The House met at 1015.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Good morning, everyone. Let us pray.

Prayers.

Members’ Statements

Health care

Ms. Teresa J. Armstrong: Speaker, I rise again to share the ongoing story of my constituent Sydney Gesualdi. Sydney was rear-ended in 2023 and has since lived with chronic pain and mobility loss. Despite referrals to eight spinal specialists in Ontario, not one was able or willing to see her—leaving her without a diagnosis, without treatment and without hope from our provincial system.

In May of this year, Sydney travelled to New York, paying out of pocket and raising funds through crowdfunding, in order to undergo invasive cervical traction and intracranial pressure testing.

Sydney finally received a diagnosis of craniocervical instability and approval for life-changing surgery—surgery that would restore her independence. The devastating part is that the approval expires this month. Without OHIP out-of-country funding—which she qualifies for under the Health Insurance Act—Sydney cannot afford the procedure, cannot even get the required physician’s letter from an Ontario specialist because every surgeon she has been referred to has declined to assess her.

Despite repeated requests from the Ministry of Health, the ministry has failed to provide a single name of a qualified Ontario specialist who could help. It shouldn’t take crowdfunding, loans and international travel for a young woman to access basic medical care.

I urge the Minister of Health to meet with Sydney and her family to understand how Ontario’s out-of-country process is broken, and to act now before it’s too late for Sydney.

Environmental protection

MPP Paul Vickers: I rise today to recognize a significant conservation project in my constituency. This spring, the Nature Conservancy of Canada announced it had acquired China Cove, an ecologically significant area just west of Tobermory through the Crying Water project. There is a historical tie to this property also: China Cove was named after the wreck of a schooner named the China, which sank near these lands in 1883.

Through this worthy project, 29 hectares were acquired for permanent protection and conservation, keeping this property and significant site accessible for the public benefit for generations to come. But, Madam Speaker, it wasn’t just the merits of the purchase that pleased me, it was the fact that this government decided to support it. With a $300,000 grant from the Greenlands Conservation Partnership program, the Honourable Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks helped preserve this beautiful and historic piece of the peninsula. Actions like this prove our government walks the talk when it comes to conservation.

I want to thank the minister and his team for recognizing this project. I also want to thank the Nature Conservancy of Canada, the Ontario land trust and all project partners for working to preserve this beautiful piece of Ontario for generations to come.

Made in Ajax / Royal Canadian Legion poppy campaign

Mr. Rob Cerjanec: Ajax is one of the most diverse communities in Ontario and our food scene proudly reflects that diversity. Recently, the town of Ajax launched the Made in Ajax food guide, highlighting the many local establishments and culinary experiences that make our community such a vibrant place. From Caribbean and South Asian flavours to Mediterranean, Filipino and so many other cuisines, Ajax truly does offer something for everyone.

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So thank you to the town of Ajax for putting the food guide together, and I invite all of you and those watching at home to visit ajax.ca to check out the food guide and come on down to Ajax.

Speaker, as we approach Remembrance Day, I’m reminded of the town of Ajax’s proud military history, reflected in our town’s own name. On Friday, we launched the Royal Canadian Legion’s poppy campaign in Ajax and across Durham region as well, raising the poppy flag at town hall and regional headquarters and encouraging everyone to wear a poppy to honour the sacrifices and service of Canada’s veterans as we approach Remembrance Day.

I want to thank all those who have served in uniform during times of conflict and peace, and those who continue to help keep our communities and our country safe. We remember and thank you.

Kinsmen Super TV Bingo

Mr. Dave Smith: Under the N36—Speaker, this year marks the 36th consecutive year that the Peterborough Kinsmen Club have been playing Kinsmen Super TV Bingo. It originally began with the Kingston Kinsmen Club, but 36 years ago, it moved to Peterborough. It has been broadcast on CHEX TV the entire time, originally as a CBC affiliate and now as part of the Global TV network. It can be found every Saturday night on Global TV, Global Peterborough, Global Durham and Global Kingston.

Although there are a number of media bingos being played across Ontario, this is the only one that’s broadcast on network TV, in an area of almost 30,000 square kilometres.

Last broadcast year, Kinsmen Super TV Bingo gave almost $700,000 to the communities where the bingo cards are being sold. Just as an example, 31 school breakfast programs were funded because of people playing bingo from October until May.

A huge thank you goes out to all of the volunteers who give up their Saturday evenings to make this happen, from the on-screen callers of Darryl, Dave and Reid to the command team who run things behind the scenes in Caroline, Jim, Conrad, John and Barry; the team answering the phones, with Dave, Dean, Matt, Les, Bob; and the number of validators like Rick and Dave.

Congratulations on 36 years, and thank you for giving up your Saturdays for such—

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the member for Toronto Centre.

Gender-based violence

MPP Kristyn Wong-Tam: This month, as we mark Woman Abuse Prevention Month, also known as Domestic Violence Awareness Month, I think about the women and children across Ontario who are living in fear, those who go to sleep each night unsure if they are safe in their own homes.

This chamber has repeatedly heard about the stark reality: Women and girls make up nearly 80% of all victims of intimate partner violence; since turning age 15, 45% of teenagers have experienced dating violence; in Ontario, a woman or child is killed every six days. These are not statistics—these are mothers, daughters, sisters, friends and neighbours.

It is estimated that 80% of IPV cases go unreported to the police. This number is even higher among teen dating, where 98% of this violence is not reported, as the survivors feel their situation is simply too minor.

Yet despite the overwhelming evidence and the heartbreak behind these numbers, when the opposition NDP table unanimous motions—Bill 173, Bill 55—this government has refused three times to declare intimate partner violence as an epidemic. The same declaration is now supported by many police chiefs, 106 municipalities and the Renfrew county inquest.

Speaker, when will this government which refuses to name a crisis be able to confront it? Shelters remain at capacity. Affordable housing is still out of reach.

I want to thank all the front-line workers, advocates and survivors who continue to speak truth to power.

Expo Hawkesbury

M. Stéphane Sarrazin: J’aimerais profiter de l’occasion pour inviter les résidents de Glengarry–Prescott–Russell à participer à l’Expo Hawkesbury qui aura lieu les 8 et 9 novembre au complexe sportif Robert Hartley.

I’m pleased to invite the residents of Glengarry–Prescott–Russell to the Hawkesbury Expo taking place on November 8 and November 9 at the Robert Hartley Sports Complex Hawkesbury. The event will kick off on Saturday morning with the mayor’s breakfast at 8:30, where I will have the honour of joining as one of the guest speakers to address attendees—who have purchased their breakfast ticket, of course.

L’Expo Hawkesbury est une occasion exceptionnelle pour les résidents de rencontrer des organismes communautaires, des entreprises et des fournisseurs de services locaux qui contribuent à faire de notre région un endroit dynamique et accueillant. Mon équipe et moi serons sur place tout au long de la fin de semaine, et j’invite tout le monde à venir nous voir à notre kiosque, poser des questions, prendre une photo et en apprendre davantage sur le travail que nous accomplissons pour soutenir la population de Glengarry–Prescott–Russell.

We will also be hosting a contest for a gift basket filled with local products, showcasing the incredible talent and entrepreneurship that define our region. It’s a fun and meaningful way to celebrate community spirit and support our local producers.

L’Expo Hawkesbury illustre parfaitement la vitalité de notre circonscription et le dévouement de celles et ceux qui contribuent à son succès. J’ai bien hâte de rencontrer les résidents, d’échanger avec eux et de partager de l’information en personne.

Conflict in Middle East

Ms. Doly Begum: It has now been over two years since October 7, 2023, a horrific day that’s been weaponized to justify a genocide—children buried beneath rubble; entire families, neighbourhoods reduced to dust; and future generations growing up under fear and starvation. As of now, in Palestine, over 60,000 lives have been lost—killed, actually—with more than 17,000 of them being children. And that’s only what’s reported.

Netanyahu’s far-right coalition—with the help of others, including Canada—continues its military campaign, and what we’re witnessing right now is not peace, Speaker. It’s devastation. Meanwhile, our governments sit here patting themselves on the back every time there’s a ceasefire, which eventually falls apart, time and time again. Just this week, BBC reported that more than 100 people were killed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza. For the people of Gaza, there has been no pause in deaths and despair.

Our federal government recognizes Palestine in words yet refuses to implement an arms embargo and impose sanctions on the Israeli government. Speaker, how many more children—how many more lives—must die before the Canadian government finds its moral backbone, the courage and conviction to stop sending arms and enabling this genocide?

Skilled trades

Mr. Joseph Racinsky: Today marks the start of Skilled Trades Week, and I’d like to share some of the incredible work taking place in my riding to provide workers with skilled trades training.

Just a few weeks ago, Landscape Ontario officially broke ground on a new training facility in Halton Hills. This 24,000-square-foot facility will provide the space to train hundreds and thousands of workers in the landscaping industry, which is so important to communities such as mine on the outskirts of the GTA.

This summer, I was honoured to be at Landscape Ontario along with the member for Mississauga–Erin Mills as well as the mayor and town councillors, as we highlighted $3 million in the Skills Development Fund for Landscape Ontario’s GROW program. This incredible program has trained hundreds of workers for the landscaping industry. At the event, I was able to meet Robby from Acton, who had gone through the GROW program. Robby previously worked in an industry that was faltering due to changes in the market and he needed to pivot. Through the GROW program and the Skills Development Fund, he was able to learn a skill in a completely different field from the one he was in before. Today, he is employed in a good-paying job at a company called Smart Watering Systems and that is thanks to the Skills Development Fund, Speaker. This program is changing lives in my community.

Speaker, to everyone that works in a skilled trade, I want to wish them a happy Skilled Trades Week.

Chambers of commerce awards of excellence

Hon. Ernie Hardeman: Both the Tillsonburg and Ingersoll chambers of commerce recently handed out their annual Awards of Excellence. It’s always great to see people come together to celebrate the businesses and residents who go above and beyond in making our community such a great place. I want to congratulate all of this year’s winners.

From Tillsonburg:

—Kermar Holdings, winner of the New Investment Commercial Award;

—Schep’s Bakeries, recipient of the New Investment Industrial Award;

—Verne’s Carpet One, congratulations on the Community Service Award;

—Beres Butchery and Catering, who received the Business Improvement Award;

—Future Transfer, winner of the Entrepreneur of the Year Award;

—Good Redden Klosler received the Employer of the Year Award; and

—Tyler Van Lewin, congratulations on the Positive Change Award.

And from Ingersoll:

—the Agricultural Award went to Steve Veldman;

—IMT defence received the Ted Hunt Large Industry of the Year Award;

—Backyard By Design has been named Business/Industry of the Year;

—Jaylen Seif, recipient of the Youth Entrepreneur/Youth Citizen of the Year Award;

—Denise Keeley, winner of the Mark Warnick Citizen of the Year Award; and

—Dale Flynn, winner of the President’s Award.

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The hard work and community spirit of these winners are a big part of what makes Oxford such a great place to call home. I wish all the winners all the best in the years ahead.

Introduction of Visitors

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Joining us in the members’ gallery are Jennifer Mossop, my friend and former colleague at CHCH Television, who was the member of provincial Parliament for Stoney Creek in the 38th Parliament, as well as Donna Cansfield, who was the member of provincial Parliament for Etobicoke Centre in the 38th, 39th and 40th Parliaments. Welcome back to Queen’s Park.

Hon. Michael S. Kerzner: I’m delighted to welcome, from my own constituency of York Centre, Paul and Karen Seidman and Guidy and Monica Mamann, who for 107 weeks helped organize a rally at Bathurst and Sheppard so that nobody would forget about what happened on October 7. We prayed for the return of the hostages. Welcome to—

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The member for Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas.

Ms. Sandy Shaw: It’s my pleasure to introduce my family to this House: my niece Katie Caudill; my nephew Graeme Caudill; my beautiful sister Penny Shaw; and her husband Lieutenant Colonel Mark Caudill, US Air Force, retired. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Ms. Lee Fairclough: I want to give a warm welcome to people here today from Hospice Palliative Care Ontario: Rick Firth, CEO; Barbara Mildon, the executive director of Hospice Care Ottawa; and a special personal welcome to the Honourable Donna Cansfield, who is also the chair of the board of Dorothy Ley Hospice in Etobicoke–Lakeshore. We’ll see you today—

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The Associate Minister of Small Business.

Hon. Nina Tangri: I’d like to welcome Satish Thakkar, Nikita Thakkar and Mayank Thakkar. Satish is the recipient of the King’s coronation medal. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Hon. Sylvia Jones: As we are marking 50 years of hospice palliative care across Canada, I also want to recognize Rick Firth from my own hospice in Dufferin–Caledon—of course, Margaret Paan and Janette Panhuis, and, as mentioned, Jennifer Mossop and Donna Cansfield from Dorothy Ley Hospice.

MPP George Darouze: It’s a great pleasure to welcome a very special guest to Queen’s Park today: my son Tony Darouze. Tony, I’m incredibly proud of you and I’m thrilled you’re here to witness the work we do in this chamber. Welcome to Queen’s Park. Enjoy your visit.

Ms. Mary-Margaret McMahon: I have some terrific people from the green roofs industry today representing Ginkgo Sustainability, LiveRoof, ZinCo, Soprema, NLSM, Landvist, Leaf Maintenance and Skyspace, representing ridings like Oakville, Wellington–Halton Hills, Barrie–Innisfil, Lambton–Kent–Middlesex, Oxford, Whitby and Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock and representing tons of jobs in Ontario. Welcome to your House.

Hon. Paul Calandra: Today’s page captain, of course, is Theodore Diplas, and his mom, Vicky Agelopoulos, is here, and his father, George Diplas. I welcome them to Queen’s Park.

Mr. Tyler Allsopp: [Inaudible] Charlie and Cathy Thompson from my riding of Bay of Quinte. Thank you for coming today. Welcome to your House.

Hon. Michael Parsa: I’d like to welcome Dr. Christina Carew from Aurora–Oak Ridges–Richmond Hill, from the Ontario Association of Naturopathic Doctors.

Mr. Anthony Leardi: Welcome to Katharen Bortolin from the Hospice of Windsor and Essex County, and also CEO Jennifer Joseph, Dr. Audrey Sasson and Dr. Barbara Weiss, and many other representatives of the Ontario Association of Naturopathic Doctors.

Hon. David Piccini: I’d like to welcome members of the CLAC union and the Progressive Contractors Association who are here today for their lobby day at Queen’s Park. It was wonderful meeting with you this morning.

I’d also like to introduce members of the Grand Valley Construction Association and Mandy, who is here today. I’m looking forward to speaking with Mandy and Jeff MacIntyre later today. Welcome to Queen’s Park, your House.

Mr. Peter Tabuns: Speaker, I’d like to welcome Dana McKiel, a broadcaster, to the Legislature. Dana, welcome.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): This morning in the members’ gallery we are joined by Benji Crane, a singer, songwriter and violinist from the riding of Parkdale–High Park, who will perform O Canada and God Save the King. Please stand and join him in the singing of our national and royal anthems.

Singing of the national anthem / Chant de l’hymne national.

Singing of the royal anthem / Chant de l’hymne royal.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): You may be seated.

Question Period

Government accountability

Ms. Marit Stiles: Good morning. My question is to the Minister of Labour. Over the last week I have spent a lot of time with working people, whether it was on the line with health care workers striking in North York or the thousands of workers that are waiting for action from this government in Ingersoll—they just want the government to bring back their jobs, Speaker.

Ontario is in the middle of a jobs disaster. Meanwhile, this minister continues to use the Skills Development Fund as a friends and family special.

So, Scale Hospitality, lobbied for by Amin Massoudi, received $17 million from the Skills Development Fund under this minister. I’d like to know how many permanent jobs came out of that particular investment.

Hon. David Piccini: Speaker, when the global pandemic hit, we introduced a fund which was designed simply to respond—to getting people rapid training, to supporting employers—with one goal and one goal in mind: to kick-start our economy. Since then, Speaker, we’ve implemented a number of measures to improve the strength of the program over the course of successive rounds: after every round, responsive to employer, labour unions; responsive to working-class Ontarians’ needs, to make sure we support them.

I want to highlight one, Speaker, that I was just speaking with at Skills Canada, Skills Ontario. They said their mobile skills unit—our Trades and Tech Truck, which many of us have seen—has enabled us to get into every corner of the province to engage with thousands of students and others around the province to highlight careers and opportunities in ways that are meaningful.

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I want to talk about outcomes and results in my supplementary.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Supplementary?

Ms. Marit Stiles: I’ve got to say, Speaker, it’s pretty surprising that the minister can’t answer that question. I mean, $17 million was given to Scale Hospitality, and the minister can’t tell us how many permanent jobs were created?

Look, Scale Hospitality, we know already, had a low-scoring application, right? And then get this: They actually submitted their application late. But still, they got the funding. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the owners did make a timely $10,000 donation to the Conservative Party.

The minister has said before that 700,000 people got work out of this fund, but can he tell us how many people were actually connected to full-time employment?

Hon. David Piccini: Speaker, I want to talk about another important fund. This fund is designed to help people who are underemployed or unemployed find work.

Let’s look at another one: A project that achieves government objectives to support young men and women in the trades scored low, but through the SDF, Skills Canada, Skills Ontario built a skilled workforce initiative, which was focused on underrepresented groups to provide a way into a career in the skilled trades. It was aimed at working individuals, and we were able to place participants in paid employment. Our goal was to focus on 120 participants; we were able to exceed this goal, placing 155 in training and jobs. Many of these individuals lived on social assistance or were completely unemployed, Speaker.

This is the measure. This is the impact it’s having on Ontarians.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Final supplementary?

Ms. Marit Stiles: They don’t have an answer, Speaker, and that’s because they don’t track it. That’s the truth: They don’t track it. Two and a half billion tax dollars—your dollars—and this minister can’t show the results of his work.

I’m going to give the minister another chance to answer a real question and give it a real answer about how he is using people’s hard-earned money—maybe they put something new in the little binder that they give them.

People are losing good union jobs right now. I would like to know exactly how many jobs were created through this minister’s interference.

Hon. David Piccini: I reject the premise. This fund supports people at every stage of their career, whether it’s unemployed, underemployed, people on social assistance. How do you measure it? Binary, full-time employment? Many aren’t able for that, and we get them into part-time employment. We get them to be able to stand on their feet to be able to earn a paycheque. That’s how we measure the success of the program. It’s not just binary on full-time employment, on part-time employment.

After every successive round—to directly answer the question—we’ve implemented measures like tracking SIN numbers. That’s something we don’t even do in many of our post-secondary institutions. We implemented financial audits and we’re implementing the Auditor General’s recommendation by posting, publicly, key programmatic indicators in the next round in the coming months, Speaker.

That’s what we’ll continue to do to strengthen the program after every single round.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Stop the clock. Just a reminder to the minister, if you could remove your phone from the desk, we’re picking it up on audio. Thank you.

Start the clock. Back to the Leader of the Opposition for the second question.

Government accountability

Ms. Marit Stiles: People are losing good jobs, good union jobs—jobs that they use to raise their families, they have to make their mortgage payments. Good, full-time jobs actually matter to the people of this province.

Now, back to the minister: In a recent interview on the radio, the minister said that he reserves the right to decide who gets funding based on the government’s priority. He admitted that he handpicked low-scoring applications because he said that they met the government’s priorities.

Can the minister share a few details about the selection process and tell us now who has the final say in deciding who receives those funds?

Hon. David Piccini: I’m proud to stand up here and talk about this Premier’s jobs record: over a million net new jobs since we took office—after decimating the manufacturing sector and driving manufacturers out of this province.

So, again, when we implemented this fund, after every round, we’ve made improvements and that includes looking at tariff-impacted jobs, which happened midway through the last round. That’s a priority. That includes looking at our Housing Supply Action Plan to make sure we have men and women in the trades. We’re growing the number of apprenticeship registrations. We need to make sure we’re offering meaningful training opportunities to grow that through group sponsorship—something we spoke about this morning—the important group sponsorship that makes sure we have apprenticeship pathways in every corner of the province.

These are the priorities of this Premier. We’re building hospitals. We’re building civil infrastructure. We spoke about Highway 413 this morning, Speaker—more than enough work for everybody to get work, all of our labour partners. That’s something that this member and her party voted against every single time, Speaker—meaningful—

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Supplementary?

Ms. Marit Stiles: That was a whole lot of nothing, Speaker. I’ve got to say, he couldn’t answer whether he decides—is it the Premier who decides? Who decides?

The minister has stood here and he has bragged about giving millions of taxpayer dollars, even billions, to low-scoring applicants. Let me point out one of those applicants: Keel Digital Solutions. Their lobbyist is the Paris groom, and the minister was photographed in their executive’s rinkside seats at the Leafs game, right? Remember that: Keel Digital Solutions. Those are close personal relationships, and the minister knows that he has to disclose those relationships with the Integrity Commissioner if they have any business before his ministry.

The people of Ontario, they know what a conflict of interest looks like. So what steps did the minister take to prevent a conflict of interest in decisions related specifically to Peter Zakarow or Michael Rudderham and their business before this House?

Hon. David Piccini: The member doesn’t care about these jobs because they voted against every single systemic initiative we’ve brought forward that puts these young men and women to work, voted against Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass, voted against and does not support net new nuclear, small modular reactors. At every step, they don’t support these meaningful pathways. We’re working hard, with one sole focus: to provide meaningful training opportunities to grow and modernize our workforce.

We introduced as-of-right legislation. We’ve improved pathways into the skilled trades. We’ve brought people from underemployment and unemployment into employment through this fund, Speaker, and we’re going to keep working hard for those very people every day.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Final supplementary?

Ms. Marit Stiles: Boy, Speaker, this is an embarrassment, right? This cloud is hanging not just over this minister and this fund, but it is spreading out across this entire government and all of their MPPs.

We know that a disproportionate amount of grants went to applicants that made donations to the minister’s riding association. We know that the minister’s history of fundraisers is getting out there in podcast world. Mr. X claimed that he got the tip-off about the greenbelt removals from this minister at a fundraiser months before it went public.

So I think the public has a right to know: Did the minister or anyone else give any applicant reason to believe that a donation to this minister’s riding association would improve their chances of receiving SDF funding?

Hon. David Piccini: That’s factually incorrect, Speaker. As I’ve said on a number of occasions and I’ve stood here and pointed out, many people who have received funding have donated to them, have donated to other parties, have run for their party in previous elections. But as I’ve said and I’ll say again, none of that matters, Speaker. It doesn’t matter when we’re assessing a worthwhile program that’s going to support people to land a job with a better paycheque, again, sitting down with unions whose leadership literally sit on their executive.

We’re elected here to support tariff-impacted sectors to make sure that we’re supporting people into meaningful careers. I’ve pointed out programs that have included significant donors of their own party, but it doesn’t matter. These are programs that have brought training—

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Response?

Hon. David Piccini: —into Indigenous communities to support youth into meaningful careers in the trades. That’s going to help us on the front lines of new nuclear. That’s going to help us on building the 413 and the—

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Question?

Government accountability

Mr. John Fraser: I hope the Premier has had a chance to reflect on his $75-million ad, the one that aired twice, the one that the Prime Minister told him not to do, the one that he went ahead and did anyway. We all know that the ad is just another one of the Premier’s vanity projects, like the rest of the hundreds of millions of dollars this Premier has spent on taxpayer-funded advertising, just to tell us how really great he is and how really great his party is.

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The Premier isn’t protecting Ontarians’ jobs; he’s putting them at risk. Will the Premier apologize to the workers of Ontario for putting himself first, and for putting them second and putting their jobs at risk?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the member for Bay of Quinte.

Mr. Tyler Allsopp: Thank you to the House leader of the third party, the leader of the third party—I’m not sure what’s going on over there—but in this party, we stand up for the workers of Ontario, and we are proud to put out that advertisement that made it clear to our American friends what the impact of this trade war will be on them.

They say all politics is local. We made sure that they knew that their President and their government are costing them their jobs, are shuttering their factories and are raising prices at the grocery store for them. We will not sit down and roll over, as the opposition has asked us to. We will continue to stand up for Ontario and Ontario workers.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Supplementary?

Mr. John Fraser: At best, it was a brain cramp from the Premier. The Premier has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on vanity ads, ads the Auditor General has said that the primary objective of which was to foster a positive impression of the governing party.

We shouldn’t be surprised because the same people who do these ads are the same people who do the Premier’s campaign ads. They do a lot of government ads—Creative Currency. Last week, we learned the connection they have to the man behind the curtain, the shadow Premier, Kory Teneycke. It’s all just a little too close and a little too cute.

So will the Premier apologize for putting his friends and insiders ahead of the 700,000 people who are looking for work in Ontario?

Mr. Tyler Allsopp: Our government was elected on a promise to stand up for every Ontario worker and every Ontario job. We are facing a once-in-a-generation crisis from south of our border. That’s why our government has stepped forward with $30 billion of support for affected businesses and workers across this province, with relief and supports and various measures to ensure they can continue working.

We will continue to use every tool that we have in our tool box to stand up for Ontario’s economic interests. There are nearly one million more men and women working today than there were when we first took office, and our government will never turn our back on the businesses and workers that power Ontario’s resilient economy.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Leader of the third party.

Mr. John Fraser: You know what’s really interesting here? Not one person on the front bench could answer that question. They had to go to the back of the room.

So 700,000 Ontarians are out of work. Hundreds of thousands of children, families, are visiting food banks. People can’t get the health care they need. They can’t get the help in school—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Order.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Order. I will start warning members.

Back to the leader of the third party.

Mr. John Fraser: Wow, you guys—

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The member for Essex will come to order.

Mr. John Fraser: Maybe somebody on the front bench can get up and answer this question, then.

There’s 700,000 people out of work. Hundreds of thousands of children and families are at the food banks, people can’t get the health care they need, and this Premier’s priority is for his friends to make a healthy profit.

So will the Premier apologize to Ontario workers for putting his friends and insiders ahead of them?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Member for Bay of Quinte.

Mr. Tyler Allsopp: Thank you very much, Madam Speaker—

Interjections.

Mr. Tyler Allsopp: Thank you.

Well, I do have an answer. I’m not surprised that the leader of the third party doesn’t recognize what’s going on. It’s called depth of bench, which means we have 79 of these, and if you even had one of them behind you, you wouldn’t still be asking the questions.

Now, let’s listen to what Wab Kinew said, “It’s clear these ads are working. If you throw a rock at a lake and you don’t hear a splash, you’ve probably missed.”

Lana Payne for Unifor said, “Premier Ford, whose province has been hit hard by the trade war, understands that we can’t negotiate from our knees.”

Why is it that everyone except the leader of the third party and the Leader of the Opposition understand what’s going on here? When will you stand up and fight for the hard-working people of Ontario?

Government accountability

Mr. John Fraser: I didn’t know that the effect of the question would be for the front benches and the Premier to be glued to their seats.

We know the Skills Development Fund was used by the minister as his personal piggy bank. We know that this is a cesspool of scandal, the Skills Development Fund. It’s not a pretty picture. When you dig beneath the rot like the AG did, you find that there’s more than just scandal: You discover, really, that the Premier is an incompetent manager shovelling hundreds of millions of dollars out the door, no strings attached.

Will the Premier open the books on the Skills Development Fund so Ontarians can get to the bottom of this?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The Minister of Labour.

Hon. David Piccini: Speaker, this Premier, at every step, has stood up for workers. You just heard the quote from the leader of Unifor: You can’t negotiate from your knees; you’ve got to stand with strength. That also means supporting those workers at every step, Speaker.

As I’ve indicated, and as the Auditor General has indicated—we welcome her recommendations—after every round of funding, we’ve taken steps to improve the program, to build and pack more integrity into the system: tracking the SIN, doing financial audits and now publicly posting KPIs in future rounds for our programmatic indicator.

We’re going to keep taking steps to support those workers—workers and organized labour who abandoned that member and abandoned their party because they know when it comes to their best interest to building a stronger Ontario, a stronger Canada, to stand up to a bully south of the border, they can trust this Premier and trust this government.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Supplementary?

Mr. John Fraser: You know, the Premier and the minister claimed that 100,000 people got jobs out of this program. There’s only one problem: There’s no real data. We don’t know if these are full-time, part-time or temporary jobs. We don’t know if these people who got jobs would have already had to have been trained, hired and paid for by the people who got skills development money, like the $27 million that went to bars and nightclubs in downtown Toronto.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are being shovelled out the door with no strings attached, and you’ve got to ask why. Will the Premier do the right thing and open the books on the Skills Development Fund so Ontarians can get to the bottom of this?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the member for York South–Weston.

MPP Mohamed Firin: Madam Speaker, I’ve sat at my desk for weeks as I’ve listened to the leader of the third party talk about what he could have done and what he would have done. But he had that opportunity: He was in government—the previous government—a government that failed Ontarians of this province as 350,000 jobs left this province under his leadership—350,000 jobs left this province, Madam Speaker.

I’m proud to stand behind this Premier. As I go across this province every single month, I’ve seen, Madam Speaker, the young people who are getting opportunities that I never had under that leader’s party—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Order.

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The member for Don Valley North will come to order.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Order.

The leader of the third party.

Mr. John Fraser: So here’s what we have: no reliable data, no accurate record-keeping and hundreds of millions of dollars being shovelled out the door to friends, donors, insiders and lobbyists like Kory Teneycke. What we need here is not just to open the books, we need a forensic audit with the scandal and mismanagement that is the Skills Development Fund.

One more time, I’ll ask the Premier—maybe he’ll answer my question: Will the Premier open the books so we can have a forensic audit on the Skills Development Fund?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The member for Scarborough–Guildwood will come to order. The member for Ajax will come to order.

I recognize the member for York South–Weston.

MPP Mohamed Firin: Week and week again, I’ve heard the leader of the third party talk about how he cares about the workers of this province, but his voting record shows otherwise. Some $70 billion worth of infrastructure—that’s $70 billion worth of jobs for the workers of this province—how did he vote when he got the chance? He voted no.

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Some $60 billion worth of health care investment—that’s $60 billion worth of jobs for the people of this province. When he had the chance, he voted no.

Some $40 billion to protect the workers of this province. How did he vote when he had that chance? He voted no.

