity.” Maybe they’re right.

But we need to know that there’s a transition going on, not just in generation, but also in how businesses use power, how homeowners use power. That transition, in the past, has led to tremendous reduction in the need for new power.

I’ll just say, LED lights swept through North America, dramatically reducing demand. I used to be on Toronto city council—I don’t know what sins I committed, but that’s where I wound up for a while—and I sat on a committee dealing with the conversion of the street lighting system from old incandescent to LEDs, which, in the 1990s, were pretty cutting-edge. It was very clear that the reduction in power was going to be dramatic. That had a big, positive impact on the city of Toronto’s operating budget, but it also changed the environment in which we do power planning.

As the price of power goes up, the attractiveness of investments that reduce your power consumption also goes up, and so you have these two things happening all the time. Be very careful when you predict power demand for the future. When you overpredict, you pay through the nose.

We’re developing those technologies globally, but I’m not seeing, in this plan to make a plan—let’s be clear: This is not an electricity plan; this is a framework to write a plan, and that framework is profoundly flawed.

Given what I’ve said to you all about the difficulty in predicting the future and the need for the public to be able to intervene, we need to be very careful about where we’re going, and we need a government that keeps the focus on affordability, reliability and sustainability.

Affordability is affected by a variety of things—not just the generation technology, but, as I’ve said, all the wires to support it, all the transformer stations, all the staff you need.

There’s no indication in this document, this plan to make a plan, that, in fact, the government will assess the evidence, put forward a plan and allow the public and stakeholders to question the government’s assumptions at a public hearing. The Liberals never allowed that—and for those who had the pleasure of sitting with me in estimates committee, I would go after Liberal ministers on this. Again, the member from Renfrew–Nipissing—let’s say he wasn’t a pussycat in those estimates meetings. I know it’s a shock to some members of that caucus, but he was not the shy introvert you know from social events.

Hon. Mike Harris: Are we talking about the same John Yakabuski?

Mr. Peter Tabuns: I’m just trying to make a point that in those meetings, he really came into his own. He was the man that you would expect he would be.

Hon. Mike Harris: You mean he was right?

Mr. Peter Tabuns: Oh, no. I won’t go there. I wouldn’t say he was right, but I would say he was aggressive.

The Liberals wouldn’t put their plans out for public scrutiny and examination. They would not let that happen.

If you’re going to be making investments in the hundreds of billions of dollars, you need to actually have an opportunity for the public to question those who put together the estimates.

I’ll go back. Last year, the Ontario Energy Board, the body that regulates the rates that you pay for gas and electricity, had hearings about Enbridge. This was a very substantial hearing, because, as you’re all well aware, the world is shifting and, increasingly, we are not going to be using gas. Just as we moved away from coal, we’re moving away from gas. Enbridge presented a report by some very high-priced and, generally speaking, reputable consultants showing that it was cheaper to take on climate change by burning gas than making more electricity, which was a pretty strange report.

Because there was the opportunity to actually go through the numbers and question those who were pulling it together, it was found that the report that was before the board was fundamentally flawed mathematically and in terms of understanding how energy systems work. Unprecedented, in my knowledge, the board ordered Enbridge to have the report rewritten so that it actually reflected reality.

If you don’t have a public hearing where the public stakeholders can question those who put forward a report, then your ability to determine what’s true and what’s false is dramatically cut.

I’ll say to all of you, if you’re paying a big bill now, if you’re having trouble covering your expenses now, you want scrutiny on spending in a way that would satisfy you that, yes, something has to be spent, or you want scrutiny that will show it doesn’t have to be spent and you don’t have to deal with a bigger bill. I think that’s the least one can do.

This government says they’re committed to affordability—and when you hear that, my friends, grab your wallets and make sure no one else’s hand is in your pocket. They say they’re committed to affordability, but the bill itself says the minister may—not “shall”; “may”—consider affordability in developing his plan. Well, you’ve got to be kidding me—“may” consider affordability? I thought the title of the act was all about that, and yet it’s not required in the act. I asked the minister about that yesterday, and it was very impressive—he danced around, he shimmied, he shook, but he didn’t say, “Yes, you’re right.

Affordability must be part of the plan. It should be a requirement in writing the plan.” It’s not there. If you’re concerned about paying bills, don’t you think the government should say that it’s mandatory, in writing the plan, that affordability is one of the focuses? But it is not in this bill.

We also need to focus on reliability. There are a lot of threats to power getting from a power plant to your home and a lot of threats to the ability to turn on the lights, your television, put the kettle on—whatever. We’ve got inadequate generation as a potential threat. We’ve got cyber failures and cyber attacks. We’ve got equipment that’s aging, possibly failing. But the thing that’s not mentioned in this plan to make a plan is adapting to climate impacts.

First of all, I think everyone in this room agrees—maybe someone can surprise me, but I think everyone agrees that the world’s weather is changing fast and, decisively, it’s getting worse. So, last year, the Ontario Energy Board actually put together a plan. They had London Economics International do a study for them, and they themselves wrote a study based on that—on how we’ll adjust to, how we’ll live with this new climate that we’re living in. I think it’s worth looking at some of what they had to say. They noted some recent weather events in Ontario that caught people’s attention.

In May 2022, a derecho brought winds of 190 kilometres an hour to the Ottawa-Gatineau region. It knocked out thousands of trees, left 180,000 homes and other buildings served by Hydro Ottawa without power. Some of the outages lasted for days. The people from Ottawa can speak to this at greater detail than I can, and they can talk about it, I’m sure, with greater emotional depth than I can because they were either living with it or dealing with constituents whose lives have been upended by it.

On September 21, 2018, six tornadoes touched down in or near the National Capital Region. When did Ottawa show up in Kansas? I have no idea how they moved that whole city down to Kansas, but that’s what we got. The strongest had estimated wind speeds of up to 265 kilometres an hour, others 220 kilometres, others up to 177 kilometres. Over 300,000 customers—in Ottawa, Gatineau, eastern Ontario—were without power. According to the Canadian Disaster Database, the estimated total costs attributed were approximately $334 million.

The OEB sort of set the stage with, “Yes, you can expect very powerful storms that will take out the electricity system.” In Canada, insured catastrophic losses have risen from around $456 million per year over the late 1900s and early 2000s to routinely exceeding $2 billion per year.

I want to say to you, you may think that the climate crisis is distant and not affecting you because no tornado has gone through your front yard recently, but you pay higher insurance rates, because when insurance companies put out billions, they recover that money from their whole customer base. That is consequential.

People have seen the reports on Hurricanes Milton and Helene going through Florida, going through North Carolina. If you actually take to YouTube and take a look at some of the news stories on American television in the southern part of Florida, you will see that those people are paying—the ones who can get insurance—very, very high rates. Because if you haven’t been hit, your insurance company will come after you nonetheless to help make up the losses where they have been hit. The North American market is affected by those losses, the Canadian insurance market is affected by those losses.

So the next time you get an insurance bill and you think, “Hey, what’s going on here?” some of it may well be profiteering, but some of it is the impact of climate change. That’s happening.

Natural Resources Canada reported in August 2022 that Canada’s climate is warming at a rate of about twice that of the global average. Climate model projections showed that this will continue, and it will increase the risks that we face in our daily lives and in our economy. The OEB, which has provided all this information, reports that the electricity sector is one of the sectors most at disruption from climate change. That’s our nervous system. People in this room—well, maybe the pages weren’t around in 2003, but the rest of you—were around with the big power outage in 2003.

Life was upended in this part of the world. Life was upended. When you’re talking about the nervous system of a society, you’re talking about the oxygen line of a society—in a hospital, it’s literally the oxygen line—you have to worry about how that change is going to affect the delivery of electricity to you and your family. So we need to take steps to protect ourselves against it.

The OEB talks about a variety of direct and indirect impacts of climate change on our system, but I have to say, this plan to make a plan does not include addressing the whole question of adapting to the new world we live in. That is a major failing because if you’re talking about how the electricity system operates, how it operated 10 years ago, 20 years ago or 30 years ago is no longer a guide because we’re going into a different reality. When you go from Toronto to Montreal—Montreal is a very nice city but it’s a different place with different driving, different restaurants.

It’s a great place actually, but we are not in the place we were 10, 20, 30 years ago. We are going into a world with far more extreme weather and we have not paid attention to it.

I have to say, the Liberals talked a lot about climate, but when we had the big ice storm in 2013 and we had—in my riding, people were without power for weeks. There was never—that I’ve been able to get, nor has the legislative library been able to get—a follow-up study of what happened and what should have been done. It was promised at the time, but to my knowledge, there was no follow-up study.

In some places like California, recognizing the impact on their power system, they are starting to put their power lines underground, which is an awfully expensive thing to do. You want to look at other things before you do that, because it’s about $8 million a kilometre, and we have many thousands of kilometres of power lines in this province.

When the OEB looked at how you would deal with this different world, they talked about protecting key communications systems. They talked about replacing the aging infrastructure, so it would have a better chance of surviving extreme weather. They talked about the need for small, local grids so that people would have some local protection.

In fact, I had the opportunity earlier this year, with a number of my colleagues, to present a bill to have the government facilitate and fund the development of local grids, not only because as technology evolves, it would produce cheaper power, but also to ensure that people have reliability, protection in extreme weather. That is something that needs to happen. Even the Ontario Energy Board thinks that is something that would help us in a crisis.

They also say that we need energy efficiency to maintain livable conditions for longer periods, and they are right. People in North Carolina took a while to get power back on. People in Florida, in the area where those hurricanes hit, were without power for a long time. We’re going to need to do that if we are going to protect ourselves and our families in the years to come. That is something that needs to be tended to. It is not in this plan to make a plan. It is not addressed.

It doesn’t make any reference to climate adaptation. There are a few things I’ve noted that aren’t here: transparency, a commitment to affordability, and taking account of adaptation. If you’re going to have a serious plan, it needs to shift our production of electricity to non-emitting sources, and stop overreliance on gas as we confront the impact of climate change.

This is an integrated plan, or so it says, so it’s covering gas, electricity and, I assume, other forms of energy. We need to use this plan to help deliver on our climate targets, because we know that as the world gets hotter, our standard of living is going to be dropping. It’s going to be harder to bring in crops. It’s going to be harder to get goods moved around the world. We’re going to spend more on infrastructure that’s damaged, homes that are damaged, and other buildings that are damaged.

