Before I begin, I want to thank my mother and my partner for their unwavering support, their love and their endurance during this last year, one of if not the hardest for us three. We’ve stuck through it together. I love you both dearly. And I’m glad to stand, of course, representing you two, constituents of mine and the many other community members in St. Paul’s.

It’s my honour to stand and speak today in recognition of International Women’s Day on behalf of the ONDP official opposition. Each of us in this Legislature has at least one woman in our lives, past or present, whom we could never thank enough for us being who and where we are today. And I have to believe that we would do everything in our power to ensure the amazing women in our lives are well supported throughout all life stages so they can thrive. For those of us who have lost beloved women in our lives, I’m certain we continue to hold their legacy strong, and the life lessons they have left with us.

This year’s International Women’s Day theme centres inclusion. It demands of us that we remember, as Rosemary Brown, the first Black woman to ever run for federal leadership in Canada, said, “Until all of us have made it, none of us have made it.” Said otherwise, no one is free until we are all free. Well, what is freedom? According to the dictionary, freedom means the power or right to act, speak or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint; the absence of subjection to foreign domination or a tyrannical government; the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.

Social conditions, I would argue, also contribute to women’s ability to be free. We need freedom over our reproductive rights and our choices. We need contraceptives available under OHIP. This government is free to do that today if they so choose and invest the political will to do so. Freedom involves having and enjoying the safety and stability of an affordable home where you can live without the fear of displacement, where you know your rent is never in danger of skyrocketing rent increases without limits. Shout-out to rent control—we can have it any day now if it’s this government’s political will, and it will help women in Ontario.

Housing, shelter, is and should be a human right but, in practice, especially under this government, we are far away from that—very, very far, as far as they are from their 1.5 million homes.

Freedom involves having access to nutritious and diverse food choices. It means not living in fear of food price gouging or having to mix your child’s milk with water to stretch it over their favourite cereal.

Women, we are resilient. We are creative. We are excellent problem-solvers. But this doesn’t absolve the government from their responsibility to adequately fund our education system so we can see the fruits of investment in the very young women and girls we’re all talking to in our communities tomorrow for International Women’s Day at our local elementary and post-secondary schools.

Freedom means having access to a justice system properly invested in by a government that doesn’t re-victimize survivors of violence but instead believes them, takes their cases seriously and ensures they see their day in court. I worry that this cannot get done with the inappropriate and, frankly, dangerous comments we’ve heard from this Premier about his desire for like-minded judges. I don’t want judges with like-minded values of this Premier, who seems to think it’s okay to chronically underfund rape crisis centres, sexual assault centres, to cut victims’ support services or legal aid, or who has silenced the very voices of women in this Legislature. That is not allyship.

And there is no freedom without women’s economic freedom, without equal pay, without safe workplaces without harassment. I believe the government actually voted down a bill on helping to create safe workplaces in municipal workplaces. That’s pretty sad, actually.

Women still haven’t seen the reality of pay equity here in Ontario although the legislation passed some 30 years ago, and this government’s tinkering with pay transparency, well, has barely begun to scratch the surface. We have witnessed this government take midwives to court, fight education workers, all of whom are predominantly women and, frankly, even racialized women at that. We’ve seen them refuse to cover 100% of take-home cancer drugs, for goodness’ sake, even at a time when we see rises in breast cancer.

All this to say, I want to thank women for being strong, for being tenacious, but I know that our strength and resilience isn’t enough; and it shouldn’t be enough. We need to have a government that stands up for all women in Ontario, especially those who have experienced the most marginalization.

This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is #EmbraceEquity.

I’m honoured to speak on behalf of our caucus, as our critic for women’s social and economic opportunity.

Equality is giving everyone the same thing, regardless of their needs.

Equity is giving people exactly what they need, when they need it, without barriers and without stigma or blame.

I’d like to remind this Conservative government that it is impossible for them to embrace equity if they continue taking nurses, who are disproportionately women—and Black women and racialized women, at that—to court. This Conservative government must give our front-line health care workers what they need to be successful. Embrace equity. Bill 124 was ruled unconstitutional, yet this government continues their appeal against this ruling, attacking yet again some of the very women workers who have been disproportionately hit over these last challenging years.