So, again, Madam Speaker, he does not care about the workers of this province.

Public transit

Ms. Doly Begum: Speaker, residents in Scarborough were promised the hope of an easier commute through the Eglinton LRT. Instead, they have endured 14 years of construction, noise, delays and road closures. What began as a $5-billion project has now soared to $13 billion and going, and there’s still no concrete opening date. This project has become the poster child of this government’s sheer incompetence.

My question to the Premier is, how much longer will Ontarians be forced to pay for this government’s failures and its wastefulness spending the tax dollars of Ontarians?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The Minister of Transportation.

Hon. Prabmeet Singh Sarkaria: We’ve committed to the people of this province that we’re going to deliver a safe and reliable system. We reached a revenue service demonstration and completed that on the Finch West LRT, and we’re going to continue to build.

Here are the facts: Every single project that this government has put forward under Premier Ford, the NDP and Liberals have voted against. Let’s take a look: the Scarborough subway extension, in that member’s backyard; that member has stood up every single time and voted against that project.

Whether it’s the budget or the fall economic statement, for 15 years, the previous Liberal government left the people of Scarborough without transit options. It was this Premier, under this government, that started the Scarborough subway extension. In fact, we were there just a couple of weeks ago marking the start of the station being under construction, making real progress on projects for the people of Scarborough, delivering world-class transit, moving hundreds and thousands of people across the city when complete to help them get to where they need to go easier and quicker.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Back to the member for Scarborough Southwest.

Ms. Doly Begum: Speaker, I would like to correct the record and make sure that everyone knows we always vote against cuts to transit, cuts to this province. That’s why every time you have brought bills without any accountability, whether it’s transit or anything else, we will vote against that.

In 2022, hundreds of workers in Thunder Bay lost their jobs after this government quietly cut Canadian content for Ontario Line subway cars from 25% to only 10%. That reckless decision back then means fewer Ontario jobs and more public money leaving Ontario today.

Again, to the Premier, my question is: How can this Premier justify turning his back on Ontarians and Ontario workers instead of keeping transit production and good manufacturing jobs right here at home?

Hon. Prabmeet Singh Sarkaria: Madam Speaker, let’s talk about Alstom, the plant in Thunder Bay that Premier Ford has visited multiple times and whose workers absolutely love him. You know why? Because we stepped in when the TTC put forward a procurement to say that this can only go to Alstom and the workers in Thunder Bay. Now, $2.1 billion will go to Thunder Bay thanks to Premier Ford and the members of this government.

Guess what: You had an opportunity, when we tabled the Ontario new deal, to support that investment, and every single member of the opposition voted against it. The member from Thunder Bay also voted against a $2.1-billion investment into 55 new subway cars that will be built in Thunder Bay. You’ve turned your back against the workers of Thunder Bay. You’ve turned your back against the thousands of jobs that are supported through transit projects.

It was this Premier who stepped up and ensured that we delivered that contract for the workers of Thunder Bay and Alstom, and we will continue to stand up and fight for those jobs, whether it’s Thunder Bay—

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Question?

Government accountability

Mrs. Karen McCrimmon: We’ve seen, in the last few weeks, bills that are being rushed through this Legislature with minimal debate and no committee input or oversight. We’ve seen the Minister of Labour give millions of dollars to rich friends and donors through the $2.5-billion Skills Development Fund. The Auditor General told us this government’s actions were not fair, transparent or accountable.

As we begin November, we move into the time of year when we recognize the contribution and sacrifice of so many who gave us our democracy and our Canadian way of life.

My question to the Premier: When will he restore honour and decency to this government, restore accountability and, as a first step, fire this Minister of Labour?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The Minister of Finance.

Hon. Peter Bethlenfalvy: Through you, Madam Speaker, to the member opposite: Thank you for your service over the years to the military and beyond.

I’ll tell you what it looks like in Ontario, I’ll tell you what an economic engine looks like. I hope you vote for the fall economic statement because in there is $1 billion to build the small modular reactor in Darlington, creating 18,000 new jobs, 18,000 construction jobs. Hopefully you’ll support creating new jobs out in Durham—3,700 jobs to operate. Supporting $500 million along with the federal government for 2,800 jobs in the north and Sault Ste. Marie: Hopefully you’ll support that as well.

And how about the $9 billion that’s proposed to help 80,000 businesses? Again, you voted against it. It’s time that you started to vote for Ontario.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The member for Kanata–Carleton.

Mrs. Karen McCrimmon: The Premier tells us that he is the most accessible Premier in history—pick up the phone; call him any time. He also tells us that his tariff ad was the most successful ad in the history of North America. Does that sound like anybody else you might know?

But, Speaker, when will this Premier show us that he has the decency, a modicum of honour and a hint of respect for the Ontario taxpayers—who pay his salary—and fire this Minister of Labour?

Hon. Doug Ford: First of all, thank you so much for the question and—Remembrance Day—I do want to thank you for your service. It means everything to all of us in this chamber.

In saying that, there’s never been an ad in the history of this world that has seen 12.4 billion views. But even better, because of that ad—it was on the floor of the Senate—the Republicans lost the vote. Four Republicans switched sides. They talked about the ad. It’s making a massive, massive difference. And guess what? We didn’t have to spend that $75 million. We spent one fraction of it to protect Ontario. You know something? We will use every tool in our tool box to protect the people of Ontario and Canada. Now it’s holding President Trump for accountability, unlike no other leader in this world—

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The member for Windsor–Tecumseh.

Mining industry

Mr. Andrew Dowie: My question is for the Minister of Energy and Mines. Speaker, Ontario is a province built on hard work, innovation and trade. Our people power the factories, the mines and the energy projects that drive our economy. From Windsor’s auto plants to the mining developments in the north, Ontario is built by hard-working people who keep our province moving. But in recent months, we’ve heard threats from Donald Trump and others who want to target Ontario’s success in energy and mining. They want to take away investments, weaken our industries and slow down projects that create good jobs right here at home.

So, Speaker, can the minister explain how Ontario is protecting our province from these threats and keeping projects moving?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the member for Mississauga–Lakeshore.

Mr. Rudy Cuzzetto: I want to thank the member from Windsor–Tecumseh for that question.

Under the previous Liberal government, Ontario was bogged down with red tape. Projects waited years for even basic approvals. Investors lost confidence, and opportunities left the province. Families paid the price.

Through the “one project, one process” framework, we’re replacing a broken system with a common-sense plan that gets results. That means faster decisions and greater certainty. It also means less duplication and fewer delays. Ontario’s high environmental and safety standard remains in place, and the duty to consult is fully upheld. That’s how we build a stronger economy, attract investment and keep Ontario leading the nation in job creation.

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The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Back to the member for Windsor–Tecumseh.

Mr. Andrew Dowie: I want to thank the parliamentary assistant for his response.

Speaker, Donald Trump has made it clear that he intends to put up barriers and punish trading partners who compete with the United States. That includes targeting Ontario’s strength in energy and mining. These are the same sectors that power our auto plants in Windsor and supply the world with critical minerals.

Under the Liberals, Ontario would have had no plan to fight back. We saw that with the GM transmission plant closure. But under our government, we’re moving fast—cutting red tape, building new projects and standing up for Ontario jobs.

Speaker, can the parliamentary assistant explain why it’s so important that Ontario continues to show strong leadership and keep projects moving to protect our economy?

Mr. Rudy Cuzzetto: For 15 long years under the Liberals, propped up by the NDP, Ontario became a place where good projects were buried in red tape. Businesses were told to wait, investors were told, “Maybe later,” and hard-working families paid the price. That ends under our government, Speaker: no more duplication, no more endless approvals, no more bureaucratic gridlock.

Just last week, the minister designated Frontier Lithium—Ontario’s largest lithium mine—as the first project under this new approach. We’re moving with speed, Madam Speaker. This project will add $1.5 billion to Ontario’s GDP, bringing $124 million in tax revenue and creating 3,000 new jobs.

While the opposition delays and wants to regulate everything into the ground, we’re focused on building—building Ontario’s economy, building Ontario’s opportunity and building a brighter future for Ontario and for Canada.

Government contracts

Ms. Jessica Bell: My question is to the Premier. Ontario invests nearly $30 billion a year on public contracts to build our hospitals, our schools and transit. But under this government’s very weak buy Ontario policy, US-based corporations are still winning contracts even when qualified Canadian companies could do the work.

We raised the issue of a US company getting a big multi-million dollar contract to build an Ontario hospital in October. The government refused to investigate the issue, refused to close the loopholes that we identified and refused to strengthen its buy Ontario policy.

So my question is to the Premier. Why is it okay letting public dollars go south of the border when we have qualified companies and willing workers who are able to do the job here?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement.

Hon. Stephen Crawford: Again, I think the opposition is well aware there is one party, one government in this entire country that has stood up for Canadian and Ontario workers, and that is the government led by Premier Doug Ford.

Speaker, we have put forward multiple pieces of legislation supporting buy Ontario, buy Canada. For example, our government put forward BOBIA, the buy Ontario building initiative, with Supply Ontario and our procurement restriction policy. We’re guaranteeing at least $3 billion more in government spending flows directly to Ontario small businesses. But did the opposition support this legislation? No, they did not.

In fact, last week in this House, we had legislation right before the House that you voted on. You voted against procuring auto vehicles for the Ontario government and the broader public sector. Why would you vote against legislation supporting auto workers right here in the province?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Back to the member for University–Rosedale.

Ms. Jessica Bell: Back to the Premier: Speaker, the government has a buy Ontario policy that has loopholes so big in it you can drive a truck through them. Municipalities are not covered by the rules, US firms can still qualify if they have just a few hundred employees here and enforcement is weak.

Today, we are introducing a motion to call on the Ontario government to strengthen its buy Ontario, buy Canada procurement policies, so government investment goes to Ontario companies and Ontario workers first.

So my question is to the Premier. Which side are you on? Are you on the side of Ontario workers or not?

Hon. Doug Ford: Ironic, you voted against our initiative called BOBI. You voted against it. We’re going to toughen it up even more by passing more legislation.

But you know something? I truly believe the opposition wants more jobs too. They need to vote with us on this new legislation to make it even tougher.

There’s no one out there hammering buy Ontario and buy Canada more than I have right across the country, to all our US counterparts; to look at the Am-Can fortress, making America and Canadians stronger; making sure that we protect Ontarian jobs and steel workers from cheap Chinese steel coming in and being dumped here in Canada, undermining our steel sector, undermining our auto sector, undermining our agriculture sector and every other sector of manufacturing as well—life sciences.

We’re under attack by Donald Trump, and I’m going to fight like we’ve never fought before to protect Ontarians and protect—

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Question?

Government accountability

MPP Stephanie Smyth: I’m going to try a different tack. This is about trust. Ontarians trust their government to spend their hard-earned tax dollars wisely, not to reward insiders and donors.

But with this government, that trust is gone. The $2.5-billion Skills Development Fund, meant to help workers, has turned into a revolving door for lobbyists and friends of the Premier.

Now we learn that the labour minister’s own wife registered to lobby for a career college, the very same sector benefiting from this fund, and the ministry doesn’t even track what kind of jobs are being created. No oversight, no accountability—just more money for friends and donors and an erosion of trust.

Speaker, through you to the minister: How can Ontarians trust a minister who oversees a $2.5-billion slush fund that rewards insiders, that ignores outcomes and that reeks of conflict of interest? Will the minister do the right thing and resign?

Hon. David Piccini: You know that’s incorrect. I’ll tell you something for this House: I’m very proud of the working woman my wife is and how she conducts herself with integrity.

I’ll tell you who Ontarians trust. When they went to the ballot box earlier this year, they put their trust in this Premier because they know when it comes to standing up to President Trump, they can trust Premier Ford.

When it comes to actually building a stronger Ontario—the homes, the hospitals, the highways—they had decades to actually build but didn’t. They trust this Premier.

When it comes to ensuring we can actually be an energy superpower, that we’re not dependent on dirty dictators, they trust this Premier and this government, who’s got the best interests of working-class Ontarians.

You heard from PA Firin earlier. They abandoned the people of this province—good, working-class people—when they had the opportunity to govern. Those folks trust this Premier to get the job done, and, at every step of the game, he’s getting the job done for those workers of this province.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Back to the member for Toronto–St. Paul’s.

MPP Stephanie Smyth: This opposition will not stop. We will find every conflict of interest, every dollar handed out to friends because that’s our job.

Ontario deserves a government that works for them, not one that treats public funds like a campaign piggy bank.

Speaker, through you to the minister, will you finally take accountability for this misuse of taxpayer dollars and resign today?

Hon. David Piccini: As I said, this Premier, this government are laser-focused on ensuring we have pathways for meaningful careers. That’s at any stage, as I said, whether it’s the unemployed, whether it’s folks living with a disability who want to actually enter the workforce.

Under them, they measured success by the size of the cheque they cut people to stay at home.

This Premier wants to give people opportunity, give them dignity, give them a shot at a job. Whether it’s full-time, whether it’s part-time, we’ll stop at nothing.

To create those opportunities, you actually have to build. You have to build hospitals. You have to build infrastructure. You have to make sure you’re an energy superpower and actually put a reasonable plan on the table to get the job done. That’s what this Premier is doing. You have to fight crime. You have to support your men and women in uniform, again, something this Premier is doing.

The members opposite had an opportunity. They were weak on crime. They pushed jobs out of this province. They raised taxes, driving employers and investors out. This Premier, this government are turning that tide and ensuring we create new jobs—

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the member for Richmond Hill.

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Public safety

Mrs. Daisy Wai: My question is for the Associate Solicitor General for Auto Theft and Bail Reform. Every Ontarian deserves to feel safe in their home and their community. I’ve heard a lot of concerns from Richmond Hill especially. It is frustrating when we hear about violent offenders being released back into the community and the streets, sometimes the very next day.

These are not isolated cases. They are happening again and again across the country. Families are scared. Police are frustrated. Communities want change.

Ontario has been leading the charge, calling on the federal government to fix Canada’s broken system. Speaker, can the associate minister explain how Ontario is leading the call for tougher bail laws to keep repeat offenders off the streets?

Hon. Zee Hamid: I appreciate the member’s question on this important issue.

Enough is enough. Ontario is tired of lawlessness. We cannot have a system where violent and repeat offenders are arrested one day and roaming the street on bail the next day. It is critical that federal law meets the standard Canadians expect: cracking down on crime and keeping violent, repeat offenders behind bars where they belong.

The federal Bill C-14 represents a right step in the right direction as it contains good elements that will help Ontario’s courts deliver justice.

Our government will always stand up for the safety of our residents, communities, law enforcement and the victims and survivors of crime. Under the leadership of Premier Ford, we’re working every single day to protect Ontario.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the member for Richmond Hill.

Mrs. Daisy Wai: Thank you to the Associate Solicitor General for his response.

While Bill C-14 makes some progress, we know there is still much more work to do. Too many violent offenders continue to walk free, reoffending and putting our communities at risk. Our government has been clear: One tragedy is one too many.

Ontario families expect real change, not half measures. The Premier and the Associate Solicitor General have shown strong leadership by standing up for victims and supporting law enforcement. They are pushing Ottawa to bring in real change that keeps dangerous offenders off our streets.

Speaker, can the associate minister share how Ontario will continue to lead the call for stronger bail reform that puts public safety first?

Hon. Zee Hamid: Our government has been clear: We will always put the safety of Ontario families first. While Bill C-14 includes positive steps, it still doesn’t go far enough. Too many violent, repeat offenders are being released back into our communities and that is unacceptable.

Under the Premier’s leadership, we’ve been loud and clear with Ottawa: Bail reform must be stronger and protect victims, not repeat offenders and criminals. We pushed for tougher rules, like our proposed three-strikes policy and no-bail thresholds for violent crimes, because Ontario families deserve better.

We will keep standing up and protecting Ontarians until the federal government takes real action to keep dangerous criminals off our streets and restore confidence in our justice system.

Fertility services

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

Northern Ontario residents were excited to hear that fertility services were going to increase, and Ontario would triple the number of families who can benefit from fertility treatment. I’d like to ask the minister how many of the new 2,250 IVF cycles were dedicated to people in northern Ontario?

Hon. Sylvia Jones: We were also very excited to be able to expand IVF services across Ontario. We know that, historically, we have seen some gaps, particularly in northern Ontario. So as we reviewed those applications, we absolutely put a lens to see which organizations currently providing IVF could provide and expand in northern Ontario.

Of course, in the coming months, you will see an additional expansion of new IVF clinics coming online. I’m very excited about this because I know how important it is for people who want to start a family to have that additional support from their provincial government. And under the leadership of Premier Ford, we’re doing that with IVF expansion.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Back to the member for Nickel Belt.

M^me France Gélinas: The answer to my question is zero went to the north. Most of the new cycle went to brand new clinics in wealthy Toronto neighbourhoods. They went to clinics owned by private equity firms like Osmington Inc., a real estate private investment firm; or to a venture capital company like Rhino Ventures; or to US conglomerate investors; or to the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine. In many of those clinics, people are charged twice as much as in a clinic owned by Ontario physicians.

Why did the minister choose to fund US conglomerates and private equity-owned fertility clinics?

Hon. Sylvia Jones: Just to reiterate, of course we have expanded the number of opportunities in existing clinics across Ontario, and in the coming months you will see expansions in new clinics that are being provided.

But I want to absolutely assure the member opposite and everyone who represents northern Ontario that we are absolutely focused and ensuring that these expansions, as they are rolled out, include northern Ontario, because in Premier Ford’s Ontario, northern Ontario is absolutely part of our economic prosperity, and it is necessary for us to make sure that we have those services provided all across Ontario, including in northern Ontario.

Affordable housing

Ms. Lee Fairclough: Speaker, in Bill 60, the government quietly slipped in a clause allowing landlords to adjust tenancy agreements based on so-called “market conditions,” “personal needs” or “business strategies.” In practice, the bill only weakens tenants’ rights.

Meanwhile, there were 4.1 million visits to food banks in the GTA this past year, with 80% of them being renters. This is from a report by the Daily Bread Food Bank in my riding of Etobicoke–Lakeshore just last week. The number of our seniors using food banks has increased 258% since 2019, and a quarter of users are students using the food bank. People are being squeezed and choosing between housing or food.

How can the Premier claim to be tackling Ontario’s homelessness crisis when his government keeps proposing laws that just make it worse?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the Associate Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

Hon. Graydon Smith: I don’t subscribe to the Liberal ideology of “We’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas.”

Bill 60 is bringing forward real opportunities to create balance in the rental system. It’s going to create more opportunity to create more rental units for the people who need them. Without that balance, Speaker, we are nowhere. These reforms are common sense. For too long, delays and inefficiencies have come at a real cost to people.

What we want to do is make sure that that young professional has an opportunity for their first apartment, that senior who is on a fixed income has an opportunity for an apartment, that couple who needs to make a little bit more money to pay the mortgage every month and be comfortable has an opportunity to do that if they want to become a landlord.

Speaker, Bill 60 is doing all that. It is bringing balance back to a system that was in imbalance because of previous governments, and we’re getting the job done for the people, the renters, right here in Ontario.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The member for Etobicoke–Lakeshore.

Ms. Lee Fairclough: The government introduced changes with Bill 60 that give landlords more power to evict tenants, burying it in the fine print. Within 72 hours of the public uncovering the obvious flaws of this bill, the minister backed down.

Since this legislative session began, this government has repeatedly tried to rush bills into law with little debate or scrutiny and no accountability. We’ve seen this lack of accountability before: this government awarding millions in the Skills Development Fund to low-ranked applicants with close ties to the government.

Speaker, why were such devastating changes to tenants’ rights even introduced, let alone buried in the fine print?

Hon. Graydon Smith: Of course, the opposition wants to talk about the things that we’re not doing. We want to talk about the things that we are doing, which is bringing balance back to a system to create more opportunities for renters here in Ontario and to incentivize landlords to want to be part of the solution.

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We all know people in our communities that have some space that they can rent out, but they’re a little bit apprehensive to be part of this situation right now because the system is out of balance. Bill 60 brings us back into balance. It respects tenant rights, it respects landlord rights and it respects the fact that we need to create more rental capacity here in Ontario.

We’ve been doing that—17,000 new units in the last nine months. We’ll continue to do that because we’re here working every day for the renters and the landlords in this province.

Veterans

Ms. Natalie Pierre: My question is for the Minister of Citizenship and Multiculturalism. As we mark Remembrance Day and Veterans’ Week, people across Ontario are coming together to honour our heroes. In my community of Burlington, the local Legion and the Burl/Oak Naval Veterans association continue to lead this very important work. They bring together people to remember the fallen. They also help to support our veterans who are still with us, helping them find connection, dignity and purpose.

Our veterans gave everything for our freedom, and we must recognize their service, ensure they have the resources they need and create new opportunities for them to thrive. We must also make sure that their courage and sacrifice are never forgotten.

Speaker, can the minister please share how our government is supporting Ontario veterans this Remembrance Day and beyond?

Hon. Graham McGregor: Thank you to the member from Burlington for that question and her fierce advocacy on behalf of the residents that she represents.

Speaker, our veterans here in Ontario rightly deserve a government that looks out for them. Our government passed the Honouring Veterans Act last year, and since then we have made key changes, including renaming this week to Remembrance Day and Veterans’ Week in acknowledgement of the 149,000 veterans that call Ontario home.

We’ve enhanced financial support for veterans through the Soldiers’ Aid Commission. Through the leadership of the Minister of Transportation, we’ve implemented a transit relief program and we’re supporting career pathways for veterans, offering training and new careers in tech and the skilled trades.

I’m also proud to say that the launch of the Ontario Veterans Award for Community Service Excellence has received over 100 nominations, which will be presented by local Legions across the province starting this week.

With the support of the PC caucus—but I want to say with members from the Liberals, New Democrats, independents and Greens, every member was unanimous in supporting this bill to make sure that we give back to the brave men and women who fought for us.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Back to the member for Burlington.

Ms. Natalie Pierre: I’d like to thank the minister for his response.

The men and women who served our country deserve our respect, not just in words but in our actions.

Across Burlington, the Royal Canadian Legion and dedicated volunteers continue to honour our heroes and strengthen our communities. Legions like the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 60, along with the Burl/Oak Naval Veterans association, remind us every day that they are the community anchors that honour our past and support our veterans today. Our government has taken steps to recognize their sacrifice, from protecting poppy rights in the workplace to ensuring Legion halls remain tax exempt.

Speaker, can the minister please share more about how we are continuing to honour and support veterans across Ontario?

Hon. Graham McGregor: Thank you to the member for that question. Simply put, we are ensuring that veterans, both during and after service, receive the recognition that they deserve.

We know that Legion halls play a vital role in communities. It was this government that, in 2019, remained committed to ensuring they’re exempt from paying property taxes.

In 2021, members of this House and members of this government ensured and enshrined the right for every worker in Ontario that they have the right to wear a poppy in the workplace during Veterans’ Week.

Last year, we changed the Remembrance Week Act, 2016, to the Remembrance Day and Veterans’ Week Act, 2024, to honour all veterans, not just those who have made the ultimate sacrifice.

Today, we have members of our caucus, like the member for Peterborough–Kawartha, who are fighting for the proper recognition that our veterans deserve through his private member’s motion last week.

Madam Speaker, we will never stop fighting for the men and women who fought for us. We can never properly thank them for their service, but we can sure as heck try.

Labour dispute

MPP Lise Vaugeois: Speaker, we heard from several members this morning claiming that this government is protecting every single Ontario job, yet 26 people working for the WSIB in document management—WSIB is an organization under your control—have lost their unionized jobs that have now been handed over to the American company Iron Mountain.

Speaker, through you to the Premier: Why are you cutting Ontario jobs for the benefit of American corporate profits?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The Minister of Labour.

Hon. David Piccini: We aren’t, Speaker. This government is focused. When we look at the systemic measures we’re taking to stand up for jobs, we included in our procurement buy Ontario provisions. We included provisions that support Ontario workers.

When it came to ensuring that we create jobs here on this side, we created a low-tax environment that encouraged investment, that actually gets men and women to work. That’s the record of this Premier: creating the climate to attract world-class manufacturing investments that are helping get people to work.

All they did when they had the opportunity, propping up the previous Liberal governments, is they taxed, taxed, taxed. They taxed people to death. They taxed companies out of ridings like mine.

This Premier created a competitive climate. This Premier is standing up to ensure we can actually manufacture and produce things here. We’ve got a build agenda that’s putting organized labour to work, and we’re very grateful for all the work that they do. We’re going to keep fighting for workers at every step of the game.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Back to the member for Thunder Bay–Superior North.

MPP Lise Vaugeois: Speaker, apparently the minister is not capable of answering the question. I would like to set the record straight on Alstom, a party the Conservatives came to late in the game. We do have work at Alstom now, thank goodness. But prior to that, they lost hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of jobs because $9 billion were sent to build cars in Maryland and Ohio.

Now, my question: WSIB management is notorious for repressing claims at the expense of injured workers, for spending millions of dollars on training junkets in the US and now for sending Canadian work to an American corporation. How can you say you are protecting jobs when organizations under your direct control are farming out good jobs to American corporations?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Back to the Minister of Transportation.

Hon. Prabmeet Singh Sarkaria: Speaker, let’s take a look at that member’s record on voting for Ontario jobs. Just this past week, we had a piece of legislation that the members opposite voted against, that said that all government vehicles would be purchased in Ontario, Ontario-made vehicles. And guess what? That member voted against it.

Now let’s take another look at that member’s record. At Alstom, in her own city of Thunder Bay, this Premier stood up and directed the procurement to go to the only Canadian, in-Ontario option. Guess what? That member voted against that very option.

The $530-million investment we announced in Thunder Bay for repairing and refurbishing Metrolinx bi-level vehicles: Guess what? That member voted against those jobs in her own riding again.

Those are just three examples she has voted against in her own community.

Government accountability

Mr. John Fraser: My question is for the Premier. I’m glad I’m going to give him another chance.

We know there’s no reliable data in the Skills Development Fund. We know that we’re not sure what kind of jobs were created. We’re not sure—well, we are sure that hundreds of millions of dollars were shovelled out the door with absolutely no strings attached. That’s pretty bad management.

We know that lobbyists like Kory Teneycke and Amin Massoudi are allowed to set up a toll booth in front of the Skills Development Fund. We know that the minister’s riding association went from $50,000 to half a million dollars. So I would think that probably the best thing for the Premier to do to clear the air and maybe show everybody he’s a good manager is that we could have a forensic audit on the Skills Development Fund. Will the Premier commit to doing just that?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The Minister of Labour.

Hon. David Piccini: We just had an audit of the fund.

That member, Speaker, had an opportunity to fight for jobs of all types. He denigrates hospitality workers. He denigrates people trying to earn meaningful part-time employment. When it comes to full-time employment, there’s no Premier with a better record in modern history than this Premier. That member stood by idly as they taxed small business, taxed manufacturers to death, driving them out of this economy—

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The leader of the third party will come to order.

Hon. David Piccini: Speaker, he gets upset when we talk about his record—his record that crushed jobs in the manufacturing sector in all of our ridings.

This Premier is standing up for it, buying Ontario, building things that put men and women to work. We’ll take no lessons from them.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the Minister of Transportation on a point of order.

Hon. Prabmeet Singh Sarkaria: I rise on a point of order to correct the record. On Thursday, October 30, during question period, the leader of the official opposition stated that she would be visiting Stellantis workers in my home city of Brampton; however—

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): You cannot correct someone else’s record.

Deferred Votes

Northern Highway 11 and 17 Safety Act, 2025 / Loi de 2025 sur la sécurité des routes 11 et 17 du Nord

Deferred vote on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 49, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act and Public Transportation and Highway Improvement Act with respect to northern highway safety / Projet de loi 49, Loi modifiant le Code de la route et la Loi sur l’aménagement des voies publiques et des transports en commun concernant la sécurité des routes du Nord.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Call in the members. This is a five-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1141 to 1146.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Members, please take your seats.

On October 30, 2025, Mr. Bourgouin moved second reading of Bill 49, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act and Public Transportation and Highway Improvement Act with respect to northern highway safety. All those in favour, please rise and remain standing until recognized by the Clerk.

Ayes

• Armstrong, Teresa J.
• Begum, Doly
• Bell, Jessica
• Blais, Stephen
• Bourgouin, Guy
• Brady, Bobbi Ann
• Cerjanec, Rob
• Clancy, Aislinn
• Collard, Lucille
• Fairclough, Lee
• Fife, Catherine
• Fraser, John
• French, Jennifer K.

• Gates, Wayne
• Gélinas, France
• Gilmour, Alexa
• Glover, Chris
• Hazell, Andrea
• Kernaghan, Terence
• Lennox, Robin
• McCrimmon, Karen
• McKenney, Catherine
• McMahon, Mary-Margaret
• Pasma, Chandra
• Rakocevic, Tom
• Sattler, Peggy

• Schreiner, Mike
• Shamji, Adil
• Shaw, Sandy
• Smyth, Stephanie
• Stevens, Jennifer (Jennie)
• Stiles, Marit
• Tabuns, Peter
• Tsao, Jonathan
• Vanthof, John
• Vaugeois, Lise
• Watt, Tyler
• West, Jamie
• Wong-Tam, Kristyn

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): All those opposed, please rise and remain standing until recognized by the Clerk.