This government has its own orphan climate plan that, in court, when they’re challenged on it, they sort of disavow: “Yes, we put it forward, but it really is of no legal consequence.” To not actually say in the plan that you are going to use our energy system, which is going to be central to this task, to meet our climate targets, is a gross loss of an opportunity—more than loss of an opportunity, it is a dereliction of duty.

I think when you look at the government’s plan to expand gas plants in Ontario, that is a huge problem. When you look at this plan, you’re not seeing the commitment to reducing the use of gas.

A few years ago, Toronto Hydro, Hydro Ottawa and, I think, the Peterborough public utility commission, who are all members of the Electricity Distributors Association, put together a report and sent it to the government, saying, “You’re about to invest major bucks in new gas plants. You can deliver the electricity services that are needed at a much lower cost by investing in conservation.” The Electricity Distributors Association got to cite the provincial electricity system operator saying, “Yes, it’s a lot cheaper to do this. The investment in conservation has been very effective at reliably meeting our needs in this province.” That plan was ignored by the government.

Why is the government listing gas as an option for the plan while the reality is that we already have about a quarter of our system’s capacity as gas plants? Why would it be expanding that in the face of what’s going on with the climate? When you look at the financial needs that people in this province have, the affordability crunch they are dealing with, why you wouldn’t take the cheaper option is beyond me—not just cheaper, but effective.

While I’m here, I will note as well that the rest of the world, which is suffering substantial damage from the climate crisis, is changing the way they deal with carbon. The European Union is bringing in what they call a carbon border adjustment mechanism. If you’re not reducing carbon use in your country or region, then you pay a penalty to sell goods into the European Union. If we want access to markets, we have to show concretely that we are reducing our carbon use, our carbon consumption. The European Union is entirely right to do that. Their pilot plan is around aluminum, iron, steel, cement, fertilizers.

I don’t know how much of those things we send to the European Union, but given that other countries are starting to look at this, including the United Kingdom, Türkiye, Australia, if we want to trade internationally, we have to get serious about reducing our emissions.

When you omit that from this plan, what you are saying to Canadian workers in manufacturing and heavy industry is, “Well, do you know what? We’re just going to hope for the best.” It says that you don’t have a plan to make sure that you can access those markets in the years to come. That is a substantial problem.

I have already talked about climate adaptation and cost. I also want to note that the Financial Accountability Officer released a report on budget impacts of climate hazards to public infrastructure in Ontario. Although the report is fascinating and I know everyone in the room wants to hear every word that was written, I will just pick out the highlights—that’s that we have about $708 billion in infrastructure in Ontario that’s vulnerable to climate hazards.

If we don’t invest to adapt to the extreme weather that’s coming so the bridges don’t get washed out, highways don’t get washed out, electricity lines aren’t taken down by high winds, then we are looking at adding about $4.1 billion per year, on average, to maintain our existing public infrastructure—$4 billion. You notice that, right, in a budget? It’s not $5 million; it’s $4.1 billion. We can invest now to make our infrastructure more resilient, hardier.

Frankly, if you are not taking the opportunity, when you’re dealing with a major system like electricity, to help that system enable us to get to our climate goals, even though they’re inadequate in Ontario, you are not being responsible with the public purse. You’re not being responsible for those people out there who are struggling every day to pay their bills every month, to pay their rent or pay their mortgage. Those people are having their lives set aside.

The next thing I want to say is that when it comes to large infrastructure projects, this government’s track record raises serious questions not only on performance but on transparency and financial accountability—and does it ever.

I can’t say it often enough, but I sat in committees with Liberal energy ministers and watched Liberals in other circumstances, and frankly, this government is just following their lead. I don’t know what it is. Is it the water supply on the other side of the chamber? Is it something genetic? Who knows? But the Liberal approach is one that this government seems to have taken on and embraced and enjoyed.

In my riding and in a few other ridings, the Ontario Line—by the way, we need these subways. You know how congested the streets are in this city. It can get pretty rough. So we need the investment. That project was sold as a $9-billion expenditure. In fact, when the Premier brought it in, he said, “The city was going to spend $6 billion or $8 billion on a relief line, a subway line from Pape station to the downtown. But for a few billion more, we can get 15 kilometres of line.” Well, as you may well be aware, that line is now costing about $20 billion. They actually, oops, overlooked $10 billion in expenses—or the Eglinton Crosstown.

I had the opportunity to deal with the city of Toronto on their relief line, and I had a chance to deal with the province on the Ontario Line. With the relief line—constant public meetings, a lot of data, so that we could critique what was going on. Frankly, in the end, at least in my riding, although those people who had a tunnel going under their house weren’t fully happy, they understood the logic and they went with it. With the Ontario Line, when I would question a decision and ask for a cost comparison, I could not get the costs. I was told, “Oh, it’s more.” Well, how much? These are public accounts.

This is public money. Why doesn’t the public get a chance to actually critique what’s going on there? I have to say, that is an approach that we see on the ground today, that is being perpetuated again in this bill.

I just mentioned the Eglinton Crosstown. It seems to be in semi-permanent limbo. The opening date—state secret. I don’t know how they keep it as secret as they do. I’m sure there’s surveillance of the vault that the data is kept in. You can’t find out. The provincial agency is not up front about issues, and frankly, in that, they simply reflect the approach that is taken by their masters. I’m going to explore that a bit further in this speech.

I know I’m starting to run out of time, and I’ve got so much more.

This bill is actually about reducing transparency. The previous Liberal ministers, who worked really hard not to answer questions and who, in estimates, would be aggressive in saying, “I can’t answer that”—in fact, in one meeting we had, Todd Smith, the former energy minister, was there. We were asking about the sale of Ontario Hydro, and the energy minister had a lawyer sitting beside him. Every so often, I’d ask a question and the lawyer would dig into the energy minister’s ribs, and I wouldn’t get an answer. But that’s nothing. They were minor players. I’d say this government is moving into the big leagues with not being open about what’s going on.

I think we should all recognize that with the right energy plan—grounded in evidence, with transparency, with the expertise of workers in our energy sector in Ontario—we can ensure our province has the energy we need for a thriving economy and a low-carbon, no-carbon future. We’re not short of smarts or skills in this province. We have an energy sector—very broad— with the intelligence, the training and the planning to meet our needs, second to none globally. But in order to do that, we’re going to need to give them a plan and a direction that makes sense. We can ensure a much richer economy.

We spend, today, somewhere between $15 billion and $20 billion a year importing oil and gas and coal. The money goes to Pennsylvania. The money goes to, probably, Saskatchewan and Alberta. That comes out of our economy. If we were to take that cash flow and put it into Ontario to power this province, then we would have a much more robust economy.

Something we did at the beginning of the 20th century when we developed hydro power in Ontario—renewable power—is that we developed the expertise to export engineering staff and knowledge globally. We were seen as a leader. And we could have done that with the current generation of energy production. We are not seeing it in this particular jurisdiction, in this particular regime.

When we, the New Democrats, developed our Green New Democratic Deal before the last election, we were looking at what it would take to actually build out a green system, to actually invest in people’s homes and businesses, to dramatically reduce their use of energy so that their bills would be stabilized at a lower level; so that they wouldn’t have the same problems with emissions; so that, in a crisis, they would be in a position to ride out extreme cold weather or extreme hot weather. The reality in this province is that you would have labour power demands that you’d have to really work on meeting.

We have the potential in this province to eliminate the import of oil and gas and put hundreds of thousands of people to work. People who are already working in energy could go further. People who are historically excluded from the labour force would have an opportunity to take

part in a variety of well-paid, high-skill jobs. That’s something that we need to do. I’m not seeing that in this bill. I’m not seeing the commitment to a transformation of our energy system. I’m not seeing, even more importantly, frankly, the ability of the public to examine and question the evidence the government says it’s operating on. Without that—and it doesn’t matter what stripe the government is—the public is going to have real problems.

The bill takes us in the wrong direction when it comes to transparency and depoliticizing our energy planning decisions.

We’ve seen the problems, with the Liberals, of politicized energy policies from previous governments, with the governments cutting out any hearings before the Ontario Energy Board—real problems.

The bill would be much more clearly labelled and understood if it was called simply the “just trust us energy bill, 2024.” That, I think, would express the actual heart of the bill and would be far better understood by people in Ontario.

I would say to all of you, why is it that people in Ontario may not trust this government and this Premier? I’m going to expand on this further if I have enough time. But I just want to note—I’ll cite the greenbelt. In 2018, the Premier, running for office, told a room of developers that he’d open up a big chunk of the greenbelt for home building. When that was revealed, the Premier pivoted, understanding that he put his foot in his mouth up to his knee, and he made an unequivocal promise: “We won’t touch the greenbelt.” He repeated that commitment through his first term.

Then, in November 2022, the Ford government changed its mind and removed 7,400 acres from the greenbelt slated for housing development. So how do you have trust in a Premier who only lives up to a commitment when there is a Mountie investigation going on?

There are a lot of reasons to not just sign on to a “just trust us energy bill, 2024.” I think there are reasons to go to committee and try to change this bill. I think that would actually be a useful forum both for debate and, hopefully, for the government to see some reason and put transparency in the bill and require that affordability be a central part of the plan—not just “may” be part of the plan; require that considerations of affordability be there.

This is a government that is proposing to build a tunnel under Highway 401. You’ve got to be kidding me.

Interjection: Apparently not.

Mr. Peter Tabuns: Seriously, when I first heard it, I thought, “He’s talking off the cuff. He’s at a stand-up comedy venue, and he has decided to get whatever yuks he can by saying something that no one would believe any serious politician would say.” Apparently, I didn’t understand what was going on. The Premier is seriously proposing something that he won’t give a price for. He did say that we would do a feasibility study, and then he said, “Well, we’re going to build it anyway.” So I guess the feasibility study was more like putting a ribbon on the package—it didn’t change the contents, but it might be prettier.

Those instances of not being able to trust the Premier say to me, this bill—man, you should not trust what is being put forward.

Ronald Reagan said, “Trust, but verify.” And do you know what? Ronnie was right. You’ve got to do that.

If you’re going to come forward and say, “I’m doing this,” give me the means by which I can verify that you are telling me the truth; that your evidence is actually consequential and it isn’t full of holes, it isn’t Swiss cheese—like the report that Enbridge brought to the Ontario Energy Board that was shredded and then had to be rewritten.

