This question is for the Premier. Yesterday, we gave the government an opportunity to put children, to put kids, first, an opportunity that this government passed on. We asked the government a simple question on behalf of our children: Will you fix our schools? The failure of this government to take inflation into its budget calculations is resulting in more crowded classrooms, more growing incidents of violence and more school programs that are disappearing day by day by day.

So I want to ask the Premier again: Will the Premier explain to the children of this province why he doesn’t like funding their schools?

Why is this government so determined to leave our education system worse than when they found it?

Interjections.

When the government cuts education funding it is parents who have to make up the difference—parents who are right now struggling already with the cost of living and are increasingly having to pay out of pocket for education supports, for activities and, yes, even for mental health supports. This government is cutting education funding for our schools to the tune of $1,500 per student. That’s a fact.

I want to know what the Premier thinks our children should do without. Is it breakfast programs? Is it counsellors? Is it music and sports—the things that bring joy in your life? What is it that this government expects our schools to cut and our children to do without?

Interjections.

The Minister of Health said that recruitment and retention of family doctors was “not a major concern.” I want to say that again: “not a major concern.” A quarter of patients in the Soo are without a family doctor. That’s not a major concern for this minister? Some 30,000 patients in Kingston are without access to primary care—not a major concern?

These comments are insensitive considering there are 2.3 million to 2.4 million people in this province without a family physician, but they are also dangerous. So I want to ask this government again, to the Premier: Does he really think it’s not a concern that millions of people are going without primary care?

I want to thank all the members for participating in the debate this afternoon on this opposition motion. And I want to be clear: Really, what this motion does is just simply ask the government to come through on funding that they haven’t covered for costs that boards had to take on during the pandemic just to keep up—just to barely keep up. Nearly five years into this government’s tenure, and I’ve got to tell you, everywhere I go around this province, life is not better for people. People are struggling. They really, really are. Whether you look at the situation in health care or in the workplace or—it’s just not better.

But for people with school-aged children right now, boy, that struggle has been so deep and so long. And it is our very littlest kids that are struggling the most. They’re struggling with really basic things like playing nicely together and sharing and learning to read, and we’re hearing this from those experts on the front line. And what this government is doing by failing to come through on this funding request by the school boards is going to mean that those little kids get less and less support, because it will mean cuts. And we heard members of the government caucus here today basically—I would consider it threaten boards.

And I’ve got to say, I want the government to show some responsibility here. I would really, really request and beg the government to please come through with this funding. Our kids need all the support you can provide right now. They don’t need excuses. They don’t need spin. They just need to make sure there are enough teachers, educational workers and educational assistants in the classroom to help them with the very most basic things. Thank you, Speaker. I hope I can count on their support.

Yes, it is indeed Take Our Kids to Work Day. My kids are off at university so they couldn’t come today, but I was really proud to bring Keegan Munk-Philips with me today, a grade 9 student at Western Tech, who is one of my star volunteers. Welcome, Keegan.

I’d also like to acknowledge all the extraordinary OSSTF members that are here today, each one of them an extraordinary leader in our province.

Did somebody say, “Why would you be getting up at 5 a.m. to get your kids to school?” Oh, let me tell you. News flash: A lot of people and a lot of people in jobs like this have to travel a really long way and drop their kids at daycare and figure out all kinds of complicated arrangements. And, as I mentioned before, they actually have to work more than one job—half of them—in order to be able to do the job they really love, which is the one that involves nurturing and caring for our children. So they’re not going to be able to watch the discussions and the debate, because this government is going to be in such a rush to take away their collective bargaining rights.

This government is going to rush this legislation through—

Interjection.

The solutions—

Interjections.

As I was saying, this really is about transparency and accountability and rushing through legislation that’s really important.

As my colleague said, what are you rushing it through for? It’s probably going to get overturned in the courts. The Liberals learned that lesson the hard way. The people of this province paid for it. This is where this government is headed once again.

I am asking the government to reconsider this. Here in the NDP official opposition we are asking the government to reconsider this.

I’ve got to tell you, Mr. Speaker, the other thing I’ve been hearing a lot—and I’m not kidding when I say I go to events and stuff and people say, “Thank you. Thank you, MPP, thank you to the NDP caucus for standing up for our kids. Thank you for being the only ones who stood up and asked this government to reduce class sizes, to invest in classrooms.” They say, “Please, our classrooms need more educational assistants, not fewer. We need smaller class sizes. We need more supports.”

This government is going to rush through legislation to deny those very workers their collective bargaining rights, to prevent them from being able to negotiate a fair wage increase at a time when we’re already losing those workers. We’re losing those workers every single day. We are in a crisis. Even if this government wanted to hire more than two educational assistants for a school, like it is in many schools in this province, to support all those kids who need that support, even if they wanted to hire more than that, they won’t be able to soon because nobody is going to want to work in this field.

The people who are educational assistants, and I think—I look to my colleague here, who has been a teacher. When you talk to the people who have actually been teachers in our caucus and around this province, they will tell you how absolutely essential it is, the work that educational assistants do. The educational assistants I meet will tell you that they do it because they love the kids, because they know how important the work is and how much those children need them. But if it also means that they have to juggle three jobs to keep doing that work, which is the reality of many educational assistants across this province, at some point, things break. Those are the voices that need and deserve to be heard in committees. It’s those workers who want to be able to sit here and listen to this debate of this legislation and who this government is going to exclude by fast-tracking the legislation. It’s deeply anti-democratic.

And I don’t know why I’m surprised. I’m not surprised, because this government, from day one, like the Liberal government before them, frankly, and the Conservative government before that, have been doing away with any ability of the opposition to provide opportunity for light to be shone on legislation, for us to have proper debate and accountability around legislation in this place. They’ve done everything they could to weaken that role.

I don’t know about you, Mr. Speaker, but I know many of them were elected, like I was, as a member of the opposition first. And I would think they would understand how important it is to have an opportunity for all voices to be heard but particularly the voices of the people who are most often forgotten, the people on the margins of our system but who really keep everything going. When I think of the educational system, it’s these workers—these CUPE workers, these educational workers—who are the backbone of that system.

The Minister of Education may stand up here and talk about how this is all about keeping kids in school. Do you know what this is about? This is about holding down the wages and benefits of the lowest-paid workers in our education system. And what this is going to do is drive down the quality of public education, and it’s going to mean that more and more of those education workers can no longer afford to work in that system. We saw that happen south of the border. We saw that happen for decades south of the border, and do you know what ended up happening, Mr. Speaker? It resulted in governments bringing in other solutions: private options, charter schools, voucher systems—

With that, Mr. Speaker, I’m going to have a seat.