Nays

• Allsopp, Tyler
• Anand, Deepak
• Bailey, Robert
• Bouma, Will
• Bresee, Ric
• Calandra, Paul
• Cho, Raymond Sung Joon
• Cho, Stan
• Ciriello, Monica
• Coe, Lorne
• Cooper, Michelle
• Crawford, Stephen
• Cuzzetto, Rudy
• Darouze, George
• Denault, Billy
• Dixon, Jess
• Dowie, Andrew
• Downey, Doug
• Firin, Mohamed
• Ford, Doug
• Grewal, Hardeep Singh

• Hamid, Zee
• Hardeman, Ernie
• Holland, Kevin
• Jones, Sylvia
• Jones, Trevor
• Jordan, John
• Kanapathi, Logan
• Kerzner, Michael S.
• Khanjin, Andrea
• Kusendova-Bashta, Natalia
• Leardi, Anthony
• Lumsden, Neil
• McCarthy, Todd J.
• McGregor, Graham
• Mulroney, Caroline
• Oosterhoff, Sam
• Pang, Billy
• Parsa, Michael
• Piccini, David
• Pierre, Natalie
• Pinsonneault, Steve

• Pirie, George
• Quinn, Nolan
• Racinsky, Joseph
• Rickford, Greg
• Riddell, Brian
• Rosenberg, Bill
• Sabawy, Sheref
• Sandhu, Amarjot
• Sarkaria, Prabmeet Singh
• Sarrazin, Stéphane
• Saunderson, Brian
• Smith, Dave
• Smith, Graydon
• Smith, Laura
• Tangri, Nina
• Thanigasalam, Vijay
• Thompson, Lisa M.
• Vickers, Paul
• Wai, Daisy
• Williams, Charmaine A.

The Clerk of the Assembly (Mr. Trevor Day): The ayes are 39; the nays are 62.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I declare the motion lost.

Second reading negatived.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): There being no further business, this House stands in recess until 1 p.m.

The House recessed from 1149 to 1300.

Royal assent / Sanction royale

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I beg to inform the House that in the name of His Majesty the King, Her Honour the Lieutenant Governor has been pleased to assent to a certain bill in her office.

The Clerk-at-the-Table (Ms. Meghan Stenson): The following is the title of the bill to which Her Honour did assent:

An Act to amend various Acts / Loi modifiant diverses lois.

Introduction of Bills

730159 Ontario Ltd. Act, 2025

Mr. Saunderson moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr20, An Act to revive 730159 Ontario Ltd.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

First reading agreed to.

Honey Harbour Community Church Inc. Act, 2025

Mr. Saunderson moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr33, An Act to revive Honey Harbour Community Church Inc.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

First reading agreed to.

Petitions

Addiction services

MPP Alexa Gilmour: I rise to offer this petition done by the folks in Parkdale–High Park. I want to thank them.

About a week ago, we learned that Parkdale Queen West safe consumption site would close in 30 days. I am the member for all the residents in Parkdale–High Park, and there are residents for whom this program is vital and life-saving. We saw a 500-people increase in use when the other safe consumption sites closed.

The residents here are asking that we follow evidence-based, life-saving health care and that we reverse the funding and restore it to Parkdale’s safe consumption site—because it’s a human right—and that we expand harm reduction and safe consumption services across every community in Ontario.

I agree with this. I will affix my signature to this petition and give it to James.

Entretien hivernal des routes

M. Guy Bourgouin: Ça me fait plaisir de mentionner la pétition « Améliorer la sécurité routière dans le Nord ».

Écoute, on vient de voter sur mon projet de loi 49. La pétition réfère à ça. Le gouvernement a décidé de voter contre. Mais c’est pour, ni plus ni moins, dire que la 11 et 17, ce sont les artères principales. Ce sont nos routes qu’on utilise au jour le jour. Ils disent aussi, dans cette pétition-là, que le taux de mortalité est encore plus élevé—deux fois plus élevé par population, considérant, comparé au Nord, et que les postes d’inspection, souvent, sont très fermés—ils ne sont pas ouverts adéquatement. La surveillance des camionneurs, l’expérience des conditions hivernales, c’est un problème.

Les soussignés demandent que le gouvernement soit obligé de faire certain que les balances soient ouvertes un minimum de 12 heures. Ils disent aussi que le Code de la route—que les mesures d’application sont insuffisantes. Ils disent aussi qu’on doit engager plus de personnes pour être capable de garder ces postes d’inspection-là ouverts; que les examens de camionneurs soient ramenés au ministère des Transports, par des examinateurs certifiés par le ministère des Transports; puis aussi que l’entretien des routes hivernales soit fait par le ministère. Ramenez la gestion des contrats hivernaux.

Je supporte, c’est sûr, cette pétition, et je vais la donner à Aditya pour la ramener au poste des greffiers.

Social assistance

MPP Kristyn Wong-Tam: I’m proud to rise in this house to present this petition. It’s entitled “Petition to Raise Social Assistance Rates,” and it is directed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

“Whereas Ontario’s social assistance rates are well below Canada’s official Market Basket Measure poverty line and far from adequate to cover the rising costs of food and rent: $733 for individuals on OW and $1,368 for ODSP;

“Whereas an open letter to the Premier and two cabinet ministers, signed by over 230 organizations, recommends that social assistance rates be doubled for both” OW and ODSP;

“Whereas small increases to ODSP have still left these citizens below the poverty line, both they and those receiving the frozen OW rates are struggling to survive at” a rate “of alarming inflation;

“Whereas the government of Canada recognized in its CERB program that a ‘basic income’” now should be about $2,000 a month, and that this was the standard amount that any citizen needed to survive during the pandemic;

The undersigned are calling on this government to double social assistance rates for OW and ODSP.

I will proudly sign this petition and send it to the centre table with page Mansahaj.

International trade

Mr. Deepak Anand: Now everyone in the world knows that tariffs are not good for the economy and not good for trade. So the residents of Ontario are asking the government of Ontario to stand up against President Trump’s tariffs, which are causing uncertainty and chaos, especially in the auto sector. With over 11 billion views across the globe, they’re telling Captain Canada, “Do not roll over. Stand up and fight for the auto sector.”

That’s why these residents are saying to continue to work to get the US to lift these tariffs immediately and protect Ontario businesses and workers who are being affected by this.

I absolutely, wholeheartedly agree with this petition. I am going to give it to page Lorraine.

Thank you, Lorraine, for all you do.

Foreign-trained doctors

MPP Robin Lennox: I’m very pleased to present this petition today regarding the new changes to the rules for international medical graduates wishing to enter the CaRMS medical residency match.

We’ve heard from hundreds of internationally trained doctors, many of whom are very eager to be able to participate in the match, who want to fill our gap in terms of our health care workforce, but are unable to because they did not complete high school locally. Many of these residents are living, working and paying taxes here, and they desperately want to serve as doctors in our communities.

I’m very pleased to sign this and to urge the government to reverse this policy.

Youth mental health

Ms. Catherine Fife: I have brought forward this petition many times. It’s entitled “Social Media Use Among Young Ontarians.”

I have tabled a motion—it is currently at social policy—asking the government to work on the issue of addressing the excessive screen time and mental health concerns that are developed when our youth are on their phones and screens, and also asking the government, literally, “Let’s work on this together, because we all know that this is an ongoing issue across the province.”

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We also know social media platforms are using algorithms, surveillance capitalism, infinite scrolling and frequency of notifications, and it’s all by design. It’s our job to do something about it.

I’m just asking the government: Let’s get to work on this.

It’s a pleasure to affix my signature. Hopefully, the government wakes up to this issue.

Emergency services

M^me France Gélinas: I would like to thank Mrs. Kim Robinson from Wahnapitae in my riding for these petitions. They’re called “911 Everywhere in Ontario.”

Speaker, when we face an emergency, we know to dial 911. Access to emergency services is not available to people who don’t have 911—and that’s most of the region in my riding. Everybody knows that when there’s an emergency, you dial 911. But in my riding, if you dial 911, you get, “This number is not in service.” You try it again and you get the same thing. Then, you dial zero and say, “I have an emergency,” and the operator tells you, “Oh, no. You need to call 911.”

In my riding, if you need the police, you dial 1-888-310-3122. If you need the ambulance in Gogama, it’s 1-877-351-2345. If you need an ambulance further south, in Cartier, it’s 705-673-1117. If you need the fire services in Cartier, it’s 710-673-2542; in Gogama, 1-888-571-3473; in Foleyet, 1-800-247-6603. The list goes on. Nobody knows those numbers, but every year someone will phone, will realize we don’t have 911, and bad things happen.

Ontario is the only province in all of Canada that does not have 911 everywhere. It has to change—and this is what the good people have signed.

I fully agree. I will affix my name to it and ask my good page Orion to bring it to the Clerk.

Affordable housing

Ms. Jessica Bell: This is a petition that’s called “Bring Back Rent Control.” It is a petition that is calling on the Ontario government to stabilize rent prices by bringing in real rent control on all units, including homes that were first occupied after 2018.

The reason why this petition is so important is because there are many people in Ontario who just can’t afford their rent and they’re being evicted by their landlord—because they can jack up the rent to whatever amount they want.

I support this petition. I give this petition to page Tishe. And I’ll look forward to seeing you implement this.

Cancer treatment

M^me France Gélinas: I would like to thank Melissa Anderson from Val Therese in my riding for these petitions. They’re called “Coverage for Take Home Cancer Drugs.”

Cancer drugs administered in a hospital are free. All you need to do is show your health card. When you get admitted in the hospital, they’re free.

But more and more cancer drugs are administered at home, which is a great thing because you will recover way faster when you’re surrounded by your family and you sleep in your own bed, eat your own food etc.

Did you know, Speaker, that British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec all cover take-home cancer drugs, but Ontario does not?

The Canadian Cancer Society has called on the government to cover take-home cancer drugs, as their data supports that access to take-home cancer drugs saves lives.

The good people have signed this petition asking the government to prioritize access to cancer treatment by developing a provincial program that provides full coverage for all eligible cancer drugs taken at home. I think this is an idea whose time has come.

I will sign this petition and ask my good page Ava to bring it to the Clerk.

Social assistance

MPP Robin Lennox: I would like to add my voice to the petition to raise social assistance rates.

I’d like to thank the many members of Hamilton Centre who have signed this petition, calling on the government to double Ontario Works and Ontario disability support payments. We know that the current rates are grossly insufficient and that we see many people on social assistance living below the poverty line, struggling to find a place to live, struggling to be able to afford food.

I’m very happy to add my name to this petition and to give it to Aditya to bring down.

Health care

M^me France Gélinas: I would like to thank Lucien Bradley from Hanmer in my riding for these petitions. They’re called “Health Care: Not for Sale.”

We all know that since Tommy Douglas was there, Ontarians, Canadians, get care based on their needs, not on their ability to pay.

We also know that the Ford government is actively privatizing our health care system. The privatization takes nurses, doctors and many other professionals away from our hospitals and into the private sector.

We also know that the Ontario Health Coalition was here last week with 160 people who had been charged for services that are supposed to be covered by OHIP. They came here with bills showing that they had to pay.

They ask the government to immediately stop the privatization of our Ontario health care system and to fix our crisis in health care by having a strong recruitment and retaining plan; to make sure that we license internationally educated nurses, physicians and other practitioners; that we incentivize professionals to come and work in Ontario; and that we guarantee access to primary care to all Ontarians.

I fully support this petition. I will affix my name to it and ask my good page Orion to bring it to the Clerk.

Children’s immunization program

MPP Kristyn Wong-Tam: I’m pleased to rise to present this petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. The petition is entitled “Tackle the Measles Crisis.”

“Whereas measles infections wipe” out “the memory of infected individual’s immune systems while risking blindness, encephalitis, miscarriage, and death;

“Whereas as of early June 2025, Ontario has reported over 18,000 measles cases” and now that number has risen to 2,600;

“Whereas 94.3% of those hospitalized in Ontario were unvaccinated;”

Whereas we need to ensure that “many students ... receive the necessary vaccinations” in order for us “to address this public health emergency;”

The “undersigned petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to:

“—implement new funding for programs to increase vaccination coverage;

“—invest in public health programs that will build trust with communities that have historically low vaccination rates; and

“—remove the ability of members of provincial Parliament and other professionals who are not doctors or nurse practitioners to officiate documents intended to exclude children from the required vaccine schedule.”

I’m proud to sign this petition and send this to the table with page Ishaan.

Opposition Day

Government contracts / Marchés publics

Ms. Marit Stiles: I am pleased to move the following motion:

Whereas Ontario’s unemployment is at its highest level in a decade; and

Whereas there is an ongoing trade war with the United States that continues to escalate; and

Whereas the government of Ontario does not require the consideration of local job creation and local training opportunities when awarding public contracts; and

Whereas the government of Ontario awarded a $140-million contract for supply and installation of glass and aluminum at the Trillium Health Partners hospital project in Mississauga to a United States-owned company; and

Whereas the government of Ontario continues to allow funding and contracts to go to foreign-owned companies for major publicly funded projects, including the Ottawa Hospital-Civic Campus redevelopment, the E.C. Row Expressway and the Garden City Skyway;

Therefore, in the opinion of this House, the government of Ontario must implement Ontario-first procurement criteria that prioritizes contracts for Ontario and Canadian businesses that can offer local jobs for all public spending contracts issued by the Ontario government, ministries, agencies, municipalities, and other provincially funded institutions, as well as ban US companies from receiving public contracts until the trade war is over.

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The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): The Leader of the Opposition has moved opposition day motion number 1.

I come back to the Leader of the Opposition to start the debate.

Ms. Marit Stiles: Before I start, I just want to say a few words about the Blue Jays. What a season, hey? What a run. I’ve got to say, the last few weeks have been just electric. I felt like the Blue Jays brought us together, not just as a city or a province, but as a country, in a way that I don’t think we’ve felt in a long time. It was really fantastic.

If you look at the team, Vlad Jr. and Bo and Yesavage—what a year he has had—you can tell how well they all get along. Also, just that love and comradeship that I felt they really had—it was so cool. It was that strong, proud core. And I think they’re still growing. So, next time; next year.

I also want to give a shout-out to the fans because they are the best fans in the league. Every inning, they were there—all that heart. They carried that team.

I want to say, I know it personally stung a lot to lose the series. That was a tough final couple of games. But we are proud. We are proud because we saw what that team built together. Maybe next year, if this government can fix the mess they made by scrapping Ontario’s anti-scalping laws and back our fans-first plan—there’s still time to ban ticket resales above face value and make sure that more fans can actually afford to get to the dome.

Speaker, the Blue Jays showed us what this province is made of: heart, hope, and a lot of hard work.

Thank you, Blue Jays. Go, Jays!

Now, speaking to the motion, I want to say, first of all, that this government has shown us what they are. They are a jobs disaster. Speaker, 800,000 people are out of work right now in the province of Ontario. Youth unemployment is hitting record highs.

In London, I want to tell you, just a few days ago, I met a 22-year-old. She had just graduated from university. She said she has stopped counting how many jobs she has applied to.

But the Premier said, “Oh, no, you’re just not looking hard enough. You want a job? Look harder.”

In Ingersoll, where I was on Friday, the Unifor local there is considering opening up an emergency food bank in the union hall. Meanwhile, they point to the government being caught up in this pay-to-play scheme, which just doesn’t seem to end, with the Skills Development Fund. I’ve got to tell you, Speaker, the Premier is feeling pretty good these days about his little ads and all of that. But I want to tell you what one of the Unifor members in Ingersoll said to me. He said, “This ego clash is killing us.” That’s what he said. And I feel it, too.

Workers feel like they’re being used as pawn pieces on this board. They feel completely abandoned. I know I’m hearing that in Ingersoll, in Brampton. I’m hearing that all across this province. If I’m at Algoma Steel or up at Thunder Bay, in Ear Falls—everywhere you go, people feel left behind.

At the Stellantis plant in Brampton a couple of weeks ago, workers told me that for every single one of their jobs that are on the line, there are seven to 10 more jobs at risk—for 3,000 jobs, that could be 30,000 jobs at risk.

Meanwhile, we have the Premier just washing his hands, pulling another stunt for the cameras. It’s getting pretty old, and we are yet to feel even the full impact of these tariffs.

Sadly, these are not isolated stories. In Ontario today, proud, hard-working people are doing everything right. They’re waiting for their government to show up, though. They’re waiting for their opportunity to get ahead, but opportunity is exactly what this government keeps taking away.

This government and this Premier have yet to offer any vision to improve people’s lives. They have not respected taxpayer dollars. At a time when every single dollar needs to go to workers, while people are pinching pennies here in the province of Ontario, this government is opening up the piggy bank; they think it’s theirs.

Speaker, this Premier and this government have not delivered on their promise to protect Ontario. So, today, we’re giving the government an opportunity to do the right thing, an opportunity for Ontario to build Ontario, with a simple motion: Buy Ontario first.

Every year, we spend, in Ontario, $30 billion of public money on goods and services and construction. That’s important. That’s things like hospitals and highways and schools—projects, though, that are paid for by the Ontario taxpayer. But too often, those contracts end up going to companies outside Ontario, to US companies, in the middle of an ongoing trade war. Let me repeat that: to US companies, while we are in the middle of a trade war. That means jobs, training, paycheques are all going somewhere else.

We are saying very clearly to this government that if Ontario is paying the bill, then Ontarians should get the work. Every contract, every project, every single dollar should go to help build good jobs right here at home. So we’re calling for an Ontario-first procurement rule that’s going to put local jobs first.

I want to be very clear. The government talks a good game, but we’re doing this right now because the government’s own rules are chock full of loopholes. Municipalities are not covered. Big US companies that have offices here can still win those contracts. Old deals are exempt. Bad deals, frankly, are exempt. And companies basically just have to check a box to say they qualify, but no one really checks.

Even worse, the government could make local job creation part of every bid, but they don’t. What does that do to Ontario jobs? Well, let me tell you. It ensures that billions of public dollars are continuing to leave the province at a time when we need them more than ever.

Speaker, I just want to reflect a little bit on some of the things that have happened since the government started talking about their promise to protect Ontario. Many of my colleagues here in the official opposition have raised these stories. We know the Garden City Skyway rebuild went to foreign-owned firms. The Trillium hospital project gave a $140-million contract to a US company. The E.C. Row Expressway in Windsor is using Korean steel, while Ontario steelworkers are losing their jobs. The WSIB just handed 26 Ontario jobs to Iron Mountain, a company that is based in Boston. Two American contractors are bidding right now to build the new Ottawa Civic hospital. And the Ontario Line subway cars—that first round, they were being made, and they continue to be made, in the United States. That’s Ontario money. That’s our money, and it is building jobs somewhere else.

Meanwhile, other provinces are showing leadership. Quebec is doing it. Manitoba is doing it. So why not Ontario? When Ontario builds, Ontario wins. Workers win. Families win. Communities win. So the government really needs to put their money where their mouth is for Ontario jobs first and pass this motion.

Speaker, I want to be honest just for a few moments here about what is standing in the way of getting this done. A lot of people would say, “Well, that makes complete sense. It’s just practical. It’s common sense.” But what we see, again, is a pattern of scandals with this government and this Premier. We saw it with the greenbelt, and now we’re seeing it with the Skills Development Fund. The government is telling workers, “If you want training funds, hire a lobbyist who knows us.” Friends and donors of this government and this Minister of Labour got millions in funding, while higher-scoring applications were tossed out by this minister.

Last week, I asked the minister, “How many training spots were lost because you hand-picked low-scoring applications?” He said, “People are free to support whomever they want.” It sends a chill, doesn’t it? It sends a message. And then he said—and I’ve got to say, in a rather condescending tone—“I understand you’re upset.” Yes, I am, because, actually, just like all Ontarians out there, I don’t believe that’s how you should be running a government. No. That’s how you run a pay-to-play scheme. That’s what you do. Do you know what? Ontarians see through this too.

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I know this government loves to govern by poll, so I want to share one with you. A new poll shows the majority of people in this province agree it is time for the Premier to fire his Minister of Labour, because the minister is not even bothering to deny what he has done; he’s defending it. Every single day that that Premier keeps that minister on the job, he is telling Ontarians that this is the kind of behaviour that is acceptable in this government. Enough is enough. The Premier needs to fire his Minister of Labour.

Speaker, I want to say that this all goes back to choices. The government is going to be presented today with a choice: to choose to support our motion and put Ontario workers first or to continue to do the things the same old way that they like to do it, where insiders win and workers lose. They can build an Ontario that looks out for its own.

Buying Ontario first is about our pride in what we do and what workers build in the province of Ontario as much as it is about our procurement rules. It is about fairness. It is about rebuilding what people believe Ontario can be again: a have province, not a have-not province; a province that makes things, that builds things, that takes care of its own.

Workers are ready to believe in that Ontario again. They just need a government that believes in them.

That’s what New Democrats are fighting for—protecting jobs, creating opportunities, lowering costs.

When you strengthen working people, you strengthen Ontario.

I want to believe that every member in this chamber wants what’s best for the people they represent.

Here’s the test: If you believe in good jobs, support this motion. If you believe in fairness, support this motion. If you believe in Ontario, support this motion.

Let’s make sure that every dollar that this government spends builds the province that we all call home. Let’s buy Ontario first, and let’s strengthen Ontario.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

Mr. Stephen Blais: It’s always a pleasure to rise in the chamber and speak on issues that matter most to Ontario families: about affordability, about jobs, about stability in a time of real uncertainty.

I certainly appreciate the official opposition bringing this motion forward, albeit a week late. It’s good to know that they can eventually get their act together and get their paperwork submitted—if not on time, at least in order to debate something.

Make no mistake about it, the issues raised today are serious. Ontario’s unemployment rate is at the highest it has been in a decade. Families are struggling to make ends meet. And confidence in our economy is being tested by uncertainty here at home and, certainly, uncertainty abroad.

Across the province, people are feeling squeezed. Groceries, electricity, housing, insurance—everything costs more, and paycheques simply aren’t stretching far enough. Inflation may have slowed on paper, but the lived experience of families tells a different story. Every trip to the grocery store is a reminder that affordability isn’t theoretical; it’s very personal. Every hydro bill is a reminder of another broken Conservative promise.

What is this government doing about it? Not much beyond slogans and photo ops. “Get It Done,” “Working for Workers,” “Building Ontario”—those are great bumper stickers, but it’s not great policy, and it’s not great for Ontario workers and their families. In order to “get it done,” you actually need to know what “it” is. You can’t claim to be working for workers when unemployment is rising the way that it has been. And you certainly can’t say you’re building Ontario when families can’t afford to build a life here in Ontario anymore.

What has become clear is that this government has no economic strategy. What it has is a lot of political advertising.

Ontario’s economy is strong with potential, but it’s fragile in confidence. Rising costs, policy uncertainty and flip-flops from the government, and a lack of long-term planning are causing businesses to delay investment. At the same time, municipalities are drowning under infrastructure pressures.

This is the moment when we need clear direction—a plan to protect jobs, to foster innovation, and to build resilience.

Instead, what we’ve seen from the government is improvisation dressed up as some kind of leadership. They chase headlines, not outcomes. They spend millions on re-announcements and foreign advertising, and then they hide money while families are tightening their belts.

When the government hides money, it means classrooms don’t get the support they need. It means hospitals can’t hire the nurses that they’re short of. And it means infrastructure projects get delayed while costs go up and up. Hiding money doesn’t make life more affordable. It makes the challenges even worse. When the government refuses to invest in people, the cost of inaction shows up in every household budget across the province.

Mr. Speaker, Ontario doesn’t need more fiscal theatrics. It needs a plan to actually help people weather the storm.

Now I’d like to get to the substance of the opposition day motion today on procurement. There is a rare but valid point from Ontario’s socialist party: When public dollars are spent, they should create public value, local jobs, local training, local benefit.

We’ve heard reports, raised in the motion, that a major hospital project in Mississauga saw $140 million worth of subcontracts go to US-owned firms, while Ontario companies were left watching from the sidelines. If that’s true, that’s a problem, and it’s a big one. And it’s not just in Mississauga.

In Ottawa, the local building and construction trades council has raised very serious concerns about the Lansdowne 2.0 contract, warning that publicly funded work could once again go to companies from outside of Ontario, bypassing local workers—in this case, to companies from Quebec. That’s not how you build strong communities or a resilient economy. We already know that construction labour mobility between Ontario and Quebec has been a major concern, and now it appears it will be subsidized by public dollars. According to media reports and a tour the Premier recently made of the Lansdowne project, it appears that that project may be in line to get money from the government of Ontario. Irrespective of what you might think about the Lansdowne redevelopment project—and I have season tickets to the Redblacks; it’s an amazing facility—public investment in that project and others should benefit Ontario workers, Ontario companies. Ontario tax dollars should not be subsidizing workers in Quebec.

When public dollars leave the province, local jobs and training opportunities go with them. We’ve seen this movie before—projects funded by Ontario taxpayers where too little of the benefit stays here at home, where local workers and businesses are too often left watching from the sidelines.

We’ve seen it before with the so-called Skills Development Fund. It was supposed to help workers train for the jobs of tomorrow, but instead of supporting the highest-scoring, most effective programs, this government turned it into a political slush fund for friends and photo ops. That’s the pattern: Every policy becomes a transaction; every investment is a headline. The government approach has been transactional and not strategic. They focus on cutting ribbons and not building capacity. They focus on those bumper stickers.

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Let’s also be clear: The NDP’s proposal to ban US companies outright isn’t the answer either. It might sound good in a headline, but it’s not how the modern economy works. Ontario’s prosperity depends on trade. Tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of good Ontario jobs exist because we export goods to the United States.

We see the pattern again and again: When the system doesn’t deliver the outcomes the NDP wants, like good little socialists, they don’t try to win the game; they try to change the rules of the game. Instead of helping Ontario workers and businesses compete and succeed, they try to rewrite the rule book. Instead of finding ways to help Ontario workers compete and win, they call for bans and blockades and bureaucracy. It’s like the little kid losing game night with their parents. They would rather reset the board, instead of learning how to play the game a little bit better.

That’s the difference. Some of us believe in helping people compete and win, and others believe success is itself unfair and needs to be rewritten. We don’t have to debate who’s who in this scenario.

Interjection: You’re showing your real, true colours.

Mr. Stephen Blais: I am showing my real, true colours. And it’s why more residents of Orléans voted for me than any other member of provincial Parliament in the history of Ontario.

Ontarians don’t need a government that rewrites the rules every time it loses; they need one that’s going to help them win.

If we slam the door and shut out US firms, what do we think is going to happen next? It’s going to be retaliation, it’s going to be lost contracts, and it’s going to be fewer opportunities for Ontario workers.

We shouldn’t be retreating from global competition; we should be preparing to win it. That means supporting Ontario companies to scale up, to innovate, to compete—it’s not hiding behind trade walls that could end up hurting the very workers we’re trying to protect.

What Ontario needs is a smarter, more strategic procurement policy—one that prioritizes value for taxpayers and opportunity for workers. That means requiring apprenticeship and local training commitments on all major public projects. That would be a good policy to build projects and actually train workers and improve competitiveness. It means supporting small and medium-sized Ontario businesses so that they can bid competitively. And it means rewarding innovation and sustainability, not just awarding contracts to the lowest bidder.

Public contracts should build public benefit. They should strengthen Ontario’s workforce, our industries and our long-term competitiveness. That’s how you keep wealth circulating in our communities—not through protectionism, but through preparation, through innovation, through thinking forward.

It has to be noted that the government continues to miss the mark—billions in corporate subsidies handed out with little transparency, infrastructure announcements made without local labour strategies, and a jobs plan that seems to begin and end with photo ops. They call themselves builders, but it’s clear they’re not following any kind of blueprint.

When local companies are losing bids on projects funded by their own tax dollars and when young people can’t find a path into the skilled trades because training programs are underfunded, or only funded if they make contributions to the government, that’s not an economy working for people. That’s an economy that is drifting without direction.

Mr. Speaker, Ontario deserves better than slogans and stunts. We need leadership that believes in Ontario workers and businesses; that gives them the tools, the training, and the confidence to compete with anyone in the world. We don’t need a government, and we shouldn’t have a government, that hides behind headlines or an opposition that hides behind easy answers. We need a plan—a real, thoughtful plan—to rebuild economic confidence and make life more affordable again.

The real Ontario-first strategy isn’t about banning others; it’s about believing in ourselves and supporting Ontario workers and families.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

Ms. Jessica Bell: I’m really happy to be speaking here today about our motion to improve the government’s buy-Ontario, buy-Canada procurement policies. The reason is that the state of Ontario’s economy today is not good. We have 800,000 people who are looking for work in Ontario in 2025. We have youth unemployment at 22%.

We recently held an employment round table with the member for Davenport and the member for Waterloo, and we heard young people talk about what it’s like to get a job in Ontario today. We heard at every level—high school graduates, undergraduates, PhD candidates in engineering, in tech. They were telling us, loud and clear, it is next to impossible to get a job in Ontario today. How could this be? It’s very concerning.

And yet, at the same time, this is on top of what has been a persistent affordability crisis in Ontario, and that’s not new. That existed before Trump came into power and imposed the highest tariffs on Canadian products in history. We all know—you must be hearing it from your constituents too—that we have persistent inflation. We have the high cost of housing for mortgages and rent payments. We have stagnant wages. We have people paying too much for everything and paying too much for food.

I recently saw this report—I’m sure it was delivered to MPPs on that side as well—that shows that a million people a year are now visiting a food bank in Ontario. That’s Daily Bread—a million people. And you can imagine, the choice of going to a food bank is not an easy choice that people want to make. No one wants to stand for 45 minutes to two hours in a line, in the cold, waiting for food. That’s what it’s like in University–Rosedale right now. That’s how long you have to wait for a food bank. The lines are very long. People don’t want to do that, but they have to because they have no choice.

I would say that the government’s response to helping our economy, quite frankly, has been weak and does not inspire trust.

You focused on cheap stunts like pouring out whisky at press conferences, or setting up some secretive, pay-to-play Skills Development Fund where you don’t even know—this government doesn’t even know how many workers got jobs at the end of it. And you’re giving it to nightclub owners and wives of former Ministers of Labour. Is that nuts? Honestly, it’s nuts.

That is why I am proud to be here today to present a practical solution that ensures we get to leverage government money to help Ontario and Canadian businesses, and help Ontario workers find good, full-time employment.

That is the purpose of this motion. The reason why it is so important is because Ontario spends about $30 billion a year on goods and services and infrastructure, building hospitals, housing, schools, transit. It is shocking to me that that government money continues to go out to US companies when there are perfectly qualified and competent businesses here in Ontario that are bidding and being denied the job—that doesn’t make any sense at all—and the reason why is because this government has written a procurement restriction policy that has some massive loopholes in it. I couldn’t believe it when I read the details. Municipalities are not covered. US firms with 250 or more Canadian employees can apply for contracts, and they’re doing it—they’re applying for it, and they’re getting them. Companies with existing supply contracts are exempt from these new rules. So if a company has been providing paper to the school board, they continue to have that contract. Given the situation that we are in economically, this should not continue.

