I think everyone in here can agree that there should be zero tolerance of children being bullied in a classroom, on their school bus or anywhere in the province of Ontario. I’ve had the opportunity to stand both in opposition and here in government to make my mark as best I could to support children who may be vulnerable to such attacks, whether it was anti-Indigenous, anti-Black racism, for children with special needs, the LGBTQ+ population, Muslim students, Asian students and Indo-Canadian students.

I think that we can all agree that every student deserves a safe place to learn in the province of Ontario and to get to school. But since October 7, some children in this province have been impacted quite negatively, and that’s the Jewish students both in Ottawa, Toronto and elsewhere across the province. Jewish day schools have been shot up and children in our classrooms in different parts of the province have dealt with racism. These Jewish students are beneficiaries, of course, of increased Holocaust remembrance education, but we need to do more.

I want to talk a little bit about Tejaswinhi Srinivas, who had to take to the Ottawa Citizen this week to talk about her five-year-old child who was on the school bus and said this: “Someone on my bus told everyone Jewish” person “to raise their hand. But I knew not to do it, Daddy. They sounded mean.” Can you image that that’s happening in Ontario today?

Every member here has said on occasion, at least once a year, that “never again” is now. “Never again” is now. “Never again” is now. And now is the time for all of us to stand up for zero tolerance of bullying of Jewish students in the province of Ontario.