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November 14, 2017

41st Parliament, 2nd Session

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Hansard Transcripts

Votes and Proceedings

Orders and Notices

Hansard Transcripts 2017-Nov-14 (PDF)

L116 - Tue 14 Nov 2017 / Mar 14 nov 2017

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE DE L’ONTARIO

Tuesday 14 November 2017 Mardi 14 novembre 2017

Time allocation

Introduction of Visitors

Oral Questions

Energy policies

Home care

School facilities

Hospital services

Ontario budget

Labour dispute

Social assistance

Ontario budget

Mercury poisoning

Indigenous relations

Labour dispute

Hospital services

Small business

Notices of dissatisfaction

Introduction of Visitors

Members’ Statements

Diabetes

Child and family services

Myositis

Veterans

Highway safety

Hindu Heritage Month

Anti-bullying initiatives

Remembrance Day

Optometrists

Introduction of Bills

Walk to Work Day Act, 2017 / Loi de 2017 sur le Jour de promotion de la marche pour se rendre au travail

Stronger, Fairer Ontario Act (Budget Measures), 2017 / Loi de 2017 pour un Ontario plus fort et plus juste (mesures budgétaires)

Motions

Private members’ public business

Adjournment debates

Statements by the Ministry and Responses

Economic outlook and fiscal review / Perspectives économiques et revue financière

Petitions

Anti-smoking initiatives for youth

Workers’ compensation

Elevator maintenance

Hospital funding

Film and television industry

Long-term care

Nuclear safety

Wasaga Beach

Highway improvement

Alzheimer’s disease

Winter highway maintenance

Long-term care

Opposition Day

Hospital funding

Royal assent / Sanction royale

Hospital funding

Adjournment Debate

Labour dispute

The House met at 0900.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Good morning. Please join me in prayer.

Prayers.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

Time allocation

Hon. Michael Chan: I move that, pursuant to standing order 47 and notwithstanding any other standing order or special order of the House relating to Bill 166,

An Act to amend or repeal various Acts and to enact three new Acts with respect to the construction of new homes and ticket sales for events, the Standing Committee on Social Policy be authorized to meet on Monday, November 20, 2017, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. and on Tuesday, November 21, 2017, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. for the purpose of public hearings on the bill; and

That the Clerk of the Committee, in consultation with the committee Chair, be authorized to arrange notice of public hearings; and

That witnesses be scheduled to appear before the committee on a first-come first-served basis; and

That the Clerk of the Committee distribute a draft copy of the agenda with the committee members by Thursday, November 16, 2017, at 1 p.m.; and

That each witness will receive up to five minutes for their presentation followed by nine minutes for questions from committee members; and

That the deadline for written submissions be 6 p.m. on Tuesday, November 21, 2017; and

That the deadline for filing amendments to the bill with the Clerk of the Committee shall be 2 p.m. on Thursday, November 23, 2017; and

That the committee be authorized to meet on Monday, November 27, 2017, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. and on Tuesday, November 28, 2017, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., for the purpose of clause-by-clause consideration of the bill; and

On Tuesday, November 28, 2017, at 4:30 p.m., those amendments which have not yet been moved shall be deemed to have been moved, and the Chair of the committee shall interrupt the proceedings and shall, without further debate or amendment, put every question necessary to dispose of all remaining sections of the bill and any amendments thereto. At this time, the Chair shall allow one 20-minute waiting period pursuant to standing order 129(a); and

That the committee shall report the bill to the House no later than Wednesday, November 29, 2017. In the event that the committee fails to report the bill on that day, the bill shall be deemed to be passed by the committee and shall be deemed to be reported to and received by the House; and

That, upon receiving the report of the Standing Committee on Social Policy, the Speaker shall put the question for adoption of the report forthwith, and at such time the bill shall be ordered for third reading, which order may be called that same day; and

That, when the order for third reading of the bill is called, two hours of debate shall be allotted to the third reading stage of the bill, apportioned equally among the recognized parties. At the end of this time, the Speaker shall interrupt the proceedings and shall put every question necessary to dispose of this stage of the bill without further debate or amendment; and

The vote on third reading may be deferred pursuant to standing order 28(h); and

That, in the case of any division relating to any proceedings on the bill, the division bell shall be limited to five minutes.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Rick Nicholls): Mr. Chan has moved government notice of motion number 38. Mr. Chan, back to you for further debate.

Hon. Michael Chan: Speaker, I believe the parliamentary assistant will be making our remarks later in the debate.

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

Mr. John Yakabuski: They don’t even want to talk about it. Boy, this is a new low.

Mr. Steve Clark: I’m going to get to that.

It is an honour to speak, normally, on behalf of my residents of Leeds–Grenville. I wish it wasn’t yet another guillotine motion, brought forward by a government hard-wired to conduct business through time allocation. I guess, Speaker, it’s what we have come to expect from a government that refuses to work co-operatively with the opposition and has no clue on how to manage their business. In fact, they didn’t even put up a speaker after they moved this guillotine motion.

While the motion may get the government House leader a thumbs up from the Premier’s office, it’s bad news for democracy, as the member for St. Catharines will attest. When his vantage point was on this side of the House, he was rather eloquent when it came to speaking against limiting debate. I want to quote him here: “We are operating in this Legislative Assembly at this time almost exclusively on what are called time allocation motions. That’s most unfortunate, because it’s what you would call anti-democratic.”

He called it—and I think I’ve said it so many times with this government, they should have it memorized by now—the member for St. Catharines’ term of “choking off of debate.” I wish he’d speak to his seatmate about it, because we’re again feeling the squeeze against debate by this government.

Speaker, for reasons I’m going to get into shortly, it’s ironic that this tactic is being used for Bill 166, the Strengthening Protection for Ontario Consumers Act. It’s a bill that affects several acts and several pieces of legislation: the Ontario New Home Warranties Plan Act, the Real Estate and Business Brokers Act, the Travel Industry Act and the Ticket Speculation Act. And, of course, it’s the reform of Tarion that’s drawn the most attention from Ontarians.

For years in Ontario, new homebuyers have been sharing what can only be described as horror stories about their experiences with Tarion. The purchase of a new home is the largest investment any of us will make in our lifetime. When it goes right it’s truly an amazing experience, to finally realize the dream of home ownership. But when there are problems and when things go wrong, the dream can quickly become a nightmare. It can be devastating both financially and emotionally, especially if the homeowner has nowhere to turn for a remedy. That’s been the case so far for too many people dealing with Tarion.

I’m proud of the many outstanding home builders we have in Leeds–Grenville. They’re honest, hard-working professionals who are a vital part of our local economy. But when things go wrong, and sometimes they do, it’s our responsibility as legislators to ensure there’s a system in place to protect new homebuyers and their investment. There has been plenty of evidence to show that wasn’t happening in Ontario, but this government was blind to it.

However, there is a significant event taking place in this province next June. So after years of doing nothing, the government was suddenly interested in looking at Tarion. While the timing says everything you need to know about their motivation, Speaker, I want to give them credit for tasking Justice Cunningham with conducting a review. He did an outstanding job in getting to the bottom of the tremendous problems at Tarion. His final report and 37 recommendations were a road map for this government to create the kind of new home warranty program that could truly protect Ontarians.

But that’s not what we have in Bill 166, not by a long shot. That’s why this government doesn’t want to take any more time than the bare minimum amount to debate the bill. They don’t want a compare-and-contrast between the comprehensive reforms set out in Justice Cunningham’s 37 recommendations and the thin gruel we have here today.

So what happened to real reform, Speaker? Quite simply, the government didn’t support Justice Cunningham’s vision, but they couldn’t just abandon the report outright. They needed to have some cover. So this summer, they struck a working group to, as the ministry’s documents state, “provide advice and input on proposals for legislative changes that would be required to implement the government’s plan.” As my colleague and neighbour in eastern Ontario the member for Lanark–Frontenac–Lennox and Addington noted in his remarks, that’s the key word. That’s the key word, Speaker.

The documents say, “the government’s plan,” not “Justice Cunningham’s plan.” From the start, there was no question that this working group would come back with the government’s plan. That’s because its membership was dominated by Tarion reps, who, let’s face it, aren’t actually coming to the table with an eye on real reform.

Then the minister put severe limits on the scope by telling them not to examine two of the fundamental recommendations in Justice Cunningham’s report, those being: “creating a competitive marketplace for warranties” and “establishing an independent body to adjudicate warranty disputes.” Speaker, the fix was in. That’s why there’s such a disconnect between Bill 166 and Justice Cunningham’s work.

I want to take some time to actually salute a volunteer organization, Canadians for Properly Built Homes. They’ve done tremendous work in exposing the need to reform Tarion. They have given a voice to those new homeowners so poorly treated by Tarion. I was pleased to meet in August with their president, Dr. Karen Somerville, and also Nancy Shipman. It’s actually a credit to their tenaciousness that we know as much as we do about the secret meetings that took place with the minister’s working group this summer.

They’re getting the runaround now by the ministry over a freedom-of-information request that they filed in September. I want to read from that request, because I think it’s important to know what they were seeking about the working group’s secret activities this summer.

“We are requesting the agenda for each meeting, meeting notes of all MGCS staff who attended these meetings, e.g. that show who was present in the meeting room (e.g. core group members as well as any other attendees, invited guests etc.) and their notes of what was said in those meetings.” Speaker, it’s a pretty straightforward request about a critical piece of consumer protection: who attended these meetings and what was said.

But on October 30, Dr. Somerville received a letter from the MGCS informing her that the ministry was extending the deadline to respond by three months, to January 26, 2018. It’s no coincidence, Speaker, that date is long after this government will have fast-tracked Bill 166 into law and also when the House isn’t sitting. Speaker, I want to note that I’ll be filing an order paper question asking the minister to release that information immediately because I believe it’s in the public interest. A minister concerned with transparency and full disclosure would agree.

But then again, if they were so concerned about transparency, they wouldn’t have struck a working group to conduct secret meetings in the first place. No, this minister got exactly what she wanted from the working group: the appearance of new home warranty reform. The government has abandoned the work of Justice Cunningham and all who contributed to his outstanding report. This bill is one thing and one thing only: Checking a box so this government can hit the campaign trail and claim that they’ve acted on the problems at Tarion.

I just want to close—I know we’re debating purchasing and consumer protection but I want to share a story from one of my constituents, Judy Lothian. She moved into her house in Brockville on September 14 and I met her on a recent canvas.

Walking up to the house, you could see there were pretty major renovations taking place, but this wasn’t a new homeowner making the home her own. Judy documented for me the long list of major defects she discovered soon after the deal for her home closed: electrical, plumbing, mold, water infiltration, structural defects—you name a part of the home and there probably was an issue with it. You can imagine me talking to Judy at her front door.

Can you imagine the legal fight, the battle, which she has got on her hands with these significant renovations? It’s all-consuming. She pointed out that there’s no Tarion, even with its well-documented flaws, to protect people in her situation because what she was buying wasn’t a newly built home.

It’s interesting to note that she did have a home inspector but, as she wrote in an email, “They aren’t allowed to use a moisture metre that puts pinholes in the walls when doing an inspection. They aren’t allowed to move furniture when doing an inspection.” That’s something everyone who purchases an older home needs to understand. I hope that Judy’s terrible ordeal will raise a flag of caution to other would-be homebuyers.

I promised Judy that I would bring her comments on the record. I appreciate being able to speak on the government’s guillotine motion today.

