The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Ontario Budget 2025: Opposition Parties React

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

Opposition critics Chandra Pasma, NDP MPP for Ottawa West-Nepean; Stephanie Bowman, Liberal MPP for Don Valley West; and Mike Schreiner, leader of the Green Party of Ontario and the MPP for Guelph react to the Ontario government's 2025 budget. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

He was like a father figure to me. Unfortunately, found myself in a very vulnerable position. This is a story about a psychiatrist in Toronto accused of abusing two of his patients, which he denies. It's also a story about a system that is supposed to protect patients. From TVO Podcasts, I'm Krisha Collier, and this is The Oath. Subscribe today wherever you listen. Now, let's get the opposition's take on this budget,

and we welcome from the official opposition, Chandra Pazma, the NDP poverty, homelessness reduction, and education critic, the MPP for Ottawa West Nepean. For the Liberals, it's Stephanie Bowman, their finance, jobs and the economy critic, and the MPP for Ottawa West Nepean. For the Liberals, it's Stephanie Bowman. Their Finance, Jobs and the Economy critic, and the MPP for Don Valley West. And Green Party leader Mike Schreiner is here, and he is the member of the Provincial Legislature for Guelph.

Great to see you three here tonight with us. I'm deputizing you all as headline writers for a newspaper. So you've read the budget, you've heard what the Minister of Finance had to say. Chandra, what's the headline? This is a budget that really misses the mark. People need help. The budget gave them cuts. The government has completely thrown the towel in on housing. And if I'm a worker who's lost my job or worried about losing my job in Windsor or Oshawa, this budget does not make me feel any better. That's a long headline for one newspaper front page, but okay.

Lansing writer, yes. Stephanie. My headline would be, Doug Ford puts his Captain Canada cape in the closet, counts on Captain Carney to save the day. Okay. Mike Schreiner. Ford budget leaves everyday people behind by failing to address housing, healthcare, education, and protecting people in places we love. Okay, you both mentioned housing, so let's start with that. What do you think

this budget doesn't do that should have done on housing? Well, it doesn't really do anything. Housing starts are the lowest they've been since 1955. It's never been more difficult for people to afford a home in Ontario. And instead of a change in direction, what we see is that the government is actually cutting funding to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. We needed to see some steps that would actually get homes built, some investments in affordable housing, some relief for renters. Instead, the government is blaming Trump and his tariff temper tantrum when they've had

seven years and they've delivered nothing on housing. Stephanie, on housing? Yeah, I mean look again, once again this government is failing the people of Ontario on housing. They committed to build 1.5 million homes, their targets continue to drop and so they look for other ways to try to puff up the numbers but again this budget shows housing starts will not meet the mark, will not make the housing crisis any better and I think they've again, this budget shows housing starts will not meet the mark, will not make the housing crisis any better. And I think they've again, they've missed a huge opportunity here to do things like

remove development charges that so many people have been calling for. We called for that in our election platform. Those kinds of things that would make, would both stimulate demand and also create more affordable housing for those people who need it. Mike Schreiner. Yeah, I mean, this government is utterly failing to address the housing crisis. They promised 1.5 million homes. They need to do 150,000 a year.

70,000 starts this year. Only half of what is needed. They're not going to meet their target. And the reason they're not going to meet their target is the Premier keeps saying no to the zoning changes like for multiplexes and mid-rises so we can quickly ramp up supply to build homes people can afford in the communities they know and love. The government for chronic homelessness, 81,000 people homeless in Ontario right now, imagine that. They're only providing funding of half of what the Association of Municipalities of Ontario say we need to end chronic homelessness. And when it comes to deeply affordable non-profit and co-op housing, completely missing in action.

Even though Scotiabank says we need to build 250,000 co-op and non-profit houses over the next decade, not in this budget at all. Stephanie, let me follow up on your comment where you said he's put his Captain Canada cape away and he's depending on Mark Carney to save the day. What does that mean? Yeah, well, you know, his Protect Ontario account, he's calling, which I thought was an interesting moniker, is kind of a let's wait and see. Let's wait and see how it goes. Let's wait and see how the federal government comes to the aid of businesses who might be struggling, to workers who might be struggling, just like the federal government comes to the aid of businesses who might be struggling, to workers who might be struggling, just like the federal government did during the pandemic.

So, you know, as opposed to actually saying, look, we are here to provide long-term funding and permanent things like tax relief to businesses and to individuals. This government is once again waiting for the federal government to bail them out. There's $5 billion, Chandra, in that Protect Ontario account. I mean, that's real money, wouldn't you say?

It is real money, which is why it's all the more disappointing that there's no conditions attached to it. There's no restriction that this go to Ontario companies, no Ontario procurement strategy, but also no ironclad agreements that when this funding goes to a company, the jobs, the factories, the equipment will all stay here. We've already seen that this government has given money to companies that are either standing down production or are trying to ship equipment to the United States. It's workers who have put their bodies on the line to keep that

equipment from going to the states. What we need to see is the government demanding that kind of commitment, that accountability, that taxpayer dollars are going to jobs here in Ontario and not to companies that are cutting and running and taking the equipment with them. I want to ask you about post-secondary. Mike Schreiner, you've got a big post-secondary institution in the city of Guelph. The money for post-secondary is supposed to go down over the next couple of budgets. What do you make of that?

