I want thank my friend from Kiiwetinoong for his remarks. For those tuning in who don’t know what we’re debating, we’re debating Bill 188, the government’s latest effort around child protection law.

The member spoke about Amy Owen. This is a story from our community that broke hearts wide open when we learned of it, because it’s exactly as the member is describing: It is a child discarded to the for-profit foster care system, which disregarded her life. For the record, I want to read in something that Amy wrote on Facebook 11 months before she took her own life. She wrote, “I am just a kid and my life is a nightmare.”

I guess I would ask us, would we allow any child anywhere in the province of Ontario to be housed in a place that did them harm? And are we going to correct that harm—I’m asking the member: Are we going to correct that harm by continuing to fund for-profit operators who, as you say, often refer to the children in their system as “cash cows,” or do we need to move to a non-profit public system, with appropriate staff, that is well run?

Well, I want to thank the member opposite for the question. As he indicated, while we’re here today debating Bill 188, we’re also talking about a whole-of-government approach to making sure that all our children, regardless of their backgrounds, have equal opportunity moving forward.

Just on an interesting and related point, I was at the Ontario Association of Counselling and Attendance Services recently. They were holding their AGM in Collingwood. We were working with that sector and counsellors to make sure that children in school have the best opportunity moving forward, through access to counselling and attendance officers, to address the kids at risk, to come up with a plan to keep them in school. To the extent that children in care fall under those headings, I would hope they would have the opportunity to have those same services.

This is a government that’s invested record amounts since we’ve come into office, a 555% increase in mental health supports in our school system. This is a government that is working across the board to make sure that all children, including the children in our child care and welfare system, have the best opportunity moving forward to get the training skills they need moving forward.