Thank you to the minister for her response. A little louder for those around: “the great city of Brampton.”

It is welcome news that our government is so significantly investing in public transit. As we know, Brampton is one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. As more people turn to public transit, there is no disputing that now is the time to invest in this key infrastructure. The gas tax funding will help to ensure that communities have the resources they need to continue to deliver safe and reliable transit service. After 15 years of neglect from the previous Liberal government, backed by the NDP, it is essential now that all governments work collaboratively together to provide the quality of transit service that our communities so rightly deserve.

Speaker, can the minister please explain how our government is working with our municipal partners in supporting effective public transit?

Thank you to the member opposite for that question. She and I have had many discussions about eating disorders and the work that needs to be done. Quite frankly, COVID-19 saw a surge in severe eating disorders among children and youth due to increased isolation, school disruption and social media exposure—as well as in adults.

The AG report in 2016 showed that the Liberals spent $10 million to send 127 kids to the United States for eating disorder treatment. We spent $16.5 million—and we spend that annually—to make sure that they can be treated closer to home, right here in the province.

Our investments are building the supporting treatments and beds and spaces across Ontario: $8.1 million, seven beds at CHEO, five at SickKids, two at McMaster; $11.1 million annually for 20 treatment spaces in underserved communities like Sudbury, North Bay and Sault Ste. Marie.

We are making investments to ensure that anyone who needs support in the province of Ontario gets it where and when they—

My question is to the Premier. Ontario has a serious problem in recruiting and retaining staff in licensed child care centres. The wages of child care educators, who are overwhelmingly women, are not competitive with other occupations that require a college education. To have enough educators to offer good-quality care, there is no real alternative to raising the wages—simple as that.

The Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario has urged the Conservative government to develop and implement a province-wide salary scale for registered ECEs and child care staff to address recruitment and retention issues. On International Women’s Day, will the Premier commit to that?

Thank you to the member for the question. Challenges such as inflation, rising costs of products, materials and supply chain disruptions are all real challenges that we’re facing here in Ontario, but also across the world. Our government, as a team, made a decision to face these challenges head on and forge ahead and continue to build Ontario.

Last week, we updated the P3 pipeline, which includes 38 major infrastructure projects which include an estimated value of $35 billion. Mr. Speaker, there’s some good news here, as two projects previously in pre-procurement now have gone to the market, where builders can make their submissions to Infrastructure Ontario: the Garden City Skyway twinning in Niagara, as well as the Ottawa Civic Hospital, one of our larger hospital expansion projects. Mr. Speaker, this is not a time to hesitate or delay. It is a time to build Ontario.

Minister of Children, Community and Social Services.

Supplementary question: the member for Parkdale–High Park.

The next question?

Happy International Women’s Day to the member opposite.

Our government doubled the Ontario Autism Program budget. Nearly five times as many children are receiving services than under the previous government. That’s approximately 40,000 children receiving services.

The reality is, we are in constant communication with families, with people across Ontario about autism. And the fact that we are improving the system from what it was before—about 75% to 66% of families and youth and children with autism were not going to get any service under the previous government’s efforts, and that was supported by the NDP. So I’m questioning why you didn’t speak up earlier. This is something that our government—

Interjection.

Interjection.

My question is to the Premier. The Greater Toronto Hockey League is a non-profit organization comprised of many hockey teams providing youth with the opportunity to participate in Canada’s official winter sport. The GTHL is part of the Ontario Hockey Federation, the governing body of amateur hockey in Ontario and a provincial sports organization that receives operational funding from the province.

Parents teach their kids that team sports are a great way to have fun and learn important skills that can last a lifetime. And that’s what parents buy into when they invest in their kids, these teams and the league, financially.

However, what we are seeing is that non-profit teams within the GTHL are quietly being sold and bought, under the cover of darkness, for millions of dollars.

Can the Premier tell us what kind of financial oversights are in place for the provincial sport organizations they govern, including the GTHL?

Parents want their children to be healthy, happy, safe and active. They trust that when they provide them with an opportunity to participate in Canada’s game, there will be transparency and accountability. Will the Premier show Ontario taxpayers, parents and kids the respect they deserve and shed light on these significant transactions? Because it’s not clear who is benefiting, and parents want to know. Will the Premier help us follow the money trail?

