Yesterday’s Ottawa LRT inquiry report revealed a cascade of problems due to the decision to build the LRT as a public-private partnership. The report said, “In many ways, the P3 model caused or contributed to several of the ongoing difficulties on the project.” These difficulties included a lack of transparency, misleading information from the P3 contractor, and the city’s inability to hold the P3 partner accountable for deficiencies.

Will the government learn the lessons of the Ottawa LRT fiasco and stop signing risky P3 contracts?

“Petition to Raise Social Assistance Rates.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Ontario’s social assistance rates are well below Canada’s official Market Basket Measure poverty line and far from adequate to cover the rising costs of food and rent: $733 for individuals on OW and ... $1,227 for ODSP;

“Whereas an open letter to the Premier and two cabinet ministers, signed by over 230 organizations, recommends that social assistance rates be doubled for both Ontario Works (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP);

“Whereas the recent small budget increase of 5% for ODSP still leaves these citizens well below the poverty line, both they and those receiving the frozen OW rates are struggling to live in this time of alarming inflation;

“Whereas the government of Canada recognized in its CERB program that a basic income of $2,000 per month was the standard support required by individuals who lost their employment during the pandemic;

“We, the undersigned citizens of Ontario, petition the Legislative Assembly to double social assistance rates for OW and ODSP.”

I wholeheartedly endorse this petition, will sign my name to it and send it the table with page Kalila.

I’m pleased to have the opportunity to rise in the House today to address Bill 26, the Strengthening Post-secondary Institutions and Students Act. I have to say, Speaker, that when this bill was first tabled, I was feeling optimistic, as someone who used to work in this sector specifically on the issue of sexual violence and harassment in post-secondary, that we had a real opportunity to make progress for students, faculty, staff and other members of our campus communities across Ontario.

The government’s legislative agenda this fall has not been a great source of hope and optimism, as the government seems to be setting fires wherever it goes, while somehow simultaneously ignoring the chaos of our health care system, but I thought this bill showed some promise. Not all the pieces were there yet, and I and many of my colleagues highlighted the areas where we hoped the government would do better during debate at second reading. The government was so steadfast during its speeches that they wanted to protect students and so adamant that this was an important issue that I thought surely the government would come to committee in good faith; listen to the feedback of students, faculty, staff, administrators and experts on gender-based violence; and make the necessary changes to make this a good bill, one that actually makes the changes required to protect students and other members of the post-secondary community.

Instead, what we saw was a situation where every single stakeholder brought forward changes they wanted to see to the bill, and the government refused to make almost every single change requested. That included student leaders pleading with the government in committee and in a press conference last week to do better. The government has not listened to these student leaders.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, Speaker, because this is a pattern we have seen from this government. They refuse to consult with the people who are affected by their legislation, like we saw with Bill 7, which forces seniors and people with disabilities to move into long-term-care homes against their will, and yet the government couldn’t be bothered to speak with a single seniors’ organization or disability organization, or even hold a committee hearing on the subject; or Bill 28, which trampled all over the rights of low-paid female workers, forcing them out of our education system, thereby ensuring that our kids wouldn’t get the fundamental supports they need and deserve. The government rammed that one through, too, without talking to a single worker, parent, education expert, labour lawyer or constitutional expert. Maybe if they had, they wouldn’t have had to repeal the bill the following week because they never would have proceeded with such excessively damaging legislation if they had bothered to talk to Ontarians first.

We’ve also seen the government conduct the barest sketch of a consultation they could possibly get away with calling a consultation—like on Bill 23, where the government refused to hold hearings across the province because apparently cities like Ottawa are exactly like Toronto, or maybe because they still haven’t figured out that Ottawa is in Ontario.

They refused to hear from the Association of Ontario Municipalities on a bill that fundamentally affects municipalities, their funding and their democratic structures. They shut down committee hearings. They refused to hear from former mayors like John Sewell. They ignored the feedback of former and current mayors and city councillors in Ottawa and Toronto.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to see the same pattern repeated here. The minister claimed the bill was based on consultations, but all the stakeholders that came before us said the bill didn’t do enough, didn’t go far enough and didn’t do it well enough. All of them asked for amendments. I guess we should be grateful that the government condescended to make a few changes to the bill, but I’m not feeling grateful because this is such a lost opportunity—a lost opportunity to seriously address this issue, to make progress for students, faculty and staff, and everyone who is affected by the issue of sexual violence and harassment.

How long will it be now before we actually see the trauma-informed, survivor-centric, comprehensive and prevention-focused approach to sexual violence and harassment that students, faculty, staff, administrators and experts on gender-based violence are demanding? Is the government going to go back to the drawing board to create a new bill to address all of the concerns and issues that we heard, delaying change for months? Or are they going to continue to ignore the pleas of students, faculty, staff, administrators and gender-based violence experts, refusing to address this issue again for the rest of their term, making everyone wait years for change?

It makes me a little sick to my stomach to think that we might need to wait years to get this issue properly addressed, because we are talking about something so serious, something that has such a profound effect on people’s lives.

We heard testimony from survivors like Micah Kalisch about how life-changing the experience of sexual violence or harassment can be. We know that it can cause serious mental, emotional and physical health problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and dissociation. It can create academic challenges and problems at work.

In response to the Statistics Canada Survey on Individual Safety in the Postsecondary Student Population, students said that experiencing sexual violence or harassment made them feel more fearful. It affected how they moved around campus, making them choose different routes or avoid certain buildings, or only travel at certain times of the day.