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

Mr. Gilles Bisson: To the previous speaker: Yes, she had a moving presentation, I thought, and brought a perspective that a lot of people didn’t get to hear as most of the presentations were not coming directly from homeowners and people who have gone through that experience.

I think the beauty of committee is when we have the public come in and tell us what legislation means to them. That’s the way it should be because, often, legislators and bureaucrats draft legislation with the greatest of intention and when the rubber meets the road when it comes to the bill, the public starts looking at it and says, “Oh, maybe this is not such a good thing,” or, “Maybe something is missing or has to be amended.” That’s why the committee process is so important, which brings me to the subject of this debate: time allocation.

Mr. Steve Clark: Guillotine.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: The guillotine. As they say in French, “la guillotine.”

Listen, I’ve said this a number of times, and I’ll keep on saying it, because, to me, it really is a bad way of doing legislation: The government has yet again brought a time allocation motion into this House in order to shut down debate so that they can force this bill through the process so that in the end it gets the short shrift when it comes—not so much the debate in the House, that

part I’m not as excited about; it’s more what doesn’t happen in committee.

I think that’s unfortunate because what you end up with is governments using time allocation as a norm and not as the exception. If you look at this place since we’ve come back from the last general election, there haven’t been that many debates where the opposition has actually said, “Okay, we’re going to hold things up and we’re going jam up the House and not let anything pass unless you do X, Y and Z.” Actually, I think the opposition has been pretty co-operative when it comes to a lot of the bills that the government brings forward because, in a number of cases, we agree with the bill. It’s a question of

interpretation of sections of the bill and some of the things that we want changed.

But the general direction—for example, a little bit later the government is going to be introducing an omnibus bill having to do with the legalization of marijuana that the federal government does. We, the provinces, have to deal with all of the regulatory and legal parts about where you sell pot, where you can smoke pot, what the driving restrictions are, all of those things—

Mr. John Yakabuski: Not here.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: And the government, unfortunately—well, we’re not going to be allowed to smoke it here. No. Are you serious?

Mr. John Yakabuski: Absolutely.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Well, how are we going to be able to stand all these debates?

Sorry. You got me sidetracked there.

I was just saying that the unfortunate

part is that the government has done it as an omnibus bill, has thrown a whole bunch of other things into the bill on the cannabis regulation and, unfortunately, that means that the public yet again are going to get short shrift when it comes to other issues that are equally important, if not more important, when it comes to some of the things that they put in the cannabis bill.

I’m sure that the government is going to probably end up time allocating that one as well, even though the opposition is not standing in the way. I would argue that if the government brought this thing for debate there would be six or seven hours of debate. That’s normal around here. I don’t think that’s excessive—to have three days of debate on a bill at second reading. It shouldn’t be seen by anyone as being excessive. It’s a democratic right of this institution and the members who are within it.

The bigger issue is that of committee. This is the part that I think is really unfortunate because, like in this bill, the public doesn’t have an adequate opportunity to get to committee because of the length of time that the bill is referred into committee by these motions. We don’t give them enough time to find out what the bill is about. I’ve seen, as you have, Speaker, the government passing a bill at second reading on Monday and they’re advertising it for people to come and speak on Wednesday, which to me is ridiculous. People haven’t had the chance to digest what the bill is all about and to be informed.

The government said, “Oh, well, we’re going to give it two days of hearings,” and again, hardly anybody is applying. Well, surprise, surprise—the bill just came out of second reading and the public doesn’t know and nobody applied because they didn’t even know the darn thing was there. More times than not, you can’t advertise properly if the bill is coming back in such a short time.

I think what it does is remove the ability of the public to have its say. When this Legislature and, in this case, this government—because, let’s be clear, it’s not the opposition that is pushing for time allocation. Certainly not; it’s the government, and it’s a majority. What they’re really saying to the public is, “You don’t count. It’s not important what you have to say because we’re smarter than all of you. We know that we can do this in one or two days of hearings with one or two days of clause-by-clause.

We’re going to decide what’s good for you.” And you wonder why the public is disconnected from this place and is resentful towards the political process? It’s because, quite frankly, we’re not taking them seriously and we’re not allowing them to be part of the participants in the legislative process.

You know as well as I do, Speaker—you’ve been around here long enough—that if the public finds out about something and it’s something they care about, they will get involved. They will come out to committee hearings. They will have their say. And that’s a good thing, because then the legislators who sit on committee are able to hear those complaints. Sometimes they’re just complaints that nothing can be done about, but more times than not they’re based on real issues that the legislation hasn’t really thought about addressing. It’s a negative or a positive consequence of the legislation that we hear about from the public.

When the public doesn’t have adequate time to come to committee in order to say what it wants about a particular bill, I think the one who’s getting shortchanged is, first of all, the public. I think our society overall and the government and this Legislature are shortchanged as well because we end up with bills that could have been a lot better, a lot stronger, a lot more effective, and instead we end up with bills that have errors in them.

I’ll give you an example. When I was first elected here, along with my good friend Mr. Wilson from the riding of—

Mr. John Yakabuski: Simcoe–Grey.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Simcoe–Grey. I’m sorry; I didn’t know the riding name.

When we got here in 1990, there was no time allocation. This House operated essentially like a minority Parliament. The opposition had a fair amount of ability to hold stuff up in the House. As a result, they used that power to force the government to have hearings on things that were important to them.

I would argue that about 80% of the legislation, the opposition was fine with. Even under the Rae years, when I was first elected as a member of the Rae government, the Conservatives and Liberals obviously had issues with things that we did as a government. They would say, “Those things: We want more time in committee so the public can find out and we can make our case why this is bad and why it needs to be changed.” As a result, the government had to give the opposition more time in committee, which meant to say that the public had more time to be able to debate.

Let me give you one example. I use this one as an example that I think is a really good one. The Rae government decided back in the day to move on what was called sustainable forestry development. We wanted to move our forestry practices from being not the bad forestry practices of the day to what we wanted to become: the gold standard. We wanted Ontario to be seen as the best when it came to forest management. From the time of where we decide we’re going to cut the tree to the time we replant the tree, the animals within the forest, the utilizers of the forest—everything had to be taken into consequence.

The reason we wanted to do that was that we saw an environmental movement coming, and the public who were demanding—they weren’t going to buy products that were unsustainable. So we put forward this piece of legislation. We thought we were brilliant. We thought it was wonderful; we thought it was great. We thought it didn’t need any changes.

But the opposition—and I remember Mr. Hodgson, who was the member from Victoria-Haliburton, up that way somewhere; he was a Conservative—

Interjection.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Chris Hodgson. Did I say the wrong name?

Mr. John Yakabuski: Hodgson.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Okay, Hodgson. Sorry about that. He was the critic for the PCs at the time. He, along with—I forget who the critic from the Liberals was. They had issues with certain parts of the bill. We travelled that bill for, oh, God, three to four weeks at least. We went across all of northern Ontario, all those small towns where forestry is an important part of the industry. We went into central Ontario, into the Algonquin Provincial Park area, where forestry is a big issue down there too, and we heard from the public. What we heard was that the legislation was a step in the right direction but there needed to be some amendment.

As a result of those public hearings, we amended the bill in such a way that it has withstood government after government since we left office, and nobody has ever gotten rid of it. Mike Harris came to power; he kept it. Mr. McGuinty came to power; he kept it. Ms. Wynne came to power; she kept it. Why? Because we had a very rigid, very good committee process that allowed that bill to be amended in such a way that it stood the test of time. Today, Ontario is able to sell into markets it wouldn’t have been able to sell into if it hadn’t been for that legislation.

And guess what? It wasn’t just the government that ended up drafting the bill; it was the public. We drafted it, the public amended it, along with the opposition, and we made a better bill. So I say to the government across the way: What’s wrong with that? Wouldn’t you want your legislation to be the best legislation it can be? Wouldn’t you want the public to have confidence in what you’ve done? Moving us into time allocation so that we can short shrift the public when it comes to public hearings I think is a mistake.

I think it’s a disservice to the legislative process at the very least, and I think it’s a bit of a slap in the face to the public because we’re saying to them, “It doesn’t matter what you have to say.”

So I just say to the government across the way, I understand why you do this, because you feel some sense of urgency that somehow or other if you allow the bill to go through the natural process, your legislation will never pass. Well, that’s not the case. The reality is that the opposition, both parties in the opposition, aren’t going to hold up everything that you’ve got. Most bills, we have no big issue with. It’s just the question that we need to allow the public to have its say. Certainly if that means there’s an extra week or two of committee hearings, what’s wrong with that?

Shouldn’t the public be part of the process of what we do in this place? I think that just makes ultimate sense, and at the end of the day it makes for a lot better legislation.

The unintentional consequence of all of this is that we get really sloppy about how we draft bills. I know my friends at legislative counsel are going to take exception to this. But we know that legislation is drafted in a couple of steps. The minister’s office and the bureaucracy work on what the concept is, what they want to do. Then they give it to legislative counsel to draft the bill. The ministry has some lawyers as well, obviously, who are involved in the process.

I think because we don’t have larger scrutiny on behalf of committees and the public, we have become a bit—I shouldn’t say “we.” I would say that the government has become a little bit lax about how they draft bills. They’re not as attentive and not as thorough as they used to be. So what you end up with are bills of lesser quality that go through the process and end up passing as law.

When we find out after the law has passed that there’s a problem with the bill, then the government has got to bring in another bill to fix what wasn’t done in the first bill or to fix what was done wrong in the first bill, and the process goes through.

Another example of that is the last time we did a major reform to the municipal planning act. The original legislation went through this place when there was no time allocation under the Tories. They rushed it through the legislative process by way of time allocation. Since that bill, I think we’ve come back five or six times with amendments to the original bill because there were errors.

Some of these bills are quite complex. The municipal planning act is not something that is easily understood by most. It’s a very specialized area. We as legislators have a general idea of what it’s all about. But you’ve got to hear from those people in the development industry, the environmental industry, the people in the planning offices of municipalities—you’ve got to hear from them. And so the unintentional consequence of rushing bills through this House makes for weaker legislation, and I think that’s rather unfortunate on the part of this government.

I just want to touch on one last part, and then I know my colleagues want to say a few things. That is, if you look at this bill, it’s like many other bills, where a whole bunch of what the bill is all about is delegated to cabinet when it comes to the ability to make regulation on matters within the bill. Again, that’s an error, that’s a mistake, because what you end up with is that the government drafts a bill and they say that the bill shall—I’ll make it really simple—make sure that the sky is blue, and all regulatory matters regarding this

section are left to cabinet. Well, the regulatory powers allow you to make the sky pink if you wanted to, because the way we delegate authority to cabinet allows cabinet to essentially change the meaning of the bill.

A good example of that: When we were government, we started the first casinos in the province of Ontario. First was Windsor, followed by Orillia, if I remember correctly. And there was a backlash. The public had never seen that in Ontario. There was a strong minority that was opposed to casinos. I would say that the majority of people were fine, but there was a very vocal, strong minority that were opposed to casinos. The then third party, the Conservatives, said that there should be a referendum on the creation of casinos.

So when they came to power, they actually passed a bill that allowed that the only way you could put a full-fledged casino in a community was by way of a referendum, but they left everything to regulation when it came to those referendums. The Liberals come to power, and guess what they did? They utilized the regulatory power within the bill to do completely the opposite of what the bill intended because they were allowed, by way of regulation, to do that.

