Mr. Calandra is seeking the unanimous consent of the House that, notwithstanding any standing order or special order of the House, the order for second reading of Bill 35, An Act to repeal the Keeping Students in Class Act, 2022, may be called today; and

That when that order is called, the Speaker shall put every question necessary to dispose of this stage of the bill without further debate or amendment, and at such time the bill shall be ordered for third reading; and

That the order for third reading of Bill 35 shall then immediately be called and the question shall immediately be put on the motion for third reading of the bill without debate or amendment; and

That no deferral of the second or third reading votes on the bill shall be permitted; and

That if there is a recorded vote, it will be limited to a five-minute bell.

Agreed? Agreed.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Calandra moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill 35, An Act to repeal the Keeping Students in Class Act, 2022 / Projet de loi 35, Loi abrogeant la Loi de 2022 visant à garder les élèves en classe.

Mr. Calandra has moved second reading of Bill 35, An Act to repeal the Keeping Students in Class Act, 2022. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Second reading agreed to.

Mr. Calandra moved third reading of the following bill:

Bill 35, An Act to repeal the Keeping Students in Class Act, 2022 / Projet de loi 35, Loi abrogeant la Loi de 2022 visant à garder les élèves en classe.

Mr. Calandra has moved third reading of Bill 35, An Act to repeal the Keeping Students in Class Act, 2022. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? I heard some noes.

All those in favour of the motion will please say “aye.”

All those opposed will please say “nay.”

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

Call in the members. This is a five-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1340 to 1345.

Mr. Calandra has moved third reading of Bill 35, An Act to repeal the Keeping Students in Class Act, 2022.

All those in favour of the motion will please rise one at a time and be recognized by the Clerk.

Be it resolved that the bill do now pass and be entitled as in the motion.

Third reading agreed to.

Resuming the debate adjourned on November 3, 2022, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 26, An Act to amend various Acts in respect of post-secondary education / Projet de loi 26, Loi modifiant diverses lois en ce qui concerne l’éducation postsecondaire.

I rise today to comment on Ontario’s economic outlook and fiscal review. While this occasion was a chance to meaningfully enhance the programs that Ontarians rely on, like health care and education, once again this government is showing their reluctance to spend and leaving our public health care system in crisis, and they are at risk of doing the same to public education.

On a positive note, the fall economic statement does have some increased funding in GAINS to help low-income seniors—which the Liberal caucus called for—about $40 million. And it does provide the opportunity for those on ODSP who can work to earn more before ODSP is clawed back. Those are measures that will help some Ontarians.

What we do not see here is a meaningful effort to fix the health care crisis and reverse decisions like Bill 124, which contributed to nurses leaving the profession at the highest rate ever.

What we do not see reflected here is the decision to not pay our public sector workers what they are worth, creating instability in the education sector and instability for families.

What we do not see here is meaningful help for low-income families who are struggling to put food on the table.

What we do not see here is an effort to protect the land that we grow our food on instead of paving over it, so that Ontarians have actual food security instead of just a food security strategy.

Increasing the Ontario child tax benefit is one of our recommendations for how this government could have provided that relief. Instead, they have decided to do nothing to help those families.

Mr. Speaker, this government talks about attracting jobs to the province. That is a good thing, but in this era of climate crisis—which this government continues to ignore—the government overlooked a very important criteria that companies use to make their decisions about location: access to green energy. With their decision to cancel green energy contracts put in place by the previous Liberal government and their decision to add carbon-emitting gas plants to our energy grid, this government is jeopardizing Ontario’s ability to attract companies to Ontario.

The government’s history of underestimating its overall financial results and not being transparent with Ontarians about our financial situation continues. This updated economic outlook still reflects a $3.5-billion contingency fund for this year alone and provides no details at all about the amount of contingency funds in future years—what the FAO and the Auditor General note as historically high.

While prudence and fiscal responsibility are admirable features of a budget and outlook, underspending and underfunding on priorities like health care and protecting our kids, our seniors and our most vulnerable are not.

The government continues to forecast a deficit for 2022-23, when just a few months ago they reported a $2.1-billion surplus. The FAO forecast a $100-million surplus in 2022-23, while this government continues to forecast a deficit of $12.9 billion.

