Role of the Family
The party has published no official statement concerning its policies on the role or importance of the family.

To support children with disabilities, the party advocates:
– addressing the growing waitlist for Ontario Autism Program (OAP) core services by building the capacity of autism providers, funding the OAP to bring families into the program as rapidly as possible, and increasing funding every year as inflation and the number of children registered in the program increases.
– establishing an ultimate wait time benchmark for diagnosis and access to core services once registered in the program.
– working with the federal Government and other provinces in the development of a National Autism Strategy to develop standards and a funding model to provide supports and services for autistic people of all ages, and providing educators with multi-discipline training to help them address student sensory and behavioural issues and adopt teaching strategies that support students with a wide spectrum of accommodation needs.
– building on the work done with the OAP toward a new Ontario Disability Support Program that would provide funding for therapeutic and respite services and supports for people with all disabilities, beginning with children and youth.

Health Care

As matters of priority within its platform, the party advocates:
– repeal of Bill 124, paying PSWs, nurses and ECEs a fair wage and hiring 33,000 nurses.
– doubling the rates for Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP).
– helping people age in place with a $1.6B investment in home care.
– support in-person learning and opposing any move toward mandatory e-learning or hybrid learning models.
– enhancing affordability and access to post-secondary by converting loans to grants for low and middle income post-secondary students.

Mental Health
The party states that:
– mental health is health.
– almost half of Ontarians reported that their mental health worsened during the pandemic; and and one in four Ontarians has recently sought help.
– the greatest barriers people face in receiving treatment are access and affordability.  But mental health is not a “nice to have,” it is a “need to have.
– it introduced a comprehensive mental health plan, “Building a More Caring Ontario,” that lays out a strategy to make mental health care more affordable, accessible and comprehensive, so that anyone in the province can get the care they need when they need it.  It intends to expand OHIP to include regulated mental health care providers who are presently out of reach for so many Ontarians.

To increase access to publicly funded mental health care, the party advocates:
– applying 10% of Ontario’s healthcare budget to mental health.
– including mental health and addiction care under OHIP by offering services provided by psychotherapists, psychologists, social workers, and other regulated professionals.
– providing an immediate base budget increase of 8% to the community mental health sector to increase access to publicly funded care.
– expanding access to publicly funded mental health and addiction treatment beds to reduce or eliminate the need for expensive private care.
– full integration of mental health and addictions services into expanded Family Health Teams and walk-in clinics to improve early intervention, and including mental health and substance use as part of regular check-ups.
– ensuring that care is available everywhere in Ontario, around the clock, including (i) investing to ensure that core mental health and addiction services are available in all regions of Ontario; (ii) establishing clear pathways to navigate the mental health care system, and trained staff to help connect people to appropriate treatment and services; (iii)  implementing a wait time reduction strategy for mental health services, and making targets available to the public; (iv)  a 3 digit, 24/7 province-wide mental health crisis response line so callers can be diverted from 911 and connected to a more appropriate service; creation and expansion of 24/7 mental health focused mobile crisis response teams, crisis centres, rapid access addiction medicine clinics, and short-term residential beds across the province.

To improve access to mental health care for children, youth and students, the party advocates:
– reducing wait times to 30 days or less by investing in front-line mental health care workers.
– investing in expanded services for youth as they age out of the youth system of care.
– ensuring that students can easily connect to community mental health professionals at or near primary and secondary schools.
– ensuring that mental health, wellness and resiliency training are included across the entire education system, including implementing a comprehensive curriculum that covers issues such as mental wellness, coping skills, and stress management.
– investing in Youth Wellness Hubs province-wide as a one-stop shop for employment, health, education, recreation and housing support, with a goal of having at least one in each community across Ontario.
– expanded funding for the Centre for Innovation in Campus Mental Health, including peer-to-peer programming, frontline counselling, harm reduction tools, and training to support well-being and resilience.
– treating mental health and addiction as a public health issue, including working with the federal government to fast-track the decriminalisation of drugs and reallocate funding from the justice system to mental health care services and improving data sharing on the overdose epidemic, including detailed data on non-fatal and fatal drug poisonings.

Preventative health care
To prioritize preventative health care within the healthcare system, the party advocates:
– working with the federal government to implement universal dental and pharma- care programs.
– increased investment in understanding social determinants of health, such as social isolation, housing insecurity, and poverty to prevent substantial, long-term  health-care costs and severe disease.
– supporting and promoting healthy behaviours to prevent disease and reduce risk factors such as poor nutrition and smoking.
– improving environmental determinants of health by prioritising clean air, clean water, and access to healthy local food in all communities.

Primary Care & Hospitals
To improve primary care, the party advocates:
– support for a publicly funded, publicly delivered healthcare system and opposing further privatisation of care.
– expanded access to family health teams in communities across the province and increased opportunities for physicians to join team-based models of care; including promoting a diverse array of healthcare providers in the teams to ensure a holistic, connected, comprehensive approach to health.
– increased options for primary care, such as community health centres and nurse-practitioner-led clinics, to ensure access to non-urgent 24/7 care, as well as mid-wives and other community perinatal care services across Ontario.
– improved diagnosis and OHIP-covered care for rare diseases, including but not limited to lyme disease, long-COVID, and chronic pain disorders.
– increasing year-over-year hospital base operating funding to a minimum of 5%; working with the federal government to provide surge funding to reduce the backlog in surgeries, imaging, and other services; expanding building of new hosptials to meet demand in high-growth areas, and finding additional hospice residences and fund all critical costs related to palliative care, including support for grief and bereavement services.
– increased annual in-home palliative care funding.
– rebalancing the healthcare funding formula to ensure better access in rural and remote areas, investment to increase the number of Indigenous-led health clinics.
– expanding the roles and scope of nurse practitioners as primary health care providers, especially in areas that lack primary care options, using incentives to bring physicians and allied health professionals to Northern and rural communities, and creating opportunities for specialist and subspecialist trainees to undertake electives and core rotations in the North.

