Heart and Stroke is at Queen’s Park today. Since I was elected, we have worked together many times to call on the government to introduce health promotion and disease prevention initiatives.

I am happy to report that thanks to their support, we have taken many steps forward. Ontario has banned flavoured cigarillos; they were marketed to youth to get them addicted to nicotine. Restaurants now put calorie labelling on their menus to help people make healthier choices.

In 2019, Heart and Stroke joined me in support of a bill to create an automatic external defibrillator registry that 911 operators could use to direct callers in the event of a cardiac arrest. Although it became law three years ago, it is still not implemented, but I am hopeful.

Heart and Stroke is here today because there’s so much more that needs to be done. Ontario needs to be informed, educated, and raise awareness about heart and brain health. We need to accelerate critical research to improve outcomes for people living with heart disease and stroke. And we need to support people in their health journey and recovery.

Heart and Stroke does all of this with their advocacy for public policies, for healthier environments, for improved access to support services and for a strong and equitable health care system. Thank you, Heart and Stroke, for all you do and for all that your volunteers do. Ontario is healthier because of your hard work. Thank you. Merci.

November is Women Abuse Prevention Month, and today our galleries are filled with advocates from the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses. They’re raising the same question again and again as violence against women has reached epidemic levels. We’ve asked your government to declare intimate partner violence an epidemic, like almost 70 municipalities have done, but you refuse.

Last year in Hamilton, police received 13,000 calls for intimate partner violence and almost 5,000 women and their children were turned away from shelter beds because they weren’t available—again, an epidemic of violence against women and your government refuses to increase their core funding, which has been frozen for over 15 years.

So it’s nice to see all of the government wearing their purple scarves, but we need to see more than that performative action. We need to see this government declare intimate partner violence and gender-based violence as an epidemic, and we need to see core funding increase after 15 years of frozen core funding.

These women are doing important work to keep our women safe. Will we ever see your government truly support women in this province: yes or no?