Just today, the FAO released a report that shows in this year alone the government is underfunding our public education system by $400 million. Mr. Speaker, that hurts kids, parents and our economy.

In difficult times like these, people look out for each other, and that makes all the difference. But some difficulties are too big for family, friends or neighbours to handle. That’s when the government needs to step up to make sure Ontarians have more than just the ability to survive—but to ensure they have the opportunity to thrive.

I rise to respond to the fall economic statement. With all due respect to the Minister of Finance, I believe this statement fails to meet the moment. You would not know that Ontario is in an affordability crisis, reading this statement—especially the most vulnerable.

While I support the increase in the income allowance for ODSP recipients, the bottom line is, for those who cannot work, this statement will mean they remain living in legislated poverty.

Speaker, nothing in this statement talked about food affordability, the excess profits of food retailers, the need to protect our farmland, the need to bring in a grocery code of conduct, or the need to house people—the growing number of homeless we’re experiencing in our communities—and the need to invest in permanent supportive housing.

Quite frankly, when the government talks about a building progress report, the report needs to talk about whether we are building to be climate-ready. When we build on the farmland that feeds us, the greenbelt that protects us, the wetlands that support us, we are not building to be climate-ready. That is not how Bill Davis built. He built a province that laid the foundation for the greenbelt—not paving over it.

The ayes are 100; the nays are 0.

I am seeking unanimous consent that, notwithstanding any standing order or special order of the House, the order for second reading of Bill 35, An Act to repeal the Keeping Students in Class Act, 2022, may be called today; and

That when that order is called, the Speaker shall put every question necessary to dispose of this stage of the bill without further debate or amendment, and at such time the bill shall be ordered for third reading; and

That the order for third reading of Bill 35 shall then immediately be called and the question shall immediately be put on the motion for third reading of the bill without debate or amendment; and

That no deferral of the second or third reading votes on the bill shall be permitted; and

That if there is a recorded vote, it will be limited to a five-minute bell.

I would like to thank the member from Brampton North for the great debate about the bill, Bill 26.

Formerly, from my past life as an IT professor who taught at colleges and different institutions, I understand the importance of protecting students. I understand the importance of a feel-safe environment where students can learn and feel safe to approach their professors and faculty—to make sure that they are protected by different regulations.

I would like to pose a question for the colleague from Brampton North: How do you see those changes impacting the safety of the students against sexual harassment?

I listened to the remarks by the member from Brampton North with interest, and I agree with a lot of what he said.

What I’m about to ask is a serious question; it’s not a gotcha question, it’s not a “playing politics in the chamber” question. We’ve been following the research about gender-based violence really closely in our city, and I like the fact that you’re talking about emphasizing support for survivors. But I also want to ask: What is the plan for perpetrators? People don’t learn to objectify other people and dehumanize other people genetically. These behaviours are somehow taught and reinforced. What is the plan, with this bill, to reach people, particularly men, who take a position of power and abuse that position of power? How do we reach them beyond consequences, no NDAs, threats—what’s the plan for education, particularly now on campus, when so many men are drawn into behaviours that are threatening to women?

I thank my colleague for the question. It’s an important question.

I think we all agree here in the chamber that supporting survivors of sexual violence and sexual harassment should be the number one priority of us as legislators here.

I’m very happy to highlight some of the other good things that are happening in this bill. For instance, if passed, these changes would strengthen the tools available to institutions in order to address instances of faculty or staff sexual misconduct against students, i.e. deeming sexual abuse of a student to be just cause for dismissal, and preventing the use of a non-disclosure agreement to address instances where an employee leaves an institution to be employed at another institution and their prior wrongdoing remains a secret.

There’s a lot of very good material in this bill. I will certainly be voting for it myself, and I urge my colleague to do the same.

The kinds of changes that we’re putting forward in this bill—it makes you wonder how these weren’t in place already. The idea that you could have somebody sign a non-disclosure agreement when they’re an abuser, on the faculty or the staff, and you have some of these vile individuals being able to hide in plain sight so that students don’t know the history of the people who are teaching them—I think it was a massive oversight that I’m proud our government is taking steps to correct.

