This is to the Premier.

At home in St. Paul’s, the lineup around our Beeton Cupboard Food Bank, run by St. Michael and All Angels, routinely wraps around the block. I remember the first time I handed food to a child.

According to the Daily Bread Food Bank, one in four food bank users are children.

This Conservative government has made things worse. They failed to act on the affordability crisis. Children are paying the price. They’re paying the price in food banks, while this government eats steak.

Will the Premier finally take responsibility for the affordability crisis so kids aren’t lining up at food banks, or will they keep passing the buck—on a full stomach, I might add?

Yesterday was my first stop on our ice cream tour across Toronto–St. Paul’s. We hung out in one of my favourite neighbourhoods, the Winona and Vaughan neighbourhood. We went to Cy Townsend Park. Today, we’re going to be at Marian Engel Park, in our Melita Avenue neighbourhood.

It was all fun with the kids. The kids—of course you’ve got to love the innocence of children; they were not bothered. But I tell you, the adults at the park hanging out with me, the parents, the post-secondary age young adults, their concern was all about affordability. I spoke to a 23-year-old university student literally with tears in her eyes. She feels that there is no moral value, no character left in the province, in this House, because she feels that the government is not listening to her—and many people’s—concerns around affordable housing. She, like many of the parents, simply wants to be able to make ends meet, wants to be able to have a better future and wants to be able to live in St. Paul’s and stay a while.

What’s happening now is we’re being besieged by demovictions, by renovictions, by skyrocketing rent increases that folks just simply cannot afford. Even No Frills, on Alberta, where I go grocery shopping as well, too, is becoming more expensive for too many of us. So we really want the government to hear from St. Paul’s.

Affordability is a crisis, and you’ve got to—