One of the most disturbing elements of that survey was the revelation that 71% of post-secondary students in Canada have seen or experienced inappropriate sexual behaviours. That’s almost three in four students. Just imagine all the lives affected by this, the mental and physical health effects of this, the academic challenges created by this.

It is urgent that we get this right. People’s lives are depending on us. We have an obligation as legislators to try to get this right. I firmly believe that members opposite share that goal with us. I don’t think anyone in this House wants to see people’s lives derailed by sexual violence. I think we all want to see people protected against this kind of violence.

But that’s why I am genuinely baffled by this government’s refusal to work with students, to work with experts on sexual and gender-based violence, to work with faculty and staff unions, to work with administrations to get this right. When you want to get this right and yet you don’t listen—I don’t understand what motivates that. I don’t understand what members think they have gained by voting against amendments at committee simply because they were moved by another party, when they were amendments that came from students who were begging you to improve this bill.

Even before the bill came to the Legislature, I don’t understand why the government would have ignored all the good work that is being done in this sector and the recommendations that are being put forward, many of them consensus recommendations.

A coalition of 24 student organizations that included the Canadian Federation of Students, the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, the College Student Alliance, the University of Ottawa Students’ Union, the University of Toronto Students’ Union and the Wilfrid Laurier student union released a comprehensive report in August called Our Campus, Our Safety that had 10 calls to action, including four addressed to provincial and territorial governments.

They called for:

—provincial standards for data collection on campuses, in collaboration with key stakeholders;

—a strengthened legislative and regulatory framework to address and prevent sexual violence that would include prevention education, minimum standards for sexual violence policies, mandatory review processes, mandatory inclusion of students in the development and review of policies, processes and education;

—committees to oversee these policies at each institution, with student representation;

—a provincial advisory committee on campus sexual violence, with paid student representation; and

—sustainable funding for community sexual assault centres and post-secondary sexual assault services.

None of these recommendations are included in this legislation. I asked the minister if she had read the report and she assured me she had. But she had no reason to give me as to why none of the recommendations put forward by our student leaders across the province are included in the bill.

We also had Courage to Act testify before committee last week, Speaker. This is a national project, funded by the federal government, which has brought together 3,500 stakeholders on this issue over the past three years and developed 82 different tools to support post-secondary institutions, students, investigators, unions and, really, all members of the campus community—all the groups that are responsible for dealing with and addressing the issue of sexual violence and harassment on campus to make sure that they are following the best practices based on evidence, experience and research. I’ve had the opportunity to be involved with Courage to Act as one of those 3,500 stakeholders, and so I can say without hesitation that they are doing really amazing work. Really, if you want to get the best understanding and the best advice about sexual violence and harassment in the post-secondary sector specifically, you want to start with Courage to Act. And yet I asked if they were consulted by the minister on the development of this bill and the answer was no. Why wouldn’t you want to start with recommendations being put forward by the experts on this, Speaker?

Similarly, Dr. Julie Macfarlane is running a campaign called Can’t Buy My Silence to eliminate the use of non-disclosure agreements in cases of sexual violence and harassment, based on her own experience at the University of Windsor. And yet, not only did the government not consult Ms. Macfarlane or other experts on the subject of NDAs, but we couldn’t even get them into committee to testify on this bill because the government wouldn’t allow for sufficient time for hearings for all the stakeholders who wanted to be heard.

I don’t understand why, if you want to get this right, you wouldn’t start by going to the experts in this field. I don’t understand why, if you didn’t go to the experts right at the start, you wouldn’t at least want to bring them into committee and hear from them there to make sure that you have the best possible bill in the end.

What is clear when you look at the recommendations of students, of Courage to Act, of organizations like Possibility Seeds and the YWCA, of gender-based violence experts, of unions like OCUFA and CUPE and OPSEU and OSSTF, is that what we need is a comprehensive approach to sexual violence and harassment that is survivor-centric and trauma-informed. These are words that are used a lot in this sector and that came up a lot during the committee hearings, so I just want to pause here to talk about why they are so important.

A survivor-centric approach puts the survivor of sexual violence at the centre, prioritizing their rights, their dignity, their safety and their well-being. Experiencing sexual violence and harassment can be incredibly disempowering, and if we are not careful to centre the survivor, the response can cause further harm and trauma, making someone feel even more disempowered, disrespected and wounded. Because people respond differently to traumatic incidents, what survivors want and need can vary. Being survivor-centric means building processes that, as much as possible, give the survivor agency and control. Even where they don’t hold decision-making power, it means checking in constantly with a survivor, making sure they are informed about the process, about timelines, about possible outcomes and impacts. It means making sure that supports and services are available for the survivor, regardless of what process they choose and what outcomes they want to see. This is really about ensuring that, first and foremost, we do not cause harm.

A trauma-informed approach recognizes that we have all experienced many things in our lives and some of those things may have caused trauma. Trauma affects how we engage and are able to process things. People respond differently to trauma. Some people freeze or become dissociative; others can be in a state of hypervigilance. Some people have memory problems and can’t remember the traumatic events clearly while others relive the trauma over and over and over again.

To have a trauma-informed approach to sexual violence and harassment is to recognize that people may come to an experience with pre-existing traumas, but because we all experience events differently and have different resources available to us to respond, one person may have a trauma response to an event and another may not.

