role="main" class="main-container container js-quickedit-main-content" id="main-content">

March 31, 2021

42nd Parliament, 1st Session

< Previous sitting day

Next sitting day >

Hansard Transcripts

Votes and Proceedings

Orders and Notices

Hansard Transcript 2021-Mar-31 (PDF)

L242 - Wed 31 Mar 2021 / Mer 31 mar 2021

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE DE L’ONTARIO

Wednesday 31 March 2021 Mercredi 31 mars 2021

Orders of the Day

2021 Ontario budget

Members’ Statements

Mental health and addiction services

Organ donation

COVID-19 response

Public transit

COVID-19 immunization

Organ donation

Hospital funding

Social assistance

Organ donation

School facilities

Question Period

COVID-19 response

COVID-19 response

COVID-19 response

Long-term care

COVID-19 immunization

Hospital funding

Tourism and hospitality industry

Immunisation contre la COVID-19 / COVID-19 immunization

Education funding

Climate change

Caregivers

Taxation

University funding

City of Ottawa

COVID-19 immunization

Deferred Votes

Support Workers Pay Act, 2021 / Loi de 2021 sur la rémunération des préposés aux services de soutien

Reports by Committees

Standing Committee on General Government

Standing Committee on Justice Policy

Standing Committee on Regulations and Private Bills

Introduction of Bills

Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care Amendment Act (Advanced Glucose Monitoring Devices), 2021 / Loi de 2021 modifiant la

Loi sur le ministère de la Santé et des Soins de longue durée (appareils et accessoires avancés de surveillance de la glycémie)

Endometriosis Awareness Month Act, 2021 / Loi de 2021 sur le mois de sensibilisation à l’endométriose

Petitions

Education funding

Orders of the Day

Protecting the People of Ontario Act (Budget Measures), 2021 / Loi de 2021 visant à protéger la population ontarienne (mesures budgétaires)

2021 Ontario budget / Budget de l’Ontario de 2021

Protecting the People of Ontario Act (Budget Measures), 2021 / Loi de 2021 visant à protéger la population ontarienne (mesures budgétaires)

The House met at 0900.

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

Prayers.

Orders of the Day

2021 Ontario budget

Resuming the debate adjourned on March 24, 2021, on the motion that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government.

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

Ms. Catherine Fife: Good morning. I just want to let the House know I have asthma and I have an allergic reaction to masks, so I have been coughing a little bit, but I am totally healthy. I never thought I would start off a finance and budget speech like that, and I think that that’s a testament to where we are as a province.

I also just want to get it on the record because yesterday we saw 2,336 cases and, continuing with the theme of the variants and the race with vaccines, it is disturbing to see the trend of how the variants are affecting the population of this province. In the 60-plus age group, there were 383 cases; between the ages of 40 and 59, 664; between the ages of 20 and 39, 789 cases; and under 20, almost 500 cases. So this is a very different pandemic, and we would argue that it required a very different pandemic budget to respond to the changing circumstances that the province now finds itself in.

We can debate about why we are here, we can debate about where money was not invested and we can debate about what actually worked, but the facts remain: We are now at six days solid of over 2,000 cases per day. I think we can all agree that we are trending in the wrong direction.

I try to start off in a positive manner, because people need to know that hope is on the horizon, and so I’m going to start off with a story from an essential worker who reached out to me just yesterday. Her name is Kerry Townson, and she gave me permission to share her story with the House this morning in the context of the vaccine investment that’s needed in Ontario. It reads as follows:

“As an essential caregiver for my aunt in Brantford, I received my first dose of the vaccine on February 18, 2021. Brierwood retirement and long-term care booked both first and second doses at the same time.

“After checking with Brierwood before my scheduled dose, they assured me that the second dose would be available. I took time off work and drove to Brantford on March 25 only to be turned away. Brierwood was never informed and was inundated with caregivers arriving who had been turned away at the hospital.

“The hospital was told that public health was to inform all caregivers. Unfortunately, this did not happen. I have forwarded you the email that I received two days after my scheduled appointment.” How disorganized is this?

“Also, as an essential caregiver, why would second doses be rescheduled (my second dose is now June 17, 2021)? All residents and health care workers at Brierwood had their second doses about three to four weeks ago. What about the essential caregivers who are doing the same work as PSWs?”

She goes on to say, “I do not understand these flip-flopping directives from the province and am very dismayed about the lack of communication.

“If you have any follow-up information, I would appreciate it. If not, I appreciate your efforts on behalf of Waterloo residents.” This was a Brantford resident who had reached out.

I have to say, we were encouraged that there is almost $1 billion in the budget for the vaccine rollout. This is a good step that the government has taken. We need the vaccine rollout to be working.

Yesterday, I sat in my place in this House and I asked the Minister of Health—I actually asked the Premier, but the question was answered, or not answered, by the Minister of Health. I referenced that Waterloo region is not getting its fair share per capita, based on the provincial formula. We were supposed to have received 89,000 doses of the vaccine; we have only received 66,000. All we are asking of the government, and the health table I guess, is to ensure that the province follows their own rules and their own directives, Mr. Speaker. So I tried to put that on the radar of the Minister of Health yesterday. She in turn blamed the federal government.

On the vaccine rollout, there really cannot be this pointing fingers at the federal and the provincial. Everybody has to take ownership for their responsibility. The question that I asked the Minister of Health yesterday was very clear and very simple: You have the vaccines. They are in Ontario. They are in freezers. Who is making the decisions about who gets what and when, or how much and when?

Waterloo region should be classified as a priority community because of our diverse and marginalized populations. Myself and my counterpart the member for Kitchener Centre have raised this now for almost a full year, around collecting race-based data, tracking cases, really understanding how the virus was spreading during that first and that second wave.

As I started off my comments this morning, we are dealing now with a very different pandemic, so that approach and that strategy obviously have to change. Given what we have heard now from front-line doctors—I know the government is very selective about who they listen to, but certainly Dr. Warner yesterday made a very compelling point about ICUs.

Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t people in this Legislature who don’t take science into account. There was a former PC member—he now sits over here on this side of the House; incredibly disruptive to the people of this province by sharing information that does not bode well for the successful rollout of the vaccine. It does not instill confidence.

I want to go back to this point of confidence in knowing that the government is doing everything it can. Today, I believe, is General Hillier’s last day on the vaccine strategy committee. There are now two new deputy ministers who have been appointed to that. One would hope, Mr. Speaker, that those two individuals have experience with community public health. I hope that they do. I think the community public health piece has thus far been missing.

I also think, and I hope the government would agree, that the rollout with the 34 different public health units is not going equally. It is not being rolled out in the very same way, because those public health units have different capacities. But, on a positive note, the money that’s in this budget for vaccines is a good first step.

On Monday, I spoke to the actual budget bill, Bill 269, and the 10 schedules that are in the budget. I specifically focused on

schedule 10, but it is worth noting that in the budget bill there are 10 schedules, which deal with credit unions, the Electricity Act, financial professionals, Invest Ontario, the Insurance Act, the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, the Ontario Loan Act and then the Taxation Act.

In the Taxation Act, it is worth noting that the government has included as their strategy to get more women into the workforce—because we all know at this point in time that women have borne the brunt of this pandemic. The research and the evidence is very clear. The government had this in hand prior to crafting this budget, and yet, what did women in Ontario get from this government? They got a task force. I’m going to say that I would put the task force aside, because we actually already have many of the answers, and I would just direct you to the YWCA Ontario brief, An Equitable, Gender-Responsive Budget.

Instead of offering a tax credit top-up of $250 for a child care space that doesn’t exist—it’s not going to be helpful to women who are trying to re-enter the workforce or to women who are trying to retrain, because the data shows us that over 200,000 people in this province have been out of work for over 27 weeks. This is significant because it creates what economists call a scarring effect, where there is reticence and reluctance and real barriers to re-entering the workforce.

But what does the budget do? The budget promises an Ontario retraining tax credit, but it’s tied to a federal tax credit for retraining. I would argue, and folks have told us this, that by tying it to a federal tax credit training program, you’re actually putting up another barrier. Why should women have to go through the federal tax training credit in order to qualify for the provincial? Why not take ownership and take a step back and say, “Listen, we don’t want to set up any more barriers for women to re-enter the workforce”?

Why have them go through another administrative hoop to qualify for something that the province is going to try to offer? Why not actually simplify and streamline it, and not intentionally put up another barrier for women? This makes no sense to us. As the finance critic and I know from the labour critic and from the health critic, we are hearing from women across the province, and they’re saying, “Why are you doing this?” To date, we have received no answers.

The YWCA Ontario, in their briefing document, which I know the government had in hand prior to crafting this budget—I don’t know how you responded to it, because you had a budget consultation process which was behind closed doors. I have argued this on many occasions over the years that if you do not have an open and transparent process, you create legislation which will not meet the needs of the people of this province.

Normally—members will know—the NDP, the Liberals, the Green member and the PC members travel around the province and we all hear the same thing, which is helpful, because if you are trying to respond to a problem, it’s actually very good to have everyone on the same page, or at least having heard the same argument. The government, for the first time in almost 30 years, I believe, chose not to do this. Given our technology and given the fact that we did four months of consultation at SCOFEA last June, July, August and September, the capacity for the government to actually do this was well in hand.

I mean, we know how to consult. We know how to use technology to ensure that it can be an inclusive process. Once again, the government intentionally chose not to go down that route.

The YWCA brief, though, has some very strong recommendations. They say, “To support an equitable, gender-responsive 2021 budget, the YWCA Ontario Coalition recommends the province:

“

(1) Mandate 10 paid sick days immediately.” A made-in-Ontario sick day program: I’m going to touch on that in a little bit.

“

(2) Institute a $4 per hour pandemic pay premium for child care, for shelter and other front-line workers during the pandemic.” These are predominantly female-dominated professions.

“

(3) Invest in the child care sector including increasing base funding and additional investments to prevent non-profit child care closures.” Some 66 child care centres in the province have closed. We were already at such a delicate place with child care. If you’re a parent in the province of Ontario, you have a chance of one in eight of getting a quality child care space that you can afford. This is not the way that you create economic opportunities.

As I’ve said on many occasions pre-pandemic, for every dollar invested in early learning and care, there’s a $7 return on that investment. I would argue that now, in the pandemic, when you’re responding to a market force where women have been excluded from that market, this actually would be more than a $7 return on investment. We’re not going to get the economy up and running again to address the she-covery and the she-cession if women aren’t part of the solution and if women aren’t part of the budget, Mr. Speaker.

The other thing that they have recommended is: “

(5) Support women’s labour market participation by taking a multi-year funding approach for pre-apprentice training programs, creating a specific category for women in Employment Ontario, and targeting women in a concerted manner with a new $115-million skills training fund.

“

(6) Prioritize housing investments to meet Ontario’s affordable and supportive housing needs and offer rent relief provisions.” I think that this pandemic has taught us some very important lessons on housing. Where we work, where we live and how, obviously, in Ontario when you have a growing number of people who have insecure housing—when they’re couch-surfing, that’s qualified as having housing; this runs counter to all health and safety protocols.