All our major allies are calling for us to have stricter and stronger procurement policies. The Ontario Federation of Agriculture, the Council of Canadian Innovators, the Canadian Labour Congress, Unifor—they are all calling for stricter procurement policies.

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This is your moment, and this is your opportunity to do the right thing for Ontario businesses and the right thing for Ontario workers. I urge you to vote for this motion.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

Mr. John Fraser: I will be brief, thankfully. I wanted to come and speak to this motion because I empathize and feel many of the same things that this party has expressed in this motion.

We have to think about Canadian jobs. We have to think about Canadian workers. We have to make sure we’re protecting them, because we know that the Premier is more busy doing something else other than doing that.

The reality is, it’s a great motion—and then you get to the end. What it fails to recognize is that we are an integrated economy. There are workers in this province who work for American-owned companies—for companies that have Canadian subsidiaries but are controlled by the American parent. We’re integrated, we’re connected; their jobs depend on it. That’s why we have something called—wait for it—trade negotiations.

The other thing that we have is trade agreements. We’re in a tough time right now, and if we somehow think that we’re going to solve it by waving a big stick at the United States—it feels good; I don’t think it’s going work.

Like I say, the motion was fine all the way through, and then the big stick came out.

The problem is, and it’s the same problem the Premier had with his ad—not to the same degree; that was a major, unforced error, where the Premier inserted himself in negotiations after the Prime Minister asked him not to. “Don’t do it”—he did it. He took the big stick and poked somebody in the eye. Yes, it felt good, but it ended negotiations and possibly started tariffs. What it did—

Interjections.

Mr. John Fraser: —and I know members on the other side are agreeing with me, is it had the effect of putting Ontarians’ jobs at risk. That’s a bad thing, especially right now, when 700,000 people are out of work and hundreds of thousands of children’s families are visiting food banks every week in this province. It was a bad thing to do—a lot of hot air, and no result.

This motion pales in comparison to that colossal—I don’t know what you want to call it, but we might have some ideas.

We can’t pretend that negotiated settlements and the trade talks and negotiations are not something that we just have to do, because people in this province work for companies that are owned by Americans—Starbucks. When you want to boycott, who are you hurting first? The workers. So the end of this motion—that’s what could reasonably happen. I don’t think it’s an unfair assessment to make. It makes it really difficult to support the motion. I support everything else that’s in there.

We have to think about ourselves first. We have to think about our province. But we also have to realize our friends and neighbours and family might be really drastically affected by what’s at the end of this motion.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

Ms. Stephanie Bowman: I’m pleased to rise today to speak on this opposition day motion. I do admire the official opposition’s spirit and the goal in which I think they drafted this. They do, it seems, want to protect Ontario workers and businesses, and I certainly applaud that, but I do think they need to also recognize that there are some serious problems with how they’ve written their motion. It could, instead of helping workers, actually hurt them, as my colleagues here in our Ontario Liberal caucus have just described. For example, we could face legal action. We could be taken in front of the World Trade Organization for acting in contravention to an agreement that we’ve made with over 20 of our closest allies, including the entire European Union.

Let’s talk about some of the content of the motion in a bit of a line-by-line here.

Certainly, Ontario’s employment is at its highest level in a decade. I’ve been using seasonally adjusted numbers, which is what StatsCan usually uses. Over 700,000 people in this province are unemployed. That is indeed a record in the last 10 years, aside from the pandemic. So we need to be concerned about those families. Those families are wondering every day how they’re going to put food on the table.

We heard about Holsag, another company in the Lindsay area, which is going to lose a plant to the US because of the uncertainty created from US tariffs.

I do find it interesting, though, that we’ve got a government that actually wanted the current administration to win, and yet now they’re ranting and raving about the impact. So I think we have to take all of their words with a grain of salt.

I think we need to just come back to those core numbers. It’s about 706,000 right now. We really need to make sure we’re paying attention to not just the numbers but the people behind those numbers.

Certainly, there is an ongoing trade war with the US that continues to escalate. That, of course, is no small thanks to this government and the Premier, who think that their ad was the right thing to do, despite the Prime Minister asking them not to air the ad. It may have been the right thing to do for them, from a polling standpoint. But we shouldn’t be governing by polling. We should be actually governing by what’s right for the people of Ontario and what they care about. And right now, they are worried about affordability. They’re worried about their jobs. They’re worried about more job losses to come and this whole “uncertainty.” That was certainly the word that resonated in my riding, in Don Valley West, talking to people over the long, extended break that we had until just a couple of weeks ago—October 20, the late start we had. People are just feeling unsettled. Even if they still have jobs, even good-paying jobs, they’re just feeling unsettled. So I don’t think that the ad campaign that the Premier and his government still seem to be standing by was the right thing to do.

So, yes, certainly, tensions are high, no small thanks to this government. But the important question also is, why do we now have an opposition day motion which could further escalate those tensions by trying to alienate the US?

I agree with Premier Ford. He said that the US is our friend and neighbour, and we want to be good friends and neighbours. So we do need to abide by the laws of the land and lead by example in that way and show that we are serious about respecting the agreements that are in place.

Speaker, with this motion, we could end up turning a diplomatic dispute into a full-blown economic confrontation even worse than we have now. We certainly don’t want that to happen. We don’t want impetuous decisions to cause further tensions with our friends and neighbours south of the border.

I certainly agree that the procurement framework is in need of an upgrade. We’ve had a government that gave unsolicited contracts to US companies. They closed down local small businesses in favour of locating ServiceOntario locations in Staples. They constructed an RFP for some telecom-related services that an Ontario company actually was providing, and they constructed the RFP so that it could only be an Amazon Web Services provider. That’s putting Ontario jobs at risk. Those are the kind of things that the government should be focused on, in terms of its procurement.

Of course, we don’t have to look any further than the scandal that is dealing us more stories every day about how this government has been not fair, not accountable, not transparent to the people of Ontario, to the taxpayers of Ontario, with the special donor fund, which they call the Skills Development Fund. More than half of that funding went to lower-scoring applications.

While the minister talks about, “Oh, well, I intervened because there were government priorities”—government priorities should have been in the criteria; if they weren’t, then that’s incompetence. Clearly, it is something: It’s interference. The Auditor General certainly called that out as a possibility, that there was preferential treatment given—the friends-and-family deal of the SDF.

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The NDP motion: The official opposition motion talks about the $140-million contract at Trillium. I agree; if we could have given that to an Ontario- or Canadian-based company, we absolutely should have. I don’t know if that came before or after. We can’t get the details from this government about that in terms of whether it came before or after their directive around trying to buy local and support Ontario. Certainly, that’s something that should be looked at.

We certainly do want future projects, whether it’s the Garden City Skyway or any other projects that this government is proposing, to use local Canadian, Ontario steel wherever possible. Certainly, I am supportive of any measures that the government can do to make sure that happens. I wish they’d been doing it a lot sooner, though. This government has had nine quarters of rising unemployment. They really do like to distract and deflect and talk all about the US tariffs which came into effect just this year. But nine quarters of rising unemployment under this government—they cannot lay it all at the feet of the US President or at the feet of US tariffs.

The other thing we have to consider is that yes, certainly, we want to transition, we want to move to Canadian steel and other products wherever we can, but that could take some time. I hope the government is having serious conversations about that with suppliers in the steel industry and other industries.

We do need to consider whether or not putting this motion into place would actually halt some infrastructure projects and, once again, put workers’ jobs in jeopardy. That’s something we need to consider, given those 700,000 people who are out of work today.

I would love to see the government seriously address the $50-billion infrastructure backlog. I’ve been talking about that for a number of months. They could put people back to work today in every riding in this province if they would address that infrastructure backlog.

Last year, at AMO, we had towns literally crying in our delegation meetings with them because they were worried about their town—the bridges in their towns and having to shut them down because they’re not in good repair and they don’t have the money to fix them. So they do need support, and we could be supporting those workers today by implementing and fast-tracking projects that would deliver jobs and infrastructure, whether it’s in roads, highways, bridges and, also, our school repair backlog.

Just in the last week or two, I had parents reaching out to me saying, “Yes, I know it’s fall, and I know winter is coming. It’s still a long way until summer and hot temperatures again, but we need to be thinking now about the air conditioning backlog, or lack thereof, in our schools.” If you’re lucky enough to be in a newer building, maybe in a suburb of a major city, or if you’re lucky to be in a school that was refurbed, you might have air conditioning, but most of the schools in my riding don’t have it. Visiting those schools this past June, I was shocked at the conditions. Kids were literally sitting there sweating—sweat dripping down their faces—and the teachers were trying to just keep a little bit of air circulating. Those aren’t good conditions for us to have our kids learning in or to have teachers and staff working in. We could be focused on fixing those kinds of things and actually creating a better environment for our kids, the education workers and teachers.

Those are the kinds of things that I think we should be talking about in the fall economic statement that’s coming out later this week.

Speaker, I am worried about this motion. I’m worried that it could send the wrong message to our allies and our trade partners. We want to show that we believe in open, fair trade, and not only when it’s convenient. We want to do the right thing.

Back to procurement: There are experts in the field—the Ontario Chamber of Commerce included—who are saying, “Instead of just focusing on the lowest price, let’s talk about other things. Let’s talk about value-based procurement.” Those are the kinds of things that would allow us to consider the life cycle of products. I think, in the last six months, we had road builders talking about that too, when they said, “We can build roads that last a long time. They might last longer, but they might not be the cheapest.” How do we reconcile that? We need to change that procurement policy that the government has in place to make sure that we’re considering those things.

That also helps us with the environment, because then we’re putting less waste and ground-up, chopped-up asphalt into dumps where, actually, we could be doing things to reuse that.

Certainly, the procurement policy could be revamped in a major way to do two things: to make it more fair, more transparent—but also a value-based procurement that would lead to a whole bunch of other positive social impacts, environmental impacts and economic impacts, because you’re looking at the whole life cycle of the project and the product.

This motion runs contrary to Canada’s commitments under the World Trade Organization, as I mentioned. Again, we really need to make sure that we’re working with our federal partners. We know that this government got Canada into trouble, not just Ontario, when they put that ad into the US market. So we need to make sure we’re working with the federal government and respecting their role and responsibility to conduct trade negotiations and, given that we’re in this unprecedented time, working with them on what Ontario could be doing. What is within the mandate of the provincial government around how it procures? What could it do to advance Ontario- and Canadian-made solutions without jeopardizing our commitments and agreements with other countries?

The motion talks about banning US companies from bidding, and my colleague from Ottawa South talked about the impact that could have on Ontario jobs. A lot of US companies invested here, and we actually wanted them here; we invited them here. We maybe even gave them loans. So the fact that they’re here now—we don’t want to lose those jobs. We don’t want them to say, “Oh, do you know what? We’re going to take our ball and go back home to the US.” We want them locating here. We want to attract investment.

I just came from the Canadian Club, where the Minister of Finance was delivering some remarks. He reiterated how he wants to build an economy where we’re attracting investment. I certainly support that. Discouraging this kind of investment via a motion that says, “Sorry, we’re not open for business to US companies” can create some real unintended consequences, I think, as it relates to US companies that are already operating here today and employing Ontario workers.

Speaker, we know that the government is talking a little bit about how it’s adjusting procurement. I would encourage them to continue to do more. Last budget, they talked about this new directive that they have, but it’s still for projects that are quite small in terms of the overall economic impact. So they do need to look at how they can do more within the legal framework that we are operating within today to attract and support investment from countries—not just the US, but from around the world. We want to make sure that countries—from the European Union, from Australia, from Japan—know that Ontario is, as the government likes to claim, open for business, and so we want to make sure that we don’t implement a motion like this which really gives us very little wiggle room.

We really want to make sure that we’re focused not on ideology but on practical solutions, real-world solutions that can be implemented here in Ontario, that can be implemented maybe even with the support of all parties.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could actually put forward a motion that could be supported by all parties as to how it relates to how we do business here in Ontario? Again, I commend the NDP for thinking about this and for making that attempt, but we need to make sure that it’s able to be defended. I don’t think this motion is able to be defended in the courts.

The other thing that the Minister of Finance was talking about today—and he has talked about it before—is, “How do we grow the economy?” Again, we know that under this government, we have not made any advances in how productive Ontario is. We know that we have, as I said, record-high unemployment. We could actually be doing more to stimulate the Ontario economy, the Canadian economy.

Speaker, in the spring, the government’s budget said that they were going to implement a fairer tax system for Ontario craft brewers—a progressive tax model that would eliminate some volume tax; stimulate demand for Ontario-made goods, including the aluminum for cans that are so popular now with consumers. Yet, from what we understand, that is not yet in place. I’m going to do some more digging on that, but I’ve heard from a few folks in the industry that it’s not yet in place. I’m not sure what the holdup is. We certainly want to make sure that local brewers are supported, that they are adding to their local economy, that they’re attracting tourists from around the province and even beyond our Ontario borders, because we know that there are some really great local craft breweries in virtually every corner of this province.

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We really need to broaden the debate here. Trade, procurement policy are complex, and I’m not sure they can be solved with a one-page motion.

So while the NDP has made that attempt here to put a motion forward on an important topic—I certainly agree that it’s an important topic—the motion actually creates some confusion about which companies would be eligible. It could drive up costs. It could hurt workers, as I say. So we want to make sure that we could be looking at other things that actually support our small businesses.

The government could have supported a small business tax cut. The NDP could have supported the small business tax cut. We had a motion about that.

And we want to make sure that the middle-income tax cut that this government promised in 2018—that could be delivered.

Supporting things like tax cuts for small businesses, tax cuts for middle-income families—those are things that would really help workers today.

So I would like to ask the government, the NDP to think about those kinds of actions and think about how we can actually do more to advance Ontario’s economy.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

Ms. Catherine Fife: It’s interesting listening to this debate today.

When you’re in a war, you choose a side. We choose Ontario, and that’s why this motion is here. And do you know what? We’re not alone in this.

The Ontario Chamber of Commerce has said those $30 billion of procuring goods and services—it needs to be modernized. This is exactly what they said. The main shortcomings of Ontario’s procurement process are:

—a narrow focus on price versus long-term value;

—a lack of collaboration between the procurer and industry;

—excessive risk being placed on vendors, especially in a tariff war;

—insufficient information-sharing; and

—administrative barriers that discourage small and diverse-owned businesses from the bid process.

They have this in a report. I’ll send it over to the minister. It’s called Modernizing Public Sector Procurement in Ontario. It is long overdue.

Some of their key recommendations actually are embedded in the philosophy of this motion that the official opposition is bringing forward to the government in an aggressive tariff war. This is sort of like a “help us help you” kind of moment. We’re all supposed to be in this together, with our elbows up and all of the rhetoric and partisanship placed aside.

This is something that would actually help people in the province of Ontario—prioritizing suppliers that generate the best economic value of Ontario, broadly defined, and consider context when deciding where to give preference to Ontario-made suppliers.

This is also not the first time that we’ve brought this forward. In 2021, I brought forward a private member’s bill called the Supply Chain Management Amendment Act. It was endorsed by the chamber of commerce. They were desperate for this government to acknowledge the value of the people and the goods and services and the resources that we have right here in this beautiful province. It was interesting; at the time, the government members, of course, voted it down, as they will do. The member from Mississauga–Malton, at one point, said we don’t have enough diverse suppliers in Ontario. Well, do you know why we don’t have diverse suppliers in Ontario? Because we don’t have a procurement supply chain program that will work. It goes hand in hand.

This moment where we are right now—the government has got all the rhetoric down: “It is unprecedented. We’re in a war. Let’s fight.” That’s right. Let’s fight together with the sector.

Our leader has asked us to be part of the tariff advisory council, and so we’re meeting with vendors all over this great province.

The forestry sector, right now, is on the ropes. I’ve been working very closely with the member from Mushkegowuk–James Bay and the northern members who have said, “The forestry sector wants to be part of the solution.” Do you have problems? Yes, you have lots of problems.

This is what the Economic Developers Council of Ontario said: Ontario has enough available unused forest fibre to support the construction of a significant number of homes and has the potential to unlock 6.7 million cubic metres of wood annually for residential building. This untapped resource is a key way for Ontario to accelerate its goal of building 1.5 million new homes.

Do you know what? Our home building starts are at 1955 levels. Every single place in this great province needs housing. The forestry sector has said they don’t want a handout; they want a contract.

One other example is the life sciences sector. They were here last week.

These are key innovation sectors that also have great health care benefits for the people we’re elected to serve.

I’m thinking of Intellijoint, who creates new hips and knees, which we’re all going to need at some point, if we’re lucky. This is a made-in-Ontario innovation. Made-in-Ontario medical supplies can’t get into our own hospitals? Why? Why do you have to be so stubborn?

Let’s do the right thing for the people of Ontario. This motion is a goodwill motion. It’s a reach across the aisle. Let’s get some stuff done for the people of Ontario. That’s what they expect from us. Let’s get to work. Pass the motion, ignore what they had to say, and let’s get it done.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

Ms. Peggy Sattler: I’m very proud to rise today to speak in support of this motion, which really addresses the challenging times that we are living in right now in this province of Ontario.

We have 800,000 people unemployed. One quarter, almost, of those people are youth.

We have businesses folding. We have businesses that are uncertain about how they are going to manage the impact of tariffs, and that is having a very chilling impact on our economy.

This motion before us today not only allows those businesses that are worried about the future to benefit from the $30 billion that Ontario spends each year on public procurement; it also allows them to benefit from the $22 billion that municipalities spend every year and the hundreds of millions of dollars that hospitals and schools and correctional facilities spend in this province every year.

Most of all, this motion will help maintain and create jobs that are desperately needed right now in the province.

This government talks a good game but doesn’t deliver. We know that in their procurement restriction policy, there are huge loopholes that allow many US companies to continue to do business with the province.

I also want to talk about the loopholes that are in this government’s food procurement policies, because food procurement is a major component of overall procurement. We saw this government talk about buy-Ontario, Buy Local, and they were going to do this by designating a single day in June as buy Ontario food day—nothing about policy changes that are so desperately needed and that would have such a profound beneficial impact on the economy.

Speaker, there is a famous Ontario dietitian, Lynn Ogryzlo, who says that if every household in the province spent $10 weekly on local food, it would have an injection of $2.4 billion into the economy by the end of one year. As that money circulates, it grows to $3.6 billion and creates 10,000 new jobs. Those numbers were generated in 2012 with input from economists and others. Those are real numbers. That is the kind of opportunity that this government could leverage if they took some strong action on tightening up local procurement policies.

I want to just end with a shout-out to the Middlesex London Food Policy Council that is doing amazing work to try to get local food products into our local institutions. They need this government to provide that direction, to mandate that organizations buy local. This government has an opportunity to do that today by passing this motion.

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The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

M. Guy Bourgouin: Comme mes collègues l’ont dit, l’Ontario est en crise. Plus de 800 000 gens ne travaillent plus, le plus haut taux depuis les derniers 10 ans—un vrai désastre pour les travailleurs. Une guerre commerciale avec les États-Unis met nos emplois en danger. Le gouvernement permet que les contrats publics financent des entreprises étrangères au lieu de soutenir nos scieries et nos travailleurs.

Mais dans le nord de l’Ontario, nous faisons face à des défis supplémentaires en matière de rétention et de recrutement. Les villes mono-industrielles dépendent fortement de l’industrie forestière pour faire vivre leur communauté.

Nous devons investir cet argent ici, chez nous, dans nos travailleurs, nos usines et nos chaînes d’approvisionnement nationales. L’approvisionnement public doit renforcer notre chaîne forestière complète : du bois ontarien, transformé en Ontario par des travailleurs ontariens.

Nos critères pour l’industrie forestière sont :

—de créer des emplois locaux;

—la transformation domestique de la fibre;

—le développement de produits forestiers et de produits innovants;

—l’approvisionnement stable pour maintenir les scieries ouvertes;

—la formation et apprentissage pour nos régions;

—des contrats à long terme pour l’achat d’électricité de la cogénération.

On protège nos emplois à chaque étape de la chaîne. C’est bon pour l’économie. C’est bon pour l’environnement. C’est essentiel pour nos communautés.

Je veux remercier ma cheffe de combattre le désastre du gouvernement Ford pour les travailleurs, et je demande à tout le monde de supporter cette motion.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

Mrs. Jennifer (Jennie) Stevens: I rise today in support of this Ontario-first motion because it speaks to what fairness and accountability should look like in Ontario’s public spending.

In Niagara, we are watching this government charge ahead with the Garden City Skyway twinning project, a massive build that few people in our community asked for and one that the government has yet to tell us the full cost of. We’ve been told it’s a priority, but what we see is the government spending unknown billions of dollars on a bridge that doesn’t solve the real issues people are facing every day: accountability, affordability, hospital wait times and jobs that can support families.

If this government insists on moving forward with the Skyway twinning, the very least it can do is to make sure Ontario steel and Ontario workers are the ones building it. Instead, we’re seeing contracts go to foreign-owned companies while skilled tradespeople right here in Niagara are struggling to find steady work.

Ontario’s unemployment rate is at the highest it’s been in decades, yet public contracts keep flowing out of the province. Our tax dollars should be creating good-paying union jobs right here at home, not sending profits overseas.

I’ve called on this government to close the loopholes that allow offshore bidders to win majority infrastructure contracts and to consider working with communities to develop community benefit agreements, ones that prioritize local labour, environment benefits and small businesses.

The Ontario NDP Ontario-first plan is common sense. When we invest public money, we should use it to build up and give back to Ontario communities.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

MPP Wayne Gates: I’m really pleased to stand today to talk about “Buy Ontario, Buy Local.”

I have no idea where the Liberals are coming from this afternoon. You know what? If—what is it?—$30 billion of tax dollars can go to protect workers in Ontario, workers in my community of Niagara, why the hell wouldn’t we do that? It makes sense. I have no idea why they’re standing up on this bill and saying they’re going to vote against it.

We’ve given contracts in Mississauga for a hospital—$140 million outside Ontario.

In my area—take a look at it—and I guess I’ll say it about Ontario: 800,000 people don’t have a job today in Ontario; 22% of our kids and our grandkids don’t have jobs today in Ontario. We have a way that we can put them to work, and that’s to use our tax dollars supporting local workers, local companies. That makes sense.

I want to talk about Niagara real quick. My colleague talked about the Garden City Skyway, which is in both our ridings. The Premier had the opportunity last week—30 seconds? Holy God.

The Premier had an opportunity last week to say that he would use local steelworkers, local steel. He didn’t do it. In my area in Niagara, we have layoffs at General Motors, Hendriks, Iafrate, Valbruna. And we have, right now, layoffs at GM, Stellantis, Crown Royal. And we have a chance to put workers to work.

Support this motion, including the Liberals and the PCs. Let’s work together and make Ontario the best place to work, live and play in our own communities.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

Mr. Terence Kernaghan: It’s an honour for me to rise today to support the leader of the official opposition’s motion to ensure that government spends taxpayer money on good local jobs and services.

I want to provide a particular example. This House will remember that I brought up that the federal government, through their crown corporation Canada Post, spent a billion dollars on electrifying their fleet—to the tune of about a billion dollars. On the surface that shouldn’t be a problem. But the problem was one of procurement: Canada’s crown corporation purchased from the United States. If the US was the only option for the product, perhaps that would make sense. Unfortunately, those same vehicles were being made by Local 88 at GM in Ingersoll, at the CAMI plant. Canada Post could have purchased from CAMI in Ingersoll, but there’s clearly little or no oversight here, no effort to support good local jobs.

As we all know, CAMI has recently lost the BrightDrop system. They’re looking at what the future might hold. And the reason for that is because of low sales. Had the government purchased from them, these workers would still be working. They would be bringing home a good paycheque, spending money in their communities at other businesses. Those businesses would be strengthened, and they would be strengthening yet further businesses. That money would continue circulating around their economy with the multiplier effect.

But despite oversight from Parliament, the Governor in Council and the Minister of Finance, Canada Post and the federal government sold out these workers.

In the province of Ontario, the Conservative government is a jobs disaster. When I asked the government about CAMI in Ingersoll, the Premier didn’t even say the words “CAMI,” “GM” or even “Ingersoll.” When I asked how many BrightDrop vehicles the Ontario government purchased from CAMI, they couldn’t answer the question. It’s pretty clear, Speaker: The answer is a big zero.

I hear it time and time again wherever I go: The Premier of Ontario is a jobs disaster. We need a buy-Ontario-first strategy. Taxpayers have every right to demand that their government—with their money—spends it on good, local companies, not in the US. They want their money spent here to benefit our workers, our families and our economy.

I urge this government: Break the Conservative-Liberal consortium, vote with us and make sure you support Ontario workers with your actions as well as with your words.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

M^me France Gélinas: Aujourd’hui, on parle d’acheter en Ontario d’abord. C’est quelque chose qui est tellement naturel dans l’environnement ou on se trouve en ce moment. Le taux de chômage en Ontario est à son plus haut niveau depuis 10 ans. La guerre commerciale en cours avec les États-Unis ne cesse de s’amplifier.

Mais le gouvernement de l’Ontario n’exige pas la prise en compte de la création d’emplois et des possibilités de formation locale lors de l’attribution de contrats publics. C’est tellement simple à faire. Par exemple, le gouvernement de l’Ontario a octroyé un contrat de 140 millions de dollars, dans le cadre du projet de l’hôpital Trillium Health Partners à Mississauga, à une entreprise américaine, quand on aurait très bien pu le faire ici en Ontario.

Le gouvernement de M. Ford continue d’accorder des fonds et des contrats à des entreprises étrangères pour d’importants projets financés à même par les fonds publics, notamment le réaménagement du campus civique de l’Hôpital d’Ottawa.

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Donc, pour aider les Ontariens et Ontariennes, le gouvernement de l’Ontario peut mettre en place des critères d’approvisionnement. C’est tout ce que l’on demande : acheter en Ontario d’abord, ce qui privilégie les contrats pour les entreprises ontariennes et canadiennes capables de créer des emplois locaux pour tous les contrats de dépenses publiques émis par le gouvernement de l’Ontario. Cela inclut les ministères, les organismes, les municipalités, les autres institutions financées par la province, et ainsi, on augmente nos possibilités d’avoir un avenir prometteur pour tous les Ontariens et Ontariennes.

Le gouvernement, à date—c’est un désastre quand on regarde vis-à-vis les emplois. On met de l’avant une motion qui leur permet de changer tout ça. La motion? On leur demande de mettre des choses en place qui existent dans bien d’autres provinces qui permettent de capitaliser sur ce qu’on est capable de faire ici en Ontario.

J’encourage les membres de toutes les parties de voter pour cette motion.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

MPP Jamie West: Very briefly, Speaker: This motion about buy Ontario basically is what moms and dads and grandparents are doing right now in grocery stores when they choose to not pick an American product and they pick a Canadian product. That’s what we’re calling on the Conservative government to do.

It’s an easy thing to understand, it’s an easy thing to support. I hope you support this motion.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

Hon. Stephen Crawford: It’s great to be able to be here in the House this afternoon to talk about this motion. Buy Ontario and buy Canada is something dear to our heart, and it’s important that we discuss it.

But, Speaker, I will add that the NDP’s sudden conversion to buy Ontario is like a fair-weather fan cheering only when the team is winning. Our government has been leading the charge since day one. So let’s call this motion what it really is: non-binding, non-serious and, frankly, nonsensical.

The NDP want to talk about prioritizing Ontario business, but while they talk, the Ontario government is taking action. We’re delivering through the Building Ontario Businesses Initiative Act, Supply Ontario and our procurement restriction act. They’re guaranteeing at least $3 billion in government spending flows directly to Ontario small businesses every year. That’s not a promise, Speaker; that’s a fact. We’re not interested in symbolic gestures. We’re building a more competitive economy with real tools that give Ontario businesses the edge they deserve.

Let’s check the record: The NDP voted against every single measure we’ve introduced to protect Ontario jobs and promote Ontario-made products. They voted against Buy Ontario, Buy Canadian Day and, in fact, not a single Ontario NDP member celebrated this past June. Could you imagine that, Speaker, not celebrating Buy Ontario, Buy Canadian Day in the midst of a trade war? Meanwhile, our caucus spent the entire month touring the province promoting Ontario and Canadian businesses to the people of Ontario.

They voted against BOBIA, the Building Ontario Businesses Initiative Act, which enacts local preference for procurement and strengthens supply chains, and just this week—this is perhaps the most shocking—they voted against the Building a More Competitive Economy Act, which puts a preference on Ontario-made vehicles in the public sector, the broader public sector and even municipalities.

So why is the opposition voting against every piece of legislation we’re putting out supporting Ontario businesses? After years of voting no, the NDP wants to lecture us about supporting Ontario business? That’s not leadership; that’s a masterclass in hypocrisy.

Let’s be clear: Our government’s procurement-restriction policy and BOBIA give Ontario businesses a real advantage. Public sector contracts now prioritize local companies, giving an estimated $30 billion in procurement per year through the province.

When US products left the shelves of the LCBO as a result of Premier’s Ford’s direction, Ontarians stepped up. Ontario wine sales surged over 60%, with VQA wines surging over 67%. That’s proof that Ontarians are reacting to our changes and want to buy local to support our economy.

And, Speaker, Supply Ontario is modernizing procurement, consolidating spending and making it easier than ever for Ontario businesses to win contracts and create good-paying jobs.

BOBIA’s local preference means Ontario businesses, big and small, get the first shot at government contracts, strengthening our supply chains and building economic resilience. I encourage the members of the opposition to take a look at how that actually works. You’ll see how it benefits Ontario businesses.

Let’s not forget: For 17 years, the Liberals, propped up by the NDP, never put Ontario first. When tariffs hit, Ontarians rejected those parties because they couldn’t be trusted to protect Ontario jobs and industries after so many had left in the 17 years under their watch.

Our government is delivering for Ontarians. We’re not just talking about it.

Speaker, the NDP’s motion is just more talk. Our government is delivering real results, standing up for Ontario.