The cost, the reliability, the sustainability of energy affects every person in the province. It’s the difference between making our household budgets work and not work. It can’t be driven by a bill that limits public access to information and effectively eliminates the potential for the public to have any input in our energy future. Just as the government changed the whole system of regulating gas with Bill 165, effectively ending regulation by a tribunal in Ontario, this bill takes the public out of the process; this becomes a far more lobbyist-driven planning process. That is not a good thing.

I’m starting to get low on time. I can see that. I won’t ask for an extension this time.

The Liberals vastly overbuilt the power system when they were in power, and we’ve all paid. We are paying, what, $7.3 billion a year in electricity subsidies now? What we’re paying in electricity subsidies makes the Ministry of Energy one of the big ministries in Ontario. It’s not education, and it’s not health—but boy, it isn’t the $400 million or $500 million it used to be. Speaker, $7.3 billion is a lot of subsidy dollars, and I’m not seeing in this plan to make a plan that that actually is going to be addressed.

I want to go, in the time I have left, into some detail on the bill.

Schedule 1 amends the Electricity Act to promote electrification and facilitate energy-efficient measures aimed at using electricity to reduce overall emissions in Ontario.

As I said earlier, electrification makes sense. That’s where the world is going. We don’t burn coal to heat our houses anymore. In the future, we aren’t going to be using electric-resistance baseboard heaters because they are so wasteful. Technology has changed. We have the ability to dramatically cut our electricity use, make our homes warm and not use gas.

So I have to ask: If the government is committed to electrification, why did we pass a bill to protect Enbridge’s plans to expand the gas system? On the one hand, we are saying we’re going to electrify everything; on the other, we’re saying we’re going to increase the number of houses that use gas. Which story is true? Is the government actually thinking that they are going to spend hundreds of billions on new power plants that won’t be needed because we have more gas in our houses?

One thing I have to note: In Germany, because of their experience with Russia not being a reliable supplier of gas, more and more people are switching away from gas to electric heat pumps. That is setting in motion a dynamic for those who remain with the gas system seeing higher and higher bills, because fewer and fewer people are paying for the pipes in the ground. What the government is proposing is that fewer and fewer people will be using gas—or they are spending hundreds of billions to no purpose. At the same time, they’re sticking the existing gas customers with bills that they’re going to have trouble paying in the future.

In an integrated plan, what is the government planning to do to protect those who remain on gas over the next few decades? In New England—there are some states that are now integrating the planning between the gas grid and the electricity grid, so that as gas users come away from that system, the gas lines are shut down, electricity is provided, and things are done smoothly, not in a jagged way that causes financial problems for the customers on both sides. Is the government proposing to do that? I guess we will find out.

If you’re talking about an integrated plan and actually electrifying everything, then you have to have in the plan what that means to look after those who are still gas customers.

This is the one that was striking—well, there were a number of things that were striking, as you may have gathered from my remarks to this point: “The minister may”—but not “shall”—issue an integrated energy resource plan setting out and balancing the government’s goals and objectives that may respect various listed energy matters. This replaces the existing requirement that the minister produce a long-term energy plan. It’s interesting to me that we’re debating a bill where production of a plan is actually optional.

It doesn’t say the minister “shall” issue an integrated energy resource plan, which is sort of what you would expect if you were doing energy planning for this major part of Canada. Why do we not require a plan? Maybe the minister doesn’t want to be tied down to a plan. Maybe he wants to just fly by the seat of his pants. The minister may say, “I had a lobbyist come in and see me. That was a good story. I think we should put the bucks there.

If I have a plan, well, that might tie me down.” It makes sense to have an integrated plan, but if it makes sense, it should be something that’s not just optional for the minister; it’s something that the minister must do.

The bill goes on: The minister is required to launch a consultation on a new plan within five years of the issuance of the previous plan, if one is issued, but it’s not clear whether the minister is actually required to issue a subsequent plan. It doesn’t require it. I have to say, the Liberals ignored their long-term energy plan system. Their system would have required hearings. They ignored that. We went after them on it. As everyone in this room is well aware, actually adhering to their own laws, own bills, was not something they were really hot on. This government seems to have the same approach.

I don’t know why they wouldn’t do this. Logic dictates that you would actually require a plan. Maybe it’s just, again, as I was saying, that they want to make sure they’ve got the freedom to satisfy the most recent lobbyist who has come into the room.

Note that the existing requirement that this be a long-term plan was removed.

Subsection 25.29(2)—I know you all need to know the exact number—of the current Electricity Act lists various energy matters that “may” but not “shall” be covered in the energy plan, including cost-effectiveness, reliability and use of cleaner sources. This bill makes various changes to this list, including consumer affordability, enhancement of energy infrastructure to support economic growth, and cost-effective procurement. Again, the items that may be covered don’t include climate adaptation.

So the next time you’re freezing in the dark and wondering, “Will the power ever come on?”—maybe you will have the opportunity to experience what people in Florida got to experience, and that’s sweating through the night, with the food rotting in the refrigerator, wondering when or if the power is going to come on.

The bill doesn’t include meeting our climate goals, and that, given the climate damage we face, is a huge omission. It also gets rid of making efficiency in conservation the first step, the priority.

Yesterday, the minister, in his opening remarks, said that the cheapest way to provide electrical services—the cheapest kilowatt is the one you don’t have to generate. Do you know what? The minister was right. You can’t meet 100% of our electricity needs through energy conservation or efficiency—you just can’t. You do have to produce power, but the starting point of any plan that is affordable is to make sure that the cheapest option is the foundational stone, the starting point, and then you go on after that.

If the government were to say, “In the process of setting this plan, we’re going to first determine what’s the least expensive source of power that meets our other needs around reliability and sustainability”—but that isn’t in here either. So you really have to ask how you’re going to make it affordable if affordability is not cooked in right at the beginning.

This bill—oh, my goodness; time is short, and so much to say.

The current act requires the IESO to publish a technical report on the adequacy and reliability of electricity resources prior to launching consultations on the energy plan—the minister “shall” publish other information, such as key data and cost projections, but only if the minister determines that this information should be made publicly available. I think I’ll wrap up there. If it’s what the minister thinks should be available, rather than what the public needs to make a determination as to whether or not something is going to work and is affordable, that is a profound problem.

This bill does not, as its title might indicate, actually help people with higher bills. Frankly, you’ll hear the word “affordability” mentioned 20 or 30 times because it’s nice to say it. If people hear the words, they often think something is being done, but just because someone says something, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the case. That’s the problem we face here. Repeating something lots of times doesn’t actually mean that something is being done in the area that we’re concerned about.

I would say this “just trust us bill, 2024,” has profound flaws. I think, in committee, it would be worth having debate about them. Hopefully the government would amend it so that they overcome some of the worst sins visited upon the province by the Liberals and actually bring forward a plan that’s useful. If they don’t amend it profoundly, this is not going to lead to electricity people can afford; it’s going to lead to electricity that will make life far more difficult for them.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms. Donna Skelly): It’s now time for questions.

Mr. John Yakabuski: I want to thank the honourable member across the way for his one-hour address on this. We always have a good time chatting on these things—rarely agree, but we agree to disagree.

I do want to raise a couple of points that the member mentioned. He talked about the Liberals politicizing the system. He used the word “affordability.” And then he went on to talk about this credible company, this firm, London Economics International. Well, I have to ask the member—because London Economics International told us that the Green Energy Act was going to cost a minimum of $40 billion.

You’re talking about affordability. You’re talking about politicization.

We talk about the most expensive act in the history of the province with regard to accelerating the cost of electricity, and I have to ask the member if all of those things—and you’re still repeating them today, not just 15 years ago. Why did your party support the Green Energy Act if you knew that it was going to cause such a problem that we are trying to address today, which is the issue of reliability and affordability in our electricity system?

Mr. Peter Tabuns: First of all, I appreciate the commentary from my colleague.

We sat through the hearings, which happened all over the province, on the Green Energy Act. If you’ll remember, in a number of rural areas, farmers came forward saying, “We need this because we need the income.” I want to note that we, on our side, tried to amend that act to ensure that private companies didn’t get to build this new green infrastructure; that it was public and community-based. As the member will recall, he voted against making this new green infrastructure—that it was public and community-based. As the member will recall, he voted against making these new installations public.

Our sense was that a publicly owned renewable energy system would actually deal with the problems that we have. I will note as well that gas-powered plants provided power at dramatically higher costs than the green plants, the green installations that went forward.

I think we have a problem with the Liberals in the way they operated that system from top to bottom.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms. Donna Skelly): Further questions?

Mr. Joel Harden: I want to thank my friend from Toronto–Danforth for his remarks.

When I think about the goal of the legislation and what the member had to say—making energy affordable—I think of, particularly, seniors living in rural parts of our province, who are continuing to live in energy poverty.

I look at a province like Prince Edward Island and what they’ve been able to do to help those homeowners, those residents, to get off expensive forms of home heating and on to heat pumps.

I look at the IESO’s program—in order to qualify for the program, a household of two has to be making a before-tax income of $64,000 or less. Meanwhile, energy companies, including Enbridge, which the member named, are enjoying fantastic profits.

My question for the member: Why won’t the government consider asking Enbridge to pay some kind of levy, like the UK government is doing, in making sure that those seniors can make that transition to affordable energy for their homes?

Mr. Peter Tabuns: I appreciate that question.

Enbridge makes a fortune. Enbridge is a money-spinner. Enbridge is a multi-billion dollar corporation and, frankly, I think that having Enbridge assist in making the transition to heat pumps makes a lot sense. I would say to Enbridge, “If you want to actually have a future, if you want to continue in business, it would be a great advantage to you to actually get into the heat pump business—install them, lease them, make money—because you know very well, and it was clear from the presentations that you made at the Ontario Energy Board, that there is not a long future for gas in this province.” Maybe a few decades—it isn’t going to be gone overnight.

If you’re actually going to meet climate goals, we’re not going to be burning gas in 2050—or if we are, it’s going to be very, very small amounts.

Enbridge has a responsibility, I think, to its customers and to its workers to look at a new business model. I agree with my colleague. That’s the correct approach.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms. Donna Skelly): Further questions?

Hon. Sam Oosterhoff: I have to correct the record for the member opposite. He spoke about the fact that he thinks Türkiye has better standards than Ontario when it comes to emissions. Ontario emitted 3.8 megatonnes last year in the production of electricity; Türkiye emitted 374 megatonnes. I don’t know how that math works out and why he’s praising Türkiye when Ontario has a very, very clean grid.

