I have a few individuals to recognize, so please bear with me, if you don’t mind.

First and foremost, I’d like to welcome and recognize the deputy minister, Maud Murray; the assistant deputy minister, Rakhi Lad; and executive adviser Cameron Yu, from our official side.

I also have members of my team, for the political side, from my office I’d like to recognize: of course, my chief of staff, Robert; Evan; Harjot; Corey; Kosta; Brittany; Jonathan; Kamel; Quinn; and Jared.

All of these individuals work really, really hard to make me look good in here, so I want to thank them for all of their tremendous work.

Madame Gélinas moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 92, An Act to promote transparency and accountability in the funding of health care services in Ontario / Projet de loi 92, Loi visant à promouvoir le financement transparent et responsable des services de santé en Ontario.

I am pleased to share this.

“Petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the Wolfe Island ferry and Glenora ferry have had serious service disruptions due to a staffing crisis created by the Ontario government; and

“Whereas residents and visitors to Wolfe Island have been trapped on the island for up to 12 hours with no way to leave, even for emergencies or work; and

“Whereas Glenora ferry has had a reduced schedule during this year’s busy tourism season, creating hours of lineups and delays for passengers; and

“Whereas the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) ferry workers are drastically underpaid in comparison to the rest of the marine industry, causing recruitment and retention issues; and

“Whereas instead of paying competitive wages and hiring more permanent staff, MTO has contracted out the work to Reliance Offshore, an out-of-province, private temporary staffing agency, which charges up to twice as much hourly as ministry staff earn; and

“Whereas contracting out the work is a waste of our public funds on a stopgap solution that doesn’t provide long-term stability to our ferry system;

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

“(1) Fix our ferries—stop the service disruptions and reductions caused by ministry understaffing.

“(2) Repeal Bill 124, which has imposed a three-year wage cut on already underpaid ferry workers during high inflation, and pay them fair, competitive wages.

“(3) End the outrageously expensive contracts with private temporary staffing agencies and hire permanent Ministry of Transportation ferry workers to work and live in our communities instead.”

Of course, I support this petition. I will affix my signature and I will send it to the table with page Evelyn.