My point is, yes, regulations are necessary, but I think we should very much limit the way regulations are. The intent of the bill should be clearly spelled out in the written bill. It should be clearly the Legislature that decides what the original intention is of what the bill should do. And if you’re going to change the intent of the bill, it should come back to the Legislature for the members to decide if that should be done or not. It should not be left up to cabinet, because they’re only a small group of people of this Legislature, and I don’t think it serves the public well.

With that, Speaker, I want to thank you very much. I look forward to what others have to say about this bill.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Rick Nicholls): Further debate? Further debate? I recognize the member from Renfrew–Nipissing–Pembroke.

Mr. John Yakabuski: Well, thank you, Speaker. I’m surprised that the government, after introducing a motion, does not seem to be interested in speaking to their own motion. We all know how this place works. It works in rotation. My colleague from Leeds–Grenville spoke. My friend from Timmins–James Bay spoke. I expected one of the honourable members across the floor to speak to the motion, but, of course, I was met with silence. So we will endeavour to stand in.

Interjection.

Mr. John Yakabuski: Perhaps I could get some of your speaking notes, Lou, because I’m sure they’re wonderful.

Speaker, what my colleague from Timmins–James Bay just said about the challenge of legislation and regulation is exactly right. Legislation is complicated. Even the smallest of bills can have complications involved in it. And oftentimes you are confronted or met by a constituent and they will say, “So what exactly is this going to do?” How many times do you end up saying to them, “Well, that’s going to be dealt with in regulation. It’s not part of the legislation.

The legislation empowers the executive council to pass regulations which will ultimately determine how that affects you the citizen of the province of Ontario”? It is sometimes very difficult, very hard, for members of Parliament here to be able to clearly articulate how a piece of legislation is going to affect the people until those regulations are actually tabled and passed. So he’s exactly right on that. Now, having said that, I don’t know that this chamber could possibly have the time to debate every regulation that exists in the province of Ontario.

There are way too many; there are way too many pieces of legislation. That’s why we have been working hard in the PC Party to reduce the amount of red tape in this province.

But let’s talk about time allocation for the moment. This is the 36th time in this session, in this Parliament, that this government has brought in time allocation on a bill. Now, you can say that they have the right, because they do. It’s provided for in legislation and the standing orders. But is it democratic? Is it democratic to continually bring time allocation to this Legislature to say, “Debate is over, folks; debate on such and such a bill is over”?

This bill that we’re talking about today, Bill 166—we are not actually talking about the bill, because it’s a time allocation motion, but we can drift in and out. With translation, it’s 190 pages. It’s a complicated piece of legislation and it amends various acts. My colleague from Leeds–Grenville articulated quite well how one of the purported intents of bringing in this legislation was to deal with the new home warranty act and Tarion, and how it has failed in actually doing that because it did not adopt the recommendations of Justice Cunningham.

It adopted the recommendations of the Liberal cabinet, who got together and said, “This is what we’re going to do. We’ll have a little tête-à-tête with a committee that we’ll set up. They’re going to come back and say exactly what we want them to say, and that’s what we’re going to put into the legislation.” But it doesn’t accomplish what most people were looking for, and that is true accountability in their new home warranties.

As my colleague said, it’s the biggest purchase you will ever make, unless you’re Bill Morneau and you have something over in France that’s bigger. For most people, our home here where we live is the biggest purchase we’ll ever make. But if you’re federal finance minister Bill Morneau, you could have multi-million-dollar places all over the world, including France, and he does. But for most of us who work here, we have one home and it’s the one we live in.

When you make that purchase, it is absolutely paramount that you can trust that the quality of the workmanship is beyond reproach, because it’s not like—we even have lemon laws where, if you get what they call a lemon as a vehicle, we now have lemon laws that will allow that vehicle to be replaced, not just continually repairs and failed repairs. You can actually get that vehicle replaced if it’s determined that it is considered to be just one of those ones that are not fixable.

What do you do with a home? You go on the Internet and order a new one and they come and put it on the spot? It’s not quite that simple. So having a good home warranty and an accountable home warranty organization is absolutely necessary, but this bill has failed to accomplish that.

The other thing that it has failed to do, and they have crowed loudly about it, is the ticket-scalping situation. Of course, it came to a head last year with the Gord Downie concert in Kingston, his final concert, and the average person couldn’t get a ticket because these bots, these scalper bots, had bought up all the tickets through the Internet. So then they scalped them at significant percentages over the face value of the ticket—double, triple, whatever they could get—and people were willing to pay that because they knew this was going to be the last of something that they would ever have the opportunity to witness, hear, listen and see.

But we’ve already heard from the people who are involved in that business that this legislation isn’t going to stop that at all. I mean, just because you pass a law doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen anymore. We have laws against illegally selling drugs on the street. Are drugs being sold on the street? Of course they’re being sold on the street. Just because you pass a law doesn’t stop these people, and these people who understand technology, they are always a step ahead of the government. You can pass a law one day, and the next day they have already figured out a way to scam that law; they have already figured out a way to beat it through evolving and changing technology.

So for them to stand here and crow and say that they’ve fixed the scalping problem is just ludicrous. It’s absolutely ludicrous for them to say that. Unless they are going to be involved in every transaction, and have somebody watching every scalper on the street selling those tickets that they’re saying can’t be sold for more than 50% over face value, and the face value has to be printed on the ticket—listen, with a transaction between a seller and a buyer on a dark evening in front of the ACC or wherever, who is going to know what that person actually had to pay for it if they wanted it bad enough?

It’s absolutely, again, “Pass a law and try to convince the world that we have got everything fixed.” It isn’t that simple, Speaker. It just isn’t that simple.

We’re going to see this coming up in the future: more time allocations. When the government was not in government, it crowed loudly about how wrong time allocation was and how undemocratic it was. The member from St. Catharines, who has been here since 1977, has had multiple speeches on the evils of time allocation. Now he sits as the government whip and thinks it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. Isn’t it funny how it changes when you’ve switched sides in the House? When he was in opposition, he thought it was just the absolute greatest affront to democracy you could think of.

I mentioned Bill 166, and we’ve got Bill 175, which was just tabled the week before we left. Bill 175, with translation, is 390 pages. I have heard that the Attorney General wants that passed before the end of the year. We have five weeks, so 20 legislative days, between now and the end of the session, and he wants this bill that was just passed done before the end of the session? How can he possibly do that without invoking some kind of time allocation?

We haven’t even heard back from the stakeholders about all of the challenges in this bill, and when you have a 390-page bill, you are going to have challenges in there. There have got to be things. Nobody is going to have gotten that right the first time; it’s just not feasible. It never has happened in the past, and it won’t happen again. That’s 390 pages.

Then we’ve got the marijuana legislation, the cannabis legislation, as my colleague talked about. That’s 98 pages, and they want to get this passed through? There are so many debates going on outside of this Legislature about all of the problems and all of the challenges that this society is going to face with the decision by the federal government to legalize cannabis: our law enforcement officers all across Ontario, the challenges with cannabis and driving, and the safety issues. We have got to make sure that the people out here are safe. We have a responsibility as a Legislature to make sure that our citizens are safe.

I’m very concerned that we’re going to see time allocation on this bill, because the government is bound and determined to see all of these things passed, because they want to go into the election next year and say, “We’ve got a clean slate. Aren’t we the greatest government ever? Please elect us.” All you have got to do is look at what they have been doing over the last several months. It’s all about election 2018.

It’s a sad day for democracy that we have another time allocation motion in this House. I will not be supporting it, my colleagues will not be supporting it and if the Liberals were willing to do the right thing, they wouldn’t support it either.

Interjections.

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

Ms. Jennifer K. French: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues. I don’t know how to follow that. I actually, quite frankly, have not had enough coffee, I don’t think, to compete with that.

However, I always appreciate having the chance to stand in this fine Legislature on behalf of the even finer folks of Oshawa. I have had an opportunity to speak to the meat and potatoes of this bill, Bill 166, the Strengthening Protection for Ontario Consumers Act. It’s nice to have a little more time because, as you know, this 20-minute window that we have—that’s it; that’s all.

It’s nice to actually have the opportunity to get more voice on record on behalf of my constituents because, really, that’s why we’re here. This is supposed to be a place where we talk about our communities and we connect all of those dots to make sure that our legislation reflects the needs of members of our community.

We’re supposed to be here because they have other things to do. We can’t fill this room with all of our constituents. They have jobs; they have families; they have responsibilities. They trust us to work well and work diligently on their behalf. That’s why, while I’m pleased to be able to get some more voice on record, it’s so frustrating to have this constant time allocation conversation about shutting it all down. “That’s it; that’s all. We have to move on. We’ve got a ribbon to cut, places to go, people to snow.”

Really, this is not just shutting down debate, but, as my colleague from Timmins–James Bay so eloquently put it, this is really about ending committee time. The time at committee is where folks get to come and share their expertise or their personal understanding of situations and where we make things better.

I’m a little all over the map. I’m going to bring it back to the original bill and then I’m going to talk about time allocation.

Bill 166 is about strengthening protection for Ontario consumers. As we’ve heard now for the last couple of weeks, it is about Tarion and new home owners and their protection. It is about being able to purchase tickets for entertainment events, trying to even the playing field and trying to get ahead of these scalper bot technologies. As even the Attorney General has said, it’s almost impossible for regulation to keep up with the technology. We’re always playing catch-up. But still, we need to try and we need to endeavour to make Ontario fair for everyone, whether that’s on the entertainment side of things and what they’re doing on the weekend or whether that’s another piece of legislation.

I’ve spoken at length about the ticket sales. I’m going to leave it at what’s already on record.

As we’ve been talking a little bit about Tarion this morning, a new home is the biggest purchase that I’ve ever made and likely will ever make. I bought my new home about 10 years ago. I bought a little townhouse in Oshawa. It was new, but it was a year old. It was a brand new home that no one had ever lived in before. It had been the construction office, so it was sitting there and it wasn’t being occupied yet. It was the very last new home on the street to be sold.

So it’s interesting that I had a bit of an advantage in that the house had been sitting there a year longer than everyone else’s when they had purchased them. And so, as houses do, they shift, they wiggle, they whatever with the seasons. About six months into living in my new home, well, didn’t I have flooding in the basement?

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Oh, no.

Ms. Jennifer K. French: And it was pouring in. I remember filming it with my cellphone, just shooting out of the hole in the basement wall, a little waterfall. I took pictures and I got in touch. I had a new home, so I had a new home warranty. I had this Tarion thing, and I didn’t know—it came in a binder. I was able, because my house was still in that first year, to be covered. I was able to have things covered, but for my neighbours who also had leaks and had waterfalls in the basements in their homes, it was too late. They had to pay for it out of pocket.

There was no way that they got the same warranty that I got, because my house had been sitting unoccupied; nobody was living in it. Like I said, it was the construction office for a year. I was technically in the second year of the house’s existence, but my first year of home ownership, so I got covered by Tarion. It was just one of those little things where I thought, “Oh, aren’t I lucky?” That was my own personal experience of buying a house, and I was glad to be covered by Tarion. Like I said, none of my neighbours were who having the same basement leaking problems were.

That is such a drop in the bucket, if you’ll pardon the pun, but we know that a review of Tarion is long, long, long overdue. We’re glad to see that finally being tackled. My story does not illustrate the years and years and years of frustrations and issues. So of course we’re glad to see that in this bill, and ultimately we’ll support this bill.