This Conservative government’s privatization and profitization of health care in Bill 60 is gutting our public health care system by yet again attacking predominantly women, our front-line health care workers. We cannot recruit, retain and return nurses to a public health care system that has been grossly underfunded and understaffed by this government.

Embracing equity is properly funding public health care, so that people have fair and equitable access to exactly what care they need in Ontario—not in the States; just saying.

I want to make it clear that derailing front-line health care workers also derails the families of sick patients. Make no mistake: Society’s gendered division of labour is still very much in place. It is women, yet again, who must often take care of their loved ones, children, partners and aging parents when they fall through the cracks—cracks this government has widened, a crisis this government has worsened due to their Darwinian health care approach. These informal family caregivers are mostly women, doing this unpaid work at their own financial ruin, many without vacation time, without equal pay for equal work, without pay equity, without paid sick days, without supports for their injuries from WSIB, without any access to a caregiver benefit program like what we, the official opposition, proposed to help put some money back into the pockets of folks caring for their loved ones. Some of these women who are caregivers are escaping gender-based violence themselves.

Speaker, our communities are built on the backs of strong women, and it’s high time that this government not just commend women for being resilient, but that they invest in our community-based, non-profit programs, for instance, that are inextricably linked to the health care outcomes of our communities.

I want to extend my thanks to Elder Abuse Prevention Ontario CEO Marta Hajek for her leadership and her advocacy.

I want to say a special thank you to our local community member in St. Paul’s, Jane Teasdale, who is working tirelessly, advocating for the rights and protections of aging adults.

There has been a 250% increase in elder abuse, yet we’ve seen this government, the Conservative government, cut supports for elders during a pandemic—the same elders that mostly women are caring for out of pocket. They need stable funding, and it cannot be below the inflation rate. Funding below an inflation rate is actually a cut.

I want to also recognize that March is Endometriosis Awareness Month, courtesy of legislation spearheaded by our former MPP for Toronto Centre, Suze Morrison, and the official opposition leader, Marit Stiles. Endometriosis impacts one in 10 women, one in 10 people who menstruate. As I learned from endowarriors Leah Haynes and Tami Ellis, founders of Endometriosis Events, and my fellow panellists there, it simply is not enough for the government to say they care—“thoughts and prayers”—while there’s no funding for endometriosis. We need more funding for research. We need more training for doctors and surgeons to properly diagnose. Many with endometriosis have to go out of province and pay out of pocket.

Health care needs to be publicly funded.

Let’s be clear: Diseases that disproportionately impact women are often not the priority of this government. We only need to look at the health care wait-lists for eating disorders, for instance. We only need to look at our fight—we’ve been begging this government to cover take-home cancer drugs 100%. That’s another disease disproportionately impacting women—still crickets from the government.

So on International Women’s Day, while we celebrate the gains, let us remember the realities for far too many women in Ontario. We need help, and no amount of resilience can pay the rent, put food on the table, keep your housing secure—in an affordable housing market created by this government.

It is up to this Conservative government to do right by women and girls, because yes, when women win, we all win.

Targets and victims of human trafficking are often trapped in social, economic and physical circumstances that place them closest to the margins of despair.

This government has a track record of not listening to the needs of rape crisis and sexual assault centre front-line staff, and survivors and those living with mental health challenges, among others who are trafficked. Therefore, it is really difficult to stand here today on behalf of the official opposition, recognizing human trafficking day tomorrow, while the government pats themselves on the back but we haven’t seen actual implementation of their plans.

This is the Ford government that dismantled the Ontario violence-against-women round table the moment they took office in 2018, and that began the callous cuts to rape crisis and sexual assault centres and, again, survivors—such as when this government cut survivors’ access to pain-and-suffering funds. Human trafficking is violence against women and children.

This is the Ford government that refuses to forgive human trafficking victims of provincial fines, outstanding OSAP student debt. Wipe these fines clean so they don’t continue to be the victims of financial exploitation, bad credit ratings, and crushing debts caused by their traffickers.

