Thank you to the member from Essex for his remarks. In his remarks, he talked about financial security and closure plans. Timiskaming–Cochrane has got a long history of mining, a long history—before financial security and closure plans—of unclosed mines, of holes in the ground, of places where the government had to step in—mines that have never been claimed. And since financial security and closure plans, people have gained confidence in the mining companies that are in Timiskaming–Cochrane now, like Alamos Gold and Agnico Eagle. People have confidence.

Is the member seeming to say that financial security for closure of mines isn’t a good thing?

In the town of Cochrane, there’s a family health team that has the funding for, I believe, five doctors, but they can’t find five doctors. They have one. They would love to be able to switch that to some nurse practitioner funding, while just a few miles away in the town of Iroquois Falls, a nurse practitioner couldn’t get funding or approval through OHIP, so she’s actually operating a private, nurse practitioner practise mostly for the Mennonite community. She really wants to be part of the system. There is funding not very far away. And yet, we’re failing on both sides.

We’re training more doctors. Great, but that’s going to take a while. We’re looking at doctors from other areas. That’s also going to take a while to bring them to the north. Let’s look at what we have, what we can work with and look for solutions.

We are investing an additional $680 million this school year alone because we are committed to helping kids catch up after a global pandemic that has set so many children back in this province and around the world.

When it comes to mental health, we’ve increased funding by 400%—$90 million; for special education, that funding is up to the highest levels in the history of Ontario at $3.2 billion—$90 million more. When it comes to building schools, we have a $14-billion capital commitment over the next decade to build, modernize and renew our publicly funded schools after a decade of darkness under the former Liberal government.

We are going to continue to invest in each and every budget to get these kids back on track.

Under this party, under our Premier, we are investing in more staffing, in more resources, in a tutoring program that never existed in this country, the largest ever—$175 million to allow hundreds of thousands of kids get small group tutoring. We expanded investments because we know we need to lift the standards when it comes to reading, writing and math, getting back to the basics, helping these kids succeed.

We will continue in every single year to increase the investments in our children.

While our kids are struggling without adequate supports, teachers and education workers are burning out from working short-staffed and our school boards are so underfunded that they’re talking about closing schools, this government is not even spending the funds they promised to. The Financial Accountability Office reported last week that the government has underspent on schools by $432 million so far this year. Just think how many schools $432 million could keep open, or how many EAs that could pay for.

Why is this government failing to invest in our kids?

Let’s put this underfunding in concrete terms, Speaker. The Toronto District School Board is in a precarious financial situation because, like many school boards, they were forced to pay $70 million out of their own reserves for the government’s COVID measures. You heard that right—despite the government having billions in unspent COVID relief funds, they made underfunded local school boards foot the bill.

Now, with their reserves depleted and not enough funding from this government, the TDSB is looking at cutting 485.5 staff positions in order to balance their budget—485 teachers, EAs, child and youth workers, ECEs and custodians gone when kids are already not getting the help they need.

Will the Minister of Education commit today to repaying school boards for their COVID expenditures and giving them the resources they need to provide kids with more supports, not less?

Thank you to the member opposite for the opportunity to clarify the facts. When we formed government, it was very clear that the previous Liberal government had failed to deliver the program needed to support thousands of children and had the fraction of the children that were ever going to receive any support under that previous program. It’s why our government immediately doubled the funding to the Ontario Autism Program. It’s why our government has five times as many children enrolled and receiving supports than the previous Liberal government. And that’s why we have created AccessOAP, with care coordinators who help people navigate through the system, a comprehensive system that we heard from people—they wanted occupational therapy, speech therapy, mental health supports, and we added those in. We’ve been listening to the autism community. That’s why we created a program designed by the autism community—

Some 60,000 older Canadians are the victims of neglect, financial, psychological, physical and institutional abuse. Elder Abuse Prevention Ontario works very hard to help older Canadians escape abuse. However, they have not received a funding increase in the 20 years of their existence, so they’re working on a shoestring. They’ve got a lot of volunteers. They are so burnt out.

Will the Premier ensure that the Elder Abuse Prevention Ontario organization receives an increase in their annual grant to at least match the rate of inflation?

Will the government live up to its obligations to older Ontarians and increase funding for the important work of preventing elder abuse?

Thank you to the member from Oakville North–Burlington for that important question.

Everyone has the right to live in safety and with dignity, free from intimidation and the threat of violence. It’s that simple. We’re building on that ongoing work to support women and survivors of gender-based violence and connect them to needed services and supports, with $8 million in additional funding over the next four years for dedicated provincial crisis lines to help more women get the help they need when and where they need it most.

This investment is in co-operation with the federal government as part of the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence. We are grateful for the federal government’s partnership as we build capacity to support survivors, and we look forward to continuing to work together to eliminate violence against women.