What astounds me is, we’re talking about the budget in this House, and the member opposite can’t even accurately read the budget—can’t tell the difference between budgeted amounts and actuals.

Here’s the story: In 2018, the budget was $69.8 million; in 2024, it’s $135 million. And that’s just to start.

We bring more resources to bear than any government in the history of this province to fight forest fires, continually making investments to improve the situation in this province for communities, for infrastructure, for individuals. And we will continue to do that.

I’ll take absolutely no lessons from the member opposite on how to either (a) read a budget or (b) fight forest fires in Ontario.

We’ve also made other investments—$20.5 million—to improve how we fight wildland forest fires, investing in new aerial fire suppression technologies; investing in science and risk assessment, including into collaborative research with universities; building capacity to support Indigenous wildland fire management.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals can ignore what we’ve done all they want, but I’ll tell you, we are right up on top of it for the people of Ontario, and that’s what counts.

We already know that, in the university and college sector, at least 50% of the instructors are low-waged, precarious contract workers, even though many of them come with PhDs—so already a clear indication of how under-budgeted universities are. Yet I see in the budget documents that the government is spending $15 million to private, for-profit companies with no expertise or ties to post-secondary education tasked with finding efficiencies.

To me, this sounds like harassment and an incredible waste of money that should be spent on core funding for universities. Can you explain to me why that $15 million is being spent on outside investigators?