Accountability in Health Care
To protect the integrity of the public health system, the party advocates:
– designating the Chief Medical Officer of Health as an independent officer of the legislature in a watchdog role comparable to that of provincial auditors, with annual publicly available reporting.

Elder Care
The party states that:
– the recent census showed that, in the next few years, one in five people in Canada will be over the age of sixty-five, and that many of them will live into their eighties.
– it is necessary to bring support and care into communities where the majority of people prefer to age in place – enjoying daily life within their homes.
– in order to give those who built Ontario a deserved chance to age with dignity, the profit motive should be replaced with a real commitment to give each resident the care they need.

Long-Term Care
The party advocates:
– creating an accountable non-profit long term care system, including building more non-profit long-term care beds, including 55,000 long-term care beds by 2033 and at least 96,000 by 2041 to meet growing demand, including allocation of beds for Indigenous-led long-term care homes.
– increasing base funding for long-term care by 10% and phasing out for-profit long-term care, including stopping licensing new for-profit homes.
– repealing Bill 218, which shields long-term care owners and operators from liability for negligence, and reinstating annual comprehensive inspections of long-term care homes without advance notice, and ensuring homes with infractions face the legislated consequences.
– transferring regulatory oversight of retirement homes to the Ministry of Long-Term Care, and creating a system of formal oversight through the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Ontario Medical Association.
– to legislating staffing in long-term care facilities to include a minimum of one nurse practitioner for every 120 residents and a staff composition that includes 20% registered nurses, 25% registered practical nurses, and 55% personal support workers, and mandating mandating a minimum of four hours of nursing and personal care per resident per day, including a minimum of 48 minutes of care provided by a registered nurse and 60 minutes provided by a registered practical nurse.
– increasing long-term care resident access to allied health professionals, such as dieticians, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and social workers, to a minimum of one hour per day.
– mandating continued professional development for staff on geriatric care, practices for caring for residents with dementia, and palliative and end-of-life care.
– to prepare for future infectious disease outbreaks, prioritizing licence proposals for small, community-based long-term care homes, updating design standards to improve outbreak management of infectious diseases, ending contracting contracting out food, housekeeping and laundry services.
– expansion of options for holistic care.
– strengthening obligations for long-term care licensees to respect and recognise residents’ gender identity, as well as their social, cultural, spiritual, and language care needs.
– amending the Residents’ Bill of Rights to better align with the prohibited grounds for discrimination in the Ontario Human Rights Code, and to add the right of residents to have accommodations made for themselves and their spouse or life partner so they can continue to live together in long-term care.
– prioritizing healthy, quality local food as an important component of resident wellbeing.

Home Care
To improve home care, the party advocates:
– increasing funding to home care services by 20% so that people can safely stay in their homes longer.
– creating a standard basket of core homecare services that providers must make consistently available across the province.
– shifting to entirely nonprofit homecare providers within the public system.
– providing team coordinators as a single access point within family health teams to ensure care is consistent with patient needs.
– mandating that personal support workers are paid a minimum of $25 an hour and for their travel time between visits.
– increasing high-quality homecare options for those experiencing frailty, dementia, and disability.
– collecting meaningful quality indicators to hold homecare organisations accountable and to promote quality improvements.
– piloting a support program as part of a basic income phase-in for those doing unpaid caregiving in families and communities.
– streamlining and simplifying the approvals process for cohousing and coliving developments, and repeal laws that would prohibit or create barriers to co-housing and co-living.
– increasing support for community centres and neighbourhood coalitions, which play an important role in encouraging community connections and reducing isolation for elders.
– creating incentives for retrofitting homes to make them safer and easier to age in place.

Education & Support for Young Workers

As a matter of priority within its platform, the party advocates:
– supporting in-person learning and opposing any move toward mandatory e-learning or hybrid learning models.
– enhancing affordability and access to post-secondary by converting loans to grants for low and middle income post-secondary students.

To build a modern, more equitable education system, the party advocates:
– establishing an independent review of Ontario’s education funding formula so it adequately reflects student needs, and reviewing the formula every five years to ensure adequate funding for ESL grants, special education assistants, counsellors, and other specific supports to provide equitable access to learning and school activities for all students, as well as unique needs of remote and rural schools.
– addressing the repair backlog for Ontario public schools and ensuring schools are able to comply with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), including provide funding for schools to make energy efficiency and ventilation improvements.
– buying zero emission electric school buses to replace retired diesel buses.

Primary and Secondary Education
To strengthen in-school learning, the party advocates:
– opposing any move toward mandatory e-learning or hybrid learning models.
– capping grades 4 to 8 class sizes at 24 students at most and kindergarten at 26 students at most.
– eliminating the EQAO standardised testing and updating the elementary curriculum to reduce prescribed student outcomes.
– increased funding for enhanced outdoor education, greenspace in school yards, and enhanced curriculum content on critical environmental topics such as food literacy and climate change.
– implement a province-wide nutritious school lunch program.
– making equity a pillar of public education, including by addressing racism in schools with mandatory collection and reporting of race-based data for student, teacher and staff populations, as well as implementing standard procedures around the reporting of incidents of racism.
– working with school boards to ensure recruitment and retention practices for staff are transparent and reflect the diversity of Ontario’s population and ensure culturally relevant and responsive programming is included in mandatory staff training, and ending streaming to ensure equity for all students.
– immediately removing all Resource Officers from Ontario schools.
– establishing clearly visible all-gender washrooms and updating school communications to become more gender inclusive, recognising that gender exists on a spectrum.
– updating the curriculum to include informed discussions of anti-Black racism, 2SLGBTQIA+ prejudice, and all forms of discrimination across subject areas.
– restoration of funding for the Indigenous curriculum program and working with Indigenous educators and community leaders to develop a mandatory curriculum on colonialism and residential schools, treaties, and Indigenous histories and experiences.