I didn’t hear the member opposite speak about nuclear in his presentation. We know how important nuclear is and its value to Ontario.

Will the member opposite stand in this House and say that he firmly supports the continued build-out of our nuclear fleet and sector here in Ontario?

Mr. Peter Tabuns: I have to say first, it’s unfortunate that the member didn’t listen to me closely when I noted that Türkiye is looking at bringing in carbon-based adjustment mechanisms so that companies have to pay money to ship goods into Türkiye if they haven’t actually taken action on carbon. I’m not saying Türkiye is better. Listen to my remarks. Our good people from Hansard are here. I suggest you read Hansard tomorrow or maybe this evening—the early rushes—and see that I didn’t say that Türkiye had better standards. I just said that Türkiye, along with other countries, is going to bring in a carbon tariff if you want to sell into that market, and if you don’t do—

The Deputy Speaker (Ms. Donna Skelly): Response?

Mr. Peter Tabuns: Yes, thank you.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms. Donna Skelly): Further questions?

Mr. Joel Harden: I want to point out, just further to what I asked the member, in England, there is an energy profits levy on 25% of profits in the North Sea sector—recently expanded to 38.1%. That has generated, for the British economy, for investment into renewal energy, $3.6 billion.

I think about a truck driver I met in the by-election in Belleville, when I went down to knock on doors there. I talked to that truck driver, and he told me about when he would drop off fuel at a homeowner’s house, and he knew that that homeowner could not pay the $1,200 bill for the fuel-up that that homeowner was going to pay and that they were going to be in an arrears to his company. He had to drive away thinking about how that family is going to choose between heating or food.

Why don’t we ask Enbridge, which is a massively profitable company, to pay more money into the treasury so we can help those seniors get affordable energy? Why isn’t that in this bill?

Mr. Peter Tabuns: It’s a good question.

I have to say, I can’t speak for the government—and I think they would be horrified if I tried; I’m getting assent on that side of the aisle. I can’t say why they aren’t proposing that fabulously wealthy oil and gas companies aren’t paying to help society, aren’t actually addressing those issues, but they should be. There’s no getting around it.

Frankly, on a somewhat different tangent, increasingly in North America, there are jurisdictions that are starting to sue oil and gas companies for the damage they are doing. Oil and gas companies have worked assiduously to tamp down any actions on climate.

I think you’re quite correct; oil and gas companies should be anteing up. They’ve got the money to do it.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms. Donna Skelly): Further questions?

Hon. Sam Oosterhoff: I appreciate the member sharing some clarifications in his previous answer, but I do want to repeat the second part of my question, because I noted, again, he didn’t talk about nuclear.

We know the importance of nuclear here in Ontario as a baseload, capacity-building tool that we have in our energy tool box.

Again, would the member opposite in the NDP stand firmly in support of maintaining and expanding our nuclear fleet here in the province of Ontario and continuing that important resource?

Mr. Peter Tabuns: The simple reality is that nuclear is a substantial part of our electricity system in Ontario.

The other reality is that this government has firmly refused, at every point, to say what kind of expense we’re looking at for any energy investment. It’s not just that you’re silent about investment and nuclear; you’re silent about any other investment, as to what it will cost.

Anyone who looks at a plan with no price tags, no projection as to what the capital costs are going to be, what the power is going to be—why on earth would you say yes to something that’s uncosted? Would you sign a contract with no price on it? Would you buy a house with the cost of the house blank, so that you get to pay whatever the vendor wants to sell for? I don’t think you would. But maybe I misunderstand you.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms. Donna Skelly): Unfortunately, we are out of time for questions.

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms. Donna Skelly): I know, but it is now time for members’ statements.

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

Members’ Statements

Lajpat Rai Prasher

Mr. Amarjot Sandhu: Today, I rise to recognize the inspiring journey and contributions of Mr. Lajpat Rai Prasher. A Canadian success story, Mr. Prasher came to this country over 50 years ago with a vision for a better future. Through hard work and dedication, he established and grew a telecom enterprise from modest beginnings, eventually selling it to Telus, a leading Canadian telecommunications provider.

Mr. Prasher’s impact goes beyond business. He has dedicated his life to supporting strong community values and fostering relationships between Canada and his country of birth. Known for his openness and inclusivity towards all faiths, he is highly respected in the community. Recently, Mr. Prasher received the lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Hindu Chamber of Commerce recognizing his long-standing contributions as an entrepreneur and community leader. His life exemplifies the spirit of resilience and community that defines Canada. I am honoured to call him my friend and mentor.

Congratulations, Mr. Lajpat Rai Prasher.

Baboth family charitable donation

Ms. Sandy Shaw: I was honoured to join Rob Baboth, his family and colleagues as they presented a cheque to McMaster Children’s Hospital to purchase a new Cribette for the neonatal intensive care unit. This is in honour of Dianne Baboth. The Baboth family has raised funds for the children’s hospital since 2009 by holding an annual golf tournament in her name. The proceeds have contributed to three rooftop playgrounds that allow patients and their families to play outside and to gather for things like movie nights and pictures, things that would be impossible for children and their families—to spend so much time at the hospital.

I would like to say that we also had a chance to tour the cancer ward and see the remarkable things that the folks at McMaster Children’s Hospital do—and you would know that, Speaker. We saw the incredible ways that staff have been able to use the donations from the Baboth family to improve the patient experience for the kids and for their families, and for the siblings too. We have to remember that when one child is sick, the entire family is impacted, and the Baboth family understands that. Their commitment is incredible.

I want to say that I appreciate seeing the McMaster Children’s Hospital—I, from the bottom of my heart, appreciate everyone in that hospital. It goes out of the way to make sure that children and their families who are experiencing life-limiting or, perhaps sometimes, life-ending experiences—that they do everything they can to make sure that they live in dignity and that they have healthy outcomes.

I want to thank the community, who donates the funds to make sure that our families, when they’re going through the worst possible thing imaginable—they may feel alone when they’re in the hospital, but when they see those playgrounds, when they see those contributions, they know there’s, in fact, a community behind them.

Health care

Mr. Deepak Anand: Ontario’s 31,500 physicians delivering emergency care, managing chronic conditions, promoting preventive health are the backbone of happy and healthy communities. Thank you for your service. With Ontario’s population growing and aging, having access to quality health care is more critical than ever.

As a proud Schulich MBA graduate, I’m thrilled to see my alma mater, York University, building Canada’s first medical school dedicated to training primary care physicians, backed by an initial investment of $9 million from the 2024 budget, Building a Better Ontario. Set to open in September 2028, York University’s school of medicine will be devoting approximately 70% of its new postgraduate seats to primary care and will have up to 240 undergraduates and 293 postgraduate seats once at full capacity.

Together, with investments like this, we are building a stronger health care system that meets the evolving needs of residents from Mississauga–Malton and Ontario.

The commitment of our government added 260 new undergraduates and 449 new postgraduate medical seats.

I want to wish the best of luck to all the future doctors of York University. I’m excited to see the community coming together to support this project.

Thank you, Premier, thank you, Minister of Health, and thank you, President Rhonda, for all your support. Together, we’re going to build a better, stronger Ontario.

Government spending

MPP Jill Andrew: Today is a big day. The Conservative government will unleash their fall economic statement, letting Ontarians know what is and what is not their priority.

So far, we know that the government has committed to giving Ontarians $200 rebate cheques. Some are calling these cheques bribe money, as they’re arriving just ahead of a possible early election—couldn’t be more coincidental.

This government has already made sweeping billion-dollar deals to help liquor up Ontarians—bribes and booze. Well, we the people have some other priorities, and we are eager to see the fall economic statement address them.

Properly fund health care. Too many people in our community do not have access to a family doctor. They end up in the ER—well, that’s if their ER is open.

Invest in real, affordable housing, including protections for tenants like rent control in all buildings, eliminating abuse of above-guideline rent increases, and a complete scrap and replacement of Tarion in order to support new homeowners, including some victims of fraud—buying homes that have never been built.

Actually tackle gridlock. Finish and open our Eglinton Crosstown LRT, one of this government’s biggest and most expensive failures to date.

We need investments in the Ontario Arts Council, which currently has a starving artist budget, despite pleas from artists and cultural workers across Ontario.

This government can fix our schools, address the repair backlog and invest in more education workers and mental health supports for students, because I’d like to think that for this government, kids trump bribes and booze.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms. Donna Skelly): I’ll ask the member to withdraw her final comments.

MPP Jill Andrew: Withdraw.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms. Donna Skelly): Thank you.

Events in Kitchener South–Hespeler

Ms. Jess Dixon: On October 19, I held my second annual fall festival, which is the one community event that I do. My main goal there is to provide a day that, for families and children, is really, really worth coming out to. We rent out beautiful Steckle Heritage Farm in Kitchener South–Hespeler, have pumpkins and food trucks and face painting. I do my best to make it something that’s really worth going to. I had a huge amount of help. We had wonderful food trucks. We had Fo’Cheezy, BeaverTails and Leen’s Shop. We also had some amazing face painters, with Bre and Robin—and some help from my friends at Xtreme Motors, Dave and Adnan, for moving 200 pumpkins.

I also want to shout out a lot of my wonderful volunteers, which include my parents, as well as Caitlyn, Michael, Gabe, Marie, Ron, Megan and Corey.

But the people I really want to shout out are my constituency office staff: my office manager, Bonita, and Anna, Gerry and Caitlyn. It was an organizational challenge pulling this together, but what stuck out to me as I walked around the farm was the number of residents who came up to me and told me a story about how my office staff and my caseworkers had fixed something for them; how they had been the only people to listen and care when they were struggling with something. It really stuck out to me just how incredible my office workers are. I know we all have them, but I’m particularly shouting out mine today.

Bonita, Gerry, Caitlyn, Anna, thank you so much. I would not be able to do my job without you.

Replacement workers

Ms. Teresa J. Armstrong: I rise today to speak on behalf of the workers of Ontario, who are the backbone of our province. And yet, despite all they do for us, they continue to face challenges. This government pretends to work for workers, but recent events tell a different story.

Look at CUPE Local 2361 at the University of Western Ontario. They stood strong for 330 members in their fight for fair wages, respect and improved work conditions. But in their fight for better conditions and wage parity with similar other unionized positions, what did they encounter? They faced the deployment of scab labour, an unacceptable practice that undermines the bargaining process, threatens fair wages and diminishes workplace safety.

