Madam Speaker, through you, I would like to thank the member for his question.

To ensure that more seniors who need financial help receive it, our government is proposing to make changes to expand the eligibility for GAINS, which is the Guaranteed Annual Income System for seniors. Starting in July 2024, it would see about 100,000 more low-income seniors receive payment, with a 50% increase in recipients.

Madam Speaker, we’re also building more long-term-care beds, and we’re also making sure that seniors are protected at home. For example, we’re investing in community paramedicine: more than $174 million over two years, starting in 2024-25, to continue the Community Paramedicine for Long-Term Care Program.

Our government is investing in seniors, and we will continue to support those people who helped us to build Ontario.

You know, Madam Speaker, when I think about public education, I think about my story My parents immigrated to Canada when I was a year old. They came here to escape a fascist dictatorship, and they came to Canada because they wanted to have an opportunity to raise their one-year-old daughter in a free and democratic society. When they came to Canada, they had two suitcases, $50 in their pocket and a one-year-old daughter, me. Back in 1986, their first night in Canada, they had rented an apartment. The apartment was barren—it was empty, because they had just arrived—and so my dad tells me that their first night in Canada, they slept on newspapers and I was sleeping in my parents’ jackets.

Now, 37 years later, here I am, a politician in the provincial Legislature of Ontario, and that’s because of our public education system, Madam Speaker. I am a product of the public education system. That is why—