Post-Secondary Education
To improve access to and equity in post-secondary education, the party advocates:
– immediately reversing the current government’s cuts to OSAP by converting loans to grants for low and middle income students and eliminating interest charges on student debt.
– indexing the base operating grant for Ontario’s post-secondary institutions to the weighted national average, followed by inflationary increases year to year.
– replacing the faulty performance-based university funding model and restoring the more stable and equitable enrolment-based funding model.
– ensuring consistent and fair labour standards and working conditions for all faculty, including contract faculty, removing wage constraints, and paying equal wages for equal work.
– developing province-wide, culturally relevant, trauma-informed and survivor-centric standards for sexual and gender-based violence on post-secondary campuses in consultation with experts, frontline workers, students and survivors.

Culture, Arts & Tourism

The party states that:
– communities providing access to essential shops and services within a 10 or 15 minute walk, with protected bicycle access, are good for both people and the environment.
– communities should be built with everyone in mind, not just the able-bodied.  As communities are modernized, streets, homes, and buildings should be made accessible to people with mobility issues so they are no longer cut off from their communities.

To build vibrant communities, the party advocates:

– strengthening community hubs by increased funding for local libraries and ramping up publicity around the important community programming that they offer; increasing support for community centres and neighbourhood coalitions, which play an important role in encouraging community connections and reducing isolation for elders; restoring improving communication and outreach, and providing reduced fees for the community use of schools to ensure their availability as important hubs in our communities; providing free and low-cost community programming in high-needs neighbourhoods, including but not limited to covering costs for free evening, weekend, March break, and summer permits; and investing in more Youth Wellness Hubs and community centres that offer access to local mental health services, spaces for social interaction, and supports for families

– creating vibrant neighbourhoods by supporting municipalities to create infill greenspaces so that there is one within a 10 minute walk of all homes by 2030; amending zoning rules to allow for small businesses such as corner stores to open within residential neighbourhoods; providing start-up funding for community-owned healthy food markets and increasing support for community gardens through land gifts and organisational support to eliminate urban food deserts; improving the community benefits system for major infrastructure projects to increase the social and economic benefit  received by the local community.

– helping small neighbourhood businesses recover and thrive by expanding the Digital Main Street program to include nonprofit organisations and provide fulfilment platforms that better enable small, local businesses to compete with large online companies; developing a small business grant program for Black-owned businesses; supporting the increased staycation tax credit and ensuring it includes dining at restaurants; working with insurance providers to develop an affordable commercial insurance program for small businesses; developing a program to help COVID-affected small businesses file for bankruptcy in a fair and non-punitive way; improving opportunities for small local businesses and nonprofits to win public contracts through targets and by decreasing current financial and informational barriers; allowing Ontario’s craft spirits, brewers, and wine producers to open independent, off-site stores; and allowing boutique wine, craft beer and artisan spirit retail outlets; improving the distribution network to work for small businesses; and allowing access for hospitality to purchase from these suppliers at a wholesale price of up to 20%.

– creating a new regulatory framework for small business, by undertaking a review of regulations in order to weed out red tape and costs that disproportionately affect small businesse; creating standardised leases to ensure fairness and transparency and ensure thatpriority is given to existing tenants when leases are up for renewal; creating rent control guidelines for year-over-year increases that apply to all commercial tenants, including new tenants; and implementing a mechanism to enforce rules and resolve disputes.

– supporting local arts and social enterprises, by decreasing land taxes payable for buildings in which below market rent opportunities are available to creative and social enterprises; developing a made-in-Ontario social enterprise strategy with the nonprofit and cooperative sectors to drive local job creation and support rural, remote, and urban self-reliance; creating a stabilisation fund for the non-profit sector to ensure that nonprofits and charities can help rebuild the economy and communities; affirming the arms-length operations of, and increase investment in, the Ontario Arts Council and the Ontario Trillium Foundation; and reinstating support for the Indigenous Culture Fund.

Family, Community & the Common Good

The preface of the party’s 2025 platform states that:
– growing the provincial economy starts with investing in workers, communities and healthcare, not just the rich.
– it proposes investment in needed roads, hospitals and schools, reducing gridlock, and supporting economic growth and diversification.

Specifically, the party advocates:
– guaranteeing everyone a family doctor in four years, ensuring that mental healthcare is covered under OHIP, and supporting seniors to age with dignity.
– slashing taxes, saving taxpayers thousands annually by permanently cutting income tax for workers and eliminating sales tax (HST) on home heating and hydro bills.
– building more affordable homes by eliminating development charges, restoring the dream of homeownership, and bringing fairness back to the rental market.
– permanently doubling ODSP so Ontario’s most vulnerable are not left behind.
– clearing the school repair backlog, improving safety at school, and providing education that prepares Ontario for the future.

Role of the Family

The party has published no official statement concerning its policies on the role or importance of the family.

Health Care & Elder Care

The party proposes:

Guaranteeing everyone a family doctor within four years by:
– attracting, recruiting, retaining and integrating 3,100 family doctors by 2029.
– creating two new medical schools and expanding capacity in existing medical schools, doubling the number of medical school spots and residency positions.
– promoting team-based care with evening and weekend appointments, integrated home care for seniors, and accessible mental health services for children, youth and teenagers.
– accelerating the process to integrate at least 1,200 qualified and experienced internationally trained doctors over the next four years through Practice Ready Ontario.
– eliminating fax machines, enhancing virtual care, introducing centralized referral systems with patient portals and implementing interoperable electronic medical records to let doctors and other healthcare professionals focus on patients instead of paperwork.
– incentivizing family doctors to serve in rural and northern communities and mentor the next generation to prevent future shortages.