Thank you for the question, and I couldn’t agree with you more with respect to when it comes to our youth and sport. One of the biggest drivers for the development of young people in sport: learning how to deal with people, teammates, understanding direction, understanding that things aren’t easy and they’ve got to work through things.

When we talk about the funding of the PSOs, which we do in a very successful way in Ontario, we allow them to get better at the levels they want to—that they need to provide the services that they provide.

You asked about oversight. We don’t feel a need at this point to go into the books to find out what every minor hockey, football or soccer organization does. If there’s a problem, we will look into it, but at this point, it’s only speculation. So I can’t get into that right now with specifics, but I will tell you that our ministry supports minor sport for all the right reasons and will continue to do so in the province of Ontario.

I appreciate the question from the member.

As the member knows and all colleagues will know, since 2018, we knew that we had to rebuild the province of Ontario, and that, of course, included child care. The member will know that we were left with a system that was completely unaffordable, that people could not access. Across the province, it was unequal—we couldn’t bring people into the system.

We worked with our partners at the federal level to ensure that Ontario had a made-in-Ontario program that brought fees down for all of the people of the province of Ontario so that families could afford child care. What does that mean? It means that families have options. More people can get back into the workforce, including women.

But we went a step further. We are consulting with ECE workers across the province of Ontario because we know how important they are. We can’t succeed if they don’t succeed. That’s why we’re consulting and we’re making sure that the program that we fought for in the province of Ontario—that this Premier, this Minister of Education, ensured that we have a better program than anywhere else in the country. Unfortunately, they voted against it, but we’re getting—

I want to thank the member from Sault Ste. Marie for the great work he does there. It’s the steel manufacturing capital of northern Ontario and increasingly for mining. Thanks for your work, Ross; I appreciate it.

Mr. Speaker, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada hosts the largest global mining conference the world over, and no doubt for sure our Minister of Mines has been very busy. But there’s an important narrative developing on the floor of PDAC, and it’s through the Northern Ontario Mining Showcase. It narrates a story about what’s really happening on the ground in northern Ontario, the need for northern Ontario development—investments that are targeted at companies in the service and supply sector. They don’t just work in mining; they work across resources. But they tell a story, an exciting one at that, about how our businesses are transforming our communities with real economic support, promoting Ontario’s northern development.

And since it’s International Women’s Day, Mr. Speaker, maybe I’ll take this opportunity to highlight and showcase an announcement I made where the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund, Vale and Laurentian University joined together to support the Mining Innovation, Rehabilitation and Applied Research Corp.

Under the leadership of Dr. Nadia Mykytczuk, they’re going to be engaging in biotech, biomining and bioremediation. This is an exciting technology being done in Sudbury for the benefit of mining across northern Ontario. We’re excited to support it, and I hope one day the member from Sudbury will actually get up and support the investments that we make in northern Ontario, Mr. Speaker, especially—

Supplementary question?

Since June 2022, front-line advocates have reached out to this government about the Renfrew recommendations. This is arising from the 2015 triple femicide, and included an implementation committee to make sure that all recommendations there would actually be carried forward to end intimate partner violence. Those requests have gone unanswered.

Again to the Premier: Yes or no, will this government use its political voice and commit to, today, the number one recommendation from that inquest and declare intimate partner violence an epidemic?

If women are to leave their abusers, we need investment in shelters, and safe, non-ghettoized housing, and we need to double social assistance rates. When women don’t have access to enough money to live on, or safe places to go, they can’t escape their abusers.

Will this government increase funding to shelters, increase safe, affordable housing? Here I’ll digress a little bit, because the kind of housing that’s available right now is ghettoized. That means that women in those places are targeted by gangs and their places are taken over. They are not safe spaces. They might be affordable, but they’re not safe.

To continue, we need that safe housing, and we need to double social assistance rates. Will the government commit to increasing funding?

Thank you to the member.

Mr. Speaker, can I take a second to wish my parliamentary assistant, the MPP from Scarborough–Rouge Park, a very happy birthday today? I know this is something that’s very, very close to his heart: Another P3 pipeline update is the Scarborough subway extension. We are now taking that contract off the pipeline because it has been awarded—the stations, rail and systems contract. This will now go into the partnership phase, where there will be a 12-to-18-month period where the contract owner—the province of Ontario—as well as the selected builder will work collaboratively to address risk and price.

