Well, we’re here debating Bill 26, so in response to the question relevant to Bill 26, if I may, Speaker, I can say that it is a major step forward for Ontario and consistent with the late Premier Davis’s legacy on community colleges. Look how far we’ve come in just 50 years since the creation of that. They are so well integrated in so many communities, like Durham.

But what this does, of course, is such that, when it comes to this particular bill—and certainly the opposition and the government MPPs have their differences, but on Bill 26 I believe we can stand united. I cannot see a single reason why members of the opposition would choose to vote against Bill 26 because of the position it would put unions in while bargaining new agreements. So I want to remind this House that members from Toronto Centre, Kitchener Centre, Davenport and Toronto–St. Paul’s introduced a bill about awareness of sexual violence on post-secondary campuses. Surely that awareness is there and should justify the—

I just want to acknowledge and thank the member for Durham for his remarks and comments. Bill 26 is very close to the heart of each and every parent. As a father of a son who is in university and a daughter who is in high school and going to university next year—for every parent our asset is our children, and we’re always worried about them, that they’re safe. That’s exactly what this bill is doing. Bill 26 is proposing changes that, quite frankly, are long overdue. Protecting students in colleges and universities is so important. That’s why I’m glad to see this government is making this a priority.

My question to the member from Durham is, can the member please outline how these measures will specifically support students and survivors of sexual violence?

Far too many people, especially racialized women and non-binary, trans and gender-diverse folks, experience sexual harassment and sexual violence. It’s common and it’s a brutal feature of the university experience, but I would like to say it is also an everyday experience.

I want to talk a little bit about—I support the bill, I think it’s useful, but I don’t think it addresses some very key aspects of why sexual violence and other forms of violence, particularly against racialized or somehow lower-on-the-gender-hierarchy people, who are subject to violence.

I’m just going to give a little bit of a story. I know we don’t have a lot of time, so I’m skipping through what I have to say, but let me tell you how often this happens in graduate school, where there is close one-on-one contact and where a student is utterly dependent on the support of their advisers for their future careers and for their future lives. These relationships are of necessity close, and they’re relationships of power.

What is missing for me in this bill is an understanding that we’re actually dealing with relationships of power and a culture of entitlement. I want to tie this also to what the member from Kiiwetinoong had to say about the violence of colonization experienced by Indigenous peoples, because it’s a violence that’s borne out of entitlement, the entitlement to dominate somebody else.

If you look at court cases about where Indigenous women have been raped and killed, you’ll be horrified, because so often, right up until today, the perpetrators are never punished. Those women are understood to be deserving of what they got. Part of what is taking place is that the perpetrators are reinforcing their sense of entitlement as male, as white and having the entitlement to act out their superiority over somebody with less power.

Now we see this with gender-non-conforming people; you see it with women, with people deciding to teach them a lesson. So we’re not talking just about sexual interest, sexual tension. We’re talking about sexual acts as an acting-out of a relationship of power, of proving oneself to be higher up in that hierarchy of who counts and who’s entitled to be dominant.

What I see as being completely necessary is a very big education piece. We need to understand what is meant by consent. I would like to see this government accept the bill that brings consent to younger people, so that people are actually learning and thinking about this at a young age. But I would also like to see all of us make the connection between something like Bill 28, which assumes an entitlement to exploit the lowest-paid workers to death—“They’re mostly women and they’re low down on the hierarchy. Who cares if they don’t get a living wage?” There is a sense of entitlement, that it is okay to pay people nothing—hardly anything—and expect them to work themselves to death. I connect this to this culture of domination, this culture of entitlement that is also connected to sexual violence, and the acting out of putting yourself in a pecking order and having somebody you can look down on to prove your superiority.

I want to say that yes, this bill is important for students, but it’s only one piece, and it’s not really going to change the culture of universities. It’s going to add a punitive element—excellent; if some people start to realize that they have to be accountable, excellent—but it is not going to change the culture until we really dig deep and start to look at what the formation of Canada is. On what basis was a whole group of people dismissed, raped, slaughtered, pillaged, whatever, and a whole new population brought in to replace them? On what basis? What kind of thinking does that reflect? That is the thinking of entitlement and the entitlement to dominate others. That’s got to be part of what goes into any program—

Thank you to the member for such an important question. Our government has a zero-tolerance policy for any form of sexual violence or harassment. As a mother of three post-secondary-aged daughters, I know first-hand the feeling as a parent of wanting your kids to enjoy everything the post-secondary education journey has to offer, while still worrying about their safety and their well-being.

One of the first actions I took as Minister of Colleges and Universities was to participate in sector-wide consultations to determine how, as a sector, we could better address instances of sexual violence on campus. What we heard across the board is that we need to find ways to not only empower survivors but also deal with the issues surrounding the prevalence of power dynamics and secrecy in many instances of sexual violence.

If passed, Bill 26 will tackle just that. It will prevent any instances of sexual violence committed by a faculty or staff member from going unreported and prevent those who commit acts of sexual violence from moving from one institution to the next under the protection of non-disclosure agreements. I look forward—

In speaking with many of those faculty and staff members, the changes we are proposing in Bill 26 are long overdue and desperately needed in the sector. Specifically, these changes would give institutions stronger tools to address instances of faculty or staff sexual misconduct against students, prevent the use of non-disclosure agreements and further require institutions to have sexual misconduct policies in place.

Our government will always do what is necessary to keep the people of Ontario safe. As minister and mother, I encourage members of our faculty and staff across the post-secondary sector to stand with me and our government to make sure that students are safe on campuses.