Thank you for the question.

I’m not sure if the member was here for the debate yesterday, but I think what was made very clear to me in the debate yesterday is that there is a unanimity of respect in this place for folks who work in first responder positions, whether they be police, firefighters, personal support workers, crisis workers. There is no disagreement about that.

I’d just invite the member to rethink the priority in the question. Is the priority to try to go after a single member in this place? Or should the priority be using the budget of this province to help people in crisis and people at risk? I know many officers back in Ottawa who do that every day. But right now, this government’s budget does not do that. People are being injured, and people are being hurt. I invite her to think and the government to think—let’s reallocate the money that we’re spending to make sure nobody else is hurt—

What I’d tell the member is, we don’t know what’s happening. This is a private contract with 23 orthopaedic surgeons at one of our public campuses of the Ottawa Hospital, the Riverside Campus.

At a minimum, I think it’s incumbent upon the government to at least tell the people of Ottawa and the people of Ontario—what is this arrangement? How are people being remunerated? Why weren’t these public employees simply offering these services within our public ORs? Why do we need to create a corporation that brings in its materials from Toronto every day by truck? What’s the business case for this? We haven’t heard a response yet.

We have 2,000 orthopaedic surgery folks waiting in acute. We can reutilize our public systems to do it better. I don’t know why there’s a need for secrecy.

I’m trying to make a serious effort this morning. My serious effort is to make the case for this government to invest massively in the operational funding of public transit, because officers like the gentlemen the member named, riders, workers—it is those lives that are at risk, and we should be spending more time allocating the budget of this province to help ensure their safety than taking potshots at each other.

If the member feels passionately about something a member of this House said, she should bring it up with that member directly.

The debate I wanted to have this morning is about whether a province that is rich, that has talent, that has expertise can help people in crisis and can ensure safety on public transit. That the debate I wanted to have this morning. And I hope the government is listening.

I will never forget a moment, in the recent election campaign, when I knocked on the door of somebody who works as an EA in our school system. I had knocked on this neighbour’s door before. When she came to the door, she had a tank top on, and there was a scratch going all the way from the top of her shoulder—it was very visible—right down to her wrist. I said, “Are you alright?” She said, “No, I had a really rough day at work.” And I said, “What happened at work?” She said, “Well, there’s a young guy I’m responsible for who has cleared the whole classroom three times last week. He grabbed me, and he had nails—I keep asking the family to make sure the nails are cut—and my arm was completely ripped up.” She talked about how the advice she got on one occasion when she reported this incident up the chain was to wear a Kevlar-reinforced sweater, issued by the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. That’s where we’re at.

So the member is right; we need to make sure that we support kids with mental health needs and support the workers in the public school system.

Let me say this to the member, through you, Speaker: If we actually wanted to make a significant difference in the lives of low-income seniors and persons with disabilities, we would heed the advice of advocates in the sector and double social assistance rates immediately. It can be counterintuitive for people who think, “Well, we shouldn’t just be giving money to low-income people. They should have to earn it.” This notion of thrift and hard work—an important part of our society—is in this moment counterproductive, because what the research shows is that the cost of doubling ODSP and OW is around $9 billion, as I understand, but the cost of poverty, according to the experts in the sector, is $33 billion. So give people—