I’m glad that CUPE Local 2361 could ratify an agreement with their employer, but I can’t help but be concerned about the next group and whether they can exercise their rights to free and fair collective bargaining.

Ontario needs strong, immediate scab labour protection. This government needs to pass the bill that the NDP proposed—Bill 90, the Anti-Scab Labour Act—because, when it’s passed, there will be Ontario legislation that will make it illegal for employers to hire scabs during strikes and lockouts.

We believe in fair wages, safe workplaces and meaningful protections.

To CUPE Local 2361 and all Ontario workers, we see you and we stand with you.

It’s time for Ontario to stand up for workers and deliver the protections they need now more than ever. So I ask this government to pass the NDP’s Bill 90, the Anti-Scab Labour Act, today—now.

Remembrance Day

Mr. Ric Bresee: As we approach Remembrance Day, I want to take a moment to recognize the many meaningful services that are held across Hastings–Lennox and Addington. Each year, these ceremonies allow us to honour and remember those who have sacrificed for our freedom.

While I would love to attend all of these services, I do want to highlight one in particular today: the Remembrance Day service at the Wilton cenotaph, organized primarily by Lion Mike Shabinsky of the Odessa and District Lions Club. For 40 years, Mike has dedicated his time to this important event, in collaboration with the military. His commitment to ensuring that we remember and reflect on the sacrifices made by our veterans is truly commendable. This Remembrance Day service typically attracts around 200 attendees, including military personnel, veterans, schoolchildren, wreath-layers and representatives from the police, EMS and first responders.

The Odessa Lions Club accomplishes so much each year, from supporting local hospitals and public schools, to funding and building parks and playgrounds and preparing food baskets for families in need. Their work on Remembrance Day also has an incredible impact on our community.

I say thank you to Mike for his dedication and his leadership. He truly embodies the spirit of service that the Lions Club stands for, and his impact on the community will be felt for generations.

Community Living Guelph Wellington

Mr. Mike Schreiner: I rise on behalf of the board, staff, volunteers and clients of Community Living Guelph Wellington.

I participated in a meet-and-greet with CLGW on the weekend, which the Speaker attended, representing the Wellington part of GW. The stories I heard from front-line staff, parents and participants were heartbreaking. The chronic underfunding of programs for people with developmental disabilities is leading to service cuts and the selling off of housing assets. People are desperate for help. CLGW’s treasurer pointed out that over the last 30 years, the organization has received a 7% funding increase when inflation was 60%. They are covering 2024 costs with 1994 dollars and are experiencing a funding deficit of $3 million.

Speaker, one parent whose adult son has been on the waiting list for housing for over a decade asked me, in tears, if she had to commit suicide for her son to move up the housing list.

The Premier said that if you can’t work, he will make sure you are cared for. Many people with developmental disabilities cannot find employment and require 24/7 care. They are not being properly cared for when services, supportive housing and programs are being cut.

I believe we are a more caring province than this, and I am eager and willing to work across party lines to provide the care these families deserve.

Sarnia-Lambton Rebound

Mr. Robert Bailey: It’s a privilege to rise in the Legislature today.

Last week, I was honoured to participate in the 40th anniversary celebration of Sarnia-Lambton Rebound, an award-winning organization in Lambton county that focuses on the well-being of young people and their families. Since its founding in 1984, Sarnia-Lambton Rebound has successfully served over 40,000 young people from across Sarnia–Lambton.

Started by local residents Barry Symington, Dee Cox and Terry Fitzgerald, Rebound’s original focus was on bringing young people in the community together to learn positive social skills that would assist them in dealing with the transition from childhood to adulthood and the challenging years in between.

Mr. Speaker, Rebound has been an invaluable resource for youth and families in Sarnia–Lambton for the last four decades.

I want to congratulate executive director Michelle Holbrook and all the staff, volunteers and supporters of Rebound on this momentous anniversary. On behalf of the government of Ontario, I wish them continued success in everything they do.

Hospice Face to Face campaign

Mr. Andrew Dowie: One week ago, the Hospice of Windsor and Essex County revealed some incredible news: The 22nd annual Hospice Face to Face campaign raised, this year, just over $110,000—a new record. This brings the total campaign fundraising to more than $1.8 million for the hospice. As the executive director of the hospice, Katharen Bortolin, so aptly put it, “Our community always shows up and we are always so grateful.”

The Face to Face fundraiser supports the Fairley Family Transportation Program and supports rides for hospice patients and families across the community. Many of these are delivered through the GENIE, the Granting Exceptional N’Impactful Experiences, program, a unique partnership between the hospice and Essex-Windsor EMS that allows clients to travel in a retrofitted ambulance.

Equally touching this year was its dedication to the memory of Dr. Jamie Henderson, the honourary co-chair of the Face to Face campaign for many years. Dr. Henderson personified the compassion, kindness and gratitude for which our hospice is known, and helped me greatly in crafting a tribute to his good friend and our riding’s former MPP Michael Ray.

To John Fairley and the entire Fairley family: Thank you for your passion and dedication to keeping our community an incredible place.

And to Katharen and all the staff at the hospice: Your service to our loved ones is beloved and appreciated.

Introduction of Visitors

Ms. Effie J. Triantafilopoulos: It is my distinct pleasure today to introduce some exceptional young people from my community.

In 2021, Ethan and Matthew McQueen started Kids Helping Kids Sleep Out to bring attention to homeless and trafficked youth. This year, with their friends, they raised $107,000 to support Covenant House.

Please welcome Matthew McQueen, Ethan McQueen, Jack Riley, Brandon Wayland, Roman Coviello, Henry Yang, Cole Thomson, Arjun Chahal, Jude Lefebvre, Logan Wolfe, Owen Tochor, Jacob Schor, and Adrian Mesman.

As well, I’d like to recognize and introduce my co-op student, Maxwell Zanerips, from King’s Christian Collegiate.

Ms. Bhutila Karpoche: It is my pleasure to welcome the Kosovar Albanian Canadian youth group here at Queen’s Park for the first time: Yllka Bojku, Luka Lamaj, Aryjola Zogu, Aldo Zemblaku, Megan Keli, Bardha Cunaj, Gurra Efendija, Orges Zejna, Ina Shehi, Alesja Cani, Alesio Vrapi, Jurgena Therca, Mario Cani, Valentin Cela, Aulona Tofaj, Alma Stafa, and Ledor Babatinca.

Ms. Laura Smith: It is my very great honour to welcome Idit Shamir, consul general of Israel in Toronto; Ms. Iris Weinstein Haggai, daughter of Judih Weinstein Haggai, Canadian victim of October 7; Gadi Haggai; the Honourable Irwin Cotler, former Minister of Justice of Canada; Adina Isenberg; and Yair Castel, consul general of Israel in Toronto and Western Canada.

We ask that all people, if possible, please join us at the commemorative event for the Canadian victims of October 7 at Queen’s Park, in rooms 228 and 230, following today’s morning session.

Miss Monique Taylor: I would like to welcome all of the co-op housing federation who are with us in the Legislature today for their lobby day; in particular, Golden Horseshoe co-op housing. Today I was able to visit with Sarah Burnett, Monica Brodeur, Angie Armstrong, Kathy Dimassi, Willy Noiles, and Doug Sider.

Thanks so much for all you do for co-op housing, and welcome, everyone, to Queen’s Park today.

Mr. Mike Schreiner: I, too, want to welcome all members of the Canadian co-op housing federation who are at Queen’s Park today. I especially want to shout out to the folks the MPP for Kitchener Centre and I met with this morning: Elana Harte, Shelley Watts, Carine Nind, and Natasha Verwey. Thank you for your advocacy for housing in Ontario.

Hon. Stephen Lecce: I want to welcome the Canadian Nuclear Isotope Council, who joined us this morning.

Every year, 247,000 Canadians will be diagnosed with cancer. We honour the life-saving work that isotypes and nuclear science is providing in cancer treatment.

Please welcome them here at Queen’s Park.

Ms. Marit Stiles: I’m so pleased to be able to rise on behalf of the official opposition here and welcome to the Legislature Mr. Mark Golding, Jamaica’s Leader of the Opposition, along with a significant entourage. My colleagues will welcome others, but I did want to particularly mention Mr. Golding’s entourage who are here from Jamaica: Sergeant Marc Anderson, Ms. Ferguson, Mr. Christopher Henry, and Mr. Andre Hylton.

It’s very nice to have you here. We are honoured by your presence.

Hon. Victor Fedeli: It’s a pleasure to introduce our director of communications, Rebecca Bozzato, and her father, Richard, who is here today to watch question period for the very first time.

It’s Rebecca’s last week in our office, and we’d like to thank her for everything that she has done.

Welcome to Queen’s Park, Richard.

MPP Jill Andrew: I would also like to welcome Mr. Mark Golding, Jamaica’s leader of the official opposition and president of the People’s National Party.

It gives me great honour to welcome back to the Legislature community leaders Dr. Laura Mae Lindo, former MPP for Kitchener Centre—they’re still coming in—Clayton Greaves, Dr. Simon Black, H.E. Dr. Macaulay Kalu, Dr. Barbara Stewart, Dr. Carolyn Benjamin, and H.E. Sandra Bowen. Welcome to your House.

And I’ll give a big shout-out to Masani Montague for Rastafest, who does incredible work in Toronto–St. Paul’s, Toronto Centre and all around Toronto celebrating Jamaican and Rastafarian culture.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): If there are no objections, I would like to continue with the introduction of visitors.

Ms. Aislinn Clancy: I also want to welcome Dr. Laura Mae Lindo to the House. She has been a great mentor, as I step into the riding and her shoes. She continues to be an amazing local champion for our community.

Thank you, and welcome back.

Mr. Billy Pang: It is a great honour to welcome my constituents from Markham–Unionville to Queen’s Park today.

First, a warm welcome to Bin Chang and Chris Lee, the proud parents of today’s page captain, Sophie Lee. Thank you both for joining us and supporting Sophie in her important role here.

I’d also like to recognize Allen Song, CEO of Global Education Academy, along with their teachers and students. Global Education Academy recently celebrated its 25th anniversary, a remarkable milestone. Welcome to Queen’s Park, and I look forward to meeting all of you today.

