Ontario Liberals promise higher wages for nurses and PSWs as Greens unveil platform, pledge to build two million homes

Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie talks to students at a campaign event at George Brown College in Toronto, on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

TORONTO — The Green Party of Ontario will build two million homes in a decade, cut taxes for low- and middle-income earners and create a "foodbelt" to protect farmland if it wins the election, leader Mike Schreiner pledged Wednesday as he released the party's platform.

Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie, meanwhile, promised to end hospital hallway health care in part by paying nurses and personal support workers more and ensuring wage parity across the entire system.

Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford remains in Washington, D.C., in his capacity as Ontario premier as he attempts to head off looming U.S. tariffs, while NDP Leader Marit Stiles had no public events Wednesday.

The Greens are the first party to release a fully costed platform. The NDP and Liberals say they will release costed platforms soon while the Progressive Conservatives committed to releasing their plan in the coming days, though it wasn't clear if it will be costed.

Speaking to the party faithful in Toronto, Schreiner cast this election as a self-interested political gambit by Ford that nonetheless presented an opportunity for the Greens to push for a fair and affordable province.

He mostly spared the Liberals and NDP from attacks while accusing Ford of cozying up to billionaires at the expense of working Ontarians and rolling back environmental protections. He was flanked at the podium by the party’s co-deputy leaders Aislinn Clancy, the only Green candidate other than Schreiner to win a seat, and Matt Richter, who’s running again in Parry Sound-Muskoka after finishing just behind the winning PC candidate in the last election.

Schreiner said he would legalize fourplexes across the province and mid-rise residential buildings six-to-11 storeys tall in larger cities. He would also end the land transfer tax for first-time homebuyers, which would cost about $1 billion over the next four years.

He would also cut taxes for those earning less than $65,000 or households earning less than $100,000, at a cost of $18.8 billion over four years, as well as double the rates of both the Ontario Disability Support Program and Ontario Works.

"Our plan addresses the fairness that we need to build affordable homes and protect renters, to bring fairness back to our health care and education systems, to protect the prime farmland that feeds us and lower your energy bills and reduce climate pollution," Schreiner said.

The Greens would also build 250,000 affordable rental and 60,000 supportive units over 10 years that would cost $2.7 billion over the next four years. They pledge to pay non-profits to operate the 60,000 supportive homes at a cost of nearly $2.5 billion over four years.

On the other side of the balance sheet, the Green plan includes a tax hike for the province's top earners. The platform estimates a three per cent increase to the top tax bracket would bring in $2.5 billion a year in new revenue.

The plan also comes up with just over $2 billion a year in new revenue through three new taxes targeting housing speculators: a vacant home tax, an "anti-flipping tax" on quick turnaround sales and a multiple property speculation tax. The speculation tax would start at 25 per cent on a third home and increase with each additional property, the platform says.

"We can't continue to live in a province without generational fairness, where a whole generation of young people, including my 25-year-old daughter, are wondering if they'll ever be able to own a home in this province. We have to fix this. Ontario Greens will fix it," Schreiner said.

The platform's largest single source of additional revenue – $4.7 billion a year starting in 2026 – comes from working with the federal government to implement a one-time wealth tax over three years, though the platform offers no details about how the Greens would make that proposal a reality.

Earlier Wednesday, Crombie said the Liberals would address a long-standing issue in health care: pay parity.

"It shouldn't matter where that nurse or where that PSW is employed," Crombie said. "Whether they are in the community in a long-term care facility or in the hospital, there should be parity in their wages."

The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the problem of unequal pay among nurses and personal support workers. Generally, hospitals paid nurses and PSWs more than long-term care homes, which in turn paid more than home-care services.

The lack of pay parity played a major role in nursing home staffing shortages during the pandemic, Ontario's Long-Term Care COVID-19 Commission concluded.

Dr. Raghu Venugopal, an emergency department physician who spoke at Crombie's news conference as she announced her plan to end hallway medicine, said a "tragedy" is happening in emergency departments across Ontario.

He listed a number of stories he and his colleagues have collected about the situation he describes as "chair medicine."

"An unfortunate mother actively having a miscarriage, treated in a chair," Venugopal said. "A palliative care patient with cancer riddling his bones and with pain, treated in a chair. A patient after surgery with complications with their abdomen open, treated in a chair."

He said many patients are waiting six to 12 hours to see an emergency department doctor and then waiting another 24 hours for a hospital bed.

"I believe Doug Ford has failed Ontario ERs," Venugopal said. "I believe he has failed our publicly funded health-care system, and I believe he has failed this great province."

Ford has defended his record on health care and blamed the previous Liberal government for cuts to medical school seats and nursing jobs.

Ford has justified calling the snap election set for Feb. 27 by saying he needs an even bigger mandate to deal with four years of U.S. President Donald Trump. The opposition have all said the election is a waste of time and money and done for personal gain with Ford ahead in the polls and to get ahead of an RCMP investigation into the Greenbelt land swap scandal.

The budget for the election is $189 million.

— With files from Sharif Hassan.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 12, 2025.

Liam Casey and Jordan Omstead, The Canadian Press