I am having a great deal of difficulty hearing the minister of housing and the member from Thunder Bay–Atikokan make claims about supporting more homes for everybody—including supports for non-profit housing—since you know very well that the two shovel-ready projects I’ve been talking about for the last six months in Thunder Bay have not been able to access any support or funding from this government. There doesn’t appear to be a funding stream available for not-for-profit housing projects. These projects would bring 100 new living units to Thunder Bay.

I’m wondering when the government will be creating the appropriate revenue stream so that these projects can be supported and go ahead.

I want to thank the member opposite for the question.

We believe every child has a right to be in school without disruption right to June. I would hope the members opposite will advance that principle as we carry on our negotiations with teachers over the coming months.

For children with special education needs, we actually increased the budget this year by an additional $90 million. The special education budget is now at the highest levels ever recorded in Ontario history.

I appreciate that we have long-standing challenges of staffing. It’s why this Progressive Conservative government has hired 7,000 additional education workers since we came to office in 2018. We know there’s more to do. For mental health, for example, we increased funding by 420%. I appreciate that there are challenges within our school boards. We can expect them to have the staffing in place to support our kids.

We agree that children with special education needs need to have the supports in place. It’s exactly why we hired 7,000 additional education workers in the province of Ontario. It’s why we’ve hired roughly 900 additional educators since starting in office in 2018, notwithstanding the members opposite. But enrolment, when it comes to children, has actually remained flat. The enrolment of staff, the increase of staffing, is still taking place.

Mr. Speaker, with that said, the member speaks about the need for funding. It is this government that has increased funding for this current school year by an additional $683 million for publicly funded schools. That’s a 2.7% increase—more funding for school boards, more funding per child, more funding in every community.

We recognize there’s more to do. We’re working across party lines to continue to ensure children have the best education system possible and that kids are able to graduate and get a good-paying job in this province.

We recognize, as Progressive Conservatives, that the world is changing, the market is changing, and our curriculum must change with it. Technical education is fundamental to ensuring that we have the skilled labour needed to fuel our economy, and yet, this curriculum was last updated by the former Liberal government in 2008, when smart phones, automated vehicles and the rise of social media had taken hold—and yet, it was not reflected in the skills and the curriculum children were learning within our schools. So we’ve now updated the technical education curriculum for the coming school year, which will include a focus on artificial intelligence. It will include a focus on cyber security, on the advancement of automation in sectors from advanced manufacturing to agriculture to construction. This will help ensure we have a highly skilled workforce that our economy needs.

Mr. Speaker, we graduate 65,000 STEM graduates a year, and even still, there are 17,000 vacant seats today in computer and information system professionals.

This advancement will help support our kids and give them the competencies they need to succeed in the ever-changing economy around us.

Mr. Speaker, we do need more skilled labour. We need them to fuel the economy, to build the infrastructure necessary to improve our lives.

It’s why we expanded the Dual Credit Program just in December—a significant increase. We’re talking about roughly 24,000 students benefiting from this type of investment that’s going to help them to do reach-ahead courses and really take courses in high school allowing them to graduate and complete their studies in college.

We’ve expanded the Specialist High Skills Major program, which allows students to gain credits in high school related to the skilled trades.

And 15,000 students are participating in the Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program.

All of this is designed to give them a leg-up and a competitive advantage to get those good paying jobs in the future.

It’s insulting to tell parents that you’re making historic investments when you’re underfunding education so badly that there are parents who have to sit outside of their kids’ school every day just to help their kids use the bathroom.

Children like Sumi Saeed in Hamilton and Colette Cousins in Toronto deserve to have the supports they need, without their parents needing to sacrifice everything to keep them at school.

So why won’t the Minister of Education commit to adequately funding education and making sure every kid who needs an EA gets one?

Thanks to the member for Niagara Centre for raising this issue.

I think it’s important to consider the reason for so many of the investments that we’re making into the province of Ontario and into the Niagara region, and it’s to address the health care concerns of constituents in all of our ridings and also to ensure that we’re building up a health care system that meets the needs not only of communities that are large and urban, but also smaller communities such as those also in southern Welland.

That’s why our government has introduced measures to not only increase the amount of new internationally educated nurses, but we’ve doubled the nursing program at Brock University, going from 300 nurses to 600 nurses—including five other nursing programs across the province.

We’ve launched two new medical schools to ensure that we’re graduating hundreds of new doctors who are able to provide the services that are needed.

But where was the member opposite when it came to funding these important investments to ensure that services were being maintained across Niagara and Ontario? Nowhere to be found, voting no every single time when it came to making sure that the rubber hit the road and the money was put where it’s needed.

We’re the government that’s going to get the job done for the people of Niagara, for health care across your riding and mine.