Thursday, January 15, 2026

Ms. Anita Armstrong

Meegwetch. Hello, everyone. Aanii. Boozhoo. Shé:kon. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in Ontario’s 2026 budget consultation process. My name is Anita Armstrong. I am a member of the Brokenhead Ojibway Nation of Manitoba, and I have the honour of being the executive director of the Odawa Native Friendship Centre in the city of Ottawa. Our distinct organization works to improve the quality of life of urban Indigenous people in the Ottawa area, and we are a part of a network of 31 friendship centres across the province of Ontario. More than 406,000 Indigenous people live in Ontario, representing 3% of the population, and 88% of Indigenous people in Ontario live in cities, towns and rural areas. In Ontario, Ottawa-Gatineau is home to the largest Indigenous population in the province. For more than 50 years, friendship centres have been the backbone of Ontario’s urban Indigenous service system, delivering cost-efficient, culturally grounded programs that improve outcomes for Indigenous children, youth, families and communities. However, today, demand far outpaces available funding, and this impacts our ability to keep up with the community needs. For instance, Odawa’s emergency food pantry is unfunded and run almost entirely by volunteers. We run services twice a month and have seen a consistent increase each service day for the past several months. As the executive director of the friendship centre within the OFIFC network, I am asking you to support the OFIFC’s request for an annual commitment of $16 million across key programs and sectors. This investment will strengthen a model that works and build resilience where Indigenous people live, through targeted, cost-efficient investments that stabilize housing, strengthen families and create real pathways to health, education and economic opportunities. Priority 1 is child and youth supports. The 2021 national census data shows that Indigenous children are 7.7% of Canada’s child population but represent over half of children in foster care. Data from the Ontario Human Rights Commission confirms the same pattern: a pipeline to homelessness, poverty, justice involvement and overall poor health. At our friendship centre, programs like the Akwe:go and Wasa-Nabin programs break cycles of trauma, keep children connected to family and school and reduce risks before they escalate. But low wages make it difficult to recruit and retain staff, disrupting service delivery. Odawa experiences high turnover in key positions at the friendship centre due to low wages that don’t support families as the cost of living continues to rise. Overall lack of funding prevents us from providing traditional and cultural programming which is essential for the healing in our communities. As a member of the OFIFC, I strongly support the OFIFC’s request for $1.24 million annually to increase Awke:go and Wasa-Nabin staff salaries from $56,438 to $66,438. This would make a huge difference to our friendship centre and ensure staff retention, allowing for valuable continuity of these supportive relationships. Priority 2 is housing stability. Urban Indigenous people experience high rates of homelessness due to structural inequities, driving greater resilience on costly emergency shelters, health care and justice systems. Friendship centre housing models provide safe, affordable homes with culture-based background supports. Stable housing is foundational for economic participation and health system sustainability. Capital funding builds housing, but operational funding is required to maintain the supports that keep the people housed. The city of Ottawa desperately needs more affordable housing for urban Indigenous families. We hear regularly from our community members that their housing needs are not being met, which leads to increased instability and mental health crises. I strongly support the OFIFC’s request for $1.6 million annually in operational funding for the friendship centre housing models. Priority 3: Indigenous mental health and wellness. Urban Indigenous communities are young—37% under 25 years of age—yet the opioid crisis and lack of culturally safe services undermine well-being and workforce potential. The opioid crisis, however, does not exist in isolation. Indigenous youth are also navigating intergenerational trauma from residential schools; child welfare systems and forced displacement; ongoing racism and discrimination in schools, health care and justice systems; as well as loss of language, land and cultural continuity. Substance use is often a coping mechanism to unresolved trauma, and it’s not a personal failure. Without culturally relevant support, youth are less likely to seek help, increasing the risk of long-term addiction and lost opportunities. This past summer, in a period of one month, we lost four young community members, all of which were waiting to get into treatments. I support the OFIFC’s request for $1.35 million annually to expand culturally grounded mental health and addictions programming—

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

One minute.

Official source

Ms. Anita Armstrong

Pardon me?

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

One minute.

Official source

Ms. Anita Armstrong

Okay, thank you—and strengthen coordinated care pathways across Ontario. Indigenous youth in rural and remote communities face barriers to stable employment, even in high-growth sectors nearby. Friendship centres can close these gaps by connecting youth with paid apprenticeships, internships and sector-specific training opportunities. The city of Ottawa has one employment and training program specific for the Indigenous community and cannot meet the needs of our growing population. This fall, at our homeless outreach centre, we provided employment readiness training, and 36 individuals completed the courses, demonstrating the motivation and willingness to improve their situation. I support the OFIFC’s budget request for $1 million annually to develop internship, apprenticeships and employment readiness programs.

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

Thank you very much. That concludes the time. Hopefully you can get the rest of your comments in in the question period. Next, we will hear from the Eastern Ontario Mayors’ Caucus.