They also say, “

(7) Invest in girls’ programming. Currently, there is no provincial funding for girls’ programming at all.” Mr. Speaker, do you know what makes strong women? Strong girls. And there’s certainly a growing body of evidence that demonstrates that girls are left out of many budgets at the municipal, provincial and federal levels.

“

(8) Stabilize enhanced funding for VAW shelters and create a province-wide strategy on gender-based violence.” We heard a lot about this in the budget, Mr. Speaker. To date, though, this government’s record on ensuring that women are safe and that the institutions and the agencies that keep women safe—more and more turn to fundraising. I hope that we can agree that people shouldn’t have to fundraise to keep women safe in the province of Ontario. The pandemic has obviously highlighted—the finance minister referenced this in his comments—that there are increased rates of violence. The response from the government to these agencies has been disappointing, Mr. Speaker.

Finally, their recommendation is: “

(9) Help non-profits at risk of closure through a sector stabilization fund and through greater access to existing funding.” I had a conversation with the Minister of Finance prior to the budget being printed, and I made the point that the not-for-profit sector in Ontario is underutilized. This is a government that wants to accelerate housing, community programming, health and safety initiatives, and child care. The not-for-profit sector is ready, willing and able to respond to that need and to accelerate it, and I do want to point out, as I did to the Minister of Finance, they’re also not big on red tape.

They don’t have time for red tape. They are lean, they are streamlined and they’re ready to get to work. Investing in the not-for-profit sector was a missed opportunity in this budget. There has to be greater transparency when that funding actually gets out into the community, because it can’t be the government picking winners and losers, as we saw with this budget.

So I would highly recommend that the government just go to the YWCA. Meet with Sheila Block, meet with the Council of Canadians—what’s it called, Peggy? The Canadian council? They actually have a report that’s ready to go, so don’t take a step backwards and study what barriers exist for women across the province for a year. Let’s get it done now. Quite honestly—hopefully, we’ll get the chance—we’ll try to amend this budget to put that gender lens on this budget. Oh sorry, it was the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. They actually came out, ahead of the budget, and pointed out how women’s economic security is so fragile.

While many women are working on the front lines of COVID-19 in the caring and service sectors, women also represent the majority of workers in the sectors hardest-hit by the economic shutdown in the first and second waves. In total, 2.8 million lost their jobs or were working less than half of their regular hours as a result of the March 2020 lockdown. These are serious numbers, and so not addressing it and not investing in reducing those barriers in a very strategic way means that you’re intentionally saying, “You know what? We can’t deal with this right now.”

Now, I will acknowledge that these times in the province of Ontario are incredibly challenging and unprecedented. But when you have voices who have the knowledge, the application of that knowledge really is the responsibility of the government.

They also make the point around unpaid caring demands impacting women’s paid work. Young women are particularly hit. Women aged 15 to 24 experienced the greatest initial COVID-related employment losses in March. So you’ll have a whole younger generation, likely graduating from post-secondary if they’re fortunate to afford it—they have debt, and they have no jobs.

Many mothers exited the workforce because—I took many of these calls and I know my colleagues did as well. By working at home full-time, also caring for children and sometimes caring for parents, and then also assisting with the schooling and the education online piece—there was a tipping point. I can’t tell you how many conversations I had with women. All they wanted was a strategy to deal with early learning and care so that that could take one thing off their plate. Structurally, this budget does not accommodate for the investment that is needed in the capital investment in child care. Remember, that investment is worth it.

The full impact of COVID-19 on women’s work has been unequal. Fully half of all low-wage workers earning $14 an hour or less were laid off or lost the majority of their hours between February and April. This included 58% of low-wage women and 45% of men in this earnings bracket. For those in the top earnings group with wages of more than $48 an hour, only 1% lost their employment or a majority of hours. By the end of the summer, they had been fully recovered. So what does this tell us? It tells us that the pandemic has affected both women and men very differently, but also those essential workers.

I talk about the K modelling of the economy. There are some people who have done very well in this pandemic. Just ask the CEO of Walmart—he’s doing okay—and of Costco. The small businesses on main street who put their hopes and dreams and investments and sometimes a second mortgage into their business, they’re not doing so well.

The workers who work at Amazon, where there was an outbreak of 600 COVID-19 cases, and health and safety—

Hon. Sylvia Jones: Over the course of the entire year.

Ms. Catherine Fife: Over the entire year, fine, but that’s still not very good, right? The Solicitor General is making a point that it was over a whole year. It’s still a big number. It’s still a big number that actually impacts the entire community.

The inequities exposed by COVID-19 are very real, particularly for racialized and immigrant women who were disproportionately impacted. Job losses and reductions in working hours were particularly high among recent immigrants to Canada and those who have immigrated to Canada within the last 10 years, a large majority of whom are racialized and working in precarious jobs that carry a high risk of exposure to COVID-19. Over one third of recent immigrants who were employed in February 2020 had lost their jobs or the majority of their working hours by the end of April 2020, eight percentage points above the losses posted by Canadian-born workers.

I raise the issue of racism in the province of Ontario. My colleague from Kitchener Centre and our Black caucus have tried to put this equity lens on everything that we see from the government. In fact, it’s now embedded in our briefing notes when we review and research policies from the government: How is this affecting the most marginalized people in the province of Ontario? I would argue, and would love to be proven wrong, that this is not the lens that the government looked at when they developed this budget.

This is a budget that, from our perspective, is steeped in privilege. If you are designing a budget and you’ve never had to figure out how to pay your rent, how to feed your children, how to pay your electricity bill, or you somehow think that waiting for two weeks for an insufficient federal program for paid sick days is somehow going to meet the needs of you and your family or give you a choice to not go to work sick, then that is steeped in privilege. What we have learned from this pandemic is that that is an inappropriate, inefficient and, some would argue, unethical approach to dealing with the pandemic that the province of Ontario is currently experiencing.

So women need ongoing support. In January 2021, there were 2.2 million unemployed workers receiving EI benefits. There is a lot of debate right now, and the discourse is ongoing, around what happens when the federal government removes those wage enhancements. How far will that send the province into an operational recession? That is why being proactive right now is so important. Give women at least a fighting chance to re-enter the workforce, to have some support along the way.

We will not recover without women meeting their potential in this province, and this province will not meet its potential if women don’t meet their potential. These are points that were well-documented, Mr. Speaker. The data and the solutions are right there in front of you.

“Investments in care are hit and miss”—this is a continuation of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and this was written by Katherine Scott. “With the onset of the pandemic, the holes in Canada’s care economy and related social infrastructure have compounded the health care and economic crisis.”

This is a government that says—finally, you understand that the health and well-being of Ontarians is directly connected to the health and the well-being of the economy, but for the first wave and second wave, you didn’t address that strategically to keep people safe.

What we know, and what we know very well, Mr. Speaker, is that the sick days piece, which my colleague from London West has brought to the floor of this House, is so well-documented, and the government’s obstinacy—it’s more than just reluctance; it’s just pure obstinacy. They’ve dug in in a stubborn, stubborn way, when we know that almost 60% of the employees in this province don’t have access to paid sick days, especially if they are low-wage or racialized.

You have this data, you have this information, and you actually even have the evidence to show that because workers didn’t have access to paid sick days in Ontario—in fact, this government removed the two measly days that the former Liberal government brought into play. But in a hot spot like Peel, 66% of the confirmed community outbreaks from September to December 2020 occurred in workplaces. You had this data right up until December. We are at the end of March; the budget was released last week. You intentionally left out a made-in-Ontario paid sick day strategy, knowing that we are right now in the middle of a third wave.

I am looking to some of the members from Peel because a Peel Public Health study found that 25% of the workers with COVID-19 symptoms still reported to work, including workers who had tested positive for COVID-19. Of close to 8,000 workers who had COVID-19 symptoms between August and January 2021, about 2,000 reported to their jobs. Two thousand workers went to work with COVID-19 in the Peel region because they had no choice.

There isn’t access in the province of Ontario to a streamlined, easy-to-access paid sick day. There were; they had at least two days. Two days would have allowed some to stay home and get tested. Surely we can agree that that would have been a good thing.

For those of you who say the federal program is sufficient, is good enough, I’m here to tell you that it is not good enough. I want to get it on the record because I’m tired, as are the people of this province, of listening to “how great” and how the province of Ontario doesn’t have to do their job because the federal government has done their job.

The Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit was an important initiative. Our leader at the federal level, Jagmeet Singh, was instrumental. Because it’s a minority government, they were able to negotiate some levels that were way better than what the Trudeau Liberals had proposed.

But this is what is wrong with it. These are the shortcomings:

It is a temporary program that ends in September 2021; you know that.

It can only be used for COVID-19-related absences.

Workers must be aware that the benefit is available and know how to apply. You brag about the fact that it’s undersubscribed and that there’s still $700 million in there. The reason it’s undersubscribed and there’s still money in that paid sick day bank is because people aren’t accessing it.

Workers are only eligible if they have lost 50% of their regular weekly hours. This means that time off to get a COVID test would likely not be covered. We want people to get tested, we want to do contact tracing and we want to make sure that once you get a test result, you don’t have to go to work.

Weeks are calendar weeks, which means if you work Monday to Friday, and you’re sick on Thursday, there is no way you can get the benefit for the last two days. Does that sound like a program that’s going to work?

Workers are eligible to receive the benefit for up to two one-week periods, not 10 days taken as needed. Now, the federal government has a proposal to expand this to four one-week periods.

Workers have to wait one week or more to apply. Direct deposit processing sometimes can happen, but sometimes it takes five days.

Workers must have earned at least $5,000 in prior years—which actually addresses the insecure contract workers who don’t qualify for this $5,000, or you can’t prove that they’ve made the $5,000.

That’s why this program is undersubscribed. We are going to continue to have people go to work sick in Ontario, and COVID-19 and now the variants will continue to spread.

So when you consider what a missed opportunity it was—I thought for sure you were going to have something in here on sick days. I really did. It would have squeezed us, which you’re very adept at doing sometimes. You would have demonstrated, though, that you’ve actually listened to the evidence, you’ve paid attention to the research and that you seriously understand how this virus is spreading across the province. Because you didn’t put that in, it really speaks to how disingenuous this call for a healthy population is. The lowest paid worker in the province of Ontario is just as important as the highest, and their health and their well-being impacts the highest-paid workers.

You have demonstrated as a government that you’re very attuned to those highest-paid workers and to those CEOs. Those CEOs, including the job creators in this province, have called for, at the very least, an emergency Ontario paid sick day. They want that leadership from this government because they understand out there—outside of this Pink Palace, they understand that the well-being of all of those workers is now impacting the economy.

We heard yesterday that the Premier is now contemplating a potential third shutdown, which is exactly what you promised would not happen. You promised that this budget and the investments to date would prevent that. Well, that has proven to be not true.

Community Living—God love them. This is an agency that does such important work caring for vulnerable people. It’s a multi-service developmental services agency supporting children and adults with intellectual disabilities. I mean, these are the best people in the world, really, and they’re in all of our communities. They have struggled. They have struggled to maintain the health and well-being of the folks that they care for. One of the most important actions the government could have taken was to implement a permanent wage enhancement.

That would have demonstrated that you actually understand the challenges that agencies like Community Living have gone through. They say, “In this spirit, we ask that some of these funds be designated to pilot implementation of the made-in-Ontario individualized funding framework developed by CLTO.”

