Get it Done Act leads priorities at legislature
Wage restraint law also set to be repealed
Ontario’s legislature will resume sitting this week with a flurry of activity, from repealing an unconstitutional wage restraint law to enacting a reversal of a decision to dissolve Peel Region and introducing politically charged omnibus legislation.
The colleges and universities minister is also expected to announce the government’s plan to address the financial struggles of the province’s post-secondary institutions early in the session.
The institutions have been grappling with low and stagnant levels of operating funding for years and then a 10 per cent tuition cut and freeze announced by Premier Doug Ford’s government in 2019 exacerbated their challenges, a government-commissioned panel said.
That panel recommended last year that the province unfreeze tuition while raising student aid and increase operating grants to the schools, but so far neither Ford nor Colleges and Universities Minister Jill Dunlop has indicated what they plan to do, aside from ruling out a tuition increase and telling institutions to find efficiencies.
One of the first orders of business after more than a 10-week break will be to introduce omnibus legislation titled the Get It Done Act, styled after Ford’s 2022 election campaign slogan.
The signature piece announced last week would require any future government to put any new provincial carbon pricing system to a referendum and has been criticized by opposition politicians as “performative political games” and a “smokescreen.”
It would not affect the federal carbon tax and the legislation could be repealed by a future government. During the announcement in Mississauga, Ont., Ford attacked the former mayor of that city, Ontario Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie.
Another already-announced piece of the Get It Done Act would ban new tolls on provincial highways. The Ford government has no intention of introducing new tolls, having removed tolls on highways 412 and 418, and a future government could undo the law.
The legislation will not remove the tolls on Highway 407 East, the provincially owned portion of that highway, which a Ministry of Transportation report in 2021 projected would be giving the province around $72 million in revenue in 2024-25.
The omnibus bill is also set to enable automatic licence plate renewals, extend a freeze on driver’s licence fees through legislation rather than regulation, and “streamline approvals for major infrastructure projects and housing.”
Ford’s government has also promised when the legislature resumes to repeal Bill 124, a 2019 law that capped salary increases for broader public sector workers to one per cent a year for three years.
The repeal comes after two levels of courts found the law unconstitutional.
NDP Leader Marit Stiles said her party’s priorities for the session include addressing staff shortages in hospitals and expediting housing.
“People are waiting for hours for basic health care, they are stuck with skyrocketing costs of housing, and their bills are not getting any lower,” she wrote in a statement. “We need real solutions, but this government is too wrapped up in its never-ending scandals to come up with real solutions that matter to Ontarians.”
An RCMP investigation continues into the Greenbelt land swap scandal, which saw the government take land out of the protected area for housing development and then return it following heavy criticism. No charges have been laid.
Energy Minister Todd Smith has said he will introduce legislation to overturn a decision by the Ontario Energy Board that he said would increase costs for new homes heated with natural gas. Environmental groups have said the OEB decision was a huge win, as it would have encouraged the uptake of greener home heating and cooling, such as heat pumps.
More housing-related legislation is expected to land before the session rises in June as the province tries to get on track to achieve its goal of building 1.5 million homes by 2031.
Ford also heads into the session down one cabinet minister, though he appears to be in no rush to name a replacement.
Parm Gill announced last month that he had resigned as red tape reduction minister and would also resign his Milton seat to run federally with Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. The resignation also means Ford will have to call a byelection for that riding, though he has six months to do so.