Good morning. Growing concerns from parents are being shared with me about the underfunding of our public schools. Church Street, Nelson Mandela and Lord Dufferin public schools take in students from across the Church Wellesley Village, Bay Cloverhill, Regent Park, Moss Park and other communities in the downtown east of Toronto.

Parents like Ines, Murshida and Shifani are telling me how our schools need more supervisors, education workers, special-needs assistants, guidance counsellors and social workers in schools to provide additional supports for their students.

Speaker, the response to violence in schools is not more police officers. Instead, the Premier should invest in the social determinants of health, which are exactly the same as the social determinants of safety: housing, education, food insecurity, early childhood development.

This government needs to invest in high-quality publicly funded education. This government needs to invest in meeting their own standards by reducing class sizes. This government needs to invest in funding existing schools so that they are well maintained. This government needs to invest in helping students living in poverty and to lifting them out of poverty.

This government needs to do all of that and more, but they need to do this by keeping our children, our teachers and their families safe by investing in education and not in bringing more police officers back to schools.

My question is to the Premier. This government has refused to listen to people on Ontario Works and ODSP who are being legislated into deep poverty. The NDP invited social assistance recipients to a round table to share their experiences with the Premier and the Minister of Children, Community and Social Services. We’ve brought their voices to the House in a report, which was delivered to the minister and to the Deputy Premier this morning.

The stories that people shared are profoundly heartbreaking and enraging. Like Trevor, who only gets to eat one meal a day. Or Declan, who wasn’t able to get a haircut before going to his mother’s memorial service. Will the Premier listen to Ontarians, double the rates and ensure that everyone in Ontario can live a healthy, dignified life?

What is clear, Speaker, is that legislating Ontarians into deep poverty is having profoundly negative effects on their physical health, their mental health and their emotional well-being. Tracey has to live on egg salad sandwiches or spaghetti for weeks on end because that’s all she can afford on $80 a month. Jordan has to skip meals to provide for his daughter and can no longer afford to pay for her swimming lessons.

The minister can throw around the word “historic” all she wants. What’s clear are the results. People are suffering. Will the government listen to their voices and double the rates?

Participants in the NDP’s round table who have disabilities shared that they would love to be working, but they can’t because of their disability. Parents who are full-time caregivers for children with disabilities are forced to live on Ontario Works, unable to even buy diapers or other supplies for their children because the rates are so low. This government’s policies are forcing people with disabilities to live in deep poverty.

But as Paul, an ODSP recipient, said, “Becoming disabled can happen to anyone. It could happen to you.” Why is the government making people with disabilities live in poverty instead of doubling the rates?