Ms. Peggy Sattler: I’m very pleased to welcome Denise McGahan from the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, who is here today along with April Ager-White and Diana Yoon. I’m looking forward to our meeting later this afternoon. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Mr. Andrew Dowie: I’d like to welcome two incredible guests. Evan Cameron, my former OLIP intern, is here today with the Canadian Nuclear Isotope Council. And the great mayor of the city of Windsor, Drew Dilkens, is here at Queen’s Park today.

MPP Lise Vaugeois: I have two people I would like to welcome—first, Liane Boyer, the mother of Lily McLean, our wonderful page from Thunder Bay.

I’m looking forward to meeting with you and having lunch later.

I’d also like to welcome Willy Noiles, who wears many hats and is also a representative of the Ontario Network of Injured Workers Groups.

I’m glad to see you, Willy.

MPP Kristyn Wong-Tam: I’d like to add my voice to the chorus of welcomes, to the very special delegation that has brought Mr. Mark Golding and his party to the Legislature of Ontario. This was done through the hard work of the Friends of Jamaica committee.

I want to recognize Sharon Abrahams, Norma Telfer, Angelina Williams, Michelle Meghie, as well as local media who has accompanied them—their work is also critical in making sure that the announcements and the voices of Jamaica reach the local community here in Ontario.

I want to welcome Anthony Joseph from Caribbean Camera, Natasha Von Castle, and our dear friend Masani Montague from Rastafest and Studio M.

Mr. Terence Kernaghan: It gives me great pleasure to welcome the Canadian Bankers Association, including Anthony Ostler, Angelina Mason, Andrew Ross, Dan Ouimet, Nick Colosimo, Monika Farias, Alanna Sokic, Gary Clement, Alex Phillips, Virginia Clarke, and Thi Tran. I’m very much looking forward to the anti-scam alliance round table, and I know you’ll be watching the fall economic statement carefully.

Mrs. Jennifer (Jennie) Stevens: I’d be remiss if I didn’t address Willy Noiles. He’s part of my riding association.

Thank you for all the work you do.

And thank you to the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada for being here this morning.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): I, too, am very pleased to welcome a special guest, a former member of this Legislature, in the west public gallery, who served as the member for Kitchener Centre in the 42nd and 43rd Parliaments: Laura Mae Lindo.

Welcome back. It’s great to see you.

Question Period

Government’s record

Ms. Marit Stiles: This question is for the Premier.

People in Ontario are working harder than ever and paying more than ever for rent, for mortgages, for groceries, for heat and hydro. While they try to make every single dollar stretch, the least they can expect is a government that’s going to put every dollar to work for them, building homes, hiring doctors and fixing schools. But for the six years that this Conservative government has been in power, people have watched their tax dollars go to insider schemes and big corporations instead of those basics.

So my question is, why should any hard-working Ontarian believe that today’s economic statement is going to make their lives better when this Premier has only ever put his insiders first?

Hon. Doug Ford: Mr. Speaker, I find it so ironic, coming from the opposition that voted against every tax cut that we’ve done.

As a matter of fact, we’re the only government in recent memory that has never raised a tax. We reduced the tax. We reduced the tax when it comes to vehicle registration stickers. We reduced the tax on the 412 and 418—we got rid of the tolls. And the One Fare is saving people $1,600 a year, travelling back and forth. We reduced the gas tax by 10.7 cents, saving families up to $380, on average, every single year.

We’re finally putting back into people’s pockets, rather than the government’s.

Every single person is going to get a $200 rebate cheque so that they can stimulate the economy. They can go out and maybe buy their kids a pair of sneakers; go out for dinner.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): The supplementary question.

Ms. Marit Stiles: You’ve cut services. You’ve introduced user fees.

Life is harder and more expensive for Ontarians than it has ever been today in the province.

People are stuck—they’re stuck waiting for a doctor, waiting for a home they can afford, waiting for someone in power to do something for them.

Today’s economic statement could take steps to expand truly affordable housing, to put more doctors in our communities, to get lead pipes out of our kids’ schools. Instead, people are going to see billions—billions—of their tax dollars go to private spa companies and private health companies and anyone else with a connection to this Conservative Party.

Why do the Premier’s insiders get billions while working people get a one-off cheque and a pat on the head?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Members will please take their seats.

The Premier.

Hon. Doug Ford: Speaker, let’s just review the past week.

There are so many families who want to have a child and they can’t. We’ve put a massive tax credit in for IVF. That’s going to help over 20,000 families.

Mr. Speaker, we announced Learn and Stay for medical students—if they stay in the area for five years, we pay for their medical school.

We got rid of the 20% of foreign students coming in, taking our kids’ medical seats. Now it’s going to be 100% Canadian, 95% Ontario—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Opposition, come to order.

Hon. Doug Ford: Then we announced we’re going to end congestion. We’re getting rid of the bike lanes in Toronto and across Ontario because only one—

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Thank you.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): The House will come to order.

The final supplementary.

Ms. Marit Stiles: The truth is, today, that life under this government, after six long years, is harder, is more expensive than it has ever been before, and Ontarians know that.

They know what this $200 cheque is. They know it’s a bid to win them over before an election, and they’re not going to fall for it. They also know what this cheque is not—it is not a solution to the affordability crisis; it’s not going to build the affordable homes people need, and it sure won’t get them a family doctor. It’s not going to leave them in a better place next month.

Speaker, will this fall economic statement give Ontarians what they paid for, or will they get more headaches instead of homes, delays instead of doctors, and schemes instead of schools?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Members will please take their seats.

Premier.

Hon. Doug Ford: Mr. Speaker, let’s reverse: Six years ago when their party, the NDP, and the Liberals, chased 300,000 jobs out of this province, they were leaving in droves—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Independent members, come to order.

Hon. Doug Ford: —talk about life being more affordable. There are over 860,000—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Government side come to order.

Hon. Doug Ford: Let me repeat that: 860,000 people are collecting a bigger paycheque because they have a better job under our administration.

We’re going to continue looking at ways to put money back into people’s pockets.

The NDP and the Liberals believe in one thing: tax, tax, tax. Leave the province. Take your business down south.

We take a different approach. We have seen over $70 billion of investment come to Ontario. We’re an economic powerhouse around the world now, not just in Canada. We created 43,000 jobs last month. And 95% of all the jobs in Canada last month were created here—165,000 this year alone—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): The member for Hamilton Mountain will come to order. The member for Ottawa South will come to order. The Minister of Transportation will come to order.

The next question.

Home care

Ms. Marit Stiles: This is the same government that drove health care workers by the thousands out of this province because they tried to freeze their pay just when we needed them more than ever. So that’s a bit rich.

People deserve a government that works just as hard as they do—one that puts their tax dollars to work making their life easier, not more difficult. But after six long years of this Premier and his costly schemes and all his scandals, people are not getting what they paid for.

Just look at health care: Under the Conservatives, fewer people have a doctor. Hallway medicine is worse than it has ever been—even under the Liberals, my goodness. And there’s a shortage of medical supplies for people who are relying on home care. It has been over a month—how many people are still facing these shortages today?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Members will please take their seats.

Premier.

Hon. Doug Ford: Mr. Speaker, let’s talk about health care.

When we walked in, hallway health care—a bankrupt system in the health care system.

We have spent $33 billion more, total $85 billion: 80,000—let me repeat that, 80,000—new nurses, 12,500 new doctors, 3,500 new acute-care beds, and we’re adding another 3,000 because we’re building 50 new hospitals or additions to hospitals with $50 billion. That’s what we’re doing.

We brought Dr. Philpott on side to make sure that not only are we leading the country with a connection of Ontario citizens to family physicians—we don’t think that’s good enough, because we only have 88%; we’re going to fill that 12% gap. We’re putting money towards health care like it has never been before.

Just call the CEOs of any hospital in Ontario and ask them, “Are you getting more support under this government or under the NDP”—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): The Premier will take his seat.

The member for Ottawa Centre will come to order. The member for Ottawa South will come to order. The Minister of Transportation will come to order.

Supplementary question.

Ms. Marit Stiles: Well, the proof is in the pudding, right? Under the Liberals, a thousand people a day were being treated in hallways in our hospitals. Today, that number is doubled under this government—great job.

They had one job to do: get medical supplies to vulnerable home care patients—just one little thing they had to do. They couldn’t get it done.

Providing health care is a basic function of a provincial government. It is the right of every single Ontarian. But to this Premier, health care is just another opportunity for his insiders to make a buck—that’s the truth—while everybody else gets left to fend for themselves, risking infection, injury, worse. They’re left trying to source essential medical supplies on Amazon, for goodness’ sake.

So my question is, are these patients supposed to wait for their $200 cheque to buy their own medical supplies, or is this Premier going to fix the mess?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Members will please take their seats.

Premier.

Hon. Doug Ford: Mr. Speaker, is the Leader of the Opposition calling the 12,500 doctors and the 80,000 nurses we registered “insiders”? Because they’re the people coming on board—or the 30,000 students, or the $546 million that we’re connecting over 600,000 people to primary care.

Mr. Speaker, the number one priority is always health care, and right beside it is the economy and making sure we have the proper infrastructure, which we’re doing. We’re building the 413. We’re building the Bradford Bypass. We’re building the 401 east. We’re putting money into hospitals, putting money into schools—over $16 billion we’ve invested in the budget in schools alone.

Mr. Speaker, we’re rebuilding Ontario from the disaster that we ended up getting when we landed in 2018. I call it the bankrupt province—it’s no longer bankrupt. People around the world are—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Thank you.

The member for Sudbury will come to order. The Minister of Red Tape Reduction will come to order.

Final supplementary.

Ms. Marit Stiles: Well, Speaker, I’m not sure that anyone who’s going without a pain pump or diabetes equipment is going to take comfort in that response from their Premier. As a first priority, people want the supplies they need to keep themselves and their family healthy. Then, they want answers to how this was allowed to happen.

We know that Bayshore health’s lobbyist just happens to be the president of the PC Party of Ontario. So I want to know from this Premier—maybe that’s why he’s not rushing to fix this mess. Is that why that company got this sweetheart, insider deal with Ontario Health atHome? And shouldn’t that contract require them to actually deliver the supplies?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Order. Order. The members will please take their seats. Order.

The response, the Deputy Premier and Minister of Health.

Hon. Sylvia Jones: The members opposite can throw accusations. We’ll get things done.

