Provincial politicians are heading back to the Ontario legislature today for the start of a new session.
It’s the first time they are sitting since the Progressive Conservatives won a second majority government in early June.
The first order of business is electing a Speaker, and two Tories are vying for the job – Ted Arnott, who has held the role for the past four years, and Nina Tangri, who served as associate minister of small business and red tape reduction.
On Tuesday, there will be a throne speech, which outlines a government’s new agenda, followed by the budget, which is expected to be largely unchanged from when it was introduced but not passed in the spring before the election.
But it is being reintroduced amid a health-care staffing crisis that has seen emergency rooms across the province close for hours or days at a time, as well as much higher inflation than when it was first introduced.
The throne speech is expected to address those changing circumstances, but it’s unclear if any new measures will be added to deal with them.
Nursing groups and opposition politicians have been calling on the government to repeal legislation passed in 2019 that capped wage increases for nurses and other public sector workers for three years, as a way to ease the staffing crunch.
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