This is the Ford government that was asked to respond within six months to the Renfrew county inquiry recommendations that came out on June 28, 2022—68 of which land squarely on the shoulders of this provincial government—and they missed the deadline. The first of these recommendations was for the government to name intimate partner violence what it is: an epidemic. I asked them to implement this recommendation twice this morning during question period, and the government refused. How can this government pretend to be leading on human trafficking, which disproportionately impacts women and girls, yet they’re unable to name gender-based violence and intimate partner violence—which disproportionately impacts women and girls—an epidemic. It doesn’t make sense.

While your government mulls over these recommendations, more victims are targeted, violated and will die.

If this government wants to eradicate human trafficking—or any other form of violence against women, at that—recognize it as a hate crime. Support the front-line workers—understaffed, underpaid and burnt out. Properly fund the sector with annualized funding. They are direct lifelines for victims, survivors and their families.

All of these solutions and so much more I’ve shared today would actually put us on the right track to eradicating human trafficking as one of many forms of gender-based violence impacting women and children.

Speaker, I rise today as a member of the official opposition and as the first queer Black person to be elected to the Ontario Legislature. But make no mistake: I stand on the shoulders of former honourable members like Zanana Akande, Lincoln Alexander and Alvin Curling, to name a few.

The government has done a good job talking about Black history, so I’m going to talk about Black present and future.

Black communities, along with Indigenous and racialized communities, have been on the front lines of this most recent health care crisis. And I want everyone in Ontario to be reminded that this government has, frankly, disrespected predominantly Black women—the PSWs, the nurses, the very front-line health care workers this government has refused to respect, protect and pay what they’re worth, through their callous Bill 124.

Black History Month is an opportunity for this government to make systemic changes to allow for social, cultural and economic progress of Black folks here in Ontario, and it cannot stop after February. Doing right by Black folks in Ontario means listening to Black health leaders and recognizing anti-Black racism as a public health crisis—recognize the physical and mental health toll of racism, and legislate policies that create the social and material conditions we need to thrive. It means ensuring the Anti-Racism Directorate is fully funded and collects and transparently shares necessary data to make our lives better. It means overhauling our “justice system” that continues to fail Black Ontarians, and overhauling broken accountability infrastructures like the SIU to finally start addressing anti-Black racism.

I encourage every person in this House to read the report titled Anti-Black Racism in the Criminal Justice System—in policing, the courts, incarceration, and criminal records. I thank the John Howard Society in my riding for their leadership and their scholarship on this and so much more.

Speaker, February is Black History Month, but in this position, we must also take account of Black lives now and what we can do to make them better. It means ensuring Black small business owners and entrepreneurs like my folks in Little Jamaica have meaningful access to financial support and aren’t consistently and disproportionately hit with anti-Black racism when trying to secure capital. It means taking real action to address anti-Black racism in education by developing and implementing mandatory Afrocentric curriculum across Ontario schools—a call me and the member for Kitchener Centre, the Ontario Black History Society and local activists like D. Tyler Robinson have long called for.

I want to thank People for Education, also from my home community, for their leadership. They recently published A Progress Report on Anti-Racism Policy Across Canada. Some key findings:

—64% of Ontario schools reported that their school boards collect race-based and/or demographic student data; 25% were unsure; 7% ain’t collecting anything;

—94% of Ontario’s schools reported providing PD specific to anti-racism and equity, but only 37% reported partnering with community-based orgs in their anti-racism and equity work;

—while 73% of schools reported focusing on anti-racism and equity in their school improvement plan, 26% of school board websites did not mention racism in their equity policies, and only 28% of school boards had an anti-racism policy, strategy or approach; and

—87% Ontario principals identified their racial background as white.

Speaker, children cannot be what they do not see. They need to be reflected in their curriculum, in the caring adults who work in their classrooms, and in the adult leaders in our schools.

These are just a few of the many ways that the government could actually invest in Black lives and legislate liberation, as opposed to oppression on a day-to-day basis—which often happens here in the Legislature.