This is a massive bill about protecting Ontario consumers, but there’s so much more that could be in here. So I would like to share a little bit from my constituency, because all of us should first be constituency politicians: We should be listening to the folks in our ridings, we should be bringing their stories and their voices here. I have a couple of other issues that, if the government were ever open to listening to ideas or amendments, here are a couple of thoughts—if not this bill, maybe another one—about how to make life a little bit more fair.

I had talked last time about protecting our seniors when it comes to fake charities or some of these scamming organizations that take advantage of our seniors and other vulnerable folks in our communities. Here is a letter from someone who is quite concerned. She says, “It worries me how many senior citizens in our community and province receive such letters requesting money from them ... I don’t believe that there is any legislation protecting seniors from predatory practices such as this.

“It is my desire to see legislation is put in place to prevent ‘companies or charities’ to target senior citizens.

“I see every day in the news horror stories about senior citizens losing part of their life savings to scams and the reason for this is in part, I believe, because we legally allow predatory up-sale/donation request practices from charities and other companies with no control.

“Some charities do amazing work in the community, but we should be on the lookout to protect the vulnerable individuals, and something along those lines should be done....

“I am not a senior, but I would hate something like this to happen to my senior family members and by the time I learn of this, there is nothing that can be done to get them out of an onerous contract that they did not fully understand”—

Interjection.

Ms. Jennifer K. French: My colleague from Timmins–James Bay is reminding me that he now is, potentially, a member of our vulnerable population and needs protecting, so we should get on that.

All kidding aside, and I talked about it before, my grandmother, who is doing beautifully and she is resilient and she is awesome, is 96. She is now living in Oshawa, she’s a constituent of mine, which I think is awesome, but I don’t know how she would word it. Anyway, she had been living in her own home up until 95 in Peterborough, lived alone and was doing very well, and was managing with dignity.

But she would answer her phone every day when it would ring, and more and more it started to ring with people who were passing her number around because she was answering the phone and would be involved in some of these lotteries and play these sort of charity scams. She was really taken advantage of. Unfortunately, we found out kind of mid-process or after the fact. There were so many moving parts to these scams; they were so involved.

I remember hearing her on the phone with someone. I listened in and then I got to speak to this man who said to me, “Oh, I know who you are and I know where you work, and I’m going to come. It doesn’t matter that you’re family. I’m going to get the house.” It was just this strange, awful person on the other end of the phone who was preying on my grandma, literally calling her every day, and I have guilt over that because as a granddaughter perhaps I should have been taking the time—but he was taking the time, because he stood to gain something.

He was calling every day to find out how the garden was looking and how her neighbours were and how her granddaughter was doing and what she was doing—all of this stuff to get into her circle of trust. He would have his own needs or family needs, and then needing her to send money through Money Mart or some of these places where once the money is gone, it’s not traceable.

It was terrible. It really was. She lost a lot of money through these scams, because she allegedly won millions and in order to get it across the border or through customs, she had to pay a certain amount—these elaborate schemes that seniors listen to and hear the “sincerity in the voice.” Unfortunately we are not protecting them. I don’t know if we’ve figured out how.

When I had taken this issue to the police and played recordings for them that I had recorded of this guy, they said, “Yes, but we can’t trace those calls, because they’re just burner phones and these people are calling from out of country.” It’s an elaborate web of deceit and scamming. We have to do better to protect our seniors. Like I said, the Attorney General had said that it’s hard to keep up with all of these threats and technologies, but we do have to endeavour to try. There’s something that isn’t in this bill: a focus on our seniors.

I have many other letters about a water filtration system that somebody gets forced to pay for, or a lawn care company sprayed a woman’s lawn, which she didn’t authorize, but then they’re forcing her to pay the $50 for services or merchandise. Actually, it was over $50, but she would have to pay, even though she didn’t sign a contract. There are people constantly finding ways to prey on our friends and our neighbours. We need to be aware of these issues as they come up because they’re always going to pop up.

We’ve been talking about scalper bots for weeks now. Just the other day in the Toronto Star, here’s another one: “Montreal Scalper Scooping Up Tickets by the Hundreds at Lightning Speed to Big Names Like Adele, Ed Sheeran and Drake—Then Selling Them Back to You at Huge Profits.” This was in the paper just recently, and here we are in debate with new material to talk about on an issue we’ve been talking about for weeks. But we’re shutting it down. We’re shutting down debate and shutting down committee with time allocation.

Speaker, I want to talk about the time allocation concept. It’s hard to explain to folks outside of this room some of the inner workings, or the things that seem inconsistent or don’t really make sense. I, like many of my colleagues, get invited to speak to grade 5 or grade 10 classes about civics and government and how things work. We tell them about the process and how it works, but we don’t often find the time to tell them about the process and how it doesn’t work. So maybe I’ll do that today. I’m going to put on my grade 5 teacher hat, which I’ll dust off; it has been a little while.

The whole concept of time allocation is that when we reach—no, I’m going to dial it back. Normally we have fulsome debate and we rotate around the room, although today the government is not taking their turn. I’m going to assume they don’t care. Maybe they could stand and correct me, but they’re not going to, because they’re not debating today. Anyway, we debate around the room, we discuss things and we reach that time when maybe everything has been said and it’s time to go to committee. That’s when we say that the debate collapses.

Do you know that I have actually never been in this room when the debate has collapsed? I’ve never actually seen that. I think it has, but I haven’t actually been in the room for that because what happens is, once we reach a sort of minimum threshold where we’re allowed to end debate now, the government puts forward a time allocation motion which says, “We have reached the amount of time that we feel is sufficient because we’ve put up 4,000 speakers,” because they take a 20-minute block and split it between 10 people or whatever. They have all sorts of games. “We want to end debate now.

It’s just so important to pass this piece of legislation for the people of Ontario. We’re going to move it through.” But in that time allocation motion, they are also shrinking the time at committee. They’re saying, “For this bill, because it’s so important and we just need to make it law so quickly, we’re only going to have one or two days of committee and we’re only going to have it in Toronto and it’s only going to be for the people who can travel and who can find out about this in the next 47 minutes,” or whatever. They put such strange limitations on who gets to participate at committee.

Committee, for those of you at home, is where we have members from all three parties listening—supposedly. Well, we listen; sometimes even our Conservative friends listen. And there might be one or two government members who appear to be listening, or they’re on their phones or asleep or whatever. We can go back to Hansard and we can pull examples of where we’ve been able to remind them of what’s going on in the moment.

We have people who come from across the province who are interested in this bill, who might oppose it, who might have issues with it, who might actually think it’s fantastic and want to say why this piece is so important. They’re either experts or they’re interested parties, but they’re people who have come to committee to focus on this bill, to make suggestions for how to make it better, or concerns about, “If you do this, this is the unintended consequence. This would do damage,” or, “This would make it better.” All of these things, they bring to that conversation.

Then we’re supposed to have an opportunity to discuss or look at these ideas. All of these proposed amendments, we put together as opposition parties. The government puts some in too. They might hear an idea and say, “Ooh! Good thing they brought this to our attention. We need to make that change before this legislation goes out and we all have to live with it.” Then we bring the amendments, we discuss them, we vote on them—basically, almost always, the opposition amendments are never passed. They’re all rejected. I think that’s just a matter of principle, but anyway, they’re all rejected.

The bill generally goes through almost just as it was; sometimes there’s some fine tuning. But because it’s such a quick process, we can’t actually make those changes based on good-idea amendments, and I’ll never understand that.

Then it comes out the other side of committee, often almost the same as it went in. Then we debate it again, and the debate is the same thing, with the opposition members saying, “How come you ignored every single amendment we put forward? Why don’t you listen to the people of Ontario?” And the government says, “Because we don’t have to. We’re the majority. Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah.” It gets passed and it becomes law.

That’s actually how the process happens, and it’s frustrating, really frustrating.

Interjections.

Ms. Jennifer K. French: They’re getting annoyed, eh? I can feel it in the room. But imagine how Ontario feels. Imagine how our neighbours and our constituents feel when it doesn’t matter what they say, when nothing gets listened to, when they don’t even get invited into the process. We have time allocation that limits committee time to one day or two days, and our folks up north are like, “It would take me that long to even get down there.” Maybe if you gave them a train, they could travel a little faster and participate in the process, but that’s a whole other debate.

So we limit the process, and I’m not sure why. My colleague from Timmins–James Bay made the point that if we actually adopted some of these amendments, or considered them, or travelled the bill or listened to Ontarians in a fulsome way, then that legislation could be that much stronger. If there’s a hiccup in legislation that somebody catches in one of our communities and says, “Listen, you have the best of intentions here; we can see it. But this is actually what it causes”—don’t they want that information? Don’t they want their legislation to be as strong as it could be? Don’t they want it to hold water?

If I had a piece of legislation that so many people had worked on through the years, I’d want to make sure that it withstood the test of time, that it actually accomplished what it was supposed to, that there weren’t any missteps or tangles hidden in there. That’s what I would want. I don’t understand why they’re like, “Oh, well. We’ll let it out there and then we’ll see what happens. Maybe we’ll fix it in a couple of years.”

You know, Mr. Speaker, there’s an old adage. It’s about how an ounce of prevention—I think you might know where I’m going with this—is worth a pound of cure. Planning ahead, thinking forward and crafting solid legislation—do it right the first time. Or do it left the first time. Anyway, do it well the first time so that it can be what it needs to be and actually protect folks in Ontario and do right by the people who sent us here and who trust us to do a good job, not just a rush job, not a halfway job.

This job is about constituency politics, but if we don’t have politicians in this House who can bridge from their communities to here, who can listen to their neighbours and their constituents and bring their concerns to this House, to the legislation, to make it not only worthwhile but make it be what it should be, then maybe they should consider not running again. If you’re doing work in your community and you are forgetting that that has to connect here—come on.

We should not always be having this time allocation conversation. I know all three parties, regardless of who’s the next government—it will be us—regardless of who is in power next, they’re probably still going to use time allocation. But why? Is it just to rush it through? Is it just so that they can point at something: “Look at how many bills we’ve passed. We’re awesome”? Okay, but how many of them are not creating havoc? How many of them are actually making things better? That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?

And a lot of bills that have passed through this House are still sitting there, because they didn’t really have any intention of bringing them to the next step. They haven’t received royal assent yet. They’re just kind of sitting there. But they can say they passed it, and we’re waiting. Or now it’s in regulation, and those regulations are taking a really long time because they didn’t do the math on the statute side on the way into committee or through committee, and now they’ve got to figure it out in regulation. I don’t know; it doesn’t make sense.

I question the government all the time, not just by virtue of the fact that I sit across from them, but because I don’t understand what they are doing and I don’t think they do either.

But Mr. Speaker, we’re finishing up this debate on time allocation, which we will never support. We will never support shutting down debate. We will never support limiting access to Ontarians at committee to their democratic process—ever, ever, ever, ever.

We support Bill 166. We absolutely think that the time in committee should be worthwhile and it should be for longer than they are proposing, because for crying out loud, when we’re talking about protecting Ontario consumers, they know where they need the protections. If we actually heard from folks at committee, we would be hearing all sorts of stuff about protecting our seniors and about these scamming companies, the things that pop up all the time and new ways to prey on neighbours. We do need to hear from Ontarians. This would be a perfect example, and this is a government that says, “Hmm, no, not today.”

Mr. Speaker, that’s all the time I’m going to take. Thank you.

