Thank you to the minister for this important piece of legislation. I would like to highlight that, in today’s world, with AI coming strongly in place and more tools coming with AI in them, we need to protect the identity of, and data identity, keeping in mind as well that AI is coming and it’s going to be here to help—

This government has made a commitment to improve the way that government services are delivered. As our society and economy transition further into the digital realm, there’s growing expectation that government services follow suit and evolve to meet the demands of the modern world. Our government must recognize and ensure that government services are accessible to all and secure across a variety of delivery platforms. So, Speaker, can the minister please explain how the proposed legislation will enhance the delivery of services in a manner that is both responsive and reliable?

I thank the member for Mississauga–Erin Mills for the question. Of course, that member was parliamentary assistant to the ministry for some time, even before I had the privilege of being appointed minister, so this piece of legislation is very much something that he has contributed to through his efforts.

Now, the bill was crafted in response to valid concerns raised by Ontarians. We recognize, and all Ontarians recognize, the incredible potential of AI—but its risks. So we begin with trust and, of course, the bill contains the words, “trust in the public sector.” Also, schedule 1, which contains the comprehensive definition of artificial intelligence, is the Enhancing Digital Security and Trust Act—once again, the word “trust.”

The AI definition that we have come up with in this bill is at section 1, subsection 1, paragraph (a) of schedule 1: “‘artificial intelligence system’ means, (a) a machine-based system that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers from the input it receives in order to generate outputs.” That’s the key, and this can include things that influence physical or virtual environments.

So we are taking the lead. We have made the investments. We are getting the good advice within the ministry and across the public sector, and so much good advice has been provided. We are building that trust, and we’re getting it done for the children of our province—our future.

As the Minister of Education has said, and I completely agree, we prefer co-operation and conversation with all partners in the public and private sectors, rather than litigation. We choose co-operation and conversations over litigation. That’s why this proposed legislation aims to establish data protections for children and minors engaged with public sector organizations. Parents need to be confident that their children are protected. They certainly can be. We worked carefully with not just the Minister of Education and the—

Good morning, Speaker.

On May 24 and May 25, Chatham-Kent celebrated a rare and unique ceremony in honour of one of our residents, George Osei, a native of Ghana and proud Ontarian.

In Ghana, the installation of a new chief is marked by a ceremony called an “enstoolment.” This is a significant event in the community. It signifies the transfer of power and authority to a new chief. The ceremony involves playing traditional music, song, dance, a community feast and the wearing of traditional attire. During the ceremony, the new chief is recognized and given symbols of authority, such as a crown and a traditional stool. The event is also a time to celebrate unity and reaffirmation of community values.

George Osei was originally from the town of Atebubu, Ghana, and he can trace his roots back to the region’s royal family. George has been a pillar of Chatham-Kent and has exemplified the virtues of leadership, integrity and dedication to his work and his family, committed to the advancement and the well-being of all people in our multicultural community.

Chatham-Kent has a long history of welcoming those from every corner of the world. Congratulations to George and your family. I thank you for contributing to Chatham-Kent’s rich tapestry as we continue to celebrate the history and traditions of all people who call beautiful Chatham-Kent and Ontario home.

I rise today to speak about punishing and mercenary social assistance rates. Even after the 21.6% Harris cuts of the 1990s, people are far, far worse off now. Most disturbingly, these Conservative cuts carry judgment, creating anger and resentment towards those who simply require our help and assistance.

Conservatives try to strip away our communities’ desire and responsibility to care for the less fortunate. Poisonous words like “handout” deliberately infected common discourse. After 15 long years of Liberal rule, those on social assistance were worse off than during the Harris regime. Many empty, vacuous words were spoken, but Liberals only decided to help those who need it the most at the end of their rule with the Basic Income Pilot project. Instead of actually fixing the well-known problem with funding, they committed to a study.

Premier Ford promised that he would let the study carry out, but it didn’t take long until that promise was broken and it was shut down—shut down because Conservatives didn’t want to see the positive results. They took away hope. How can anyone stabilize their life when they’re consistently struggling and at risk?

Ontarians on social assistance live in deep, deep poverty and their monthly housing bills are often more than what they receive. This is before even attempting to buy food. It’s survival mode for most, if not all.

This government pats itself on the back for indexing people well below the poverty line. Maytree has found that Ontario Works recipients would need $17,000 more per year just to reach the poverty line.

I want to thank the United Way for their Make It Livable campaign to double social assistance rates. I call on the government members to remember our common humanity, think of those in desperate need and double social assistance rates now.

La semaine dernière, j’ai visité le Club Amical du Nouveau Sudbury et j’ai été impressionné par toutes les activités qu’il offre aux personnes âgées de notre communauté. Il offre des jeux, comme les fléchettes, le billard et les cartes. Il planifie des soirées de théâtre, de musique et de danse. Il organise des ateliers, des évènements et des soupers en communauté. Il encourage la vie active avec du yoga, de l’exercice, des journées de golf et plus. Et tout ceci est organisé par des bénévoles.

