This question is to the Premier.

Young people are particularly vulnerable to permanent brain damage due to diesel fuel exposure. With young people beginning skilled trades training as early as grade 11, can the Premier explain to parents why the government has not reduced the diesel exposure limits to the level long recommended by health and safety experts?

Mine workers have been lobbying this for years. In fact, members of the United Steelworkers have stickers on their hard hats recommending it be much reduced from the level that the government has recently moved to. For me, particularly knowing how badly WSIB is serving the interests of injured workers, I can’t imagine how parents will feel.

My question is: Why has the ministry not moved the rate down to the recommended level?

I would like to invite members to join the delegation from Lupus Ontario for a group picture at the grand stairs after the question period.

I’d like to remind the House that in room 247, the Nigerian delegation is there. You’re welcome to join us there today.

Deferred vote on the motion that the question now be put on the motion for third reading of the following bill:

Bill 71, An Act to amend the Mining Act / Projet de loi 71, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les mines.

Mr. Speaker, we have invested more than $1.2 billion towards helping communities through the Social Services Relief Fund—$1.2 billion to help with food, to help with the cost of housing; investing $83 million through the Ontario Trillium Foundation to support non-profit organizations, including food banks; $8 million in support for funding Feed Ontario. Mr. Speaker, every single measure that we’ve taken to help Ontarians during the cost of high prices everywhere, the NDP continuously votes against. They will never support lowering costs in this province. You’ve seen them; you’ve heard them. They’ll say one thing here in the House, but as soon as it comes to actions, they’re MIA. They don’t exist.

It’s this Premier and it’s this government that says we’ll make sure that every single Ontarian is supported and no one is left behind, and we’ll put—

Interjections.

Again to the Premier: Food banks in London and across Ontario are stretched to the limit. In just the last year, the London Food Bank saw a 40% increase in demand. The Emergency Food Cupboard at the Northwest London Resource Centre in my riding is seeing five or six new families a day. When people can’t afford food, their physical and mental health suffers. It causes more chronic conditions, more non-communicable diseases, more infections, depression, anxiety and stress.

Speaker, will this government listen to the Middlesex-London Health Unit, lift people on social assistance out of legislated poverty and increase social assistance rates?

Interjections.

Speaker, there are friends throughout the gallery; I think it would take up the five minutes that we have if I went through the list.

I do want to welcome all of my friends and supporters who are here today. Thank you for taking the time and for supporting me in the decade that I have served.

I would like to acknowledge that my mom, Yvonne Hunter, is here. My eldest brother, Maurice Hunter, is here. And I always call him my little brother—my youngest brother, Andrew Hunter, is here, as well.

I also want to acknowledge my constituency staff who are here. Mohammed Patel is here. Julianna Atanasovski is watching—and Jonathan Patch, and also my intern, Daniel.

Thanks to all of you for being here and for joining me today. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

The ayes are 78; the nays are 30.

Pursuant to standing order 63, your committee has selected the 2023-24 estimates of the following ministries for consideration: Ministry of the Attorney General; Ministry of Francophone Affairs; Ministry of Indigenous Affairs; Ministry of the Solicitor General; Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery.

Report presented.

Bill 85, An Act to implement Budget measures and to amend various statutes / Projet de loi 85, Loi visant à mettre en oeuvre les mesures budgétaires et à modifier diverses lois.

I have a petition here:

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Haldimand county has requested a ministerial zoning order to accelerate the development of a proposed city of 40,000 people on industrial-zoned buffer land in the Nanticoke industrial park; and

“Whereas the housing development will grow the population of the Port Dover-Nanticoke area from approximately 7,000 to 47,000 people; and

“Whereas this development will have a significant impact on infrastructure such as roadways; and

“Whereas 40,000 people living in the Nanticoke industrial park buffer zone is a threat to area jobs in steelmaking, oil refining and the related trades;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to not grant the Haldimand county request for an MZO.”

I support this petition. I will affix my signature to it and send it to the table with page Sophie.