We hear all the time that young people are vital to the success of our province. We need to be giving our young people every tool in the tool kit to allow them to succeed, and a safe place to learn is the bare minimum to do so.

We need to make sure that we’re building an inclusive society where nobody feels entitled through their position of power or authority to treat anybody any differently, and especially to engage in some of the heinous types of sexual harassment and sexual violence that we’ve been seeing.

An important piece of this bill that I think my colleague would agree with is around the accountability measures, so that you can no longer allow a non-disclosure agreement to be signed that protects somebody who committed one of these acts at another institution. They can’t just sign up and work at another institution. I think that’s an important piece. Another big piece of it, frankly, is to allow it to be just cause for dismissal.

I hope that these changes impact the safety of our students.

I think having a safe place where people feel secure is fundamental for everybody’s success, whether you’re part of faculty, whether you’re on the staff, or whether you’re a student. When people can have trust in an institution that not only the authority figures but also their colleagues are being held to a standard, I think that creates a healthier work environment for everybody involved.

The instance that I pointed out in my remarks, where a faculty member at a school in Niagara region was found guilty and was able to work there three years later—not only would that make the students feel unsafe, but I imagine that would make the other faculty and staff feel unsafe as well.

I think more transparency and more accountability is better for everybody.

This is the first time that I have been able to do a question-and-answer when speaking to a bill, and I want to thank the opposition for being very thoughtful in their questions, and the colleagues on our side of the House for being thoughtful in their questions as well.

This is an important bill. It’s going to make our campuses safer. It’s going to help protect students. It’s going to make a better environment for faculty and for staff. I really do hope that everybody in this House votes for this bill. It is a very good piece of legislation; I’ll be voting in favour.

I thank you very much for the debate today.

I want to also thank the minister for bringing this really important bill forward.

To anybody, all across the board—it doesn’t matter what political stripe you are—sexual harassment, sexual violence has no place in our society.

As leaders in our community and as parents, we must talk to our children, making sure that they know that no is no and that consent is important; we all have a responsibility, as legislators.

We also have a responsibility, as parents or aunts or uncles or grandparents, to make sure our young people grow up to be good citizens in society.

Thank you for bringing this bill forward, Minister.

And thank you for the debate today.

We know that Bill 26 has a strong focus on faculty and students. Can you talk a little bit about how it’s not just good for students but it’s good for the faculty and staff as well?

The member from St. Catharines.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Through you, I would thank the member from Brampton North for introducing some valid points about Bill 26. However, within this bill, it addresses sexual assault—but in my community, the biggest gap in supporting survivors is not in the rules, but in their ability to get sexual assault evidence kits to receive their justice.

Can the government elaborate on whether or not they think hospital response programs like the ones in Niagara will get extra support to ensure all survivors are supported?

Further debate?

It’s an honour to rise to talk about this subject in this House.

I think you’re going to find when it comes to issues of gender-based violence and intimate partner violence, there’s a lot of agreement in this House. Where we need to focus the mind, I think, is on strategies about what we do.

The good news is that there has been a lot of research published lately on gender-based violence. Where I’m from in Ontario, the Renfrew county inquest that just happened into a serial murderer who wreaked havoc in that community, funded by this government—$150,000, by the way, from this government to support that work, an important investment, and what it has yielded is a significant amount of recommendations for us, to think about how we get in front of this.

It pains me to say this, but when I was a faculty member at Nipissing University in 2005 and I saw the way—particularly men—in a seminar class I taught, that third-year undergraduate students at Nipissing University were treating women in small group activities, and when I saw things in the hallway between staff and students, it disturbed me at a deep level. And I asked myself that question one asks: What is the choice one makes when one is a bystander to these sorts of things? I guess because I come from a position of education and trying to understand how behaviours develop, I always ask the question—I would pull someone aside privately, to give them that respect, and say, “What motivated you to say that to her in that small group conversation—to not just disagree with the point but to belittle the person? What was that about?” Eventually, what I was able to unearth through interactions like that is animosity and anger—I’m not a therapist, but I’m married to one—and when I was able to see that, I was able to try to reach that person and say, “You’ve got a lot of anger, and I’m not sure why it’s manifesting against women colleagues here in this class, but that’s not going to help you succeed in this course. I really encourage you to seek out some of the supports we have here on this campus that are paid for by the public so you can figure out how you get ahead of this, because this is going to become a problem for you in your studies at this university if this pattern repeats itself. That student put up with that in that small group, and she didn’t need to. She had every right to call you out and stand up to you. And if it doesn’t change, I’m going to be approaching her and you so you resolve this matter.”

