I’d like to welcome Steve Barnhart from Niagara Parks Commission and President Stefan Fediuk from the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects.

Speaker, I’d like to apologize, but I got stuck in traffic, and it was a three-and-a-half-hour drive here this morning.

So thank you, and I’m looking forward to meeting with you later on.

I always enjoy my colleague from Niagara Falls when he speaks.

You were talking to the kids when they were here, saying that they’re our future, but they’re also our biggest resource. It’s not gold. It’s not materials or EV batteries. It’s not that; it’s our youth. And yet we see this government’s own panel of experts recommend—a blue-ribbon panel recommended an urgent $2.5-billion investment over three years, and that’s minimum. That’s minimum.

I heard you speak about how students are struggling. I want to ask you, what would the NDP government do? Because they’re not doing that which should be done. I know you brought some good points, but I’d like to hear from you, if we had recommendations like this, what would the NDP government do for their kids?

I enjoyed in particular the member for Niagara Falls talking about international students because I’m very concerned about them. I see an incredible amount of international students in Ottawa using food banks and who are very housing-insecure, and I just want to zoom out for a minute because there are other places in the world that treat international students very differently.

I want to cite in particular Germany. Germany is a place with over 300 public post-secondary institutions, and you can study there as a Canadian for free, for minimal tuition; there are nominal fees here and there.

The German economy is one of the most successful economies. I had the occasion to go there for some conferences when I was a student. I learned a lot from people I met over there about how particular industries run in that country, and I’m wondering if we could actually convince this government to financially contribute to colleges and universities. Why couldn’t we treat international students with more respect?