Le club amical compte 333 membres, et ils ont créé une communauté positive et solidaire. Non seulement est-ce que le club est un espace sécuritaire et amusant pour toutes les personnes âgées, mais c’est aussi une place très spéciale pour ceux qui n’ont pas de famille en ville ou qui sont seuls. Cela les aide à se faire des amis, à remonter le moral et à s’assurer qu’on prend soin d’eux comme communauté.

Vous pouvez ressentir l’engagement du conseil d’administration envers le bien-être des personnes âgées dans la façon dont ils s’expriment—ils sont un groupe attentionné. Tu peux vraiment voir ceci par la manière dont les membres sont impliqués avec le club. Certains font du bénévolat depuis plus de 30 ans.

Pour plus que 40 ans, le club amical offre de nombreux services pour aider à soutenir la communauté francophone âgée à Sudbury. Ils et elles devraient être fiers de leurs réalisations passées et présentes.

Mes amis du club amical, merci beaucoup pour la belle visite et pour tout ce que vous faites pour nos personnes âgées de la communauté.

Thank you for the response. We’ll move to another question.

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

And now I move to the member for Sudbury for the next member’s statement.

I’m very lucky to have a beautiful niece and two beautiful nephews. Olivia is seven. Conor is going to be seven in September; he’s wrapping up lacrosse season and he’s about to start soccer season. And then Shea is going to be three in July, and he actually played his first soccer game. He really likes scoring goals, so we hope that bodes well for him.

But I’m nervous about the impacts of technology, AI and social media—what impacts those are going to have on my two nephews and my niece. Could the minister explain how this bill will help protect Conor, Shea and Olivia?

This weekend, Waterloo region hosted the spring games of Special Olympics Ontario, and myself and my friend Corey attended the opening ceremonies. Frankly, we were blown away. It was held in Waterloo, originally scheduled prior to the pandemic but rescheduled, and incredibly well organized by Waterloo regional police, with Chief Mark Crowell heading it up for the first time. I was amazed by how organized everything was and the amount of passion and dedication that had gone into it.

We were able to witness the law enforcement torch run and athletes entering the arena to light the torch. The torch run is something that has been going on for years now to support the Special Olympics. It’s a really interesting partnership between police as sort of the community members that bring everything together.

The one thing that everybody kept saying as we watched the athletes come in was people saying that their faces hurt, because they couldn’t stop smiling, and I was one of those. In a time where people are somewhat dour and cynical, it was quite amazing to see a group of athletes who are so incredibly delighted to participate in something that they love and to have that much enthusiasm.

It also marked the retirement of CEO Glenn MacDonell, who has spent 35 years supporting Special Olympics Ontario. The love that these athletes had for him was just incredible to see. So thank you to Mr. MacDonell, thank you to WRPS and thank you to all of the amazing athletes that competed this weekend in Waterloo region.

May 17, 1974, is a day that many Cambridge residents will never forget. It started as a beautiful sunny day, but Mother Nature had other plans. On that fateful day 50 years ago, a flash flood swept through the city, literally swallowing up all of downtown Galt. I was a teenager at the time, and I remember my friends and I riding our bikes downtown, where we witnessed the most incredible scenes. There were people in canoes and motorboats rescuing people from their homes and from their businesses. There were cars literally floating down the streets. Fortunately, no deaths resulted from the flood, but it did cause more than $6 million in property damage. That was a lot of money back in the 1970s.

Recently, the people of my riding gathered at the Fire Hall Museum to mark the 50th anniversary of the great flood of 1974. They reminisced about what they saw and what happened on that devastating day.

Speaker, the events of May 17, 1974, were a once-in-a-lifetime experience for many people of Cambridge. I thank the volunteers in my community who have worked hard to preserve the memories of that day.

What is it with this Premier’s obsession with booze? Spending a billion dollars to put beer and wine in corner stores a little more than a year earlier than planned is simply unjustifiable. You have to ask yourself, who benefits? Well, it’s the same people who always do: the wealthy and well-connected insiders and friends and multinational corporations. It’s the Premier’s billion-dollar boozedoggle—a billion dollars to speed this up by a little more than a year.

What’s the rush, Premier? Premier, you could have waited for the contract to end and made a better deal—a deal that would have benefited all Ontarians, not just the wealthy, well-connected and large corporations.

The Premier gave away the store in his billion-dollar boozedoggle, and Ontarians will pay.

I wish the Premier had the same sense of urgency for the 2.3 million Ontarians who don’t have a family doctor, or for fixing our crumbling schools, or for helping children with exceptional needs who aren’t getting the help they need in our schools, or for keeping rural emergency rooms and hospitals open. A billion dollars could have been better spent on the things that matter most to Ontario families.

On May 18, the Canadian Egyptian Heritage Association once again hosted Canada’s largest Egyptian festival, the sixth annual Discover Egypt festival at Celebration Square in Mississauga. Over 28,000 people gathered to enjoy Egyptian music, listen to entertaining performers, eat traditional foods, and celebrate Egyptian culture. The following day, they visited the Egyptian Museum in Mississauga, where visitors had an opportunity to view many of the artifacts and learn about Egyptian history, with a light and sound presentation of the exhibits on display. This was a great weekend for Egyptian Canadians to showcase their food, music, culture and heritage to Canadians.

