Merci à ma collègue de Nickel Belt pour cette question.

It’s a very important question because the mental health of our children really is suffering, and sadly, the resources just aren’t there.

So 95% of schools in the province say they need more help with mental health than what they’re getting. Only 9% of schools have regular access to a regularly scheduled mental health professional, and half of schools have no access at all, and unfortunately, francophone schools are overrepresented in that half of schools with no access at all.

When I speak with directors of education and school boards within the francophone system, they tell me it’s incredibly challenging to recruit French-speaking mental health professionals and the kind of support they’re getting from the government is just inadequate to address the task.

Unfortunately, French-speaking children get no assistance with their mental health, even though they’re dealing with the same challenges that English-speaking children are dealing with, and it’s completely unacceptable in this province.

I’ve spoken to parents who’ve felt like they can’t enroll their children in our publicly funded schools for that reason. I’ve spoken to other parents who say their heart is in their throat when they send their kids off to school every morning because they don’t know if they’re going to be safe.

We are failing these kids and unfortunately, it’s a larger pattern on the part of the government towards people with disabilities. This is how they’re treating kids in our provincial schools. This is how they’re treating older adults in our developmental disabilities sector. This is how they’re treating people on ODSP—

And with regard to high schools in Ottawa, the CEPEO, the Conseil des écoles publiques de l’Est de l’Ontario, has been asking for funding to support a public French high school in Centretown. They have land that the NCC has committed. All they need is the government to step up and commit funding, and unfortunately, the minister has refused to even meet with them, so I would encourage him to do that immediately.

Thank you so much to the member for Nickel Belt for those remarks. I don’t think there’s a person in the House who understands our health care system better than the member for Nickel Belt. The government would do well to listen to her.

I’ve been speaking with organizations in Ottawa West–Nepean that are providing not-for-profit home care and community care services—Carefor, the Olde Forge Community Resource Centre, Jewish Family Services, Meals on Wheels—and all of them are struggling so much due to the underfunding of these home care and community care services by this government. They are struggling because, yes, the government promised additional funding but then hasn’t delivered it, so they are bleeding money every single month, waiting for this money to actually flow. They are losing staff every month because they can no longer compete with other sectors. The staff feel like they are being asked to do the impossible, to fill in the gaps of the social safety net this government has broadened.

My question to the member from Nickel Belt is why should anybody trust this government’s changes on home care and community care when they’ve done such a bad job managing the system to date?