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

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: It’s my pleasure to rise in debate today. I wish it were about Bill 166, the Strengthening Protection for Ontario Consumers Act, but really what we are here to debate is time allocation. In essence, it is a closure motion which the government is bringing forward so that we will limit the debate on the topic.

Speaker, I must say that when I first arrived here almost 12 years ago, and I sat further in the back than I do today, we used to have sheets upon sheets upon sheets of articles—or Hansard, I suppose—from the government, talking about periods in the past and members who had sat when our party had formed a government. They would routinely criticize the previous Conservative administration for invoking closure. We would have passages and excerpts from the Liberal government on how they would oppose the invocation of closure. Of course, one of our favourites was the member from St.

Catharines, who opposed time allocation and closure motions, until they formed a government, and then they would routinely invoke closure themselves, as they have today.

My colleague from Renfrew–Nipissing–Pembroke, of course, calls these “guillotine motions,” chopping off debate, ending debate, cutting the head off of the debate. I just wanted to point that out, because this is a Liberal government that likes to talk about transparency, openness and accountability, yet in the same period of time, they don’t want to have that type of accountability for their legislation. They don’t want to have that openness, that transparency, so that the public will actually understand what type of bills they are bringing forward, and what the implications are for the province of Ontario—and, in this particular case, the consumers of the province of Ontario.

I think that when you’re talking about consumer protection, we all have stories from our own communities and our own constituencies we could bring to the floor of the Ontario Legislature. I think, too, that one of the things that they have neglected in terms of continuing open debate is that we frequently do not have enough time at committee the way we used to, travelling these bills so that there is adequate consultation with the public, and adequate and thorough reviews of legislation in terms of clause-by-clause and amendments.

One of the areas I would have liked to have seen in this piece of legislation, for example, is stricter controls in the insurance business here in Ontario. I must say that in the city of Ottawa, we have had a great deal of flooding, and we had a great deal of flooding last spring. I actually spent some time in the area of Carp and West Carleton loading sandbags, so that we could help our neighbours in our community against this flooding, after the Ottawa River rose.

But then I had a flood in my own home; it occurred from a dishwasher overflow. I can tell you that dealing with the insurance business and the insurance industry in this province is nothing short of hell. I think that the government could have actually looked at that industry as one in particular where we could have seen perhaps even a consumer bill of rights for those who are dealing with the insurance industry.

That’s one of the areas I would have liked to have seen the government pursue, and we could have had an open discussion here in the Ontario Legislature to have a conversation where we could have looked further into that particular industry. I know that we’ve looked at other industries as well. I have obviously spoken in the media about this legislation.

One area that I do support is where you’re looking at purchasing tickets online and the bots that are out there. We had one case in particular that was egregious, and that was when the Tragically Hip were on tour, may Gord Downie rest in peace. He had gone on a tour throughout, and a number of scalpers decided to pick up those tickets. That was particularly egregious because I think a number of Canadians wanted to support the Tragically Hip at that time. I often will see that in the city of Ottawa. For example, we have Canada 150 events, celebrations. We have a major hockey game coming up, the Winter Classic between Ottawa and Montreal.

Mr. Steve Clark: Go, Sens, go.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Go, Sens, go. Exactly; that’s right. I’m very upset, however, with the Senators right now for letting Kyle Turris go. A number of my favourite hockey players have left Ottawa after we had a Cinderella season last year. So I’m a bit bitter about that, Speaker. I’m not even going to hide that. But we also had a tremendous run with the Redblacks, although this past weekend they did lose. I watched the game. I had to turn it off after the third quarter, though, because it just broke my heart that this wonderful team wasn’t going to be at the Grey Cup next weekend in Ottawa, when they’re hosting it.

But again, I think it speaks to the consumer protection for those people who are fans, like myself and the member from Ottawa Centre, who love our teams that are from our city and who want to make sure our constituents who want to attend a CFL game or an NHL game have the opportunity.

Now, Speaker, because this is a time allocation motion and I’m allowed to waiver on the topic, and I’ve already done my bit in criticizing the government for bringing in a time allocation motion, I must say that Don Cherry made my daughter cry on Sunday. And I’m a big Don Cherry fan. But he said that it’s possible that my Ottawa Senators will move to Quebec if we don’t get a new arena in downtown Ottawa. That just broke my daughter’s heart, because that’s our team. I don’t know if that’s going to happen. I suspect it probably won’t.

We are looking at bringing a new arena to downtown Ottawa at the LeBreton Flats location. We’ll see how that proceeds. It’s obviously a federal matter, on NCC land. But I think the one thing I would like to say is that, regardless that they have decided to send a number of our favourite players off to other teams through trades and whatnot, we do want to ensure that—

Interruption.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: I’ll just make sure that phone doesn’t go off. It’s not ringing. It’s not ringing.

We want to make sure that the Ottawa Senators stay in Ottawa. We need to send a message, I think, that that team stays there and we continue to protect the consumers and the fans who want to support our NHL team.

But again, Speaker, I know I have limited time in debate today. I think it’s relatively important that we continue to have an open discussion on strengthening protection for Ontario consumers. I think it’s important that we talk about some of the key issues, whether it’s on Tarion, when people are buying homes, or when it comes to purchasing tickets, whether it’s for entertainment or sports, that those protections are in place so that in Ontario everything is relatively fair. I’m going to look forward to voting on this piece of legislation, which I suspect will come later in this week.

I’m also looking forward to seeing what the fall economic statement says later on today as we sit in this Legislative Assembly.

Of course, this afternoon, Speaker, we’ll be talking about health care. The third party will have a motion based on health care in Ontario, particularly as it relates to a Brampton hospital. And so when we’re talking about Ontario consumers, I think it’s also something we could do in terms of talking about patients. This government, obviously, had a piece of legislation called the Patients First Act. Then we see what’s happening in Brampton and we know that that legislation has failed.

So, Speaker, I wanted to say thank you for the opportunity to debate. I do recognize from the clock that we are to recess before question period, so with that, again, I say thank you. I really enjoyed this opportunity to speak.

Debate deemed adjourned.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Rick Nicholls): Thank you very much to all debaters this morning. It is now 10:15. This House stands recessed until 10:30.

The House recessed from 1015 to 1030.

Introduction of Visitors

Mr. Bill Walker: It’s my pleasure to introduce, on behalf of my friend and colleague the member for Kitchener–Conestoga, Michael Harris, two guests at Queen’s Park: Rob Dietrich and James Lichty. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

M me France Gélinas: I would like to welcome advocates for Diabetes Canada. I have nine of them: Oria James, Anmol Singh Lamba, Charlene Lavergne, Stacey Livitski, Don Mann, Gord Miller, Rachel Moon Kelly, Tracy Moreira-Lucas and Kathy Nelson. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Hon. Marie-France Lalonde: Today in the House we have several members from the Ontario Provincial Council of Women. I would like to welcome Edeltraud Neal of the Ontario Provincial Council of Women. They are here in room 228 all day today. Thank you very much for everything you do to support women in Ontario, and thank you for being here.

Mr. Steve Clark: Speaker, I want to introduce to you and through you to members of the Legislative Assembly a constituent from my riding of Leeds–Grenville who is here with the CUPE members for their long-term care day. As you know, they’re looking for a legislative minimum-care standard of four hours in long-term care. I want to welcome my constituent Sue Hanson, from Leeds–Grenville, and also CUPE president Fred Hahn and long-term-care worker Candace Rennick. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Mr. Wayne Gates: I would like to welcome two members who are spending their day with their favourite MPP today: Kristi Frank and Jeff Irving. Welcome to Queen’s Park. I hope you enjoy your day with me.

Hon. Jeff Leal: In the members’ east gallery today I’d like to welcome members of the Ontario Agriculture Sustainability Coalition to the House, including Matt Bowman from the Beef Farmers of Ontario; Joe Hill from the Beef Farmers of Ontario; Eric Schwindt from Ontario Pork; Doug Ahrens from Ontario Pork; and Judy Dirksen from the Veal Farmers of Ontario.

I’d like to invite everyone to their reception, which is taking place this afternoon at 5:30 p.m. in room 228. If you enjoy a veal chop, a pork chop or a hamburger, come and see these folks.

Mr. Lorne Coe: I’d like to introduce to the Legislature Robert Schwirtz from Enniskillen in the region of Durham, who is here with the Ontario Fur Breeders’ Association.

M me France Gélinas: I would like to welcome all the members from CUPE from across Ontario. I want to mention their president, Mr. Fred Hahn, as well as their secretary-treasurer—also a long-term-care worker—Candace Rennick, who are here today to support my bill on four hours of hands-on care in long-term care. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Hon. Reza Moridi: It’s a great pleasure to welcome my friend Mr. Mansour Mahdavi, who is visiting the House this morning.

Mr. Rick Nicholls: I’d like to welcome to the Legislature today Catherine Moores, who is president of the Canada Mink Breeders Association, and Tom McLellan from Lambton–Kent–Middlesex. He is also here today. Great reception. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Mr. John Vanthof: I would also, on behalf of the NDP, like to welcome the Ontario Agriculture Sustainability Coalition, especially Matt Bowman, a resident of my riding and a proud beef farmer.

Hon. Indira Naidoo-Harris: I’d like to recognize our page captain today, Vanditha Widyalankara, and welcome her mother, Udara Gurusinghe, here in the public gallery today. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Mr. John Yakabuski: I have two introductions this morning. First, I have from my riding of Renfrew–Nipissing–Pembroke, with the Ontario Fur Breeders’ Association, Clifford Meness. He is also a former chief of the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan.

Mr. Peter Tabuns: It’s my pleasure to welcome students from Chester Elementary School in my riding. I hope they enjoy the proceedings. Welcome.

Mr. Granville Anderson: I would like to welcome Petra and Robert Schwirtz who are constituents of mine here this morning with the Ontario Fur Breeders’ Association. Welcome.

Mrs. Gila Martow: I want to welcome my executive assistant, Nathan McMillan, and his parents, Margaret and Brian McMillan, all the way from North Bay. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Hon. Eric Hoskins: I’d also like to welcome Diabetes Canada to the Legislature today. In particular, I would like to introduce a few of their advocates who are joining us: Noam Ami, Lindsey Cosh, Sepelene Deonarine, Deborah Gibson, Brian Halladay, Julia Hayden, Glen Heatherington and Alex Ivovic. Thank you for the important work that you do.

I’d also like to take the opportunity to welcome our long-term-care workers who are here with us today, as well as CUPE.

Mr. Victor Fedeli: Three items: I’d like to welcome Dave Bosma from North Bay. He’s with the Fur Harvesters Auction.

I’d like to welcome Kelly Harris, the director of the Canadian Credit Union Association board of directors.

I want to wish a belated happy birthday to John Sinclair. I think he’s plenty-nine.

Hon. Deborah Matthews: Today we welcome new pages to the Legislature, and I’m delighted that our page captain today is from London North Centre, Adam Muinuddin—his grandmother, Talot Muinuddin; uncle Tariq Muinuddin; and his mother, Romana Siddiqui. Welcome to you all.

Mr. Ted Arnott: I would like to welcome my constituents here today: Dean Broadfoot, Joe Hill and Dave Stewart. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Ms. Peggy Sattler: I would like to welcome my constituent from London West, Gord Miller, who is here with Diabetes Canada, and also Linda Davis, who is here with the Provincial Council of Women of Ontario and comes from Business and Professional Women London. Welcome.