As soon as we heard that there were distribution issues, we understood that we had to assist, and we immediately started working with Ontario Health atHome. We have special assistance teams with this vendor to make sure that people get the critical medical supplies and medications they need. We know it is unacceptable for people who are living at home and needing these supplies to have any delays.

In addition, we have ensured that any individual who went out and purchased necessary supplies can get those supplies reimbursed. Over 80% of those cheques are already being distributed. We know that we had to take action to ensure that people get the services they need.

But I have to look at the budget increase that we’ve had in home care in the province of Ontario—last year alone, a 10% increase in people accessing home care. We are—

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Thank you.

The next question.

Government spending

Ms. Catherine Fife: My question is for the Premier.

People across this province are struggling and they are hurting. Their rents are higher. They can’t find a family doctor. Kids in our schools are learning in classrooms with leaky roofs, with garbage pails catching the water. Ontario has become a have-not province.

Today’s fall economic statement gives this government an opportunity to right those wrongs and course-correct in a major way.

To the Premier: Will today’s fall economic statement show a government that is willing to invest in the promise of this province—because this province could be such an amazing place for everybody, not just for the insiders—or should we expect more stale ideas, beer promises and bribes from this government?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): The House will come to order. I think I can handle this. I appreciate the interventions of the members, but I think I can handle it.

I’m going to ask the member to withdraw her unparliamentary comment.

Ms. Catherine Fife: Withdraw.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): To reply, the Minister of Finance.

Hon. Peter Bethlenfalvy: Just take a look at what we’re doing in this province. We’re rebuilding the economy, we’re strengthening our health care, we’re tackling gridlock, we’re building infrastructure for our growing communities, and, yes, we are balancing the budget.

The Premier got up earlier and talked about how we’re building this economy. Mr. Speaker, if you look, since 2018, the economy has grown by over $300 billion, to $1.1 trillion. That’s good for workers. That’s good for families. That’s good for businesses. They’re able to put food on the table. They’re able to feel good about themselves. They’re growing this province. And we’re doing it together, under the leadership of this Premier, with all my caucus colleagues.

I’m looking forward to saying more this afternoon, in the fall economic statement.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Supplementary question?

Ms. Catherine Fife: Balancing a budget on the backs of the most vulnerable in the province of Ontario is nothing to brag about.

Under this government, taxpayers are not getting what they paid for. The government is failing at the very basics: education, health care, affordability, compassion.

Our public services are facing a shortfall of $13.1 billion over the next three years.

This government is consumed with their schemes, their scandals, their fantasy tunnels. They are completely disconnected from the problems of everyday people in this province.

Election cheques won’t make up for the fact that the cost to put a roof over your head has skyrocketed under this Premier.

To the Premier: Will today’s balance sheet show taxpayers how much of their money is allocated to these pandering schemes at the expense of public services like health care?

Hon. Peter Bethlenfalvy: There you have it, Mr. Speaker: They’re against putting taxpayer money back in their pockets. They’re against families. They’re against businesses. They’re against building this economy. But it’s no surprise; there isn’t a tax that they haven’t loved, a fee that they haven’t wanted to increase.

We cut the gas tax again, helping families and businesses right across the province.

Their party just up the road—they support an increase to the carbon tax. They’re taking money out of businesses’ pockets. They’re taking money out of people’s pockets. That’s their solution.

I think people are tired of the solutions coming from that opposition. They’re supporting this party and our plan to build this province, support workers and support families.

Manufacturing sector

Mr. Ernie Hardeman: My question is to the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade.

Good-paying jobs that were lost under the Liberals are being brought back to the province. The Liberals turned their backs on southwestern Ontario, and hard-working families had to pay the price. Under their watch, factories closed, jobs were lost, and our manufacturing capacity was hollowed out. But now our government has created the conditions for job growth in every region of the province.

Over the summer, I joined the minister to welcome important manufacturing investments that will benefit the families in my riding and across the region.

Can the minister please share with this House some of the investments that have been made in Oxford?

Hon. Victor Fedeli: Yes, I can share what has happened in Oxford. They are a manufacturing powerhouse. Some $93 million in new manufacturing has landed in Oxford. Vuteq Canada, automotive parts manufacturer—$40-million investment, 145 new jobs. Trans-Mit Steel—$23-million investment, 17 new jobs. Armtec, a great company in Tillsonburg—$27 million to build a brand new facility. MTO Metal Products, a manufacturer of custom metal parts—$2.5-million investment, 16 new jobs.

Speaker, these are all investments that are creating great-paying jobs for the hard-working families of Oxford. They’re all here because we’ve lowered the cost of business by $8 billion annually. And these jobs are part of the 860,000 new jobs we’ve created in Ontario.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Supplementary. The member for Mississauga–Malton.

Mr. Deepak Anand: Speaker, in 2023, Ontario created more manufacturing jobs than all 50 US states combined. Our manufacturing sector that was crushed under the Liberals is thriving again.

It is a contrasting tale of two leaderships. The Liberals were content with watching goods that were once made in Ontario moving out. In constrast, our government, under the leadership of Premier Ford, has created the conditions to restore Ontario’s manufacturing might.

To all the job creators: If you’re looking for a place to invest, Ontario is that place.

Over the summer, I joined the minister to welcome an important investment in Mississauga.

It’s such refreshing news that the good-paying jobs are being created right here in the province of Ontario.

Can the minister please provide this Legislature an update on any other investments and expansions that are happening right here in the province of Ontario?

Hon. Victor Fedeli: We are seeing job-creating investments in every single part of our province.

Speaker, we were in Mississauga–Malton with the member as we cut the ribbon at First Choice Beverage. They are a Canadian producer of juice and dairy alternative products. They’re investing $50 million to boost their manufacturing capacity at their Mississauga facility, creating 20 new, good-paying jobs along the way.

With the member from Kitchener–Conestoga, we turned the sod at Golden Windows. This is a $30-million investment. They’re an Ontario-based manufacturer of windows and doors. They’re building a 240,000-square-foot facility in Kitchener, adding 50 new, good-paying jobs.

Speaker, we’ve supported 135 projects, leveraged $1.9 billion in new investment, and helped create 3,500 new jobs.

Health care

M me France Gélinas: Ma question est pour la ministre de la Santé.

Palliative care physicians from all over the province are still reaching out to me about the crisis in home care medical supplies. The minister’s decision to hand off the last mile of medical supplies delivery to Bayshore is leaving palliative care patients in pain. It is also hurting small businesses, who for years have been handling medical supplies delivery to their communities, to their neighbours, and they all lost their contracts. This decision is bad for patients. It is bad for small businesses.

Speaker, how could this minister make a worse decision for home care patients and small businesses?

Hon. Sylvia Jones: While the member opposite and her party were voting down every single investment that we were making in home care in the province of Ontario—they were voting against it. We have increased home care capacity in the province of Ontario.

Yes, absolutely, it’s unacceptable that people cannot get their medical supplies and necessary medications on time. But we have acted quickly to ensure that Ontario Health atHome—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Opposition, come to order.

Hon. Sylvia Jones: —embeds themselves into that vendor to make sure that they get the necessary supplies, prioritizing palliative care patients, prioritizing people who need those necessary pieces of equipment. And we are seeing improvements. But I am not going to apologize for something that the vendor has done. We need to make sure that today, right now, it is focused on the patient and making sure that they get those supplies. We’ll continue to do that work.

And I hope that the next time we expand home care in the province of Ontario, your party—

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Thank you.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Order. The member for St. Catharines, come to order. The member for Windsor West, come to order.

The member for Nickel Belt, supplementary.

M me France Gélinas: I’m glad the minister recognizes that this crisis in home care is her responsibility.

There are other crises in health care.

A year ago, Catherine from Cornwall had her prescription renewed for a full year because her doctor was retiring and he knew full well that a walk-in clinic would not renew it. She has spent the last 11 months trying to find a doctor with no success. Ask the MPP for Stormont–Dundas–South Glengarry; he knows all about it.

My constituent Yvon died of cardiac arrest last spring at the age of 60, two years after retirement. Yvon’s doctor retired in 2020. His wife, Stasha, is absolutely certain that he would still be there if he had had access to a family doctor.

Will the minister admit today that she has also created the crisis in primary care?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Members will please take their seats.

Hon. Sylvia Jones: In the 2023 budget, we invested a billion dollars in home care—you voted against. In the 2024 budget, we invested $2 billion in home care, which you voted against. Our additional investments mean that over 700,000 people are now accessing home care in the province of Ontario who were unable to prior.

You will hear in today’s financial economic statement an investment and expansion of a Learn and Stay program that has been incredibly successful for nurses, for our northern Ontario paramedics, for lab techs. We’re now expanding that program to physicians who choose to study family medicine in the province of Ontario.

The investments that we are making, whether it is in the short term, the long term or in the medium term, mean that, finally, we have a government and a Premier who is investing the necessary money to ensure that our home care and our health care is there for the people who need it across Ontario.

Taxation

Mr. David Smith: My question is to the Minister of Transportation.

Costs keep rising in Ontario in terms of groceries, gas—everything is more expensive, and the Trudeau-Crombie carbon tax is making it worse.

Our government has not raised taxes, and we are working to keep costs down for families.

The previous Liberal government raised taxes year after year after year. They raised taxes on everything.

Unlike the Liberals and the NDP, our government believes that we should work to make life easier for the people of Ontario.

Can the minister please share what our government is doing to help put money back in people’s pockets?

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): The member for Hastings–Lennox and Addington, parliamentary assistant.

Mr. Ric Bresee: Thank you to the member for that question.

Our government is focused on making life easier for the people of Ontario. Whether it’s building new transit and highways to make it easier to get around or taking steps to save people money, we are focused on ensuring that Ontario remains one of the best places to live, work and raise a family.

The previous government’s record is clear. They introduced a provincial carbon tax. They raised fees on drivers’ licences. They raised fees on Drive Clean. And they raised the gas tax, making it more expensive to fill your tank.

Our government has taken a different approach. We cut the provincial carbon tax. We froze drivers’ licence fees. We removed the fee on the Drive Clean program. And we have cut the gas tax by over 10 cents a litre.

Speaker, our PC government, under the leadership of this Premier, will continue to put more money back in people’s pockets and save families money.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): The supplementary question.

Mr. David Smith: Thank you to the parliamentary assistant for his answer.

Our government needs to make life easier for families and business in Ontario. But when families need help, Bonnie Crombie and the Liberals keep voting against saving people money. They are out of touch, elite and expensive. When they were in power, they ignored Ontarians.