That’s how I dealt with just one interaction—and we’re talking about low-level, lateral violence, relatively speaking.

But what the government is talking about with this legislation are, in some cases, lethal acts of gender-based violence. And that’s what I want to talk about today in the time I have to speak to this bill.

I want to talk about the first place I went to do post-secondary education. I’m the first person in my family to go to post-secondary education. I went down the 401 and went to Queen’s University in Kingston. I didn’t really know what I was going to study. I just decided I was going to pick the courses and choose my own adventure, figure out where I was going to go. I ended up doing a lot of politics—shock—and a lot of sociology.

Two years before I got there, there was an incident that shaped me even then, as a high school student, known in Ontario history as the Gordon House incident. I think it’s important that I talk about this incident because, certainly, it has informed my approach to gender-based violence and how we help not only survivors but perpetrators.

In 1989, in October, Queen’s University ran something—it’s very common; I think I just heard the member from Etobicoke–Lakeshore talk about it—a “no means no” campaign. It was meant to just put it to students—as the member for Toronto Centre said several times, with legislation that they’re bringing forward—a consent-based culture for intimacy on campus. The reaction at Gordon House, which is one of the residences at Queen’s University, from some folks, particularly men in that dorm room, was to hang banners outside the window reading things—I’m just going to pause for a second for people watching this, listening to this. If you’ve had experiences of violence in your life or a friend—I’m just going to give you a warning: Some of this stuff is difficult to hear, but I think it needs to be said.

For the campus’s “no means no” campaign, there were some people at Gordon House who hung banners outside their windows that read, “No means tie her up,” “No means more beer,” “No means harder.”

I’m embarrassed to tell you, Speaker, that I was a grade 11 student when these things were happening, and I remember thinking at the time, “Well, there’s going to be an investigation. Something has got to happen. There has got to be a conversation about this.” There was nothing of the kind.

The president of Gordon House went on to say that the incident wasn’t terribly important because, really, what happened was that the incident upset a small minority of feminists and that it shouldn’t be a crime to offend people. That’s what one person said.

The university itself did not convene any restorative justice process to try to understand why people felt the need to hang these banners—what was in their minds, what they were reacting to, how to have a conversation about this. Nothing happened whatsoever.

I showed up there in 1991, as an undergraduate student, and I talked to some of the people who lived through that. I asked them, “What did you do to get the university’s attention?”

Well, my goodness, 50 people—largely women students—did a sit-in at the principal’s office, at David Smith’s office. They demanded funding for a consent-based culture on campus, beyond just some kind of ad-and-pamphlet campaign, so students could understand what a consent-based university culture would look like, what it would mean. They had to get into the local media. They had to speak their piece. There was an acronym for this group of 50 students. I’m not allowed to say one of the words of the acronym, because it’s not parliamentary language, but I think people can figure it out. The group was called ROFF, Radical Obnoxious—F—Feminists. They were people who were fed up with the lack of activity on campus. And what did they demand? They demanded not just consequences for people hanging those banners, because rather like we just heard in the debate, one can have consequences for unacceptable behaviour, and that’s fine, but if there’s no investment in preventive measures—education to help bring along, particularly, men who believe you can objectify someone and you can control someone, and that you can therefore humiliate them with that perceived power you may have—penalties are pointless. You’re always going to be dealing with the outcomes of bad decisions. So those folks at ROFF sat down, and they got the university’s attention.

It was one of the reasons I wanted to go to Queen’s, because I thought, “There’s a community of students who aren’t just going to wait for politics to happen. If they see something that’s not right, they’re going to take politics into their own hands and they’re going to say, ‘This is unacceptable. You’ve got to change it.’”