Official source

Mr. John Beddows

My name is John Beddows. I am the mayor of the town of Gananoque, and I’m the chair of the Eastern Ontario Mayors’ Caucus. Collectively, our municipalities represent over 420,000 electors in eastern Ontario, and we are the 10 separated municipalities. I am here to talk to you today on three topics. The first is the Municipal Property Assessment Corp. and levy, the second is funding for post-secondary education and the third is funding for the community paramedic program. In front of you I’ve distributed the one-page flyer which speaks about who we are, but on the back are our provincial advocacy priorities. I’m going to speak first to the MPAC priority. I am sure that this committee has heard from several people that municipalities really want the quadrennial assessment to happen, and we join in that. But the substance of our primary question for this committee now relates to the provincial levy, or the levy on municipalities from Municipal Property Assessment Corp. which is factored into two pieces. The first part is about supporting the regular annual functions, and the second part is about funding quadrennial assessment. In other words, the municipal levies have already funded two quadrennial assessments—the 2020 and 2024 assessment—but we haven’t received either service. So what we would like this committee to do, going forward, is consider building into the budget the idea that the MPAC levy should not include the portion that is intended to fund the quadrennial assessment until two full assessments cycles have been completed by the government—until the Minister of Finance has directed MPAC to do the quadrennial assessment twice. Amongst our member municipalities, 50% of the levy adds up to about $2.6 million per year which is coming out of the property tax levy and going into MPAC—so we’re over $5 million between our municipalities. If 50% of the MPAC levy, which municipalities pay every year, is intended to fund the province-wide assessment every four years, that’s $2.6 million from the property tax levy going to MPAC, but we haven’t received that service. So our ask is ideally—given that 2016 through 2019 paid for 2020, and 2020 through 2023 paid for 2024; we’ve just gone through 2025 and are coming to 2026—that we simply don’t have to pay that portion, whatever it is. Now it’s not broken out in the levy as assigned, but we haven’t received the service, so we’d like to get the service before we pay for it again. That’s the first ask. We would like to bring that forward. And I think that’s our forward position on this because it’s essentially, the property tax is being transferred to MPAC, but the service it’s intended to deliver hasn’t been delivered. So we’d simply ask that that portion of the levy not be charged to municipalities going forward until the minister has directed MPAC to execute the province-wide assessment twice. In the second instance, as I’m sure this committee is aware, education funding is a hot topic in the province of Ontario for every level of education, but I am here to talk specifically about post-secondary education and the impact of the funding model in eastern Ontario. Various organizations, including the Auditor General of the province of Ontario in the 2023 value-for-money audit, have spoken to the difficulty with the funding model for Ontario’s post-secondary education. The Auditor General spoke to the fact that Ontario’s funding model didn’t speak to the infrastructure deficit that exists currently in institutions. The reductions in international student numbers by the federal government have had an impact based on the revenues they generate for schools, and the Fraser Institute reports that Ontario is actually the lowest per capita funder of post-secondary education after Nova Scotia. So our ask is that this cycle of budget build in that the minister would direct—or the budget cycle would raise Ontario’s level of funding for domestic students to the same level as the next lowest province, which is Nova Scotia for domestic students, and that that happen by the 2028-29 fiscal year and that we come up to the average by the 2030-31 fiscal year. In eastern Ontario, approximate access to post-secondary education is an essential element not only of equity but also quality of life in a region which is facing demographic challenges and related to attracting younger families into the area. They are key elements involved in that, but one of the interesting and important elements is approximate access to the quality education delivered by all of Ontario’s educational institutions. We’ve faced in our region cutbacks in programming from St. Lawrence College and Queen’s; budget pressures at Trent University; program pressures in Algonquin, here in Pembroke amongst other places; the pending outright closure of Algonquin College’s campus in Perth; and so an element of affordability is accessibility and an element of accessibility is proximity. But the overall health of the system is about funding on a per capita basis. We are specifically discussing funding for domestic students, and by “domestic” I don’t mean Canadian; I mean an Ontario resident. We’re talking about provincial tax dollars here. We’re talking about our taxpayers’ dollars, so we’re talking about ensuring that we have a healthy and sustainable system going forward, such that the levels are predictable and the funding is consistent. The third element I want to talk about briefly, which is not on the document before you, is the community paramedic program. We’re all aware of the capacity to shortfall in our medical service at primary care—

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

One minute.

Official source

Mr. John Beddows

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The difficulty that small and rural municipalities face in attracting physicians and primary care opportunities—rural Ontarians generally don’t have close access to either walk-in clinics or emergency rooms. Therefore, the community paramedicine program is an essential bridge for quality of life for people in eastern Ontario. The program was introduced in 2021 with no inflationary ladder. We ask that this committee consider recommending to the minister that an inflationary increase in the funding provided by the province for the community paramedicine programs be built into the budget going forward, simply to allow us to continue to sustain this essential service, which is even more important in areas with demographics that indicate an older population. It’s about, again, equity, quality of life and access to services. Particularly when people are de-rostered, this is the in-between with no doctor in the emergency room. So this would take pressure off emergency rooms in our hospitals, which are facing pressure, by allowing people to get close access to intervention.

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

Thank you very much. That concludes the time for the presentation. Hopefully, as with the last one, maybe it’ll get through in the question period. We now will hear from the Ontario College of Family Physicians.