People come to the table. They’ve said, “You know what? It’s not working as it’s currently funded.” All of us know this from across the province.

And then of course there’s the housing issue, which I touched on. The Co-operative Housing Federation Canada makes a very good point by saying, “Affordable housing is a long-term public asset that drives productivity and economic growth, promotes economic mobility, and provides greater household stability.”

This is exactly what we want from the province. This is the kind of leadership that we want and we need after a full year of being in a constant state of crisis. If you get housing right, I argue and have argued for many years, a lot of other things fall into place. I’ve raised this in the House before. The not-for-profit sector, including the House of Friendship, the Working Centre and the downtown community health centre, partnered to create stable housing for those who face insecure housing on a regular basis. They took over a local hotel.

They brought in the health sector to support physical health and well-being, and also mental health and addictions. They created their own community hub.

This is the thing that the Liberals always used to talk about—“We want community hubs”—but they never financed them. If you want to instill a sense of collaboration and community spirit, then you don’t have these agencies competing against each other. You give them dedicated funding and you let them do their job. Certainly that’s what the House of Friendship did in Kitchener. It is a model that the province should look at because it makes so much sense and it actually saves money down the line.

There was a lot of talk yesterday, in particular, about mental health. I have to say that that will be our next crisis that this province faces. We need to be ready to address a heightened—an accelerated—sense of urgency on the mental health file. I’m particularly aware of what’s happening in our schools, because my husband and my sister are both teachers. One teaches in Peel and one is in Waterloo.

When parents are reaching out to teachers and sharing stories about their concerns and about their worries about their children and how they will move forward, and about the loss of a sense of resiliency—because social isolation is obviously a real challenge—you know that there is a desperate need for any kind of support, any kind of advice.

AEFO, CUPE, ETFO, OECTA and OSSTF/FEESO call on the Ford government, and they have been the entire time, to lower the class sizes to keep students safe, because keeping schools open is so important, and to address learning loss incurred during the pandemic—which is why we will not be able to support the $1.8-billion reduction to the education file that went out by the ministry memo.

Even if we all get vaccinated and we start school in September—and God, we hope that that happens—the learning disruption and the mental health piece are not going away because the pandemic has dissipated. In fact, all of those concerns, all of those issues are going to land in that classroom, where, I have said consistently, all of the social issues always land. And if they don’t land in that classroom, then they end up in the back of a police car.

These education leaders have called for that lower class size piece to make that transition more humane, more compassionate. They’ve called for enhanced safety measures to ensure infection control.

The deficit in our schools in Ontario is a hangover from the Liberals. The infrastructure needs of our school system, in our 7,000 schools across this province, are very real. But what an opportunity that you had before you to invest in upgrading HVAC systems to keep infection down, to keep our schools safe, to keep our schools open and to create jobs—the HVAC folks, various advocacy groups, came to us in the finance committee back in June. They made a compelling case for the return on investment for upgrading our school infrastructure. Why you did not take this up from a—think of the jobs that would have been created locally in all of our ridings, in all of our schools.

Finally, they’ve called for mental health supports for students and education workers and supports for students with special education needs.

I know the government thinks very highly of this child benefit that you have touted as parental choice—the $400 per student, the $500 for special needs. The Minister of Education says that parents can use that to take their kid to camp. That does not help the special education students who need a coordinated, cohesive response in our school system. The $1.8 billion that’s going to be coming out of education also coincides with the price tag of this child benefit: $1.8 billion.

Parents need support, but it should not come at the expense and the cost of the education system and the investment that is needed to ensure that all children in our public education system have the opportunities to meet their potential.

These education leaders have a campaign called Everything Is Not OK.

“Everything Is Not OK: Sector Leaders Call for Mental Health and Addiction Wait Times Strategy to be in Upcoming Ontario Budget.

“Province’s mental health leaders are calling on government to ensure that a mental health and addiction plan is part of the government’s COVID-19 recovery plan.”

The investment that was announced in this budget is insufficient, as a starter.

“More than 6,000 people have already signed an online petition calling on long-term, targeted and sustainable investments in Ontario’s mental health and addiction system”—it’s not enough to say in this House there’s no health without mental health if you don’t fund it, if you don’t invest in it.

They call for:

“Consistent care. Because regardless of whether you’re in northern Ontario, rural Ontario or downtown Toronto, all Ontarians should get the same high-quality care.” This is not happening right now.

“Faster care.” People are waiting too long. When you’re in crisis, you shouldn’t have to wait.

“Easier access to care. Because it’s too complicated and Ontarians don’t know where to turn to for mental health or addiction services.

“Transparent care. Because Ontarians don’t know how long they are going to wait and what they can expect from their care.”

I’ll just leave you with a quote from my friend Camille Quenneville: “COVID-19 has had and will continue to have life-long impacts on many Ontarians. Today, thousands are struggling with severe grief and loss as a result of the pandemic. Many of these individuals are essential workers and health care workers who worked throughout the pandemic to keep us all safe and healthy. We need to ensure that support is there for them when they need it.”

You will get your opportunity later on this afternoon when my colleague from Hamilton Mountain brings forward her private member’s bill, which ensures mental health supports for essential workers and that they’re not denied that resource. So you may have missed the mark on this budget, but you’re going to get a chance later on today to support that private member’s bill.

The transformation in mental health has been an ongoing issue in this province for many, many years. You had full licence in this budget—we would never have challenged a significant and transformative investment in mental health, because we understand, on this side of the House, and I know some of you do as well, that everything is not okay on the mental health front. Why you would not take that opportunity to invest is quite something.

One of the biggest challenges that we are facing right now, globally, in this country and in this province, is climate change.

The environmental alliance says this about your budget: “We are disappointed with this budget. We were hopeful that the Ontario government would take this opportunity to revisit and reset its hostile approach to the environment. Sadly, that’s not the case.

“The near-term focus on COVID-19 and the additional assistance for families, citizens, and small businesses” was needed. “However, governments around the world are making plans for a green recovery from COVID-19 and putting climate change at the centre of their efforts to create jobs.”

I would urge you to look at our Green New Democratic Deal. We have done a full two years’ worth of research to determine where those green jobs are, how we can get the economy going, and that it’s an inclusive economy, that we don’t leave people behind. Because social justice is also very key to environmental leadership, and knowing that climate change disproportionately affects the poorest and most marginalized people means that it requires a differential response, not the way that you’ve done business all along.

So, jobs: If you are really focused on the economy, then investing in a green economy would be forward-thinking. It would be progressive. It would actually signal to the people of this province that you can be coping or trying to handle this COVID-19 pandemic, but also that you haven’t forgotten about the other issues important to Ontarians.

They go on to say, “Ontario’s budget barely references climate change. And it doesn’t provide any funding for even the few climate change programs the government has already committed to.” So you’re not even funding your own plan. “Where is the $400 million promised for the emissions reduction fund, for example?

“The

section on protecting Ontario’s environment is full of contradictions,” they write. “For example, the government touts Ontario’s clean electricity supply, though the budget omits that the electricity sector is projected to see a 300% rise in emissions by 2030 due to an increased reliance on natural gas. Likewise, that

section asserts that relatively minor spending on data-gathering will see that ‘flood risk is reduced’”—you don’t reduce flooding in the province of Ontario just by gathering data. In fact, you undermined our ability to manage flooding by undermining conservation authorities in Ontario, so—I was going to say something, but it was fairly unparliamentary, and I edited myself, Mr. Speaker—“ ... will see that ‘flood risk is reduced,’ even though the government recently undermined the ability of conservation authorities to stop dangerous development in flood plains and hazard areas.

“We are glad”—and so were we—that there was no specific message around Highway 413. I do want to say Highway 413 is not needed. It is not an economic driver. It will negatively impact the well-being of so many communities around that corridor and, at a cost of $8 billion, it is not where you should be investing right now. Sustainable investment is where you should be investing.

But they do point out, “Unfortunately, the Bradford Bypass, otherwise known as the Holland Marsh expressway, is mentioned in the budget. This highway would bulldoze through the greenbelt and the Holland Marsh, one of the most productive agricultural specialty crop areas in the country and one of the largest wetlands in the region, causing severe stormwater and groundwater impacts”—not a good idea.

Because you still are contemplating, in the year 2021, these kinds of infrastructure projects, knowing full well the impact that climate change has on our health, our well-being and our economy, it signals to us that you had very selective hearing when you were doing those budget consultations. But of course, as I’ve pointed out, we don’t know what was said to you because we were excluded. I will say this as a point of record: When you exclude the official opposition, you are not only disrespecting us as fellow parliamentarians, but you are disrespecting the people that we serve.

That undermines our democracy, and then you end up with a budget that doesn’t reflect what the people of this province need, the people that we serve. It’s very problematic.

Just to continue on with climate change—and I only have a few more minutes left. If you can demonstrate to the people that the changes they want to see are actually happening—and, to date, you have not done that on the environmental file at all. You lost a significant court case in the Supreme Court last week around the carbon tax. You spent $30 million on that. The Premier was quoted as saying that he would do it again. This does not instill confidence that rational thinking or that evidence-based thinking or even critical thinking is at the heart of the decision-making of this government.

This is a quote from David Miller, who was the former mayor of Toronto and was, I would argue, ahead of his time on environmental policies. He says, “If you can demonstrate to people that the changes they want to see are actually happening, you give people more confidence in the process, and then it becomes self-reinforcing—more public confidence leads to more public support for change, which allows for more changes to be enacted. Momentum builds as people start doing things in their own lives, encouraged by the knowledge that their government is there with them.”

The people of this province do not think that you are with them on climate change or on any kind of environmental reform or modernization of infrastructure investment. They do not trust you.

I have said this before: The only other time that I’ve seen it in this House where the population, the citizens that we serve, recognized that the government no longer had their trust—because they have abused that trust—then that had electoral consequences, because that whole side of the House used to be Liberals, and then they got down to seven members. That was the people of this province saying that selling off Hydro One and not ensuring that our educational and health care needs are being met have consequences.

This should serve as a lesson to all government members on that side, that this budget does not reflect what the people need. In doing so, you have demonstrated where your priorities are, which are not the same as the people of this province.

Finally, I just want to say on the sustainability piece that I know that there was an announcement yesterday around sustainable investment for engineering. It was an investment made by the Minister of Labour and the Minister of Finance to try to get 100 engineers to develop some sustainable infrastructure. I want to say to the government that if you come to the University of Waterloo, this is an ongoing conversation that has been happening now for 25 years. That expertise and that knowledge exist on our own university campuses.

Why is the government so reticent to make use of that, to commercialize the research from a health sciences perspective, to procure the very products that are made here in Ontario, like the personal protective equipment from a company like Eclipse Automation in Cambridge or Canadian Shield in Waterloo? What a missed opportunity to demonstrate that you actually believe in Canadian and Ontarian innovators. I hope to change that with a bill that I’m going to be bringing forward on procurement and diversifying the procurement supply chain.

It should be a matter of course that the rhetoric that we heard from the Premier about how great Ontario companies are, but now those Ontario companies can’t get their PPE or their health innovation into the very—they can’t procure government contracts. Women, especially, can’t get in the room to even bid on those contracts. If you want to generate the economy, then actually put the very good businesses that you talk about to work for the province of Ontario.

