It’s a great privilege to introduce to the House members of our constituency team in Ottawa Centre. We have with us Erica Braunovan, Ethan Smith-Johnson and Sharon Lee. I would not have been able to make it here this week on my bicycle without those fine folks.

Also tuning in: John Purkis from Ottawa.

Thank you a million times, colleagues, for everything you do.

It’s my pleasure today to welcome two of my friends and colleagues from the city of Ottawa who are joining me here today: Rudi Asseer, who is the chair of the Dare to be Vulnerable Project, dealing with storytelling for mental health among leaders in our city; and, of course, Dr. Aroldo Dargel, who is a bipolar specialist with the Ottawa Hospital, specifically at the General hospital. I want to say thank you to them for joining me. It is customary for us to get up and down and up and down to try and get somebody recognized around this place, so don’t take anything by it.

School bus cancellations have thrown thousands of Ottawa families into chaos this September, because the Minister of Education cut $6 million in transportation funding to Ottawa school boards. When the boards rightfully complained, the minister offered just $1.8 million in a one-time transfer, but only if the boards agreed to use key messages praising the government.

Why does the minister think it’s okay to demand praise while Ottawa parents scramble every day to get their kids to school?

The minister created this problem with his funding cut. What is he going to do to fix it?

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Associate Minister of Housing. For too many Ontarians, including young people, newcomers and seniors right here in Ottawa, finding the right home is still a major challenge. While our government is taking meaningful measures to address housing supply through new legislation, the scale of this problem calls for continued action and leadership. More resources are needed to build upon the work already under way and to bring forward more measures to address this serious issue. Finding solutions means working in partnership with all levels of government in order to produce results.

So Speaker, through you, can the associate minister please explain how our government is getting more homes built?

While it is encouraging to hear about the progress our government is making to advance housing construction, there is still more work that needs to be done, not just in Ottawa but across the province.

The commitment by municipalities and the federal government to work collaboratively with our government in developing strategies that will provide real and long-term housing solutions is important and essential. In order to meet our goal of significantly increasing our housing supply, decisive action need to be taken.

Mr. Speaker, through you: Can the associate minister please explain how our government is supporting municipalities across our province, including the great city of Ottawa, so they can deliver on their housing commitments?

I want to thank my colleague for the question and also commend him on riding a bike here from Ottawa. It’s remarkable. I don’t think I would ever have the courage to do it, or the physical endurance or the mental endurance and all kinds of things. That’s on the Hansard now, so that’s there forever. I don’t think that’s a position I’m going to flip-flop on. I commend my colleague on that.

I do want to take the chance to highlight—in Brampton, we have some of the best transit workers you could ask for. While municipalities across Ontario saw ridership go down during the pandemic, we were actually the first city to bounce back, and now we’re at 120% of our old ridership, because of the front-line workers who work in my city.

So we’re always going to stand up for transit workers. They deserve to feel safe in their community, and our government will continue—

What I can say is, we’ve got a—

Interjections.

Look, we’ve got to stand up for our first responders. We’ve got to stand up for workers and that’s exactly what we are doing. I really hope that this member will come out in support of—I haven’t seen the member’s supportive statement about the changes we made about thyroid and pancreatic cancers, retroactive back to 1960. I haven’t heard the member say whether or not the member believes that’s a good idea, but I hope the member will stand with the PC caucus in banging that drum and making sure that we’re standing up and giving the firefighters the respect that they deserve. So I hope the member will stand up for them in her community as well and do that as well.

Our government put forward a really ambitious agenda about building highways, building transit, right? We see the historic investment of the Highway 413 in my community. That’s going to be revolutionary for residents in my community, not only the residents that drive to work and drive home every day, but for our truck drivers who—talking about front-line workers, our truck drivers are heroes just the same. You think about the 50 hospitals: The Premier says that it doesn’t matter what corner of Ontario you’re in, you’re either getting a new hospital or you’re getting a renovation on your existing hospital. Well, all of these things that we’re building are going to need workers to do that.

And I think I got heckled by the Windsor member. I think she’s mad she voted against the hospital in her riding, in her part of the world, but she also voted against the Brampton one, in my part of the world, too, so I guess there’s nothing new there. But look, we need more people in the trades. Our government’s investing to do that—