Official source

Dr. Jobin Varughese

Good afternoon. My name is Dr. Jobin Varughese. I’m the president of the Ontario College of Family Physicians, or the OCFP. I’d like to thank you for allowing me to speak today on behalf of the Ontario College of Family Physicians, which represents 18,000 family physicians and medical students, including residents and retired physicians. Today, there are more than 16,500 family physicians working in communities across this province, providing care to patients across the system, from comprehensive community-based practices to hospitals, emergency departments, urgent care clinics, palliative care and many more. As a family physician in Brampton for 15 years, I have been fortunate to make a positive impact on the lives of my patients. I love the work of family medicine and want to see the system changes that will enable family physicians to best serve their patients and ensure Ontarians have access to a primary care team, anchored by a family physician. Today, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to you on behalf of my family physician colleagues and the patients we serve across communities. The OCFP applauds the government’s commitment to connect every person in Ontario to primary care and the investments that have been made to support this goal. While primary care continues to face challenges, there is also a giant opportunity. I am pleased to share four solutions, driven by what we have heard from our membership and partners, that will make a meaningful difference for the people of Ontario and the family physicians who care for them. These are outlined in the written submission we shared with the committee. First, we need to continue investing in technology and smarter workflows, so that family physicians can spend less time navigating the system and more time caring for patients. Our top priority in this area is accelerating the centralized intake and referral system. Today, referrals are fragmented, opaque and administratively heavy. This drives long waits, duplications and enormous inefficiencies. A centralized system, co-designed with family physicians, will allow referrals to be coordinated based on need, capacity and transparency for both patients and providers. As part of the Care When You Need It campaign, we’ve found that 70% of Ontarians have waited more than three months for a specialist or a diagnostic test, and more than one third have waited over six months. Some 95% support giving family doctors access to a centralized referral system. It’s a practical way to improve access, reduce waste and get better value from the existing health care capacity. Second, Ontario needs a digital health and AI strategy that builds on the current successes and ensures new tools are implemented in a coordinated way. Programs like the AI scribe pilot have already shown real promise in reducing administrative burden and improving physician sustainability. Unfortunately, isolated tools are not enough. Family physicians need interoperable systems that connect electronic medical records across care centres, support a portable patient record, strengthen digital foundations in rural and northern communities, and modernize core infrastructure such as an immunization registry. Without this foundation, innovation stays fragmented and its impact is limited. A provincial strategy will ensure digital investments are aligned, scalable and actually support system goals like access, efficiency and quality. Third, we must make family medicine more attractive and a sustainable option if we want to recruit and retain the workforce that primary care depends on. Today, many family physicians are struggling with the rising practice costs, staffing shortages and growing administrative demands. Too many are moving away from comprehensive longitudinal family medicine or leaving practice altogether. The OCFP is recommending targeted investments to support family practices with digital infrastructure, help primary care teams attract and retain allied health professionals and fund structured leadership and change management support, so reforms succeed at the practice level. Specifically, OCFP is seeking an investment of $500,000 per year for three years to leverage the OCFP’s community of practice and physician leadership programs. This funding would help to ensure ongoing system changes are successfully adopted by family doctors to maximize the benefit for patients. This is about stabilizing what already exists, because without a stable family physician workforce, no primary care reform can succeed. Finally, we must continue to invest and optimize team-based care so that Ontario can attach more patients to primary care. Team-based models are essential, but they must be supported in ways that actually expand family physician capacity and reduce the burdens on family physicians. This includes accelerating work to optimize family health team contracts, removing financial barriers that undermine appropriate delegation and spreading models that are already demonstrating reduced administrative burden and better use of clinical skills. Getting team-based care right is one of the most effective ways to improve access while making better use of health human resources. The OCFP is ready to partner with the government to make these solutions a reality by investing in technology and smarter workflows, developing a digital health and AI strategy, and making family medicine a more attractive option, as well as optimizing team-based care. We can most efficiently use our health care resources while also ensuring more Ontarians have access and comprehensive integrated primary care with the expertise of a family physician. Thank you.

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

Thank you very much. That concludes the three presentations. We now will start the first round of questioning with MPP Brady.

Official source

Ms. Bobbi Ann Brady

Thanks to all of our presenters this afternoon. I’ll start with you, Anita. You were talking about, the demand for services far outpaces the funding that you are receiving, and you are asking for $16 million in the upcoming budget. How much do you currently receive from the provincial government?

Official source

Ms. Anita Armstrong

Oh, my goodness, that’s a really good question—certainly not $16.4 million. I don’t really know that. I don’t know that; do you know— Interjection.

Official source

Ms. Bobbi Ann Brady

That’s okay. You can get it to me later.

Official source

Ms. Anita Armstrong

I’m really sorry. Thank you.

Official source

Ms. Bobbi Ann Brady

You broke it down into $1.24 million for increased staff wages. You talked about $1.6 million for the friendship centre housing model. Are those all numbers on top of the $16 million or are they part of the $16 million?

Official source

Ms. Anita Armstrong

They’re part of the $16 million ask across the board.

Official source

Ms. Bobbi Ann Brady

You mentioned—I think it’s the friendship centre housing model? Can you tell us what that looks like? Is it transitional housing? How does it work?

Official source

Ms. Anita Armstrong

We actually don’t have the housing model at our friendship centre, due to a lack of funding. Certain friendship centres receive programs; others don’t. They have to select based on the need, based on criteria. The housing model is just affordable housing. There is a transitional aspect to it, but ultimately it just supports the community with affordable housing and education and opportunities from that housing. But we don’t have it in the city of Ottawa at our friendship centre.

