Address in Reply

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Leader of the Official Opposition.

CLAUDIA CHENDER: I am honoured to rise and finish my reply to last day's Throne Speech. Early in the speech, we were told that only when we stand with and for one another can we push back the forces that hold us back. That was reiterated today when we heard about - well, what J.D. Vance would call "the enemy from within." This is true; we can only stand with and for one another when we push back the forces that try to hold us back, and it is clear right now that those forces are coming from south of the border. What are we going to do?

Well, together, we need to strengthen and support our local economy in the face of these potential tariffs. We need to support local businesses and workers, and we also need to create a place where people can afford a place to live and access primary care.

We know that housing is the largest driver of the affordability crisis that many Nova Scotians are facing, and yet we heard almost nothing about housing in the Throne Speech. In fact, I think the only place in the Throne Speech that housing is mentioned is in one sentence that couples building housing and building pipelines, which is so strange because we won't see a pipeline built in Nova Scotia, but we must see housing built in Nova Scotia.

Incredibly, prices are out of reach for so many still four years into an apparent effort to work on it. Home ownership - and I know that we've all heard this in our ridings - is a dream that families are literally giving up on. If I talk to the people I know - young professionals - if they don't have family help, frankly, or independent wealth of some kind, they are not looking toward a future where they will own a home, and that is a failure. In the face of that, in the face of a moment when rents are skyrocketing, and housing is totally unaffordable, we no longer have a Department of Housing.

I want to say this again because it bears repeating and, in fact, when it first happened, the new Department of Growth and Development didn't even list "housing" as part of its mandate. We have no Department of Housing for the first time in history that I can find. This is unfathomable to me and to thousands of Nova Scotians who are struggling to find and keep housing that they can afford. Perhaps the Premier doesn't think that housing is an issue anymore, but I'm certain that the 66 per cent of Nova Scotians who experienced challenges with housing in the last year would disagree.

The housing portfolio, as I mentioned, is now under the Department of Growth and Development. As we've already discussed, growth and development will be crucial to our province's economic future. Housing is certainly a part of that puzzle, but housing needs its own department, and it needs its own minister, and I think what the government is doing here is saying the quiet part out loud.

When this government thinks of housing, they think about it in terms of development, or maybe developers, or they think of it as growth. We think of housing as a home, and we know that it remains incredibly challenging for people across this province to find a home that they can afford.

In my own constituency, in one example of dozens of cases we've had just in the last several months, a man came to us. He was renting a room from a friend. He was on social assistance - or maybe it's called the "opportunity cheque" now; I don't know what it's called - but we would call it social assistance in the past, and so he didn't have very much money. His roommate died, and the next day, his landlord changed the locks, and there wasn't really anything he could do because he wasn't a tenant, because he couldn't be a tenant, because he can't afford a place to live.

So he came to our office, and within two solid weeks of work of my constituency assistant and my incredible staff and dozens of phone calls and lots of engagement with frontline agencies, we were able to secure a promise of something in a few weeks. Meanwhile, he's in a shelter.

This should not be happening. We need housing. We need housing for people like this gentleman, but we also need housing for the hundreds and thousands of young professionals in our province who want to make a life here but can't afford to. They can't find a house they can afford.

There's almost nothing in this budget about this, and this affects our health. It affects our mental health. It affects education and children's ability to learn. It affects recreation, as we've heard. It leads to poor physical and mental health outcomes. And it remains the largest barrier for women fleeing from the epidemic of domestic violence.

We've seen an increase in rent supplements, and there is a supplement program that's in the budget. It's not enough, because if there is nowhere to live, these rent supplements don't create housing.

What the frontline organizations - whom I want to take a moment to just give all the biggest shout-outs in the world to, and whom I've been speaking with over the past weeks and months and years, but more intensively - what these frontline organizations that work with survivors and perpetrators of gender-based violence tell us is that housing is sometimes the difference between life and death. A lack of housing forces survivors to make impossible decisions. They have to decide between being homeless and facing abuse. That's not a decision anyone can make.

