It is my absolute pleasure to rise today to discuss a recent funding announcement in my riding of Flamborough–Glanbrook.

On April 12, alongside the Minister of Education, I announced that our government is investing over $31 million in the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board for the new Waterdown Bay Elementary School and an addition to Mount Hope Elementary School. This investment will support the creation of 682 student spaces and 176 licensed child care spaces for my community. Parents and representatives from the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board have been influential throughout the process. They have been strong advocates for our community and demonstrated our need for this funding.

Due to its unlimited potential, Flamborough–Glanbrook is one of the fastest-growing communities right across Ontario. By investing in early learning, we are laying the foundation for the next generation of leaders and innovators to build on this success.

Schools and access to child care are important for Ontario’s students and parents. Our students deserve to learn in state-of-the-art, modern facilities.

Mr. Speaker, our government recognizes the importance of getting new schools and expansions to existing schools built as quickly as possible for our growing communities.

I do appreciate the question from the member opposite, but Ontario is actually not putting the federal funding at risk. What has happened is, the federal government has unilaterally changed its mind on what we should fund.

As the member opposite will know, the National Housing Strategy was a 10-year strategy which was guided by a couple of principles: building additional units and renovating old units. Ontario had a target of 19,000 new units over 10 years. We’ve hit 11,000 of those 19,000 units. We had a target of 23,000 renovations. Because of the horrific record of the previous Liberal government, we have had to spend an exorbitant amount of money renovating and rehabilitating stock that would otherwise have been taken out of commission. We’ve done that in co-operation with the service managers, including many of the service managers in the north, and what we have done is renovate, rehabilitate and put back into circulation 123,000 units; that’s 426% of our target.

What we won’t do, though, is what the federal government is asking us to do right now—unless members agree, of course: to remove the power from our municipal partners and the service managers and direct what should happen in the north and in other parts of the province. We’re not there—