Official source

Ms. Bobbi Ann Brady

Is there a criterion of who fits into the affordable housing?

Official source

Ms. Anita Armstrong

Based on the funding, or—

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

One minute.

Official source

Ms. Bobbi Ann Brady

No. Who inhabits those houses that are deemed affordable? Who determines that?

Official source

Ms. Anita Armstrong

That would be the friendship centre itself. Folks would get on a wait-list. Depending on the city, people apply for the housing, and it’s based on need. It’s also first-come, first-served because it is limited housing, but the criterion is those who are in need. The most vulnerable are prioritized.

Official source

Ms. Bobbi Ann Brady

Okay, great. Thank you.

Official source

Ms. Anita Armstrong

You’re welcome.

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

Thank you. MPP Sarrazin.

Official source

Mr. Stéphane Sarrazin

Thank you, all of you, for the presentations. It’s always really interesting to hear about all the challenges. I have to say to you, Mr. Mayor, Your Worship, a few of us were in municipal politics. Some of my colleagues were councillors, and I was a mayor, and we’ve heard your message loud and clear. Talking about the post-secondary, we met with Mr. Brulé from Algonquin College yesterday, and we know that when the changes were made by the federal government for international students—I believe they went from 27,000 students to 24,000. It does affect them, so the message was loud and clear. It was really interesting hearing about the community paramedics. We have it in my area also and I guess you’ve been having this service funded since 2021. But I am not quite sure—you said you never really got an increase, but you got it year after year though, right? You might want to elaborate on that.

Official source

Mr. John Beddows

Oui. Merci, député—bien apprécié. Thank you very much, sir. For the community paramedic program, the designated delivery agent for Gananoque, where I live, is actually the united counties of Leeds and Grenville and I sit on the joint services committee which manages that. Since 2021, we, like other municipalities—we all pay for it from our levy—have received money from the province to fund the community paramedicine program. But there wasn’t an inflationary increase built into the program funding model. So we’re asking that such an increase be considered going forward, and that this committee recommend to the minister that an increase be built into the provincial funding for this service, which provides a really essential and critical element of health support into rural areas and to small towns—be built into the budget for 2026-27. We see this as an element—it’s one of those bridging spaces between un-rostered patients and the emergency room, particularly in areas with older demographics or rural areas with longer distances to travel, or small towns which don’t have a walk-in clinic or a hospital with an emergency room. This particular service allows people to get a health check that lets them have their issue either addressed or appropriately addressed by transportation to other services. So it decreases pressure on emergency rooms and allows a degree of pre-emption, particularly for un-rostered patients.

Official source

Mr. Stéphane Sarrazin

If I may add, we had some announcements of more funding in the health sector. We’ve seen some programs like the VTAC here in Renfrew and we got it in Prescott-Russell. Hopefully we’ll see more of this because, of course, it plays a big role for emergencies, for hospitals. So hopefully, within these announcements, we will see more of the services coming along. We heard your message loud and clear.

Official source

Mr. John Beddows

Merci beaucoup, député. Thank you very much. I appreciate your interest and the focus of this Legislature on the issues of health service and health service delivery equity to Ontarians—very much appreciate it.

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

MPP Smith.

Official source

Mr. Dave Smith

Thank you, Chair. I appreciate that. I’d like to jump over to the Ontario College of Family Physicians. One of the challenges that we have in the health care system with respect to negotiations—the OMA represents all of the doctors when they do the negotiations with the Ministry of Health. I’ve heard from family physicians a few times in my riding coming in and talking to me about different challenges that they’ve faced with it. Has the college of physicians considered separating from the OMA on that negotiation process and negotiate specifically for family physicians? Because it seems that there are times where the needs that the family physicians are coming up with are not the negotiating points that the OMA is working on.

Official source

Dr. Jobin Varughese

Thanks for the question. I think there are a couple of big things where the OMA and the Ontario College of Family Physicians see very closely on some of the areas that we collaborate with. I think that when it comes to remuneration, there’s a benefit in having one body work with the government, and it allows us to be able to work very closely, as partners.

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

One minute.

Official source

Dr. Jobin Varughese

I think one of the things that we’re hoping to really get through in this session is to really invest in the current conversations that we’re having with regard to technology, developing the digital health strategy and AI strategy, supporting family physicians and optimizing team-based care and really allowing the remuneration to follow as well, because these are things that are tangible and can be done within this budget cycle.

Official source

Mr. Dave Smith

We’ve also had some recent news, I’ll refer to it as, with Quebec physicians seeing some challenges in Quebec and looking to come to Ontario to continue their practices. What’s your stance on that? Is that something that Ontario should be actively promoting or working with, or would you rather see more focus on Ontario-based physicians and less focus on attracting Quebec physicians?

Official source

Dr. Jobin Varughese

Well, we know that retention and recruitment both are critically important. For the Ontarian physicians that currently exist within our system—

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

Thank you very much. That concludes the time. We’ll now go to MPP Pasma.

Official source

Ms. Chandra Pasma

Thank you so much to our presenters for being here this afternoon. Mr. Beddows, I’m going to start with you. I appreciate that you raised the issue of post-secondary education. Yesterday, we heard from Algonquin College about the impact of the severe underfunding from the province—more than $7,700 less, per capita, than the national average, which obviously has a significant impact on the capacity of our colleges to offer programs. Algonquin College ended 37 programs, which included closing the Perth campus entirely, and I believe, at the Perth campus, their programs were exclusively in the trades. So I’m wondering—you spoke about equity, but what does it mean for the communities when they have lost a post-secondary option that is local for them?