We will be bringing in more buy-Ontario legislation soon. Let’s wait and see how the opposition will vote again. I suspect they’ll probably vote no again against Ontario businesses, against Ontario workers and against Ontario’s future. My bet: They will vote against this legislation. As per usual, we’ll continue to hear all talk and no action from the opposition NDP.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

Ms. Marit Stiles: First of all, I’d like to start by thanking the shadow minister for economic development and trade, the MPP for Waterloo, and the others in our caucus who’ve been participating in the leader’s advisory council on tariff response and economic security, and all of the organizations who have come to meet with the council to propose some solutions to the significant situation we are in as a province. I really appreciate it, and I want to thank all of the opposition caucus for the work they’ve done on this in this regard.

Certainly, this motion is just the first of many that are coming, that are going to be setting forward a path for the government to protect jobs in the province of Ontario. Because let’s be clear, this government is an absolute jobs disaster, Speaker. We see it over and over again: Everywhere you go around this province, people are really worried. I think it would have been the simplest thing—and we’re getting a signal here from the government that they’re not going to be supporting this motion.

I was very shocked and surprised to hear the third party indicate they’re not going to be supporting it either. Because I can’t think of anything more simple and straightforward than addressing procurement and developing an Ontario-first procurement policy and closing the loopholes that are allowing billions of dollars to bleed from our province at a time when we should be investing in jobs here and workers here in the great province of Ontario.

Monsieur le Président, le gouvernement doit protéger les bons emplois ici en Ontario et dépenser l’argent des Ontariens et Ontariennes de manière responsable.

We have a responsibility to the people of Ontario. There is no more direct way than the money that we actually spend as a government on services, on products. So Speaker, I have to say I was quite surprised.

I did want to share—the member for Sudbury used a really great analogy here. Every day when I go to the grocery store in my neighbourhoods and I see people spending their money on Ontario products instead of American ones, we should do the same—

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): MPP Stiles has moved opposition day motion number 1. Is it the pleasure of the House that this motion carry? I heard a no.

All those in favour of the motion, please say “aye.”

All those opposed to the motion will please say “nay.”

In my opinion, the nays have it.

Call in the members. There will be a 10-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1440 to 1450.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Would members please take their seats?

MPP Stiles has moved opposition day motion number 1. All those in favour of the motion will please rise one at a time and be recognized by the Clerk.

Ayes

• Begum, Doly
• Bell, Jessica
• Bourgouin, Guy
• Clancy, Aislinn
• Fife, Catherine
• French, Jennifer K.
• Gates, Wayne
• Gélinas, France
• Gilmour, Alexa

• Glover, Chris
• Kernaghan, Terence
• Lennox, Robin
• McKenney, Catherine
• Pasma, Chandra
• Rakocevic, Tom
• Sattler, Peggy
• Schreiner, Mike
• Shaw, Sandy

• Stevens, Jennifer (Jennie)
• Stiles, Marit
• Tabuns, Peter
• Vanthof, John
• Vaugeois, Lise
• West, Jamie
• Wong-Tam, Kristyn

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): All those opposed to the motion will please rise one at a time and be recognized by the Clerk.

Nays

• Allsopp, Tyler
• Anand, Deepak
• Bailey, Robert
• Bethlenfalvy, Peter
• Bouma, Will
• Calandra, Paul
• Cho, Raymond Sung Joon
• Ciriello, Monica
• Coe, Lorne
• Cooper, Michelle
• Crawford, Stephen
• Darouze, George
• Denault, Billy
• Dixon, Jess
• Dowie, Andrew
• Downey, Doug
• Firin, Mohamed
• Flack, Rob
• Grewal, Hardeep Singh
• Hamid, Zee

• Hardeman, Ernie
• Harris, Mike
• Holland, Kevin
• Jones, Trevor
• Jordan, John
• Kanapathi, Logan
• Kerzner, Michael S.
• Kusendova-Bashta, Natalia
• Leardi, Anthony
• Lumsden, Neil
• McCarthy, Todd J.
• McGregor, Graham
• Mulroney, Caroline
• Oosterhoff, Sam
• Pang, Billy
• Parsa, Michael
• Piccini, David
• Pierre, Natalie
• Pinsonneault, Steve
• Pirie, George

• Quinn, Nolan
• Racinsky, Joseph
• Rickford, Greg
• Riddell, Brian
• Rosenberg, Bill
• Sabawy, Sheref
• Sandhu, Amarjot
• Sarkaria, Prabmeet Singh
• Sarrazin, Stéphane
• Saunderson, Brian
• Scott, Laurie
• Smith, Dave
• Smith, David
• Smith, Graydon
• Smith, Laura
• Tangri, Nina
• Thompson, Lisa M.
• Vickers, Paul
• Wai, Daisy
• Williams, Charmaine A.

The Clerk of the Assembly (Mr. Trevor Day): The ayes are 25; the nays are 60.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I declare the motion lost.

Motion negatived.

Request to the Integrity Commissioner

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Before I continue to orders of the day, I beg to inform the House that today I have laid upon the table a request by the member for Toronto–St. Paul’s to Cathryn Motherwell, Integrity Commissioner, for an opinion pursuant to section 30 of the Members’ Integrity Act, 1994, on whether the member for Northumberland–Peterborough South, David Piccini, has contravened the act or Ontario parliamentary convention.

I will give the members a moment to leave before I call orders of the day if they choose to.

Orders of the Day

Protect Ontario by Securing Affordable Energy for Generations Act, 2025 / Loi de 2025 pour protéger l’Ontario en garantissant l’accès à l’énergie abordable pour les générations futures

Resuming the debate adjourned on October 30, 2025, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 40, An Act to amend various statutes with respect to energy, the electrical sector and public utilities / Projet de loi 40, Loi modifiant diverses lois en ce qui concerne l’énergie, le secteur de l’électricité et les services publics.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

MPP Jamie West: We’re here to debate Bill 40. This is our first day back in November, where we’re wearing our poppies, and I just wanted to share the flag raisings that happened in Sudbury. Branch 76, that’s my branch of the Royal Canadian Legion, they had their flag raising that morning. The wind was bitter cold, but on the bright side, the flags were flowing really well.

In Sudbury, I’ve mentioned in the past, just beside MIC—the restaurant is called Made in Canada—there’s a giant flagpole that’s put up by Lopes. Felix Lopes is very involved with this. We believe it is the largest poppy flag in the world; it’s certainly the largest in North America. That was raised at 5:30 as well.

Just one more thing I’d like to mention out of my branch, the Dr. Fred Starr Branch 76: Comrade Art McGinn passed away peacefully at 100 years of age at Health Sciences North on Saturday, October 11, 2025, one month before Remembrance Day. Art was an Air Force veteran of World War II. He was a member of the R.L. Beattie Branch 224 in Copper Cliff and their Dr. Fred Starr Branch 76 in Sudbury—like I said, that’s my branch—which will be celebrating their 100th anniversary next year.

In 2018, he received a Diamond Jubilee Medal for 70 years of service.

I just want to extend our sincere condolences to the extended McGinn family and his comrades and friends, on behalf of all of our parties, I’m sure.

Moving on to the securing affordable energy for generations act, Bill 40: I’m very proud to rise to add the voices of the people of Sudbury on this bill. This is a legislation about energy, but really, it’s about affordability. Energy really is what unlocks that key to making ends meet, being able to move forward.

During the opposition day bill, for example, I was seated beside the Leader of the Opposition, Marit Stiles. The Liberal members were talking about how expensive energy is, and they were talking as well about hospital overcrowding, and they were talking about similar issues like that, that the member and I were talking about were how we actually got elected, because of hospital overcrowding and the high cost of energy, Liberal failures. School repairs was the third one.

But with Hydro One, if you think back, pre-2018, the Liberal Party had sold off and privatized part of Hydro One. Rates immediately began to spike, and the people of Ontario said, “Please do not do this. Do not sell off any more.” They sold off some more and the rates began to spike as well, even higher, and it pretty much was the cornerstone that led to their downfall. In fact, the Minister of Energy was in my riding, and I replaced him in that election. That’s because the cost of energy affects not just households but businesses as well, but you really see it in your bills.

So when we talk about legislation about energy, you’ve got to look through that lens of energy as a public good. Is it a foundational resource? How do we power our homes, how do we power industry, how do we make it affordable? But far too often governments have politicized this, and unfortunately, Conservative and Liberal governments have privatized it. If we move down the path of more and more privatization—well, in a private company you have to make profits. If energy is publicly owned, the profit margin is pretty minimal. You just want to make sure it’s maintained and doing well and that money is able to be funnelled back into the energy product, and it ensures that prices stay low for industry, especially large industries like the ones in my riding when it comes to mining.

When Marit, the leader of the official opposition, came underground with me in South Mine, I had said to her, “Stop for a second and inhale. You think that’s oxygen, but you’re breathing electricity.” There is no air underground without a fan pushing it underground. There is no water removed from underground mining without electricity powering those pumps to move it back up to the top.

Speaker, just a reminder: I’ll be splitting my time with the member for Scarborough Southwest.

So when you’re privatizing energy, you’re driving those costs up. One of the things that—I’m new to the file for energy. I had mining originally, and when the ministry became energy and mining, I started learning more about energy. One of the first places I went to was visiting nuclear power plants—I’ve gone in the past but going again, learning about procurement and other forms of it.

One of the places that I had visited—well, actually, I went to the gate. We weren’t allowed to go in yet; they were just breaking ground on it. OPG is working on these SMRs, and the SMRs are by GE Hitachi. It’s interesting, groundbreaking, the first of its kind in Canada. We’re leading that charge.

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But the cost is pretty high, and there’s a balancing act between balancing the cost of that procurement—because GE Hitachi is an American company with a lot of American supplies, including the enriched uranium that would come from the States. Candu, for example, is almost 100% a Canadian supply chain, and the energy comes from Saskatchewan in Canada. Normally, outside of Donald Trump times, maybe this would be a good idea. I feel a little hesitant at this time to recommend it.

I understand and I appreciate the need to look at SMR energy, but at what cost? What happens when Donald Trump decides, “Well, that’s ours, and we’re not going to supply the energy anymore”? As he’s more recently declared, they’re going to start building their own GE Hitachi SMRs, so does Ontario get blocked out of the way even though we pay the freight for the development and learning curve on this?

The learning curve has been steep right now, because GE Hitachi promised us originally that these reactors were going to cost about $700 million American for each reactor, ballparked at about $1 billion per reactor, so $4 billion for four reactors. But instead of $4 billion for four, we’re looking at paying about $20 billion, almost $21 billion. That’s a huge cost overrun.

Let’s say you were buying a house and they told you that your house is going to cost you a million dollars—a beautiful house. Then, halfway through the build, they said, “Did we say $1 million? What we meant was $5 million.” That makes you a little nervous about your cost overrun. That cost is borne somewhere, either by taxpayers or ratepayers, so we need to think critically about this. How much are we paying for things? What’s going to pass along when you have a project from GE Hitachi costing five times more? Maybe we start looking back at Candu—on time, under budget. They have a good record, right? So let’s follow in that.

I’m going to run out of time, so let’s—

Interjection: You have lots of time.

MPP Jamie West: Oh, I’ve got more time? Apparently, I have more time, Speaker.

I talked about Candu being 94% of the Canadian supply chain. I think that’s really important, especially right now. We’re talking about buying locally. Our opposition motion was about buying locally, which is really important.

Part of that R&D part of it is going to be the learning curve, and the idea, basically, for GE Hitachi is, “We’re going to be first in line. We’re going to understand how to build it. When we’re bidding on contracts, we’ll be a step ahead of them.” But we’re going to make sure we have language that says that, because if it’s just a “trust us,” they’ll have an advantage. When you have Donald Trump saying, “No, we’re going to go with the American counterpart doing it,” we’ve blown a lot of money and all we have is a pinky-swear promise, potentially. So I want to make sure that that works out.

I think one of the things that’s important, too, when we’re talking about this is that there’s no costing in the energy plan. If you have an energy plan going to 2050 but it doesn’t really talk about the cost and people are paying for energy, they really start to feel the effects of that. They start thinking, “Well, how much is this going to cost me at the end of the day?”, because people are struggling with their bills already.

I have some notes over here I want to talk about. Let me just grab this here. I mentioned earlier on, when I was talking with the Liberals, when their government had fallen. A whole bunch of us were new. Lots of my colleagues here were new in 2018. There was a whole change in the government.

One of the promises that the Conservative government had was to bring your electricity prices down, and they have done that through a subsidy program, but they haven’t really brought them down. In fact, energy rates have continued to go up, and they’ve gone up just recently. It will go up today, I guess—November 1, sorry. They went up on Friday.

It’s nice that people aren’t paying for them, but sooner or later, we’re not going to be able to subsidize this to the proper rate. We’re subsidizing right now to the tune of $6.5 billion. If you look at your bill, about a quarter of your bill is actually hidden by tax subsidies to pay off the energy bill that you’re not covering right now. Sooner or later, that begins to eat your ability to do other stuff. Think of what you could do with $6.5 billion.

I go back to the Liberals selling off Hydro One and energy going through the roof. Nothing was done about that. They just sort of put the finger in the dam and helped ease the pressure on it. When electricity rates go up 30%, I think subsidies are going to climb a little bit to help offset that. I don’t know if they’re going to cover the whole 30%, so your bill is probably going to go up a little bit even though the Premier promised it would not go up, that it would in fact go down. But it continues to go up, and we’ve had seven years of increases that the government is doing their best to hide. I say that in a complimentary way because people are so strapped for cash, no one could afford to make these bills affordable. Without that, they just wouldn’t be able to make ends meet.

But we need a plan. We need a costed plan to get us out of this downward spiral that we’re in today. Otherwise, what happens as the rates go up by 30%? You’re already covering $6.5 billion, right? You’re going to continue to climb without a cost, without a plan. You look over the next 25 years and the description is a plan, but there’s no costing to it. So to me, it’s more of a discussion paper than a plan. People want to know what things are going to cost, especially businesses. If we’re trying to get people to attract here—especially as the Americans are threatening businesses that, “You must leave and do business in the States.” And we don’t have a costed plan to be able to tell them what things are going to cost years from now.

I watched the Jays games. I was one of those guys who stayed up past 2 a.m. to watch the game last Monday. It seems like every 30 seconds there was a commercial for the Ring of Fire. I want to say, too, probably the cleanest miners I’ve ever met. You can tell because they’re working in a mine that’s made out of plastic bags on the side. But in spite of it, I think it’s important we attract people to mining, and it’s probably easier to attract people when you’re spotlessly clean. But the reality is, it’s going to take a while to open the Ring of Fire. I think the government’s own estimate said the road to the first mine would take about six years even if there weren’t protests involved. And it’s going to take a couple of years to open up that mine.

So, if those people cannot plan for the price of electricity, let’s say, best case scenario, 10 years from now—probably a little bit more than that, but let’s say we could pull it off in 10 years; we’ve got smart engineers. If they don’t know what energy is going to be today and we can’t give them a costed plan for three years from now, five years from now, seven years from now or 10 years from now, how do you make a business plan when electricity could just swoop like this? And that’s really important because on the business side, you need a business plan, but in your household, you need a plan as well.

Housing is already incredibly expensive, and if electricity continues to climb the way it is, more and more people will end up homeless. You need to be able to keep a roof over your head. The member—and I just forgot the riding name; I always want to say people’s names, Speaker—for University–Rosedale talked about a million people going to food banks in Ontario. I’ve talked many times in the past about the number of working people going to food banks every year since I’ve been elected has increased. Imagine that you work a full-time job and you’ve got to go to a food bank to put food on your table. This is not something to brag about, right? The government talks about working for workers, but look, if you’re going to a food bank and you work full-time, you’re not working for workers very well. You’re not addressing those basic needs. And if you put electricity on top of that, you’re ensuring more people are going to food banks, and when more people go to food banks, fewer people can donate to food banks and that is not a spiral that we can continue.

In an affordability crisis and you can’t afford when electricity goes up, it causes real issues. And we’ve seen this already where seniors in the summertime can’t put the air conditioning on. They just can’t afford to do it. And in the winter, they try to keep their house as cool as possible without cracking a pipe. In Northern Ontario, if you don’t have enough heat, your pipes will freeze and crack and that’s a whole other cost you’re going to deal with.

We need to really pay attention to this. But continually, what we’ve seen is handing contracts and doing favours for private companies at the cost of the taxpayer. This is where the “Liberal, Tory, same old story” expression comes from. When you’re doing that, when you’re always serving the corporation that provides and making sure that the people who provide the energy make a healthy profit—and so maybe that when Conservative members retire, they can work for the energy board; they can work for other boards like that and get hired by them—you leave ordinary Ontarians behind.

We need to treat electricity as a public good. It’s something that we believe in, as New Democrats. We believe it’s a public good because it helps people, it helps businesses and organizations get together. And so, in the contrast, what you’ve seen in successive Liberal and Conservative governments is your hydro bill just climbing and climbing and climbing even if they’re artificially deflating it.

In this bill, it also gives more power to limit the independent scrutiny of complex matters that are before the Ontario Energy Board. The OEB is supposed to be independent. They just look at stuff and they tell you, “Hey, this is good for Ontario or not so good for Ontario.” But more and more in these bills, they take away that ability.

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If you think about last year, there was a bill called Keeping Energy Costs Down Act. It gave the Conservative government the ability to override the decisions the independent Ontario Energy Board made. The OEB basically said to Enbridge, which provides natural gas to people, “You can’t pass your expansion costs on to your current suppliers.” That would be a fun thing to do. Any business, I’m sure, would love to do that. You just increase your current contracts so everybody else would pay for any kind of expansion you have. But the OEB said, “It’s not something that’s cost-effective. It’s not fair. And people who are already hooked up to natural gas shouldn’t be paying for other people to be hooked up to natural gas. That’s a cost of you doing business and expanding your business.”

The Conservative government wrote a bill called the Keeping Energy Costs Down Act. I believe they time-allocated and they rammed it through so that Enbridge could pass those costs down. If you’re on with Enbridge for natural gas, you probably saw your bill climb up, because the Conservative government is not as concerned with ensuring people have low energy bills—although they have a very fancy title that would suggest that. Instead, what the bill did was ensure that your bills could go so that Enbridge could make even more money on top of it.

When you think about that—I really want to get back to that you need that reliable and affordable energy. You need decisions that are based on what’s best for the public, not what’s best for the utility provider, although you’ve got to take care of the utility providers so they’re successful and dependable.

I’ll give you an example. This summer, we lost power in my neighbourhood. I live in the south end of Sudbury. We lost power for about 12 blocks. I don’t know exactly what happened, but it was a transformer or something that got damaged, and they had to shut the power down in order to fix it again. This was summertime. The weather was nice; a little warm. My neighbours, in the beginning, were kind of jovial about it. The sun was out; they were outside; they were having a beer on their lawn; they were barbecuing; they were making small talk, connecting, catching up with their friends after work, and they were joking about there being no power and how this was what it was like in the 1980s—you didn’t have Netflix and stuff to do. Everyone was doing a pretty good job in getting through it and making sure that they were either clearing out their freezers because they’re going to barbecue everything, or they were making sure not to open the freezer so nothing starts to melt.

Then, as the evening came on—and it was still pretty warm out, because Sudbury can get pretty hot in the summertime, and it’s not unusual to be around 24, 25 degrees, even close to 30—people started getting mad. They went from this comfortable, “Oh, isn’t this interesting what happened,” and “It’s nice to get together,” to “I’ve got to work tomorrow, and I can’t sleep if I don’t have the air conditioner on,” and “I’m worried that I won’t wake up in the morning because my alarm clock is electric,” and “I want to watch something on TV, and I want to make popcorn. I want the microwave to work.” These are all minor things and stuff that people would say is a First World problem, but we do live in the First World. We want to ensure that people have access to electricity—and how important it is. Really, that was within about four or five hours, where people went from sort of happy and comfortable to “Enough is enough.”

Reliability is really important, and I talked earlier about how affordability is really important.

The other thing—because I only have a minute and a half, and people have asked me to mention this: In a lot of places in Ontario, you cannot charge an EV. In northern Ontario, it’s very, very difficult to find EV charging stations. I’m looking at replacing my car, for example, right now, and I’d like to get an EV. I think it’s better for the planet. I think that it would save on gas costs. There’s a variety of reasons. But it’s very difficult to find a car that has the range that will bring you from Sudbury to Toronto without having to stop to charge. The charging takes about 30 minutes, to get you over the hump. Also, there are only a few places you could stop and charge. It makes it very difficult. If you’re trying to change people’s buying habits, when you have to get somewhere within a certain amount of time—let’s imagine you just flip the script, and instead of charging stations, it was gas stations. If there are only one or two gas stations between here and Sudbury, or here and Thunder Bay, it almost becomes impossible for people to make that perfect decision, the smarter decision. So we need reliable EV charging stations.

I wish that, back when I was first elected, instead of ripping out charging stations, the Premier of Ontario was trying to expand and build more of them, incentivize people to have more of them, because we really need to get forward the—I see you looking at me, Speaker. I have one second. Thank you.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Questions?

Hon. Sam Oosterhoff: I really appreciate the member opposite from Sudbury for his remarks this afternoon. I want to also acknowledge the beautiful place that he lives.

Both of us talked a little bit about Sudbury in our remarks on this legislation. I had the privilege of chatting a little bit about your beautiful neck of the woods as well.

I think we agree a lot on reliability and the importance of affordability.

I was wondering what your take was on the section of the legislation around data centres; specifically, around prioritizing major loads. We’re seeing other jurisdictions that haven’t taken proactive steps and now are facing real challenges, especially in the US. You might have seen some of those impacts. I’m wondering if you have any thoughts about that particular portion of the legislation and, of course, the importance of prioritizing projects, whether it’s data centres or others, that are in the best interests of the economy and also of the workers of this province. I’m wondering if you could explain a little bit more the NDP position on this and your personal take.

MPP Jamie West: I appreciate the associate minister’s question about data centres and prioritizing projects.

One of the things that puts a little bit of a chill on this is with the SDF scandals. There’s about 51% of SDF funding that seems to be tied to who donated to that party and what’s best for the Conservative Party and maybe not necessarily for the people.

So, in a broad sense, yes, we really should be planning out where electricity is going and making plans for it. I’m a little hesitant to say “rah-rah” to it because I’m worried—in the past, say, greenbelt scandal, SDF scandal—about how the Conservatives would use that.

The other part of it—I’m part of the CSG, which connects American and Canadian politicians, and there are some places south of the border where they’ve had data centres that have promised amazing jobs and workloads, and they have caused real issues for those communities where very few people have jobs. They use a ton of electricity and a ton of water as well. So we have to make sure we’re putting on our thinking caps when we’re making decisions like that.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I recognize the member from Waterloo.

Ms. Catherine Fife: Thanks to the member for sharing his thoughts on Bill 40.

Bill 40 is problematic. It includes a potential decrease in transparency and public input, a centralization of power away from municipalities and, potentially, increased costs for taxpayers.

The reduced transparency and public input is now part of this government’s new image. Democracy is very problematic for you guys. Public consultation is too much work. You’ve time-allocated a number of pieces of legislation, shutting down our voices, when we represent the people of this province as well.

To the member for Sudbury: Do you have any general concerns about the direction of where democracy is going right now?

Bill 40 is a perfect example of how you are undermining voices of the people in this House.

MPP Jamie West: Thank you to my colleague from Waterloo on this as well.

It is really important, when you think about the voices of the people—we’re all here elected to represent the people of our communities. I often say in the House, “I’m here to elevate and amplify your voices.” But it causes issues.

I live in northern Ontario. Sault Ste. Marie, right now, does not have really great representation. Members from that city are calling me, asking for support on issues that are important to them, because they don’t have quality representation from there. I think that it’s high time that we ask that member to step down and we call for an election in that riding, to have the voice of the people echoed here—especially on issues like this.

People feel it in their wallet when it comes to electricity prices. If we are making moves that potentially are going to drive the price of electricity up or other forms of energy up, people should be able to speak out loud and clear about if they think it’s a good idea or a bad idea. We should be responding to the needs of those people.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Questions?

Ms. Catherine Fife: Back to the member from Sudbury: The member from Niagara mentioned the concept of these data centres that are popping up everywhere. There was a rumour of a data centre coming into Wilmot township. This was the very controversial, basically, expropriation of prime farmland, which is our strength as a province, quite honestly.

Data centres are huge energy thieves. They also require a huge amount of water, which is very problematic. And yet, they’re a pivotal part of this government’s economic strategy.

Do you have any advice and safeguards around moving forward with some of these infrastructure projects, but finding the balance in community so that we’re not compromising the environment as well?

MPP Jamie West: Thank you again to my friend from Waterloo.

It is an issue. You were the voice of Wilmot, which is surprising, because it’s not even in your riding. They elected people from the government side to be their voice, and the people from the government side, instead of being their voice, are saying, “We’re going to just plow over your farmland to build a specialty project.” And then, New Democrats ended up being their voice—which we’re always proud to do.

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Like I said earlier, with the associate minister’s question, when the government is picking winners and losers, and you have a track record like this government has, where there’s an RCMP investigation on the greenbelt—I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an RCMP investigation over the SDF scandal—maybe they don’t have the best position to say, “We’re going to pick fairly and based on what the best evidence is.”

If you want to try to crystallize it or make it more clear for people, that should be more transparent—

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Response?

MPP Jamie West: —for people to be able to speak up and have their voices forward.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Questions?

Mr. Deepak Anand: Mr. Speaker, the bill, Protect Ontario by Securing Affordable Energy for Generations Act, 2025, as you know, supports Ontario utilities to buy Canadian.

I heard from the other side a lot about “buy Canadian” and building a more secure energy system by enabling them to fund the investments necessary to implement new restrictions on hostile foreign participation in our energy sector, protecting the province from risk of malware, manipulation, tampering and surveillance. My question is very simple. To the member from Sudbury: What do you think of this in this bill? Are you going to support it, and what is your opinion about this?

MPP Jamie West: Thank you to my friend from the other side.

I talked about the importance of investing locally in Canadian products, when I talked about how confident I am in Candu Energy as opposed to the Hitachi SMRs. The GE Hitachi SMRs, right now, are five times the price—it’s an American company that relies on primarily an American supply chain, especially for their energy side. In normal conditions, that probably wouldn’t be much of a concern for people, but right now, with Donald Trump—what he says in the morning may change in the afternoon, might change again in the evening. I wouldn’t be surprised if, all of a sudden, he yanks those contracts away from us and forces them to be in America.

I think if we are going to support Canadian and also not be five times over the budget, we invest in Candu nuclear. They have been on time and under budget on every single project, and we can invest in Canadians.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Question?

Ms. Catherine Fife: I’ll take “reduced transparency and public input” for $400.

This bill gives the Ontario Energy Board more authority to set procedural policies without full public transparency. It allows for increased government funding to be used for electricity generation payments, instead of ratepayers funding them, which could impact the total cost of electricity for consumers. And then the centralization of power—this legislation also allows the province to overrule municipal official plans, reducing the authority of local governments in planning decisions.

Any time a government overrules other levels of government, they’re essentially trying to silence people who have voted for those levels of government, be they school boards or municipalities.

Does the member have any concerns with the direction that this government is going in in order to have a bill that has a really great title?

MPP Jamie West: There are so many things I could talk about in there.

When you talk about overruling another level of government—again, the Premier has gone back to speed cameras and bike lanes, and I think the reason he does that is to change the channel.

There are a lot of problems with the SDF funding—the 51% that are a little bit sketchy, that the Auditor General said don’t really make sense.

What’s surprising: Scale Hospitality. The leader of the official opposition, Marit Stiles, asked questions about this this morning. They got $17 million to train people in hospitality. They cannot account for how many jobs were created. They were supposed to build a training centre. They can’t tell me if there’s a training centre there—$17 million of taxpayer dollars going towards Scale Hospitality. Hospitality is an important sector. But I tell you—you give a college or university $17 million, and they will tell you exactly how many students they have, how they graduated and, in most cases, what they’re doing today, four or five years later.

It’s unfathomable that SDF has been used this way. Good fund—improper use.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I’ll go to further debate. I’ll go to the member from Beaches–East York.

Ms. Mary-Margaret McMahon: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. It’s nice to see you in the chair.

It’s always a pleasure to be in this House with all of you, trying to build a better Ontario, and I’m always proud to represent beautiful Beaches–East York.

This afternoon, it’s Bill 40 that I will be discussing: Protect Ontario by Securing Affordable Energy for Generations Act, 2025.

It’s always interesting to know the titles of your bills because, yes, they sound good—and then you get into the weeds, and you realize that might not be the case.

Of course, Bill 40 primarily focuses on energy for Ontario. It alters the current Electricity Act to centre its purpose around economic growth. The act also alters the Ontario Energy Board Act, to add a new objective of economic growth. Importantly, the act works to expand clean energy—specifically, hydrogen and nuclear.

I will talk more about real, clean and green energy in a minute.

Let’s talk energy stats. Our province imports approximately 463 gigawatt hours in energy from the United States. We must hone in on our abundance of renewables here at home.

When this government first came to power in 2018, how many hundreds of renewable energy contracts did you rip up—in 2018? It’s not 1918. It’s not 1818. Why would we even consider doing that ludicrous move of ripping up renewable energy contracts in 2018—hundreds of them, which are jobs actually in Ontario; good, green jobs—and just reverse, put Ontario back decades and decades? We used to be a green global leader—not so much anymore, since 2018. That was your first move. I always like that good old Irish saying, “Start as you mean to go on.” That was not a very good start, and it cost us not only jobs, but it cost us money in getting out of those contracts—huge amounts of money. It’s absolutely ludicrous.

In 2022, approximately 90% of Ontario’s electricity was from zero-carbon sources—nuclear, hydro, wind, solar etc.—with about 8% from natural gas and other fuels.

And you will know that the reason we have such a clean energy grid in Ontario is—thank you very much to the Liberal Party for closing the coal plants, which is an absolute fact. You cannot dispute that. So you’re very welcome for that. Yet, achieving net zero by 2050 will still require significant reductions across sectors—primarily in transportation, buildings, and industrial sectors.