Just a final word on sustainability that Mr. Miller also supports is that there is a triple bottom line around sustainability: environmental, economic and social. If you leave people behind, which this budget does do, quite intentionally, then you lose confidence. The people of this province obviously lose confidence, but so do the very innovators that we want to actually inspire to invest in this province.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce also referenced this in their brief to the federal government, that in times of disruption, which we can all agree we are currently in, this is the time to be bold. You have licence. You have agency to be bold and to colour outside of those PC conservative lines, and you would have had our support in doing so. But to date, the inconsistency in the application of innovation in Ontario has been a fairly consistent theme.

When I met with primary care doctors across the province, including the area of Peterborough, the primary care doctors in this province said to myself and to our health critic, who was in the meeting, “Why do we have to work so hard to try to help the province get needles in arms?” That has been their major complaint. They are qualified. They have the trust of their patients. They’re in our communities. They want to be part of the solution.

To date, the government has been very focused on the commercialization of those vaccinations—running commercials for Shoppers Drug Mart, for instance. How does this fit into a public health directive whereby you are excluding the people who have the skills and the talent and have taken an oath to secure the health and well-being of their patients?

Yesterday, also around the vaccination piece—I just want to say how hopeful people are about vaccines. My brother-in-law finally got his vaccine and he said he wasn’t prepared to have this feeling of relief. But that’s what’s at stake here. People need to have hope, and so the vaccine rollout must go better than it is currently going.

I was reading in Queen’s Park Briefing that there’s a private app company now staffing vaccine sites in Peel and in Sudbury. Check this out: The company is called BookJane. It’s a software firm that describes itself as a “gig economy” platform for the health care sector, and it’s staffing immunization clinics with doctors. It has mobilized more than 300 doctors through its app, which requires them to be part of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, of course. And then the doctors are paid $170 per hour, or $220 an hour on evenings and weekends, to administer vaccines at sites run by hospitals and public health units.

Now, this could go back to the e-health debacle, but the fact that our own public health units are relying on an app from a private company to find doctors in Ontario is quite something. I am running out of time, but I wanted to get this on the record. Why are we relying on a tech app to recruit doctors when the doctors have been knocking at your door, trying to get the vaccines, trying to be part of the solution? It really does leave us with many more questions than answers.

Our critic for disabilities has raised the issue around those who are vulnerable in the province of Ontario, who are on ODSP or Ontario Works or some form of social assistance whereby they are experiencing great challenges in accessing the vaccine. I raise this because those who struggle with disabilities, who are differently abled, shouldn’t have to have additional barriers to access the vaccine, because they are vulnerable physically and also are probably exhausted by this COVID-19 experience, especially given the rates of support that they get in Ontario.

Interjection.

Ms. Catherine Fife: What did you say?

Miss Monique Taylor: Zippo.

Ms. Catherine Fife: Yes.

Finally, I just want to summarize. By now you should understand that we, of course, will not be supporting this budget. That shouldn’t surprise you, given the feedback that we tried to give and the missed opportunities that are currently in this budget.

I feel like this province is at a very frightening tipping point. Yesterday, one of the doctors said that the state of denial must end. If we have sick workers that are continuing to go to work sick, we will never get this pandemic under control. We will never address the transmission rates that are currently happening right now in the province of Ontario.

There will be a day of reckoning, especially in long-term care because that iron ring that this government talked about is not in the budget. The paid sick days: not in the budget. Paid vaccination time off: How can people go get vaccinated if they can’t get the time off work, even for a couple of hours, even a measly couple of hours? Just show a little faith in the people of this province. Give them the opportunity to safely get vaccinated and not have to pay the price for doing so. There is no permanent wage increase for personal support workers.

SEIU has articulated the lack of respect that this government has demonstrated for PSWs. Hospital funding that doesn’t cover what the Ontario Hospital Association have called for—Anthony Dale put out a call yesterday saying that this is not sustainable.

On tax deferrals for businesses: I was the economic development critic for a good long time. The fact that you didn’t change the criteria for businesses to access the small business grant, what a missed opportunity to really thank the businesses in the province for their leadership and for their dedication during these challenging times.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I will end my comments.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Rick Nicholls): Further debate?

Mr. Parm Gill: Mr. Speaker, it’s always an honour to rise in this place and speak on behalf of my constituents in Milton in support of our budget, especially this time around, protecting people’s health and our economy. I think it’s important to highlight those two priorities: protecting people’s health and our economy. It is with the investments of $51 billion included in this budget that we’ll work towards doing just that: protecting the health and well-being of every single Ontarian and creating the conditions that will see the economy come roaring back.

Let me highlight some of what this means to my constituents in the great riding of Milton, Mr. Speaker. March 2020 was the beginning of our uncharted journey that has brought us to now. Many businesses in my community of Milton were declared essential and remain essential for the supply chain, for the food chain and to support families right across this great province. One of those businesses is Sargent Farms. Since 1943, this family owned and operated business has not only employed hundreds of Miltonians but has produced chicken from farm to plate for millions right across this province.

They are now in their third generation of operating this Milton institution and have no plans to slow down.

Sargent Farms is the largest provincially regulated chicken producer in Ontario. Being provincially regulated means that provincial food inspectors are integrated right into their facility and their day-to-day operations. With the onset of COVID-19, their business began to experience staff shortages on the production line and also staff shortages on the food inspector side of things. Sargent Farms would never compromise food safety. That’s why they worked with my office and with the Ministry of Labour to ensure that more inspectors were hired and that staff and inspectors would be tested regularly.

In this budget, we’re building on this and providing more support for small businesses like Sargent Farms.

Over this past year, everyone in the province has realized how important reliable Internet is in order to work, learn and safely connect with family and friends online. Families and businesses in rural Milton have known this for years and have been fighting to get online. This budget builds on the progress we have made with programs like CENGN and Mage Networks. Those programs have delivered real results for my constituents in the rural part of Milton.

Because of the investment of $63.3 million in the CENGN and Mage Networks broadband program, phase 1, we will see families getting online as soon as early next month, so just a week or two out now. They’ve been fighting for years for reliable Internet, and it’s finally happening. This government is making it happen.

Our government has brought forward with this budget the most ambitious investment into cellular and broadband in our history, and that’s $4 billion. That is how serious we are about getting Ontarians online.

Students, families, small businesses and farmers in my riding of Milton are applauding this budget.

Our government’s Up to Speed: Ontario’s Broadband and Cellular Action Plan is a $4-billion investment that will allow kids to learn at home and small businesses to get connected. Families can now FaceTime or go on Zoom with friends and families without having to keep asking, “Are you frozen, or is it just me?”

This past year has shown us that although we may have been physically distant from our extended family, it has brought us closer than ever to those that we live with. That’s why we will continue to support families each and every day.

From the beginning of this pandemic, our government has brought in supports for families, starting with a one-time payment of $200 for each child and $250 for children with special needs. I’m proud that we are building on that program with an additional payment, a third payment for twice as much: $400 for each child and $500 for children with disabilities. Speaker, that is a total of $800 for each child and $1,000 for children with disabilities since the beginning of the pandemic.

I’ve heard from a family of five in my riding—very similar to my own. Two of my kids are older and the youngest is still in high school. This family of five used these much-needed funds to buy computer desks, webcams and other supplies necessary for their school-aged kids.

Parents know best. They know what is best for their children and what they need in order to be successful. That’s why we’re putting this money into their hands. Obviously, as parents, we feel that they do know best.

I’ve heard from parents in my riding who have been able to purchase laptops and webcams in order to support their son’s or daughter’s transition to learning from home. I’ve heard from others who have been able to subsidize the increased usage of the Internet needed to learn and work from home.

Whether it is getting online or supporting your family, this budget continues to build on what we have been able to do in three short years of being in government. Milton, as everyone knows, is one of the fastest-growing towns in the province, and I heard from parents loud and clear during the last campaign that our schools were overflowing. The previous Liberal government ignored Milton for far too long. I have been fighting for our community at Queen’s Park each and every day and have been able to announce a whopping six new schools since taking office in June 2018. These schools include:

—Halton District School Board SW #1 secondary school, an investment worth $42.5 million;

—Halton District School Board SW #11 elementary school, an investment worth $21.4 million;

—Halton District School Board, #12 elementary school, an investment worth $19.1 million;

—Halton Catholic District School Board, #3 secondary school, an investment worth $41.3 million;

—Halton Catholic District School Board, #10 elementary school, again, an investment worth $17.2 million;

—CS Viamonde, a French elementary school, an investment worth $9 million;

for a total investment into Milton of over $150 million. That’s since June 2018. These schools, as we all know, are extremely important and vital for creating opportunities for our kids.

But Speaker, there’s more. Our government also invested nearly $20 million in expanding one of our local secondary schools, Bishop Reding, that had over 60 portables outside to accommodate the growth in our community. It seems like there were more and more portables added every month.

I am proud that our government, with this budget, continues to invest in Milton and in communities right across our great province. That includes the back-to-school fund worth $913 million; the Safe Return to Class Fund worth $381 million; and Grants for Student Needs, $21.5 billion, and that’s an increase of $736 million; altogether, an investment worth $26.794 billion—with a “B,” Mr. Speaker—more money into education than any other government in the history of our province. Our government, with this budget, is investing more money into our education system at a record level. Facts are important, and I’m very proud of these facts.

Our teachers and support staff have done an amazing job, especially over this past year, providing lessons in class and online. I know it hasn’t been easy, but I have seen our educators approach this past year with an eagerness and an innovative attitude. Whether it is creating new ways for our students to connect virtually, or creating virtual or drive-through graduation ceremonies, we have seen new ways of doing things this past year.

One thing my office is proud to do each year, Mr. Speaker, is provide our graduating students with congratulatory certificates. We have prepared thousands of these certificates over the past three years, and I am proud to have this work well under way this coming year again.

That, of course, includes birthday greetings for our seniors, for each and every person living in a long-term-care or retirement home in my riding of Milton. It’s a little token that I can provide that might bring a smile, a bit of a surprise, on their birthdays.

Nothing is more important than supporting our seniors, and we on this side of the House have invested like never before in supporting our seniors. Over $2 billion in the long-term care protection fund continues to provide the necessary resources for our long-term-care homes to be safe, to ensure that our seniors are protected and can live with dignity. We have invested $405 million to help with relieving operating pressures in the long-term-care sector.

Our front-line nurses and support staff have been working hours and hours of overtime, and we cannot thank them enough for the commitment they have to supporting our seniors. We continue to invest in people through our $1.9 billion to increase staff levels—

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Rick Nicholls): Excuse me. I apologize for having to interrupt the member from Milton, but unfortunately the time for debate this morning has expired.

Debate deemed adjourned.

Members’ Statements

Mental health and addiction services

Mr. Jamie West: Speaker, 38% of Canada’s opioid overdose deaths happened in Ontario last year. That’s the highest number of opioid overdose deaths of any province or territory in the country—the highest by a long shot. But those aren’t statistics. Those are people. Those are families whose lives were shattered. Those are sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles. Those are best friends and work friends. Those are our neighbours. Those are people who are desperate for help.