Hon. Yasir Naqvi: I want to wish a special happy birthday to Andrew Rudyk, who is my press secretary. He just turned 27 on Sunday. He’s here to watch question period. It’s the first time he’s actually going to be watching it live. I just wanted to welcome him and thank him for the hard work he does on behalf of the people of Ontario.

Mr. Raymond Sung Joon Cho: I’d like to welcome Angely Pacis to the Ontario Parliament chamber.

Mr. Jeff Yurek: I’d like to welcome to the House some advocates for improved diabetes care: Barb Pasternak, Diana Provenzano, Parnaz Sadighi, Krishana Sankar, Marla Spiegel, Siva Swaminathan, Tom Weisz and Liwei Zhou. Welcome.

Mr. Bill Walker: I’d like to introduce Chantel Elloway and Kelly Harris to the Legislature. Welcome.

Hon. Mitzie Hunter: I’d like to welcome members of Campaign for Public Education who are here, and Hugh MacKenzie and Krista Wylie from Fix Our Schools.

I also notice that members of CUPE and OSSTF are here.

Also, this morning I met with Rachel, Amanda and Barbara from Diabetes Canada. They are parents and advocates, and I want to thank them for the work that they’re doing on behalf of students.

Mr. Toby Barrett: I’d like to welcome my neighbour Rob Bollert, a fourth-generation mink and fox farmer with the Ontario Fur Breeders’ Association.

We also welcome the members of the Ontario Agriculture Sustainability Coalition.

Mr. Sam Oosterhoff: I rise today to introduce two members of the Fur Breeders’ Association of Ontario from the Niagara region, Mr. John Dekker and Mr. Arthur Jones. Welcome to the Legislature today.

Ms. Peggy Sattler: I would like to welcome the large delegation of trustees, parents, students, education advocates and representatives of the Campaign for Public Education and also the representatives of Fix Our Schools who are here this morning for the Fix Our Schools media conference.

Hon. Deborah Matthews: I would like to correct my record if I could. The page from London North Centre is Aditya Deshpande. He is not the page captain today, but he is the page from London North Centre.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): I do have one in the Speaker’s gallery today from my riding of Brant: Thadeus Zebroski, Sandi Zebroski and Tatyana Zebroski. Welcome to Queen’s Park on a dinner with the Speaker. Congratulations, and thank you for being here.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Because they’re constituents. That’s why.

The member from Scarborough–Rouge River on a point of order.

Mr. Raymond Sung Joon Cho: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I ask for unanimous consent concerning a motion to declare June Filipino Heritage Month.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Excuse me. The member’s seeking unanimous consent. Do we agree? I heard a no.

It is therefore time for question period.

Oral Questions

Energy policies

Mr. Todd Smith: Good morning. My question is to the Premier. Speaker, this morning Global News reported that utilities in Ontario charged customers $12.4 million just to send out disconnection notices last year. Some customers were billed as much as $55 for a single notice of pending disconnection. A stamp is 85 cents; an email is even less than that. Hydro One even admitted that the cost of sending a disconnection notice is only $1.05. Why does the Premier think it’s fair that thousands of Ontarians who already can’t pay their hydro bills are also being charged for the privilege of being told that they’re going to be disconnected?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Mr. Speaker, I know the Minister of Energy is going to want to speak to the specifics of this notification, but let me just say that what we know is fair is that across this province people have seen a reduction, on average, of 25% in their electricity bills, and people living in more remote and rural communities up to a 40% to a 50% reduction. We knew, and we know, that people were struggling—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Order.

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: —with their electricity prices. That’s what our fair hydro plan addresses. It actually addresses the challenges that people were facing because we had made investments in our electricity system to make it reliable—

Mr. John Yakabuski: No, no. You’ve made deals with Liberal friends.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): The member from Renfrew–Nipissing–Pembroke, come to order. You’ve signalled that I may need to go to warnings right away. I will oblige, if I have to.

Finish, please.

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: The system was not clean. It was not reliable. It is now, Mr. Speaker. There was a cost associated with that, but people have seen reductions in their bills. That’s what’s fair.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary.

Mr. Todd Smith: For three years, the Premier said there was no crisis in electricity in Ontario. She didn’t act until it became an election crisis for her and the Liberal government of Ontario. And we know that the fair hydro plan, which is really unfair, doesn’t do anything to fix the problem of Ontario’s electricity crisis; it just makes it worse.

Speaker, the Ontario Energy Board doesn’t require companies to track disconnection notices, but most do. We know that across Ontario roughly 1.5 million disconnection notices were sent out last year—1.5 million. Electricity is so expensive that hundreds of thousands of Ontarians can’t afford it and can’t afford the disconnection notice they get for the power they can’t afford. Follow the logic here.

Speaker, why is it that the government is allowing outrageous profits to be made from customers who can’t afford their hydro bills in the first place?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Minister of Energy.

Hon. Glenn Thibeault: So, if we’re following the logic, let’s look at the very first thing that we did, which is a 25% reduction for every family and its household, which they voted against.

Going on with that, Mr. Speaker, following the logic, all they would have to do is look to what the OEB is doing. The OEB is currently undertaking a comprehensive review of its customer service rules, and we look forward to seeing that result later this year.

On top of that, if we’re following logic, which is something they don’t have on that side of the House, they are well aware that the OEB banned winter disconnections from November 15 until April 30, 2018. The OEB has mandated that all customers who are currently disconnected be reconnected as soon as possible at no charge. The OEB, in their decision, also requires the removal of load-limiting devices and anything else that is affecting customers—

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. Final supplementary.

Mr. Todd Smith: This is the Liberal legacy in Ontario. People are getting cut off their electricity at record rates. Listen to this: Last year, approximately 60,000 Ontarians had their power cut off—60,000. We know now that across Ontario, roughly 1.5 million Ontarians have been served with disconnection notices. That’s one in every three homes being hit with a disconnection notice. Welcome to Liberal Ontario. These are the numbers; you can’t dispute them.

Still, utilities are charging up to $55 for disconnection notices that only cost $1.05 to actually produce. How the heck do you explain that, Mr. Speaker? Why do the most catastrophic mistakes of this government always seem to fall on the people of Ontario who can least afford them?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Stop the clock, please. Be seated, please.

Minister?

Hon. Glenn Thibeault: Welcome to Liberal Ontario, where your rates have gone down 25%. Welcome to Liberal Ontario, where you’re seeing more infrastructure built right across this province than ever before. Welcome to Liberal Ontario, where you don’t have coal as part of your electricity system. Welcome to Liberal Ontario, where we’re raising the minimum wage and looking after our workers. The list goes on. We are very proud of our record and making sure that we’ve invested in health care, that we’ve invested in infrastructure, that we’ve invested in education, advanced education, training and research.

You know, Mr. Speaker, when it comes to welcoming people to Liberal Ontario, we do that with open arms. We’re encouraging businesses. We’re encouraging people. We’re seeing more and more people come to Ontario. Our unemployment rate is at its lowest ever, thanks to the Minister of Economic Development and Growth. Mr. Speaker, I’m happy to take that member on anytime to debate a Liberal Ontario and the benefits for its future.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Stop the clock. Be seated, please.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. We’re in warnings.

New question.

Home care

Ms. Lisa M. Thompson: My question is for the Premier. Last week, many Ontarians were shocked to learn of a new secret home care agency that her government will be creating. What we want to know is who she consulted with in creating this agency. Was anyone, other than the organization writing hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of attack ads on behalf of the Liberals, even consulted?

This is a question of ethics, Speaker, not merits. We want to know about the relationship that the Premier and her Liberal government had with its former party president.

I have a straightforward yes-or-no question: Will the Premier do the right thing and release all of the correspondence that her office had with the SEIU and all other relevant stakeholders ahead of the home care changes announced in October?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: I know that the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care is going to want to speak on the specifics. Our priority, with a very complex issue in terms of making sure that the people who we love, the people who raised us, the people who have built this province, is that they have the care that they need and that they want. That means that there needs to be a range of care.

Interjection.

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: I hear the heckling from the other side. They’ve had a lot of time. We have been investing in home care. We have been working to make that transformation in the health care system that actually gives people who are needing care in their homes or in the community those options.

We continue to look for ideas. We continue to look for models that will provide better care for people who either want to stay in their homes, want to stay in the community or need long-term care. That’s our priority: making sure those people have the care that they need.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary? The member from Elgin–Middlesex–London.

Mr. Jeff Yurek: Back to the Premier: In her 2015 report on community care access centres, the Auditor General found serious issues. The government was spending 39% of their total budget on administration costs alone. They created a needlessly complex system that resulted in gaps in care and left patients suffering.

Now we’re hearing the government has quietly put forward a plan for new home care bureaucracy, with zero consultation with industry stakeholders. Instead of spending precious dollars on home care and patients, this government has instead opted to expand the bureaucracy, to the benefit of their Liberal insider friends. Given the government’s poor home care track record, this will clearly not benefit patients.

Can the Premier explain why this announcement was buried at the bottom of a press release and rushed through with no consultation? And will the minister commit to disclosing any involvement SEIU has had in this decision?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Minister of Health and Long-Term Care.

Hon. Eric Hoskins: Mr. Speaker, if the member opposite had been paying attention, he would have known that in early October, at Kensington—which is a tremendous provider of home care services; they have a hospice as well and they have a residential setting for individuals who require support—I spoke in front of many media representatives, many cameras, at the same time that we announced an increase in our funding to home care across this province. I specifically and emphatically described this model, which is in fact—

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Just a reminder for those that maybe didn’t hear me: I said we’re in warnings.

Hon. Eric Hoskins: —a model that has been used successfully in California, in Massachusetts, in Michigan, in Oregon and in many other places around the world, the model that we’re following to give choice to those who require home care.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Final supplementary. The member for Leeds–Grenville.

Mr. Steve Clark: Back to the Premier: For years, this Liberal government has looked out for the interests of insiders and the well-connected first, leaving everyday Ontarians paying more, working harder and getting less. This deal to create the SEIU-backed home care model certainly looks like history repeating itself. SEIU has been described by some as having cozy ties to this government. As my colleagues have said, their GR head is a former head, former president, of the Liberal Party. This deal the other members have outlined doesn’t pass the smell test.

Speaker, my question to the Premier is simple: Just how much influence has Michael Spitale had on the creation of this SEIU-backed organization?

Hon. Eric Hoskins: Mr. Speaker, we’re piloting—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): The member from Nepean–Carleton will withdraw.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Withdraw.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): The member from Nepean–Carleton is warned.

Carry on.

Hon. Eric Hoskins: We’re piloting two new, innovative, self-directed care models. One model is that we’re going to provide funds directly to home care clients to purchase the services themselves. But we need to acknowledge there’s a subset outside of that, roughly 6,000 people maximum across the province, that don’t want to remit taxes for their employee to Revenue Canada, that don’t want to negotiate or find it challenging to negotiate those contracts with employees. So we’re going to provide that subset with complex needs—more than 14 hours of home care needs a week—with the opportunity to select and

schedule their own personal support worker. We’re going to do that and we’re going to support them, as many jurisdictions in the United States and around the world have done successfully.

School facilities

Ms. Andrea Horwath: My question is for the Premier. Schools in Ontario need $15.9 billion worth of repairs just to get them to decent standards for our children. That’s a very big number, with very big consequences. In the summer, that number means kids are in the classrooms sweating in their seats because schools can’t afford air conditioning on hot days. In the winter, which is upon us, it means a second-grader, for example, trying to focus on her math test while fumbling with her winter gloves and parka because the heat is broken yet again at the school. We have to do better for our children in this province.

