I was saying earlier, we have committed more than $200 million to connect children and youth to care at hospitals and close to home in their communities, including new funding for surgical and diagnostic wait times, pediatric hospitals and rehabilitation programs, as well as mental health and other community-based supports.

Home and community care is especially important for people to be able to age in place in the comfort of their own community. I am happy to say that we are increasing funding for the 2023-24 fiscal year of up to $569 million. This includes nearly $300 million to support contract rate increases to stabilize the home care workforce. This funding will also expand home care services and improve the quality of care, making it easier and faster for people to connect to care.

Speaker, the budget touches on so many critical areas, from helping our vulnerable residents to creating an environment where our Ontario-made manufacturing businesses can further thrive.

Thank you to the Minister of Finance for his work on this budget and how he has taken so much of our community members’ feedback into consideration, all the while being respectful of the taxpayer’s dollar.

Ontario is preparing our students for the jobs of the future. This is critical because we believe in better connecting learning in the classroom with meaningful careers. This is why the government is creating more hands-on learning opportunities, which will allow our students to earn college credits and take apprenticeship training, all while still in high school. This is important because it’s going to build our pipeline of job-ready graduates.

Building on the success of the micro-credentials challenge fund round 1, Ontario is investing $5 million in 2023-24 to launch a second round of the program. This will increase micro-credential learning opportunities between post-secondary institutions and industry.

Speaker, we are providing an additional $3.3 million over the next three years, beginning 2023-24, and this will expand access—

Our government knows this economic time has been extremely challenging for so many people in our communities across this great province and right in my community of Newmarket–Aurora as well.

What I would like to note is that we have adjusted core allowances under the ODSP to inflation annually and increased the monthly earnings exemption for persons with disabilities. I’d also like to highlight the additional investment of $202 million each year in the Homelessness Prevention Program and Indigenous supportive housing. This has great impact in my community. On average, service managers are going to be seeing over a 40% increase in this supportive housing—