The member from Sudbury.

The member from Niagara West.

I appreciate the question from the former member from Scarborough–Rouge Park—or the former question from the member from Scarborough–Rouge Park.

Anyways, I just want to talk about—you said this means that the victims will not have to face their perpetrators, because there’s no re-employment. But there’s a flaw in the bill, and the flaw is that a lot of graduate students are also teachers when they’re on the campus. So what happens if a person who’s also a teacher as well as a graduate student sexually abuses a student? Does that person stay on the campus? They may not be re-employed, but do they stay on the campus as a grad student? Does the victim have to face them?

I’m pleased to have the opportunity to speak today on Bill 26, the Strengthening Post-secondary Institutions and Students Act. This legislation covers topics that are very personal to me, having spent the last few weeks working with my community, my colleagues and hospitals in Niagara to ensure we have better practices for sexual violence and harassment, not only on campuses but for anyone who is seeking support.

I do want to acknowledge, before going too deep into the theme of the bill, that Bill 26 does provide post-secondary institutions and private career colleges with the clear rights to fire employees when they are found to have sexually abused a student, stops them from being re-hired and bans the use of non-disclosure agreements.

It is important to create safe spaces. It is not a surprise that students who had experienced unwanted sexual behaviours reported that it affected their mental health; simply, it affected their life, both academically and their post-academic life. It is traumatizing.

Madam Speaker, I would be doing a disservice to my own community if I did not bring up an incredibly important point on the matter of sexual assault and this legislation: Transparency is important; however, so is the experience of the survivor once they have endured the trauma of a sexual assault.

In Niagara last month, we saw the cost of a health care and hospital system that has been ill-supported by this government in terms of maintaining staffing levels to ensure that a survivor, whether from academia or anywhere else, was able to receive adequate support, namely a sexual assault evidence kit.

Unfortunately, our local hospital in Niagara desperately needs support from this province. It is forced to send away survivors of sexual assault to see nurse examiners in other regions. In the case of being sent to Burlington from Niagara, a victim is being asked to get in a cab with a complete stranger and travel for over an hour to another hospital.

Survivors—ensuring they get access to sexual assault evidence kits in a timely manner and local manner. This is because we can all agree even a single survivor being turned away and a single survivor losing their justice is an issue we need to find a solution to immediately.

Speaker, sexual assault survivors need real, tangible support alongside protections like these. They need to know that we have priorities in this province, across all hospitals, that put survivors first.

In fact, during the same time survivors in Niagara were being turned away because we did not have the staff to give them the support they required, the same thing happened in New Brunswick. The difference between Ontario and New Brunswick has been crushing. Over the last few weeks, New Brunswick has offered sweeping changes to how survivors receive support and education, and guarantees that they get the support they need.

In Ontario, we see legislation like this but no mention of actual, tangible supports for survivors who are being turned away not only in Niagara, but, I’m expecting, across Ontario. Simply, we need to see minimum standards for campuses when it comes to sexual and gender-based violence. My colleagues have raised this issue. We cannot treat this matter as a token of half measure. We must make a full and comprehensive review of the gaps for survivors and close them, as urgently as possible.

Madam Speaker, there is a lot more work to be done to support survivors, and it is dangerous if this support is done in a way that ignores the problem we have at hand.

It is my hope that this legislation is not the government just checking a box, but that they will begin to see awful gaps across communities and help hospitals with funding to ensure no survivor is turned away, whether they are a student or otherwise. In Niagara, our hospital response program is still left with silence from this government on that support. This is a problem that makes it seem that this issue is not being taken seriously enough. That makes me very worried. I would like to see legislation that tackles sexual violence and gender-based violence include support for survivors and hospitals. In this legislation, specifically, I would like to see clear supports for students who are survivors, ensuring they get access to sexual assault evidence kits in a timely and local way.

I want to take some time out during the debate on Bill 26 to highlight that sexual assault and protecting survivors is not a partisan issue; it is not a platitude either. It requires, in a meaningful way, understanding the matter fully. Sexual assault shatters people’s lives, and the impact of this violence must never be minimized.

The rates of post-traumatic stress disorder for survivors of sexual assault are incredibly high. The road to trauma recovery is long, confusing, often volatile and immensely difficult. It is with this in mind and heart that we, as leaders, must work together to ease this path for survivors and remove each and every barrier we can along the way.

