I want to give a warm welcome to my father, Ray Lecce; my brother Michael Lecce; and two future Prime Ministers: my nieces Valentina and Vivienne. Thank you for coming today to watch Queen’s Park.

I want to thank the member from Burlington for the wonderful question and her continued focus on young people and their success.

Mr. Speaker, under our government, we have undertaken a focus on helping young people graduate and get access to good-paying jobs. From a modern curriculum to modern schools to merit-based hiring of our educators—we are overhauling our curriculum, with a focus on increasing outcomes, graduation rates, results and better jobs for the young people we represent. It’s why we have reformed our curriculum—labour market-aligned for the first time—including mandatory learning on financial literacy, on coding, on real-life application, on learning about the importance of balanced budgets—because we know, on this side of the House, that budgets do not balance themselves. We also know about the costs of debt and inflation and paying taxes. We’re teaching kids about problem-solving skills and leadership development.

We’re investing to build modern schools, with over $500 million every year.

And we’re ensuring the best educator gets hired in a meritocracy, so that the best leaders are in front of children in this province.

It’s why we signed a better deal, with three billion more dollars and an additional year of investment on the table to ensure every parent—for-profit and non-profit parents, which would have been excluded by the New Democrats and Liberals—that they have access to the financial relief of roughly $10,000 by the end of this year alone.

Four times, our government has stepped up with direct financial relief to parents. We just rolled out another catch-up payment which is going to deliver $1.6 billion in total into parents’ pockets, where we know they need it, to face the rising costs.

We’re also standing up against the federal Liberal carbon tax, which has raised the cost of home heating, of baby supplies, of food, and making clear this regressive tax hurts the most vulnerable within our communities.

We are standing up for affordability. And we’ll continue, under our Premier’s leadership, to make life more affordable and child care more accessible for Ontario parents.

Mr. Speaker, because of our Premier’s leadership, we have been able to deliver a better deal, with $3 billion on the table more, and an additional year of funding guarantees that will ensure child care remains more affordable and accessible for all Ontario families.

It’s fundamental that we remind the people of Ontario that had the New Democrats and Liberals had their way, we would have omitted literally 30% of operators in all of our communities that are depending on government to come up with a sustainable, inclusive program that reduced costs.

On average, by Christmas of this year, we’re looking at $12,000 per child. This is a monumental step forward.

The member opposite is right; we will need more ECEs to fulfill the 86,000 spaces this government is working to create. It’s why we have a plan. We’ve launched a specific advisory group that has been established over the fall of non-profit, for-profit and technical experts coming together to ensure we’ve got the requisite staff. We continue to increase wages, and we continue to roll out a program that has 92% of operators enrolling, because they believe in this program.

The people of Ontario are depending on this government to get the job done.

Mr. Speaker, we’re going to hire thousands of additional ECEs in our province because we will need more people to staff the 86,000 more spaces this government will create—more access, in addition to more affordable child care. It rose by 400% under the former Liberal government—an indefensible record.

This government and our Premier know we can make child care affordable for families for future generations, and we’re going to get the job done.