Something I’m embarrassed to say, as well—embarrassed, disgraced, upset; there are a bunch of words I could use. I talked about the Gordon House incident in October 1989. What is the incident that we are going to be commemorating across this country, as we do every year, on December 6, 1989? The École Polytechnique massacre. And what is the origin of the École Polytechnique massacre? It is a man who believed that his future had been compromised because of a feminist agenda that discriminated against his ability to go into engineering, and the way he was going to resolve it, in his one maniacal moment, was to walk onto a campus with a weapon and murder people.

I would submit to you, Speaker, as we think about this issue of why we need not just a consent-based culture on campus but a consent-based culture in Ontario, and what we do to create it, that these are the bookends of the spectrum. You have flashpoints, when you see an incident where someone felt motivated or inspired to put out hateful speech, threatening, essentially, rape culture on a campus, with zero response until the students at that university rose up and demanded better. And then, on December 6, 1989, you had the lethal incident where somebody took it upon himself to do something that one would want to believe no human being would ever want to do. I want to submit to you that these things are related.

I want to fast-forward to 2021, because my alma mater, Queen’s University, has said since the Gordon House days that they want to resolve this issue, but it’s not resolved. I think that for the administrators at Queen’s—where I used to work at Nipissing University in North Bay and where I also worked at Carleton University—this continues to be a work in progress. Queen’s has run a campaign on its Instagram page called @consentatqueens. You can check it out yourself. What they have found in the course of that work is that more and more students are coming forward to talk about what is happening to them on campus—that things are being put into their drinks; that suggestions are being made to them live in class, in front of everybody else, not even hidden. It was in 2021 that Queen’s authorized, with student participation, this online campaign.

We have a daughter and a son in our home. I have no doubt that our daughter is going to go on to do incredible things. In our place, we joke about her being 14 going on 40; she’s ready already.

But I think about the environment, as the member for Brampton North mentioned, that people are walking into right now. Turning on any one of our devices, as we have to do in this job at any given time, will expose you immediately to issues of objectification of women and implied behaviour about how men are supposed to behave, dominance culture. And there are things we can do to fix that.

I want to suggest there’s a link between this bill, Bill 26, and a private member’s piece of legislation my friend from Orléans put forward in the last session—and I understand he’s putting it forward again. MPP Stephen Blais, the member for Orléans, has asked this government to consider the ability for municipalities to remove city councillors, sitting elected office-holders, when they are independently investigated and proven to be engaged in acts of sexual misconduct that fall short of the Criminal Code. This is what has happened in our city. It’s one of the reasons why the issue of gender-based violence has seized our community.

Former councillor Rick Chiarelli was investigated not once but twice—twice—with 35 women coming forward and detailing some of the most egregious, ridiculous, creepy forms of behaviour you can imagine a political adviser doing in an office. From the time those women consented to go through that process of forming their complaints, do you know what they had to deal with? They had to deal with a mental health crisis themselves, job loss. They paid the economic price for Mr. Chiarelli’s behaviour. They had to deal with the anguish of the hate piling on them on social media for having the courage—the three of them who were public—to speak out publicly. For the 32 others who weren’t speaking out publicly, they carried the weight of that question of “What is going to happen to this gentleman?”

What our whole city saw is that Councillor Chiarelli was able to maintain his seat. The most the city of Ottawa could do, under the Municipal Act, was to deduct his pay.

Folks may have seen it; you may have missed it—at the last sitting of city council for Ottawa, which just happened, the last act of that city council was former councillor Rick Chiarelli standing up to give his farewell speech on Zoom and the entire council meeting that was present in the chamber getting up and walking out. Some people who had served multiple terms as councillors chose that decision; it was better for them to get up and walk out than to give their farewell speech to their residents in the city of Ottawa. That’s how fed up we are back home with Councillor Chiarelli—independently investigated twice, involving at least 35 people, probably more.

MPP Blais is asking the government for its help to work on a reform to the Municipal Act that would say that in independently investigated cases of sexual misconduct, a decision can be made to remove a sitting office-holder, that is subject to judicial review. The person can get the decision judicially reviewed, and if it’s overturned, they get their position back. I would suggest to the member for Brampton North and others promoting this bill that if what you want is a sense of serious consequence, that is exactly, I would think, in keeping with what you’re talking about right now. I would love to see, in this session of this Parliament, this legislation come to pass across all party lines.

