My question is to the Solicitor General. You and I have had many conversations about your dog, Hal, and my dog, Nellie, and how this is very important to us. I also want to thank you for how you kept in touch with me during the incident that happened in Hamilton with the dog, Merlin, that was dragged.

I want you to know that we want this to be successful, 100%. We support your concern, our concern, for animal welfare. But I do have to say, I really want to know how you are going to step up enforcement. The PAWS Act has a budget of about $21 million, compared to what the OSPCA had, which was about $6 million. During the same period of time, the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals laid about 2,000 charges. We just heard here from the member from Etobicoke–Lakeshore that PAWS laid about 650 charges. So the charges are going down.

My dog is a rescue dog. I got her from a farm which was breeding puppies. She was really a puppy mill accident; she wasn’t a purebred, and so they were going to discard her. My question to you is, how can you step up enforcement, and how do you know who the bad actors are? And the tough language—

Back to the Premier: The Hamilton public health lab completes thousands of water samples and time-sensitive medical tests every day and often takes overflow from other locations that are beyond capacity. In fact, Hamilton’s lab has one of the largest workload volumes in the province, which includes water testing for more than 11,000 private residences and hundreds of beaches. And yet, closure is looming.

The province should be improving access to health care and increasing our public health capacity, not cutting it.

So I ask the Premier, during National Medical Laboratory Week, why are you not investing in our public health infrastructure which is needed to keep Ontarians safe and healthy and keep all of these labs open?