To be trauma-informed begins with recognizing the signs and symptoms of trauma and requires a response that is informed by knowledge about trauma and its impact. As Klinic Community Health centre’s tool kit on trauma-informed care frames it, “The trauma-informed model replaces the labelling of clients and patients as being ‘sick,’ resistant or uncooperative with that of being affected by an ‘injury.’ Viewing trauma as an injury shifts the conversation from asking ‘What is wrong with you’ to ‘What has happened to you?’”

I think you can see why it’s so important to stakeholders in this sector that our approach be survivor-centric and trauma-informed. It is all about “First, do no harm.”

The third element that students, gender-based violence experts and unions have called for is that our response be comprehensive. As the Our Campus, Our Safety report, pulled together by the 24 student groups, says, we have to go beyond stand-alone, individualistic measures. We need an approach that addresses policy, procedures, prevention and data collection. We need meaningful collaboration between government, post-secondary institutions, survivors, students, administrations, faculty, staff and grassroots movements.

Instead of a comprehensive approach, what we got from this government is a bill that focuses on one tool and one tool only: punishment. But why on earth, when we know what the outcomes are, when we know how high levels of sexual violence and harassment are on post-secondary campuses, would we not want to start with prevention, Speaker? When we know how damaging and how life-altering it can be, why wouldn’t we want to stop it from taking place in the first place rather than simply punishing perpetrators after the fact? Yet this is a bill that contains not one single preventative measure—not one.

All of the witnesses were unanimous last week: They wanted to see prevention measures included in this bill. They wanted to see, at the very least, the bare minimum, mandatory education for everyone on campus: education on consent, education on prevention, education on safety measures, education on what your rights are, education on what to do if something happens to you, how to intervene safely if you see something happening to someone else, what to do if someone discloses an incident of sexual violence or harassment to you.

We tried to add that to the bill, Speaker. My colleague the member for Nickel Belt and I moved amendments at committee that would have added a requirement for mandatory prevention education for all students, faculty and staff at publicly funded universities and colleges and private career colleges, but the government voted against it. Their rationale was that they couldn’t add this to the bill without doing consultation on it—this despite the fact that students and others have been calling for this for years now. They all called for it during the committee hearings and in their written submissions: the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, the Canadian Federation of Students, Courage to Act, Possibility Seeds, the University of Toronto Students’ Union, the PEARS Project, OCUFA, Western University.

If the hearings on the bill didn’t convince the government that prevention education is necessary, then I’m not sure what would. It would be hard to imagine an issue on which there is more consensus. I worked in this sector for six years and I can tell you that there are not a ton of issues that administrators, students, staff and faculty unions all agree on. So I don’t understand the impediment to action here, Speaker, just like I don’t understand why the government won’t be supporting my colleague from Toronto Centre’s bill on Consent Awareness Week. When only 28% of Canadians understand what consent means, surely we want to be doing our best to educate everyone on consent and have conversations across the province. Here is something concrete and tangible that the government can do, supported by stakeholders from all sides, and the government is saying no. It’s truly baffling.

A comprehensive approach also means taking into account that post-secondary communities have many different participants, not just students, and that there are shifting roles and responsibilities and many different possible interactions. There are students, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, third-party contractors and visitors. We know that all these members of the campus community are affected by and can be victims of sexual violence and harassment, and they are all worthy of our protection—not just one group.

There’s also not a firm division between students and workers. Many students are workers filling instructional roles as well as staff roles. There are shifting identities and balances of power in which someone might be a classmate in one setting, a supervisor in another and a supervisee in yet another.

Finally, we know that most incidents of sexual violence and harassment on campus or in off-campus spaces related to the post-secondary institution are student-on-student incidents. Yet in this bill, rather than take a comprehensive approach that takes account of these many identities and the relationships between them, the government has chosen to focus on only one single relationship and treat it as if it is unidirectional and unchanging. We heard concerns from student groups about the fact that the bill focuses only on faculty and staff and doesn’t take into account that students themselves can be faculty and staff.

When asked about it, the minister said there are other tools to address sexual violence between students. But there are also already other tools to address sexual violence between employees and students. The point isn’t whether or not there are existing tools, the point is whether the existing tools are good enough, and what we heard from the students was a very firm no.

Finally, “comprehensive” means taking into account that post-secondary education is not what just takes place in the classroom. Post-secondary institutions are places of employment and residences and the location of many social events. There are also interactions between members of the community off-campus and online that are no less connected to the institution just because they’re not on campus.

And increasingly, there is experiential learning. In fact, this was an area flagged by multiple witnesses at committee as an area that the government should be paying attention to. The government is pushing for more and more students to do experiential learning or work-integrated learning placements. These placements put students into situations were there is a huge power imbalance, since students depend on these placements to complete their program and get their diploma or degree, to break into the field after graduation, but they don’t have the rights and protections of employees. This puts them in a position where it is incredibly hard to stand up or say no to problematic behaviours, where it is hard to report problematic behaviours and where students fear the consequences or repercussions of coming forward.

