I’m happy to have a few minutes to talk about Bill 98. I want to start with a few letters that I got from my constituents.

I’ll call her Carole—Carole wrote to me: “I am a school bus driver.... Every day I strive to provide safe and timely transportation for students in my community. Due to a funding shortage, we have been forced to cut back on the number of buses and routes in our region. That means that often, despite” all “my efforts and those of my colleagues, students are late or not picked up at all. It’s frustrating to be in this situation. We are doing everything we can but the system is under extreme pressure and it may buckle at any time. Please, for the sake of the students across this province, give the system emergency funding so that I can do my job and” I “won’t leave kids stranded.”

You have to realize that I represent 33 small northern communities, most of them far apart. Many of them do not have a school in their community. Kids have to be bused long distance to get there, and when the school bus doesn’t come, that means that the student does not go to school. Is that fair? I don’t think so. We all want our kids to have the best chance in life, and that means getting an education. To get an education, you have to get to school. But when there is no money to hire drivers, to pay them a decent wage, to make sure that you have enough routes, then kids in Nickel Belt miss day after day.

I have another; I’ll call him Manfred. He wrote to me: “I am a constituent in your riding—I work as a bus driver ... and I need your help! Ontario’s student transportation sector is in crisis. School bus delays and cancellations are plaguing the system, leaving students and parents stranded. Parents are being forced to take time off to drive their kids to and from school”—if they have a car. “As a professional driver who takes great pride in driving a school bus, I want this to change.

“Ontario school bus operators, many of which are small ... businesses”—and where I live, they’re small businesses—“are struggling to make ends meet in what is the hardest jurisdiction” in our province “to do business. As an employee of”—and he names his employer—“this worries me as I am committed to the company and the sector. Drivers are not paid adequately and without proper funding from the Ministry of Education, the situation will only get worse.”

I fully agree. We need a good, safe transportation system. None of this is in the bill that we are talking about.

I would like to talk about l’École Notre-Dame du Rosaire, à Gogama. L’École Notre-Dame du Rosaire a presque dû fermer ses portes parce qu’il n’y avait aucun enseignant ou enseignante pour aller à Gogama. À Gogama, on parle, quand tout va bien, d’un minimum de deux heures de route pour se rendre à l’école la plus proche à Sudbury, ou d’un minimum d’une heure et demie de route pour se rendre à l’école la plus proche à Timmins.

Gogama a besoin d’une école. On a l’École Notre-Dame du Rosaire, mais la pénurie d’enseignants francophones, elle se vit au quotidien dans le nord de l’Ontario et dans le Nickel Belt.

Le gouvernement a mis en place un groupe de travail sur la pénurie des enseignants et des enseignantes dans le système de l’éducation de langue française. Ils ont donné des recommandations, mais aucune de ces recommandations-là, qui ont été demandées par le gouvernement de M. Ford, n’a été mise en place.

Ça, ça veut dire—on s’entend tous : on a besoin de 1 000 enseignants/enseignantes francophones supplémentaires par année. On a une stratégie pour se rendre là. Le gouvernement a demandé à son groupe de travail de leur donner une stratégie. Et qu’est-ce qu’on fait? On les ignore. Ça, ça veut dire que l’année prochaine, ça va être encore la même chose.

Les jeunes de Gogama risquent de ne pas avoir d’enseignants dans leur école. Si on regarde l’école Notre-Dame, à Foleyet, on est dans la même situation. Foleyet, c’est, minimum, une heure et demie—une heure et quart, si tu vas plus vite que la vitesse—pour te rendre à Timmins. Même chose : une heure pour te rendre à Chapleau. Ce n’est pas raisonnable de demander à un enfant de quatre ans, cinq ans, d’être en autobus pendant une heure et demie de temps pour se rendre à l’école. On a besoin d’écoles à Foleyet, à Mattagami, à Gogama, partout dans le Nickel Belt, mais s’il n’y a pas d’enseignants/enseignantes, ces écoles-là sont à risque de fermer. Pourquoi? Parce qu’on n’a pas suffisamment d’enseignants. Le gouvernement le sait, a mis un groupe de travail en place, a des recommandations qui ont été faites pour eux, et qu’est-ce qu’ils font? Ils les ignorent. Ce n’est pas acceptable.