Through you, Speaker, I urge the government to include in any bill, especially one that relates to sexual assault, urgent next steps—that must include the immediate repeal of Bill 124 so we can recruit, retain and return nurses to this sector, which will help keep hospitals and community care centres operating at their full capacity, ensuring necessary care can continue uninterrupted. That’s the issue we have seen in Niagara region—survivors being turned away. Limiting what we can do to compensate nurses has led to survivors being turned away, and these survivors could be students or anyone in the public; we will all agree that it is unacceptable.

Supporting members of our community who have been sexually assaulted must include a holistic approach, it must include wraparound services, and it must utilize the great work that is already being done by our local experts—in Niagara’s case, these are performed by staff at the Niagara Sexual Assault Centre.

It is also imperative that this government restore funding to sexual assault crisis centres as well as provide the 30% increase called for by the sector. Sexual assault recovery often requires a comprehensive approach involving both treatment and crisis centre services, both of which are stretched thin, province-wide.

Madam Speaker, before I relinquish my time speaking to this bill, I have one more note to make, which should be tied to this bill: There should be a broader view of all sexual assault funding across the province. As a very local example, Niagara Health has requested $183,000 in additional funding to enhance staffing resources and ensure survivors of sexual assault are fully supported. Their plea for help has not received a response from the Minister of Health as of yet. It is discouraging to know they are still left with silence, despite the conversation about sexual assault support through this bill that is actively being discussed right here today. This money would have incalculable value to ensure that survivors of sexual assault are supported in the aftermath of an assault and are given the tools to ensure justice can be pursued.

Since Niagara Health has not received a response from your ministry, they are forced to fill this urgent funding gap with their own resources, which have already been stretched way too thin. That’s not the right approach we should be having. This is not the conversation we should be talking about. We should not create protections in schools but leave the actual follow-up and justice hanging in the air. There is no justice in that. I think we all can understand that.

Thank you, Speaker, for the time.

Speaker, as the MPP for Ajax, you will know that in the region of Durham we have two universities: Ontario Tech University and Trent Durham—and Durham College.

Underpinning this legislation was a broad consultative process. We’ve had many universities come back to us with their input about the effect of this proposed legislation. I’ll read one paragraph for you: “Ontario Tech University welcomes the province’s strong support for the post-secondary community’s commitment to eradicating sexual violence and maintaining healthy and safe learning, living, social and working environments for its students, staff and faculty members with this bill.”

Taken together, it’s providing the framework to ensure student safety. Furthermore, it is dealing with the issue of staff and staff involvement in non-disclosure.

Would the member from St. Catharines—

I think this bill is not going far enough. As I mentioned, survivors need to ensure that they’re getting access to evidence kits—which they’re not getting. If you’re a student or you’ve been sexually assaulted within your community, it is so imperative that that victim needs to get to a hospital and get a sexual assault evidence kit, in a timely way, and that they’re not sent to another hospital an hour and a half away with a complete stranger. It’s for their mental health, for their wellness and for them to be able to support survivors.

Last year—I believe it was last year, or a year and a half ago—I stood in this House and I brought forward inter-partner violence disclosure and Clare’s Law, and this government turned it down; they didn’t vote for it. That was one more tool that we could have put in the tool box for women who were being sexually assaulted in Ontario, so they could contact the police and find out if their partner or whoever they were with had some kind of charges against them of a sexual nature or an abusive nature.

I think that this government should put more funds in, spend their money where it should be and look back on this legislation—and, like I said, repeal Bill 124, so that nurses can definitely be retained and replenished.

Questions?

I’m glad to be able to ask questions of the member, who spoke well on this important issue.

As we see in the bill, there are some obviously positive aspects, one of which is that survivors won’t be forced to sign non-disclosure agreements anymore. Things like that are positive, but if we’re looking at it from a survivor’s standpoint, it really does fall short.

This is a government whose first step was an attack on clubs and organizations on campus, back in the day, through that so-called opt-out mechanism which defunded social service programs, some of which were survivor-focused.

If this government were actually interested in supporting survivors, what more could they have in this bill, or what more could we see from this government in this Legislature?

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to rise before the House and speak about Bill 26, the Strengthening Post-secondary Institutions and Students Act, 2022.

The bill addresses the name change of Ryerson University to Toronto Metropolitan University—TMU—as well as strengthening this government’s commitment to the safety and well-being of students attending Ontario’s world-class colleges and universities.

