My question is to the member for Waterloo. Last month, the Minister of Finance actually announced that the Ontario government ended the fiscal year with a $2.1-billion surplus, a far cry from the $33-billion deficit that was projected. Following shortly afterwards on October 27, the FAO then criticized the Conservative government for not being transparent of how they were going to spend the money over the next several years. Then they revealed that there’s a $44-billion unallocated contingency fund and about $40 billion in programs unspent. The FAO says the contingencies are not generally used to address these shortfalls.

My question, Speaker, to the member is: If the provincial cupboards are bare, as claimed by the Ford Conservative government, why are they misleading Ontarians with the austerity budget and punishing education workers with legislated poverty by taking away their collective bargaining rights and disrupting human rights?