I heard that cry at the beginning of the session today, and I want to welcome back our friend Bruno. Welcome back, Bruno.

Speaker, on October 5, I wrote to the Minister of Education about the closure of child care centres in Dubreuilville and Assiginack due to staff shortages. These closures left parents to come up with new arrangements for their children’s care at a moment’s notice.

A constituent in Dubreuilville informed me that one parent travels an hour every day with her child from Dubreuilville to Wawa for child care and then has to make the same trek back home every single day. With the winter months coming, you can imagine how stressful and dangerous this will be.

In Assiginack, the wait-list has grown to 26 individuals. Staff there say “operating on a skeleton crew” is a regular thing and have had to transfer workers from another location just to keep their doors open. This is unacceptable in Ontario. Young families are under enough stress with the skyrocketing cost of living as it is.

This staffing crisis is the result of this government’s low-wage policies and lack of funding to child care centres to hire and retain qualified individuals. The government must end this crisis and give early childhood education workers fair pay so that children can thrive and parents can have peace of mind. This cannot wait. The government needs to step up to the plate and recognize that child care workers and Ontario families deserve better.