I know the Premier and our government are taking action to save people money.

Can the parliamentary assistant share more about what our government is doing to make life more affordable for people in Ontario?

Mr. Ric Bresee: Thank you again to my friend from Scarborough Centre.

It’s disappointing that the Liberals and the NDP refuse to support common-sense solutions to make life more affordable. They voted against the One Fare program. They voted against removing double fares for transit riders between GO Transit and local transit agencies. The One Fare program saves the average commuter $1,600 per year. When she was mayor of Mississauga, Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie raised Mississauga transit fares for students, for adults and for seniors.

Speaker, the difference couldn’t be more clear. We’re standing up to save families money. The NDP and the Liberals want to make life more expensive.

My colleague is right; the Liberals and the NDP could not be more out of touch.

We’re the only party fighting to keep costs down for the people of Ontario.

Government advertising

Ms. Chandra Pasma: While our kids are in schools with floods, crumbling ceilings and lead in the drinking water, this government is forcing school boards to print and post signs at schools promoting the government. They’re even making school boards pay for the signs with funds that could be going to fix the schools or, you know, getting the lead out of the drinking water.

How can the Minister of Education justify this scenario to taxpayers, who expect their money to go to safe and healthy schools for our kids, rather than to self-promotion by a government in trouble?

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): To reply, the member for Markham–Unionville and parliamentary assistant.

Mr. Billy Pang: I thank the member for the question.

My ministry consistently allocates almost $1.4 billion each year to school boards to renew and improve their school facilities. These investments are making a difference on the ground in schools—such as HVAC improvements, roof repairs, and renewal of building electrical and plumbing systems.

Unfortunately, while we were making the necessary improvements in schools, boards were not even spending all the money we were giving them, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars being carried forward each year. This practice was not a good use of our tax dollars, and as a result, we had to introduce time limits for spending school renewal allocations.

The members of the opposition should be thanking us for ensuring that taxpayer money is now being used efficiently rather than defending fiscal waste—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Opposition, come to order.

Mr. Billy Pang: We are ensuring that our public dollars are being used efficiently, while also ensuring that students can continue to learn in a safe and secure setting.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Supplementary question?

Ms. Chandra Pasma: This isn’t the first time we’ve seen such incredible disrespect from this government. Last year, the Auditor General criticized the Minister of Education for spending over $4 million in taxpayer dollars on partisan ads. According to the Auditor General, these ads put forward claims that lacked context or evidence. The government spent this money while kids didn’t have mental health supports, education assistants, or even teachers.

Why does this government constantly think they can use public money for self-promotion instead of where Ontario residents want to see it go—towards supporting our kids?

Mr. Amarjot Sandhu: My colleague has explained that it is not a new requirement to have Ontario Builds signs on capital projects like new schools and renovations. But what the member opposite failed to mention is that these are the same school boards that spent $38,000 on Blue Jays games. They wasted $145,000 on a lavish trip to Italy.

The opposition party can play politics on the issue, but what we are focused on is building schools. We’re focused on building child care spaces.

I want to thank the Minister of Education for announcing two new schools in my riding of Brampton West.

We’re focused on making investments. We’re focused on building medical schools. We’re focused on building hospitals.

Do you know what these blue signs mean? These blue signs mean we’re making investments.

Health care

Mr. Ted Hsu: We hear countless stories from the 2.5 million Ontarians this government has left without a family doctor.

Two constituents in Kingston and the Islands who served with the Canadian Forces were left with no family doctor when they finished their service. One is a teacher who was sent overseas for a two-year posting and, when they returned, couldn’t get re-rostered with their local clinic anymore. Another is a discharged CF member who has mental health complications, uses walk-in clinics, but struggles with having to explain their mental health history over and over again every time they see a new doctor.

I ask this government, why is this okay?

Will the minister make a way for people who have served with the military to have family doctors when they finish serving their country?

Hon. Sylvia Jones: The member opposite raises an important issue, and I’m happy to take that away and see what we can do. But I also have to ask him to look in the mirror.

Look at your party’s history. You were a party that cut 50 medical seats, which now means that almost 350 physicians who could have been trained in the province of Ontario are not here.

Do a compare and contrast. While you were cutting medical seats while you were in government—we have expanded. We’ve expanded medical seats in every single medical school in the province of Ontario—almost doubling them in the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. We have now announced, and next September we will have, a medical school in the city of Brampton.

The contrast between what you did while your party was in government and what we have been able to do in six short years and will continue to do with the announcement now, and ensuring that Dr. Philpott is leading primary care expansion in the province, that’s getting—

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Thank you. Supplementary question.

Mr. Ted Hsu: This doesn’t have to be so partisan.

I once attended a dinner to recruit a New York family doctor to Kingston. What might they have heard? Well, OHIP billing hasn’t paid for inflated costs. And then, this government lowballed doctors during the latest fee negotiations, making an offer the arbitrator called “completely unrealistic.” What else did they hear? Well, the system makes doctors spend hours phoning around their networks, begging specialists to take their patients, handling the deluge of faxes on meds checks or minor ailments, or tracking down a missing fax the hospital sent to the MPP’s home phone by mistake.

This New York doctor might have been swayed by the 5,000 Ontario family doctors who walked away from family medicine.

Why won’t this government just fix the system and get more family doctors for the 2.5 million who don’t have one?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Stop the clock.

I’m sure that’s an interesting conversation under way between the member for Ottawa South and the Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development, but question period is still under way, and I’d ask them to wait until after question period is over, perhaps, to continue the conversation.

Start the clock.

The Minister of Health to reply.

Hon. Sylvia Jones: With the greatest of respect—the member opposite just admitted what hadn’t been done in the previous Liberal government.

Yes, we are absolutely dealing with this. We have been seized with it since Premier Ford came into office. Expansion of medical schools; expansion of seats; expansion to ensure that our residency students who want to practise in Ontario, who want to have a seat in Ontario, will now have that as a result of this afternoon’s fall economic statement—we are absolutely getting this done.

Frankly, if the two parties opposite had actually done their planning and work, we would not be in this position and we would not have to be rebuilding the way we’ve had to.

Infrastructure funding

Mr. Logan Kanapathi: My question is for the Minister of Infrastructure.

Across Ontario, we know there is a housing crisis. Communities are growing. Young people, families, and new Ontarians all need places to call home. But building homes is only part of the answer. We also need the right infrastructure to support those homes—roads, schools, and especially water systems—because without the proper water and waste water infrastructure, new housing cannot happen. It is one thing to approve housing, but it’s another one to ensure those houses have the infrastructure they need.

Can the minister please update the Legislature on what our government is doing to ensure municipalities have the water systems in place to support new housing?

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): The member for Brampton West and parliamentary assistant can reply for the government.

Mr. Amarjot Sandhu: Thank you to the member for the question.

I’m very honoured to have the opportunity to rise in the Legislature this morning to speak about what our government is doing to accelerate housing starts, particularly with our Housing-Enabling Water Systems Fund.

Our government was re-elected with an even larger mandate on the commitment that we would get housing and infrastructure built. Through the Housing-Enabling Water Systems Fund, we are doing just that. Our $970-million investment for water and waste water is paving the way for all municipalities all over the province—and we hear the good news every day.

For those municipalities that haven’t applied yet, I have got good news for you: The second intake of applications is currently open; the deadline to apply is 4:59 p.m. on November 1, 2024. If your municipality wants to build, our government will stand side by side with them, get shovels in the ground and get it done.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Supplementary question?

Mr. Logan Kanapathi: Thank you to the parliamentary assistant for the response.

In every part of our province, we see the need for more homes. We know that our communities are ready to grow, and we know that they need the right support to make it happen. Local leaders are telling us they are ready to build and people are eager to move in.

But we know that building homes is only one part of the plan. Without the right funding for the essential infrastructure, they are limited in what they can do. Water and waste water systems are not just extras; they are necessities for any new home to get built. This funding can make all the difference, bringing jobs and homes to these communities.

Would the parliamentary assistant please share how this funding is impacting local economies and helping municipalities keep housing costs low?

Mr. Amarjot Sandhu: Thank you to the member for that supplementary question.

Minister Surma and Premier Ford had the privilege of spending their busy summer travelling across Ontario, seeing first-hand how this funding will positively benefit municipalities and Ontarians.

Just this past Monday, Premier Ford announced $34.9 million in funding, which will help build over 3,300 homes in Greater Sudbury. We know these actions get results, and so does Mayor Lefebvre of Sudbury, who told our government, “This $35-million” investment “is a truly historic infrastructure investment in Greater Sudbury—the largest one-time funding commitment we have ever received from the province.”

When Minister Surma was in Vaughan to announce $35 million which will support the construction of 20,000 homes, former Liberal leader and current Vaughan mayor Steven Del Duca said, “We are in the midst of a housing affordability crisis, and this is an all-hands-on-deck moment for all leaders. I look forward to continuing to work with the provincial government to build a bright future.”

Speaker, what every municipality that received funding had in common was these municipalities want to build—

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Thank you.

The next question.

Missing persons

Miss Monique Taylor: My question is for the Premier.

It has been over two weeks since Logan went missing from his home in Havelock-Belmont-Methuen—a vulnerable, autistic 18-year-old who has other needs, including ADHD and anxiety.

Over a year and a half ago, I stood in this House and introduced a critical and vital private member’s bill: Bill 74, Missing Persons Amendment Act. Bill 74 is at the Standing Committee on Justice Policy, stalled with no action. It has been there since March.

Premier, when are you going to bring back Bill 74, pass it, and help missing persons like Logan be located close to home?

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): The government House leader.

Mr. Steve Clark: Through you, Speaker, to the member: I understand private members’ bills can be a bit of a frustrating process.

I had a question the other day from the member from Carleton, and I quoted a stat that, when I first came into the Legislature in 2010, I was told: that, since Confederation—

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Order.

Mr. Steve Clark: If the member will allow me to answer her question—when I was first here, I was told by legislative research that, since Confederation, about 3% of private members’ bills actually make it into legislation.

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Order.

Mr. Steve Clark: If the member will allow me to answer—I’ve had private members’ bills pass. I’ve been pretty lucky, because I made a decision that, rather than playing politics on the floor about standing committees, I’d actually roll up my sleeves, walk across the floor and talk to the minister involved and ask how we can work together. I was successful. I made some decisions.

I say to the member, you can make those same decisions.

The Speaker (Hon.