Transportation: We can talk about when the Eglinton Crosstown is opening. Will I be around? Maybe not. Will I have grandkids? Will my grandkids be old? Maybe my grandkids could be there at the ribbon cutting. I don’t even have grandkids, just so you know, but I will have them, probably, by the time the Eglinton Crosstown opens. For God’s sake, get it open.

Buildings: We’ll talk about buildings in a minute.

Here’s another thing that is totally lacking with this government: conservation. Remember, if you’re my vintage, you grew up with turning the lights off, and there were funny little quirky sayings and jingles on conserving energy and making it fun to do that. So where is that education and awareness? Where is that campaign? That is the cheapest, easiest, most convenient way to reduce energy usage. Where is your creative thinking on that?

When the Ford government came into power—we talked about this—it was 758 renewable energy projects in Ontario. Can you imagine? It amounted to $230 million to scrap that. We could sure use that money right now. And it largely impacted Indigenous communities, if you want to be honest, many of which were invested in these projects, and they permitted projects to be built on the land stewarded in these regions. So what does that say? That’s a bit of a slap in the face to Indigenous communities. But we know how you guys approach consultation with Indigenous communities—it’s called “not at all.”

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So, yes, we know what the previous Liberal government did to phase out coal, which was very bold and brave and has paid off for future generations.

My kids are 26 and 27. I know it’s hard to believe that I have kids that age. When they were small, we had 50 smog days in Toronto. Do you guys remember that? You couldn’t go outside and take your kids to the parks because of all the smog days. You don’t hear that word anymore. So, again, you’re welcome, from the Liberal government. You can thank us.

Despite Ontario’s high percentage of carbon-free energy and natural gas plants, it still produces a lot of emissions, and that number is increasing, with electricity emissions increasing in the GTA by 28% between 2023 and 2025. In 2024, gas-fired plants supplied 16.3% of the province’s electricity, increasing from previous years, and projections predict natural gas supplying 25% of Ontario’s electricity in 2030 and 23.6% by 2040.

There’s actually a gas plant near my neighbourhood, on the waterfront, called the Portlands, and it was only supposed to be used as a peaker plant, just when we need it, for emergencies, that kind of thing. But it has been rolling steadily 21 hours a day, which is not—look up the definition of “peaker;” that’s not in the definition. Something has gone awry there.

Another issue we face to build the most sustainable and smartest path forward is addressing the data gaps. Data from major electric decision-makers—publish historical and annual data for allowing of comparison and determining how much emissions different sources are producing, and publish long-term planning forecasts that include projections of grid-related emissions. That would be helpful.

The importance of renewable energy cannot be overstated. Solar and wind are now the lowest-cost of sources of power available. Why wouldn’t we invest more in solar and wind? Solar panels pay for the energy invested in them in less than a year, even in Canada. They last for 25 years under warranty, but can actually last much longer. And solar panels actually get more efficient as the temperature gets colder.

In 2022, wind energy generated 36 terawatt hours of electricity in Canada, accounting for 5.7% of total electricity generation, which provided enough electricity to power about three million typical Canadian homes. Some of you, I believe, have wind farms in your ridings. Anyone? Anyone?

Hon. Sam Oosterhoff: Yes.

Ms. Mary-Margaret McMahon: Aren’t they beautiful? All right. Well, good for you. Thank you for doing that—for being a host.

Canada has only begun to scratch the surface of its vast and untapped wind and solar energy resources. It is extremely troubling, however, despite our vast potential and our seemingly smart moves.

This government has a historical pattern and continues to engage in a pattern of cutting green and sustainable initiatives.

This government—there is the old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but yours is, “If it’s working well and it’s successful, let’s jump in, slice and dice and meddle and manipulate it so that it’s now a complete mess,” when we don’t have time for that. That is completely illogical. Let’s just leave the things that are working well alone and address the things that are a mess, like health care, education, housing.

We could talk about the conservation authorities, which—on Friday afternoon, you dropped that bomb, because you just love dropping bombs on Friday afternoon. Somehow, 36 conservation authorities that are doing a great job for Ontario, protecting Ontarians and preventing floods and issuing flood-risk mapping—somehow, that’s not working well for you, for some reason. I guess you want Ontario to flood and you want people to experience and have to shell out of pocket $43,000 for basement floods. So you’re now going to try to make this superpower body that represents, I guess, maybe, six conservation authorities. It makes no sense.

Hon. Rob Flack: Seven.

Ms. Mary-Margaret McMahon: Lucky number seven. There was nothing wrong with 36.

You’re centralizing control in this bill, just like you are trying to do for the conservation authorities.

That seems to be also a theme: If it’s working well, jump in and meddle and mess it up; if it’s not working well, ignore it and also then centralize control as much as you can in every sector.

Continuing on with environmental initiatives that you seem to be allergic to, we did have in the House today over 20 green roofs companies. That’s another weirdness that you have decided to pursue. That is 1,600 jobs. That is jobs in your communities in agriculture—growing the sedums and all the other botanicals for the roofs—and cooling roofs so you don’t actually have to use that much energy. That’s a conservation measure, so that saves us money. Actually, green roofs are the most cost-effective stormwater management system, so why mess with them? That’s jobs in your riding.

And then, Bill 17, with the green development standards—that’s another one. Things are working well. Toronto Green Standards have worked well. The green roofs were in the standards. It has been working for 15 years. The Premier, when he was city councillor with me, voted yes and totally supported Toronto Green Standards.

And the green development standards: Many of your municipalities have green groups, green organizations, that are big on green development standards, which is, in case you weren’t aware of what a green development standard is, incentivizing energy-efficient windows and doors so that it’s more comfortable inside; perhaps heat pumps, so you’re using less electricity—another measure, another way to conserve energy; green roofs, of course; heat pumps; and all kinds of other things that would incentivize—planting of trees, all kinds of things like that. I don’t know if you guys get the return on investment, the cost-benefit analysis, if you’ve ever done that, on energy-efficient measures. I maybe need to take you on a field trip.

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My super-smart colleague the member from Kingston and the Islands—not all of you were here to hear his speech on Bill 40, but he does have a wealth of experience and knowledge and education in this field. He listed some things that Bill 40 has, something to worry about—some aspects of the integrated energy plan, which is the first energy plan since 2017. Holy moly, what have you been doing? It’s sold as an economic growth bill, and the opposition might be expected to nitpick and let it go. But Bill 40 could also mark a policy divergence between the Conservatives and the Liberals, with the problematic elements being authorizing payments to generators, distributors and the Ontario Electricity Financial Corp. from monies appropriated by the Legislature, instead of payments from the rate base. It continues the ability to socialize risks of energy projects and disincentivize efficient use of electricity, which we’ve talked about a few times.

My colleague also talked about not so much focusing on—you can focus on economic growth, but what about productivity growth? He gave a whole lecture on that. If you would like to learn more about it, you should watch his video clip. You all look like you’re just chomping at the bit to learn more about that. He spoke about Ford’s “crony capitalism”—oh, my gosh, he said that word a hundred million times. Because the Ford government is very susceptible to regulatory capture and crony capitalism, we are likely to keep saying, “Never has a government spent so much and achieved so little”—that was always my colleague from Don Valley West saying that.

All in all, I would just say this is another disappointing bill because you’re missing the boat on ensuring that Ontario is the most sustainable province going. Just look at British Columbia and how far ahead they are. If we want people to stay in Ontario, we’ve got to give them hope. We’ve got to give them a reason to stay here. Lagging behind globally and avoiding any type of climate action does not give people hope. Maybe you can go to sleep tonight, think about it, and come back and change your mind tomorrow.

Again, I just wish you would focus on the things that are broken and fix those—like education, health care and housing—and stop meddling with things that are working well.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Questions?

Mr. Joseph Racinsky: Thank you to the member for her comments this afternoon.

She spoke quite a bit about the Liberal government’s record. I’m happy to remind residents of Wellington–Halton Hills—they remember well that record and the Green Energy Act disaster. The Liberals spent 15 years driving hydro rates through the roof and chasing businesses out of the province.

So I want to ask the member: Why are they opposing this bill that finally ensures long-term energy affordability and economic competitiveness?

Ms. Mary-Margaret McMahon: To the member from Wellington–Halton Hills, who’s new like me, a little bit—but he’s newer than me: Neither one of us were here at the time. I’m working on when I was here, but I am darn proud—

Interjection.

Ms. Mary-Margaret McMahon: No, I am darn proud of what the Liberals did to close the coal plants, and we all should be, because you all are breathing cleaner air because of the Liberal Party closing coal plants. Your children and grandchildren are at less risk to develop asthma, childhood leukemia and cancers because the Liberals closed the coal plants and built a greener, cleaner Ontario.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Questions?

Mr. Terence Kernaghan: I’d like to thank my friend from Beaches–East York for her presentation today.

When I think of Ontario’s power system, I think back to Sir Adam Beck, a member of this Legislature from London. Ontario’s power system was one that was so well wrought that it used to be studied by Harvard Business School. Unfortunately, the Harris government broke it into crown corporations for the generation as well as the delivery of energy, politicizing and messing with a very well-made system. I also think back to the privatization of Ontario hydro under Kathleen Wynne.

I’d like to know from the member: Would they support bringing Ontario hydro back under public control?

Ms. Mary-Margaret McMahon: Wow. That’s a good question.

We’re at a new time, in 2025, and I am always open, as you know, to working across party lines to get things done for Ontarians and to help with a better quality of life. So it’s something to think about, for sure.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I recognize the member from Don Valley West.

Ms. Stephanie Bowman: I want to thank my colleague from Beaches–East York for her thoughtful comments around this bill and also for her passion and commitment to protecting Ontario’s environment. I want to talk about that in terms of this bill.

We know that demand will continue to increase from all of the devices that we all use and the AI changes in our society and our economy. We know demand will increase, but you touched on reducing demand and conservation.

Could you talk a little bit more about what this government could do to actually encourage the demand for electricity to be lower so that we don’t have to build as much capacity as we might need to?

Ms. Mary-Margaret McMahon: Thank you very much to my neighbour from Don Valley West.

I’ll tell you one thing not to do if we’re serious about energy use in Ontario: One thing not to do is to kill the Toronto Green Standard, the green development standards in Ontario. They’re working masterfully. They have been working masterfully for the last 15 years. If we take the green roof industry alone—and they were here today—that’s 1,600 jobs in not just Toronto, guys, but rural areas, your areas. I think I mentioned it the last time I spoke on that. Burlington, Flamborough–Glanbrook, Lambton–Kent–Middlesex, Mississauga–Erin Mills, Mississauga–Malton, Milton, and Oxford—their jobs. I don’t think you want to chase jobs away.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I recognize the Associate Minister of Energy-Intensive Industries.

Hon. Sam Oosterhoff: I want to begin by acknowledging the member for Beaches–East York and her passion and ardour that she has expressed this afternoon and how much she clearly cares about energy policy and its direct correlation to the social and economic well-being of people in her riding and in every corner of our province.

I do have a question, though. She was speaking about the time that the Liberals were in office here in the province of Ontario. I remember when we saw 300,000 manufacturing jobs leave the province and a 300% increase in energy rates. My question is, just looking back at that time, when she considers the Liberals’ record and all of their policies—and I understand that she’s obviously arguing for some of those policies—is there anything that they did wrong? When you look at the Liberals from 2003 to 2018, is there anything that you would look at and say, “I would have done that differently?” Yes or no.

Ms. Mary-Margaret McMahon: I’m not sure if you were here then, but there are different factors, including the financial crisis and the Liberals bailing out the auto sector.

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I want to talk about today and how over 700,000 Ontarians don’t have jobs, especially youth. They’re coming to my office all the time and expressing their anxiety, their frustration. When we were younger, you could easily get a job, any type of job. You could easily rent a house, rent a room in a house. You didn’t have to move outside of Ontario.

What are you doing about that? What are you doing about that job creation? Well, you’re chasing jobs out. You’re chasing renewable energy companies out. You’re chasing green-roof companies out. That’s not keeping jobs in Ontario.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I recognize the member from Ottawa Centre.

MPP Catherine McKenney: Thanks to the member from Beaches–East York.

The purpose, I understand, of this bill is to prepare Ontario’s energy system to meet demand for future economic growth. When I think about the number of new hospitals that are being built across the province and the large central utility systems that are required to power hospitals, mega-hospitals, I don’t see anything here that allows for—or, not even “allows for,” but promotes good district energy systems.

Would you agree, as we’re investing in these large new hospitals, that using district energy would be a good idea?

Ms. Mary-Margaret McMahon: Absolutely, 100%, I’m all for district energy systems and centres. They’ve been proven to work elsewhere in the world.

There’s actually a resident of mine who works at MaRS, across the street, who is working on an idea like that: get an area, get geothermal under the road and supply—who knows?—300, 500 homes with power. Hospitals are perfect for that, and we should be exploring that and incentivizing them to do that. You need to provide the incentives. Give incentives to make these industries do the right thing, and they are keen to do it.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Question?

Ms. Stephanie Bowman: To the member from Beaches–East York: We’ve got a government that has been talking a lot about EVs and battery plants and putting all their eggs in one basket. It is kind of ironic, isn’t it? Because it’s also the government that ripped out the EV chargers, cancelled rebates on electric vehicles, which actually caused the number of EVs purchased in Ontario to fall—check out the numbers. Could the member briefly comment on why you think this government took that action?

Ms. Mary-Margaret McMahon: Yes, I think this government was doing the wrong thing. They think they can solve the climate crisis by just focusing on electric vehicles, putting all the eggs in that basket instead of thinking of other things. It’s not going to be one single thing that helps—

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

Mr. Mike Schreiner: It’s an honour to rise to speak to Bill 40. I find it interesting that we have a bill with the words “affordable energy” in it that we’re debating two days after electricity prices in the province of Ontario went up by a whopping 29% due to the policies of the Ford government, primarily doubling down on the most expensive forms of electricity. Ratepayers won’t feel the full brunt of this dramatic price increase brought on by the Ford government because they’ve increased the amount of money subsidizing electricity prices, which have been over $6 billion a year—likely climbing, according to the Financial Accountability Officer, disproportionately benefiting wealthy households at the expense of working people.

So when you think about the fact that this government says we don’t have enough money for affordable housing, we don’t have enough money for hospitals, we don’t have enough money for primary care or education, post-secondary education, think about the over $6 billion that is directly going to subsidize electricity prices in this province, directly, disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest households.

I don’t understand; if the government wants to do affordable energy, why not invest in the lowest-cost sources of energy: wind, utility-grade solar? New nuclear, new gas—three to five times more expensive. I don’t even care if you believe in the climate crisis; I don’t understand why you would double down, through directives to the IESO, Bill 5 and now Bill 40, on the most expensive forms of electricity when Ontario has huge capacity to be a global leader in the cheapest forms of electricity: wind, utility-grade solar and storage.

Right now, in the province of Ontario, we ship out $16 billion to $24 billion a year to purchase fossil fuels from other jurisdictions. Granted, a lot of that is transportation fuels, but a lot of it is ramping up gas plants—70% of the high-cost, high-polluting gas plants come from gas from the United States, a country that we, I think, want to not be engaged in that kind of trade with, given the way they’re attacking our sovereignty, especially when we could be doubling down on low-cost made-in-Ontario wind, solar and storage, saving you money, lowering climate pollution, driving energy independence, and strengthening a made-in-Ontario economy with Ontario jobs.

Instead, this government is ramping up gas plants. When they came into power, our grid was 96% clean; now it’s down to 84%. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had the economic development minister say Ontario’s competitive advantage in attracting things like EV investment is our clean grid, yet they’re making it dirtier. As a matter of fact, their plans to ramp up gas plants will increase climate pollution by 400% by 2043, losing our competitive advantage that the minister talks about all the time.

Right now, globally, $2.2 trillion this year alone, in 2025, is going into the green energy transition, double—I repeat: double—what’s going into fossil fuels. So global investment in fossil fuels is going like this, global investment in renewables is going like this, and yet this government wants to tip the scales in favour of fossil gas plants—again, three to five times more expensive than wind, solar and battery storage. I want Ontario to be a global energy superpower, attracting our fair share of that $2.2 trillion instead of having a government that says no to it.

Do you know what? I’m all for us investing more in critical minerals. It would be nice if we used those critical minerals in made-in-Ontario renewable energy and battery storage. But no, this government would rather have SMRs with US technology, enriched US uranium, and ramping up gas plants with US gas instead of made-in-Ontario solutions.

We have enough capacity in Ontario in the next decade to generate six to 10 gigawatts of wind, four to six gigawatts of solar, and three to four gigawatts of battery storage, creating the opportunity for $40 billion of investment in the province of Ontario to create jobs, leading to 80,000—and I want to repeat this: 80,000—job years of employment. I understand that might not be good for the fossil fuel giants, but it would certainly be good for the people of Ontario—creating Ontario jobs; lowering Ontario energy prices; making our grid cleaner, more competitive and reducing climate pollution, not to mention the localized air pollution.

The member for Beaches–East York is right; the Portlands gas plant is the largest single source of toxic air pollution in the city of Toronto. As a matter of fact, developers had to change their development plans because the air was so polluted next door to it that they couldn’t build towers high enough that the windows could open because it would affect people’s health.

Speaker, we have solutions to the climate crisis, the jobs crisis, the air pollution crisis. We need a government that will deliver on them.

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The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Questions?

Ms. Stephanie Bowman: Thank you to the member for Guelph for his ardent and factual remarks today. I always enjoy listening to him speak.

I’d like to ask him a little bit about why he thinks this government is broadening IESO’s mandate to include the phrase “economic growth.” From what I understand, IESO already has a mandate to make sure they are talking about the demand that we need in the future for Ontario, and, in fact, they have been talking about that and this government wasn’t doing much on that front, and that is one of the reasons we now have a less clean grid.

My question to the member is, why do you think they’re including the phrase “economic growth” in the mandate for IESO?

Mr. Mike Schreiner: If I can only look at the government’s past actions, it’s because I think they believe economic growth means more fossil fuel use and climate pollution, not more jobs or lower-cost electricity or attracting more global investment. And so, already this government is directing it to the IESO on the Long-Term 2 energy plan that said—do you know what?—ratepayers are on the hook for covering 75% of the grid hookup for gas companies, but they haven’t given the same benefit to renewable energy companies.

This government also, when the OEB said, “We’re going protect new home builders by saying don’t impose subsidies to them for natural gas hookups,” this government said, “No, no, we’re not doing that. We’re not doing that. We’ve got to protect the profits of the big gas companies rather than helping homeowners save 15% on their home heating costs.”

I would ask the government: How come you’re not going to stand up for everyday people and their cost?

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Questions?

Mr. Deepak Anand: The Protect Ontario by Securing Affordable Energy for Generations Act is about supporting Ontario’s growing hydrogen economy.

I heard from the other side, and the member was talking about carbon and not using those fossil fuels, so I want to ask him a very simple question. What is your opinion by expanding the IESO mandate to include hydrogen development? This bill is supporting what you’re actually saying. So how can we do more in supporting hydrogen?

Mr. Mike Schreiner: I appreciate the member’s question. The hydrogen economy is a huge opportunity for Ontario. As a matter of fact, the salt caves in the Kincardine region are a perfect storage facility for hydrogen. The question is, are we going to be globally competitive with green hydrogen, or they are going to use fossil fuels to produce that hydrogen?

When it comes to diversifying our trade partners, diversifying our exports, ensuring we have good trade relationships with the EU, we need to be exporting green hydrogen, but, unfortunately, the government appears to be tipping the scales to benefit fossil fuel companies at a much higher cost, much higher levels of pollution and actually making us less competitive in our ability to develop green hydrogen.

So I would say to the members opposite: I’m happy to work with you on a hydrogen strategy. Let’s make sure it’s a clean hydrogen strategy as we diversify our trade partners, especially the EU.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Questions?

MPP Wayne Gates: It’s always great listening to the member from the Green Party. You hit something that really hit home in your very open comments: that the Conservatives have been saying for eight years that our rates for hydro are going to go down, and you said that it’s just come out they’re going to go up 29%. Some of that is because they’re doing $6 billion a year in subsidizing, basically, the rich and famous.

Maybe you could explain in the minute that they give you exactly what that means and who’s getting those subsidies?

Mr. Mike Schreiner: I want to be really clear here. Electricity prices went up 29% on November 1. That’s primarily driven by the money they’re pouring into new nuclear and gas. Over $6 billion in subsidies goes to everyone. Everyone is going to get that. So that’s actually going to make you feel the 29% is not going to be as hard on you.

But what the Financial Accountability Officer determined is that, disproportionately, wealthy households benefit from that subsidy, and it makes sense. They live in big homes. They use tons of electricity, whereas a lot of working people live in smaller homes that use less electricity. So it’s a benefit that disproportionately—

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

Hon. Michael S. Kerzner: I’m proud to be sharing my time today with my friend the member from Mississauga–Malton.

Mr. Speaker, I’m happy to rise for my first time this fall session to talk about Bill 40, and that’s the Protect Ontario by Securing Affordable Energy for Generations Act. I’m happy to acknowledge the incredible hard work of the minister and the associate minister.

Understand something else, that the times that find us today are different. Ontario’s viability has been called into question by a President in the US who’s changed the ground rules. As the Premier has said, Mr. Speaker, never before in my generation—or, I would add, in anyone’s generation—have we been confronted with such threats.

Bill 40, in part, says that we are proud Ontarians. We will be relentless in making sure that we have a strong economy not only today, but tomorrow; and that our security, our message, our promise to our children and for those who have grandchildren is Ontario will always be strong. That’s why Premier Ford ran on a platform that was undeniably clear in February of this year to protect Ontario.

I want to touch on a few things that I think are important, and that is why Bill 40 is important and why I do feel this needs to be passed as soon as possible. And one of the things that I did not hear from the people across the aisle is about the enormous electricity demand that is forecasted—unprecedented demand: a 75% increase in demand over the next 25 years. We have never heard such staggering numbers that must cause us to think how we will be prepared.

This past summer, on one of those rare days, I was actually able to travel, Mr. Speaker, through your own riding on the Loyalist Parkway, where you abut right up against the waterway and you see the beautiful waterways of St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario. I saw the side of the Lennox and Addington generation station that was built over 50 years ago, and the members opposite might know the story. It was built then because people anticipated that there would be more draw for electricity. They actually built it fuelled by oil, which today is something—a fossil fuel—that we would never find to be acceptable. That plant, which is now in reserve, powered by natural gas, is there when we need extra power to meet our peak load.

If you drive further on the Loyalist Parkway through beautiful Prince Edward county, you will come to Wesleyville: the site, we hope, of our next large nuclear power plant that we hope we’ll see in our generation, that will help equalize the demand that we have forecasted. But that plant shell is there and it’s actually the sister of the Lennox and Addington generation station. Although, the one in Wesleyville didn’t get fully built; it’s a shell.

We look today and we understand that electricity is different in use than it once was. And I want to speak about specifically the draw that will be required for the electricity to be used in the new data centres. Data centres, for my parents’ generation—and I have the privilege of having both parents alive in their nineties—I can’t explain the data centres and how that correlates to why we need to have more generating capacity.

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What I can tell you is that the data centres are vital for our economy because we are moving into an economy, not only that we are reinventing ourselves—and that’s why our government is proud to have made the EV investments we can, so that Ontario will harness the critical minerals in the Ring of Fire and they will find their way to St. Thomas. And we will be the world’s greatest manufacturer of batteries and other components to build electric cars. That’s important, but that takes power; that takes surety of knowing that we have the generation capacity to make sure that that will take place.

The data centre concept is not something from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. It’s something that’s actually happening today. The amount of companies that have applied to want to set up data centres and tap into the grid have to be sure that there will be power for them. The problem right now is we have to be absolutely relentless to make sure that we will build that power generation.

Bill 40 talks about making sure we have a plan. In Ontario, already 100 data centres are being built—the largest centres in Canada, particularly here in the GTA. These data centres, over time, will be larger and more energy-intensive. Mr. Speaker, under current legislation, utilities are required to connect all data centres indiscriminately, regardless of how much energy they need or how many jobs they create. We have to have a plan. Bill 40 takes a big step to acknowledge something in the future.

Mr. Speaker, when I’ve listened to the other side—I want to remind everyone in this House that when the Liberals were in power they came up with something called feed-in tariffs. That means—and I actually tried to get in on it because I thought it was a good deal—that you could put solar on your roof, and feed-in tariffs at almost 15 times the cost that it takes to generate one kilowatt of power. That was ridiculous. They signed crazy contracts for solar farms and wind farms, way above the market levels. Those are something that the taxpayers are still paying for, and that was wrong.

Our government looks at energy in a prudent, practical way. We will build capacity because we want to make sure that the next iteration of our economy, an economy built on imagination and innovation, on boldness and relentlessness, and under the leadership of Premier Ford—every day we’re seeing what Ontario will look like tomorrow, and that takes power. That’s why we will never apologize for coming forward with strategies to make sure that investments can be made in Ontario. The Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade is trying every day to bring one more deal to Ontario.

Everybody needs power. Bill 40 goes a long way for saying, “Where will you be when I need to connect to the grid?” And we will say, “We will be ready for you and welcome you.”

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I recognize the member from Mississauga–Malton.

Mr. Deepak Anand: I would like to continue where the member from York Centre has left—the hard-working member of York Centre; I forgot to mention that. It was absolutely well said. It’s a vicious cycle. When you’re doing good, good things happen to you. When you’re investing into the policies to bring the investment, investment is going to come. When the investments are coming, they have expectations, and that’s what Bill 40 is all about.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to speak on Bill 40, the Protect Ontario by Securing Affordable Energy for Generations Act, 2025. Before I start, as I always do: Today, since getting elected, it has been seven years, four months and 28 days. I want to take a moment to thank God for giving me the mental and physical health so that I can represent the residents of Mississauga–Malton. And thank you to the residents of Mississauga–Malton for your trust in me to do what we’re doing with these government members.

Speaker, the previous member just talked about the concept—when we talk about Ontario, we’re like a global village. We have people from 150 nationalities speaking 202 languages—a world that is more connected than ever. What happens across an ocean can impact us here within minutes, from trade flows and energy markets to data and technology.

As we stand here today, Ontario’s success has always been built on our ability to thrive in this interconnected global village, where we attract people, talent and ideas from across the world. Because of this concept, being connected means opportunity. It means we can bring the world to Ontario, and at the same time, we can take what we build here in Ontario to the world.

That is what this bill is really about. It’s about how we prepare Ontario to lead in an era of global competition where reliable and affordable energy is not just a utility, it is a cornerstone of prosperity. It is about being competitive. It is about being there to progress.

What does that mean? As global competition intensifies, energy demand surges and affordability becomes more important. We are not going to stand still. Through this bill, through this government, under the leadership of Premier Ford, we are stepping up. We are making sure we are taking decisive action to build a more competitive, resilient and self-reliant economy through this bill. This legislation will protect workers and our economy by supporting major growth in Ontario’s energy system to meet rising demand.

It’s simple as this: When these companies are going to come here, they are going to build and manufacture, and they will need electricity. If you go 30, 40, 50 years back, I don’t remember there being many people who had phones or cellphones. Today, it’s a requirement. Having a laptop or a computer at home is not a want, it’s a need. All this equipment needs energy. In other words, we have to make sure that we have affordable, secure, reliable and clean energy for generations to come.

As the members already heard, Ontario’s electricity demand is expected to rise significantly for the next 25 years—I would say it’s actually going to be forever now. We’re not going to go back; we’re actually going to go forward. That is why the government is acting now to build faster, plan smarter and power Ontario’s future.

But this is not something which the government has not shown before. If you look at the data from the previous government when we knew that the silver tsunami was coming—our seniors and baby boomers—they built 611 long-term-care homes—

Hon. Sam Oosterhoff: Nothing.

Mr. Deepak Anand: —practically nothing—but we didn’t sit. We’re not going to wait for that; we’re actually going to work and act now.

The same way we’re attracting these investments, we want to invest back into the people of Ontario. As our kids are growing and doing amazing research and innovation, we want to make sure that we are there to support them with our reliable, affordable energy.

Talking about the data—Speaker, you already heard from the other speakers as well—the past government increased energy rates by 400% and planned to close the Pickering nuclear facility. What we’re doing is we’re doing exactly the opposite. We’re reducing the cost and we’re making sure we have reliable energy. Why? Because when we are giving somebody a dream, a dream to prosper, we need to give them the tools to achieve that also.

That is what this bill is doing. Reliable energy is not just a matter of infrastructure; it is a matter of confidence. Businesses invest where they can count on power that is affordable and consistent. Families settle where communities are strong and opportunities are growing. That is one reason you’ve seen growth in Ontario, whether it’s bringing in investments to the tune of over $60 billion, or close to 800,000 people coming to Ontario in a single year. When we talk about these investments, we’re talking about bringing more job opportunities and supporting our residents.

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Mr. Speaker, reliable, affordable and clean energy gives global investors the confidence that Ontario is the right place to grow. But just as importantly, it gives local entrepreneurs the power to innovate and expand. There are many companies in Mississauga–Malton that are doing exactly that. Energy security means that a small business in Malton or a start-up in Kitchener can grow into the next major Ontario success story without looking beyond our borders. By making it easier and more affordable to operate here, Bill 40 helps us to attract investments across the globe, while creating Ontario-made businesses rooted in our community, hiring local talent and investing back into the economy.

So what are we doing here? We’re making sure we are supporting the growth of Ontario’s data centres, the fastest growing industry in the world. As the global demand for AI, cloud computing and data processing increases, what’s going to happen? Mr. Speaker, we have clean air. We have amazing, sweet water. We have a massive land mass. But that’s not enough. For those companies to come here to invest, they would need energy. By doing that, we are making sure we’re getting investment, innovation and job creation. That is why we are prioritizing electricity for data centres that support the province’s economic interest, create high-quality jobs, strengthen Ontario’s position in the digital economy and enhance Canada’s data sovereignty.

This is not just technology; it is about security. By keeping more of our data infrastructure here at home, we are strengthening privacy protection and giving businesses the confidence to grow in a secure and stable environment. These measures are part of Energy for Generations, Ontario’s integrated plan to power the strongest economy in the G7. This plan brings together all energy sources under one coordinated strategy to meet rising demand, protect the grid and ensure Ontario has affordable, reliable and clean power.