Official source

Mr. John Beddows

Thank you very much for that question, MPP Pasma. There are two elements to this. The first isn’t often talked about, but it’s the local impact on the economy from the operation of the business of the school itself. There’s an impact on the local economy because that payroll goes away. That often isn’t mentioned here, but there is actually an impact there. Purchasing, contracting, the salaries of individuals employed are spent locally, and there’s a local economic churn in that area, which would go away. And the second: For Ontarians who want to access educational opportunities, affordability does become an important question, and proximity does equal affordability. So the ability to stay at home and go to school or to not travel very far in order to attend not just initial education but things like trade upgrading is a driver for the local economy. It retains people. It creates the idea that people can stay, go to school and then continue to work in an area. And what it can help to do is shift demographics going forward, because if you build it, they will come. So if there’s daycare, families will go to where the daycare is. If there’s access to opportunities for quality primary, secondary and post-secondary education, there’s an incentive for people to stay where those places are or to value living in those places, to a certain degree, because it allows their children access to future opportunities. We don’t often see something that can be framed as a pure investment as opposed to a value proposition in government spending, but education is truly an investment. We can do the return on investment. We can look at the economic impact of education. And the distribution of that return on investment is regional as well as central. So allowing the distribution of educational opportunities is an element of equity for people living in rural areas and also helps to retain—we’ll call it—younger families in rural areas because they see opportunity for their future and their children’s future locally.

Official source

Ms. Chandra Pasma

Right. Thank you.

Official source

Mr. John Beddows

Thank you.

Official source

Ms. Chandra Pasma

Ms. Armstrong, you mentioned the Odawa food pantry, not funded, seeing an increase, which—the Ottawa Food Bank generally, we heard yesterday, has increased demand. They’re having to reduce the amount of food in order to try to provide everyone with some. Can you help us to understand why does Odawa operate a food pantry in addition to the Ottawa Food Bank, given that it’s unfunded? What role is that playing for the community that’s so important?

Official source

Ms. Anita Armstrong

It’s imperative for community, seeing the increase of food insecurity in our community. I think we started our food pantry—probably, we’ve been open for 50 years serving the Ottawa community, and we’ve just provided emergency food from the onset, I think. It’s never been funded, but we just try to fill the gaps. We recognize that our community needs additional supports, and so, yes, we’re just trying to fill the gap a little bit. We do get support from the Ottawa Food Bank. But as you said, they’re stretched very thin across the entire city, and they’ve had to reduce the allotment per organization.

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

One minute.

Official source

Ms. Anita Armstrong

One of our main fundraisers is for food pantry because we recognize the need. Unfortunately, our funders, the community, just can’t meet the need of our population. So we’re doing our best that way to raise funds for food security.

Official source

Ms. Chandra Pasma

Right. Well, thank you for doing that work. I would assume funding in other areas would help reduce some of the organizational strains to provide that housing. Just really quickly, based on what you said about housing, you’re asking for funding specifically for Indigenous-friendship-centre-modelled housing. But I would assume you also want to see Ottawa get support for building more affordable housing so that stock is there and available.

Official source

Ms. Anita Armstrong

Absolutely. It’s across the board. Our mandate is obviously First Nations, Inuit, Métis, and we are trying to—

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

Thank you very much. That concludes the time. MPP Collard.

Official source

Mme Lucille Collard

Thank you to the presenters for coming today and making the time to give us that very important information. I do have a question for you, Mr. Beddows. As mayor, you may understand this better than I do. I get requests all the time for people asking for the MPAC assessment to resume. It has an impact for the municipalities but also for the individuals on the worth of their houses and whatnot. Do you know why those freezes have been occurring and why they’re not picking up where they left off?

Official source

Mr. John Beddows

Merci bien, députée Collard. No, I do not, and I won’t speculate. I know the MPAC province-wide assessment is at the direction of the Minister of Finance, and therefore whether or not it occurs is a government decision. The reasons for it, I don’t know. What I do know is that there hasn’t been a province-wide assessment since 2016. I know that new build is dialled back for assessment purposes to 2016 levels, and I know that there are some challenges going forward. So at a municipal perspective, one of the challenges is, we dial up a budget, and that’s the amount of money we need to raise. Then we assign the tax levy and distribute it based on the amount of money we have to raise. If the assessed value of your house doubles, I don’t need twice as much money to plow the streets in front of your house; I just need the same number of dollars. So we adjust. The challenge is equity. To give you an illustrative example, in my municipality, I had a resident’s house burn down. Insurance paid off. They built a new house. The value of the new house is more than twice what the old house was, but because it’s a new build but it’s valued against our current mill rate, I can’t do one-off adjustments. So this family of seniors has now seen their property taxes double because there isn’t an assessment across the entire community which would allow us to distribute that. So this family is pinched because the value of their new home is increased. This is an illustrative example—I’m not really a big fan of Bobby’s law because I think we should serve all the Bobbys, not a Bobby, as it were—of a province-wide assessment allowing municipalities to distribute the property tax burden in a way that allows equity across the entire property stock within their municipalities. From our perspective, the assessment also allows us to understand the value of the municipality itself going forward. Does that answer your question?