We’re talking about campus environments here with this bill—very important. We all know, and I know personally from being a professor, that there is absolutely a power imbalance between the person who gives you your grades, which have a big impact on what you do with the future of your life, on what you actually end up doing in the work world—there’s a lot of power in that person. So the question I have is, what do we then say to that office-holder if we allow for further impunity? If what this bill is intending to do is remove that impunity from people or challenge it, I would encourage the government—because, as I understand it, they haven’t done that yet; the member for Toronto Centre can correct me if I’m wrong—to seek out conversations with people representing faculty and staff in the university and college sector, because those organizations also want to build a consent-based culture in this province. We don’t want to rush a product to fruition that might end up not achieving the objectives you’re trying to see.

Let me end with an anecdote from a leader back home, on gender-based violence. Another sad story that is manifesting itself, I think, in a positive way—Mr. Rafael Ready worked with the diplomatic corps, helping embassies set up all over the world. He lives in the member for Ottawa South’s community, just south of us in Ottawa Centre. In the summer, sadly, you may have heard, it was his family that had the heinous double-murder attempt that involved his wife and one of his two daughters. This was a situation of an offender who had been marked, who had a history of violence, and there wasn’t requisite support to make sure that this family was safe. So what is Mr. Ready committed to do? Well, I happen to know Mr. Ready, because both of the family members he lost are members of the same karate dojo that my son trains at. I knew the two women he lost—wonderful folk. Mr. Ready has decided to take his grief, take his loss and mobilize it in a way to make sure that femicide is actually a part of our Criminal Code and that education about violence and violent behaviours, particularly among young men, is something we deal with immediately.

There’s a program the Ottawa Police Service runs back home called MANifest Change, and it tries to find ambassadors in communities across our city to really encourage positive behaviours. When they see these kinds of controlling, misogynist behaviours, they don’t say, “Okay, you’re a perp, you’re a creep, you’re terrible.” They ask the questions I tried to ask, as a professor, that I began with in my comments this afternoon—“What motivated you to say something like that? What’s going on? Why do you perceive that person to be lesser than you? Would you like your mom or your sister or your aunt or your niece to be treated that way?”—to get through to that person.

Mr. Ready is someone who has strength that I can’t comprehend, because at this moment of intense grief—he was out of the country when this incident happened, setting up yet another one of our diplomatic presences in Latin America. It took him seven days to get back home—seven days—but when he finally got back home and dealt with what he had to deal with, surrounded by the love in that community on Anoka Street, his next calls were to MPP Fraser and to me. He said to both of us, “What have we got to do to reach people, particularly young men? What are we going to do with the mental health crisis in our communities? I don’t want this to happen to any other families.”

So we return to Bill 26 and we return to Gordon House, and I guess we realize, as a chamber, that we really—despite good intent—haven’t moved far enough. We still aren’t funding programs to support survivors. We still aren’t thinking through how we reach perpetrators who are drawn in, however it may happen—violent behaviours towards others, particularly women. We still are thinking, I think, that just having severe consequences is enough. I think it’s important, but I want to submit to you—and I hope I’ve made the case this afternoon—that I don’t think it’s enough.

I think, inside every person, is the potential to change, for the most part. The amount of sociopaths we have in our society—the Paul Bernardos of our society—are a tiny fraction. Most people have the capacity to change; however they’ve been taught to dehumanize other people, they have the capacity to change. We fail ourselves, as a society, I believe, on campus and elsewhere, if we don’t mobilize the resources of this province to help them. The organizations that MPP Andrew knows very well—doing the consultation work that you’ve done, my friend—that are scraping pennies together to support survivors—or whether it’s what MPP Stevens was talking about, with the survival kits. These organizations need to have robust funding. They need to have support because what they can do is prevent Gordon House incidents, prevent École Polytechnique incidents, prevent Councillor Chiarelli-like incidents.

We can build an Ontario, as the member for Brampton North said, where everybody feels safe and everybody feels heard.

Thank you to the member for Ottawa Centre for such a great portion of debate. I, like you, did not hear you say that you were not voting for the bill, nor have we said anything of the sort.

But there were some things that I noticed and also heard that were missing from this bill. The scenario of graduate students who were both employees and students at the same time, who could be discharged from employment and not from the school portion—what are your thoughts on that?