Why did the Premier allow this $15.9-billion school repair backlog to get so bad?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Let’s just look at the facts of what has happened over the last number of years, Mr. Speaker. First of all, we inherited a system that was seriously degraded. As I’ve said in this House and elsewhere, one of the reasons that I am in provincial politics is because of the policies of the previous government that allowed our publicly funded education system to degrade, in the classroom and outside of the classroom. That’s why I’m here; that’s why many of us are here.

We have invested $17.5 billion in capital funding. We’ve built 820 new schools, and we’ve invested in more than 800 retrofits and additions. When you think of the reality that there are in the order of 5,000 publicly funded schools in this province, that is a huge percentage of schools that have either been rebuilt or have been renovated. Since 2013, we’ve invested $9.3 billion in capital funding to support more than 120 new schools and more than 140 additions and renovations. That rebuild and that renovation continues.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Ms. Andrea Horwath: The fact remains that there’s a $15.9-billion backlog in repairs for schools in this province. The disrepair in Ontario schools started with the Conservative government; I don’t disagree with that observation that was just made by the Premier, because that government cut school maintenance budgets and left a $5.6-billion backlog when they were at the helm. It has continued, however, with the Liberal government, which has often provided just one tenth of what schools actually need to keep up with repairs.

Why did the Premier break her promise to Ontarians and follow in the Conservatives’ footsteps when it comes to education funding that leaves too many children in this province trying to learn in buildings that are falling apart around their ears?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Minister of Education.

Hon. Mitzie Hunter: First of all, Mr. Speaker, there’s no government in the history of this province that has invested more in education than this government on this side of the House.

I know that there are advocates here who are concerned about the state of our schools. We know that good school environments provide better learning environments for students. I want to thank Fix Our Schools for all of their advocacy and the advice that they have given to us. And do you know what, Mr. Speaker? We are following through. After inheriting a system that was, as the Premier has pointed out, in complete disrepair, we have been making those investments in new schools and additions, as well as in the repair of schools.

This year alone, our government will spend $1.4 billion on school renewal, which is in line with what the Auditor General has advised on an ongoing basis to keep our schools in a good state of repair.

We know that there is more work to be done, and that’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re making those investments and we’re working with school boards to do so.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Final supplementary.

Ms. Andrea Horwath: The Premier’s record on education is abysmal. Since 2011, the Liberals have closed more than 270 schools and put another 300 on the chopping block. The repair backlog has only gone up.

I think it’s pretty interesting to hear the Premier and the minister talk about the previous government’s complete disrepair status in terms of it being $5.6 billion. If they’re so concerned about the complete disrepair that they were left, why is it almost three times more under the Liberal government after 14 years in office? The repair backlog has only gone up, and now it’s $15.9 billion. Children are being sent to schools with leaky roofs and broken boilers. Thousands of students are being sent to learn in dilapidated portables.

Schools are parks, playgrounds and public spaces. They are supposed to support and encourage our kids to learn. Why has the Premier let our schools fall into such dismal disrepair?

Hon. Mitzie Hunter: We have a plan moving forward to continue to invest in Ontario’s schools. We are investing $16 billion over the next decade to invest in the infrastructure in our schools, because we know that good school environments provide optimal learning for students, and that is our focus.

I don’t know what the focus of the leader of the third party is, Mr. Speaker. The last time she put forward a plan, it promised an embarrassing $60 million a year for school repairs. That is just 4% of the $1.4 billion that we have committed to invest in school repair and renewal.

We know that Ontario schools are worthy of these investments, and that’s why we’re making them. We’re making these investments so that students can have the best learning environment possible. We have committed that funding to school boards so that they can prioritize the facilities that need repair.

Hospital services

Ms. Andrea Horwath: My next question is also for the Premier. The emergency department at Brampton Civic Hospital was built to serve 90,000 visits. It experienced more than 138,000 visits last year alone. This year, the hospital has already been forced to declare code gridlock eight times between January and April. We know that last year at Brampton Civic there were 4,352 patients lying on stretchers getting their medical care in public hallways.

The Premier’s solution is to offer 37 beds. While I’m sure that the people of Brampton will take the 37 hospital beds, it’s just simply not enough to begin undoing the damage caused by many years of Liberal budget cuts and freezes.

Is this the best the Premier can offer to the people of Brampton?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Minister of Health and Long-Term Care.

Hon. Eric Hoskins: I want to commend the mayor of Brampton, the leadership of Brampton Civic Hospital and William Osler, and the three MPPs on this side of the House as well, who have worked so hard on behalf of the residents of Brampton and the surrounding region of Peel.

On top of the 17 million new dollars that we added to the operating budget of William Osler this year, we announced last week 37 new beds for Brampton Civic Hospital itself; 22 beds for Etobicoke General Hospital, which is part of the William Osler system; and, importantly and especially, we announced our commitment to fund, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, phase 2 of the Peel Memorial Urgent Care Centre, which will involve more than 100 new beds and associated supports once that is fully completed in the future.

That is an incredible response, I think, to a reality that’s happening in Brampton because of a growing population. It is one of the highest-growth populations in this country, and we’re responding to that.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Ms. Andrea Horwath: The Peel Memorial centre has also been hard hit by the Premier’s shortchanging of health care in Brampton. In 2016, the Premier and her Minister of Health were warned that the Urgent Care Centre at Peel Memorial would need to serve 65,000 people per year, 50% more than what it was designed for. It has to help 50% more people than it was designed for while being forced to close at 10 p.m., again due to a lack of support from this Premier and her Liberal government. The 37 beds that the Premier has offered are barely a drop in the bucket when it comes to underfunding of this magnitude.

Will the Premier take any meaningful action to help Brampton hospitals and make sure that Brampton families have health care that they can count on?

Hon. Eric Hoskins: I think it’s insulting to the leadership in Brampton—the mayor and the leadership at William Osler—to suggest that the investment that we made to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars last week is somehow meaningless: 37 new beds for Brampton Civic, 22 new beds for Etobicoke General. And at Peel Memorial specifically, what we did is we committed to funding, and we’re now well on our way, to create phase 2 at Peel Memorial—by the way, a wellness centre which is so well received by the community and appreciated by the community.

We’re building a tower adjacent to that phase 2 which will contain well in excess of 100 new beds, on top of an increase in the operating budget to William Osler: $41 million in the last two years. If that’s meaningless, I don’t know what planet that member is living on.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Final supplementary.

Ms. Andrea Horwath: I’m living on a planet where, in Ontario, people are getting their health care in hallways in hospitals. That’s what planet I’m living on.

The NDP has a motion today that would immediately relieve the pressure at Brampton Civic and Peel Memorial, because Brampton families shouldn’t have to wait to get access to good-quality health care, and their loved ones shouldn’t be getting their hospital care in public hallways.

The William Osler Health System, which runs Brampton Civic and Peel Memorial, has called for an immediate $30.2-million investment to cope with the overcrowding, open two mothballed operating rooms that were built but have never been used, and deal with immediate funding shortfalls. This is a start. It won’t fix the harm that comes from decades of underfunding, but it’s what the people of Brampton need right now.

Will the Premier commit to taking this step and helping the people of Brampton get the health care that they need and they deserve?

Hon. Eric Hoskins: Like the PCs, with regard to the announcements I made in October that I referenced, it seems that the leader of the third party missed our announcement last week where we announced 37 new beds—in fact, beds that will be available this calendar year. She missed the fact that, in response to the growing demands in Brampton, one of the fastest-growing jurisdictions in this country, we’re expanding Peel Memorial, adding more than 100 beds there, plus all the associated supports for rehabilitation and complex continuing care.

We’re making the investments. What was announced for Peel is the equivalent of a medium-sized hospital. And we announced, a couple of weeks ago, 2,000 hospital beds and spaces to be able to address the capacity challenges that certain parts of our province are having.

Mr. Speaker, this is great news for the people of Brampton. I think she needs to talk to the people of Brampton, because they will agree with us that it is solving the problem.

Ontario budget

Mr. Patrick Brown: My question is for the Premier. Today it appears that the Minister of Finance will double down on his claims that Ontario has a balanced budget despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Let’s start with the Financial Accountability Officer: In May 2017, the FAO’s spring outlook said that we will continue to be in budget deficits for the next five years—five years, Mr. Speaker. He stated further: “Beginning in 2018-19, the FAO is projecting a steady deterioration in the budget deficit....”

So, Mr. Speaker, we have the Minister of Finance pretending we have a balanced budget; we have the FAO, chosen and agreed to by the government, saying that it is not accurate, that we’re in a significant deficit.

My question to the Premier is, who’s right, the Minister of Finance and his political spin or the non-partisan FAO?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Stop the clock, please. Be seated, please. Be seated, please. Thank you.

Premier?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Let’s look at some objective realities, Mr. Speaker. The fact is, Ontario is leading economic growth in the country. Our unemployment rate is the lowest in 17 years. We are seeing job creation: just this year, 125,000 net new jobs; 800,000 net new jobs since the recession.

The reality is that Ontario is doing very well. But here’s the other reality, and the Minister of Finance will be speaking to this as well: Not everyone in this province is sharing in that; not everyone is feeling that benefit evenly.

So what we are doing as a government is putting in place supports, making sure that people have access in a fair way, that they have access to opportunity across the province, whether it’s students who will benefit and are benefitting from free tuition, whether it’s young people who, starting in January, will get free prescription medication, or whether it’s the millions of people who will benefit from an increased minimum wage. That’s the fairness and opportunity that we are—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. Stop the clock, please. Be seated, please. Be seated, please.

Supplementary?

Mr. Patrick Brown: Again to the Premier: I had a pretty specific question, and that is that the Minister of Finance says the budget is balanced, yet the FAO, the non-partisan legislative oversight, agreed to by the government to make sure that facts are correct and the numbers are correct, that officer that the government agreed to is saying the government’s numbers are wrong—and not just by a little bit. The Financial Accountability Officer’s economic and fiscal outlook predicts that Ontario’s deficit will be $2.6 billion.

Mr. Speaker, again to the Premier: Rather than talking about something not related to the question, I want to know, who is right with their numbers? Is it the FAO, which is the non-partisan legislative oversight, or is it the Minister of Finance and their fake Liberal spin?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: I think it’s interesting that the Leader of the Opposition would suggest that the economic well-being of the citizens of this province has nothing to do with the economy of the province. That makes no sense. The fact that there are millions of people in Ontario who can’t look after themselves because they’re earning $11.60 an hour and they will see a minimum wage increase—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): The member from Leeds–Grenville is warned. The member from Niagara West–Glanbrook is warned. And there are a couple of others who are next.

Carry on.

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: An increase to their wage as of January 1—I think that will make a material difference to the people who are—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): The member from Nipissing is warned.

Finish, please.

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: —struggling to make ends meet.

The reality is that if this Leader of the Opposition doesn’t think that creating fairness in this province, creating opportunity in this province when we’re living in a province that is leading economic growth in the country—if he doesn’t think that that’s a priority, then he is completely off track in terms of what we believe as a government.

Labour dispute

Ms. Peggy Sattler: My question is to the Premier. Speaker, last week’s announcement of a hardship fund for some of the 500,000 college students who have been financially disadvantaged by the strike is cold comfort to students who are seeing their dreams slip away as this strike drags on, who are experiencing skyrocketing rates of anxiety and depression with few resources on campus to assist them, who are being forced to turn down job offers and are worried about how they will be able to support themselves.