Yeah, $2 billion cut between now and 2028. For an education system that's already the lowest funded per capita of any province in the country. And has been for 40 years. It has been for a long time. It would take a $5 to $7 billion increase in funding just to get to the average. If you want to talk about how we tariff proof Ontario,

it's having the best trained workforce in the world. You're not going to get that when you cut post-secondary education. You want to talk about how we innovate and be competitive business-wise, bringing new products to market. It comes from the research that comes out of our colleges and universities. We're going to lose that. This is going to do significant damage to our economy, and I am shocked that the Ford government doesn't understand the connection to

investment in education and jobs and economic growth. I'll ask you about education because you're the critic for the official opposition. 56 million in this budget over two years to hire new public school teachers. You gotta like that. It's a drop in the bucket compared to what's needed and obviously we don't have the details. The funding that they've said is for new teachers is to hire, I think it's about 2,500 teachers. We have 40,000 teachers right now

who are certified with the Ontario College of Teachers, who are choosing not to work in our education system because of the conditions, because class sizes are too large, because there's mental health challenges that are not being supported, because there's no action on violence that's occurring because kids are frustrated. If we were tackling those conditions, it would benefit our kids. It would bring qualified teachers and education workers, because we have a shortage of those two, back into our system.

It would mean that our kids were getting the supports that we needed, and it would create good jobs. But this government, this budget is not closing the gap on funding that was created by this government's cuts and by the Liberal government before them. Stephanie, it is, I mean, the last Ontario election was clearly fought on Trump and tariffs and trade,

and so was the last federal election for that matter. And this budget also focuses a lot on those issues as well. How concerned are you that other things that we really can't take our eye off of, homelessness, mental health, I mean, healthcare, a whole long range of things, are getting lost in the shuffle because governments feel they necessarily have to focus on the tariff issue? No, it's a great question, Steve. I mean, this government has left Ontario's economy and Ontarians willfully unprepared to face this crisis.

You know, the government has been spending at a rate higher than inflation, one and a half times the rate of inflation on average for the last seven years. They were overspending and under-delivering. Again, we've had crises in healthcare, in homelessness, in housing, mental health. Every file is on fire. And yet, we have now got a government, because they've got their hands tied behind their back, has now got to only increase spending by less than inflation. So we're actually having a real decrease in real dollars in program spending.

And that's going to hurt the people of Ontario. You know even you know as Mike and Chasman were talking about the post-secondary education sector we are actually two research groups, Ontario Council of Universities and another government body are saying we're going to be short hundreds of thousands of spots in the next couple of decades. That means again we are not investing in our kids future and those kids those students are the workers of tomorrow who will be innovating, bringing new technologies to bear on our economy. That hurts productivity and so those are the kind of things that again I think this government is failing the people, the budget and the government are failing the people of Ontario. Having said that, you know, I appreciate that opposition politicians usually like the government to spend more on their priorities. I get that. The deficit, Mike Schreiner, is booming this year.

I mean, it's going from an already big number to a gargantuan of $14.6 billion. The debt to GDP ratio is going up closer to 40%, which is a number we don't want to get back to. Conservatives would tell you this is not a very conservative approach to budgeting. What do you say? You know what I find infuriating about this whole conversation

is the Ford government wasted revenue on election gimmicks in the last two elections. 2022 $200 license sticker gimmick cost the province $2.5 billion year one, one and a half to two billion dollars each and every year after that. This election in February, $200 checks went out to people including those who are millionaires, billionaires and who get six figure incomes, $3.2 billion. Imagine if we had all that money right now to invest in affordable housing, to fixing

healthcare, to reversing the cuts to education. And your pet peeve, Steve, we're spending $6.5 billion subsidizing electricity prices for millionaires, billionaires, and people who have six-figure incomes. Why not cap that, target it to lower-income folks, and redirect the money to higher priorities? Housing, healthcare, education. Well, I'll ask Chandra about that because they are proud of the fact that they are going to make permanent the gas tax cut that they brought in originally, temporarily we were told, but now it's going to be permanent once they pass it through the legislature.

It's going to cost the Treasury a billion, too, every year. What do you think they should be doing with that money presumably instead of gas tax cuts? Well this is a government that always seems to miss the forest for the trees. You know the largest item in people's budget that they're struggling with the most is the cost of housing. There's nothing in here to help them with the cost of housing. People are struggling to afford groceries. There's nothing in here to help them buy groceries. If we really wanted to take action to make life more affordable, those

are two areas where we should be starting, making sure that people can afford a home and making sure that people can afford to put food on the table. Let me give 30 seconds to each of you, just finally tonight. I appreciate you have criticisms with this budget. Tell me one thing you would have done that they didn't do that were you in charge would have been in the budget.

Mike Schreiner. Money for affordable housing. If we don't start building co-op nonprofit housing, we are not going to solve this crisis. 93% of the deeply affordable homes built in Ontario were built before 1995. 30 years of underinvestment has led to this crisis. We have to reverse it. Stephanie Bullman. Middle income tax cuts. Families are suffering from the affordability crisis. They need money in their pockets now and contrary to what the finest minister said, doing that would put money

in their pockets today. And a small business tax cut. Those small businesses create 60% of Ontario private sector jobs and they're hurting. We don't want their doors to close because that will just exacerbate the unemployment crisis this government has created. Second highest unemployment rate in the country under this government. Chandra Pasma. Investing in health care and schools is a win-win. We are building the infrastructure, creating those construction jobs. We're hiring health care workers and education workers. Those are also good jobs and we are providing people with the health care that they need and the high quality education that their kids deserve.

Mr. Director, can I get a three shot of our guests, please, as I thank Chandra Pazma and Stephanie Bowman and Mike Schreiner for coming into TVO tonight and participating in our budget night coverage. Many thanks to the three of you. Steve, thanks for your service at TVO. Oh, stop it, Mike. Thanks, Steve.