While the Conservative government continues to talk a good game, it’s all sizzle and no steak. Every year, the federal government provides Ontario with $175 million for mental health and addictions. Do you know how much the Conservatives put towards this in their 2019 budget? Zero—zero in 2019, zero in 2020, and zero in this budget too.

Sheldon O’Brien sent me this letter about his brother:

“Dennis O’Brien Jr. That’s my brother’s name. He died last month on Jan. 13. He died alone. He did not have the proper resources to seek help for his mental health and addictions problems.

“That’s the fault of improper funding to mental health and addictions programs.

“It’s time to start taking action. We get it, you’re ‘working’ on it. We have heard that for months, if not years.

“Our homeless populations and vulnerable populations cannot afford to keep waiting.

“The safe consumption site cannot come soon enough.

“I work downtown as a security guard and we usually see one overdose per shift where we need to administer Narcan.

“In Police Foundations, I learned about how bad our downtown core had gotten in terms of the vulnerable population, but it’s much worse than anything you can expect from reading about it.

“I challenge you to spend a day downtown observing and you may begin to realize that those on the street, although unlikely to vote in elections, are still human beings that you should care about.

“Please”—

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Rick Nicholls): Thank you very much. I apologize; time is up.

Organ donation

Mr. Stephen Crawford: It’s an honour to rise in the Legislature today to discuss a truly important campaign. April is Be a Donor Month here in the province of Ontario. Starting tomorrow, it is critical to raise awareness and encourage individuals to register and become an organ or tissue donor.

The need for organ and tissue donors is becoming even more apparent. There are almost 1,600 Ontarians on the wait-list for a transplant. Currently, there are more individuals on the wait-list than there is organ availability.

Sadly, every three days, somebody in Ontario dies a preventable death while waiting for a transplant as a result of limited availability.

Since April 1, 2020, registrations for organ and tissue donations in Ontario have decreased by more than 50% versus the same time a year ago.

I cannot stress enough how important being a donor is and its impact on other people’s lives. One organ donor can save up to eight lives and enhance the lives of 75 individuals.

I want to clarify any potential misconceptions there are about registering to be a donor. Everyone has the potential to be a donor regardless of their age, medical condition or sexual orientation.

April 7 is also national Green Shirt Day. Green Shirt Day was inspired by Logan Boulet, who was one of the Humboldt Broncos who tragically passed away. Logan, a registered donor, saved six lives. In his memory, and to champion organ and tissue donation, I encourage everybody to wear green on April 7.

COVID-19 response

Ms. Doly Begum: Speaker, this is the sixth day that Ontario has seen over 2,000 daily cases—today is the highest. We are now into a third wave, which is projected to be far worse than what we have experienced so far.

There are over 1,100 schools with reported COVID-19 cases and 58 schools which had to close down as of yesterday. Parents, families, children and youth are facing an incredible amount of uncertainty.

This government had more than a year now to prepare for what was coming. They had the opportunity to invest in safer learning environments for our children but chose to do otherwise.

I recently heard from a constituent, Donna, who is a mom to a 15-year-old. “Kids have been pivoted and bounced around a lot during this pandemic,” she shared, as she continued to tell us about how difficult it is to see her teenage son not have the opportunity to take a break.

Students are facing burnout and an unprecedented amount of mental health strain as they have to constantly switch between learning methods and see their safety and well-being undermined.

In the wake of yesterday’s confusing back and forth between the Premier and the minister about whether or not to postpone the March break, Donna, like many parents, is frustrated with this government and their inability to provide clear messaging for students and families. Parents are worried for the safety and mental health of their children as they navigate this pandemic

It’s time this government prioritizes education for the sake of families across this province and takes responsibility for parents, kids and education workers so that they’re not left behind.

Public transit

Mr. Rudy Cuzzetto: Recently, I was honoured to join the Minister of Infrastructure, along with the federal Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, Catherine McKenna; the federal Minister of Transport, Omar Alghabra; and the mayor of Mississauga, Bonnie Crombie, to announce a joint investment of over $158 million in modern public transit infrastructure for the people of Mississauga. This includes $56 million for a new two-way bus rapid transit corridor along Lakeshore Road in Mississauga–Lakeshore, with three new stations between East Avenue and Deta Road and connections to the GO Transit network, the Hurontario LRT, the TTC and pedestrian and cycling networks.

Together, we’re building a modern and accessible inter-regional transit system that will support our growing population along the Lakeshore Road corridor. With 20,000 new residents in Lakeview Village on the site of the former coal plant and 8,000 new residents in Brightwater on the site of the former Texaco refinery, it is critical that we build the transit infrastructure we need to support this growth, both for our economic recovery and for the community’s future.

Speaker, this announcement is also a great example of what we are able to achieve when we are working in partnership with the federal government and the municipalities. I’m looking forward to continuing to work together, both as we respond to the impacts of COVID-19 as we lay the groundwork for our recovery, and for a stronger, better and more progressive Ontario.

COVID-19 immunization

Mr. Jeff Burch: Many seniors in Niagara in their seventies have been patiently waiting for over a month to receive their vaccine. On the weekend, those over the age of 70 were told by the province that they could finally book an appointment. But on Monday, when the opportunity arrived, they found only disappointment. Dozens of seniors could not book online and could not get through on the hotline. Those who got through were told there were no vaccines in Niagara and they didn’t know when they would be there.

My office was flooded with calls from people like Angie Desmarais from Port Colborne, who said she spent all day on the website and making phone calls. She says, “Seniors have transportation and mobility issues, and this system makes things even more confusing.”

Another senior from Port Colborne said she was offered an appointment at the Toronto Metro Convention Centre. John Neeley was told to just keep calling every day; there were no vaccines in Niagara—mass confusion, Speaker.

The Chief Medical Officer of Health stated he wasn’t confident that there would be enough vaccine to vaccinate the 70 to 74 age group, and public health could only say that they were working with the province to let them know the issues and working to try and figure out what had happened.

This government had months to organize. It is extremely disappointing that this system is having so many issues and is so unfriendly to seniors, who are trying to protect themselves and others by following the rules and attempting to book their vaccine appointments but are unable to because this government has not organized the system properly.

We must do better for our seniors and their families, who have already endured so much throughout this pandemic.

Organ donation

Mr. John Fraser: April is Be a Donor Month, and next Wednesday, April 7, will be Green Shirt Day. We won’t be here; I want to remind all my colleagues to wear a green shirt next Wednesday. Green Shirt Day, of course, is in honour of the late Logan Boulet, whose organ donation saved six lives and inspired 100,000 donor signatures.

Almost 1,600 Ontarians are on a wait-list. Every three days, one of them loses their life while waiting to receive that really important donation that they need. Ontario’s Trillium Gift of Life Network is called that for a reason. Organ donations can save up to eight lives and enhance up to 75 others through tissue donation.

With the pandemic, transplants are down and registrations are down over 50% from pre-pandemic levels. While 90% of Ontarians support organ donation, only 33% have signed up. In my riding of Ottawa South, it’s 35%. There are families in my riding like the Therien family and Suzanne Camu and Marc Quinet and many others who are strong advocates for increasing organ donation.

We need to do more to help them. We need to do more to make people aware. We can do that, all of us who haven’t already, by taking two minutes and going to beadonor.ca to register.

Hospital funding

Ms. Christine Hogarth: I’m elated to rise this morning to share groundbreaking news from my riding of Etobicoke–Lakeshore. In 2017, Trillium Health Partners and the government of Ontario announced an unfunded plan to support a major development and expansion of the Queensway Health Centre, located in the south end of my riding.

As outlined in the 2021 budget, our government took action and we are moving forward and finally getting shovels in the ground. The south Etobicoke community is growing rapidly, and I am glad that the need for greater access to localized health care is being recognized and actions are being taken.

Founded in 1956 as the Queensway General Hospital, the Queensway Health Centre is the product of an amalgamation between Trillium Health Partners and the Queensway General Hospital in 1998. The health centre has served the needs of our diverse community for decades, and this announcement is important to the continued development of south Etobicoke. The Queensway Health Centre expansion will include the creation of a modern post-acute facility for complex continuing care and rehabilitation patients to receive care and recover in a purpose-built environment, as well as a new parking structure.

Trillium Health Partners is Canada’s largest hospital, with over 1.7 million patient visits annually and more than 277,000 visits per year to the emergency department and urgent care centre. Over the next 20 years, no hospital in Ontario will experience more growth in demand for services than the Trillium Health Partners hospital.

Thank you to the government of Ontario.

Social assistance

Ms. Bhutila Karpoche: People on social assistance are increasingly forced to make do with less. A disabled person on Ontario Disability Support Program is expected to live with an income of $1,169 per month to cover rent, food, utilities and all other basic necessities. The rate is even lower for a person on Ontario Works, who is expected to cover all costs of living with only $733 per month.

Social assistance rates fall well below the poverty line, and have remained stagnant despite skyrocketing housing costs, inflation and increasing prices of basic necessities. People on social assistance have been ignored for decades by successive governments, both Liberal and Conservative, and even ignored during the pandemic. Through the federal CERB program, we know that $2,000 per month is the minimum that people need to survive. Yet when the government announced the budget last week, there were no rate increases to either ODSP or OW. In fact, poverty was not even mentioned once in the budget document.

At a time when it is more important than ever to ensure that no one is left behind, the government is turning its back on poor and disabled people. The government claims that the budget aims to protect people’s health and Ontario’s economy, but without providing long-overdue rate increases, this budget cannot achieve either goal.

I call on this government to listen to Ontarians, to increase rates and directly support people on ODSP and OW.

Organ donation

Mr. Logan Kanapathi: I wanted to rise today to speak about a cause close to my heart. Each April, Ontario commemorates Be a Donor Month to raise awareness about organ and tissue donation. I want to thank the staff at the Trillium Gift of Life Network for advocating on behalf of this important issue.

Currently, in Ontario, over 1,400 people are waiting for life-saving organs. Every three days, someone in Ontario dies waiting for a transplant. Only 35% of eligible health card holders are registered organ donors. Registration for organ and tissue donation in Ontario has decreased more than 50%. As we recover from the pandemic, the need for life-saving organs is higher than ever.

On April 6, 2018, the Humboldt Broncos hockey team met a tragic accident, which took the lives of 16 people, including 21-year-old Logan Boulet. Logan’s organ donation saved six lives and inspired almost 150,000 organ donor registrations across Canada. Everyone is a potential donor, no matter your age, medical condition or sexual orientation.

This April, I encourage all Ontarians to sit down with your loved ones to discuss registration as an organ donor. You can do it online at beadonor.ca. It will only take a few minutes to register online, and all you need is your Ontario health card number.

School facilities

Mr. Parm Gill: Milton is one of the fastest-growing communities in the province, but it remains very tight-knit. That means more and more families are calling Milton home each and every day. As our community continues to grow, I’m proud that our government continues to support our growth.

This past Friday was a perfect example. It was a pleasure to attend the ground-breaking ceremony of yet another new school in Milton: Catholic elementary school #10, at Kennedy Circle. I was proud to be joined by the Minister of Education; our longest-serving mayor in the country, Mayor Krantz; Councillors Mike Cluett and Rick Di Lorenzo; our two Catholic board trustees, Marvin Duarte and Patrick Murphy; and also the director of education for the Catholic board, Patrick Daly.