We are doing so by supporting our workers. For example, Speaker, if you really look at it, energy-intensive industries have always been one of the largest sources of growth in Ontario’s economy. Our IT sector, for example, contributes $48 billion to the GDP annually. Ontario leads the country in clean technology, with five Ontario companies ranked among the top 100 globally. We host 64% of Canada’s fintech firms: companies like Astute Softwares, K2BTech, TSI Solutions. These are all Ontario success stories.

That includes, Speaker, investing in clean and secure and affordable power. By building this infrastructure, we are helping and supporting the electricity requirement while maintaining to keep the cost lower, expanding clean energy sources and ensuring our energy system remains both sustainable and affordable.

Speaker, to conclude: The Protect Ontario by Securing Affordable Energy for Generations Act, if passed, will codify and add economic growth as a formal objective of Ontario’s energy agencies, support Ontario utilities to buy Canadian, support Ontario’s growing hydrogen economy and expand the eligibility of the Future Clean Electricity Fund to include nuclear generation and transmission infrastructure, which will be necessary to meet the province’s growing electricity demand.

This bill, Mr. Speaker, reflects what Ontario needs. We adapt, we innovate and we lead. This bill allows us to attract global investments while empowering local businesses to build and stay here. It strengthens our self-reliance, protects jobs and ensures the lights stay on for the generations to come.

In Mississauga–Malton, I see every day what’s possible when businesses, government and community come together with collaboration: We shape a better future. Bill 40 captures that same spirit of building for the long term, not just for today.

Ontario is a place of opportunity where people come from across the world to work hard, dream big, power the future together. So I urge all members on both sides: Let’s come together, pass this bill and build a better, stronger, prosperous Ontario.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Questions?

MPP Wayne Gates: I appreciate getting to say a few words on Bill 40. Doug Ford’s promised to fix the hydro mess—the mess, quite frankly, that was created by the Conservatives and the Liberals. As a matter of fact, the Liberals got defeated when you guys took office because they privatized Hydro One. It has driven up our bills 300% in some cases. November 1, just a few days ago, hydro prices are jumping nearly 30%. I don’t know anybody that’s getting a 30% raise. I may be wrong, but I don’t know any.

Instead of fixing it, the government is hiding it, doubling the rebate to 23.5%, costing taxpayers $6.5 billion—that’s with a B, Speaker; billion with a B. That’s money coming out of our hydro bills; it’s coming out of our hospitals, our schools, our housing and, quite frankly—I met with the long-term minister today—it’s coming out of long-term care as well.

Ontario is running the highest debt we’ve seen in my history, $14.6 billion. When is this government going to finally fix the broken hydro system?

Mr. Deepak Anand: This bill is nothing but the tale of two different worlds: their world, when they supported high energy rates along with the Liberal Party; and on the other side, what we’re doing is we’re standing up to protect by securing affordable energy for generations, making sure that energy that powers our homes, factories and future is secure, affordable and proudly Canadian. That is what this bill is doing, to make sure that as we get more investments, when we grow, we have the tools to support those industries.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Question?

Ms. Natalie Pierre: Thank you to my colleagues for their comments this afternoon. Our government has recognized that electricity demand in the province of Ontario is forecasted to increase significantly, driven in part by growth: growth of data centres, AI workloads and electrification. I’m wondering if the member from York Centre can tell us what impact the failure to control and regulate the connection of certain data centres would have on the province of Ontario.

Hon. Michael S. Kerzner: I want to thank the member for the question. The reality is, when we look at other jurisdictions and other provinces in Canada, if data centres even want to go there, those provinces may not have the generation capacity to accommodate. We’re hearing even in Quebec—go out future years; I don’t know what their capacity of generation is. We know, because Premier Ford has a plan, and that is to be bold with small SMRs, to make sure that we have a long-term plan to build a larger nuclear plant similar to what we have in Darlington and to look for other ways of generating power that will keep our provincial grid one of the cleanest in the country. We’re proud of where we are. Those data centres belong here in Ontario.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Question?

Mr. Terence Kernaghan: I’d like to thank the Solicitor General and the member from Mississauga–Malton for their presentation. My question will be for the Solicitor General. The Solicitor General used the words “prudent” and “practical” in his presentation discussing Ontario’s EV future. My question would be, was it prudent for the government to rip out fully paid for and functioning EV stations from GO stations or was it practical to rip out fully functioning and paid for EV charging stations from GO stations?

Hon. Michael S. Kerzner: What I can say to the honourable member is that we’re not going to stop. When it comes to being bold and innovative and imaginative and foreseeing an Ontario that will be for my children and their children’s generation one day, what we can say is that we will go forward.

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When I went down to see the plant of Volkswagen at that site in St. Thomas—it’s the third-largest building in the world that will be right outside of St. Thomas.

At the end of the day, Mr. Speaker, we’re not going to stop. We’re going to be bold. We’re going to be innovative. We’re going to be progressive. And we’re going to make sure that we will be there to leave an economy for another generation, unlike when Bob Rae’s government was here; they left it for no one.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I recognize the member from Orléans.

Mr. Stephen Blais: I agree: It’s bold to call taking money from one pocket to put into the next “innovative.”

But my question to my friend from Mississauga who waxed poetically about the innovation in this bill and how it was going to protect Ontario’s economy—I’m wondering if the member for Mississauga can tell us, how many generations of Ontarians is he willing to burden with the additional debt that his government is taking on in order to not become efficient in hydro prices—to actually have hydro prices go up—instead of actually making the hydro system more innovative and more efficient for Ontarians today and into the future?

Mr. Deepak Anand: To the people of Ontario and the kids that member opposite is talking about, please do not read what the previous government has done to their rate. If it was their government, they would be in debt by now anyway.

But I’ll tell you what this government is doing, because it will help those children when they go to study. They know we have a province where the future is good and bright.

What this legislation will do is provide stability and clarity. The intent is to ensure that the critical energy infrastructures are made based on system needs, reliability and long-term affordability. This is about responsible governance and safeguarding ratepayers from uncertainty—like the Liberals, proposed by the NDP, for 15 years that had skyrocketed the energy bills of Ontario.

Speaker, through you to the people and the children: You have a government who is there to support you, because we want to build a better, stronger Ontario.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Question?

Hon. Zee Hamid: As you know, all data centres are not the same. Some data centres might allow Canadian governments and corporations to store cloud data, data in the cloud, within our borders—really important for national security—whereas some data centres might just be mining Bitcoin or crypto.

I’m curious about changes to legislation. Can either of the speakers, the minister or the member from Mississauga–Malton, talk about how the minister exercising some control on the types of data centre that can connect to the grid is important, and how does this benefit the province?

Mr. Deepak Anand: Thank you, member from Milton, for the incredible work that you’re doing in your riding.

You’re absolutely right. We’ve seen a lot of growth in Milton, an explosion of growth. And those investments are coming because the people who are investing, whether they are from across the globe or from Canada, know that there is a government who is always going to make sure that data centres that support the province’s economic interests, including those that create high-quality jobs, strengthen our digital economy and support domestic data hosting, are quickly approved for connection to the grid, ensuring Canadian data stays in Canada and is protected from misuse and weaker foreign privacy regimes.

Speaker, we are making sure that we are building up a better, stronger Ontario through this bill.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Question?

Ms. Stephanie Bowman: I’d like to ask the member for Mississauga–Malton if he could comment on the percentage of the grid that’s now clean. It reached a peak under the Liberal government: 96% clean, emissions-free in 2017. Under this government—the Conservative government—it’s fallen to 84%, Mr. Speaker. Every year, it’s been getting worse.

I agree with the government: Demand does continue to rise. But will the government commit to what percentage of the grid is going to be clean as we continue to see demand rise, or is the bottom the limit? What is the limit for what we will accept in terms of emissions from this grid?

Mr. Deepak Anand: Thank you to this government who believes electricity is important, because that’s why I’m able to charge my phone—and thank you to my phone. I’m just going to read the data: Ontario has one of the lowest per capita emissions in Canada at 10.4 tonnes of CO₂, which is 43% below the national average.

Speaker, yes, this is the government who believes in balancing to make sure that when we give these investments we’re prepared for these investments, because these investments are paying for the services for our future generations to come. That’s why we’re building a better, stronger Ontario.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

Ms. Doly Begum: Speaker, if you’ll indulge me, I just want to take a moment first to share something that took place in my riding yesterday because I think the entire House will appreciate how beautiful it was.

Yesterday, we celebrated the 100-year anniversary of the Scarborough fire hall. In Scarborough, in my riding, we have the oldest firehouse. It was just a beautiful celebration where we had the family of the first fire chief, Scott Williams, there, as well as the McCowan family. The reeve at that time, Robert McCowan, had the trowel, so they had the original trowel from that time for laying the brick that was presented to him. They dedicated and donated that to the fire hall. It was just a beautiful celebration.

I just want to say thank you to the firefighters for what they do. We appreciate your work. You signed up for a job that is inherently dangerous to support all of us, to safeguard all of us, to protect all of us. It is not forgotten on any of us in this House.

Thank you very much, Speaker, for indulging me for that.

I am honoured and privileged to speak to Bill 40. It is always a pleasure to stand here on behalf of the good people of Scarborough Southwest and speak to any legislation.

One of the things that I always talk about in this House is requiring all of us on this side to trust the government, when the government—really, all they want to do is centralize power and, in some ways, find really sneaky ways to get more done that supports their friends and donors. In this case, I have this feeling, and we’ll find out more when the government actually proposes the plan for schedule 1, the integrated energy plan, which will be presented later on. But right now, from the way it looks, they’re just trying to sneak more gas plants without local authority.

So, Speaker, when I look at this legislation—and I’ve gone through it over and over again. Because I come in here and I want to be able to work together because I think, at the end of the day, we all have the same goal, which is to represent our ridings and make sure that we are upholding the values of our local constituents and really making sure that their lives are more affordable. Right now, it’s not.

One of the ways we could make their lives more affordable is by allowing them to have affordable electricity. Obviously, when we look at the demand and what’s going on, things will get worse.

One of the initial things that we look at in this legislation, before I go into the local authority and the gas plants, is the government’s initial idea of, “Here the demand will increase and therefore we will need to make sure that we have this legislation.”

I listened to the speakers before me speak to this, the minister as well as the member—yourself, Speaker. One of the things I have to say I agree with is that the demand will increase. And we have to do everything possible to make sure that we make up for that demand. It is projected by the IESO’s 2025 annual planning outlook that electricity system demand will actually project about a 75% increase by 2050, up from the 60% projected in the 2024 outlook, and that’s just going to increase.

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But one of the things they highlight and that I know the government is also concerned about—I’m not sure if they’re concerned in a good way or a bad way, and that’s my question—is data centres. When they talk about data centres, Speaker, data centres are expected to be the top driver of this demand. So when we talk about this demand and what we’re trying to do, my number one priority is my constituents, the residents of Scarborough Southwest, and of course all of Ontario, all Ontarians. Does this bill—and is the intention of this legislation to—actually help residents in Ontario have affordable hydro?

Now, if we look at the background and if we look at what took place—actually, I should say that maybe a month or so ago, I had the honour and privilege to attend a conference in South Bend on behalf of the Ontario Legislature along with my colleagues on different sides—MPP Gallagher Murphy—I forget her riding name—as well as MPP Mary-Margaret McMahon—to come together and learn about some of these things and what took place in the conference for the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Legislative Caucus

It was just incredible to learn about the way we sometimes miss certain things that later we regret. PFAS was one of them, and the way plastic and PFAS have now gone into our bodies and how it’s too late. We had presenters at the conference and one of the women talked about how her body is probably just so—it is really sad. Some of the family stories are just so heartbreaking.

We learned about PFAS, and we learned about the impact it had at the conference. But another presentation was sort of a warning to what’s happening in terms of the water demand as well as the electricity demand when it comes to data centres. I just thought I would share this because I think it really connects with this legislation and how we learn so much in this job about things that we didn’t really do in our professional background before. This conference allowed me to understand the unknown risks as well as the uncertainty that comes with data centres.

This was a non-partisan conference, so trust me when I say this: I’m not here to say yes or no to one way. I just want to make sure that the government is aware of some of these things and the uncertainty.

The Great Lakes region—and I want to highlight a few things because Ontario is one of them. It’s a very attractive region when it comes to data centres. Data centres—the big companies, the big AI companies—want to come to Ontario. Trust me, you do not have to make yourself attractive.

All of the Great Lakes region is already attractive for these data centres because we have a big basin of water that data centres want to be in. You don’t have to change legislation for that. In fact, you have to make sure that you have legislation to safeguard and protect residents and ratepayers and taxpayers to make sure that we have access to electricity and are on the grid.

Because of the freshwater resource and the relatively cool climate, the stable and low-carbon energy grid, proximity to the major North American markets etc., when it comes to data centres, they require constant cooling to function efficiently. Cooling systems, especially what is called evaporative cooling, consumes a vast amount of water as well as a vast amount of energy.

Right now, it looks like there is indiscriminate legislation in terms of prioritizing whether data centres get on the grid or not. One of the things that I think I appreciated, that it takes a look at in this legislation, which is sort of a hint, is that now that indiscriminate prioritization will go away.

If I were to just give you an idea of what data centres consumed worldwide—in 2022, they consumed an estimated 460 terawatt hours globally. I can’t even describe the amount that is. In Canada, what we’re expecting, actually, is that that’s about a 13% demand for the total consumption of water, just by data centres—if we are actually making that comparison within Canada. And the expectation that the current—the way data centres are increasing, by 2035, we are expecting that 13% of the demand of electricity will be just from data centres. So there is a huge increase and it’s just going to continue, and we have to make sure we’re prepared in regard to that.

So are we actually making sure that we are safeguarding our constituents, our residents, so they have electricity?

Honestly, I get it, that the minister or—you want to give one person that sort of power when you see the mismanagement by the Liberals. You saw what took place for 15 years, especially on the hydro file. What a colossal, complete, utter disaster. One of the reasons I got into provincial politics almost a decade ago was because of the sell-off of Hydro One. What a complete embarrassment of this province by the previous Liberal government. They just took a crown corporation, which was already broken into pieces, and put it on a silver platter and signed up for really terrible contracts and handed off contracts. The minister actually did a fantastic job, talking about how even he thought, “Do you know what? I should sign up for one of these contracts, because it sounds too good to be true.” Frankly, they were too good to be true, because taxpayers, all of us Ontarians, are still paying for that. We are still paying for that Liberal failure when it came to the sell-off of Hydro One.

When I see that we are giving a minister or a ministry so much power—while I understand the risk that the Liberals put us in, it also begs the question of what this Conservative government will do with this province.

If you look a little bit back, before the Liberals, it was the Mike Harris Conservative government that actually made it really easy for the Liberals to put Hydro One, to put the entire electricity system, on a silver platter and put it up for sale. It’s really important that we talk about this, because—just refresh to our memory to 1998: There was legislation called the Energy Competition Act, if I’m not mistaken. The Conservatives should know this very well. You should have your dossier on that. It’s actually known as one of the primary reasons why we are still facing such high electricity rates in Ontario today. That legislation did two things. One was, it increased electricity rates for all of us. That legislation in 1998 by the Conservative government increased electricity rates, that we’re still paying for today. And, number two, it created the market instability of electricity in Ontario.

When we have this kind of history, this kind of legacy from the Conservatives, can we really trust the ministry and can we really trust the Ford government, this Conservative government, to take care of ratepayers, to take care of taxpayers ever again?

Interjections.

Ms. Doly Begum: Exactly. No, we cannot.

We had, for 94 years—Sir Adam Beck actually gave—that was his legacy. When Adam Beck established Ontario’s public hydro system for the explicit purpose of driving Ontario’s industrial economy—something that this legislation pretends to do. Speaker, 94 years prior to the Mike Harris government, we already had that. It was the Conservative government that actually destroyed that. It was actually—the purpose was so that people can pay at cost and every penny would be reinvested into the electricity system so that Ontarians can benefit from that. It was a former Conservative government that completely destroyed that. Then came the Liberals, and then they just put it up on a silver platter for sale.

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So, now, here we are. Really, I think even in just schedule 1, it talks about how they’re going to establish the same thing that I think Sir Adam Beck did initially when we established our public hydro. Unfortunately, because of the Conservatives and the Liberals, we do not have that today, so people are forced to pay really high rates for electricity.

When I look at this and I look at the demand, we still haven’t figured out a really good system for storing clean energy. When I see the way that this government lays out this legislation, there are quite a few things that are still missing from the legislation. What we’re hoping to get is the integrated energy plan 2025—when the government is expected to release the actual plan for what they mean in this legislation.

I want to quote a few things from the legislation. One of the things they specifically talk about is the specified load facilities, without really giving us a proper, clear criteria for how that facility will be assessed.

What we are seeing right now with the Ministry of Labour and the labour minister is, we can’t even get the criteria for how the SDF funding was released. We don’t even know how organizations were given taxpayer money, taxpayer dollars, through the SDF funding. We have these kinds of examples. We also have examples like the greenbelt. We also have examples like Ontario Place.

When we allow for a minister to hand-pick something, we know how that goes. We have very good experience of that. I’ve been here now, what, eight years? Trust me, Speaker, I can share with you—some of the earlier years, before you were here, it was the same thing, so you didn’t miss out on much. Your ministers did the same thing, Speaker, whether it was the greenbelt, Ontario Place—and now maybe with this, they’ll be hand-picked by the minister. And they just want to say, “Trust us.” I want to trust you, but you haven’t really given me a really good basis for that. You haven’t done a good job to make sure that—do you know when you have a kid who’s just like, “No, no, I won’t touch this candy. You can just leave it here on the table,” and then you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to trust you,” and then you come back and there are no candies left? And then you do the same thing over and over. I just can’t.

So here we are. We have these specific highlighted parts, sections, where it basically says, “Trust us.”

The other part of it is that it kind of shifts the burden from ratepayers to taxpayers, and it will hide the real rate of electricity. We’ve seen that with the Liberal government as well, where even within our bills, people were paying for things that they really were not—the consumption wasn’t there. What I’m seeing in this legislation is that there are a lot of things that say, “Do you know what? We’re going to allow for tools for the ministry to make sure that they look at the high consumption facilities; they look at different organizations, different folks getting on the grid, like data centres, for example; looking at the capacity.” But then it also allows for the minister to take on a lot of power; not only that, it actually takes away power from local authorities—so, for example, municipalities.

As I was saying, one of the reasons I got into provincial politics was because of Ontario Hydro, because of electricity and what took place with the Liberal government almost 10 years ago.

One of my fond memories was going to Wasaga Beach and meeting with local people there who came together, rallying against their local council, who—the mayor at that time wanted to sell their Wasaga Distribution Inc., the WDI. Wasaga Distribution Inc. was owned by Wasaga Beach, the town, the people. They had the power to come back. It was amazing seeing the local people, who sometimes didn’t even care what was happening in this meeting—and it was a packed room. It was amazing. That’s local power at the hands of local people.

Right now, what I see from schedule 2 of this legislation is that you will be taking away the ratification by the referendum that exists when there’s a new gas plant.

I cannot believe I’m running out of time. I was just getting to the good part of how this legislation has sneaky ways of now giving more new contracts for gas plants without local people’s involvement and approval, and giving council the way to just approve it. Sometimes that can be very problematic.

Thank you very much for the time to speak to this bill.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Questions? I’ll go to the member from Niagara Falls.

MPP Wayne Gates: He didn’t want to wake up all the Conservatives to ask a question, so he had to come to me.

I’ve been here all afternoon on Bill 40.

What bothers me about this place sometimes is, some people will stand up and they don’t say what’s accurate. I won’t say “don’t tell the truth”—but it’s not accurate.

Some of the members over there continue to say that it was the Liberals and the NDP who supported the privatization of hydro. That is not accurate. At no time—and I’ve been here for 12 years—have we ever supported to privatize our hydro system. It was done under Mike Harris. That was before me. I wasn’t here. I’m old, but I’m not that old. It was done under Mike Harris, supported by all the Conservatives.

I want to be clear. So my question to my colleague is, is that true—that the NDP supported to privatize hydro?

Ms. Doly Begum: Oh, hell no—no.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Withdraw, please.

Ms. Doly Begum: I withdraw.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): You have a few more seconds.

Ms. Doly Begum: Thank you for the question.

It was one of the reasons why I joined the NDP and ran in my riding of Scarborough Southwest. There was a Liberal member there who supported the sell-off of hydro, and I was vehemently against it. I came to Queen’s Park—it was the first time I came to Queen’s Park—and I was doing a deputation, telling the Liberal government at that time in committee, “You should stop this sell-off of Hydro One and make sure that people have power over their own electricity system in this province.”

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further questions?

MPP Catherine McKenney: Thank you for that, to my colleague. That was excellent.

I just want to say off the top, I am happy that you focused on water demand, because that is something that really is missing here—the lack of any safeguards.

I want to go back to the data centres and the pull on transmission capacity and scarce energy resources. There’s no clear definition here of what a data centre is. Do you have a concern that we could be looking at the cryptocurrency miners taking up that scarce energy resource that is needed in the province, again driving up the cost of our energy?

Ms. Doly Begum: Thank you to my colleague for this question.

It is a very, very concerning future that we’re going to face, and we have to be prepared to address it.

It is estimated that data centres actually consume more—let me just see. It’s estimated that they consume millions of litres per day for just infrastructure for digital economy, and that is just currently. The impact it has on water—

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Response, please.

Ms. Doly Begum: —in our Great Lakes region, Ontario—we’re one of the regions that’s targeted. Obviously, power is another one. They can be on the grid and get—thank you very much, Speaker.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Questions?

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Mr. Tyler Allsopp: Thank you to the member from Scarborough Southwest for your comments. I really enjoyed your speech today.

You talked a lot about how terrible the previous Liberal government was. I really appreciate hearing more about that.

Certainly, my residents in Bay of Quinte remember how awful it was under their regime, when they were forcing wind projects into farmers’ fields—who didn’t want them—on the south shore of Prince Edward county, and ecologically sensitive areas were forced to put up wind power, and also, is at eight times the market rate. It was just an absolute terrible, dismal failure from that previous government.

If you could take another 60 seconds and remind us of how bad things used to be, I’d really appreciate it.

Ms. Doly Begum: You and me both, my friend.

I think our constituents were really tired of seeing how a crown corporation was taken for granted and sold.

I remember actually even meeting the Premier at that time, and I was talking about how I came to committee, talking about individuals’ stories and how much their hydro rates had increased—how some people were paying $800, $1,200 for hydro bills. It was just horrible, what was happening. People were losing their livelihoods just trying to keep up to heat their homes.

But I have to say, that failure is also linked to the Mike Harris Conservative government in the previous years, who made it possible by restructuring the crown corporation of the electricity system in Ontario. That made it easier for the Liberals to do that.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further questions?

MPP Wayne Gates: I just want to say to my colleague who’s in the corner in the back row there—we had that discussion earlier today, so he knows who I’m talking about—I’ve gone down to the third row in 14 years.

Anyway, I want to say that we have 800,000 Ontarians unemployed today. I have kids and grandkids who can’t find a job—22% unemployment.

Today, we’re subsidizing this hydro file by $6.5 billion, and our deficit for the province of Ontario is now $14.6 billion, the highest level ever in the history of the province. We could be using that money for hospitals or schools or long-term-care facilities.

My question to the member is, do you have any idea how much we’re paying—interest rates—to service the debt of $14.6 billion?

Ms. Doly Begum: The member brought a very important point, which is the cost that the people of this province pay for government mistakes.

Today, I think that the leader of the official opposition asked a question about how many people actually got jobs from the SDF funds that were given out, and the government had no data. I don’t think they know about the interests, either, that you’re asking about.

What I would also like to add to this, in these uncertainties and these unknowns, are the cost of the 401 tunnel, for example, the Ontario Place disaster, the entire government’s agenda on some of the construction, the Eglinton LRT—all of these that the people of this province have been paying for that the government has not been accountable for.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further questions?

Ms. Stephanie Bowman: I thank the member from Scarborough Southwest for her comments.

My question is about the cleanliness of our electricity. The Liberal government created the greenbelt. The Liberal government shut down coal-generating plants so that today we all breathe cleaner air. I wonder if the member would like to comment on the benefits of that and what this government has done to our clean grid, which used to be a real asset—and it’s still not bad, compared to other places. But 96% of our energy used to come from zero-emitting sources; now it’s down to 84%, under the Conservative government. So I’d like to ask her whether or not she thinks the Conservative government is doing a better job on the energy file than the Liberals.

Ms. Doly Begum: This time, I am going to say absolutely not. But it’s not like the Liberals set the bar very high. The Liberals signed Ontarians up for contracts that cost taxpayers a lot of money.

One of the things I always talk about is that you set people up for success—when you come up with legislation, you have to have good, pure intentions.

What happened with the hydro file, under the Liberals, was a disaster because they did not have the right intention to benefit Ontarians.

Right now, with this legislation, when I see the selective process that will be given to the minister, we’re heading to that same route again. We’re heading to the same route because we don’t have a sound economic policy that will actually help Ontarians within this legislation—just like when the Liberals did by saying, “You know what? We’re going to shut this down but do this at the same time.” It actually made it harder for Ontarians to get by.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate?

Mr. Stephen Blais: In 2018, the Premier promised to cut Ontarians’ hydro bills by 12%. That promise was broken. Average hydro bills have actually gone up, not down, since he has taken office. The Premier himself warned back then that hiding hydro costs in debt would burden our children and our great-grandchildren.

Yet, here we are in 2025; instead of real relief, the Premier’s government has embraced the same shell game he once denounced. They claim that hydro rates are affordable while shuffling the costs around and out of sight. So how is the government supposedly making hydro appear cheaper? By using your tax dollars to subsidize electricity costs.

Bill 40 doubles down on that trick. It lets the government pay electricity generators and utilities with money from the Legislature—i.e. taxpayer funds—instead of having consumers cover the full costs on their hydro bills. In plain terms, you are still paying, just through your taxes rather than your electricity statement. So if that’s true, then the Premier and his government have in fact raised taxes, because, as we know, hydro rates are up, not down. It looks like they took charges off one bill and put them on another. That is a classic shell game. Hydro rates aren’t magically lower, as we’ve already said; they’re higher. But the costs are simply hidden on the public ledger. This subsidy scheme hides the true cost of electricity from Ontarians. When people don’t see the real price of power, there’s less pressure on government to fix the root problems.

Bill 40 continues writing blank cheques to everyone instead of targeting relief to those who truly need it. That’s not responsible policy. That’s politics and optics.

Today, over $7 billion a year from the Ministry of Energy’s budget is spent on electricity price mitigation—fancy words for hydro subsidies. That’s more than three cents of every tax dollar that you pay, siphoned off to artificially lower electricity bills. Think about that: Out of every dollar in taxes, a chunk of it is going to cover up high hydro rates, instead of funding schools, funding hospitals, funding tax relief. It’s not free money. It’s taxpayer money. If the province doesn’t have a surplus lying around—and we know that this government doesn’t—then where do those billions come from? It comes from debt, the magical four-letter word this government loves. The government is piling up public debt to bankroll this scheme, meaning that our kids and our grandkids will end up paying for today’s hydro discounts with interest.

Far from securing affordable energy for future generations, Bill 40 is setting future generations up to pay the price. Why? Because this government cares more about the optics than the outcomes. By masking costs with subsidies, they can wave around low hydro rates on paper while ignoring the actual problem: the high cost of producing and delivering power.

Even members of the Premier’s own party have admitted that shuffling costs hasn’t done anything to reduce the actual cost of producing electricity, and that’s exactly right. The underlying expenses are still there: the infrastructure, the contracts, the market inefficiencies. None of that gets cheaper just because the government uses taxpayer dollars to cover part of the bill.

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Now, Bill 40 offers an illusion of affordability. It’s a short-term political fix that does nothing to make energy genuinely more efficient or affordable in the long run. So let’s be clear about what Bill 40 does: It openly authorizes the government to take costs that normally would be on your hydro bill and to pay them out of the treasury instead, to use taxes to pay that hydro bill instead. In legal terms, those costs will be paid out of money appropriated by the Legislature. In human terms, they’re putting it on your tab as a taxpayer. Normally, in a normal situation, the independent regulator, the OEB, would make sure that the rates that you pay, that I pay, that everyone pays would cover the cost of electricity—nothing more, nothing less. But under this plan, if the government wants to curry favour by undercharging for power, they will just plug the gap with tax money. It’s moving the expense from one pocket to another and hoping that no one notices that they’ve got both hands in our pockets.

Bill 40 is a grand illusion. The government wants to disguise electricity costs using public dollars so that the bills look lower. It’s like printing a lower price on a product but quietly adding the difference to your credit card bill. It’s sleight of hand, and that sleight of hand might fool some people in the short run, but it’s not real affordability. Real affordability comes from lowering costs, not by hiding them.

By pouring subsidies in and keeping prices artificially low, the government actually discourages energy conservation and efficiency. People have less reason to save power when it seems cheap. Economists warn that these distorted prices are fiscally unsustainable and undermine energy conservation—

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I will interrupt the member to caution him on his use of language with regard to some of the terms he’s using.

Mr. Stephen Blais: Sure. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In the end, though, someone always pays, through taxes or through debt, and in this case, that someone is Ontarian taxpayers. There’s no magic; it’s just a costly illusion.

This whole approach threatens Ontario’s future on multiple fronts. First, on affordability: It might feel good now, but it’s a trap. Today’s subsidy party will lead to higher costs tomorrow when the bills come due with interest.

Second, on transparency: By burying the costs in this government’s books, Bill 40 makes it harder for the public to see what’s really going on. When hydro prices don’t reflect reality, families and businesses can’t plan, there’s less accountability and there is more susceptibility for waste.

Third, productivity: Hiding true costs means that there’s less pressure to innovate and improve efficiency. An economy where energy prices are manipulated is one where productivity growth falls behind because there’s less incentive to invest in new technology or smarter energy use.

In short, the policy undermines the very goals we should be striving for: affordable energy, open and honest government and a more productive economy.