It’s so important that students and the workplaces providing these opportunities know that students are protected by post-secondary sexual violence policies while they are doing these placements. And yet, the government defeated our amendment that clearly spelled out that policies would apply on-campus, off-campus, online and in experiential learning settings. The government members said that the clarification wasn’t necessary because the minister had said at committee that the bill will apply in all of these settings. Apparently, the members are very confident, or very hopeful, that there are a lot of people reading committee transcripts from the Ontario Legislative Assembly, because I’m not sure how else students, administrators and employers are supposed to know about the minister’s assurances. The way to genuinely provide clarity and assurance to everyone that the policy applies comprehensively across the board in all places and all situations where post-secondary activities take place would be to include it in the bill.

Student leaders who appeared at the committee last week, like Jessica Look and Octavia Andrade-Dixon of OUSA, and Micah Kalisch of the PEARS Project, made it clear that students can only claim their rights if they know what their rights are, and knowing what their rights are means clearly spelling out what their rights are. I don’t think the minister saying something once in committee clearly spells out to students what their rights are. This is another missed opportunity because the government did not want to listen to students and other stakeholders.

Another element that is missing from this bill that we clearly heard from stakeholders they wanted to see is minimum standards. We already have a requirement for stand-alone sexual violence policies, and now this bill adds the requirement for post-secondary institutions to create an employee sexual misconduct policy, but there is a complete absence of guidance for post-secondary institutions on what these policies should look like and what standards they should have to meet to be acceptable. This means that we will have 48 different policies with 48 different definitions and 48 different standards at the publicly funded universities and colleges alone, and hundreds of different policies if each private career college develops their own separate policy. It also means that what constitutes sexual misconduct at Algonquin College in my riding of Ottawa West–Nepean might not be considered sexual misconduct at the University of Ottawa or Carleton University or La Cité college. Students at these four institutions will have completely different expectations about processes, policies, procedures and supports.

Student leaders have asked for the government to set out minimum standards for these policies to be developed by an advisory committee consisting of the Council of Ontario Universities, the Canadian Federation of Students, the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, and representatives from faculty and staff unions. These minimum standards should cover the definitions of “sexual violence” and “harassment,” the scope of institutional policies, data collection, training, investigations, confidentiality, campus safety audits and consultations. This would ensure that every student on every campus could count on the same high degree of protection and support.

Unfortunately, when my colleague the MPP from Nickel Belt and I moved an amendment that would have added these kinds of minimum standards to the bill, the government voted against it. Their argument was that we couldn’t waste time developing standards that students could expect—the issue was too urgent. Of course, this was shortly before they voted against mandatory education, because, on that one, we had to consult indefinitely on an issue on which there already was consensus and certainly could not hasten to act despite the urgency of the pleas, so no one can accuse the government of consistency on this issue.

We know that the resources of universities and colleges vary from institution to institution: The expertise and the personnel, even the interest that administrators take in this issue and their desire for change. We can see it already in the existing sexual violence policies. There are some very good ones and there are some very weak ones. Why should some students go without adequate protection because administrators couldn’t be bothered to create a good policy, or because they don’t have the resources and support to do so? Why aren’t we creating more forums for sharing of information and best practices—which, I should note, is something the administrators who appeared before committee told us they would very interested in—and support that work by having a provincial-level committee creating minimum standards based on best practices? When you are trying to protect students, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t start by listening to students.

Students, unions and experts on gender-based and sexual violence have also been calling for better data collection. This is something we also heard at committee. We can’t know how post-secondary institutions are doing in responding to and preventing sexual violence and harassment when we have no idea at all what is happening.

The Our Campus, Our Safety report recommends regular campus climate surveys that are publicly released, so that stakeholders can monitor progress and identify emerging challenges. We also heard from Farrah Khan of Possibility Seeds that these campus climate surveys need to cover everyone, not just students. We have massive gaps in our knowledge about the experience of other members of the post-secondary community. Addressing the problem starts with knowing the problem, Speaker.

We also know that post-secondary institutions could be collecting and sharing aggregate data about disclosures and reports, including what form the response took, whether the complaints were deemed to be founded and what disciplinary measures were implemented. Without any kind of data, there is no way to hold institutions accountable and no way even to know whether the measures the government has put forward in this bill are even effective—although perhaps that is the point here, to the government.

Students have also asked to be treated like equal partners in the work of preventing and addressing sexual violence and harassment on campus. So many institutions pay lip service to student consultation, but don’t meaningfully address the concerns and the issues that students are raising.

Faculty and staff also deserve to be consulted on the creation and implementation of these policies. Consulting with members of the campus community will ensure that policies are truly comprehensive, protect every member of the campus community and take into account differing identities and power differentials, different roles and responsibilities. For instance, one of the concerns that has been raised repeatedly about this bill is the fact that it is completely silent on the fact that students are employees, too. Having students and workers involved in the creation and implementation of policies ensures that roles such as student workers are understood and addressed by the policy. These committees can also play a role in assessing the data or reviewing the campus climate surveys to ensure that gaps are being addressed, progress is being measured and no one is falling through the cracks.

Students are also calling for the government to create a provincial-level advisory committee with representation from administration, student groups like the Canadian Federation of Students and Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, faculty and staff unions. This will provide a constant source of information for the government on the challenges and successes, best practices and shortcomings in this area, allowing for future tweaks through legislation or regulation. It would also allow for the creation of minimum standards. Unfortunately, the government voted against our amendment to set up a permanent advisory committee—no advice needed, I guess.

