I want to thank the member opposite and welcome her as the new education critic for the official opposition.

Mr. Speaker, our government will not waver from keeping kids in class. We believe that is the most consequential action we can take to support the very children the member opposite speaks of today. How we do that, Speaker, is through Ontario’s Plan to Catch Up, a $600-million net investment this year, compared to last year, of increased spending to support publicly funded schools; the largest tutoring expansion of its kind, which our government just extended into the next year of $175 million, benefiting over 170,000 students in this province as we speak.

We recognize, as every parent knows, that there has been real learning loss, a phenomenon that has been seen in every region of the western world. That’s why we feel so strongly that we need to increase investments in public education, part of that with the hiring of 5,000 more staff this year, in addition to helping parents through this economic difficulty. Our Premier and our government will do both: invest in families and invest in our publicly funded education system.