My question is to the Minister of Colleges and Universities. All Ontarians should feel proud of the great history of medical and science research from our post-secondary institutions that has saved lives and changed the world. Just one example: We only have to look across the street to the University of Toronto to see the Banting and Best Diabetes Centre, which is Canada’s leading centre for innovation in diabetes research, education and clinical care. In my own personal experience of having spent 25 years at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, I’m very aware of the wonderful research being done at that institution.

To this day, we know of the positive role that our colleges’ and universities’ hospital research institutions continue to play when it comes to innovations and progress in our health care system.

Can the Minister of Colleges and Universities please inform the House on what is being done currently by our government to support these investments?

Working with so many stakeholders, our government has often talked about the investments in hospitals and strengthening our province’s public health sectors.

Speaker, can the Minister of Colleges and Universities elaborate further about the initiatives that our government has invested in to support a more robust health sector?

I just want to bring a bit of a Waterloo-region lens to the perspective of the conversation here. Waterloo region is slated to need somewhere in the neighbourhood of about 70,000 homes to meet targets over the next—well, looking at roughly by 2031. That’s coming up pretty quick. There are a lot of pieces of this legislation that I can really get behind, because we’re looking at ways to really move the needle forward in a much more expeditious measure.

One of the things that we talk about a lot in Waterloo region is student housing. When we look at what this does with as-of-right zoning for multi-unit housing, whether that be duplexes or triplexes, and not having to go through rezoning and being able to speed those things up—I’d love to hear some of your comments on that, looking at it from not just the people that are going to be living in these places, but students that often come to our country to experience our fantastic education system here or folks that are maybe coming from your riding to come out to one of our fantastic universities.