Ending hallway health care by:
– helping hospitals hire and retain the staff they need by paying nurses, PSWs and other supportive healthcare workers a living wage and providing them with additional training and professional development opportunities to stay in the public system.
– eliminating wage discrepancy across the system, regardless of whether an individual is employed by a hospital, in-home care or in long-term care.
– investing in needed infrastructure including expediting hospital repairs and expansions.

Protecting the public healthcare system from privatization by:
– cracking down on for-profit healthcare promoted by the current government by regulating temporary nursing agencies.
– bringing nurse practitioners (NPs) into the public system and banning private-pay NP clinics.
– reviewing the current government’s privatization plans, including a full review of Health Minister Sylvia Jones’ mandate letters and auditing how Ontario is using the more than $20 billion in federal health transfers it receives every year.
– developing a Francophone Healthcare Strategy to ensure Franco-Ontarians are able to access care in their first language.

Expanding Mental Health and Addiction Services by:
– introducing universal mental healthcare under OHIP by expanding the Ontario Structured Psychotherapy Program, covering conditions like anxiety, depression, and eating disorders, hiring more social workers, and defining standards and coverage so that all people in Ontario have a basic form of coverage.
– providing wraparound support to help people recover from addictions, including rapidly building supportive housing units.
– acting decisively and collaboratively with those on the frontline to bring deaths caused by opioid use down to zero in four years through expanded treatment, recovery and rehabilitation.

Supporting Seniors To Be Independent and Restoring Confidence In Long-Term Care, by:
– guaranteeing needs-based home care through Family Health Teams, boosting annual home care funding by 25%.
– helping seniors age at home gracefully by creating a Seniors’ Home Care Tax Credit, saving up to 25% of up to $10,000 in medical expenses a year.
– repealing the coercive Bill 7 and ensuring that LTCs are held accountable for mismanagement, non-compliance, and neglect of direct care under a four-hour minimum standard per resident, per day.

Helping those who suffer disablilities by:
– permanently doubling the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) benefits and indexing it to inflation so that Ontario’s most vulnerable are not left behind.

Education & Support for Young Workers

To restore education to the centre of its economic plan for Ontario and ensure a good start for children in world-class schools, the party advocates:

Clearing a $21.78-billion school repair backlog by:
– installing heating, air conditioning and air filtration systems in every classroom by doubling annual capital funding for schools.
– building 90 new schools over four years and ensuring that no school needs to use portables.
– allowing schools to address their unique staffing and infrastructure needs by expanding funding, eligibility and flexibility for the Safe Schools Grant program.

Keeping children and educators safe at school by:
– allowing every elementary, middle or high school student to have support and supervision in the classroom by establishing a lower student-to-teacher and education-worker ratio.
– hiring more mental health professionals, educational assistants, Early Childhood Educators (ECEs), social workers, child and youth workers and other staff, lowering the ratio of students to education workers in the Core Education Funding.
– closing the funding gap of $1,500 per student in the K-12 sector and ensuring future commitments are tied to inflation.
– clearing special education-related waitlists and assessment backlogs so students have access to appropriate resources and support.
– committing to mutual respect and collaboration between the Ministry of Education, students, parents, teachers, unions and administrators starting with a commitment to not blindside educators with Friday afternoon announcements.
– feeding every elementary and secondary school pupil a free and healthy lunch every school day by quadrupling funding for school food programs.

Providing education that prepares Ontario for the future by:
– reintroducing a one-year teaching degree to expeditiously address the teacher shortage.
– holding school boards accountable for spending new and existing funding on priority outcomes such as helping students develop skills for the future, advancing student success and making schools safe.
– strengthening French education across Ontario by supporting community and cultural partnerships, training, inter-board cooperation, and hiring additional French educators.
– expanding access to STEM, robotics, coding, skilled trades, entrepreneurship, economics, financial literacy and civics courses.
– providing opportunities for skilled trades and health care workers through union-led training programs.

Fixing post-secondary schools, by:
– eliminating interest on OSAP loans and raising the income threshold for repayment to $50,000.
– capping international student enrollment at 10% for each Ontario college and university, and expanding campus resources and affordable student residence options.
– funding colleges and universities fairly to help them avoid being heavily dependent on international student enrollment.
– establishing a province-wide policy mandating post-secondary institutions to increase their focus on IP generation and commercialization, and business adoption of skills, technologies, and ideas.

Culture, Arts & Tourism, Official Languages
The party advocates:
– developing a Francophone Healthcare Strategy to ensure Franco-Ontarians are able to access care in their first language.

Role & Development of the Family

To fight the rising cost of living, the party advocates:
– controlling grocery prices, by: (1) providing a Monthly Grocery Rebate based on how much the cost of essential groceries like milk, bread and vegetables have increased under the current government, tied to income and numbers of people in households and (2) bringing transparency to grocery prices by forcing big retailers to display signage when they raise prices on basic grocery items more than two per cent in a week (by weight, to protect against shrinkflation), and cracking down on price fixing and other unfair practices by establishing a new consumer watchdog to keep food prices fair.

Child Care
To fight the rising cost of living, the party advocates:
– implementing $10/day child care after years of delays by the current government, creating 53,000 new, public or not-for-profit affordable childcare spaces by working with providers and service managers, and by removing the rules that limit municipalities in creating their own child care spaces.

Health Care

The party states that:
– Ontario’s public health care system has been broken by consecutive prior governments who have opened the door for corporations to make a profit off of vulnerable people.
– New Democrats brought publicly funded, publicly delivered health care to Canada and in Ontario it intends to strengthen and protect it.

