Je veux remercier la députée d’Ottawa–Vanier. C’est très encourageant, vos commentaires sur ce projet de loi.

J’étais très intéressé par les circonstances que tu avais décrites, que les conseils scolaires anglophones n’étaient pas préparés à vendre les écoles fermées aux conseils francophones. Est-ce que tu peux détailler un petit peu le pourquoi? Quelles étaient les raisons pour lesquelles ces conseils ont refusé?

Having worked for a school board for over 16 years early in my career, I’ve attended many board meetings and witnessed a very high-functioning board, the Ottawa-Carleton Catholic School Board.

However, like the member from Ottawa–Vanier, I think we can do better, governance-wise.

To have a standard of care like the minister has in his bill and the training to ensure that that standard can be maintained is very important. I’m wondering if you could tell me the components of that training that you think would be most important for a school board.

On behalf of hard-working Ottawa families, it’s a pleasure for me to stand up and provide my strong support for the Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act.

There’s no question that the world is changing, and we had better change with it, or we risk getting left behind.

The Minister of Education has been doing an admirable job of modernizing Ontario’s curriculum, to ensure that it prepares our young people for the world of tomorrow. This has meant focusing on STEM learning and math, including financial literacy and digital fluency, and encouraging kids to take a good look at rewarding careers in the skilled trades.

It’s an honour for me to represent the people of Carleton, and I take every opportunity I can to listen to the concerns of hard-working families. My constituents are respectful and polite, but they’re also pretty firm about wanting value for money. Families in Ottawa understand the critical role that public education plays, and they nearly always like their children’s teachers, but they also see their school board as a big and impersonal bureaucracy and believe the education system must do a much better job of preparing young people for the workforce.

The Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act will, if passed, provide parents and taxpayers with some long-overdue accountability, and it will assist the minister in making the education system more responsive to the changing needs of the job market.

Our legislation, if passed, will drive provincial priorities and expectations for Ontario’s education sector from the province through to Ontario’s classrooms to enhance accountability and transparency.

Our legislation will enable more effective governance through reforms for education sector boards of trustees and directors of education.

Our legislation will help to maximize the considerable real estate assets of school boards.

It will ensure Ontario’s teachers are trained for the needs of today’s and tomorrow’s classrooms.

And our legislation will provide the information and tools necessary to ensure consistent information and approaches to student learning, including student learning about mental health and well-being.

Madam Speaker, there are certain parts of the legislation that are very, very important and are very critical, not just in Ottawa—but specifically in my riding of Carleton.

The fact that our legislation will enable school boards to maximize the considerable real estate assets of school boards make me think about Munster Elementary School, which was shut down years ago by the previous Liberal government, supported by the NDP. While it’s in perfect condition, Munster Elementary School has remained closed, and the school board has no intention of reopening it. In fact, the school board has tried to sell this asset several times—something that I have prevented, because it makes no sense for the school board to not utilize Munster Elementary School to its full potential.

This bill allows the school board to collaborate—whether it’s with other school boards, whether it’s with the municipality—to come up with some sort of solution that will allow parents in Munster to send their kids to a local school, but also give the option of making sure that the building is used to its maximum capacity. Whether it’s as a hybrid community centre or whether it’s dual school boards, the opportunities and the possibilities are endless, and this legislation provides that opportunity. This legislation provides that hope to the community of Munster, the people of Munster, that perhaps once again they can send their children back to Munster Elementary School, a local school. That’s why I’m proud to support this important piece of legislation, and I look forward to working with the parents and the community of Munster to come up with various solutions and work towards how we can get Munster Elementary School opened.

The bill that we’re discussing is quite wide-ranging and includes a number of much-needed reforms. I’m not going to list them in their entirety, but I will briefly mention a few that I’m especially excited about.

The big item is, of course, the provincial information for parents that will spell out their rights, roles and responsibilities within the educational system. This is very important, especially in the city of Ottawa, where in the past month there have been some contentious issues in the news with school board trustees, and parents have been left wondering what their rights are to get involved, what their rights are to ask questions. This legislation will ensure that parents will know what their rights, roles and responsibilities are within the education system.

As I mentioned earlier, many parents across the province view their local school board as a big and impersonal bureaucracy that does not feel a need to listen to the concerns of families. I experienced this myself when, last year, the parents in Findlay Creek who had their children attending Vimy Ridge Public School reached out to my office because they felt like they were getting nowhere with the school board and their trustee. When they were telling the school board and trustee that there were too many kids and that they needed to build a second public elementary school in Findlay Creek, the school board simply ignored them and kept on adding more and more portables until, finally, the school board said they’re going to start busing new students to other communities. Instead of accepting that they needed to build a second public elementary school, the school board just ignored the needs of parents.