If the minister can direct the colleges to create a hardship fund, why doesn’t she direct the colleges to go back to the table and work out a negotiated settlement and bring stability rather than chaos to the college system?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Be seated, please. Thank you.

Premier?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: I am completely sympathetic with students who want to be back in the classroom. They need to be back in the classroom, and I know that colleges have a responsibility to put in place contingency plans to ensure that students don’t lose this semester.

I also know that faculty want to be back in the classroom. My understanding is that faculty will begin voting on the employers’ last offer through the OLRB beginning today.

We want every student in our college system back in class as quickly as possible, but I know that the member opposite understands the process. We need to let that unfold. We will work as hard as we can to make sure that young people get back into the classroom as quickly as possible.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Ms. Peggy Sattler: Again to the Premier: With no resolution in sight until at least the end of this week—and that is by no means certain—the college strike has entered uncharted territory in the history of college labour relations.

The risk of losing a semester is very, very real for students. Students are worried that they will have to repay OSAP for education they did not receive. When St. Lawrence College student Morganne Campbell called the Premier’s office to share her concerns, she was told to call welfare.

Speaker, is this really the best advice this Liberal government can offer to students, when it is their failure to properly fund the system that created the conditions for this strike and their inaction that has allowed the strike to drag on past the breaking point?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Be seated, please. Thank you.

Premier?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Minister of Advanced Education and Skills Development.

Hon. Deborah Matthews: Since this strike began, my focus has very clearly been on the students. I have spoken with students, I have spoken to parents and I have spoken to grandparents, all of whom are really concerned that their child or grandchild or they themselves are in danger of losing a semester.

It is vitally important that this strike gets resolved and gets resolved quickly. We do respect the collective bargaining process. The colleges are bargaining with OPSEU. We must respect that process, but at the same time we must keep our eye on students. They are facing real anxiety, as the member opposite has said. They are facing real challenges, financial and otherwise. That’s why we’re asking that colleges create a dedicated fund to support those students.

Social assistance

Ms. Sophie Kiwala: My question is to the Minister of Community and Social Services.

Our government continues to take a leadership role in exploring creative and innovative ways to reduce poverty and support people living on low incomes. We have shown our commitment to low-income individuals and families through expanding the Ontario Electricity Support Program, introducing OHIP+, providing free prescription medications to children and youth up to 24 years old starting this January, and through the largest increase to the minimum wage in the province’s history, raising it to $15 an hour by 2019. In my riding of Kingston and the Islands, I know that these commitments are very important to my constituents.

On November 2, the Income Security Reform Working Group released their report titled Income Security: A Roadmap for Change, with recommendations to the government on how to make further improvements to supports and services for people living on low incomes. Mr. Speaker, through you to the minister: Can you please tell the members of this House more about the Income Security Reform Working Group and their recent report?

Hon. Helena Jaczek: Thank you to the member for her question and her advocacy for low-income Ontarians.

Last year, our government established the Income Security Reform Working Group, a First Nations working group and an Urban Indigenous Table on Income Security Reform. We asked them to study Ontario’s income security system and make recommendations on how to improve it.

I want to sincerely thank the members of the three working groups for their valuable contributions over the last year in creating the road map. We will be using the road map as a guide to develop a multi-year plan. Our plan will be practical, realistic and recognize the province’s fiscal responsibilities.

Mr. Speaker, I know that on this side of the House, we all agree with the need to fundamentally reform the income security system, especially social assistance, because we want our programs to reflect the needs of the people who require them.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. Supplementary?

Ms. Sophie Kiwala: Thank you to the minister for all of the important work she does to support some of Ontario’s most vulnerable individuals and families. I know that people from my riding, like Hugh Segal, who helped author the recommendations for basic income, Toni Pickard, as well as of course Elaine Power from Queen’s, will all think that these initiatives will be very, very important for our communities.

While Ontario’s economy is strong, not everyone is experiencing the same opportunities. More people are facing job insecurity, and the cost of living is certainly rising. We want to create a fair, modern, accountable and effective income security system that will ensure that individuals living on low income will have the tools and resources they need to improve their overall quality of life.

It is also important that we hear from the public about how they feel and how we can reshape our current income security system. Can you please tell us how the public can get involved in providing their feedback on Income Security: A Roadmap for Change?

Hon. Helena Jaczek: Although we continue to make improvements to the social assistance system, we know we have more work to do. Reforming the income security system, including the transformation of social assistance, will assist us in ensuring all individuals are treated with respect and dignity and are inspired to reach their full potential.

We also want to ensure particular attention is focused on the needs and experience of indigenous peoples. Hearing from individuals who are directly impacted by our current social assistance programs is vital in terms of how we move forward with the recommended changes.

That’s why my ministry has posted Income Security: A Roadmap for Change online for public feedback. What we hear over the next 60 days, along with the recommendations from the report, will go a long way in helping us to reform the system into one that is fair, supportive, and puts the needs of the person at the centre of the supports we provide.

Ontario budget

Mr. Patrick Brown: My question is for the Deputy Premier. There’s a lot of talk about the Liberals’ mythical balanced budget. It’s not just the Financial Accountability Officer who’s saying the government’s numbers are wrong; it’s the Auditor General. Last year, she said that the government significantly understated the deficit, and the books “were not prepared following Canadian public sector accounting standards.” She added, “The Legislature and all Ontarians must be able to rely on the province’s consolidated financial statements to fairly report the fiscal results for the year. This year they cannot.”

Now you’ve got not only the Financial Accountability Officer, you have the Auditor General saying that the government’s numbers do not add up. Rather than answer something that’s not related to the question, I’ve got a very specific question to the Deputy Premier. The FAO and the Auditor General are saying that the government’s numbers are wrong. In this financial update we’re getting this week, can we be assured that the numbers are actually going to be agreed upon by the legislative officers? Yes or no?

Hon. Deborah Matthews: To the President of the Treasury Board.

Hon. Liz Sandals: I can give you the one-word answer: Yes. The budget is balanced. In fact we are on—

Interjections.

Hon. Liz Sandals: Yes, the budget is balanced. We are on track to balance the budget this year.

Do you know what that means, Speaker? That means that instead of slashing and burning services that people rely on, we choose to invest in the people of Ontario to bring the province out of the recession, in progressive policies like full-day kindergarten and free tuition, which will ensure that the labour force of the future is well-educated and well-trained over the long term—not to mention the historical infrastructure investment of $190 billion over 13 years.

Private economists agree with our projection that we will have 2.8—

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. Supplementary?

Mr. Patrick Brown: Again to the Deputy Premier: My question was, will the FAO and the Auditor General agree with the numbers? It should be very worrisome to everyone in Ontario that you have numbers that the government is presenting and that the legislative oversight are saying are incorrect. This is unparalleled. You’ve got the FAO and the Auditor General saying not only are the numbers wrong, but the government is making up their own accounting rules.

And if it’s not good enough that you’ve got the legislative oversight saying that you’re wrong, the highly respected Don Drummond, whom this government has praised before, has said, “By no means are they completely out of the fiscal woods.” So everyone is saying your numbers are wrong.

Speaker, will they do us the kindness of at least admitting that they are making up their own rules? Will they at least give us the honesty of saying their numbers do not add up and we are in a deficit?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Stop the clock. Be seated, please. Thank you.

Minister?

Hon. Liz Sandals: I wouldn’t presume to speak for our independent officers; they’re independent. However, what I can do is tell you about some other third-party numbers; for example, 800,000 net new jobs since the recession. The majority are in the private sector and in above-wage industries. About 94.1% of those new jobs are full-time. That’s not my data; that’s StatsCan. The unemployment rate is 5.9%, which is below the national average for 31 straight months in a row. Those are not my numbers; those are StatsCan numbers.

What about the GDP? Private sector forecasts for real GDP are 2.9% in 2017, an increase from 2.4% since we presented our balanced budget.

Other indicators: Canada’s—

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. New question.

Mercury poisoning

Ms. Sarah Campbell: My question is to the Premier or the Deputy Premier. The NDP has repeatedly confronted the Premier and this government with evidence that people in Grassy Narrows and Wabaseemoong First Nations were still getting sick from mercury poisoning, including young people. But she has repeatedly insisted that the mercury contamination from the Dryden mill was contained. She even warned that a full cleanup might make things worse. Now we know that her government has known all along that there was still mercury contaminating the river and that this government has been concealing this truth.

When did the Premier find out that the ground under the mill was still contaminated with mercury, and who gave the order to keep this truth from the people of Grassy Narrows?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Be seated, please. Thank you.

Deputy Premier.

Hon. Deborah Matthews: To the Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation.

I should say, Speaker, that we have a plan in place to deal with the mercury pollution on Grassy Narrows, on the Domtar site. We are working with Grassy Narrows First Nation and with Whitedog First Nation. We are working with the ministry officials. We have committed to clean up the mercury site there.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Ms. Sarah Campbell: Speaker, the fact of the matter is that this government has had that report in its possession for over a year, and this government has always known this information. This is not new information.

The minister did not let the people of Grassy Narrows know. How is that transparent? Instead, a few months after receiving the report, he told this House that “There is no source” of mercury contamination. The people of Grassy Narrows and Wabaseemoong First Nations deserve to know why they have not been told the truth.

Will the Premier tell us when she knew about the contamination and who gave the order to conceal this truth?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Be seated, please. Thank you.

Minister?

Hon. David Zimmer: As I said, Speaker, the ministry and the government received this report in September 2016. We are committed to resolving this issue. I can tell you, Speaker, that in the past year or so, I have been to Grassy Narrows twice. I have met with the chief at Grassy Narrows—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Finish, please.

Hon. David Zimmer: —and the chiefs of White Dog. I have had meetings with former minister Murray on two occasions with the leaders from the communities. We have had meetings with the then federal minister, Minister Bennett. We are committed to this.

We have recently provided about $5.2 million to support pre-remediation work, and subsequent to that, we’ve set aside $85 million for remediation efforts. This government is serious about dealing with this issue.

Indigenous relations

Mr. Shafiq Qaadri: Bonjour. Aanii. Boozhoo. My question is for the Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, the Honourable David Zimmer.

Speaker, as you will know, there’s a long history of treaty-making between First Nations and the British crown in Ontario. This history actually dates back from 1701 to the present day. In fact, Ontario is unique in Canada for the number and variety of treaties between First Nations and the crown. There are actually about 46 treaties and counting. These include land purchases across the entire province.

Last week, Speaker, as you will know, Ontario celebrated Treaties Recognition Week, with events taking place all across our province that brought together indigenous and non-indigenous peoples to learn about our shared history. Can the minister elaborate on the significance of Treaties Recognition Week and our government’s work towards reconciliation in this area?

Hon. David Zimmer: Speaker, treaties are the reason Canada and Ontario exist as we know them today, and all Ontarians, especially students, need to gain a better understanding of treaties. Ontario is the first province in Canada to legislate the observance of an annual Treaties Recognition Week. During the first recognition week last November, we connected many indigenous speakers with hundreds of students across Ontario through our Living Library initiative. This year we held more than 200 events in 60 communities, with 50 indigenous speakers.

Last week, I was in Whitefish River First Nation to celebrate Treaties Recognition Week with Grand Chief Madahbee and Chief Shining Turtle. We launched two very, very important children’s books on the history of treaties and their significance.

It’s through the recognition week that the government’s three-year treaty strategy is working to build a better understanding of the significance and importa