To promote public health care, the party advocates:
– as part of its Family Health Guarantee, ensuring that every Ontarian has a family doctor by adding 3500 more doctors to the primary care system, hiring more nurse practitioners, health care workers and support staff, and investing in publicly funded, publicly delivered health care.
– investing $4.1 billion over four years to connect people to team-based primary care, close to home.
– addressing the Northern health crisis by establishing a Northern Command Centre to hire 350 doctors, including 200 family doctors in Northern Ontario, and doubling residency positions at NOSM University.
– training and hiring more nurses to ensure safe nurse-patient ratios, better care, and an end to the reliance on for-profit private nursing agencies that are costing hospitals hundreds of millions of dollars.
– ensuring that health care workers are paid fairly, by introducing wage parity across the health care system so that workers in home care are paid the same rate as their counterparts in hospitals.
– resuming expansion of Ontario’s public hospital network and stopping the privatization of health care services, including prioritizing projects at Windsor-Essex Regional Hospital; new hospitals for Durham Region, Brantford, and Brampton; restoring 24/7 emergency services to Welland Hospital, delivering a new hospital for Brantford; restoring service to Fort Erie and Port Colborne Urgent Care; responsibly planning a new Regional Hospital in Kitchener-Waterloo; re-opening Minden Hospital; and preserve; and preserving Rural Emergency Departments.
– reducing wait times for patients and improving access to care by establishing a centralized and standardized referral system to streamline the process of referring patients to specialists and reducing the administrative burden on doctors and their staff.
– working with experts, health care providers, patients and communities to ensure access to gender affirming care and breaking down barriers to accessing health care for all 2SLGBTQ+ Ontarians.
– expanding OHIP to include coverage for prescription contraception, the HPV vaccine at any age when recommended by a doctor, PrEP and PEP, and take-home cervical cancer test kits.
– stopping privatization of home care and long-term care. For-profit care providers compromise quality and reliability of care.
– ensuring that people can live at home longer as they age, with reliable and expanded services to support their nee, including attracting and matching match long-term care and home care workers to communities where they have shared culture and language skills.
– reversing the unconstitutional Bill 7 that allows hospitals to discharge patients into long-term care homes without their consent, fixing Ontario Health at Home after its disastrous roll out, so no one is left waiting without urgent homecare supplies.
– taking immediate action to clean up the mercury in the English-Wabigoon River system, remediating the mercury buried upstream from Grassy Narrows, and connecting people who are impacted by mercury poisoning with the care they need.

Mental Health Care
– establishing universal basic mental health care and increasing funding to community mental health service providers, like CMHA and AMHO, to provide crucial services to help people with addictions.
– following the advice of experts and using evidence-based strategies to address the opioid epidemic, including funding the addition of detox and residential treatment beds, and establishing wage parity for health care workers in community settings so they can also offer mental health support.
– clearing the waitlist of 28,000 children and youth waiting for mental health care, including ensure children and families have access to Autism services, particularly in Northern and Rural communities where services are even scarcer.

Health Care Workers
To fight against rising costs, the party advocates:
– eliminating parking fees at hospitals for staff, visitors and patients. No one should be worried about paying for parking at a hospital during an affordability crisis, whether they are a patient, a loved one, a front-line worker or a doctor.

Education & Support for Young Workers

The party states that although schools are at the heart of Ontario’s communities, decades of cuts and freezes have left them schools overcrowded, understaffed, and crumbling. Every child, regardless of income status, deserves a high-quality public education in safe schools that support their needs.

The party advocates:
– investing Ontario’s next generation with a new, needs-based funding formula.  In consultation with schoolboards and education workers, it will review and fix school funding, which has been reduced $1,500 per student since 2018, leaving schools with fewer teachers and larger class sizes.
– fixing schools with an additional $830 million per year to clear the repair backlog within 10 years while keeping up with school maintenance needs and giving students a high quality, nurturing learning environment.
– hiring more staff in schools, supporting additional dedicated teachers, educational assistants, child and youth workers, ECEs, custodial and skilled trades workers to make sure students get the one-on-one attention they need in well-maintained schools, including consultations on the restoration of one year teacher’s college programs to help get more qualified teachers in the system, faster.
– creating a universal School Food Program so that every child in Ontario is set up to succeed, using fresh food prepared and grown in Ontario and increasing funding to the First Nations school food program.
– increasing student transportation funding, to address days missed by changes to school bus service eligibility requirements, including fixing the student transportation funding formula.
– protecting the right to Francophone education, as well as Francophone rights to access to government services, health care, retirement living, and kindergarten-to-post-secondary education in French, in French-language institutions and including investment in Francophone education in French school boards and French immersion programs in the English system while redoubling efforts to ensure there are enough Francophone teachers in the system.
– reducing fees for before and after school child care, and negotiating with the federal government to expand $10-a-day to school age children.
– supporting every learner, by ensuring that the public education system gives students with disabilities the support they deserve and working with educators and school boards to continue destreaming with adequate funding and support, and ensure that the data is available to support more equitable schools.

Post-secondary Education
The party advocates:
– investing in in public post-secondary education, increasing per student funding by 20% and tying future increases to inflation. Universities and colleges are at a breaking point, many posting deficits and cutting programing.  Decades of prior government have left Ontario with the lowest per-student funding in Canada for post-secondary education.
– reversing the current government’s cuts to OSAP and converting all OSAP loans to grants so that all students graduate debt-free, and canceling outstanding student loan interest owed.
– establishing a standalone Francophone institution at Sudbury University, and returning the midwifery program to Sudbury University and increase enrollment in the nursing program to increase access to labour and delivery services while growing the francophone health care workforce.

Young Workers
To protect Ontario jobs, the party advocates:
– doubling Ontario’s Career Ready Program so Ontario colleges and universities can create additional work-integrated learning opportunities, creating thousands of new, paid co-op and internship opportunities for young people.
– supporting pathways into the skilled trades, from shop classes to those seeking a career change later in life, with continued investment in the Skills Development Fund and workers’ training centres across the province.
– establishing Ontario’s first Youth Climate Corps, giving opportunities to young Ontarians to learn skills and earn a fair wage while helping Ontario communities reduce their emissions, restore their natural environments, and become more resilient in a changing climate.