Finally, students, faculty, staff and administrators were very clear in their call for funding to support the work that is being done and needs to be done. Particularly in the area of sexual violence response, there is a significant funding shortfall. Ontario’s sexual assault centres are seeing huge demand and long waiting lists, and the funding from this government is just not keeping up. One sexual assault centre told the CBC in May that their wait-list is at a 33-year high. The Toronto Rape Crisis Centre said that its funding hasn’t changed in 15 years, while demand has increased 20% in the last two years alone. This government cancelled an increase in funding to sexual assault centres that was promised by the previous Liberal government, and their funding envelope has not even kept up with inflation, let alone demand.

We heard at committee last week from Farrah Khan of Possibility Seeds that there has been a huge increase in demand for this sector over the past two years, as the pandemic has contributed to an epidemic of gender-based violence. This in turn is resulting in burnout among staff and many staff leaving the sector.

We know that when people are asked to provide care in impossible conditions, that can become a form of trauma or harm in and of itself. People can experience secondary trauma, depression, anxiety or suffer from compassion fatigue. We need to support the people who are doing this important and valuable work. There needs to be both permanent funding to post-secondary institutions to run sexual violence response offices and funding to sexual assault centres and services in our communities. Many students and workers who experience sexual violence or harassment end up seeking support from community organizations. We need to make sure that those organizations have the funding they need to provide that support, to keep staff in place and to provide culturally competent, trauma-informed, survivor-centric care. We need to increase funding to Ontario’s sexual assault and rape crisis centres by 30% and make that funding stable.

We also need to make sure that institutions have the funding they need for prevention programming, like mandatory education and campus safety audits.

The government is happy to talk about punishing perpetrators, Speaker, but is not putting a penny towards preventing sexual violence and harassment from taking place in the first place. It’s an odd thing coming from a government that is sitting on billions of dollars in unallocated funding. You would think that the goal of protecting students would actually merit some spending when the government is so flush with cash.

One final element that I will note is missing from this bill. As weak as it is, it excludes one group of students entirely from the protections that it does offer: students at private universities. When I asked the minister about this at committee, she had no answer as to why they would be excluded. She simply said it was something that the committee could consider changing at the amendment stage.

So I moved an amendment to include students at private universities. If we are trying to protect students, why wouldn’t we want to protect all of them? Well, the government voted that one down, too, and I am still scratching my head over their rationale. Their rationale was that the funding model for publicly assisted universities and colleges is different than the funding model for private universities. Well, that’s true, but this bill does cover students at private career colleges—and newsflash to the government: The funding model for private career colleges is also different than the funding model for publicly funded universities and colleges.

At the end of the day, what does the funding model even have to do with the rights of students to be protected against sexual violence and harassment? Students at universities that are funded exclusively through private means are not any less traumatized or affected when they experience sexual violence or harassment. They are not less likely to experience mental and physical health effects. They are not less likely to experience academic or employment challenges. They are not any less deserving of counselling or supportive services, and they are not any less deserving of seeing justice served and consequences for the perpetrator. I simply cannot understand why the government does not think that they are worthy of any support or protection just because they go to a privately funded university.

So that’s everything that’s not in the bill that should have been there. Let’s look now at what is in the bill. The bill has three schedules. The first two are nearly identical, with one addressing publicly funded universities and colleges—or as the government likes to call them since their funding commitment is so incredibly low, “publicly assisted”—and the other addressing private career colleges. Both these sections set out the same definitions and requirements for publicly funded institutions and private career colleges, which is why, again, it is so weird that the government couldn’t bring itself to do the same for privately funded universities.

The first thing that the bill does is define sexual misconduct. Now, this is a marginal improvement from the terminology in the previous version of the bill at second reading, which was “sexual abuse.” What we heard loud and clear from stakeholders, including Possibility Seeds, Courage to Act, the PEARS Project, the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance and others, is that “sexual abuse” was the wrong language. But you will notice, Speaker, that throughout my remarks, I have been using the terminology “sexual violence and harassment,” not the term “sexual misconduct,” which the bill now uses. That is because the witnesses were very clear that sexual violence and harassment were the preferred terms because those are the terms that students and experts in the sector are using. “Sexual abuse” was not an appropriate term for this situation and this sector—that was very clear. But the government just made up this term of “sexual misconduct.” No one was asking for it.

When my colleague the member for Nickel Belt asked the government members of the committee to name just one stakeholder or expert who used the term “sexual misconduct” or requested that the government use it, the silence from the other side of the table was deafening. No one is asking for this term to be used. Everyone is asking for the term “sexual violence and harassment” to be used. These are the terms that are already being used by students. As the students reminded us several times during our deliberations, students can only claim their rights if they can understand their rights, and understanding their rights means using familiar and recognizable language. We need to listen to what students and experts have told us and use the words that they want. This is not partisan language—it is a definition put forth by the people that we have a duty to protect. If we use language in a bill that they’re not using on campus, it is going to be less effective.

My colleague from Nickel Belt and I tried to amend the bill to make the language consistent with what students and experts are calling for. The government voted against that amendment and put forward this terminology with no explanation offered whatsoever as to the reason why it was so important to use a made-up term that no one is calling for. It feels like the government is so dead set on seeing everything as a partisan battle to be won or lost that they can’t even make a single change on terminology that is being unanimously demanded by stakeholders because that would somehow be a loss, instead of a victory that we could all celebrate because we are now making students safer.