We need more housing. We need a Department of Housing. We need to know that in this large government, there is a person whose sole responsibility is figuring out how we solve this housing crisis. Yet we do not have that. We have a gajillion ministerial assistants, we have lots of Cabinet ministers, and yet we could not dedicate one person - one human being in this government - to actually just deal with housing. We have a Minister of Health and Wellness. She works very hard. We have a Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development. I can't speak to the Minister of Education's work ethic - he's new in the role. We don't have a Minister of Housing.

I know I'm repeating myself, and I'm doing it on purpose, because it is still shocking. There's a commitment to building public housing in this budget and in the Throne Speech, but it is a fraction of what is required. The last time we checked, there were 7,700 people on the public housing wait-list. A few hundred units is great. We welcome it, and it's not enough - not by a long shot.

The government has had three-and-a-half, almost four, years to deliver meaningful action. There are good programs in the department - well, I don't know where they are. They were in the Department of Housing. Where are they now? Somewhere. If they still exist, some of those programs were good. However, every housing organization that we have talked to, in particular the folks who are building non-market housing - housing that is immune to the price shocks of the ever-escalating prices for both rental and new homes in this province - have told us that, while the names are good and the ideas are good, they are insufficiently funded. There is not enough money in any of these programs to make a meaningful difference.

Further, many of these programs are agnostic about whether they're accessed by non-profit, non-market, for-profit, or market-based developers. At the beginning, there was some rationale for that, because we had such a small non-market housing sector, but that's not the case anymore. Because of the need, we see a growing non-market housing sector from one end of this province to the other. Through the valley, through the North Shore, through Pictou County, certainly in Cape Breton - we look at folks like New Dawn Enterprises - Southwest Nova Scotia, and here in HRM, we have these organizations right across our province. However, when they apply for many of these programs, they have to go up against developers - the well-funded developers with lots of expertise.

If I had to pick who would best preserve housing at a cost that Nova Scotians can afford, I'm going to pick non-market housing providers every time because it's their mission. They don't exist to make a profit. They exist to provide housing. There's a space for developers who want to make profit from housing. Lord knows we have lots of them, and they're making really good money. You can read it in AllNovaScotia any day of the week. The profits are going up. I think that has been aided in large part by this government, which has given them lots of land and lots of space. That's great. Yet there are so many Nova Scotians who remain in core housing need.

We need a plan to actually give Nova Scotians homes that they can afford, to strengthen tenant protections. We have a new Minister of Service Nova Scotia. Maybe they'll be willing to have a conversation about what protecting tenants means and what balance means when that balance is someone's balance sheet or someone's ability to be housed. That's the balance we're talking about when we talk about protecting tenants. We need a plan to support municipalities to expedite housing developments, including in places that are underutilized and where developers are land banking.

My colleague the member for Halifax Needham asked about this today in Question Period. I want to take this moment to reiterate that the fire that consumed the Bloomfield School is an absolute tragedy. The fact that no one died is a miracle. Not a kilometre away from the Bloomfield school sits St. Patrick's-Alexandra School, which could house thousands - tens of thousands - of people. It is a giant lot, and it is now being used to very unsafely and illegally house people who have no other option. There are lots of ways that the province themselves - or through delegated powers, the municipality - could force developers who are sitting on prime housing sites in the middle of urban areas - it's not just Halifax. There's a way that they could force developers to build or take the land back and use it for a public purpose.

There was some misunderstanding in Question Period. The Bloomfield site was a school, then it was a thriving community hub, then it was purchased for affordable housing by the NDP government, and then it was sold to private developers by the Liberal government. In the middle of all of that, it actually had been recommended by the school board for a school site, and then it was rejected because we were told that it didn't look like the schools we think about in Nova Scotia. There wasn't enough parking. It could have been a vertical school. Cities have schools that have more than three storeys, but we couldn't imagine that at the time. It has been failure and failure and failure of different orders of government to do something useful with this site.

