I am informed that the member for Ottawa–Vanier has a point of order.

It is now time for oral questions.

To reply for the government, the Minister of Education.

It’s a great pleasure to introduce again Sharon Lee, an OLIP intern working with us and our team for the Ottawa Centre office.

Sharon, it’s nice to see you. Thank you for all your help.

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?

Thank you for the comments.

Prior to being here, I followed the circumstances in Ottawa very closely, and what came out was very disturbing. I also followed, back home—the University of Windsor had a case with the NDAs back in 2019.

To me, it is vital that we go down this step. Just from your comments, it sounds like you’re not going to be supporting the bill, and I wonder whether the status quo is preferable to passing this bill and further improving it later on.