Finally, I just want to say that schools need to be a place of joy. They need to be a place of self-esteem and confidence-building for all children, including Black students. That means ensuring kids are seeing themselves, ensuring kids are being celebrated, and ensuring, as I said before, that their curriculum is seen and heard.

Today I stand in honour of the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. The key word here is “action.” To truly honour the 14 women murdered means to act so that it doesn’t happen again, because, sadly, this massacre was not an isolated moment in time. Since 1990, there have been at least 980 femicides in our province alone.

This past May, four Indigenous women were viciously murdered as an act of femicide. We must remember their names too: Rebecca Contois, Marcedes Myran, Morgan Beatrice Harris, and the one who elders named Buffalo Woman. Each of these women had their full lives in front of them and they should still be living today. But because of violent misogyny, racism and colonialism, they are not.

Gender-based violence, including femicide, is a national epidemic. Let’s start by naming exactly what it is. Despite being a national epidemic, the province still has a role to play. The government’s endorsement of the national action plan on violence against women is not enough. It is more words or empty signals when there’s no action backing it up.

Earlier this year, the Renfrew county inquest was published in response to the femicide of three women in Renfrew county, with 86 total recommendations; 68 of these are under the province’s mandate. These 68 have yet to be answered to with any plan of action and, importantly, budget to implement them. These include establishing an independent intimate partner violence commission, a survivors’ advocate so survivors and their families and communities have a voice at the table; ensuring an annualized funding model is applied across the sector so each dollar can be spent on community care, not administration and reporting; and developing a plan for real, affordable, second-stage housing so that shelters aren’t the only housing available. These are just a few of the many at hand for this government that they continually to fail to answer to.

I also want to note that this is too often framed as a women’s issue. This is as much a women’s issue as a men’s issue. I want to thank the organization Counterpoint, in St. Paul’s, for recognizing this and putting in the work there with their counselling and educational programs dedicated for men’s learning specifically. Prevention does not happen without men’s work too.

I want to thank the minister for speaking. I saw that she became emotional, and I certainly know that has happened to many of us in this House, myself included. These are tough topics.

First of all, of course, I want to acknowledge OAITH, and I want to thank them for the 10th anniversary of Ontario’s Wrapped in Courage campaign.

I also want to make it clear that while tears, concern and heartfelt words certainly help, it can’t be all; it’s just not enough.

We need the Conservative government to ensure that every victim of violence who is working can have access to paid emergency leave.

We need to ensure that every victim of violence who is a recipient of ODSP and OW can actually afford to leave. We know that this government has refused to double ODSP and OW rates immediately. That could really help folks who are trying to escape violence.

We also know that paid sick days are equally important, because, folks, when home is not safe, you head into work when you’re not well; you’re unable to stay home and heal. It’s a recipe for disaster.

I also spoke with many staff members and board members from OAITH today who are incredibly proud of their work collaborating with folks across party lines—because this is a non-partisan issue. I want to say that for many of them, staff burnout is incredibly real. In some cases, the staff-to-client ratio is, frankly, untenable. In one case, I believe there were 18 or so clients with one person at the shelter. If some of those clients are moms of single kids and some of those clients are dealing with psychosis, you can only imagine what can transpire if there’s one staff member.

I want to also express the need for flexible funding. We heard from OAITH folks that it really worked when the government allowed them to have autonomy over their own budget and recognized that different shelters need different requirements. Not having that option means the difference between losing a staff member and not being able to replace that staff member, which means programming is hurt, which means the people being protected and served through that programming to help eliminate gender-based violence are also hurt by this.

One centre lost funding for their child care respite worker—and I wasn’t fully aware of this, but losing that child care respite worker created a huge barrier for women leaving violence, because if they couldn’t get to a job interview, if they couldn’t get to court, if the child can’t be left alone, if there’s no support for the child, they lose that opportunity.

I also heard that Family Court support is overwhelmed. In one particular place, there was one support worker for 260 clients, if I’m correct.

We heard about the needs in different parts of our province. I live in Toronto, but that’s not the only place—so we have to think about what’s needed for rural and northern communities that are already under-resourced in order to fight against gender-based violence.