The witnesses were also unanimous that the definition in the bill is not good enough. The definition of the government’s new term of “sexual misconduct” is now up to every single individual institutional policy to determine. At the end of the day, we could have hundreds of different definitions of sexual misconduct across the province. What might be punishable behaviour at one institution might be perfectly okay at the one next door. There’s not even a requirement for consultation with anyone—students, gender-based violence experts or legal experts—let alone a minimum standard for what the definition must contain or what it should look like. Institutions are being given this power to determine the definitions without any consultation, with no regard to the fact that they’re not disinterested participants in this process. They have a vested interest here in protecting institutional reputations, in downplaying sexual violence and harassment to appeal to donors and prospective students.

This is even more so for private career colleges, who have shareholders that they have to be accountable to. You know what’s not good for enrolment and profits? Sexual violence. One way to make sure you don’t have a problem with sexual violence and harassment is to make your definition as weak and as exclusive as possible.

On the flip side, the government is giving employers the power here to override the Labour Relations Act and collective agreements based on the definitions that employers themselves will be able to set forward. Define a behaviour as problematic and suddenly you can fire someone with no recourse to due process, employment rights or rights under the collective agreement. No employer should have that kind of power without some kind of accountability.

Witnesses told us that there were existing definitions out there that could be seen as the gold standard, and that one of those gold standard definitions should be made universal in all of these policies. But when my colleague from Nickel Belt and I tried to move an amendment to put that gold standard definition into the act, the government voted against it because they said that universities and colleges were autonomous institutions that should have the right to make up their own definitions.

It’s a funny thing how universities and colleges being autonomous institutions doesn’t matter when the government wants to legislate that they all have to create sexual violence—sorry, “sexual misconduct” policies, but suddenly it matters when it comes to legislating what has to go into that policy. And so here we are with a bill that uses a made-up term and an incredibly weak, shifting definition of that term that will vary from institution to institution to institution to institution across the province. And that’s just the first part.

The next part of the bill allows post-secondary institutions to discharge or discipline an employee for committing acts of sexual misconduct. Now, if, like me, you’ve worked in the area of labour relations for the past few years, you might be wondering, “Well, wait a minute. I thought employers could already discharge or discipline an employee.” And indeed they can.

What this section actually allows them to do is disregard any standard of due process; any rights to appeal; the Labour Relations Act, which is the result of decades of worker activism to ensure that all employees have basic rights and protections; and collective agreements, which in the post-secondary sector are often the result of decades of collective bargaining between workers and employers.

When I asked the minister about this, she insisted that we had to override collective agreements and labour law in order to give universities and colleges one more tool to be able to respond to sexual violence and harassment.

But the reality is that labour law and collective agreements already allow employers to discipline and terminate workers. In fact, they set out the processes and steps that must be followed for discipline and termination. This is to ensure that discipline and termination are not arbitrary, that they follow standards of due process and progressive discipline, and that there are accountability mechanisms such as arbitration or right of appeal. These are safeguards for the person who is accused, but they are also safeguards for the employer.

Now the government is saying none of that matters. As the Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa said, what the government is doing here is setting out a harsher punishment than even the Criminal Code imposes, because there is no right of appeal. There is no standard that the investigation has to meet, no qualifications that the investigator or decision-maker has to have, no requirements that the respondent has to have the opportunity to offer a defence, no appeal rights if the respondent or the survivor believes there has been a miscarriage of justice.

I know this government doesn’t like collective agreements or collective bargaining. I know they like to legislate away workers’ rights. I know they’re incredibly disdainful of the work that unions do to negotiate protections and rights for workers. We’ve just seen that with Bill 28, and we saw it again last week at committee when the government attacked OCUFA, as if OCUFA wasn’t there like every other stakeholder asking the government to take action to protect students and add prevention measures to this bill.

But this government just can’t seem to learn lessons when it comes to using legislation to override workers’ rights and trample on collective agreements. These efforts inevitably end up in court, just like Bill 124, and the courts do not look favourably on the government ignoring charter-protected rights, just like Bill 124.

And in this case, what will happen when this ends up in court? A survivor will experience months, potentially years, of additional harm and re-traumatization as the case goes through the court process. And what’s so frustrating about all of this is that it’s so unnecessary. You don’t need to be able to override collective agreements and labour law in order to discipline or fire perpetrators. Employers already have those rights.

The next section concerns non-disclosure agreements. This is another area where the government failed to listen to the experts completely the first time. The previous draft of this bill failed to get this right completely. It banned non-disclosure agreements, but only after a court or adjudicator or arbitrator ruled that sexual abuse had taken place. This ignored the fact that the majority of non-disclosure or confidentiality agreements are used before a decision is ever made and, in fact, were being used in some cases to avoid a decision ever being made.

A respondent could agree to leave voluntarily, no need to finish the process or fire anyone, on the grounds that a non-disclosure agreement be put in place. This could then result in a situation where the wrongdoer could get away scot-free and the survivor or anyone else who shared legitimate information about what happened is the one who faced consequences.

In fact, we know that this already happened with the case of Julie Macfarlane, a professor at the University of Windsor. The alleged perpetrator was able to negotiate a deal with the university that he could leave with an NDA and a letter of reference from the university that made no mention of the allegations or the investigation. But when a perspective employer reached out to Dr. Macfarlane to ask about him and she told them the real circumstances of the alleged perpetrator’s departure, it was Dr. Macfarlane, not the perpetrator, who was punished by the University of Windsor.

