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.

I don’t have much time, but this is one tool, bringing forward—

Point of order?

The member for Toronto Centre.

To the member from Spadina–Fort York: He’ll recall that last fall we made policy changes to strengthen post-secondary students reporting sexual violence and harassment—several regulations and amendments that addressed some part of what you spoke of going forward. Remember that?

Notwithstanding, my question to the member from Spadina–Fort York is: Does the member opposite feel that faculty or staff who have a history of committing sexual violence be allowed to remain in their role protected by non-disclosure agreements? Or should they be dismissed?

Listening to the comments today, I’m reading some quotes from some of our presidents of universities like Laurier: “Laurier is committed to ensuring a safe, welcoming and inclusive ... environment for all students across our campuses. We support measures that will allow universities to build upon existing policies to ensure that students remain free from harassment both inside and outside of the classroom.”

And then I hear the remarks today. Throughout the various debates we’ve had, we’ve had the members from the opposition—through you, Madam Speaker—talking about sexual assault as costly and calling for non-partisan solutions to get where we need to go. Well, Speaker, Bill 26 proposes non-partisan solutions that will make a huge impact for students across the province. So, my question is: Will the opposition support Bill 26?

Thank you to the member from Spadina–Fort York for his comments. I want to ask a question with respect to NDAs, because we’ve heard the government members talk about how the NDAs are now going to be curtailed or they’re going to be banned in this bill, but that’s not the case. NDAs still exist under this legislation.

In Prince Edward county, one of the first provinces in Canada to do so, they’ve actually enacted legislation to stop non-disclosure agreements from being used to protect perpetrators of sexual violence. What is stopping this government from actually closing that loophole? Because they haven’t gone far enough, clearly. But why is it that they won’t go far enough? Do you know the answer to that?

Thank you to the member for Spadina–Fort York. One of the things you said that really caught my ear was “a culture of misogyny,” when you talked about the importance of prevention. I would just ask the member from Spadina–Fort York if he can talk about why prevention is so important in breaking apart a culture of misogyny.

I don’t know why this government is leaving this loophole around the non-disclosure agreements. The way it’s phrased right now, with this legislation, somebody could be asked or coerced to sign a non-disclosure agreement before the legal process is complete. That’s a huge gap. That’s a loophole in this legislation that I hope the government will address in committee.

That’s why I’m very supportive of my colleague’s consent awareness bill to declare a consent awareness week so that we have an ongoing educational program on campuses and across this province to raise awareness about sexual assault so that we can try to curtail it through education.

The question about this bill is that it doesn’t go far enough. The measures that are there are fine, but they’re not actually going to stop sexual assault on campus, which has got to be the goal—

Questions and comments?

Further debate? Further debate? Further debate?

Ms. Dunlop has moved second reading of Bill 26, An Act to amend various acts in respect of post-secondary education. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? I believe it’s carried.

Second reading agreed to.

Orders of the day? The deputy government House leader.

The House adjourned at 1650.

I’d like to refer the bill to the Standing Committee on Social Policy, please.