I know how excited the people of Scarborough were when Minister Mulroney, the Minister of Transportation, was there in the new year to turn on that tunnel boring machine, which is drilling below the ground in Scarborough. Mr. Speaker, we have a lot to celebrate and we will continue to build Ontario.

Speaker, as the population continues to grow in my riding, it is critical that we build the necessary services to support their needs. Transit, highways, schools and long-term-care projects are important to the families and the people of my community. Under the previous Liberal government investments in expanding transit and improving health care facilities were not a priority. Sadly, the communities in my riding of Scarborough–Agincourt were left behind, as were many others across the province.

People deserve better and they are counting on our government to strengthen Ontario’s communities by investing in critical infrastructure. Can the minister please explain how our government is delivering on the promise of building public infrastructure that supports the local needs of communities?

I really do feel for the community of Renfrew and their families and friends who were impacted by the loss of those three souls. In particular, the member from Renfrew has been actively working with the community to ensure that things are progressing.

I do want to thank the members who participated in the inquest. It was not an easy inquest to participate in, but they persevered and provided our government with some valuable recommendations, which we are reviewing. On February 10 we provided part 1 of our response to the recommendations, and that response was quite comprehensive. It gave a full overview of what the government has been doing so far.

Mr. Speaker, I have been working across different levels of government to make sure we’re implementing programs to keep women safe. For example, we had the opportunity to announce the pilot project in the Peel region with the Solicitor General that pairs police officers with social workers to respond to intimate partner violence calls and de-escalate the situation and connect individuals to resources and supports.

There are many things we’re doing and we’re going to keep pushing forward to ensure women are safe in Ontario.

So we need to build more homes in Ontario. If we’re really going to put women’s safety and make it a priority, we need to support the initiatives that the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, the Associate Minister of Housing, our Premier, our government is making to build more homes faster. Will they support Bill 23 so we can get this done to get women into safe houses?

My question is for the Minister of Indigenous Affairs and Northern Development. There is so much to enjoy and discover in our communities across all of northern Ontario, Speaker. Unfortunately, the previous government, propped up by the NDP, failed to recognize the north for the importance of its vast resources as well as the ways in which northern communities contribute to our economic and cultural well-being here in Ontario. In short, they ignored opportunities to build infrastructure, to create jobs and to show the north the respect that it deserved.

This week, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada held their annual conference here in Toronto. This mineral exploration and mining convention draws large attendance from across the sector for the purposes of information-sharing and networking. Speaker, can the minister please provide information about how our government is partnering with and supporting northern Ontario businesses as part of this conference and all the opportunities that will stem from that?

While mineral exploration and mining are a key focus when it comes to opportunities in northern Ontario, our government must continue to ensure that our communities remain strong. Our northern communities deserve support in order to build the capacity that is needed to deal with the growth that comes from new and emerging mineral extractions. Speaker, can the minister please explain how the prospectors and developers association convention was an opportunity to better showcase the central role and importance of northern Ontario?

My question is to the Premier. Speaker, the London Coordinating Committee to End Woman Abuse released a snapshot yesterday showing that there were more than 10,000 domestic and sexual violence crisis calls in the London area in 2022, an increase of 54% from the year before. The vast majority of those calls were from women. Over the same period, women were turned away 2,166 times from Anova’s women’s shelter because of a shortage of beds, a 62% increase from 2021. Anova is also seeing more severe cases of gender-based violence than ever before.

Speaker, will this year’s budget include the increased and stable funding that organizations like Anova, Atlohsa and London Abused Women’s Centre need to keep women and children safe?

Ma question est pour le premier ministre. You will remember, in 1994, the NDP brought midwifery to Ontario. We gave Ontario families access to midwives for free and we paid the midwives respectfully. After 16 years of Conservative and Liberal governments, midwives faced a $100,000 pay equity gap. No matter the analysis that the midwives presented, the Liberal and the Conservative governments refused to listen to these women. So the midwives launched multiple appeals in the courts and in the Human Rights Tribunal. And you know what, Speaker? They won each and every one of those appeals. The tribunal sided with the midwives and ordered the government to pay.

Yet we are now in 2023. It is International Women’s Day. Will this Conservative government do the right thing, respect the tribunal, respect midwives and give them pay equity?

Interjections.