This is the sixth new school for our community since June 2018, totalling over $150 million in investment from our government for new schools in Milton. This is in addition to the $18-million expansion of Bishop Reding and the $3 million to St. Peter elementary school for a new child care centre.

As a proud father of three, I know how important investments like these are for our community. I am proud that our government continues to deliver for students and families in Milton.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): That concludes our members’ statements for this morning.

Question Period

COVID-19 response

Ms. Andrea Horwath: My first question is to the Premier. It’s really clear that we are heading into another lockdown, with more schools closing—in fact, probably all schools closing—and we know that the ICUs are becoming overwhelmed with COVID cases.

This is all on the government. It’s all on the government. Back in February, there were warnings that the Premier needed to pay attention to, and he didn’t. Experts were warning that things were going to get very, very bad. But what did the Premier say? The Premier said the numbers are looking rosy. And they weren’t; he knew they weren’t. Everybody knew that the numbers weren’t looking rosy back in February when he claimed they were.

My question to the government—in fact, my question to the Minister of Health—is, was it her who told the Premier that the numbers were looking rosy and he could start lifting health precautions? If not, who on that side of the chamber gave the advice to the Premier that things were looking rosy and he could lift the precautions?

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Minister of Health.

Hon. Christine Elliott: Thank you, Speaker. Good morning. To the leader of the official opposition: No one has ever said throughout this pandemic that things are looking rosy.

From the very beginning of the pandemic, we have taken careful, measured steps to protect the health and well-being of every single Ontarian. We’ve done that by building up capacity in our hospitals and by making sure that we’ve been able to build up a robust testing strategy. We’ve been able to test over 12 million Ontarians already. We’ve also been able to administer over 2,190,000 vaccines.

We have taken careful, measured steps every step along the way in order to protect people’s health and safety. No one takes this for granted. No one takes this carelessly. This is a very serious issue for every single person in the province of Ontario. We appreciate that, and we’re dealing with that.

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

Ms. Andrea Horwath: In fact, there are now 421—it may be more as of this morning’s numbers, which I haven’t seen yet—ICU patients, the highest ever since the pandemic started. And this Premier, against all advice, decided to start lifting precautions when he knew it was a big risk, but he decided to take that risk anyway. In fact, when the Premier was saying that the numbers were looking pretty rosy, here’s what Anthony Dale, from the Ontario Hospital Association, said on February 12: “Yesterday’s modelling underscored the accelerating risk of highly contagious new COVID variants.

The warning could not be clearer. An exhausted, overextended hospital sector is likely going to have to deal with a 3rd pandemic wave.”

Will anyone on that bench—anyone—acknowledge or admit that the Premier’s behaviour, the Premier’s reckless decisions, led us right into this third wave?

Hon. Christine Elliott: Our government has always taken very careful consideration of the recommendations made by the Chief Medical Officer of Health, the science table, the modelling table and the pandemic measures table. All of those people have been giving us their best advice. We anticipated, because of the variants of concern, which are now the dominant strain in the province of Ontario, that there would be an increase in hospitalizations. Because it is a more dominant strain, it’s more transmissible, and it’s more, unfortunately, deadly, so we did anticipate an increase in hospitalizations.

That’s why we’ve increased the amount that we’ve put into our hospital system since the beginning to over $5 billion, including $1.8 billion in our most recent budget that allows for $760 million to support the over 3,100 new beds that have been created in the province of Ontario in the last year, as well as $300 million to reduce the surgical backlogs and $778 million to support the hospitals in the work that they need to do to support the patients with COVID-19 coming in.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): The final supplementary?

Ms. Andrea Horwath: The government ignored the warning of doctors, of the science table, of experts, of front-line health care workers. They ignored the advice, and they rushed the opening without putting measures in place that should have been put in place—things like an evictions ban, things like real investments to make schools safer and reduce classroom sizes, things like paid time off for sick days and paid vaccination time. These are the things that everyone was saying were necessary to keep people safe.

But it’s obvious what the Minister of Health is telling us: that they calculated the risk and decided it was okay to have ICUs overwhelmed, and it was going to be okay to have more people get sick with the variants, and it was going to be okay to have 421 people, and counting, in the ICUs, overwhelming our hospitals and basically putting our health care professionals in a very untenable position of exhaustion.

My question to the government is: How can you justify people losing their lives because you didn’t want to spend the money to put proper measures in place? Fourteen deaths yesterday: Explain that to the people of Ontario.

Interjections.

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

The Minister of Health to respond.

Hon. Christine Elliott: We have been following what’s happening in our hospitals very, very carefully, including conversations with Mr. Anthony Dale and other leaders of the hospitals. Our government, the Ontario Hospital Association, the Ontario Critical Care COVID-19 Command Centre are closely watching the province’s critical care capacity. While the situation is concerning—there’s no question about that—it is under control, and we’re going to continue to ensure that there’s capacity in hospitals across the province to provide care for COVID-19 patients and any other person requiring hospitalization during this pandemic.

We are making the changes. We’ve got the Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital that’s open. That is the overflow for some of the other cases. We’re looking at this regionally to make sure that hospitals can share some of the loads, and we’ve invested, as I indicated earlier, over $5 billion in our hospital system since this pandemic began. We are watching carefully, and we’re responding to the need.

COVID-19 response

Ms. Andrea Horwath: My next question is also to the Premier. After weeks of ignoring the warnings, the Premier yesterday told people to expect an announcement. My question is: Why is the Premier stringing people along? Why won’t he tell folks what to expect so that they can plan?

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): To respond, the government House leader.

Hon. Paul Calandra: I think the Minister of Health and the government have been clear right from the onset. We will work very closely with the Chief Medical Officer of Health. We will look at the data consistently in making those decisions. These are very difficult decisions that we are making on behalf of the people of the province of Ontario. They are guided by one thing only, and that is to keep people safe. We simply will not rush those decisions because the Leader of the Opposition is anxious.

We will sit down with the science table, we will sit down with the Chief Medical Officer of Health, and we will make these difficult, challenging decisions on behalf of the people of Ontario by looking at the data, because that’s what I think the people of the province of Ontario would expect. We have done that from the beginning, and we’ll continue to do that until we’ve defeated this pandemic.

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

Ms. Andrea Horwath: Families need and deserve answers, but the government has left families, who are desperate to plan the next couple of weeks, hanging. Our ICUs have been literally told, “Expect to be overwhelmed.” That’s the government’s plan, to overwhelm our ICUs. Schools and students have record-high cases now of COVID-19, higher than ever in terms of the pandemic so far. Fourteen people, as I already mentioned, lost their lives to COVID-19 yesterday.

Speaker, what is going on over there? Why are we in this position yet again? Why are we here again facing lockdowns, uncertainty, businesses closing, families not able to plan, schools closing, ICUs overwhelmed? Why are we here again?

Hon. Paul Calandra: As the Minister of Health has ably mentioned earlier, right from the onset, we have been working very closely with the Chief Medical Officer of Health—not only the Chief Medical Officer of Health for the province of Ontario, but in all the different public health units across this province. This is a very difficult and challenging pandemic. We have seen across the globe that circumstances have changed almost daily in different places. Despite that, we have been prepared.

The Minister of Health just highlighted the fact that we have put billions of dollars into ensuring that our hospital system has the capacity in order to react not only to the first wave but to anything that comes after that. We’ve increased ICU capacity. We’ve increased critical care capacity. We have done what is necessary to do. The Minister of Health is putting a number of resources, billions of dollars into extra resources, to ensure that our schools have been safe.

Is there more to do? Absolutely there is. Is there a crystal ball that tells us how this will end? No, but what we will do is put all the resources in to make sure that the people of the province of Ontario are ultimately successful in defeating this, and we are well on the road to doing that.

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

Ms. Andrea Horwath: For weeks the Premier has ignored the advice he was getting, and everybody knows it. We’ve been watching it play out right before our eyes. Here is what the head of the Ontario Hospital Association shared just yesterday in terms of what hospital leadership and health care leadership are saying: “This is the most worried I have been since this began.” How can that be? How can that be, that after over a year, this is the most worried our health care professionals have been since it began? “For the first time in a long time”—another quote—“folks around here are scared.”

Front-line health care workers are exhausted. They’re tired, they’re scared, they’re frightened, because of the way this government has handled the pandemic. They deserve so much better from their Premier. They deserve better from their government.

After months of ignoring advice, why are we in the situation that we are? Protections were reduced and other precautions were not put in place when the government decided to open up too soon. So I guess the question is—they dragged us into a third wave; this government dragged us into a third wave—what’s next?

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): The Minister of Health to respond.

Hon. Christine Elliott: One of the problems has been the variants of concern that, as the leader of the official opposition will know, have increased rapidly, resulting in more hospitalizations and more capacity required. That’s why we have built that capacity into the system with the investments that we’ve made.

Mr. Dale, the OHA president, who you also just quoted, also said, “The OHA greatly appreciates the investments announced today and thanks the government of Ontario for providing hospitals with additional financial resources in an effort to maintain stability during this ongoing crisis.”

We have given hospitals significant investments. We’ve allowed for $1.8 billion more in our budget. We’ve also been creating over 500 intensive care beds and medicine beds. We also have opened the Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital as an overflow to assist hospitals in the other area, and we are prepared to open field hospitals with the assistance of the federal government, which will create another 200 beds. One is ready to go in Sunnybrook and we can open another one in Hamilton if we need to. So we still have the ability to expand capacity, and we will make sure that every Ontarian who needs to be hospitalized will be hospitalized and get the care they deserve.

COVID-19 response

Ms. Marit Stiles: Good morning, Mr. Speaker. This question is for the Minister of Education.

This government’s laissez-faire approach to COVID-19 in schools has pushed families to the breaking point. Every day, more students and education workers are getting sick—a record high of 1,222 cases last week alone. More classes are being sent into isolation. More schools are being closed today. I just checked: A quarter of the schools in this province have reported cases. Despite all of the photo ops, the minister has failed week after week to reach his own goals for in-school testing.

Parents are trying to understand why this government would repeatedly say they believe schools should remain open, but then do almost nothing to make sure they could stay that way. Yesterday, the Minister of Education admitted that “the risk profile has changed,” so why hasn’t his plan?

Hon. Stephen Lecce: We have followed the best advice of the Chief Medical Officer of Health. We have one of the lowest case rates for youth under 20 in the nation. That is not a coincidence. It’s because we put in place a plan, endorsed by the medical community, that included masking, cohorting, stricter screening before children enter a school and expanded testing. In fact, under the Minister of Health’s leadership, from March 7 to March 14, 57,000 tests were completed on youth under the age of 18.

We are fully committed to dealing with the increasing risks within our community. We appreciate that the rising risk in the community creates challenges for schools. But to put it into context—because the member opposite focused on the negative; let’s reverse that and focus on what is taking place in schools today—75% of schools in Ontario do not have one active case, 98.69% of schools today are open and 99% of students have no case at all.

We appreciate the risk. We’ll continue to elevate our plan and continue to invest to keep schools safe.

