Mr. Speaker, we’re making sure that the students stay in class. I’m going to repeat that: They’re going to stay in class. We want parents to know that we’re doing everything we can to make sure students don’t miss one single day in class.

We’ve been at the table, we put a very fair offer, and the union continues to charge ahead with a strike action that would affect this province this Friday. That means there would be two million students sitting at home and probably a million parents who would be taking work off.

I want to be clear: We will never, ever waver from our position that students remain in class, catching up with their learning, surrounded by friends, with a full school experience, including extracurricular activities.

The Liberals and NDP want to make sure they stand up for the heads of the union. Our party differentiates between labour and labour leadership. We support the front-line labour folks. We support the fact that the front-line folks get 131 days of sick days; we’re okay with that. But what we don’t support is the unreasonable request from CUPE leadership that they demand a nearly 50% increase—a 50% increase.

Mr. Speaker, the union refuses to withdraw their strike notice even after we put forward a very generous offer. We’ve already—

They talk about 54,000 workers; we’re talking about over a million parents who would take work off because you want to feather the nest of the heads of the union. That’s unacceptable.

We want to take care of the front-line, hard-working educational workers, and we’ll always have their backs. But do you know something? We aren’t going to feather the nest of the head of CUPE.

Again, we differentiate between labour and labour leadership. I think the labour needs to find new labour leadership.

Interjections.