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?

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.

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?