It's not the only one. I'm talking about Bloomfield because I'm familiar with it, but there are so many sites like this. While we open up ecologically sensitive areas to unbridled private development, we miss these service lots in the centre of neighbourhoods - often the centre of traditionally marginalized neighbourhoods, often the centre of neighbourhoods that don't have the infrastructure that they need. We miss the opportunity to build there, and that is an enormously missed opportunity.

This government was very quick to take power away from municipalities to create Special Planning Areas, to expedite private development. Who were the beneficiaries of that? Developers were the beneficiaries of that. Developers have made and are making lots of money building housing that we need in these Special Planning Areas. Will this province consider taking power from those developers when the beneficiaries would be the public and the frontline organizations that serve us by instituting something like a vacant land tax, by forcing these developers to build or to sell it back?

In the upcoming session, we'll introduce practical solutions to help Nova Scotians in these areas, as we have been doing for years. Real rent control, better protections for tenants, more pathways to real home ownership.

We can't afford to wait while Nova Scotians struggle to find a home that they can afford or put up with living in unsafe conditions. Department or not, commitment or not, my colleagues and I will continue to fight to ensure that all Nova Scotians have a place to call home.

Having a place to live is only part of the equation. True well-being comes from having our health. There is no greater duty of government than ensuring its citizens have access to quality, timely health care, but in every community, the stories are the same: emergency room closures, emergency wait times worsening, patients waiting years for a family doctor, and frontline workers stretched beyond their limits.

Speaker, the Houston government was elected in 2021 on a promise to fix health care. We didn't hear much about it in the recent election campaign. While we have seen some welcome improvements in some areas of our health care system - and I'm sure, as the Minister of Health and Wellness alluded to earlier, we're going to hear a lot more about it in Budget Estimates - the root of the health care crisis, which almost all experts will agree, is that the lack of attachment to primary care has yet to be addressed in a meaningful way. This was the platform of the two Opposition parties in the last election. It's more than hiring doctors. It's opening collaborative care centres from one end of the province to the other and prioritizing the work.

We still have over 100,000 Nova Scotians without access to primary care. Many of those Nova Scotians are seniors. Many of those Nova Scotians have chronic diseases. Many of those Nova Scotians are children. For all the improvements that we've seen so far, from pharmacies to Maple, it's not a substitution for being attached to primary care. We just haven't seen that. We haven't seen a plan for it. We didn't hear about it in the Speech from the Throne. We are concerned, to say the least.

We are even more concerned, and I can't - I have so much to say about this, but I'm going to keep it somewhat limited, because this government has a tendency to hide information that does not suit their political agenda. We don't have a communications department. We have seen a massive overhaul of the rules of the House of Assembly and of the Act today. We got no notice. We had no engagement. We had no forewarning. This is the kind of work that in the past would have been the work of a committee. We would have brought the parties together to talk about those changes to the rules. We would have contemplated what would have made sense. That is not what happened today. That is not what we see here.

We also, of course, saw the elimination of Communications Nova Scotia. We saw first-hand some of the results of that this morning. Our budget documents were late and incomplete. We had all kinds of challenges in the process. I don't know if that's because people were upset when this supposed non-partisan agency sent out a glossy booklet, paid for by taxpayers, touting the government's accomplishments at the beginning of a campaign, or whether they just want to control the message. The reality is that there was a shutdown of this department, and that does send some chill.

The Premier's years-long campaign to give the Information and Privacy Commissioner order-making powers under the Liberal government now seems laughable. I'm shocked at my relative longevity in this House at this point. So many won't remember that this Premier made his reputation on opposing, on calling out the government, on calling for transparency, on calling for good governance, on listening to the Auditor General, on giving order-making powers to the Information and Privacy Commissioner, on filibustering - he taught lessons in it - and yet we're doing away with all of that today.

We're doing away with all of that today because this majority government is not secure enough in their mandate and in their ability to pass any legislation that they want, so they have to change the rules to limit Nova Scotians' ability to understand what's going on, to reply to what's going on - I don't even know if we have a Law Amendments Committee anymore. I don't think so. It doesn't pass the smell test.

