It’s my pleasure to rise to highlight an organization which is improving the lives of students within my riding of Eglinton–Lawrence and around Ontario and across Canada: Pathways to Education. I fully support Pathways’ mission to help high school students who face barriers to reach their full potential through education.

Pathways focuses on supporting students from low-income households who might otherwise struggle to finish secondary school or even drop out. Pathways provides lots of practical support, even bus tickets, for participants to get to school. Essentially, it provides them with what they need to finish their education so that they can have all the possibilities that that opens.

A few weeks ago, Owen Hinds and the rest of the Pathways team at Lawrence Heights invited me to once again tour their Pathways facilities in my riding. I enjoyed meeting the students, who were busy working on their homework assignments, supported by peers and by other volunteer mentors. Pathways boasts over 800 volunteers, who should be commended for their over 26,000 volunteer hours. With over 19,000 students having benefited from Pathways since 2001 and over 6,000 currently in the program, 78% graduate from school and 69% go on to post-secondary education. It’s a true success story.

Along with the Minister of Colleges and Universities, I attended their grad ball recently, as well, to celebrate with them and continue to support all of their efforts.

As we all know, the last two years have proven to be very challenging for many parents and students. The recent EQAO data shows that most Ontario students, like students all across Canada, are struggling with math. I’ve also heard from many parents who say their young children’s reading skills are not progressing as they should. After the pandemic and with union-driven strikes, it’s fair to say that we cannot take children out of class.

We now have an opportunity to help Ontario students recover. Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of Education: What is being done to help our children recover from these learning losses?

These are unpredictable economic times, marked by increased costs that are across the board, and parents, now more than ever, can use financial relief that will ease the costs associated with their children’s learning recovery. Parents need flexibility so that they can best spend those dollars to help their kids catch up.

Speaker, on behalf of hard-working parents in my riding, can the minister inform this House on what our government plans to do for parents who are in financial need?