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

Ms. Marit Stiles: Back to the minister: Nothing to see here, eh? Nothing to see? The risk profile has changed because this government refused to act and walked us straight into a third wave. They held back funding when it was needed most, and that left schools vulnerable again.

I want to share with the minister something that Alison, a parent in my community, wrote this week. She says, “The safety precautions for primary students in September are well and truly the same and unchanged today. We are relying on luck to get us through the school year without potentially contracting COVID-19.”

Speaker, parents were frustrated in the first and second waves. Now they’re just plain furious that this has been allowed to happen again. Will the minister listen and act before more people get sick?

Hon. Stephen Lecce: Certainly that constituent would appreciate knowing that the members opposite would have kept schools closed in 2021, which is contrary to the best interests of student mental health and development. For this government, we put in place a $1.6-billion plan—it depends on the day in question period: They focus on the investment; the next day, it’s a reduction in expenditure, but really the inconsistences are—

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Order.

Hon. Stephen Lecce: When it comes to the government, our consistency is an investment, is a plan endorsed by the Chief Medical Officer of Health. The foremost medical leader in Ontario has given his stamp of approval on our plan. It is not a matter of luck that 75% of schools, while we face a third wave, do not have one case at all. It’s not a matter of luck; it’s because of prudent planning and listening to the best medical advice that 98.6% of schools remain open today as we deal with this global challenge.

We appreciate the risk. We’ve elevated our protocol with one-symptom screening, with quality masks, with the cohorting of students, with better cleaning and, of course, enhanced access to testing. We will continue to follow the best advice to keep every student and staff safe in this province.

Long-term care

Mr. Kaleed Rasheed: My question is to the Minister of Long-Term Care. I was pleased to see the minister announce a new development project in my riding of Mississauga East–Cooksville two weeks ago. Tyndall Seniors Village has been allocated 73 new and 151 upgraded spaces. The project will result in a 224-bed home through the construction of a completely new building in and around Mississauga East–Cooksville.

Province-wide, there are 40,000 people on the wait-list. The Mississauga Halton LHIN has experienced some of the longest wait-lists for a long time, so it’s very important that we are taking action to deal with the wait-list. With a population that grew while the previous government failed to build long-term care in the decades before, we need that capacity. What is the minister doing to build more capacity in Mississauga?

Hon. Merrilee Fullerton: Thank you to the member for Mississauga East–Cooksville for the question and for his very important work on behalf of his constituents. His riding will be receiving the 73 new spaces he mentioned, and put together, all projects in Mississauga add up to almost 1,000 new spaces—993 new spaces, to be exact.

The Legislature will need no reminding that in their last two terms of office, the Liberals built only 611 spaces. Our government is building one and a half times that amount in Mississauga alone. Our government is investing $933 million in these projects on top of the $1.75 billion already dedicated to the delivery of 30,000 new spaces over 10 years. This work is so important. I am proud that it’s a Conservative government that’s getting it done after decades of talk from the opposition parties.

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

Mr. Kaleed Rasheed: Thank you to the minister for her response. My question is back to the Minister of Long-Term Care. That’s actually great news for my constituents and all Mississauga residents.

As the minister will know, Tyndall Seniors Village is an older home and experienced a COVID-19 outbreak. We saw older homes across the province struggle to contain outbreaks. The pandemic has underlined the importance of upgrading older long-term-care spaces to modern design standards. We know this work is important, so I am glad to know the ministry is doing everything they can to speed up new long-term-care projects.

What is the minister doing to modernize long-term-care homes?

Hon. Merrilee Fullerton: Thank you for the question. The member for Mississauga East–Cooksville has really been a tireless representative for his community and his constituents, and I commend that.

The criteria for the latest allocation of new projects prioritized the upgrading of older homes in response to lessons learned around improved IPAC measures, particularly the elimination of three- and four-bed ward rooms.

He’s right that modernizing this sector cannot wait, as it did under the previous government. Long-term care requires repair and rebuilding, and our government is doing just that with an aggressive modernization agenda. Ours is the government that is finally addressing upgrading older spaces and building new ones to fix the long-term-care sector that has been so badly neglected for 15 years.

COVID-19 immunization

Ms. Doly Begum: My question is to the Minister of Health. Speaker, provincial modelling data shows that Scarborough will have the third-highest amount of COVID-19 ICU cases by mid-April. This should be no surprise, since I have been talking in this House about how Scarborough has been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 for over a year now. My community is home to front-line essential workers, racialized people, low-income families and people living with many health conditions who have faced the worst of this pandemic for the last two waves, and wave three will be no different.

My team and I are in consistent communication with Scarborough Health Network, which has been running an efficient vaccination program to do their best and protect our community. However, with the capacity to vaccinate over 35,000 a week, their resources have been massively underutilized due to this government’s systemic negligence of Scarborough, its vulnerability and its needs.

Last week, the Minister of Health finally answered my call for a commitment to an equitable vaccination strategy. So my question is, Mr. Speaker, has there been any work done to ensure that Scarborough receives an equitable amount of vaccines consistent with the risk that our community is facing and our vaccination capacity?

Hon. Christine Elliott: I thank the member for the question. The short answer to your question is yes, but it depends on the supply that we receive. We are still waiting to receive large quantities of the AstraZeneca supply. We know that the 1.5 million doses are now in Canada and going to the federal government. We’re still waiting to find out when they will be received by Ontario, at which time the doses will be distributed equitably across all of the 34 public health units, including Toronto and specifically Scarborough.

We also know that there are certain hot spots in areas across Ontario. Scarborough would be one of them. That’s why we’ve also invested $12.5 million into a community prioritization committee to be able to go into communities, working with community health partners, community health centres and so on, to be able to bring the vaccines to people, because we know that some people are not able to get to mass vaccination centres. There may be language problems, transportation problems, other problems, and trust and vaccine-hesitancy issues. So we are going to bring the vaccines to the people in a number of communities, including many in Scarborough.

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

Ms. Doly Begum: I want to provide the minister with some statistics. For the week of March 29 to April 4, Scarborough Health Network was given 15,210 doses. For the week of April 5 to 11, Scarborough Health Network was given 3,510 doses. We have over 650,000 people living in Scarborough. The amount of doses given to our health network reduced by 23%, Mr. Speaker. This is unacceptable. It almost looked like an error to me, to be honest.

I’m once again asking the minister: Why has Scarborough Health Network, a body in charge of protecting and serving over 600,000 people in Scarborough, not been given an equitable amount of vaccines? Can the minister explain these numbers?

Hon. Christine Elliott: First, I would agree with you that Scarborough Health Network is doing an amazing job distributing vaccines. I have visited one of their centres at Centennial College. They’re doing a great job, and the front-line health care workers—doctors, nurses, pharmacists—are all on deck to deliver the vaccines.

The problem is, we don’t have sufficient volumes of those vaccines just yet. We are receiving the Pfizer vaccines; that’s true. The Moderna vaccines have been delayed several times. We’re still waiting for them to be received. They were to have been received last week and now won’t be received until April 7, and even then we’re not sure on that date. AstraZeneca, as I indicated earlier, we don’t know when that’s coming, and the J&J, we still don’t have a timeline for when they’ll be received.

To all of the members that are concerned about their public health units not receiving greater volumes of vaccines, it’s because of the supply issue. As soon as we receive them, we will be distributing them to the public health units, because we want to get needles into people’s arms across the province as soon as we can.

Hospital funding

Mr. Jim Wilson: My question is to the Minister of Health. Speaker, I want to thank the Minister of Health and the Premier for ensuring that the Collingwood General and Marine Hospital remains on the government’s radar. The hospital was included in the budget on the list of older hospital facilities supported for redevelopment and rebuild. Welcome as this news is, it has raised questions throughout the south Georgian Bay area. My constituents are asking me what it means, since the hospital was also mentioned in the government’s 2019 budget.

So I ask the minister: Can Collingwood expect a brand new hospital on the land that is being donated for that purpose, or are we looking at a redevelopment on the current site? Does the minister have a timeline that she can share with my constituents?

Hon. Christine Elliott: Thank you very much to the member for the question. Our government is committed to making sure that our health care system has the tools and resources it needs in order to provide world-class care to all Ontarians. That’s why, in our recently announced budget, we have included a revised capital plan, which will see over $30 billion invested over the next 10 years, including an additional $3 billion in the 2021 budget in hospital infrastructure.

The Collingwood redevelopment project will expand the level of patient-centred care we’re able to provide, which will ensure residents’ needs are being met close to their homes. We are going to work closely with the Collingwood hospital as they move through the stages of planning to ensure that improved patient care is at the centre of this significant investment.

We look forward to working with you and with your hospital to ensure that the residents of your community receive the excellent health care that they deserve.

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

Mr. Jim Wilson: Back to the minister: Thank you, Minister, for that answer.

Speaker, the minister will recall that this House, last November, unanimously supported my private member’s resolution to support planning for hospital redevelopments in both Collingwood and Alliston. As would be expected, people in the southern end of my riding were disappointed to see that there was no mention of Stevenson Memorial Hospital in the recent budget, even though it was also mentioned in the 2019 budget.

Can the minister assure my constituents that Stevenson Memorial Hospital remains on the drawing board, and can the minister provide a timeline of when we might expect shovels in the ground?

Hon. Christine Elliott: I can certainly assure the member that Stevenson remains on the drawing board. It is something that we are very committed to dealing with, and we’re extensively consulting with the hospital as the planning progresses. As you know, the hospital recently moved from stage 1 to stage 2 in the ministry’s capital planning process last year.

Obviously, it’s important to remember, and I know you know this already, that when you are planning for an investment this significant, you need to take the time to make sure that it gets done right. But it is moving forward, it is in stage 2, and we are committed to working with our hospital partners to make sure the investments are going to be carried out efficiently and at the right scale.

Additionally, in 2020, we did provide a $1-million planning grant increase, which ensures that the total planning grant now is $1.5 million, which will assist the project moving further towards construction as they complete the planning on it.

Both hospitals are certainly within our sights and are certainly moving forward. Thank you for the question.

Tourism and hospitality industry

Mr. Rudy Cuzzetto: COVID-19 has left disastrous impacts on our economy in this province, and continues to have a negative impact over the year. Businesses affected by this pandemic continue to face uncertainty every single day. With each day this pandemic looms in Ontario, more businesses are in need of support.

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Heritage, Sport, Tourism and Culture Industries: Minister, this government tabled a budget just a week ago. Can you please tell us how this government will support Ontario’s heritage, sport, tourism and culture industries, who have been hardest-hit during this pandemic?

Hon. Lisa MacLeod: Before I answer the question to the honourable member, I just wanted to say thank you to the people of Nepean. Fifteen years ago today, myself, the health minister and Peter Tabuns from Toronto–Danforth walked into this assembly after we were elected. So I wanted to say thank you to the people of Nepean and, formerly, of Carleton for the privilege and the honour to stand in this assembly for the past 15 years.

Interjection: Glad you’re here.

Hon. Lisa MacLeod: Thank you.

