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.

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

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

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.