Speaker, what I’m going to rise in this place and defend all the time is community safety. The member can engage in any number of culture-war statements he wants, but what I’m going to ask him and what I’m going to ask every member in this House is: What does that accomplish by the day’s end? What does that actually accomplish? Will it bring back the lives we’ve lost of first responders? Will it bring back Sergeant Mueller? Will it bring back Carl Reinboth? Will it give people a new lease on life, or is it just about scoring points on Twitter?

I’m not here to score points on Twitter. I’m here to fight for my community. I’m here to make sure that we do right by people living in crisis, and comments like that? It’s just performance. I’m interested in actual solutions. Believe it or not, Speaker, I’ve found that there are times members of this government will do that. I invite this member to talk to those members of this government, because those are people actually engaged in serious work, not games.

I began my life as a community organizer, Speaker, in this city, working with the great Jack Layton to make sure people didn’t freeze to death on the streets of this city and got access through a housing-first program. We convinced a Conservative mayor, Mel Lastman, to invest millions of dollars in a housing program called the Streets to Homes program, that the city currently has, which needs another tranche of reinvestment.

But there are solutions that exist, Speaker. We don’t have to keep throwing money at the problem in ineffective ways and putting people in difficult situations. We can and must do better.

I’ll be honest in my response to what the member has said. I’m not interested in playing culture war games in this place when it comes to community safety, and I would invite the member opposite to consider the same. We can try to play “gotcha” politics in this place by using catchphrases, or we can make the community investments we need to make to keep our community safe. I talked about specific investments we can use to make the community safe. I note the federal Conservative leader was playing similar games in the House of Commons yesterday in question period.

We have to be driven by evidence. We have to be driven by effective solutions that work. The case I was making this morning that I didn’t hear any evidence or response to from that member—I hope I hear it in debate—is, are we making the right investments, are we helping first responders and are we helping neighbours in crisis? Those are the pertinent questions.

Housing, supportive housing, and support for people with mental health and addictions—I heard the associate minister of the government yesterday praise those initiatives, and I’m glad to hear that. I’m glad to hear that, in this place, we’re following the evidence and not the culture wars.

I’m glad the program’s working for your community. Jury’s out for me on whether I’m going to support it. I need to make sure there’s enough money in the bill to support all communities.

We need the government, we need the public to make sure we incentivize and figure out ways to help people get housing. It doesn’t always mean cranes, either. Supportive housing can be repurposing existing rental stock, supportive housing could be wrapping services around places like rooming houses, but we can’t do that on $800,000 a year with the Homelessness Prevention Program, and we can’t do that with the limited resources currently allocated towards public and non-profit housing in this province. We need much, much more.

I appreciated the comments about first responders from the member, but I want to invite him, in the answer to my question, to reflect on the fact that there are many first responders in this province. Firefighters do fantastic work, taking great risks, but so did Christine Mandegarian, a member of SEIU who went into the equivalent of a burning building, a long-term-care home infected with COVID, and lost her life. Do you know who was there for Christine, Speaker? Her union, the SEIU. Do you know what so many other care workers need in this province? A union.

I want to know from the member, who I believe does care about first responders, what his government will do to help workers like Christine—who, sadly, left us—form a union and get the respect they deserve? That’s really working for workers.