And that’s just one situation. We have no idea how many survivors have been harmed by the use of non-disclosure agreements. We have no idea how many perpetrators have been able to find other employment in the sector and to continue to harm students because of non-disclosure agreements. And we have no idea how many times non-disclosure agreements have been used to avoid responsibility and consequences.

The stakeholders were all clear: The language in the first version of this bill was not nearly good enough and did not go far enough to ban the most problematic uses of non-disclosure agreements.

But we also want to have a survivor-centric response, and that means recognizing that sometimes survivors want non-disclosure agreements. We need to respect survivors’ wishes and allow them to control and direct the process. Sometimes, what the survivor wants to restore a sense of control and dignity is to keep things quiet, so an absolute ban is not survivor-centric. It does not allow survivors to express their needs and wishes.

So many stakeholders called for changes to this section of the legislation: Possibility Seeds, Courage to Act, the PEARS project, the Canadian Federation of Students, the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, OCUFA, OPSEU, the Ontario Federation of Labour, the Canadian Centre for Legal Innovation in Sexual Assault Response and Dr. Julie Macfarlane.

Stakeholders also raised concerns about how the government went about making the changes proposed here. I want to read this piece by Dr. Macfarlane which highlights the government’s whole approach to consultation and what the effects are for people who are directly affected by this issue and this legislation. It’s entitled, “A Tale of Two Committee Hearings on NDAs

“As the public becomes increasingly aware of the misuse of non-disclosure agreements or NDAs in covering up misconduct of many kinds—sexual harassment, assault, discrimination, abuse and bullying, as well as defective goods, construction and negligence causing harm—governments are starting to legislate to restrict their use. But the approaches being taken are a study in contrasts.

“In Manitoba three weeks ago, the committee hearing on the non-disclosure agreements bill heard from more than 15 individuals who had signed an NDA and could only now, for the very first time, speak about what had happened to them with the protection of parliamentary privilege (otherwise they could have been sued for breaking their NDA by speaking up).

“The testimony ... was incredibly moving, as individual after individual—former nurses, teachers, police officers, IT workers, women, Indigenous people and others—stood up and described how their efforts to complain about ill treatment resulted in a permanent gag on them. ‘Former’ because for most, standing up for themselves ended their career.

“The committee permitted all those who asked to testify, sitting until after midnight. It was a remarkable exercise in democracy. As Julie Roginsky, co-founder with Gretchen Carlson of US organization Lift Our Voices, who also testified before the committee about the harmful impact of NDAs puts it, ‘It’s very nice, from this side of the border, to see comity (civil and inclusive dialogue) in a legislature. We don’t get to see much of that.’ Numerous others have since pointed to Manitoba’s committee hearing as an example of best practice in responsibly presenting critical and otherwise hidden information and experience to lawmakers.

“The bill now proceeding in Manitoba addresses the use of NDAs broadly in complaints about harassment and discrimination. In Ontario, the ... government has introduced Bill 26 that focuses on the use of NDAs by universities and colleges to secretly move faculty and staff who have behaved abusively to other schools (a topic with which I am familiar). Bill 26 held its committee hearing on Tuesday November 22, having asked organizations and individuals to register to testify in a 48-hour window the week before. I registered on behalf of our campaign Can’t Buy My Silence, which has been working with lawmakers in PEI (where legislation is already passed), Manitoba and Nova Scotia, as well as with 78 universities in the UK who have signed a pledge not to use NDAs.

“However, neither I nor any other experts on the use of NDAs seem to have been called to testify. Unlike Manitoba, there appears to be no online record of the proceedings. I am also not aware of any who have signed NDAs being called to testify about the impact on them. In short, this seems to have been perfunctory hearing to ‘tick the box.’

“This is especially concerning given the grave inadequacy of the Ontario provision in the proposed legislation. It would only apply to NDAs made after an adjudication. By this point, an NDA is pointless because everything has already been argued in the public domain. In order to actually stop the use of NDAs in universities to cover up wrongdoing and protect students—which is what the Ontario government claims it wants to do—the clause needs to be amended to include NDAs that are forced on complainants in the settlement process. In its present form it will not change the current practice at all. I proposed such an amendment, to be met only by silence from the committee.” In fact, Speaker, my colleague from Nickel Belt and I moved Dr. Macfarlane’s proposed amendment. Guess who voted against?

But I’m glad the government did listen at least a bit in this area of the bill and did make some of the amendments that were needed here, but there is still more to do. This legislation will only protect students from NDAs, leaving survivors in other sectors still subject to non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements. We need stand-alone, survivor-centric, trauma-informed legislation like Prince Edward Island’s to ban non-disclosure agreements in all sectors for all survivors.

Finally, these first two schedules of the bill require institutions to develop sexual misconduct policies that govern the rules with respect to sexual behaviour between employees and students of the institution, examples of acts that contravene the policy and examples of disciplinary measures that may be imposed on the employees who contravene the policy, but once again the government has chosen to give institutions wide latitude and no guidelines whatsoever on a sexual misconduct policy.

There is no requirement to consult with anyone or to follow any best practices or to meet any minimum standards. Acts that constitute sexual misconduct at Toronto Metropolitan University may not be sexual misconduct at the University of Toronto or York University or Sheridan College or George Brown College. There will be potentially hundreds of variations of what constitutes sexual misconduct across the province.