The member here raises a significant issue: The sectors that I represent were hit first, hardest. They will take the longest to recover post-COVID-19. I spent the day on Monday with the finance minister and the Premier in Niagara Falls, a city of 90,000 that lost 40,000 hospitality jobs at the beginning of this pandemic. Also, I come from Ottawa, the nation’s capital, where the third-largest sector and industry is tourism, so I’ve seen it first-hand across the province, which is why we were so successful in arranging with the finance minister historic investments into these sectors: over $930 million we’re able to access. I’ll get into the actual investments in the supplemental.

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

Mr. Rudy Cuzzetto: Thank you, Minister. The weather is slowly getting warmer, spring is well under way, and soon we will be enjoying the summer months here in Ontario. Among the hardest-hit by the pandemic have been those in the tourism sector, and many of those tourism businesses are seasonal and rely on the summer months.

Through you, Mr. Speaker, can the minister please provide more details on how this government is ensuring that those in the tourism and hospitality industry receive the support they are desperately in need of leading into the summer?

Hon. Lisa MacLeod: First and foremost, we’ve set up a tourism, economic development and recovery task force, led by former MPP and opposition leader Tim Hudak. They will be working on an itinerary-based travel incentive—when it’s safe to do so; we’re not suggesting it is right now, but we want to be prepared for hyperlocal tourism in the days and months ahead.

In addition, we are looking at gateway cities. The destinations of Toronto and Ottawa have been decimated; we want to make sure we provide them with a great level of support with their international airports, their major convention centres, and of course, most of the cultural assets in the province are there.

Finally, we want to work on signature destinations, like Muskoka, like Blue Mountain, like the Thousand Islands and other places across the province.

But directly, we are investing over $200 million into sport and recreation infrastructure, over $100 million in business grants, over $100 million in tourism recovery programs, $50 million for religious and cultural institutions, $10 million for the arts, $10 million for agri-tourism, $260 million in an incentive to get people back in training, a $150-million travel tax incentive, $50 million for our regional tourism organizations, $1.3 million for regional-based resources, $3.9 million for provincial parks and, of course, $10 million that will be going toward other activities.

So we’re really excited about supporting these—

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Thank you very much. The next question.

Immunisation contre la COVID-19 / COVID-19 immunization

M. Guy Bourgouin: Ma question est pour le premier ministre. Pendant que le programme de vaccination de ce gouvernement est tout croche, les communautés du nord de l’Ontario doivent faire preuve de leur créativité. Le bureau de santé publique Porcupine fait l’impossible pour assurer que les plus vulnérables aient accès au vaccin le plus vite possible, avec un nombre limité de vaccins dans une région très vaste et avec une population vieille et sans accès à la technologie. Le bureau de santé a donc fait appel à la communauté pour aider à contacter les résidents pour les faire vacciner.

Ma question est très simple : où sont le premier ministre et son gouvernement dans cette situation-ci?

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): Minister of Health to respond.

Hon. Christine Elliott: I thank the member very much for the question. Actually, we have achieved great success in the north, especially with Operation Remote Immunity. That was developed in association with First Nations leaders, with Ornge, and allowed for 31 fly-in communities to receive their first doses. We’re now working on the second doses for those residents.

We’re also working with the local public health units, because while we have one overall vaccine plan with three phases, we know that the situation is different in different parts of Ontario. What works in Toronto isn’t going to work in your region. Windsor is different; Ottawa is different. So, the local medical officers of health have been developing their own plan to make sure that their own residents can be vaccinated, which is the way we planned it to be, recognizing that they know their own areas best. I congratulate the regional health officer in your area for doing that because they know the best way to reach the residents, and that is perfectly in accordance with our plan.

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

Mr. Guy Bourgouin: Northerners are used to being creative and resourceful, because this government has left them on their own will. My office has been helping to book vaccination appointments for elderly residents who have no access to technology, live alone and don’t have a caregiver.

Will this government put their money where their mouth is and step up to the challenge, or will they continue to play “Where’s Waldo?” with the good people of Mushkegowuk–James Bay?

Hon. Christine Elliott: I would say to the member we have already put hundreds of millions of dollars into this project. We already have our online booking tool that is doing a great job. They have already booked over 850,000 appointments. It’s operating well. There are some glitches here and there—I certainly will acknowledge that—but overall, the system is doing a great job.

But we also recognize that there are many residents who are not computer-literate. They don’t feel comfortable booking online. We still have our booking tool, the call centre, where people can call. They speak a number of different languages so that if people are more comfortable making the appointment via phone, they certainly can do that. That is available across Ontario, including northern Ontario. Every part of Ontario is booked into this system.

Education funding

M lle Amanda Simard: My question is to the Minister of Education. Last summer, this government told school boards to use their reserve funds to hire additional staff and create space to allow for greater social distancing in classrooms. Reserve funds are meant for repairs to school infrastructure and to build new facilities. To date, this government has not committed to reimbursing school boards forced to deplete these funds in order to keep kids safe at school. In fact, there was no mention of reserve funding in last week’s budget, something that is understandably concerning to all school boards.

The budget also confirmed that this government is cutting $1.6 billion from the education budget for the 2021 school year.

Mr. Speaker, will the minister explain why he decided that school boards do not deserve any reimbursement for the reserve funds they were forced to spend to make their schools safe—a job that should be up to the government?

Hon. Stephen Lecce: Indeed, the government did step up with a $1.6-billion investment. We believe every level of government, our school boards, our federal government and, yes, this province must be prepared to invest in the protection of children and quality education. We actually welcome the co-operation of everyone to be part of the solution.

We have invested an additional $700 million more in the budget, underscoring our commitment to public education. We have an upcoming announcement about the Grants for Student Needs, which is our principal funding vehicle for school boards. All members and all parents will see an increase in expenditure in mental health, special education and STEM learning and a focus on learning loss for reading and for mathematic supports.

We recognize that there’s more we can do. We will continue to step up in partnership with our boards, with all Canadians, all Ontarians, to make sure that schools remain safe and that we maintain excellence in learning in Ontario.

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

M lle Amanda Simard: Back to the minister: Throughout this pandemic, educational assistants and early childhood educators have often been overlooked. EAs and ECEs work long hours in close quarters with students, helping them eat, taking their hand, and toileting. They often work with students who have behavioural issues. Many don’t understand the importance of physical distancing and wearing a mask, putting these workers at greater risk of exposure to COVID-19. Many are refusing work or are leaving the profession because of mask exemptions and high EA-to-student ratios, which remained unchanged during the pandemic.

EAs and ECEs are understandably concerned for their health and that of their families. They simply don’t feel safe.

What additional measures is this government taking to protect the safety of EAs and ECEs during the third wave, and how does the minister plan to stabilize this vital workforce when they’re cutting $1.6 billion from the budget?

Hon. Stephen Lecce: Indeed, there are 409 more EAs in Ontario because of our government’s investments; an additional 330 childhood educators because of our government’s investments. I appreciate the member recognizing the increase.

What I would also note is that when it comes to vaccinations—two points. The first is, this government prioritized education staff. All of them, including the hard-working EAs, ECEs, childhood educators, our bus drivers, our educators—everyone is in phase 2, which I think underscores the commitment of the government to make sure that these front-line staff who cannot work from home get access to the vaccine as soon as possible.

The limitation is our access to supply. As we get more vaccines, we’ll be able to accelerate the delivery to these critical workers, who are really doing an important job to support our kids and keep them safe.

Mr. Speaker, we’re going to continue to invest, but I think the most important thing we can do is to work with the federal government to get these vaccines to this province so we can get them into the arms of Canadians.

Climate change

Mr. Rudy Cuzzetto: Climate change is a complex problem that poses serious challenges for all countries around the world. To be able to tackle this very important issue requires continuous collaboration between governments, the private sector and the people of Ontario, working together to drive more innovative and effective solutions.

Mr. Speaker, the constituents in my riding of Mississauga–Lakeshore have expressed concern about the worsening impacts of climate change and the effects it continues to have on our local communities. Now, more than ever, they want to know that their government is serious about climate change and willing to step up their efforts to address this important environmental challenge.

So my question for the Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks is, can he assure me today that tackling climate change is a top priority for our government?

Hon. Jeff Yurek: I want to thank the member from Mississauga–Lakeshore for the question and his strong advocacy, on behalf of his constituents, for a healthy environment and a healthy economy.

Mr. Speaker, up to this point, I’ve been very clear that this government takes the threat of climate change very seriously. That’s why I recently announced an investment of $20 million over four years for the Greenlands Conservation Partnership. This initiative will advance our actions in the Made-in-Ontario Environment Plan, like protecting vulnerable and sensitive natural areas, such as wetlands and other important habitats, through good policy, strong science and partnerships. It will help mitigate the effects of climate change and increase the number of conserved natural spaces for the public to enjoy.

I can assure the member that having healthy communities and a healthy environment will always be the top priorities for this government. We know that tackling climate change is a key part of achieving this.

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

Mr. Rudy Cuzzetto: I want to thank the Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks for his dedication to the people of Ontario and to the environment.

My community cares deeply about the environment and will be happy to hear that our government is taking real action on climate change.

Mr. Speaker, after a long winter, the warm weather is finally on its way, and this means Ontarians will be looking to spend more time experiencing the outdoors. Now, more than ever, people all across Ontario are looking for more opportunities to discover the beautiful green spaces our province has to offer.

Can the minister please tell this House how this investment will ensure more people can access Ontario’s natural areas?

Hon. Jeff Yurek: Thanks again for the question from the member from Mississauga–Lakeshore.

Mr. Speaker, we recognize the positive impacts getting outdoors has for both our physical and mental health.

I, too, am enjoying much time out hiking with my wife. We currently go to Catfish Creek Conservation Authority, Springwater. It’s a great nature trail, seven kilometres long.

It’s a beautiful time to get out with the family and actually enjoy nature. I encourage all Ontarians, if they have the opportunity, to get outside and enjoy nature.

Our investment is supporting that type of activity by expanding our natural areas. It’s going to increase opportunities for Ontarians to go hiking, fishing, boating, or taking out their mountain bike and doing some trail riding.

This investment is just one of many the government is making to expand access to outdoor recreation and strengthen protections for our environment. We will continue to focus on delivering the commitments in our Made-in-Ontario Environment Plan and continue to address the challenges of climate change and promote healthy natural spaces.

Caregivers

Mrs. Lisa Gretzky: My question is to the Deputy Premier. Last week, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario released a decision that shows how the Premier and his government’s inaction to ensure congregate care residents have meaningful access to their essential caregivers discriminated against a child with disabilities.

The tribunal found that the child had been adversely affected and that human rights protections do not go away in a pandemic. It shouldn’t be left up to each service provider to do the right thing. The government should have stepped up and legislated visitations to ease the adverse effects of isolation, and made it clear that residents should be allowed outside care homes for sunshine and fresh air.

Speaker, with this decision from the tribunal, why does this government continue to facilitate breaching the rights of thousands of congregate care residents in group homes, long-term-care homes and others across the province? Why won’t they pass my More Than a Visitor Act and immediately reunite these families once and for all?

The Speaker (Hon. Ted Arnott): The parliamentary assistant, the member for Ottawa West–Nepean.

Mr. Jeremy Roberts: We are aware of the recent decision of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario and our ministry is reviewing the decision.

Our top priority remains the health, safety and well-being of children, youth, adults and families in Ontario, includ