The parents came to me, and we worked hard. We created a petition. I spoke with the Minister of Education—and that’s probably the fastest school I’ve ever managed to get funding for, to get built. When I heard about the issue, it was in October, and the day we received funding was, I believe, sometime in mid-April—so eight months.

I was very, very pleased to work with the parents and families of Findlay Creek to make sure that they got funding and that the school board prioritized building a second public elementary school in Findlay Creek. But they shouldn’t have gone through me; they should have been able to deal directly with the school board and their school board trustee. But you know that when parents are reaching out to their local MPP to get assistance on a school board matter, there’s an issue there with the system.

Our government understands that parental involvement is crucially important in a child’s education, and we believe in empowering parents, not in telling them to sit down. Providing each parent with information that outlines their rights and responsibilities will enhance parent-teacher conversations and encourage more parents to voice their opinions and get involved in their children’s education.

Madam Speaker, my colleagues on this side of the House strongly support this legislation, because it includes a number of measures to make school boards more accountable to families, and I agree with all of those measures.

I’m especially impressed by one amendment to the Ontario College of Teachers Act, 1996, that would allow student victims of alleged sexual abuse, child pornography or a criminal sexual act by any teacher to receive funding for therapy. At present, the provisions require there to be a direct relationship between the student and teacher, which is limiting for victims of abuse. I applaud the Minister of Education for including that measure in the bill.

When young people enter the public education system, they are in our care, and they deserve every protection we can afford them.

Clearly, the Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act is a thoughtful and comprehensive bill that will help protect young people, empower parents, and make school boards more accountable to parents and taxpayers. With this legislation, we are telling parents in Ontario, we are telling the communities of Munster, of Findlay Creek, Riverside South, Stittsville—all across my riding of Carleton, across the city of Ottawa, including Manotick, and across the province that our government is here, our government is listening.

Our government has always supported parents, and we will continue to support parents, because ultimately it is their children in the public education system, and it is our responsibility to make sure that children and families are supported.

My question is for the Premier.

Operating rooms at the Riverside campus of the Ottawa Hospital have been leased to a private, for-profit corporation on Saturdays for the last while. The 26 surgeons running this for-profit corporation have been hiring nursing staff from the Ottawa Hospital’s public OR rooms. Nurses are being offered twice their normal salary. The surgical equipment for this clinic is shipped in from Toronto. On the surface, it doesn’t seem to make sense. But what has also never been clear to me is how this for-profit clinic was approved in the first place.

Can the Premier clarify if this clinic was given his government’s formal approval to operate?

Back to the Premier: We all know that the privatization of orthopaedic surgery and the poaching of staff from our public hospitals is exactly what this government wants to do with Bill 60. But section 4 of the Ontario Public Hospitals Act is very clear: Leasing any space in a public hospital requires the explicit written approval of the Ministry of Health. You can’t even put a Tim Hortons in a hospital without ministerial approval. The law in Ontario is clear: The Ottawa Hospital cannot lease its operating room without the explicit written approval of the Minister of Health. I hope the Premier knows that.

When will the Premier investigate the apparent breach of Ontario laws by the for-profit corporation leasing operating rooms at the Ottawa Hospital?

I want to ask this question—and probably for the benefit for the member from Guelph—because I live just outside of Smiths Falls, have farmland outside of Smiths Falls. Do you know what? If you go past my farm a little piece, do you know what you see in a big field? “Welcome to Ottawa.” Well, you’re still about 60 kilometres from Ottawa. So that’s a problem for a farmer who has a son or daughter who wants to take over the farm and wants to reside in the community they grew up and in the community where they want to remain and perhaps take over the farm.

So my question for the member from Windsor–Tecumseh is, what is this bill doing for rural development?

I would like to thank my colleague from Toronto Centre for their excellent presentation. The member makes a very, very important point, that there are businesses across this province—certainly many businesses in my riding—that have called on all of us as legislators to deal with the problem, the crisis of homelessness, and to make sure that people who are unhoused get access to housing and that they have the mental health and other wraparound services that are needed.

My question to the member is, given that the homelessness crisis is getting worse—the municipalities of Hamilton and, I believe, Ottawa have passed motions declaring a state of emergency on the homelessness crisis—what action can the government take today to address this issue?