Je vois que le temps passe quand même assez vite. If you look at what happened to our education system since the Ford government came into place, you will see a $1,200 decrease in budget per student since the government came into power; you will see four less educators—teachers—per 1,000 students since the government came into power. Now they’re telling us, “We will increase the number of teachers for reading.” Yes, there will be one new teacher for every 2,850 students. If you take every kid from, I would say, Levack, Onaping, Cartier—go all the way to the watershed, Gogama, Mattagami, Foleyet, Ivanhoe Lake—all of this, they don’t make 6,650 kids. Who came up with those ratios? How is this supposed to help the people I represent? The kids in Nickel Belt deserve the same amount of support as everybody else. And yet, we have a government that comes up with ratios that, frankly, need to be looked at.

Put a bit of a northern lens on what you are doing. The people of the north are Ontarians. You were elected to look after everyone, not just the people who voted Conservative—the 18% of Ontarians who voted for you. You were elected to look after 100% of Ontarians.

When you come forward with changes like this, I can assure you that the people of Nickel Belt feel like we were left behind, and this is wrong.

We have to fix the school bus problem. Not a day goes by that there’s not a route in Nickel Belt that gets cancelled because they can’t find a driver, because there isn’t enough money to pay them a decent wage, and they have had to make changes and take other jobs.

Don’t get me wrong; it is not hard to find a job in Nickel Belt. We have new mines opening all over the place. We have lots of opportunities for people to make good wages. Do you know why? Our mines have been unionized for a long time. The unions fought really hard to get good-paying jobs with good benefits. It’s not surprising that people will go to those good-paying jobs.

But we still need bus drivers. This is an important job. This is a job that makes sure that the kids in Nickel Belt get to go to school. You have to look at all of those small, rural schools that are at risk of closing and bring forward action that could change all of this. Unfortunately, none of that is in the bill.

When you talk about maximizing the assets that you have, well, have a look at what it looks like to run a French school. All of them have portables. All of them have more kids than the school was built to serve. All of them are looking to expand. We are looking at the English school boards, which often have schools that are half-empty, and which could be better used for all of our students. None of that is clearly stated in the bill. There’s a lot that needs to be urgently done so that our kids have the best chance in life.

This is what makes Ontario so good. We have a top-notch education system, but in the last five years, under this government, we have seen a steady decline. The competitive advantage that we have in technology, in knowledge, in business comes from the fact that the people in Ontario have access to a good education. Under your watch, all of this is going downhill, and we will all pay for this for a long time to come. You have a chance to do better. Don’t let it go by.

Stop the clock.

The House will come to order.

Interjections.

Start the clock. The next question.

The Minister of Transportation can reply.

The next question.

Today, I’m excited. We heard the Minister of Economic Development talk about how this is a jurisdiction to grow and invest, and we heard the Premier saying we’re going to build 1.5 million houses.

But my question here is for the Minister of Transportation—because do you know what? We talked about the GTA becoming home to over two million people, because this is the place to grow and raise a wonderful family. We have to make sure we can build the transit to meet that population need. Unfortunately, the reality is that our transit networks are already strained. People are looking forward to greater transit routes that are accessible and convenient, through the proposed Ontario Line, and that will deliver relief to the city’s core and to the people in Etobicoke south.

The reality is that, unfortunately, the Liberals didn’t do anything. Just like they neglected Ontario Place, they neglected our transit line. They did not put any meaningful investments in badly needed transit infrastructure.

I’m wondering if the Minister of Transportation can provide an update on the progress of the Ontario Line.

Interjections.

Ontario is such a wonderful place to grow, and after 15 years of disastrous rule by the Liberals, not investing in anything, it is so important that we are getting shovels in the ground and, at the same time, we’re building the Ontario Line and other major transit networks that will not only benefit the riders of Etobicoke–Lakeshore but will benefit all Ontarians.

Ontario cannot afford to hold back our economy. Now it’s time to build. Now it’s time to move ahead with critical investments in our transit infrastructure needs. We need to continue building highways, roads and transit infrastructure that is needed to keep Ontario moving.

Can the minister please elaborate on our government’s actions to ensure that this critical transit project is delivered?