Culture, Arts & Tourism

The party advocates:
– to fight the rising cost of living, repairing, revitalizing, and reopening the Ontario Science Centre, and canceling the current government’s deal to hand over Ontario Place to a luxury spa company, saving the equivalent of $400 a household.

To protect Ontario jobs, the party advocates:
– working with artists and creators to promote and market Ontario’s book publishing, film and television, live performance, digital and arts industries; ensuring both the stability and competitiveness of Ontario’s film, television and digital tax credits; and strongly supporting Ontario Creates and Ontario Arts Council programs to ensure people throughout the arts and culture sector have the support and respect they need.
– partnering with Ontario’s francophone community to grow and promote book publishing, film and television, live performance, and cultural festivals in French — a key thread in the tapestry of our province.

Francophone community

The party advocates:
– protecting the right to Francophone education, as well as Francophone rights to access to government services, health care, retirement living, and kindergarten-to-post-secondary education in French, in French-language institutions and including investment in Francophone education in French school boards and French immersion programs in the English system while redoubling efforts to ensure there are enough Francophone teachers in the system.
– establishing a standalone Francophone institution at Sudbury University, and returning the midwifery program to Sudbury University and increase enrollment in the nursing program to increase access to labour and delivery services while growing the francophone health care workforce.

To protect Ontario jobs, the party advocates:
– partnering with Ontario’s francophone community to grow and promote book publishing, film and television, live performance, and cultural festivals in French — a key thread in the tapestry of our province.

As of 23 February 2025, four days prior to the election it called, the party has published no comprehensive updated statement of its proposed policies. 

The Role & Development of the Family
The party states that it believes, as a matter of principle, in the values of the family which encourage tolerance and mutual support.

Health Care
Prior to its current term in office, the party stated that:
– front-line medical professionals should be consulted regarding the best use of health care funds.
– to address the need for more health care services, it was investing to support historic hospital expansion and construction projects, including a new inpatient wing at William Osler Health System’s Peel Memorial and ongoing planning of a new regional hospital in Windsor‐Essex.
– it was investing in the creation of new children’s treatment centres in Ottawa and Chatham‐Kent to increase access to critical programs and services.
– it further advocated: in order to reduce hospital wait times, creating 15,000 new long-term care beds over 5 years, and adding $3.8 billion in new support for mental health, addictions, and housing; introducing free dental care for low-income seniors; and providing an additional $38 million to support children with autism.

In its 2024 Budget, the party states that:
– in February 2023 it instituted a plan for connected and convenient health care built on three pillars: The Right Care in the Right Place, Faster Access to Care, and Hiring More Health Care Workers.
– it also continues to invest in improved access to digital services, including enhancement of Health811 services to enable increased access to virtual care, online appointment booking, and integration with Ontario Health Teams, and continuing to invest in remote care management, which is integral to supporting patients in the comfort of their homes rather than in hospital for a wide range of conditions, including post‐surgical discharge and chronic disease management.
– to support home and community care, in 2023 it accelerated commitment of $1 billion over three years to stabilize the home and community care workforce and to support the expansion of home care services, and further proposes to invest an additional $2 billion over three years to boost that acceleration, support earlier investments to increase compensation for personal support workers, nurses and other frontline care providers, and to stabilize expanded services.
– it continues to invest in transforming the home care system, including new models of care and modernizing the Client Health and Related Information System (CHRIS), the digital infrastructure system supporting home care.

Hospitals
The party’s 2024 budget states that:
– in recognition of the indispensable role hospitals play in delivering critical health services, it proposes investing an additional $965 million, including a four per cent increase in total base hospital funding for an unprecedented second year in a row, to ensure public hospitals are able to meet patients’ needs and to increase access to high-quality care. The investment also includes funding for stabilization and management of the surgical system, with a focus on maximizing capacity to increase the number of surgeries performed, to promote shorter wait times, and funding to ease pressures faced by small and Northern hospitals.
– it proposes to expand palliative care services in local communities by adding up to 84 new adult beds and 12 pediatric beds, bringing the total to over 750, in order to provide people with comfort and dignity closer to their communities and loved ones when they are nearing the end of life.
– to continue building a convenient and connected health care system, it plans additional investments of nearly $50 billion over the next 10 years in health infrastructure, including close to $36 billion in capital grants. This includes supporting more than 50 hospital projects that would add approximately 3,000 new beds over 10 years to improve access to reliable quality care. Recent milestones include:  projects at Grand River Hospital, Health Access Thorncliffe Park, Queensway Carleton Hospital; Quinte Health; Sault Area Hospital; Ottawa Hospital; University Health Network – Toronto Western; West Park Healthcare; Waypoint Centre; Windsor-Essex Regional Hospital.
– the budget also proposes commitment of an additional $620 million over 10 years for the Health Infrastructure Renewal Fund and the Community Infrastructure Renewal Fund, to  address urgent infrastructure renewal such as upgrades or replacements of roofs, windows, security systems, fire alarms and back‐up generators.
– it proposes allocating an additional $500 million over 10 years for small hospital projects and community health programs. These smaller hospital and community projects can create much needed capacity in the short term and help to prevent hospital visits that put pressure on emergency departments and hospital admissions.