As the member for Durham mentioned last week in his speech about Bill 26—it gives me the opportunity to also celebrate the legacy of the late Honourable William G. Davis, the 18th Premier of Ontario. He was known as the “education Premier.” The tributes that we did in the House weren’t that long ago, crediting him with our community college system, which provides world-class education.

Each and every Ontario community college provides thousands of students across our great province with a springboard to realize their dreams.

I attended college myself—Loyalist College in Belleville—and graduated as a registered nurse in my early twenties.

I’m always grateful I had the opportunity to know Mr. Davis personally. He was such a great individual.

I know Fleming College in Lindsay—Peterborough and Haliburton are the other campuses—was created as a result of the colleges being formed in 1965, so that’s great. Two of those campuses are in my riding.

It’s important, in legislation, to recognize what has gone on in the past—but also to experience the freedom of higher learning in safe, secure and equitable environments, so we’re making sure that vision continues.

The legislation also amends the Ryerson University Act of 1977 and the University Foundations Act of 1992. It’s kind of technical, but I want to let the audience at home—who, I know, are listening intently—know what the contents of the bill are. It will change the name of Ryerson University to Toronto Metropolitan University—TMU—and it will change the size and composition of TMU’s senate, as we look forward to creating a fair and more equitable education system for all students. Changing the name of the university to TMU is going to better align the university with its students and their shared values.

I want to give another shout-out: I know it’s a bit of history to start with in my opportunity to speak today, but I’m pleased that TMU is renaming its law school the Lincoln Alexander School of Law. The Honourable Lincoln M. Alexander was the first Black Canadian member of Parliament and Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, from 1985 to 1991.

It seems fitting—we’re just coming back from our Remembrance Day constituency week and attending so many services. In my riding, I have a lot of cenotaphs and Legions which I try to attend throughout the year, if we can’t get to them on Remembrance Day.

Lincoln Alexander also served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War, and then he came back to law school.

In 1968, he was Canada’s first Black MP, as I mentioned.

I actually had the opportunity to know Lincoln Alexander. He was a friend of my dad, who was a member of Parliament. Way back when, he would play Santa Claus to me on the phone.

Interjections.

As Lieutenant Governor, he even came up and opened the Kinmount Fair—of course, I’m from the great town of Kinmount. He also served as chancellor of the University of Guelph—so quite a distinguished career. I think it’s so wonderful that his name is going to be associated with the law school.

Similarly, we need to do everything we can to ensure a safe learning environment for our young adults, and especially our young women. The proposed bill shows that this is something our government remains focused on. Our children, young children, vulnerable, going to these post-secondary institutions—we expect that they’re going to be safe and protected while pursuing their education away from home. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. I know that we speak a lot of international students and those increasing numbers who come over and their vulnerability, also, coming into our post-secondary institutions.

I have spoken many times about gender-based sexual violence in our communities.

In 2018, a survey showed that Canadian women experienced disproportionate rates of sexual and physical violence. Around 30% of women aged 15 to 24 report being physically or sexually assaulted by someone other than their intimate partner. And in recent years, 92% of victims of sexual offences have been women, and virtually all of the attackers, 99%, were men. It’s also important to understand that almost 90% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police.

Studies already show that one in three Canadian women will experience sexual assault in their lifetime. It’s a horrible statistic, but it’s clear that the issue is much larger than the current statistics report. In an era when we have social movements and we’ve raised global awareness of the sexual harassment, assault and rape of women, it is remarkable that today some offenders are still not being held accountable for their actions.

This legislation also introduces changes necessary to clarify our government’s zero-tolerance position on sexual harassment, assault, and every other form of violence. That is why this legislation will also amend the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities Act and the Private Career Colleges Act, 2005, to help protect students in instances of faculty and/or staff sexual misconduct and harassment.

The changes being proposed include:

—strengthening tools available to institutions in order to address instances of faculty or staff sexual misconduct against students;

—preventing the use of non-disclosure agreements to address instances where an employee leaves an institution to be employed at another institution; and

—requiring institutions to have employee sexual misconduct policies that, at a minimum, include the institution’s rules with respect to sexual behaviour and examples of disciplinary measures that may be imposed on those employees who contravene such policies.

These measures will help address instances where faculty members overstep teacher-student relationships with inappropriate behaviour, such as an instance in 2016 when an independent review found that a professor at an Ontario institution of higher learning lured a female student with alcohol for the purposes of making sexual advances towards her.

