I want to congratulate the Seasons Centre for Grieving Children, which is based in Barrie, Ontario, who received the 2022-23 Attorney General’s Victim Services Award of Distinction from our Attorney General, Minister Doug Downey.

The Seasons Centre for Grieving Children offers services at no cost to families and opens its doors to participants aged five to 24. The centre relies totally on fundraising and generous corporate and personal donations.

The Seasons Centre for Grieving Children is extremely pleased that they have received this award, and I am pleased to welcome them here today. They’re joined today by Hope from Seasons Centre, their mascot. She has been travelling around many places and hopes to raise awareness of childhood grief. The Seasons Centre has done a lot of work, and this afternoon, I hope many people will be able to meet Hope to spread the word for children experiencing grief and learn more of how they can bring these great services to their own community.

Today, we have members in the gallery, Rowley Ramey and Johanna Stockley, who do so much work for the centre, helping families and children. I hope everyone here can join me for a round of applause to thank them for all the work they and their team do.

I want to thank my friend and colleague from Brampton North for his support of victims and victim services organizations from around Ontario. We recently had an event and we had colleagues from all parties there to celebrate the individuals and the groups that are supporting victims of crime. People have their own personal experiences, and sometimes that motivates them to increase awareness.

I want to focus on just one today that happens to be in the gallery. I introduced them earlier: the Seasons Centre for Grieving Children. For over 25 years, with no government funding, they have provided services for children between the ages of 5 and 24 who have experienced a death of a parent or a sibling. It’s exactly those types of people and those types of organizations that deserve the victims awards they’ve been bestowed with.