In this bill, the Ontario Energy Board is basically told to stand down. In fact, the bill adds a new section—I think it’s 28.1—that says certain big electricity users can only be connected to the grid under rules that the cabinet will later set by regulation. All the details are left to the government’s regulations, with no guiding principles written into the law. That means decisions about who gets power connections on what terms could be made behind closed doors, without the usual transparent process. It’s a recipe for political interference, and with the public and even the Legislature kept in the dark. It’s a recipe for the government’s next political fundraising scandal. So I have to ask, will the Minister of Energy be the next minister who’s open for business?

Now, Mr. Speaker, a curious change in Bill 40: It even lets the CEO of the Ontario Energy Board set internal rules about how quickly to hold hearings and what evidence to consider. Why meddle with the OEB procedures? It looks like it’s a move to tighten control over the regulator. The clear message: If the independent regulator tries to protect consumers in a way that upsets a well-connected company, this government is going to change the rules. With Bill 40, they are pre-emptively stacking the deck. Decisions might no longer be made purely on the evidence and the public interest, but rather on the political orders of the government—political orders influenced by, perhaps, political contributions. It’s a pattern we’ve seen before, Mr. Speaker.

The bill’s changes allow what you might call backdoor subsidies. Instead of openly raising hydro rates, which of course would upset many people, or having a full debate on spending, the government can quietly funnel money to energy companies through legislative appropriations and then order the energy board to lower the rates accordingly. It’s all done outside of public view, baked into the provincial budget, which is hard for the average Ontarian to trace to their hydro bill. There’s no line on your hydro bill that says, “Covered by taxpayer funds.” But maybe if this bill passes, Mr. Speaker, we should recommend that that line be added to everyone’s hydro bill.

I think that the lack of transparency is by design. By bypassing the usual regulatory scrutiny, the government can claim political credit for lower hydro rates while hiding the true cost in the form of just general government spending. It’s an accounting trick that insults the public’s intelligence, assuming that we won’t figure out who’s paying for what.

When you strip away oversight and hide real costs, you open the door to crony capitalism. All these new powers—cabinet setting connection rules in secret, the OEB told to prioritize a certain agenda, billions in subsidies up for grabs—are a recipe for well-connected insiders to game the system.

Unfortunately, this government has a track record that gives us reason to worry. Handing out discretionary power with no clear principles invites lobbying and it invites favouritism.

Who is going to get those big industrial connections or hefty subsidies? Will it be whoever has the Premier’s ear or is a friend to the party? Ontario has already seen scandals where political buddies come first and public interest comes last. Bill 40, by concentrating so much discretionary control in cabinet’s hands, is practically an invitation to backroom deals.

Mr. Speaker, the government’s approach emphasizes short-term economic growth—growth spurts, really—often just spending lots of public money for a ribbon-cutting photo op, instead of addressing the structural problems that would actually make life better. They brag about jobs created or investments attracted. But how many of those are propped up by big subsidies taxpayers are paying for?

Real prosperity isn’t built on the government writing ever bigger cheques. It comes from improving productivity, doing more with less, spurring innovation and cutting waste. Yet neither Bill 40 nor the government’s integrated energy plan even mention productivity growth. Not once do they mention productivity growth, Mr. Speaker. They’re busy chasing flashy projects—and calling it growth—that ignore foundational efficiencies that truly lower costs and raise living standards. In the end, it’s all about looking good now, not building for the future or building a stronger economy.

Let’s talk about productivity for a second, because it’s the missing piece in Bill 40. Productivity growth is how we make progress without simply throwing more money or labour at a problem. It’s about innovation, smarter work and better technology, basically, getting more value out of each dollar and each hour. Over time, that is the only path to sustainably higher living standards and affordability.

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The bill is fixated on spending and subsidizing, not on modernizing. By ignoring productivity, the government is missing the chance to actually lower the cost of energy in the long run. Instead of encouraging efficiency and innovation in the energy sector, they’re just writing cheques to cover up the existing inefficiency.

The government keeps touting economic growth, but what kind of growth are we getting? If the government spends billions of dollars to create temporary jobs or to entice a company or a business to come to Ontario, they might call it a win. But do debt-driven subsidies really demonstrate real economic health, or is it just a short-term economic sugar high? There’s a big difference between pumping money into the economy for a short-term bump and fostering a competitive, productive economy that grows on its own strength.

With Bill 40, the Conservative government is effectively saying, “Trust us. Whatever we decide is economic growth is worth putting onto your hydro bill or onto your tax bill.” That’s a blank cheque. It’s optics over outcomes once again, creating the appearance of growth while the underlying fundamentals, like efficiency and innovation in the energy grid, are ignored again.

Now, Mr. Speaker, we don’t have to guess what happens when governments chase growth through spending sprees and political allocation of resources. History is chock full of these tales. Look at Japan in the 1990s, the often-so-called lost decades. The government poured money into massive infrastructure projects—some literally became famous bridges to nowhere—all to prop up economic growth stats. Politically connected areas got the cash, not necessarily the areas in real need or with potential. The result: stagnant productivity and a mountain of debt.

That’s what crony capitalism yields. You might see short-term growth on paper, but you don’t get the productivity gains that actually improve people’s lives. We have to avoid this path. Bill 40, with its blank-cheque subsidies and politicized energy planning risks turning our energy sector into a wasteful boondoggle—costly projects that boost a few stats while families see little benefit.

Mr. Speaker, Ontario’s debt is already enormous. A big chunk of it comes from schemes to artificially lower electricity prices. The Auditor General has warned in the past about these tricks to keep hydro costs off the books. Those warnings have not been heeded by this government. In each case, the pattern is the same: borrow or spend public money to hide costs, call it relief and then claim victory. But the bills come due; you can’t repeal the laws of economics—someone always pays.

With Bill 40, the government wants to keep doubling down: more subsidies, more debt, more pretending. It’s like trying to cure a hangover by taking another shot of whisky. It might extend the illusion for a little bit, but it only makes the eventual problem that much worse.

What happens if we continue down this road, Mr. Speaker, if we pass Bill 40 and normalize these subsidies and political meddling? Ontario could end up—and will end up—with higher electricity costs in the long run, a less reliable grid and a pile of debt to show for it. By refusing to address the real drivers of costs and even blocking the transparency that would reveal them to the public and to the Legislature, the government guarantees that the problems will fester.

Ontarians, I think, are fair-minded. We can handle the truth. What we need—and what Bill 40 fails to provide—is transparency and honesty about the cost of electricity. If building new supply or upgrading the grid is going to cost money, let that cost be visible and don’t hide it in a maze of subsidies. And then let’s debate the best way to manage the cost: Maybe it’s worth using tax dollars to ease the burden on low-income families or to invest in green energy. But those choices should be made in the open with clear eyes, not through sneaky legislative tricks.

A real integrated energy plan would be exactly that: integrated with a sound fiscal plan as one piece of Ontario’s economic puzzle. Instead of chasing headlines, we should focus on making the system more efficient and reliable, which truly brings down bills over time. That means leveraging technology, encouraging conservation and planning smartly for the future—none of which you will find in Bill 40.

If the government was serious about affordable energy for generations, it would be talking about productivity and efficiency every chance it gets. It’s productivity growth—finding better ways to generate and use power—that will keep energy affordable in the long run.

Instead of pouring billions into masking prices, we should be investing in making our grid smarter and our buildings more efficient because every dollar spent on hiding costs is a dollar not spent on solving the problem.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Questions?

Hon. Michael S. Kerzner: Our government believes that when you invest in your province, you should have something on the balance sheet. It’s called an asset that you leave to another generation. When we build something, we own it; it’s something that can be passed on.

When the Liberals were in office, there was nothing they left us—not one long-term-care bed, not one hydro plant, nothing except solar fields and wind farms at 10 to 15 times the actual cost to generate power.

I want to ask my friend across the aisle, does he think that was fair?

Mr. Stephen Blais: The Solicitor General is a smart man, and he knows that that statement is blatantly untrue and risks actually distorting the public record in the Legislature—

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I have to ask you to withdraw that.

Mr. Stephen Blais: There were—

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Will you withdraw that comment?

Mr. Stephen Blais: I withdraw. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

There were many dozens, if not hundreds, of infrastructure projects under the previous government that left a lasting record for Ontarians. His government is choosing to spend nearly $7 billion a year in hydro subsidies. That’s not building a single thing, that is taking money from your left pocket to put it into your right pocket and hoping that Ontarians don’t realize his hands are in both of our pockets.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I go to the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane.

Mr. John Vanthof: I listened intently to the speech from the member, and I wonder if he’s now an independent, because he said things like “shuffling costs,” “illusion of affordability,” “disguise.”

I agree with most of the speech, but at least—and I’m not a Conservative supporter—you can see where they’re subsidizing as opposed to the Liberal affordable hydro plan where you tried to mask it in the books of Ontario Power Generation.

Everything you said was accurate, but your party was way worse—way, way worse. You sold Hydro One. You couldn’t get the auditor to pass your books. Please, look in a mirror, man.

Mr. Stephen Blais: As the member knows, I was not here under the previous government, so when I look in the mirror, I see someone who delivered enormous infrastructure investments to the people of Orléans and Ottawa.

But in that vein, Mr. Speaker, I would ask my colleague from the NDP, since he is so connected to the past and what previous governments have done: Given that this government has dramatically raised the debt, just like Bob Rae did when Bob Rae tripled Ontario’s debt in only five years, does the member see himself closely aligned with the debt-driven, high-spending, high-subsidy party that now forms government?

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Next question?

MPP Tyler Watt: When I came in here, I actually had no idea what you all were even debating. All I kept hearing was about the former Liberal government that hasn’t been in power since 2018. It’s amazing how we still live rent-free in your heads. I hear the member here shouting about gas plants—are we not here to debate a bill about energy? This is wild.

The fact that this government is so obsessed with the former Liberal government shows me that there is stuff that is wrong in this bill, and you know it because you’re trying to distract people from what’s actually going on.

My question is to my colleague: Are you worried about this bill being interfered, once again, by political direction from the minister’s office.

Mr. Stephen Blais: Yes, this bill removes safeguards, gives electricity policy decision-making directly to political operators, whether that’s the minister and cabinet or, as we’ve seen with this government, other political staff. That is a recipe for—you know, this government has transitioned their political fundraising scandal from being about land to now it’s about labour, and the next political fundraising scandal will be about electricity. Mark my words: The Minister of Energy’s riding association will get a wave of donations. This is how they’re going to pivot to the next scandal.

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The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Questions? I go to the member from—

Mr. Tyler Allsopp: Simcoe–Grey.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Simcoe–Grey.

Mr. Brian Saunderson: Thank you to the member from Quinte.

I’m happy to rise and join this conversation. It seems to me, from the conversations we’ve heard, it was quite a revisionist speech, and I agree with the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane about the ongoing costs. The member, in his comments, made a lot about the subsidy in terms of keeping hydro rates down and wondering where that came from. The FAO report showed that a direct sell-off of Hydro One meant that Ontario lost between $444 million and $487 million a year going forward from 2025. That’s an annual amount that we’ve lost.

It also is interesting to note that, as a result of the green energy programs that were referenced in the Solicitor General’s comments, this government is having to pay off costs where we were buying energy for 20 times the going rate and then selling it off for a lower rate.

If the member opposite wants to know where the shortfall comes from that we’re making up, it comes from the Liberal government—

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I go to the member from Orléans.

Mr. Stephen Blais: I’m reminded of an anecdote which I first learned of while watching my favourite television program. The government is trying to sell Ontarians a truckload of white salmon. They’re putting a label on it: “Guaranteed not to go pink in the can.”

This is the highest debt Ontario has ever seen: $137 billion in new debt under this government. Hydro prices are higher than they were when they were elected. The number of unemployed Ontarians is higher than when they were elected. The number of jobs in Ontario is lower than when they were elected.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Next question?

MPP Jamie West: Thank you to my friend from Orléans. A few things he said: He said, in 2018, the Conservatives promised to cut hydro by 12%. The Premier was not able to do that; rates have continued to increase: Three cents to every tax dollar you pay now goes towards subsidizing hydro rates.

And then you said the subsidy party has come to an end because it comes back with interest. This party was started under the Liberal government, right? And like a lot of things the Liberal government hasn’t done well, the Conservatives have been like, “Hold my beer, and I’ll show you how bad we can make it.”

So, your party started digging the hole; they started digging deeper. How do you figure we’re going to get out of this?

Mr. Stephen Blais: Well, certainly, you don’t get out of the hole by continuing to dig, and that’s what this government has done. The $7 billion a year in hydro subsidies and $137 billion in new debt is a heck of a big hole.

But if we want to go back in time a little bit, we can go back to the 12 days of unpaid leave that the Rae government forced on all public servants. We can go back on an NDP government that tripled Ontario’s debt in five short years.

We can go back and talk about the mistakes of the past, or we can do what we were brought here to do and build for the future. We’re proposing to build and talk about the future.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I’ll go to the Minister of Rural Affairs.

Hon. Lisa M. Thompson: I find it interesting listening to the debate today, because I feel very strongly that we have an opposition party that does not support nuclear. We have a third party that did nothing really to resurrect the mess that the opposition party made in nuclear. In the 1990s, I remember the ghost town that Kincardine was. That Main Street really was negatively impacted when they tried to mothball Bruce Power, known at the time as Douglas Point. It was a Progressive Conservative Party that brought nuclear back to the forefront to demonstrate the efficiencies that can be realized through a reliable, affordable, innovative and—my goodness, we’re even fighting cancer now. I ask—

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): The member from Orléans.

Mr. Stephen Blais: I respond by saying I was in elementary school in the 1990s, so I don’t have the same first-hand knowledge of the complete foul-up the NDP government made of the province.

I do remember going to high school, though, in the 1990s under the Mike Harris Conservative government and remember our teachers being on strike. I remember overcrowded classrooms and I remember a government that was hiding public deficits in crown corporations, and those memories seem to be—

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further debate? I recognize the member for Bay of Quinte.

Mr. Tyler Allsopp: Thank you very much, Speaker, and thank you to all my colleagues. I just want to say, before I start my formal remarks, that this has been an incredible debate and really bipartisan. We heard members from the NDP talk about how terrible the previous Liberal government was, and then we heard members of the Liberals talk about how terrible the Bob Rae government was—and I agree with both of you.

It is a great honour to rise in this House alongside my caucus colleague the MPP for Simcoe–Grey—

Interjection: Hard-working.

Mr. Tyler Allsopp: —hard-working, intelligent, upstanding—in full support of Bill 40, the Protect Ontario by Securing Affordable Energy for Generations Act, 2025.

This legislation reflects the strength of our government’s vision for an energy system that is affordable, secure, reliable and clean—an energy system designed not only to meet today’s needs but to power Ontario’s economy for generations to come. It stands as a commitment to every family, worker and business in our province that Ontario will continue to lead the G7 in responsible growth, innovation and opportunity.

Bill 40 is more than a policy update. It is a comprehensive renewal of the laws that govern our energy future. Through thoughtful amendments to three cornerstone statutes—the Electricity Act, 1998, the Municipal Franchises Act and the Ontario Energy Board Act, 1998—this legislation integrates economic growth into the very foundation of our energy framework. It aligns regulation with innovation, affordability with accountability and prosperity with sustainability.

Mr. Speaker, Ontario’s history is defined by the power that fuels it. From the first hydroelectric stations at Niagara Falls to the nuclear achievements at Pickering, Darlington, and Bruce, our province has always drawn strength from its energy leadership. Bill 40 continues that proud legacy by ensuring that every decision in our energy system supports jobs, investment and community growth.

The legislation begins by modernizing the Electricity Act, 1998. It explicitly adds economic growth as a purpose of the act and extends that mandate to the Independent Electricity System Operator and the Ontario Energy Board. From this point forward, energy planning in Ontario will always consider how it contributes to prosperity. When the IESO evaluates transmission projects, it will measure their impact on regional development. When the OEB reviews generation applications, it will weigh their ability to create jobs and to attract industry. This is a transformational shift that connects economic policy and energy policy as two sides of the same coin.

Mr. Speaker, Ontario’s economy is expanding rapidly. We are attracting new investments in advanced manufacturing, in artificial intelligence and in biotechnology. All of these industries depend on reliable and affordable power. Bill 40 ensures that, as our economy grows, our energy system keeps pace with it in a way that is strategic and sustainable.

A central innovation in this bill is the formal recognition of hydrogen as a cornerstone of Ontario’s clean energy future. By adding a new purpose to facilitate the development of a hydrogen market and economy, our government is laying the groundwork for one of the most promising technologies of the 21st century. Low-carbon hydrogen will allow us to store renewable energy, power heavy transport and decarbonize industrial processes that cannot easily electrify. It is a versatile fuel that will drive economic growth and environmental progress simultaneously.

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Hydrogen development means jobs in research, engineering, construction and manufacturing. It means opportunities for Ontario’s colleges and universities to lead in training the next generation of clean-tech professionals, and it means new revenue for municipalities that host production and distribution facilities. By embedding this priority into law, Bill 40 sends a clear message to the world: Ontario is open for hydrogen business.

Mr. Speaker, the digital economy is creating new demands on our grid as well. Data centres, cloud computing and artificial intelligence applications require large amounts of electricity. If left unmanaged, these loads could strain capacity and raise costs. Bill 40 addresses this head-on through a new section 28.1 of the Electricity Act, requiring that certain large facilities meet specified connection requirements before being linked to the grid. This ensures that energy-intensive projects proceed responsibly, with proper planning and community benefit.

These requirements will consider economic development, job creation and energy efficiency. They prevent uncoordinated connections that could jeopardize stability or unfairly shift costs onto households. Growth in the digital sector will continue, but it will be growth that respects the public interest.

Mr. Speaker, energy security is an essential pillar of this legislation. In a world where geopolitical instability can disrupt global energy supply chains, Ontario must be able to protect its own interests. Bill 40’s preamble commits the province to supporting our energy sector with limitations on foreign participation where necessary. This is not about closing doors; it is about ensuring that critical energy infrastructure remains secure and that decision-making stays in the hands of Ontario.

Affordability is another core principle of this bill. Ontarians expect their government to keep electricity rates stable and fair. Under this bill, the Minister of Energy and Mines will have authority to make payments to transmitters out of funds appropriated by the Legislature, with a corresponding requirement that the Ontario Energy Board reduce rates to reflect those payments. In plain terms, when government takes strategic action to strengthen the grid, we can do so without passing costs directly onto consumers. That is responsible governance in action.

Transparency is built into the process. Because these funds must be appropriated through the Legislature, they will be debated and scrutinized publicly. Every Ontarian will know how and why their government is investing in our energy system.

The bill also modernizes the Ontario Energy Board Act, 1998, to make the board more efficient and responsive. A new section 13.1 authorizes the chief executive officer to issue internal policies on timelines and on procedural matters. For too long, projects that could boost supply or improve infrastructure have been delayed by slow administration. These reforms preserve rigorous review while allowing faster, clearer decisions—an advantage for consumers and for investors alike.

Another important provision of Bill 40 is the clarity it brings to how large energy users connect to the grid. If a specified load facility fails to meet its connection requirements or breaches them after connection, the transmitter or distributor must follow processes outlined in regulation. Those processes may include notice, remedy periods and, if necessary, disconnection. Such authority protects system integrity and ensures no participant endangers the broader grid.

Mr. Speaker, Ontario already enjoys one of the cleanest electricity mixes in all of North America, yet we must plan now to maintain that advantage as the demand grows. Electric vehicles, heat pumps and industrial electrification will require significant new supply. Bill 40 provides the legislative foundation to expand capacity responsibly through hydrogen, storage and modernized transmission. It ensures that, as Ontario pursues clean-energy innovation, families and small businesses will continue to benefit from stable bills and reliable service.

Mr. Speaker, a strong energy system is also a strong community system. When we invest in power lines and generation projects, we create skilled trades jobs, support local businesses and drive growth in every region of our province. Bill 40 is about ensuring those benefits reach all corners of the province, from Bay of Quinte to Kenora to Thunder Bay and Cornwall.

This legislation embodies the principle that energy policy is economic policy. By aligning the mandates of our energy institutions with economic growth, we are building a future in which affordable power and prosperity advance together. That future will see Ontario as a leader in clean manufacturing, digital technology and in hydrogen innovation.

Mr. Speaker, this bill balances ambition with accountability. By introducing hydrogen and data centre regulations, we prepare for the future without compromising the present. This is the path to an energy system that works for everyone.

Thank you very much. I will yield the remainder of my time to the member from Simcoe–Grey.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I recognize the member from Simcoe–Grey.

Mr. Brian Saunderson: I want to thank the member from Bay of Quinte for his comments. It’s a pleasure to rise today in the House on behalf of the hard-working residents of Simcoe–Grey in support of Bill 40, the Protect Ontario by Securing Affordable Energy for Generations Act, 2025.

I’d like to preface my comments by a salute to our Toronto Blue Jays. They fought an epic World Series, beating the Yankees and then the Mariners and then taking on the Dodgers, and taking it to extra innings in game 7. I always believe that life imitates sport, and the Jays showed us that the power of unity, the power of dedication truly generates a whole that is far greater than the sum of the parts. The Jays showed us how we can lead by working together and working with laser focus on the job at hand.

This, Speaker, is a critical bill to ensure that we maximize our megawatts, that we focus on the power of generating power to drive our province and build a new energy generation.

I want to commend Minister Lecce, the Minister of Energy and Mines, on his hard work and laser focus on what matters most to Ontarians: affordability for families and businesses, new net investments for economic growth and, most importantly, a clean energy grid for generations to come.

Let’s be very clear, Ontario has one of the cleanest energy grids in Canada and, in fact, in the world. Ontario has 40% of Canada’s population and is Canada’s economic engine, attracting over $77 billion in foreign investment in the last six years to the automotive industry, to health sciences and to the tech sector, and yet it produces less than 25% of Canada’s GHG emissions. On a per capita basis, Ontarians generate 10.4 tons of GHGs per year. This is among the lowest rates in Canada. It’s, in fact, 43% below the national average of 8.2 tons per person per year. We are leading Canada, and we are increasing our energy grid to meet the needs as we move forward.

This bill preserves the groundwork set out in Energy for Generations, Ontario’s first integrated energy plan announced this year.

Mr. Speaker, it wasn’t long ago that under the previous Liberal government, which we’ve had quite a bit of discussion about in this House this afternoon, energy planning was considered in short four-year election cycles. As we know from the question-and-answer period, we continued to subsidize energy rates to pay down the debt that the Liberals have dug us into, where energy sources were chosen not based on the lowest possible cost but rather on ideologically driven convictions, where we were purchasing energy for 20 times the going rate. That is exactly why under the previous Liberal government, energy bills skyrocketed by more than $1,000 for a family per year.

The Wynne government sold off our power at 10 times the going rate and had an event to actually sell off shares of Hydro One just to pay down the debt. Energy became unaffordable, families began to choose between heating and eating, and we were in a crisis.

In 2018, Premier Ford and our PC government was elected. We were elected on a mandate to fix the hydro mess, restore trust and accountability and ensure that we attract new investments, new businesses and new growth to this great province. That is exactly what we have done, Speaker. We have stabilized energy bills, brought billions of dollars in investments, created hundreds of thousands of new jobs—in fact, a million new jobs—without raising a single tax on the hard-working families and businesses in Ontario.

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Bill 40 is part of the hard work and another important step in the right direction at a time when our closest ally has created uncertainty and havoc. President Trump has taken unnecessary and adversarial actions to undermine, destroy and threaten our economy. And that is why, now more than ever, we must act with purpose to protect Ontario and secure our energy future to ensure that we are self-sufficient and never reliant on another jurisdiction.

Ontario is preparing for a significant surge in electricity demand over the coming decades. We know from our ED plan that we have demand for additional energy. We know from our growth that we will have additional demand for our residents and businesses across the province. And we know with generation data centres and AI that we will see extreme growth in energy-intensive businesses. That is why we need to act aggressively to prepare for Ontario’s energy system’s continued growth.

Our government has already taken steps to advance this, including the work being undertaken at Bruce to build 6,500 megawatts of clean power. We’re refurbishing almost all of our nuclear fleets. Unlike the Liberals, who planned to shutter Pickering, our government, under the leadership of Premier Ford and Minister Lecce, has not only saved Pickering; it has saved 2,000 jobs that came with it. Speaker, we’re building the G7’s first small modular reactor at Darlington, and once the fleet of four small modular reactors is built out, they will add 1,200 megawatts of power to our grid, the energy equivalent to power 1.2 million homes. Most importantly, we’ve taken steps to build the largest nuclear generator on earth at our Wesleyville site which, when built out, could provide up to 10,000 megawatts of power.

But until all of this is complete, we need to prioritize our grid to ensure that power goes to economic priorities as well as to the public. To put this in perspective, the IESO, the Independent Electricity System Operator, currently has about 2,327 megawatts of data centre demand looking to connect at this very moment. That is equivalent to powering 2.3 million homes. In total, there are 12 active applicants, 10 for new data centres and 10 for existing ones that want to increase their demand. To put this in context, the IESO has 33 active system impact assessments, applications for new customer connections, currently. Data centres are 36% of the applications by number and more than 50% by megawatts. Ontario plays host to the largest concentrations of data centres in Canada, with the core cluster located in the greater Toronto area, ranked as the country’s number one data centre market by global operators.

Ontario currently has 110 data centres in the province, and the advancement and adoption of AI and cloud computing are resulting in a need for new data centres. These AI and cloud computing data centres tend to be larger and use significantly more power than current data centres. Instead of only consuming 10 to 50 megawatts, these data centres tend to consume hundreds of megawatts, up to a gigabyte. As of July this year, the Independent Electricity System Operator has been receiving connection requests for up to 750 megawatts on a single connection point with very quick implementation timelines.

Speaker, the size and speed at which these data centres want to connect highlights the importance of ensuring the system is prepared to meet demand. Electricity demand in the GTA is forecasted to put pressure on the capacity of the bulk transmission system in the next 10 years due to other drivers like population, economic growth and electrification. Under the current system, utilities are required to connect every large data centre that enters into connection agreement. This poses a problem. This does not consider how much energy they consume, how many jobs they create, or whether they support Ontario’s broader economic strategy and goals. In some cases, large data centres absorb all remaining electricity capacity in an area and add significant challenges to ensuring electricity capacity is available for new housing or other economic development projects.

That is exactly why Bill 40 is needed. As we move forward on these significant projects, alongside many others, the Protect Ontario by Securing Affordable Energy for Generations Act is critical to our success, because this reinforces Ontario’s leadership in delivering clean, reliable and affordable energy projects. But it’s also critical, Mr. Speaker, with what we are facing in the world environment and what’s going on south of the border. We need to support made-in-Canada technologies, made-in-Canada resources and made-in-Canada jobs with a primary focus on driving continued economic growth while meeting the energy demands of the future.

The proposed legislative changes outlined today in Bill 40 represent the next step for energy for generations and will build on the recent accomplishments in the energy sector. We will continue to build clean, affordable energy that can drive the incredible growth that we’re seeing in manufacturing, that we are seeing in growth in residences, that we are seeing in communities all across this great province, while at the same time rising to the occasion to be able to meet the massive demands in AI and cloud technology.

These are sectors that are important to our business, and that is why I urge members of this House to rise to the challenge and support Ontario.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Questions?

MPP Wayne Gates: November 1, hydro prices are jumping nearly 30%. Instead of fixing it, the government is hiding it, doubling the rebate to 23.5%. That’s money coming off our hydro bills and out of hospitals, schools, housing and long-term-care facilities. Ontario is running a $14.6-billion deficit, one of the largest ever.

My question to either one of you is, do you know how much we’re paying to service that debt?

Mr. Brian Saunderson: I want to thank the member opposite for his question.

As we heard from the questions in the preceding round on this debate, the rebate that we give back to Ontarians to help make energy more affordable is paying for the losses of revenue from the sell-off of Hydro One, is paying for the long-term commitments by the previous Liberal government under their Green Energy Act, but also very importantly, it will help to pay forward as we work with Ontarians to create efficiencies in our energy sector.

Not only are we creating new capacity in the grid; we are working with our residents to help them bring in measures that will cut their energy requirements. So not only are we increasing energy, we’re reducing demand.

If you want to talk about debt, our GDP is so much higher that our GDP-to-debt ratio is far lower now than it was in 2018. We’re bringing that down and paying the lowest interest rates in Canada on debt.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Questions?

Mr. Joseph Racinsky: Thank you to the members for their statements.

We are facing unprecedented threats from south of the border. A feeling of uncertainty permeates many elements of the economy, but our government was elected to a historic third majority mandate to protect Ontario. We have a plan, and we are implementing that plan. We’re cutting red tape, making Ontario the best and most competitive place to start and grow a business, and we’re also taking action to ensure that Ontario becomes an energy superpower.

Under Premier Ford’s leadership, we are working hard to ensure that Ontario is the fastest growing economy in the G7.

Can the members opposite share how this bill fits into that plan?

Mr. Tyler Allsopp: Thank you to the member for that excellent question.

There are a number of ways that we are building one of the most competitive economies in all of the G7. You take a look, as you said, at cutting red tape: We’ve cut over 650 pieces of red tape, saving businesses 1.8 million hours a year and lowering the overall regulatory burden on all of Ontario by over 6%. We’re also making significant investments in public transit, in building roads, in building hospitals, putting money back into our communities, unlike the previous Liberal government, who ran massive deficits and gave us nothing for it.

But take a look at the million new jobs that we have created since coming into office because of those conditions that we’ve put in place. Even in the first three months of this year, with President Trump’s tariffs on the way, we grew the economy by 87,000 jobs, and just in the last three months alone, have added 20,000 manufacturing jobs to our economy, which means we now have twice as many manufacturing jobs as either New York or Florida.

As we continue to build out our economy, we know we will need the power to continue to advance our competitive advantage. If you look at what we’ve done with AI and high-tech, we now have 424,000 employees working in the tech sector, up over 100,000 employees working—

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): It is now 6 p.m.

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): The House stands adjourned until 9 a.m. tomorrow morning.

The House adjourned at 1800.