Official source

Mme Lucille Collard

Oui. Merci beaucoup.

Official source

M. John Beddows

De rien. Je vous en prie.

Official source

Mme Lucille Collard

I would like to also better understand how this impacts the municipalities. Either your income from the taxes—the fact that there is no assessment; is that a good thing for you or a bad thing? How does it impact the work of the municipality?

Official source

Mr. John Beddows

The municipalities build their budgets. The amount of money from the budget is what actually drives the property tax levy. Because the province-wide assessment hasn’t happened, we don’t understand the current market value of the privately owned, or the provincially or federally owned, assets—PILT-related, or payment in lieu of taxes-related—in our municipalities. With that, it makes it difficult for us to set an appropriate tax rate that charges our residents for the services they receive. So we have to raise a certain amount of money, but we don’t know if it’s being distributed appropriately based on the value of properties, which have moved significantly up and down, depending on the nature of those properties, so that people are paying—we’ll call it “fairly”—for the services they receive.

Official source

Mme Lucille Collard

Right. Prior to 2016, how often were the assessments conducted?

Official source

Mr. John Beddows

Quadrennial; 2016 was the last one. There was supposed to be one in 2020, which was deferred because of COVID, and 2024 would have been the next one. Municipalities receive a levy bill from MPAC. This year, for example, Quinte West’s bill is facing a 5% increase, estimated at $604,559—playing to the audience.

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

One minute.

Official source

Mr. John Beddows

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Half of that, we expect—ballparking—would be paying for that big, province-wide—so you pile up your money every four years to pay for it. And so we’re not getting the service. We would like to have the municipal levies adjusted down until the surplus has gone through two cycles, because we’ve paid for it for two cycles. We also really would like to see the province-wide assessment done so that we can understand the value of the assets held in our municipalities and fairly distribute the tax burden so that people are paying appropriately for the services they receive based on the value of their property, but more fundamentally, for things like insurance evaluation. There are a whole bunch of pieces that fit into this. We just see this as a fairness question.

Official source

Mme Lucille Collard

So who is collecting the levy?

Official source

Mr. John Beddows

It’s paid to MPAC, ma’am.

Official source

Mme Lucille Collard

Okay—paid to MPAC?

Official source

Mr. John Beddows

Yes, ma’am. The Municipal Property Assessment Corporation issues a levy—

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

Thank you very much. We’ll go to MPP Brady.

Official source

Ms. Bobbi Ann Brady

I would describe that as a budgeting nightmare. I’ll turn my questions over to the Ontario College of Family Physicians. Jobin, you spoke about the crisis surrounding the lack of primary care physicians in Ontario, especially in rural areas. I represent a rural area. I recently saw an article out of BC—I hope you know the article I’m referring to—where a municipality thought outside the box and they began hiring physicians as municipal workers and used the municipal admin staff to do paperwork. I’m wondering if you believe that this type of innovative thinking would be helpful in attracting and making family medicine look more attractive here in Ontario and help with the retention issues.

Official source

Dr. Jobin Varughese

Thanks for the question. Honestly, there is no shortage of innovation that can be helpful. We know that there are a lot of benefit in a lot of things that people are having to do. One of the things we’re hoping to have happen is that we can have province-wide solutions that allow for primary care to be seen as a priority, as it currently is, and continue to see the investments make a difference, especially in expanding those interprofessional teams, as you mentioned. This is a province-wide issue; it shouldn’t be on individual municipalities to make adjustments based on their needs. But there is a need to have equity in the system, so having a province-wide, sustainable plan that has a lot of these tools, like some of the progress that’s being made on the Health Care Connect list or some of the rollout on the team-based models—these are all the positive steps we need to see. But we also need to see the day-to-day changes. That’s why we’re going to see a lot of these innovations in trying to decrease the administrative burdens, which we know can be as high as 10 to 19 hours a week. So as we work through the investments and get them in the right direction, we need to have more to stabilize primary care and support existing practices, as well as make team-based primary care the norm. We need to have the solutions that I outlined today, focused on—

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

One minute.

Official source

Dr. Jobin Varughese

—turning progress into real, felt change, both for patients and for the physicians that care for them.

Official source

Ms. Bobbi Ann Brady

Thank you for that. Building upon that—and I hope I articulate this correctly—yesterday, we heard from folks in the community who go out there and do wonderful work in our community, and keep people out of ERs and keep them out of doctor’s offices. They are encouraging us as policy-makers to invest in community services. We’ve heard from Mayor Beddows about a community paramedic program, which I know works well, but as a policy-maker, I’m confused, because you’re now asking us to prioritize family physicians. What does that model—where should we start? I know that it’s connected, but what does the ideal model look like and where should we prioritize money?

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

Thank you very much. That concludes the time—no time for an answer. MPP Kanapathi.

Official source

Mr. Logan Kanapathi

Thank you to all the panellists. Thank you for being here and thank you for your presentation. My question is to Dr. Jobin. Thank you for your passion. Thank you for what you are doing, not only for us here, but for the patients in Ontario. I want to change the channel here, Dr. Jobin. You guys are responsible for the licensing of family physicians. Is that right?

