Six years after the Conservatives formed government, Ontario still doesn’t have a strategy to address hate and racism. This is an embarrassment and another failure on this government’s tarnished record.

Not only does Ontario lack a comprehensive anti-hate strategy, but we also have a Premier who evokes racist tropes from behind a government podium. Just last week, without any evidence, the Premier speculated that “immigrants” are behind the shooting at a Jewish girls’ school. It is a shockingly racist comment to scapegoat immigrants for this senseless act. The police who are actually investigating the crime had to distance themselves from the Premier’s comments.

This is the same Premier who blamed COVID-19 on immigrants. He blames Ontario’s housing crisis on international students—the same Premier who vilified Umar Zameer and called for the jailing of this brown, Muslim man who has now been found innocent by the courts.

The Premier has denied the existence of systemic racism and cancelled Ontario’s Anti-Racism Directorate, including its committees on anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism and anti-Indigenous racism. It seems like the Premier could use the directorate’s advice now more than ever before.

Ontario cannot combat racism if this Premier does not recognize that it exists. Naming it is the first step to dismantling its hateful power.

I feel like I have to say this every day in this House. All forms of hate are interconnected and have the same goal: to divide us as people, to make us afraid, to have us not trust each other and to distract us from building stronger communities that actually care for each other. Ontario needs a comprehensive—