School boards in Toronto are facing a funding shortfall because of this government’s failure to properly fund education in Ontario. The Toronto District School Board is short $27 million. Parents often contact me about how this underfunding is affecting their kids’ education.

I think of Adhi. His son is in a developmentally delayed class at Clinton school. His son has been attacked twice by another child. He has been scarred physically. The school knows they need another skilled educator in the room to keep kids safe, but they don’t have the staffing allocation.

I think of Janice and Christine at Kensington. They’ve just learned they will have a grade 4/5/6 class for this coming year. That means a teacher will have to explain three different classes all day, every day. That’s a very difficult task. It means that older kids will sit there in the class and be bored, and it means younger kids will sit in the class and feel completely overwhelmed.

Stories like this come into my office every single week. Every school is having to do more with less, year in and year out.

The TDSB has asked the ministry to fund schools properly and to account for the extra costs they must shoulder because of provincial and federal directives, because of COVID, because of inflation. How does this ministry respond? How does the minister respond? They look the other way.

I want schools to be properly funded. I want our kids to have an excellent public school education. The TDSB is asking for a new funding deal, and I support these requests, and I hope the ministry and the government support these requests as well.

I’m happy to say that Kitchener is getting it done when it comes to building housing. Premier Ford recently joined me at Kitchener city hall to congratulate them on a job well done. For meeting their housing goals, Kitchener received $14 million from our government as part of the Building Faster Fund. The fund is a three-year, $1.2-billion program that encourages municipalities to address the housing supply crisis here in the province. The plan allows municipalities to receive funding for making significant progress against their targets by providing money for infrastructure to build more homes.

Kitchener broke ground on a total of 3,579 new housing units in 2023. That’s 139% of their targeted goal. They knocked it out of the park. Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic and the rest of his council have done a phenomenal job. Berry knows that addressing the housing crisis is a team effort.

The mayor went on to say, “Tackling this challenge will take an all-of-community approach with all orders of government and the private and not-for-profit sectors working together to ensure every Ontario resident has both a roof over their head, and any supports they may need, in order to live a great life.” I can wholeheartedly support that sentiment.

Thank you very much to Kitchener for getting it done.

Speaker, that’s just categorically not true. We increased employment services’ funding when we led employment service transformation across Ontario.

But, Speaker, to look at that in isolation would be doing a disservice—a disservice to the hundreds of thousands of—

It would be doing a disservice to the hundreds of thousands of men and women trained through the Skills Development Fund for better jobs with a bigger paycheque. We’ve been helping racialized, marginalized, socio-economically disadvantaged groups all across Ontario have access to a meaningful job, Speaker.

And I visited the justice-affected individuals at Oaks Revitalization centre. I’m meeting with them—I think it’s this week or next, Speaker—to talk first-hand with men and women literally who have had run-ins with justice, but today, thanks to this Premier, this government, they are taxpaying members of society working on the front lines of skilled trades.

Again, the only people in this House who want these men and women to do more with less is the NDP, because they voted, every time, against budget measures that have put more funding into programs like the Skills Development Fund.

I would encourage that member to join me in the union training halls in his own riding, look them in the face and explain to those business reps why he voted against SDF funding that’s helping people who are out of work get access to a job. It’s because he doesn’t want to build the hospitals. He doesn’t want to build the schools. He wants misery. He wants government handouts. He doesn’t want to give these people a leg-up.

That’s what we’re doing with this government. We’re giving people dignity and purpose, and I’m proud of it.

Interjections.