Please continue.

Thank you for your comments, your observations, and also for sharing what I think are some very difficult experiences in your life, and in your professional life as well.

I’m very interested because, in speaking about the NDA aspect of this bill—it’s written in a manner that only precludes NDAs after a court or arbitrator has found wrongdoing. So it doesn’t eliminate NDAs altogether; it still allows NDAs. As it’s drafted, it allows an employer or an employee to sign an NDA any time until a decision is made. My question is, why would anyone even want to sign an NDA after such a decision?

I was very interested in listening to your story. I didn’t realize you were a former professor—so very close to your heart, some of the things we’re discussing today.

We need to talk about the survivors who have come forward, but for every survivor, there are many people who have not come forward; they just don’t have that comfort level. And my heart goes out to them for what they’re dealing with every day, day in and day out, because they’ve probably kept that a secret from their families and their professors, their college friends or their university friends.

As a former professor, my question to you is—I wasn’t sure if you’re in support of this bill or not, but my understanding is that this is another tool in the tool box for survivors, for professors, for institutions, for people to come forward. We want more people to come forward. Do you not think this is another tool to help institutions better address faculty and staff serial misconduct? And do you believe this will help students come forward?

I was listening and conferring a little bit with our subject matter expert on your bill too. I think the bill can be improved. The member for Toronto Centre is right here, poised to help you to talk to the stakeholder groups that can help you improve the bill.

What we need in this bill is dedicated funding to survivor groups. If somebody makes that bold step you were talking about, to put their claim forward, to challenge the alleged harasser, and lacks income as a consequence of that, we’ve got to support that person. We’ve got to make sure they have the resources to be successful.

And then on the use of NDAs, as you’ve mentioned—I think the member for Toronto Centre has a lot of ideas as to people you can talk to to make this bill better.

So if the bar the member is suggesting is that high, this is something—to the friends in government here—you can fix in this bill. If the goal is promoting safety, consequences are important, but resources to make sure people actually can be resilient, as a survivor, are also important.

What I’d say to the member, through you, Speaker, is, if the goal is to establish clear consequences—what I’m hearing the member for Toronto Centre saying is that non-disclosure agreements are still allowed with this legislation, short of a conclusive judicial process. That can be an absolutely agonizing wait for people.

None of us on this side of the House are opposed to consequences for people who have been independently investigated and shown to be engaged in sexual misconduct. You will not find a single person here disagreeing with that. But if we don’t have the requisite support for people who had the courage to come forward as survivors, the whole process falls apart. That’s where we actually do want to work with you to make this better.

It’s time for us to move into action mode. We’ve done the research, and now we need to work with the community experts. MPP Wong-Tam, MPP Andrew, MPP Stevens, myself and others know exactly—and I’m sure you do too—who we can get the money to to make the change happen. We’ve got to bring the money from a governmental level—from this House level—right down to the community so people have the resources and the strength and the support they need. That’s the goal.

What I’m telling you seriously—through you, Speaker—is that we want this bill to work. No one in this Legislature is supportive of a continuation of violence on campus or anywhere else—I am making that assumption—but we will disagree on how we allocate the province’s resources to make it happen. There’s a consequences-led approach—that’s one part of the puzzle—but there’s also a solutions approach at a community level. On campus and in our communities, these violence-against-women, gender-based-violence organizations are absolutely starving for funds. They are the other side to this that can help situations like at the University of Windsor or at Ottawa city hall.

We have to have a fulsome approach. I may vote for this, but it has to be a bill that accomplishes a serious approach to gender-based violence—and I want to believe in this House that there is a will to do that.

To my colleague from Ottawa Centre: You mentioned at the beginning of your comments what came out this summer in Renfrew county. The inquest made 86 recommendations for Ontario to prevent intimate partner violence, in that file. There were a lot of great recommendations from the report. However, the government did not act on them. Some might say that the government dusted these recommendations under the rug.

Also, last year I brought forward legislation that would give women more tools to avoid intimate violence—legislation resembling Clare’s Law—which the Ford government voted down.

To my colleague from Ottawa Centre: What do you think can be done to strengthen Bill 26 to help survivors who could fall or might possibly be falling through the cracks?