“In Support of Improving Accountability and Transparency in Ontario.

“To the Minister of Education:

“Whereas the government is committed to delivering a world-class education system that helps prepare students for the jobs of tomorrow; and

“Whereas the legislative changes proposed through the Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act, together with future regulatory amendments, would, if passed, lay the groundwork for a truly world-class education system, unified with a singular focus to improve student outcomes in important lifelong skills like reading, writing and math; and

“Whereas Ontario school boards are not consistently working toward the same priorities, school board performance varies across the province on indicators related to literacy, math, graduation and student attendance; and

“Whereas some parents can review and assess their school board’s performance while other boards do not proactively share this information; and

“Whereas in response Ontario is taking action through proposed legislation to set student achievement priorities and expectations for Ontario’s education sector, and proposed legislative and future regulatory changes, if passed, would allow the Minister of Education to set provincial priorities to:

“—focus boards in important areas of student achievement like reading, writing and math;

“—require school boards to report on progress toward these priorities and enable the Ministry of Education to support struggling boards sooner;

“—allow the minister to require school boards to make any report that the minister may require from the board available to the public;

“—require enhanced school board financial reporting on funding and spending, planned and actuals;

“—allow the minister to strengthen rules around financial accountability and transparency;

“—allow the minister to prescribe school board limitations in participating in business activities that could place school boards in financial risk;

“—allow the minister to enhance the financial accountability of school board-controlled entities, promote greater school board-municipality co-operation on delivering child care and enable an accelerated apprenticeship pathway;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly as follows:

“To support the Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act, 2023, and ensure its passage.”

I’m happy to sign my name to this petition and provide it to Christopher.

I was very pleased to meet with some of the folks from Save the Minden ER today at Queen’s Park. I want to thank Richard and the folks who set up signing set-ups at coffee shops and corner stores to get 17,107 names. I just have a couple of pages here, though, Speaker.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the Haliburton Highlands Health Services board of directors has, without consultation with the affected stakeholders, announced the permanent closure of the emergency department located in the municipality of Minden Hills, Ontario, effective June 1, 2023;

“We, the undersigned, petition that a moratorium of this decision be implemented by the Ministries of Health and Long-Term Care immediately for a period of a minimum of one year to allow for consultations with all affected stakeholders to occur.”

I’m pleased to affix my signature and will send this to the table with page Maya.

What I hold in my hand is just part of 17,107 signatures.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the Haliburton Highlands Health Services board of directors has, without consultation with the affected stakeholders, announced the permanent closure of the emergency department located in the municipality of Minden Hills, Ontario, effective June 1, 2023;

“We, the undersigned, petition that a moratorium of this decision be implemented by the Ministries of Health and Long-Term Care immediately for a period of a minimum of one year to allow for consultations with all affected stakeholders to occur.”

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

I have a petition to address homelessness in Ottawa:

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas, per the 2023 Ontario budget, the province of Ontario has allocated $48 million in additional funding to address homelessness in Toronto, yet only $845,100 for the city of Ottawa;

“Whereas this amounts to 60 times more funding for Toronto, despite being just three times the population of Ottawa;

“Whereas this shortfall in funding for Ottawa will severely compromise the city’s 10-year housing and homelessness plan;

“Whereas this will result in the cancellation of 54 new housing units scheduled to be completed within 18 months, and hundreds more over the next 10 years in the second-largest city in the province;

“We, the undersigned citizens of Ontario, petition the Legislative Assembly to provide Ottawa with its fair share of funding to address the homelessness crisis and alleviate the suffering of its most vulnerable citizens.”

I agree with this petition. I’m signing it and giving it to Liam.

I have a petition entitled “To Address Homelessness in Ottawa.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas, per the 2023 Ontario budget, the province of Ontario has allocated $48 million in additional funding to address homelessness in Toronto, yet only $845,100 for the city of Ottawa;

“Whereas this amounts to 60 times more funding for Toronto, despite being just three times the population of Ottawa;

“Whereas this shortfall in funding for Ottawa will severely compromise the city’s 10-year housing and homelessness plan;

“Whereas this will result in the cancellation of 54 new housing units scheduled to be completed within 18 months, and hundreds more over the next 10 years in the second-largest city in the province;

“We, the undersigned citizens of Ontario, petition the Legislative Assembly to provide Ottawa with its fair share of funding to address the homelessness crisis and alleviate the suffering of its most vulnerable citizens.”