I know my colleagues will agree that any form of sexual misconduct or harassment is wrong, and that is why I support government action that addresses and condemns all forms of sexual violence and misconduct on or off Ontario campuses. It is our students who will continue to drive this province forward, and we know that a healthy campus environment is crucial to every student’s success.

I would like to share with this House a strong and succinct statement from Linda Franklin, the president and CEO of Colleges Ontario. Ms. Franklin remarked that “ensuring every student has a safe and positive learning environment is a top priority.” Ms. Franklin added that “the comprehensive policies and protocols in place at every college are enhanced on an ongoing basis, and we’re committed to working with the government and students on the further measures announced in this legislation.”

I know that Linda Franklin is retiring, after 15 years, next year, so I want to wish her all the best. She has been a wonderful advocate for the colleges of Ontario.

Madam Speaker, it is clear that across our institutions, these changes are welcomed and appreciated for going further than ever before to combat sexual harassment and violence on our campuses of higher learning.

Ari Laskin, CEO of Career Colleges Ontario, said that his organization is “pleased to see the government is taking action on sexual assault and sexual violence in the post-secondary educational sector.” Mr. Laskin also said that he is pleased to see the government formalize this process and knows that “Ontario’s career colleges will continue to put student safety and well-being at the forefront of their operations.”

We all have a role to play to make sure our learning environments are welcoming, protected and safe, where students know that they will always have support. With these amendments, our government is showing the commitment to ending sexual harassment and assault in all learning environments, as well as our dedication to creating a better learning atmosphere for all students.

Madam Speaker, I want to thank all of my colleagues for their support of Bill 26 and, in particular, the Minister of Colleges and Universities and the member from Simcoe North for all her work on this piece of legislation and legislation that has been brought forward by her in different ministries before.

I hope everyone in the House supports Bill 26.

I also have a university in St. Catharines: Brock University. We have Niagara College in Niagara as well. We come from a university/college town.

However, when I write the minister and I don’t get a response—my colleague from Toronto–St. Paul’s as well as myself jointly wrote a letter asking if this government was—

Response?

Further debate?

First of all, I’d like to thank the member from Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock for all of her work protecting our survivors—our victims of human trafficking and those survivors. She deserves a round of applause for all the work she has done to move this topic forward. This is a non-partisan issue, and this is so important that we even started talking about it, but we have to continue that dialogue.

I remember when the member came to the city of Toronto council when I worked there, to talk to the mayor about the Saving the Girl Next Door Act and the important proposal that tried to get everybody to just have that conversation moving forward. So I’m really glad that you were able to speak today from your experience and all the consultation you have done personally and all the work you have done around sexual abuse and sexual harassment, and sharing your comments with the people here in the House today.

I’m just wondering, for those who are just tuning in right now, if the member can just talk a little bit about this bill and measures specifically of how they are supporting students and survivors of sexual violence. How is this bill helping those people?

I want to commend the member from Haliburton-Kawartha. I sat and listened very intently to her remarks. I also had the pleasure of working with her a number of years ago on her bill, the Saving the Girl Next Door Act—a great bill, and a great advocate for that.

I’d like to know a little bit about—I don’t know whether anyone has touched on this too much this afternoon—the amount of consultation that went into this bill to get it as far as it did. I’m sure there’s always room for more, but could you outline a little bit the consultation that went into it?

I have a question for the member opposite, who—it’s getting to be a couple of years ago now—I was pleased to work with a bit and learn from, as we were all learning about human trafficking and her work at that time. In the spirit of that time, I want to talk about the importance of education when we’re here discussing sexual assault and the punitive side of things, which has its place and is important—but also, what about the prevention side?

To the member opposite, I would say: We all know that sexual assault of any kind causes lifelong trauma and significant impact. So why, in this bill, do we not see a shout-out to Consent Awareness Week, and why aren’t we seeing a focus on prevention, and where is the place for that with this government, in this House?

I appreciated the member’s strong comments about the need to take decisive action to protect students on post-secondary campuses from sexual assault. There certainly is no countenance for that within this Legislature. But I am concerned, because we know from the data that, overwhelmingly, unwanted sexualized behaviours on campus that are experienced by students are from other students. So there’s an opportunity within this bill to implement training mandates on campuses, for example—training of all staff, students and faculty about what constitutes consent and how to respond. I’m just wondering why the government didn’t incorporate any of those kinds of prevention and education measures in this bill.

I thank the member from Oshawa and the members opposite. We’ve worked together a lot on the human trafficking file and raising that awareness in our own communities, as well as provincially. It’s something that needs to keep going, and there’s never too much awareness.

