Mr. Speaker, it’s a great pleasure to introduce Harsimranjeet Bhatia from the Ontario Association of Naturopathic Doctors. Harsimranjeet practises in my riding, and I look forward to meeting with them and the association later today. Welcome to your House.

It’s my great pleasure to welcome Aranka Jones, a constituent of Simcoe–Grey and a member of the Ontario Association of Naturopathic Doctors, to the House.

I’m pleased to honour and introduce Melinda Chartrand, a trustee who is with us from the Centre Jules-Léger Consortium. Welcome to Queen’s Park. Bienvenue and thank you for leadership for francophone students.

I just want to welcome three of the most very important people in my life who I could not love more: my wife, Melissa; my mom, Barb Smith; and my sister Gwen Smales, in the Speaker’s gallery. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

It’s Niagara Week here at Queen’s Park this week. I want to welcome Lord Mayor Gary Zalepa from the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. He is the only Lord Mayor in all of Canada.

Interjection.

Tim Jennings, executive director of the Shaw Festival, and his team; April Jeffs from Brock University; Zach Dadson from Brock University—and I want to welcome all the wine and craft brewers who are here today.

Get out and enjoy Niagara wine and craft beer. It’s the best in the province of Ontario.

We don’t permit political statements during introduction of visitors; I’ll remind the members.

The Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery.

The member for Stormont–Dundas–South Glengarry.

I, too, would like to welcome members of ACTRA in the galleries today.

It has been two years. It’s time to end the lockout.

I would like to welcome members of the Ontario Bioscience Innovation Organization. They will be putting on a health technology adaptation lunch today in 228.

Also, welcome to the Ontario Association of Naturopathic Doctors, who will be in the dining room at 5 o’clock.

Also, we have members of the Nurse Practitioners’ Association of Ontario here today.

Welcome to your House.

I want to introduce Mitchell Brum and Emily Carlucci, interns in my office who are visiting here today.

To use a scientific term, we’ve got a whole whack of visitors from the Niagara region here this week—far too many to name, but I want to welcome them all to Queen’s Park.

I encourage all members to come out this evening, from 5 to 7 p.m., for an amazing reception in honour of Niagara Week. You’re going to have some of the best that Niagara has to offer.

I especially want to acknowledge Melinda Chartrand, who is here with Csc MonAvenir; also, April Jeffs, who is joining us; as well as the regional chair, Jim Bradley.

Welcome to Queen’s Park, everyone.

How in the heck could I forget John Cleland, ACTRA member, ACTRA national councillor, executive committee member, and my friend. Thank you so much for being here, John.

I’d like to welcome Dr. Campbell from the Ontario Bioscience Innovation Organization and her team for their health tech adoption lunch today in 228-230. So please join.

Since 2018, we’ve registered over 12,500 new physicians in Ontario, with almost 10% of those being family physicians. We’ve also registered 80,000 new nurses and 2,400 new doctors last year alone.

Speaker, last year was a record-breaking year for nurses. We registered over 17,500 new nurses last year. We’ve registered over 33,000 new nurses in the last two years, and we have another 30,000 nurses that are enrolled and studying at a university or college in Ontario.

But we are not stopping there. We want this year to be another record year. We’re investing another $740 million to address the immediate staffing needs, supporting the expansion of over 3,000 new nursing seats at Ontario colleges and universities.

Speaker, we’ll continue to do what’s needed to ensure that the people of Ontario have the best publicly funded health care when and where they need it.

Just one year after our government launched our Your Health plan, we’re making steady progress to connect more people to convenient care. We started the year with an investment of $110 million to create 78 new and expanded interprofessional primary care teams. And in this year’s budget, we expanded that to $546 million over the next three years to ensure that 600,000 Ontarians have access to primary care.

We’ll continue to make the investments that are needed to ensure that all people of Ontario have access to the care that they need when they need it.

I apologize; I’m going up for the second time, but I noticed Daniel Grubb from Brock University came in with April Jeffs as well as Zach Dadson.

I just want to welcome you, as well, today. Thank you for coming.

And Niagara Week—come on down to the reception, 5 to 7, down in the legislative committee room, and enjoy some Niagara craft beer and wines.

Speaker, as I’m sitting here, I’m realizing there are so many familiar faces in the room, I can’t even keep up. But I would really be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the presence of the long-time national president of ACTRA, Ferne Downey, a dear friend of mine who’s in the room today too.

Stand up, Ferne.

A quarter of patients in Sault Ste. Marie without a family doctor—not a major concern? Thirty thousand patients in Kingston without access to primary care—not a major concern? These comments are not only insensitive, considering the 2.2 million people in this province without a family physician; they are dangerous.

I will ask the Premier, will he stand by the minister’s dangerous and insensitive comments?

Imagine—imagine—being in an emergency room. You go there because you’ve had these problems; you’ve been putting it off because you don’t have a family doctor. And then you sit there and you’re told not only do you have cancer but that it’s metastasized—in an emergency room.

