On April 19, I was very pleased to be able to host the second annual Ottawa West–Nepean Good Neighbour Awards. These awards celebrate the people in our community who brighten and sustain the lives of their neighbours every day in ways big and small. They are all nominated by members of our community.

Some of them, like Shannon, Zoë, Jennifer, Maryam, Rana and Tricia, are amazing volunteers for local community organization like Matthew House; the Caldwell Family Centre; the Nepean, Rideau and Osgoode Community Resource Centre; and the Ottawa Valley Brain Injury Association. They are all doing incredible work supporting newcomers, low-income communities and people with concussions.

Others, like Neil, Leeanne and Paul, show up every day for people in their community, helping with moves, child care, shovelling driveways and lending a helping hand to newcomers and people living with disabilities.

Bill and Jeannie are teachers, sharing their wisdom and life experience with our community. Laura is a school librarian who tirelessly advocates for reading and connects kids with books.

Murray, Joyce, Jayne and Margo are community builders, bringing people together, forging connections and creating social networks that support and sustain one another.

David brightens the lives of his neighbours every single day with a positive message, and Pam supports her neighbours in adopting ecologically sustainable practices.

In a time when there’s so much in the world that can make us feel anxious or concerned, these neighbours remind us that we are always surrounded by goodness and there is always someone there to lend a helping hand. Thank you so much to each one of you for being a good neighbour.

I’d like to introduce a constituent from my riding of Ottawa South, who is also here with the association of landscape architects, Cameron Smith.

For the Premier, Mr. Speaker: The Premier campaigned on being transparent, ethical and accountable, yet six years after assuming power, his government has left nothing but a series of scandals in its wake, punctuated by backtracks and broken promises. Five ministers have resigned. Others have been banished from caucus. There’s an RCMP criminal investigation with a special prosecutor and judicial appointments for like-minded friends, with even a special office in Ottawa for a failed political candidate. Clearly, the gravy train is rolling full steam ahead with a new station in Ottawa.

So you’ll forgive me for being skeptical of the Premier’s taxpayer-funded self-promotional ads saying that everything in Ontario is okay. With shuttered emergency rooms and an unprecedented health care staffing crisis, he refuses to give details about our health care worker shortage, citing the risk of economic damage.

Will the Premier break his cone of silence and let his Minister of Health tell Ontarians how bad they have let our health care worker shortage really get?

I’m very pleased to be able to rise and present this petition that is signed by many residents of Ottawa, including Kimberly Byars of Ottawa West–Nepean. These constituents raise concerns about the privatization of our health care system and the fact that people across Ottawa and across Ontario are being charged fees for services that should by covered by OHIP, despite the fact that the Premier and the Minister of Health promised that nobody in the province would be required to pay for health care with their credit card.

They are also concerned about the fact that allowing privatized health care bleeds health care workers out of our public system. We don’t have an unlimited source of health care workers to provide nurses and doctors for both a public system and a private system.

So these petitioners are calling on the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to protect our health care system against sale by this government, to actually properly fund our hospitals, to recognize the foreign credentials of nurses and doctors who have been trained outside of Ontario, and also to ensure that everybody in Ontario has 10 paid sick days.

I wholeheartedly support this petition. I will add my name to it and send it to the table with page Liam.

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?

I hope this question is not too personal for the member. You may have heard me mention the gravy train a bit earlier and how the Premier has 48 people on the sunshine list in his office and how he’s added another person to work for him in Ottawa—actually, the candidate that you beat in the last election is going on the sunshine list and probably making more money than any minister is here. But that’s not the point.

Actually, that office is going to cost $1.7 million a year for someone who you beat, and we all know the reason for doing that is that’s what the Premier wants to spend to try and get the seat back. Don’t you think it would be smarter for the Premier actually to just invest that money in the things that we’re talking about here?