I appreciated the comments from my colleague the member for Timiskaming–Cochrane. I wanted to ask if he had a chance to look at a very interesting analysis of the budget from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. They raise concerns about the size of this government’s contingency fund. It is now over $5 billion—very much a departure from the traditional practice in Ontario of allowing a contingency of about $1 billion.

Does the member have any thoughts as to how that $5 billion that’s socked away into contingency that may or may not be spent—often, it’s not spent, as we have seen from previous budgets. But what does he think the government should be doing with those funds?

Well, certainly building affordable housing is something I think we all agree needs to be a priority. I think that certainly in the recent debate going on amongst the Liberal leadership candidates, there have been lots of ideas put forward about positive ideas around housing, including having a fund that could actually build social housing.

So I think that is something that is certainly being discussed at length right now amongst our caucus and our leadership candidates, and I think that we’ve got a view in this government where we need to help them see that investing in affordable housing is actually positive. In my riding recently, I was surprised to learn about a transit-oriented community that will be built with Metrolinx, and I hope they might consider things like co-op housing there.

A billion dollars is absolutely sufficient for a contingency fund, especially in this time when we know that we’ve got programs that are underfunded, so—

My question to the member for Guelph is around that over $5-billion contingency fund that’s been set aside in this budget.

The CCPA did an analysis looking at program spending over the last five years with the numbers adjusted for inflation. They found that real per capita spending on post-secondary education has dropped 11% since 2018 when this government was elected; in children and social services, down 12%; in education, down 11%. What does the member think about a government that allows program spending to decline to that extent and also puts aside over $5 billion in an unallocated contingency fund?