I want to shout out to the Minister of Education, who changed the actual curriculum in the elementary schools so that there is more awareness at a very young age about learning, about the Internet, about the appropriateness of relationships. That is only one piece that our government has brought forward. We say, “No tolerance”—and we realize that education is absolutely key. The member from Oshawa is absolutely right—education at all levels. I salute the Ministry of Education for changing that curriculum. And this is an ongoing situation in which we will continue the education.

You’re right. The Minister of Colleges and Universities was also the Associate Minister of Women’s Issues, and she did a great deal of work on human trafficking there and getting that education out and getting supports out. She has now brought in a piece of legislation which has been consulted for months with stakeholders. Everybody wants to do this. It’s a matter of it getting out there. Where are the vulnerabilities to tighten up? The Minister of Colleges and Universities has seen that on the faculty and the student side, that there has to be legislation brought in. So the minister has done the consultations. We see a tightening up with people in a position of power being staff and vulnerable people being students, and how we close that loophole. Thank you very much for the opportunity.

As we all know, education components evolve with professions. So although I can’t answer the question directly on what is happening in the colleges right now, I know in many professions there are ongoing education modules that I encourage everyone to take, and there are certain mandates. I believe probably some of that is going on as we speak, in those professions. Raising the awareness like this legislation also empowers those—we’re talking colleges and universities right now—to increase that education and awareness.

For sure, I think Bill 26, if passed, would put an end to the secrecy around faculty-student sexual violence. We’ve seen, in medical reports in recent years, uses of non-disclosure agreements to prevent students from seeking legal recourse against the offender, and the ability for faculty and staff to move from one school to another without facing any punishment or outright dismissal. It’s far too common in post-secondary education, as the statistics that we do have show.

In many cases, collective agreements allow offenders to receive greater protections and rights than survivors of sexual violence. If passed, this would give institutions a greater power to discipline and dismiss offenders and empower students to come forward with evidence of sexual violence.

The member from Oshawa.

I just have some news for folks. Pursuant to standing order 7(e), I wanted to inform the House that today’s night sitting is cancelled.

It’s an honour to speak on this Bill 26 today. I think everybody in the House is in agreement with the goals. We need students to be safe on college and university campuses. In order to do that, to prevent and to stop sexual assaults on campuses, we need education, we need processes for reporting and repercussions, and we need supports for survivors.

This bill takes some measures on repercussions, but that’s it. It doesn’t have the education component; it doesn’t have the supports component. Bill 26 is about increasing repercussions for staff who sexually abuse a student. Bill 26 provides post-secondary institutions and private career colleges with clearer rights to fire employees when they are found to have sexually abused a student, to stop them from being rehired, and bans the use of non-disclosure agreements.

I think we can also agree that there is a crisis of sexual assault on campuses. We saw it blow up about a decade ago, and the Liberal government brought in a few supports and they brought cameras to campuses. Let’s see; in September 2021, at Western University during orientation week, the reports from social media suggested that 30 or more students were drugged and assaulted on the campus. In the same week, four women came forward to police about three incidents of sexual assault. There was a school-wide walkout with 9,000 students protesting what they called the “culture of misogyny” on campus. They called for Western to review policies and procedures for handling these situations, and they want more than this bill has to offer. We know there’s a crisis, and it blew up a year ago.

This government conducted consultations, but the only thing they came back with was this legislation that increases the repercussions for staff who sexually abuse a student. It doesn’t deal with student-on-student sexual assault. It doesn’t deal with so many other aspects. It doesn’t deal with the education or the supports that are needed.

We know that this is a crisis because post-secondary students experience a disproportionate number of sexual and gender-based assaults compared to the rest of the population. Forty-one per cent of sexual assault cases are reported by students of post-secondary institutions in Canada. Three out of four students have witnessed or experienced unwanted sexual behaviours while attending a post-secondary institution. One in five women will experience rape, and one in 10 young men will perpetrate rape by the time they graduate.

Men are disproportionately the instigators and perpetrators of sexual assault and violence, and most often against women. Most sexual and gender-based violence is committed by students towards other students and occurs in high-risk times and spaces on and off campus. This is why Bill 26 needs to be amended to address student-on-student violence as well as staff-on-student violence.