Official source

Dr. Jobin Varughese

That would be the CPSO, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

Official source

Mr. Logan Kanapathi

Okay. I wanted to ask, opening that question. You advocate for—there’s tens of thousands of doctor shortages, not only in urban areas, but especially in rural areas. We are having pre-budget consultations in the rural areas. We are here. The mayor was talking about the shortage of family physicians and primary caregivers. There are thousands and thousands of IMGs, international medical graduates, coming out of Canada—went to high school, university, then coming back to the medical degree of five years. They have to start all over again. Internationally-trained doctors here—thousands them—are driving taxis and delivering pizzas. They had to start all over again. Our government is opening up the door. We are hiring. We are moving in their direction. Tell me: Does your organization, the OCFP, advocate to carry more family physicians, especially primary care, into the system, building capacity? We are in a crisis.

Official source

Dr. Jobin Varughese

Thank you for that. As a reminder, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario are the ones that do the licensing. The Ontario College of Family Physicians helps support, and I think this is where the amount of changes that have been made to date have been making differences in ensuring that we can have more people both recruited and retained. Programs like Practice Ready Ontario have allowed for people to start practising earlier. I think one of the things that we need to be able to do in order to do that is work towards investing in more communities of practice, like the ones we currently have that have been very successful. The $500,000 investment per three years that I was mentioning would be leadership academies that allow for highly reputable, valued services to family physicians of all types, including IMGs and including those that are early in their practice, within their first five years. These would be the go-to destinations. We already saw what happened during COVID. There was a huge need to have a physician forum for knowledge translation. And so, as we get further provincial funding in this, we can actually become the trusted peer leader change management vehicle that allows for increased support of some of the uptake in team-based case in provincial initiatives, like centralized referral. This will allow us to have a stronger system that, regardless of where somebody trained, they’re able to practise at the highest level in family medicine.

Official source

Mr. Logan Kanapathi

Thank you, Dr. Jobin. I’ll pass it over to MPP Tyler.

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

MPP Allsopp.

Official source

Mr. Tyler Allsopp

My question is for Anita Armstrong of the Odawa Native Friendship Centre. I wondered if you could expand a little bit on some of the programs that you were talking about that relate to youth homelessness, and the overrepresentation that we see of Indigenous youth within the foster system. I used to work for an organization called the Enrichment Centre for Mental Health, and so we worked with a lot of people who were unhoused and may be experiencing addictions or mental health issues. What we found is that one of the number-one predictors for adult homelessness was people experiencing homelessness as a youth, and that often, youth end up in a homeless situation because of a breakdown within the family or disagreements with older family members. So, if you could talk about how those programs help keep kids housed and keep those families together.

Official source

Ms. Anita Armstrong

Yes, thank you very much for the question. I would say that with the First Nation, Inuit and Métis community, what needs to happen is a recognition and healing of intergenerational trauma, and that stems back, you know, over 250 years. When there is a breakdown of culture and tradition, and even passing on loving, healthy relationships, that obviously impacts our youth, our children, and they just don’t have the tools to make it in an already difficult society. As I mentioned earlier, they’re not just facing the normal issues of regular youth. They have those intergenerational and unresolved traumas, as well as all the other complex issues that are being faced every day. So, yes, we want to start supporting early. We want to make sure that youth have programs to come to where they can feel valued, they can connect with tradition and culture. We believe culture, language, tradition is—

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

Thank you very much. That concludes the time. MPP Bell.

Official source

Ms. Jessica Bell

Thank you to the presenters for coming in today. My first questions are for the Eastern Ontario Mayors’ Caucus, John Beddows. Thank you so much for being here. I wanted to change tack a little bit and talk about homelessness within your region, because it has come up as we’ve been travelling through eastern Ontario to talk to people about some of the issues that they’re facing. I was wondering if you could give us a bit of an understanding of the state of homelessness in the towns that your area represents. Do you know the numbers? Are affordable housing starts or shelter supports enough to address some of the homelessness issues that you’re seeing? What impact is it having on municipal budgets and communities? Could you paint us a picture?

Official source

Mr. John Beddows

Thank you, MPP Bell. I’m going to go high level, because I didn’t come prepared to answer those questions in detail.

Official source

Ms. Jessica Bell

That’s fine.

Official source

Mr. John Beddows

And I don’t have the aggregate information from my member mayors, so I can speak from my own perspective. I can speak from the perspective of the joint services committee of Leeds and Grenville. But I can do a high-level piece. Housing affordability is a cross-generational, cross-cultural, cross-constituency challenge, as was just addressed by the question to my colleague—I’ll call you “my colleague” at this table—and it touches on everybody. Housing affordability is an interesting challenge. Part of the homelessness prevention challenge is about the challenge inherent in supportive housing, because there’s a large element of the population who are facing issues, which provide layers of challenges to enabling us to help them to remain housed in the long term. Housing affordability is a challenge across the province. We have the government program to build more housing, of course, which is looking at addressing part of that challenge at the municipal level, and certainly at the DDA level, where social housing and supportive housing is actually enabled to be delivered. At this point in time, trying to meet demand is a challenge across the board. And this is the message I hear from my constituent mayors: that we have populations of people who are difficult to permanently house for a number of reasons. But there’s a portion of that that has to remembered: that people who won’t be housed for various reasons because they either choose not to be, or they’re choosing not to—for example, in Toronto—be on a by-name list, which means they’re very difficult to track and to serve. But what I will endeavour to do, MPP Bell, is I will speak to my constituent mayors and I will provide a written submission to this committee to address your questions before January 29, because I don’t want to talk out of turn or give you bad information.

