I want to thank the Ontario Medical Students Association for a terrific meeting this morning, and I think they will be filtering into the House soon.

I also want to shout out Geordie MacLaren, who is here from the great town of Vankleek Hill, who I grew up with, from the beef farmers. Good to see you, Geordie. Welcome to the people’s House.

I want to thank the member for Hamilton Mountain for her work, for a very long time, as our child critic.

I want to read into the record and just get the member’s response to remarks made by the great Cindy Blackstock, who, in 2016, when the federal government lost a human rights tribunal case, said the following—I’m wondering if there’s an echo in her remarks this afternoon.

Ms. Blackstock said, “Nothing the government can do can make up for the wrongs it consciously perpetrated against kids. And I want to emphasize that it was conscious. It wasn’t an accident.”

The report went on to say that while the federal government may be responsible, “funding at least 93% of on-reserve child welfare, the Ontario government created the system where these children died and provides the law within which the child welfare agencies operate.”

I’m just wondering if the member for Hamilton Mountain has any reaction to that.

Thank you very much to my friend for his presentation. I’m just wondering if he has any reflections on the fact that at the rate that I’m seeing, with the evidence we have, we have a situation where, with every week, we have a few kids who are passing away in one way or another in care. He’s lived it. I’ve grown up with friends who have had a similar experience. While I acknowledge the positive things in this bill, we have youth in our province we’re losing. So how could this bill be amended to make sure that we get the services and the supports, as my friend from Hamilton Mountain was saying, into these homes to make sure that the kids who are in crisis get the help they need?

I want to thank the member for Kitchener Centre for talking from the perspective of a social worker, which is a useful one for this discussion. I want her to reflect upon what we could do as a province to incentivize people to pursue social work as a career, particularly for marginalized people, given that you’ve walked in those shoes. And I’m wondering if you could talk specifically about cases where we know private, for-profit homes are inadequately staffing residential facilities for people at risk.