There is no new money for increased mental health supports for students. I want to just repeat that very clearly, because this government has talked about mental health supports. There is no new money in this budget for mental health supports for students.

I’ll tell you what I’m hearing from parents are tears and calls of rage. They have reached their wits’ end. Why, Speaker? I’ll tell you. Because the $18 million that’s allocated in this budget doesn’t even come close to the actual need that our communities are looking for.

The TDSB, in 2022, spent $67 million more on special education than they received—$67 million more. More than half of the secondary school principals and nearly two thirds of the elementary principals have reported that they’ve asked their parents to keep their children with special needs at home. Don’t even bother sending them to school, because they don’t have the capacity to support them and there’s nothing in this budget to actually change that.

I really appreciate this government’s persistence. They love to re-announce announcements. So once again, we hear about the York University medical school, which is great, but they’ve announced that before. What they forget to tell us is that there’s no associated funding attached to it.

We are also hearing that post-secondary institutions are running deficits. They were very loud and clear in their pre-budget consultation. They’re running deficits; they’ve raided their reserves; they’ve sold off their assets. The well is dry and they need a partner that is going to step up, and multi-year funding that’s sustainable and predictable, and that’s not here in this budget.