I’ve enjoyed getting to know the member but I’ve got to just say a few things. First of all, this government presided over the most lost class days of anywhere in North America because of its abject failure to take the pandemic seriously at the time when they did. That’s the first thing.

Secondly, the other critical point they need to understand is that nobody on this side of the House ever once said a student with special needs did not have a right to get into their classroom and learn. We never, ever spent a day without thanking the staff for going in to help them. But on this side of the House we don’t just believe in words. We believe in raising the revenue required to put into the system so those children and that staff can do their jobs well. These guys are just about words. They’re just about platitudes. They’re just about wonderful aspirational things while shorting the system, underfunding kids and underfunding our staff.

The mom of the seven-year-old I spoke about earlier has started a practice of going to her school three times a day so her kid can get fresh air and walk around. This is absolute insanity. We are a first-world country. We are one of the world’s leading jurisdictions in public educational achievement and we are putting students with disabilities under the school bus right now. That’s what we’re doing. We have to stop that. We have to make sure there’s adequate funding for special education, and this government has to move beyond rhetoric and move into a funding position to deliver on the promises they’re making.

This is the thing: I don’t think you’d find a person in this building who would be opposed to more accountability, but when you begin a project of law without actually consulting the key partners in the education sector, how good is your experiment likely to be? Consult all the single stakeholders, please. There are good practices out there. Follow them.