We have to think about how escaping violence has to be inextricably linked to having housing—affordable housing; transitional housing; sustainable, supportive housing. What happens is, for folks who are unhoused, who end up on the street or are in fear of ending up on the street, survival, having food becomes one of the only things they can focus on—getting help, not requiring them to come back to a home where they’re being abused, where their children are being abused. We need to house women.

Bill 23, as you know, Speaker, is a bill that will directly impact victims of gender-based violence—because if they’re not housed, they cannot be safe.

It’s an honour to stand to address the Legislature today on Dress Purple Day.

The minister did say one thing that was correct: Yes, all children and youth should matter in Ontario. But what we do know is, certain children and youth do not matter as much as they should in Ontario, namely, Black youth and Indigenous youth and youth of colour, who we know are disproportionately represented in systems of care, currently, in Ontario.

I want to start first by reminding the public who may be watching that this is the Conservative government that cut a billion dollars in resources from the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services just a few years ago. And we learned again today, through the Financial Accountability Office’s Economic and Budget Outlook, that we are seeing $44 billion in contingency from this government that’s directly impacting the very sectors that can help us ensure that children and youth are safe and healthy and have well-being in their communities, such as a $23-billion shortfall in health, a $6-billion shortfall in education, a $4-billion shortfall in the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services—

Interjection.

I want to also take some time to thank one particular group of folks who are instrumental to the safety and well-being of children and youth in our province, and that is education workers.

Speaker, I want to make it clear: Paying $39,000 a year to education workers doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the way in which they support the social, academic and of course, most importantly, the mental health of our children. Whether they’re driving them to school on the school buses, whether they’re working with them in classrooms, with our kids who have disabilities, we have to pay—and respect—education workers what they deserve. Currently, this government’s decision to pay education workers at a rate that’s lower than inflation, when many of them are going to food banks, when many of them don’t know where their ability to pay for rent comes from, does not create a social climate where education workers can thrive. And I can assure you that if education workers aren’t thriving, they cannot support our children and youth thriving either. So that is something I want us to really think about in this space today.

I want to give a special shout-out to one of our local organizations in St. Paul’s, For Youth Initiative. FYI is their acronym. They’re in our Oakwood Village community, and they really do a lot to support Black, Indigenous, racialized students and youth who live in the Oakwood Village area and otherwise. It’s all about employability. It’s all about ensuring that students have a sense of pride and that they receive culturally relevant services in our community.

I want to encourage the government to continue to invest in community-based services, because at the end of the day, we have a government that will spend billions of dollars to build a highway to mansions that folks cannot afford in Ontario, yet the Minister of Children, Community and Social Services stands there and proudly talks about investments of $800,000 to address anti-Black racism or $800,000 to address 2SLGBTQI+ communities. You can’t buy one house in St. Paul’s for that price. So that’s really difficult to hear, when we know that there are billions of dollars being cut by this government or withheld by this government from education, from community social services, from the things that actually matter.

Of course, I will run out of time before I get to mention many of the pieces of legislation that, for instance, our member from Hamilton Mountain has put forth. And the member from Kitchener Centre, myself and the member from Thunder Bay–Superior North are consistently putting forth pieces of legislation that we hope this government will look at and create laws based on—but actually are about protecting children and youth in this province of Ontario.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Ontario’s social assistance rates are well below Canada’s official Market Basket Measure poverty line and far from adequate to cover the rising costs of food and rent: $733 for individuals on OW and soon” 1,227 whopping dollars “for ODSP;

“Whereas an open letter to the Premier and two cabinet ministers, signed by over 230 organizations, recommends that social assistance rates be doubled for both Ontario Works (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP);

“Whereas the recent small budget increase of 5% for ODSP still leaves these citizens well below the poverty line, both they and those receiving the frozen OW rates are struggling to live in this time of alarming inflation;

“Whereas the government of Canada recognized in its CERB program that a basic income of $2,000 per month was the standard support required by individuals who lost their employment during the pandemic;

“We, the undersigned citizens of Ontario, petition the Legislative Assembly to double social assistance rates for OW and ODSP.”

I could sign this a million times, Speaker, and I will until it happens. And I’m tabling it with Malini.