My question is to the Premier. The Eglinton LRT has been under construction for 12 years. It has also spiralled beyond its estimated cost, from the original $5 billion to nearly $13 billion, and it’s likely to rise as well. While the consultants building this project keep racking up the bill, we get faulty LRT platforms—in fact, stations that are broken up and taken away in dump trucks.

Taxpayers whose hard-earned dollars are funding this project, long-suffering residents and businesses that actually went bankrupt and had to close down are all looking for answers. They want transparency.

My question to the Premier is, how much more money, how much more of people’s hard-earned dollars, will your government waste?

My question is to the Premier. This Premier and Minister of Infrastructure are painting the Ontario Science Centre as a teardown, but it isn’t. They’ve seen record attendance. I encourage folks and families to visit them and explore and enjoy their brilliant exhibits.

What is true is that capital repairs and building renewal are years behind. And, fun fact: According to the Ontario Science Centre’s 2022-23 business plan, Infrastructure Ontario is technically the science centre’s landlord. The minister says the science centre is falling apart. However, the business plans say nothing of the sort. What the Ontario Science Centre needs is for the government to cough up the needed funds and make the repairs.

My question to this minister is, will she keep withholding the funding needed or pay up?

Interjection.

The minister no doubt realizes that being a better landlord and doing the necessary repairs would be far less costly than building a whole new science centre. Unless the minister is planning to shrink the science centre, the minister knows she can’t rebuild a new one for less than the cost of repairs and knows that there isn’t money in the budget for this.

So my question is, what is the Premier’s actual plan for the Ontario Science Centre and what is it going to cost Ontario?

This petition is submitted by the Ryerson Community School, the school where I first taught as a teacher back in 1989.

“Petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from the Elementary Teachers of Toronto to Stop the Cuts and Invest in the Schools our Students Deserve.

“Whereas the Ford government cut funding to our schools by $800 per student during the pandemic period, and plans to cut an additional $6 billion to our schools over the next six years;

“Whereas these massive cuts have resulted in larger class sizes, reduced special education and mental health supports and resources for our students, and neglected and unsafe buildings;

“Whereas the Financial Accountability Office reported a $2.1-billion surplus in 2021-22, and surpluses growing to $8.5 billion in 2027-28, demonstrating there is more than enough money to fund a robust public education system;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to:

“—immediately reverse the cuts to our schools;

“—fix the inadequate education funding formula;

“—provide schools the funding to ensure the supports necessary to address the impacts of the pandemic on our students;

“—make the needed investments to provide smaller class sizes, increased levels of staffing to support our students’ special education, mental health, English language learner and wraparound supports needs, and safe and healthy buildings and classrooms.”

I fully support this petition, will affix my signature and pass it to page Dominic to take to the table.

I’d be happy to, Speaker. It’s interesting that this member asked the question when the person who sits beside her, when he was a regional councillor, asked the same thing that the Auditor General asked, and that was to fix the broken formula from the previous government.

In a 2021 value-for-money audit—you can read it right here—it talks about the inequity of that program. We had Mayor Sutcliffe and officials from Ottawa here. We explained the situation to them. But we are responding directly to the 2021 Auditor General’s report, where it said for funding equity.

You know who you need to ask, member? You need to ask the people from Niagara, the people from London, the people from Windsor, who were shortchanged with that previous formula. Ask your colleague.

The updated formula was developed based on the feedback from the Auditor General and municipal stakeholders. The updated model takes into consideration a community’s share of homelessness, supportive housing units, low-income households, households in deep core housing need as defined by CMHC, and Indigenous and youth populations.

We are not going to facilitate a funding formula that was outlined in the Auditor General’s report that forgets about communities, like those in Niagara, like those in London, like those in Windsor. We’re not going to do that. We’re going to respond to the Auditor General’s report and have a fair funding formula that treats all of Ontario with fairness and equity.