We need education, processes and repercussions, both preventative and punitive measures—stronger punitive measures that consider graduate students who are also employees of post-secondary institutions. This is one of the gaps in this legislation, because it talks about staff, and so if a staff member is found to be guilty of sexually abusing a student, they can be fired, there can be no non-disclosure agreement, and they cannot be rehired. But what if the perpetrator is a graduate student, so they’re both a staff member and a student? Do they continue as a student on the campus? And if they do, what does that mean for the victim? Does the victim have to face their perpetrator on the campus? So this is one of the gaps in the legislation that I hope the government will address when it goes to committee.

When I was teaching at York University, before I became an MPP, the Liberals created the sexual violence campus safety program. It added cameras on campus, and this was thought to be the necessary solution to addressing sexual and gender-based violence at colleges and universities, but it wasn’t. This was almost a decade ago.

What has happened—because the Liberals did not take adequate measures at that time—is that sexual assault on campus has continued to the point where, at Western University, 9,000 students walked out in protest because of this culture that’s happening on our campuses.

So I want to talk about solutions. I want to talk about three things that we’ll be asking the government to do. First of all, we’ve got to have prevention. We have to have repercussions, and then we have to have supports for survivors.

On the prevention side, my colleague—who’s sitting right beside me here—from Toronto Centre and the members from Davenport, St. Paul’s and Kitchener Centre brought forward in September Bill 18, the Consent Awareness Week Act. The point of this bill is to proclaim the week beginning on the third Monday in September in each year as Consent Awareness Week. The goal of Consent Awareness Week is to create space one week every year for Ontarians to have meaningful, positive, intersectional and age-appropriate conversations around consent, what it means and what it looks like, because sexual assault of any kind causes lifelong trauma and impacts relationships for the rest of the survivor’s life.

This bill, currently, was carried past first reading, but it’s sitting in committee. So I would ask the members of the government to consider incorporating that bill, the consent awareness bill, into this bill when this bill gets to committee.

Process and penalties—I actually talked about this. The grad students who are both employees and students at the university—that needs to be changed. We need to make sure that, if somebody is accused and found guilty of sexually abusing a student, then whether the abuser is a student, a graduate student or just an undergraduate student, that the victim never has to face that person, their perpetrator, on the campus again. That’s an amendment that needs to be made to this legislation.

The final thing I want to talk about is supports for survivors. After the protest last year at Western University, they launched the action committee on gender-based and sexual violence with an independent review to identify policy gaps or procedural failures related to the events. Most of the recommendations they came back with were around prevention, and these are actions that Western, to their credit, has taken for the most part, so far as I know.

They have appointed a special adviser to address campus culture and safety. They require all incoming students to complete a gender-based and sexual violence prevention education and awareness training. They are hiring an additional gender-based-and-sexual-violence-support case manager and education coordinator. They are creating a training program for Western special constables and other security personnel. They are providing more support to student organizations like fraternities and sororities, to address issues around gender-based and sexual violence, and applying for funding from the Canada Research Chairs Program and the Canada First Research Excellence Fund to support new academic position focused on gender-based and sexual-violence-related research.

So all of these prevention measures—Western University went through that crisis a year ago. They had their own task force. They came back with these prevention recommendations. Why doesn’t the government incorporate these recommendations, these prevention measures, into this legislation? We should be taking a bill like this very seriously and doing everything we can to support survivors, and the bill doesn’t do everything we can. It seems to do the bare minimum.

My colleague from St. Paul’s says, “Students go to post-secondary education to study, experience life and have fun, not to be subjected to unwanted pain and violence.” Students deserve to feel safe at university. They pay exorbitant tuition fees. They must have good grades to attend, and will be burdened with years of student debt and interest on that debt tied to—they’re paying so much money. We have an obligation, a responsibility, to make sure that they’re safe in that space. They should not be traumatized by sexual assault because preventative training and supports have not been put in place.

I’m asking this government, when we get to committee with this legislation, to please consider amending it and broadening the scope so that student-on-student sexual assault is taken into account, so that education is part of this package and supports for survivors are also part of this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker; I appreciate that. And thank you to the member from across the House for her comments.

I’m just curious, because it has been raised before, what’s in the bill and what you’re actually saying—and what many members on the government House side are saying—doesn’t quite align. So on the one hand I’m hearing, “No more NDAs,” yet there’s a loophole in the bill that specifically allows NDAs. I’m hearing that you want to address violence on campus, but you’re focusing specifically on faculty. What about alumni, visitors, people who are working under contract, graduate students who happen to also be teachers? There’s nothing in the bill that actually addresses that.