I look forward to seeing the festival again next year.

And of course, we are all preparing for Egyptian Heritage Month, which is fast approaching in July.

On a related topic, I want to acknowledge the important work of Philopateer Christian College, a school in Mississauga with over 420 students, which has been faithfully serving our Mississauga community for over 25 years. Throughout this time, they have educated more than 10,000 students. We celebrated their silver jubilee last week by watching a lovely performance by their students at the Living Arts Centre and enjoying a gala dinner.

I am happy to have watched and supported their resilience and success over the years. I thank them for their work supporting the Egyptian, Arabic and Coptic communities in Mississauga.

They will soon be opening a second campus in Ottawa, and I wish them well for the next 25 years.

Speaker, as we are approaching June, we are also approaching the Senior Volunteer Appreciation Week and Seniors Month in Ontario. This is a time dedicated to honouring our seniors.

In 2021, this House passed my Senior Volunteer Appreciation Week Act, establishing the first week of June each year as Senior Volunteer Appreciation Week. I am proud to say that this initiative has since inspired our communities to express their gratitude towards our senior volunteers. It has also encouraged seniors to remain active and involved in community life.

To mark this special week, I will once again be presenting the senior volunteer awards to our cherished senior volunteers in Markham–Unionville. Their efforts have had a profound impact across multiple generations, fostering a spirit of community and continuity. Their selfless sacrifice deserves our utmost respect and recognition.

I sincerely encourage my fellow members to honour our seniors and senior volunteers this June. I am also grateful for the opportunity this legislation has provided to highlight their invaluable contributions.

Recently, I attended a seniors’ tea in Ottawa West–Nepean, with over 200 seniors in attendance, and as I made my way around the room chatting with people, I heard the same thing over and over again: “Can you please get the Premier to fix our health care system?”

It was the same at the General Burns community fun day on Saturday as hundreds of residents stopped by my tent. Person after person told me, “Our health care system is broken. What can we do to get the government to actually care?”

But while Ottawa residents are desperate for action, the health minister says that there is no recruitment and retention problem for family doctors; this at a moment when 2.3 million people in Ontario have no family doctor, and every week, my office hears from constituents who are about to lose their family doctor or have already lost their family doctor.

The Premier has also fought in court for two years against your right to know how many nurses and personal support workers we are short in Ontario, saying it would be “economically damaging” to share this information, even as they don’t care how damaging it is to your health.

The government is also paying more to private, for-profit clinics to perform the same surgeries that are being provided for less in our public hospitals, meaning that taxpayer dollars are going to fund profits instead of increasing the number of surgeries, even though our public hospitals have the capacity to do more.

I agree with my constituents. It’s time for the government to stop playing games with our health care system and get to work on fixing it so that you get the health care you deserve.

It’s a pleasure to rise in the House and highlight some good news we had over the weekend in Brampton, particularly for our Sikh community. The Sikh community have been in Canada for over 100 years and they played a vital role in shaping our province and the beautiful city that Brampton is today.

This past weekend, I spent time at Brampton North’s own local gurdwara, the Gurdwara Guru Nanak Mission Centre. The sangat at Guru Nanak Mission Centre has been fundraising for years, with the goal of building a new gurdwara on the site. Countless individuals have given their time, their money and their resources, and on Sunday, we were finally able to announce and put shovels in the ground on the site of a brand new gurdwara, right at Guru Nanak Street and Dixie.

Speaker, a gurdwara is not only a place of worship, but it’s also a community hub where all are welcome, and at any time you can drop by for a free warm meal and be greeted with open arms and blessings. Selfless service, or “seva,” is an important value for the Sikh community, and the construction of the new gurdwara doesn’t just mark a good day for the Sikh community, but a good day for religious freedom in Brampton and all across our country.

I invite all members of this House to come up to Brampton North and learn more about the values of the Sikh community. Join me for the Gurdwara Guru Nanak Mission Centre’s annual Nagar Kirtan parade on June 9. I hope to see you all there.

I’ll end my speech today with the way I ended it on Sunday, Speaker:

Waheguruji Ka Khalsa Waheguruji Ki Fateh.

Meegwetch, Speaker. I am so honoured to welcome my mom in the House.

Applause.

Singing of Happy Birthday.

It’s my pleasure to welcome our page captain, Paige Armstrong from Chatham-Kent–Leamington, a grade 8 student at St. Ursula Catholic School in Chatham. Paige is supported by her mother, 28-year registered nurse Lora Ann Armstrong, and her brother Richard. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

This morning, I have the pleasure of welcoming St. Clement’s School, who is visiting from my riding: their teacher Elizabeth Boyden, Rose Keenan, Covenant Ezechim, Mia Sonia de Pellegrin Overgaard, Tala Abdo, Allison Cheng, Hailey Finkelstein, Cassidy Bryce and Jocelyn Chen.

I’d like to welcome to the House Will Trefiak. He’s a cyber security and privacy consultant. Welcome to your House.