My question is to the Minister of Health. Niagara is a senior community with higher health needs, so it is concerning that our family doctor crisis is blooming from bad to worse.

Since June, residents in Niagara without a family doctor have grown from 53,000 to 73,000. That number is expected to double by 2026. St. Catharines alone needs 51 doctors right now. Family physicians alarm bell wasn’t just rung, it is blaring.

Despite promises, St. Catharines’s health teams see no base funding boost to support our already stretched, aging doctors. They are overworked, underpaid and buried in red tape. When will you halt the doctor drain and prioritize St. Catharines and seniors across Niagara?

This petition is labeled as “To Raise Social Assistance Rates.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Ontario’s social assistance rates are well below Canada’s official Market Basket Measure poverty line and far from adequate to cover the rising costs of food and rent: $733 for individuals on OW and $1,308 for ODSP;

“Whereas an open letter to the Premier and two cabinet ministers, signed by over 230 organizations, recommends that social assistance rates be doubled for both Ontario Works (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP);

“Whereas small increases to ODSP have still left these citizens” well “below the poverty line. Both they and those receiving the frozen OW rates are struggling to survive at this time of alarming inflation;

“Whereas the government of Canada recognized in its CERB program that a ‘basic income’ of $2,000 per month was the standard support required by individuals who lost their employment during the pandemic;

“We, the undersigned citizens of Ontario, petition the Legislative Assembly to double social assistance rates for OW and ODSP.”

I cannot think of a better petition to affix my name to, and I will send it down to the table with page Isaac.

Through you, Madam Speaker: Considering the blue-ribbon panel recommendation for an urgent $2.5 billion investment over three years to sustain our post-secondary institutions and the current plan to provide less than half of this amount, that’s starving the sector until it implodes—well, it’s imploded. This is a crisis created and not found.

Can the government explain how it plans to address the remaining financial gap to prevent the undermining of quality and accessibility of higher education in Ontario?

My question is to the member from Don Valley East. Finally the government is addressing some of the long-standing post-secondary issues that this Conservative government really has been ignoring. It’s not enough, but it is actually a start, and this is true. It’s been five years of neglect; that is also true.

But it is also true that the sector had been neglected by the previous Liberal government as well. The leader of the Ontario Liberals has not made any commitment to freeze tuition. Certainly there is no commitment to lowering them, as of yet. Could the member from Don Valley East elaborate on tuition fees and the importance of committing to lowering them within the perspective of how students are struggling after nearly a decade and a half of neglect?