I want to go back to health care. Again, precious little about health care in the Speech from the Throne. There were some discussions of accomplishments, but I couldn't help but notice that there was the note of new MRIs.

One of the things that we don't see in enhanced diagnostics is diagnostics for women at risk of breast cancer. This is something that the former MLA for Clayton Park West spent a lot of time advocating for - advanced screening for women who are not able - or cancers cannot be picked up on regular diagnostic equipment. I count myself as one of those. I know many other women in my life who are, as well.

The good news is we probably won't die because of the lack of advanced diagnostics. The bad news is we are more likely to have cancer diagnosed at Stage 4 than at Stage 1. I guess that's okay on a spreadsheet, but it's not really okay in real life. That's only one of the areas of women's health that this government has been silent on. We have not seen a priority.

I am glad to see a commitment to the Menopause Centre of Excellence, but if it's anything like the Endometriosis and Chronic Pelvic Pain Clinic, it will be not enough and not soon enough. There is still an enormous wait-list. There is still a very challenging path for women who have this debilitating disease.

Most investments made by this government, especially the big ones, especially the additional appropriations, have been made not using traditional procurement that is designed to get Nova Scotians the best deal. We saw today a $657,000 deficit projected, something the now Minister of Public Works would be up here railing against had he not made different choices in his life.

The reality is it's true. If it is true that we need to run this level of deficit in order to meet our responsibilities, then it is also true that this government has a responsibility to Nova Scotians to tell them how they're spending the money and for them to be assured that that money is good value.

We have no such assurance. In some cases, we don't even have contracts. The most glaring example of that, which we've talked about here, is Hogan Court. It's great that we have a transitional care facility, but some people got pretty rich in the process. It was done contrary to expert reports and opinions and contrary to the report of the Auditor General.

This is a pattern. We have unsolicited bids going to companies like Google, companies that have access to our data, companies that are American companies that are loyal to the U.S. administration, which is threatening us with a trade war, and have access to our data.

We need to rethink transparency; we need to rethink the degree to which this government actually cuts Nova Scotians in on the conversation. From what we see so far, it's the exact opposite.

Speaker, as the Official Opposition, it is our duty to hold this government accountable. They should welcome this. We will challenge their assumptions, push for meaningful action and ensure that Nova Scotians' voices are heard.

We are committed to fighting for policies that lift our province up and improve people's lives. In doing so, we demand transparency and accountability from those in power, especially in the face of bolder and more frightening tactics to limit media, control messaging, spend without accountability, and paint everyday Nova Scotians who dare to disagree as the enemy.

This government is flooding the zone and changing the way we do business. I've outlined a number of them, but there's more. I just want to say it's important to note that today, on Budget Day, a day that is normally reserved for the budget, we also have a report on compensation. We also have a wholesale changing of the rules of the House of Assembly. We also had two bill briefings that took place simultaneously to the Budget Speech. This is ridiculous.

We have a bill introduced that's going to let this government fire people that they may want to fire. The reality is that there is no reason for this. The only reason is to give Nova Scotians less ability to understand what the government is doing.

These bills could roll out over days or weeks or months, and yet they come forward all in one day. Government efficiency, changing the rules, exploration, any of the things that the government has brought forward today, would itself deserve a full debate and ability to comprehend.

I can only be left with the conclusion that this government doesn't want Nova Scotians to know what they're doing. This government doesn't want Nova Scotians to understand. They want to ram through their agenda as quickly as they can. They want to lift bans and talk later.

The challenges that we face are great, but make no mistake, so is our resolve. Nova Scotians are resilient, hard working and full of hope. And what they need is a government that will match their determination with action; a government that will listen, learn, lead, and fight for a better future. We resolve to meet these challenges with kindness and compassion.

The time for excuses is over, and the time for real leadership is now. And so, let's work together to build a stronger, fairer, more secure, and more prosperous Nova Scotia, where no one is left behind and where every citizen has the opportunity to thrive.