I’m standing today to talk about the rather exciting past few weeks I’ve had from the perspective of culmination of personal projects. I’ve said many times that I came here because of my focus on crime prevention, and I’ve really seen that recognized in the last few weeks.

Two weeks ago, we saw a $150,000 investment in The Fourth R out of the faculty of education in Western, which puts a curriculum module into Ontario high schools that allows students—and middle schools—to focus on building healthy relationships, with a particular focus on gender-based violence. Then, just last Friday, the Minister of Education and myself were at the Tim Hortons Field in Hamilton to announce what I think is safe to say is a groundbreaking investment: $875,000 into the Coaching Boys Into Men program, which will allow 23 separate violence-against-women agencies throughout the province to certify 400 coaches and teachers at over 200 high schools on, basically, how to give young men and boys the tools that they need to become willing allies in the fight to combat violence against women.

It was an incredibly exciting announcement. This has been a lot of personal advocacy on my part. I couldn’t have done it without, at education, Justin and Kennan, but also, thank you so much to Sue Taylor, Dr. Peter Jaffe, Dr. Claire Crooks, Dr. David Wolfe and Ray Hughes. I’m looking forward to continuing working with all of you. Thank you so much again.

I’m so pleased that you asked me that question, because 1,326 sexual assault cases got thrown out of court in 2022 because you are underfunding the court system. This tough-on-crime government are allowing literally rapists to walk free. So that program that you were just talking about—you spent all that money rambling up this convicted criminal, but if that guy goes past 18 months, he walks. That’s the system that you’re so proud of.

Interjections.

You cited some stats around people making distinctive choices not to go into that sector because the working conditions are so tense and so hard, and they’ve been made more difficult by this government. But I always think about the existing resources in health right now. My concierge at my building, a block away, is a renal specialist from Pakistan. He would like to be a practising doctor in Ontario. So I would urge the government to look at all avenues to ensure we have the appropriate health care professionals working in Ontario.

The base funding that was included in this budget is already allocated to Bill 124. It’s already spent.

This is—22 hospitals in Ontario are running deficits. So this budget allocation, unfortunately for all of us in all of our ridings, misses the mark so profoundly. It truly was a missed opportunity to hear the acute message that we heard from acute care and allocate the appropriate funding. That did not happen.

I was pleased to see the government do that with midwives a little bit. So why not expand the scope so that actually we can meet the needs of health care? I will say my future daughter-in-law—I’ve told you my son is getting married. She’s a nurse at Grand River Hospital—

Interjections.

With every passing year, that hole gets bigger and bigger, right? This comes back to inflationary costs. But the fact that hospitals right now are—22 are running deficits. It should be a red flag for this government that the funding is not keeping pace.

But also, when you inject that 30% for-profit part, that 30% is a huge carve-out in a multi-billion-dollar budget item. So what I would have to say is that I guess I’m going to have to see you on “the dark side of the moon,” because things are not going very well in the hospital sector.