Raising the pay of nurses and other health-care workers is a top priority for Ontario's opposition parties this session.

"We are experiencing the biggest health-care crisis of our generation and the premier has been AWOL throughout the summer," Green Leader Mike Schreiner said at Queen's Park Monday.

Repealing Bill 124, the wage cap legislation limiting certain public sector workers to no more than one-per-cent annual raises, is Schreiner's top ask, he said.

"When the premier reintroduces the budget this week, we're demanding that the premier repeal Bill 124 and enable nurses and other front-line health care workers to negotiate the fair wages and benefits they deserve," he added.

Health care, the cost of living and climate change are other issues he plans to focus on during the upcoming legislative session, he told reporters on Monday morning.

All the opposition parties agree on Bill 124.

"We want the throne speech and budget to take action to end the hospitals crisis, including scrapping Bill 124, lifting up wages, fixing working conditions, accrediting tens of thousands of internationally-educated professionals and launching a hiring and training blitz to start right now,” NDP deputy leader Doly Begum said in a statement last week.

On Monday, interim Liberal leader John Fraser said scrapping Bill 124 is "an essential part" of a health and human resources strategy, which would help ease the strain on the province's health-care system.

Schreiner also talked about the need for a coordinated health-care human resources strategy. The core of such a strategy, he said, is repealing Bill 124.

The government also needs to move faster on accrediting foreign-trained health care professionals, he said.

The recent letter Health Minister Sylvia Jones sent to the College of Nurses of Ontario and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario giving them two weeks to find ways to speed up the process isn't enough, Schreiner said.

"The premier should have started doing this two years ago. The fact that they are saying a few hundred are going to be fast-tracked, simply is insufficient to address the crisis that we're facing," he said.

The government "should actually do something meaningful about foreign-trained health-care professionals," Fraser said. "Not just issue an edict to a college after you've been telling (it) to get this done in two weeks after you've been telling us for the better part of a year."

On Monday, Jones talked up her government's efforts to buttress the health-care system, including the letter.

"We've done quite a lot already," she said. "There's a lot that's already in place," she said.

Schreiner's affordability appeals were focused on those living on social assistance and those who can't afford a place to live.

"I renew my call to the premier to double ODSP rates so that people with disabilities no longer live in legislative poverty can afford the skyrocketing cost of living."

ODSP rates have been stagnant for a long time, even as the cost of shelter has skyrocketed and inflation keeps raging. Currently, the maximum amount a single person on ODSP can receive is $1,169 per month.

During the election campaign, the PCs promised to increase rates by five per cent, which would bring the maximum payout to $1,227 per month. The NDP and Liberals called for a 20 per cent increase, but advocates have warned anything short of doubling the rates will leave people in poverty.

To get more housing built, Schreiner fell back on one of the housing affordability task force's biggest recommendations: ending exclusionary zoning.

"Make it as-of-right, in every neighbourhood in this province, for people to build duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes," he said.

Schreiner's final call tried to tie together his signature issue of climate change with the cost of living.

"We can't forget that food inflation and the climate crisis are intimately linked," he said.

"The droughts, the extreme weather events, the heat we're experiencing right now, the fact that the world is literally on fire as we speak, highlights the need for the premier to make a commitment to protecting the farmland that feeds us, the nature that protects us and ensuring that our communities are climate ready."

How to do that? Don't build more highways (the Bradford Bypass and Highway 413), Schreiner said, even though doing so was a central piece of Ford's election campaign.

Opposition parties gearing up to fight Ford government on health worker pay

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