I want to thank the member from Windsor–Tecumseh for sharing his time with me, and I want to thank the Honourable Stephen Lecce, Minister of Education. From the moment he got here, even before he was the minister, he has been focused on one thing: making Ontario better. And in the education system, for him, it was ensuring that everything we did as a government had one goal in mind and that is to prepare our students in a better way for the future and what the future is going to bring.

We know we live in a tremendously changing world. I can remember when I was in school; I’m sure there are some teachers that try to forget. Having said that, it was mandatory to attend, so from time to time, I did show up. But I was also around when our children went through the school system, and now our grandchildren.

What I saw when I came here in 2003 was I saw the former Liberal government dissatisfied with the data that was coming from our schools with regard to student achievement. That a fair assessment. But what did they do? You see, here’s the difference, Speaker: On this side of the House, we take our direction from the parents of children when it comes to our education system. The people who have their children in the system are the best evaluators of the system itself. They understand what their children need and they understand if the system isn’t delivering it.

So when we got here in 2003, do you know what the Liberal Party’s and the Liberal government’s answer was to lower-than-desired test scores in our school system? You would think that if your problem is lower-than-desired test scores—do you know what you’re going to do? You’re going to say, “We need to do something to increase those test scores, so we’ve got to look at what we’re doing, what we’re delivering, and how we’re delivering it to those students.” In fact, they did do that, but their answer wasn’t to enrich and strengthen the curriculum so that our test scores were more in line with other jurisdictions. Do you know what the Liberals’ answer was? It was—they got their direction from the leaders of the teachers’ union. I say that because our daughter is a teacher and two of our daughters-in-law are teachers, but you know where the direction comes from: It comes from those people at the top of the scale, the leadership. And the direction from them was, “Well, water down the curriculum, make it easier and then the test scores will go up.”

Well, they did. If you determine that the race that used to be a mile was 5,280 feet and you say quietly, “We’re going to make a mile 4,740 feet,” do you know what? Those people who are running the mile are going to say, “Man, I’ll tell you, those times are good.” But you are not running the same mile.

When we got here, we realized something had to change. I’m going to tell you, in spite of the rhetoric coming from the other side, the attacks coming from the other side, Minister Lecce has stood there like a strong oak tree, focused on what we are going to deliver for the people of Ontario and their children: a better education system that prepares them for the world of tomorrow. The students who are in that system today—it’s not just about today. We know it’s about tomorrow.

Ladies and gentlemen, you talk about that oak tree standing stiff in the wind and not bending, not breaking, and then what happens? The minister gets faced with something that nobody saw coming, this COVID-19 pandemic that threw everything into chaos. But what did we do? We managed our school system. We took the children out of school when it was absolutely necessary, but as soon as possible to the benefit of them and to our system and everybody’s mental health and everything else, we’ve got them back in the class. When the medical people agreed that it was safe to do so, we got them back in the class.

Now we are faced with new challenges. Part of that is student achievement. Again, it has to be addressed. I talk to parents and I also talk to teachers and they say themselves that they can’t believe what’s going on sometimes in our school system. They really can’t believe that what we are doing today is challenging. We have wonderful students. We have 12 grandchildren. Obviously, I’m going to speak highly of them. But look at this group of pages here. You want to talk about the cream of the crop? The folks who come here, the young children who come here—not young children; I guess they’re middle children—come here to serve us as pages.

One of my brothers—my youngest brother, Konrad—was born in 1965. He was a page here in 1978. But the cream of crop is those children who come here as pages. I absolutely guarantee you—and I haven’t asked a single one of them this question—they want to be challenged in life. Because they want to make sure that when the stuff hits the fan, as they say, they are able to face it. We need to make sure that our school system is focusing on those needs. This focus on STEM in the school system today that Minister Lecce said is absolutely vital if we’re going to prepare the students for tomorrow: That’s what we are focusing on.

Now he is looking at other issues in our school system. One of the issues is governance and consistency. If you don’t have consistency, you’ve got a problem, because it’s like what’s good for the goose is not good for the gander. You know the old saying, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander”? Well, we just have the situation in Ontario where we don’t have consistency; Minister Lecce is going to take care of it.

I see his parliamentary assistant here today as well. I know that MPP Barnes is maybe not listening closely to me, but she’s certainty listening to this entire debate, and she’s listening to parents across this province and what they want to see. Because if you’re a parent, what do you care about most? What do you care about most? As a parent and a grandparent, I know what you care about most: You care about your children. So what are you going to do? You’re going to do everything you can to do the best—you want their lives to be better. I know that my father wanted my life to be better than his. It wasn’t hard for mine to be better; I didn’t have to go fight a world war. But I also want my children’s life to be better than mine, and I want our grandchildren’s to be better yet. What do we do to make sure that happens? We make sure we start out with the right basis, with the foundation.

We talk about what’s important in this world and what’s important for us to deliver as a government, you know that right off the top it’s going to be health care. If you don’t have your health, you’ve got nothing. I don’t care if you’re a gazillionaire, if you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything. But what comes next is our education system, because our education system—I’ll be gone some day. Some people will be happy. I’ll be gone some day; every one of us in here will be gone some day. But the world is going to carry on, and we’ve got to make sure that the people who we have in charge of that world have been prepared in the best way possible, and a successful, challenging, top-notch education system is the way to go. We have the minister to do it.

On that, I would say, I move that the question be put.