Official source

Ms. Jessica Bell

I really appreciate that. One of the reasons why I raise it is because municipalities everywhere are often being asked to provide services that the province traditionally used to do, or they do not have enough resources and their problem is growing. I can follow up with you on that. I don’t have a lot of time so I’m just going to move to the next question. My next question is to president Varughese from the Ontario College of Family Physicians. I listened carefully to the recommendations you were making. The recommendation around moving forward with an AI scribe—I am curious to know if the college has done an assessment on how much time this would free up an average doctor and what impact that would have on how many patients that doctor could see as part of their roster.

Official source

Dr. Jobin Varughese

This has already been studied preliminarily and is showing early signs that three to four hours have been saved per week simply with AI scribe as a tool. In speaking with my colleagues, many people feel that even when it doesn’t reduce the overall number of hours, they feel like they are able to practise in a better way because of the fact that they’re able to really focus their attention on the patients. They’re able to be eye-to-eye and—

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

One minute.

Official source

Dr. Jobin Varughese

—they’re able to spend that time in a strong way. So, really using those successes and investing in centralized referrals or other infrastructures like that that are digital would really help us keep family physicians in Ontario so that we can focus more on patients and allow us to really spend that time in a meaningful conversation with our patients.

Official source

Ms. Jessica Bell

Thanks for that. We don’t have a lot of time, but as a follow-up, I’m also curious to know about the recommendation around expanding team-based care and how someone who is a sole practitioner—what their work conditions are like compared to a doctor that is working within a family health team setting and what that would do for doctor retention. But we can follow up on that question.

Official source

Dr. Jobin Varughese

Absolutely. I’d love to talk more about that, and we have been doing focus groups specifically on that to try to find that reality between people who have family health teams and access to teams and those that don’t. We’ve been hearing immense benefits from having teams around you and the ability to focus on the care that’s provided.

Official source

Ms. Jessica Bell

I’m looking forward to seeing the—

Official source

The Chair (Hon. Ernie Hardeman)

Thank you very much. We’ll now go to MPP Collard.

Official source

Mme Lucille Collard

Actually, I’m going to continue with the Ontario College of Family Physicians for a question. I am really interested in the internationally-trained-doctors solution. To me, it seems to be low-hanging fruit that we could access here in Ontario to address the high demand. I know you mentioned a practice-ready program when MPP Kanapathi asked you about it, but I see that program as having very, very limited success because its accessibility is not actually very good. It’s costly, it takes time and doctors have told me that it doesn’t work for them. My question to you is, would the college be willing to work with the government to create bridging programs to allow those people who have extensive training and experience in practice—to get them to qualify and be licensed to be able to access the practice?

Official source

Dr. Jobin Varughese

I think one of the things that the Ontario College of Family Physicians is really great about being is that shared collaborating space, and so the ability to bring multiple partners together is one of our specialties. I think we’re very willing to work with the government to find ways to implement that by bringing other providers like our academic family physician partners, those within other areas that have expertise in international medical graduate training, as well as ensuring that we can do this. I think being a change partner is something that we are very invested in being and helping with that change management. As the government brings solutions towards the idea of improving retention and recruitment, it’s critically important. I think we also need to counteract that with the ability to bring in some of the system needs that we have currently, so as we bring more people into the system, they’re coming into a system that has things like a centralized referral, has interoperability of the electronic medical record, has the ability to have AI scribes or other digital tools built in so that as we continue to bring people into the workforce, we’re able to do it in a way that allows our system to not have more people struggling to work through. I think that’s where we’ve seen some of the commitments to date and I think we want to continue to see that move forward. Our ask being the $500,000 investment for three years would work towards these community of practices and could continue to push forward on building more ability to understand what it would take to bring the international medical graduate solution into a reality.

Official source

Mme Lucille Collard

Thank you. I’m going to turn my attention to Anita, because my riding is Ottawa–Vanier and there’s a huge amount of Indigenous people. There is also a huge amount of organizations that serve Indigenous people in various capacities. I have a couple of questions for you. I just wanted to understand, right now, where do you get your funding from? I know you are asking the government to provide additional funding, but where is your basis coming from?

Official source

Ms. Anita Armstrong

We receive funding from federal, municipal and provincial—

Official source

Mme Lucille Collard

All levels of government.

Official source

Ms. Anita Armstrong

Yes, all levels of government. The $16.4 million that we’re inquiring about is to supplement current funding of all 31 friendship centres across the board. Odawa has about $6 million of funding from all levels of government, so I imagine all 31 friendship centres probably have roughly about the same amount. We are just asking for that supplementary increase for programs, for overall services and supports, and wages, of course.

Official source

Mme Lucille Collard

In relation to that, in Vanier, almost next to my office, we have the Wabano Centre. They organize a big event to raise funding every year. It’s a huge success and it’s very impressive. I’ve been going there for years, and I’m always so impressed by the amount I learn from everything that they bring in that evening and they show us.

Official source