Mr. Speaker, I agree with this petition. I will sign it and give it to page Mackenzie to bring to the table.

“Whereas the federal government is increasing the escalated carbon tax by 14%, on April 1, 2023;

“Whereas carbon tax cost increase will put more pressure on consumers who are already struggling with inflation;

“Whereas we call on the federal government to stop the carbon tax, which is a tax hike that Ontarians and Canadians cannot afford;

“Whereas the government of Ontario is helping to reduce the cost of living by keeping taxes low, freezing and eliminating licence plate renewal fees and scrapping the requirement to have licence plate stickers for passenger vehicle, light-duty trucks, motorcycles and mopeds and building on these measures in Bill 85, Building a Strong Ontario Act (Budget Measures), 2023, the government continues to help Ontarians with the cost of living;

“Whereas we call on the Ontario government to urge the federal government to halt the carbon tax increase, that will raise the cost of everything;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To support the passage of Bill 85....”

I support this petition and sign my name to it and give it to page Akshitha.

I recognize the government House leader on a point of order.

I’m pleased to recognize the member for Scarborough–Guildwood.

I have a petition regarding homelessness in Ottawa.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas, per the 2023 Ontario budget, the province of Ontario has allocated $48 million in additional funding to address homelessness in Toronto, yet only $845,100 for the city of Ottawa;

“Whereas this amounts to 60 times more funding for Toronto, despite being just three times the population of Ottawa;

“Whereas this shortfall in funding for Ottawa will severely compromise the city’s 10-year housing and homelessness plan;

“Whereas this will result in the cancellation of 54 housing units scheduled to be completed within 18 months, and hundreds more over the next 10 years in the second-largest city in the province;

“We, the undersigned citizens of Ontario, petition the Legislative Assembly to provide Ottawa with its fair share of funding to address the homelessness crisis and alleviate the suffering of its most vulnerable” residents.

I agree with this petition, will sign my name and pass it on to Randall.

I rise for my final time in this chamber. I am resigning my seat this week to seek elected public office and to continue my public service in another venue. I do so with no regrets, as there are big issues to attend to elsewhere in my city, Toronto.

However, I cannot help but reflect on my tenure in this place. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to do so.

I was elected in a by-election in 2013 and re-elected three times since. I am proud to have served the people of Scarborough–Guildwood.

Scarborough is the community where my family and I ended up when we emigrated from Jamaica. Scarborough is where I grew up and came of age, where I went to public school and to university, where I started my working life. I love my community, and I am proud to have advocated on the community’s behalf for better hospitals, for better health care, for better transit and for better services for my constituents.

In my nearly 10 years in the Legislature, I have sat on both sides of this House: minority government, majority government and opposition. What can I say? It has been a journey.

I was proud to serve in cabinet as the Associate Minister of Finance and also as the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Community and Social Services—I know Community Living is here today, one of those great social service agencies—as Minister of Education and as Minister of Advanced Education and Skills Development.

At finance, I was charged with designing a made-in-Ontario pension plan, the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan. The ORPP was really the catalyst for the Canada-wide expansion of the Canada Pension Plan. I call it CPP 2.0. That really benefited all working Canadians, now and far into the future.

I also helped to create the foundations for multi-employer pension plans, or MEPPs, which created the University Pension Plan, making sure that we have retirement security for those workers, and also for financial literacy being mandatory in grade 10.

