I’m very excited to welcome students who are here from Liceo Giambattista Vico in Sulmona, Abruzzo, Italy. They are with us today. They just wrote a book, Voci d’Abruzzo. It helps to commemorate the story of Italian immigrants to this country and to the United States. Voices of Abruzzo honours their incredible legacy of sacrifice. Welcome to Queen’s Park. Benvenuto.

On the contrary, we believe students should get back to basics, which is why we’ve brought forth a plan to strengthen foundational skills in reading, writing and math. We increased staffing by 2,000 additional focused educators, with respect to literacy promotion and math. We’ve hired 8,000 additional workers since we started in 2018. This year, like every year, we are increasing funding—over $690 million, an increase in funding that’s going to help kids get back on track.

This morning, we announced over $20 million in additional funds to combat violence that’s happening in and around our schools, a 37% increase in Focus on Youth to help school boards with respect to after-school mentorship, leadership and career-development programming and free camps for high-need communities.

We just launched an agreement with the Pinball Clemons Foundation. We launched another agreement with Respect Group—that’s Sheldon Kennedy, a former NHL player. All of these funds are for the TDSB and school boards across Ontario to combat violence and keep children safe in schools across this province.

We’ve also hired 8,000 more staff, opposed by the NDP. We just announced a $560-million increase in funding, opposed by the NDP. We increased 2,000 front-line educators just last Sunday. That too was opposed by the NDP. The constant in this Legislature is opposition by the NDP for progress, for change and desperately needed reform to improve publicly funded schools.

The Standing Committee on Social Policy, Speaker.