Primary Care:
The party’s 2024 budget states that:
– it proposes historic investments to enhance access to primary care with a goal that everyone who wants to have a primary care provider can connect to one. On February 1, 2024, it announced an investment of $110 million in 2024–25. Building on this, it proposes a total investment of $546 million over three years, bringing the total investment to $606 million since 2023–24.
– to address the need for family physicians and improving the province’s primary care capacity, it is working with York University in establishing a new medical school in Vaughan. This would be the first medical school in Canada primarily focused on training family doctors.
– to address immediate health care staffing needs, it is investing $743 million over three years.  Initiatives include:  making the extern program permanent, offering up to 5,590 health care students training opportunities to work in hospitals and gain practical experience as they continue their education; making the supervised practice experience partnership program permanent, to support up to 1,500 internationally educated nurses annually to become accredited nurses in Ontario; and increasing nursing enrolment in colleges and universities, including $128 million over three years to support sustained enrolment increases of nursing spaces at publicly assisted colleges and universities.
– it continues to invest in expanded access to allied health care providers across the province, including by adding an additional 700 education seats for medical radiation and imaging technologists, medical laboratory technologists, medical lab technicians and medical radiation extenders, and working with colleges to explore and pilot compressed programs for pharmacy technicians and medical radiation technologists so more qualified professionals can enter the workforce sooner.

Women’s and Children’s Health
The party’s 2024 budget states that to ensure women and children better access to culturally responsive and safe care to strengthen the health of their families, it proposes investment of $50 million over three years, including:
– $24 million over three years to enhance access to the Indigenous Healthy Babies Healthy Children Program across 160 Indigenous delivery site.
– $15 million over three years for Mobile Maternal Care, to offer a range of services, from prenatal to postnatal care, improving accessibility of maternal and newborn health care in remote communities.
– $11 million over three years to support safer births in Northern Ontario by providing mothers in Northern Indigenous communities with vital birthing supports, including more doulas, second attendants or birth helpers.

Mental Health Care
The party’s 2024 Budget states that:
– during its prior time in office it made historic investments of $3.8 billion over 10 years for mental health and addictions services, and now proposes to invest an additional $396 million over three years to support the stabilization, improved access and expansion of existing mental health and addictions services and programs.
– as part of this investment, it proposes allocating $124 million over three years to support the continuation of the Addictions Recovery Fund to ensure the people of Ontario continue to have access to enhanced specialized services for mental health and addictions treatment, including: (i) maintaining 383 addictions treatment beds for adults who need intensive supports, helping to stabilize and provide care for approximately 7,000 clients each year; (ii) three mobile mental health clinics to provide a suite of mental health and addictions services to individuals living in remote, rural and underserved communities; and (iii) three police‐partnered Mobile Crisis Response Teams to support individuals in a mental health or addictions crisis.
– it further proposes to support the Ontario Structured Psychotherapy Program for those with anxiety and depression through cognitive behavioural therapy.
– since 2020, Ontario has established 22 Youth Wellness Hubs, helping connect over 43,000 youth and their families to mental health and wellness services and accounting for over 168,000 visits. To build on the success of these hubs, it plans to expand the network by adding five more  hubs in Port Hope, Thunder Bay, Oxford County, Vaughan and Brampton, bringing the total number to 27.  In addition, it proposes to invest $8.3 million over three years to add another five hubs, bringing the total number of hubs to 32.

Long-Term Care
The party’s 2024 Budget states that through planned investments totalling a historic $6.4 billion since 2019, it is making progress to build 58,000 new and upgraded beds across the province by 2028.

Construction Funding Subsidies
The party’s 2024 budget states that:
– its commitments to long-term care include $155 million to increase the construction funding subsidy to support the cost of developing or redeveloping a long‐term care home, in order to fast-track construction for the next tranche of beds.  Eligible projects will receive an additional construction funding subsidy of up to $35 per bed, per day, for 25 years. In addition, eligible not‐for‐profit applicants will be able to convert up to $15 per bed, per day, of the supplemental funding into a construction grant payable at the start of construction, to increase projects’ upfront equity and enable applicants to secure financing.
– it first provided supplemental increases for construction funding subsidies in November 2022, and since then has advanced construction for over 60 long‐term care homes and over 10,000 beds.
– through an accelerated build pilot program, four new long‐term care homes have been built on hospital‐owned lands, adding 1,272 new long‐term care beds in Mississauga, Ajax and Toronto.
– towards its commitment of building 58,000 new and upgraded beds to modern design standards across the province by 2028, it has 18,000 beds that are either open, under construction, or have approval to start construction. In response to higher costs in the sector, the government is increasing operating funding to help support the financial stability of new and existing long‐term care homes.  Since 2023, long‐term care homes have been completed and opened to new residents at: Wellbrook East and Wellbrook West in Mississauga; and Woodland Villa in Long Sault.
– it proposes to invest an additional $46 million over three years to support the continued operation of 59 Behavioural Specialized Unit (BSU) beds, and to add more than 200 net new BSU beds to expand care for individuals with complex needs.

Education & Support for Young Workers

Prior to its current term in office, the party stated that it stresses teaching basics such as reading, writing and math, rather than using schools as social laboratories, and advocated:
– creating a 75% refundable tax credit for child care costs for children aged 0-15.
– ensuring that parents are allowed to choose the type of child care that is best for their children.
– returning to educational basics by scrapping discovery math and inquiry-based learning.
– banning cell phones in all primary and secondary classrooms, in order to maximize learning time.
– making mathematics a mandatory study in teachers’ college programs.
– fixing standardized testing programs.
– restoring prior sex-ed curricula until a new age-appropriate curriculum can be developed, based on consultation with parents.
– banning school closures pending a review of the closure process.
– mandating respect for free speech on university campuses and in class rooms

K-12 Basics
The party’s 2024 Budget states that:
– it is supporting a back to basics learning strategy by building foundational skills in reading, writing and math. Students have benefited from a new math curriculum focused on financial literacy and coding, as well as the overhauled language curriculum that brings back phonics and cursive writing.
– recent Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) assessment results show encouraging progress, which demonstrates the importance of students learning in the classroom without disruption and with targeted supports focused on literacy and math.
– it proposes to continue existing supports through the back to basics learning strategy, including: (i) $15 million for digital math tools to provide anytime access to learning opportunities at home and in the classroom, as part of total funding of about $72 million in math supports, including one‐on‐one French‐language online tutoring through Eurêka!; (ii) $65 million for dedicated educators working in small groups or individually with students in kindergarten to Grade 3; and (iii) an updated kindergarten curriculum, starting in September 2025, which will introduce learning through clear and direct instruction in reading, writing and math for kindergarten students.