I was very proud to be the first Black woman in the history of our province to be Minister of Education. In this role, I found myself in a position where my ministry team said, “Minister, great news. Graduation rates have hit a record high of 86.5%.” Wonderful, but then I was forced to ask the uncomfortable question: Who is in the 13.5%? The ministry team had all the numbers, and it was so revealing: Black students, especially Black male students, half of whom were not graduating. Who else? LGBTQ2SL+ students, students with disabilities, Indigenous students, students in the care of children’s aid—all of them not graduating in the numbers they should be. I told my ministry team there’s nothing wrong with our students; it’s not the students who need to change. It’s the system that needs to change. It’s the system that must change: change to support our students, change so that they can succeed.

That’s why I am grateful for the opportunity to have been the Minister of Education. It meant that I had the opportunity to implement Ontario’s Education Equity Action Plan, created to improve education outcomes for students—all students of all backgrounds. It meant working with parents, educators, principals, board staff, trustees, labour unions and representatives and the entire community to identify and eliminate discriminatory practices, systemic barriers and biases from the schools and the classrooms.

It meant shifting the culture in our classrooms by applying an equity, inclusion and human rights perspective to the entire Ministry of Education, then tracking our progress to measure success and results. It meant increased fairness in the hiring and promotion of staff and educators by removing barriers for under-representation and under-represented communities.

When students see themselves reflected in their learning environments, they are more likely to feel a sense of belonging, a sense of inclusion, a sense of well-being. It meant doing everything possible to ensure that race, disability, gender and socio-economic status do not prevent students from achieving the success they deserve. Instead of the system leaving some students behind, we changed the system so no students are left behind, including students with learning disabilities. I’m very proud of that.

In opposition, I’m proud of my private member’s Bill 232, Local Choice for Local Elections, which would have restored the ability of municipalities to decide for themselves, without needing to go to the province, if they want to elect their local representatives by ranked ballot elections.

I am so proud of my private member’s Bill 60—and this bill was introduced a few times—the Safe and Healthy Communities Act (Addressing Gun Violence), which was designed to treat gun violence as a public health issue, permitting health boards to develop programs to address gun violence and amend the Health Insurance Act to ensure that OHIP funds trauma-informed counselling for survivors, essentially breaking the cycle of violence in our communities. Although the bill did not pass, and I’m sad to say that, the main elements were adopted by Sunnybrook Hospital and St. Mike’s hospital, and it is working.

I am so pleased that this bill was also endorsed by Toronto city council, and I look forward to many more opportunities in the future to put initiatives in the public interest before council for their endorsement.

In closing, I wish to thank friends and colleagues here, all around the chamber—I see you—for all your support. And I want to say thank you to all parties on both sides of the aisle as well. I wish to thank you for your hard work.

I want to also thank the hard-working staff of the Ontario public service whose support ensures that everything we do in government gets done.

I wish to thank my wonderful constituents from Scarborough–Guildwood. Thank you for your support these past 10 years.

Thank you to my friends and my family and my supporters who are here today, especially those from the Ontario Liberal Party. You are family.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for this opportunity. I want to say thank you to my colleagues in my Liberal caucus, my wonderful friends. I want to say thank you to my seatmate, the leader of our party. Thank you so much for all you’ve done. We were elected on the same day and have gone through so much together. Thank you to the member from Ottawa South.

So, finally, all I want to say to all of you is thank you. Stay tuned. The best is yet to come.

Applause.

It’s my honour to present the following petition on behalf of Save the Minden ER group with part of the 17,107 signatures—collecting 95% of the population’s signatures is a pretty strong mandate.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the Haliburton Highlands Health Services board of directors has, without consultation with the affected stakeholders, announced the permanent closure of the emergency department located in the municipality of Minden Hills, Ontario, effective June 1, 2023;

“We, the undersigned, petition” the Legislative Assembly of Ontario “that a moratorium of this decision be implemented by the Ministries of Health and Long-Term Care immediately for a period of a minimum of one year to allow for consultations with all affected stakeholders to occur.”

I fully support this petition, will affix my signature and deliver it with page Mridul to the Clerks.

Speaker, if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent to allow the member for Scarborough–Guildwood to immediately make a 10-minute statement concerning her upcoming retirement from this House.