I want to ask the Premier again to stand in this place and tell us whether he is going to continue to stand by his health minister’s insensitive comments.

Interjections.

This government, if they are recruiting any physicians, we can’t keep them. They are leaving faster than we can recruit them.

The Minister of Health said last week this is not a major concern for her government. I want to hear from the Premier himself, who is sitting right here today. I want to hear him speak to this. Do you stand by your comments? Do you stand by your minister’s comments, or are you going to remove her from her role? Are you going to remove this Minister of Health from her role for those insensitive comments?

Mr. Speaker, the opposition leader wants to hear from me; I’ll tell the opposition leader, as she sat in this House with the support of the Liberals, fired—let me repeat that: fired—1,700 people, and you support it: 1,700 nurses.

Again, as our great member said, we have put in over $300 million in investment for not only pediatric care but $546 million for 600,000 Ontarians, to match them up with primary care. But that’s not all we did. We’re making sure we’re building medical universities that, again, neither of your parties have ever built in 30 years. York University, they’re going to graduate primary care doctors. The Brampton university, they’re going to focus on primary care doctors. University of Toronto is going to focus on primary care doctors.

As our great member said, over 12,500 doctors have been hired and registered and working here in Ontario since we’ve been in office; 80,000 nurses—

It has been over two years since 28,000 ACTRA members have been locked out of the national commercial agreement by the ICA. ICA walked out on negotiations. This illegal lockout has been propped up by this government’s hiring of union-busting ad agencies to create ads that further stab ACTRA members in the back by using non-unionized replacement workers, pitting workers against one another.

Speaker, there are over 100 ACTRA members here today advocating. They’re actually fighting for their livelihood. The question is to the Premier. Will the Premier and Ministers of Labour and Culture attend the We Rise Up Rally here at Queen’s Park and hear how their illegal lockout is affecting ACTRA workers, help get ICA back to the table to negotiate, stop using union-busting ad agencies and support our Bill 90 to protect these workers, some of the most precarious workers in Ontario?

Stand up and save the workers.

Mr. Speaker, we have hired 3,000 additional educators under our Premier’s leadership and 9,000 additional education workers, as confirmed by the school boards in the province of Ontario. We’ve added a 22% increase in funding when compared to the former Liberals, billions of additional dollars in public expenditure.

But, Speaker, this goes back to the refrain of the Leader of the Opposition: In order to achieve—according to her, the benchmark of success is investing dollars, as if that is the only way by which we can improve outcomes for kids—one of which was delivering stability for four years of peace for children in Ontario. That delivers a better outcome for our kids.

Mr. Speaker, we reverted to merit-based hiring. Common sense should prevail, making sure the best educator is hired for when we teach our kids. We made a variety of curriculum reforms to instill math and literacy and core fundamental skills back into the curriculum. That’s how we lift standards in Ontario.

Mr. Speaker, we’ve added thousands of additional educators—thousands; 9,000, no less, additional education workers, even though the student population has largely been flat. Having said that, Speaker, funding per pupil is up to $13,852. In our rural communities, it’s over $15,000. In our northern communities, it’s over $19,000 per child. In our French school boards, it’s over $22,000 per child.

We are increasing investments, but we’re also holding school boards to account to demand better outcomes on the fundamental skills. That’s what parents expect in this province.

The Premier may want to talk to the family doctors who have a petition going right now to have that health minister fired.

Speaker, in spite of this government’s claim of historic spending in education, the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association has said that this year’s funding is the lowest level of per-student funding in more than a decade. They warn that these funding shortfalls are going to be felt in classrooms.

Since this government came into office, it’s not only family physicians and nurses and PSWs that we’re losing, we are also losing and we have lost 5,000 educators.

My question to the Premier is, will he commit today to reversing these historic cuts to education?

Let me be perfectly clear: A budget that ignores inflation is a budget that ignores reality. This is a reality, Speaker, where the cost of a computer a year ago is not the same that it is today. The difference? Well, Mr. Speaker, that is called a shortfall—a $1,500 shortfall for each and every student in this province, and our children and our parents are feeling it. In greater Essex, math and English help are on the chopping block. In Peel, specialized communications classes and literary coaches—gone.

So, my question again to the Premier is, how much more support are our kids supposed to give up?

When schools face cuts, it’s the kids who are the most vulnerable who are going to suffer the most. That’s the truth. Westdale in Hamilton lost their breakfast program. That’s on this government.

These supports are not just add-ons; they play an absolutely essential role in our children’s mental health, in their confidence. A kid who goes to school hungry is not going to be able to do as well. They’re not going to be able to concentrate in class. We all know that as parents.

We’re going to debate a motion later on today to get things right. Will the Premier, sitting right there, support our opposition day motion today to ensure that every child receives the high-quality education they deserve, regardless of their family’s income?

Interjections.

Interjection: Oh, come on.