School Safety
The party’s 2024 Budget states that:
– it proposes allocation of $30 million over three years to help equip schools with security cameras, lighting and other security upgrades, including vape detectors, as well as learning on privacy and online safety in elementary and secondary curriculum.

Special Education
The party’s 2024 Budget states that:
– it is committed to providing all students with the opportunity to succeed in school and life, including students with disabilities and special education needs.
– to that end it proposes allocation of $18 million in the 2024–25 school year to help the most vulnerable students, including $8 million to introduce dedicated resources to help students with special education needs navigate the school system and beyond, as well as $10 million for increased in‐class supports for students with the highest level of need.
– it proposes increasing allocations for the Ontario Autism Program to $120 million, which is double the increase provided previously, to support enrollment of 20,000 children and youth in core clinical services.

Building Schools and Child Care Spaces
The party’s 2024 budget states that:
– it proposes allocation of $23 billion, including approximately $16 billion in capital grants over 10 years, to build, expand and renew schools and child care spaces across Ontario.
– since 2018, it has supported nearly 300 school or child care‐related projects, of which more than 100 are actively under construction.

Postsecondary Education

Tuition
As a part of its effort to keep life affordable for Ontarians, the party’s 2024 Budget states that:
– it is extending a tuition fee freeze for Ontario students in publicly assisted colleges and universities for at least three more years, including offering institutions the flexibility to increase tuition by up to five per cent for out‐of‐province domestic students.
– since the freeze was first introduced after a 10 per cent reduction in tuition fees, students and parents have saved an estimated $1,600 per year, on average, to attend university and an estimated $350 per year, on average, to attend a public college, compared to what they would otherwise have paid.

Accountability and Student Support in Postsecondary Education
The party’s 2024 budget states that:
– to increase transparency on ancillary fees and other student costs, while also supporting student mental health and keeping campuses safe and inclusive, it introduced the Strengthening Accountability and Student Supports Act, which would authorize the Minister of Colleges and Universities to issue directives requiring colleges and universities to provide information about ancillary fees and other student costs, including for textbooks. This would help students and their families understand the full cost of the courses they are selecting.
– the act would also require colleges and universities to have mental health policies in place that should include clear and transparent information about programs and supports available to students, along with policies to address racism and hate, including but not limited to antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
The party’s 2024 budget states that:
– in response to increasing labour market demands for workers in sectors related to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), it has allocated one‐time funding of $100 million to support STEM program costs at publicly assisted colleges and universities with enrolments above their funded levels.
– to ensure that small, Northern and rural colleges and Northern universities can provide students with competitive choices for local postsecondary education, the government is providing an additional $10 million in funding through the Small, Northern and Rural Grant for colleges and the Northern Ontario Grant.  The funding is intended to provide targeted support to eligible institutions that are financially vulnerable, while the government works with them on efficiency initiatives.

Culture, Arts & Tourism

Film & Television
In its 2024 Budget, the party states that:
– Ontario’s vibrant and growing film and television industry continues to create high‐value jobs and attract investment across the province. Productions that received support from provincial programs spent approximately $3.2 billion in Ontario in 2022, contributing to over 45,000 full‐time direct and spinoff jobs.
– as first announced in 2022 Budget, it advocates modernizing Ontario’s film and television tax credits to reflect the latest industry practices, and has expanded tax credit eligibility to productions made available exclusively online, introduced a screen credit requirement, and expanded eligible expenditures for the Ontario Production Services Tax Credit to include location fees and measures to simplify eligibility and help companies get their tax credits faster, while also ensuring support remains targeted to professional productions.

Community Development
In its 2024 Budget, the party:
– proposes allocation of $200 million over five years in a new application-based local community sport and recreation infrastructure fund, demonstrating its commitment to provide children, families, and seniors across Ontario with new and improved opportunities to participatre in sport and recreational activities by investing in new and revitalized community and recreation infrastructure.
– proposes plans to build vibrant, complete, mixed-use communities at or around transit stations, and to provide new voluntary funding tools for municipalities to apply toward the design and construction of new GO Transit stations and mixed-use communities.

Toronto Waterfront
In its 2024 Budget the party states that:
– to date it has contributed $400 million to the Villiers Island / Ookwemin Minising project in the Toronto portlands, including funding for bridges and other infrastructure to provide cycling, walking, and driving while advancing the Port Lands Flood Protection Project.

Official Languages
Prior to its current term in office, the party stated that:
– it believes in and accepts, as a matter of principle, its responsibilities for the preservation of Ontario’s heritage and cultural diversity and the conservation and renewal of our environment for present and future generations.
– to support Ontario’s Francophone communities through COVID‐19, it was building on its initial investment of $2 million in the COVID‐19 Relief Fund for Francophone Non‐Profit Organizations by providing an additional $1 million to support hard hit Francophone non‐profit organizations.
– as part of its commitment to the long‐term economic recovery and development of Francophone communities across Ontario, it was investing $3 million over three years to better meet the increased need and demand for support from community organizations, including social enterprise and small businesses, serving Ontario’s Francophone community across all regions of the province.

In its 2024 Budget, the party states that:
– it remains committed to improving access to services in French across Ontario and enhancing the vitality of Franco‐Ontarian communities.
– to that end it is working with the federal government to renew the Canada–Ontario Agreement on Minority‐Language Services and would further invest close to $10 million over three years to expand the delivery of quality French‐language services, to support the development of bilingual training programs, improve the economic opportunity of Francophone businesses and enhance French‐language supports in communities across Ontario.