Student leaders, like the Ontario Undergraduate Students Alliance and the PEARS Project, Courage to Act’s Britney De Costa called for institutions to be required to consult with students, faculty, staff and gender-based violence experts on the development of these policies. Faculty and staff unions echoed this concern. Yet, once again, when my colleague from Nickel Belt and I moved an amendment that required institutions to consult with faculty, staff and employees on these policies, the government voted against the amendment. Because post-secondary institutions are autonomous institutions, we apparently can tell them that they have to have a policy, but we can’t tell them that they have to talk to anyone in the development of the policy. It’s absolutely bizarre, Speaker, that just like with the funding, sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn’t. There is no consistency.

And so, what we are left with is a bill that is much less than it should be. Students, faculty, staff, administrators and gender-based violence experts were all very clear last week that they wanted the bill to do more and to do it better. The government has not listened to those pleas and so we will have to wait now and continue to engage in advocacy in hopes that the government will listen in the coming months and address all of the outstanding work that needs to be done rather than waiting until they are defeated in 2026 for a new government to finally listen to students and other stakeholders and take a comprehensive, trauma-informed, survivor-centric approach to sexual violence and harassment.

Finally, Speaker, I want to conclude by acknowledging that the third schedule of the bill makes the name change of Toronto Metropolitan University official. This is an important step towards reconciliation. Residential schools are a dark stain on our history—a stain whose legacy continues into the present in ways large and small. We should not honour the men and women who devised and implemented this system, who condoned and carried out atrocities against children. We should not celebrate the architects of genocide. Name changes may be a small step toward reconciliation and atoning for our past, but they are a vital step. We cannot achieve reconciliation if we are still celebrating the perpetrators.

One of the things I appreciated at committee last week was the opportunity to hear from Toronto Metropolitan University and the Standing Strong Task Force on the process that was followed in looking carefully at the legacy of Egerton Ryerson and the harm that was caused by honouring his legacy. There are lessons that we can learn here for other post-secondary institutions as they grapple with colonial legacies and with the work of reconciliation and decolonization.

They heard from thousands of community members, making the time and space for people’s experiences to be heard fully. They did not try to set opposing viewpoints off against each other. They engaged in careful research and learning, and they made thoughtful recommendations to genuinely make progress on reconciliation at the end of that process. The name change was only one of more than 20 recommendations that came out of that process. Post-secondary institutions should not be afraid to create space for different voices, to listen, to put aside critical impulses and to take action when harm is identified.

To wrap up, although I think this is a lost opportunity on sexual violence and harassment, I think this bill is a positive step forward on reconciliation and decolonization, and I hope that everyone will learn lessons from that experience. It is never too late to start listening, to start learning, to value the contributions and perspectives and wisdom and experience of others. It is never too late to take actions when harms are identified, when gaps or problems we weren’t even aware of are identified. It only makes us stronger—as communities, as institutions and as a province.

The work speaks for itself, honestly. The government may have consulted people before the bill was tabled, but stakeholders were unanimous in coming to committee and saying that the bill needed amendments in order to actually address the situation, that what was there needed to be done better and that there was much that was missing from the bill.

As to the length of the committee hearings, that’s not on the opposition; that’s on the government side. We asked for more time and we were denied.

Thanks to the member for London West for that excellent question. Western University was one of the deputations that appeared before committee last week, and they shared that work that has been done and the training that they’ve undertaken, which I have to say I find incredibly important and impressive.

But Western University also called on the government to make amendments to this legislation, to include mandatory prevention education. We heard it from all stakeholders, from students, administrators, faculty, staff, gender-based violence experts: The number one thing we need to actually prevent and not just respond to incidents of sexual violence is education, training on consent, making sure that everybody knows what their rights are, how to intervene safely when they see an incident. This was absolutely a lost opportunity to listen to stakeholders like Western University and mandate that kind of education on campuses across Ontario.

When the member for Nickel Belt asked the government to say who is asking for the term “sexual misconduct” to be used, the government could not answer. Making up a stakeholder after the fact who might have preferred the term “sexual misconduct” doesn’t actually help with the situation of making sure that students who are at universities and colleges now actually know what their rights are and can claim their rights.

But I do also recognize that it is only one small step, and there is a lot of work still to be done on reconciliation. We have a situation in Ontario today where there are people who don’t have access to clean drinking water or safe housing or safe roads or fire protection services, for no other reason than because they are Indigenous. I think that’s absolutely unacceptable, and a government that was truly committed to reconciliation would be taking urgent action on all of those issues.

I think Toronto Metropolitan University had a really great process to actually listen to community members, to identify that harm and to recommend multiple steps that could be taken. I’m glad that this bill formalizes that name change so that we no longer honour the legacy of somebody who caused that kind of harm in Ontario.

I’d like to offer my congratulations and thank you to the member for Toronto Centre for her wise remarks, both on this bill in response to a really bizarre attack on the faculty members who are working really hard to keep people safe across our post-secondary sector and for her kind words to me personally.

The member mentioned the need to be trauma-informed and survivor-specific in their remarks. We heard from witnesses last week at committee how important that is to getting the response to sexual violence and harassment right. But we also know that many people on campuses across the province aren’t fully aware of what those terms mean and how they would be implemented in a policy and what that would actually look like in practice, which is one reason why I think minimum standards are so important and why students are calling for those minimum standards to be implemented. Does the member agree that that could be a way of making sure that policies are survivor-centric and trauma-informed?