Premier, shelters and transition houses are bursting at the seams. Many children and women have nowhere to go. The sector is facing critical staffing shortages and turnover as wages in this sector have been brutally shut down and stifled because of this Conservative government’s Bill 124. While they should be expanding programs to meet the demand, they are struggling to keep their doors open on shoestring budgets that are not tending to the operational needs.

Yesterday, a front-line worker shared how they are fundraising for food for their clients. Another spoke of how their organization’s funding expired, reversing progress made for women and children fleeing violence.

Again, my question is back to the Premier: Will he commit to ending gender-based violence today by creating a sustainable needs-based funding model for this sector? Will he support these workers and can Bill 124?

This is to the Premier: Advocates for survivors of intimate partner violence have echoed at this year’s pre-budget hearings the same recommendations following the Renfrew county inquest. Ontario needs a plan for housing survivors of intimate partner violence. Shelters are overflowing. Women have to stay in shelters longer and longer because of the challenges in finding their own safe and real affordable housing, and this Conservative government does not have a plan. This is a priority for Ontarians. Is housing survivors of gender-based violence a priority for this government?

Will the Conservative government provide adequate, stable, long-term funding for women’s shelters, for real affordable housing, for transitional housing in this year’s budget? I don’t want to hear about five years from now—in this budget.

The latest report from the Ontario Association of Interval and Transitional Houses, or OAITH, says there were 52 femicides in Ontario this year. One woman or girl killed, I think we can all agree, is one too many. Each of these losses were preventable through action on the many recommendations this government has at hand to address the systemic issues that make it difficult for women and children to escape violence in the first place: actions on affordable housing, supportive housing included; wage parity; paid emergency leave; and doubling ODSP/OW benefits—because there are folks with disabilities who are victims of violence—just to name a few.

My question is to the Premier: Will this government put their words into action by implementing the many recommendations that the official opposition and community agencies have provided to finally end gender-based violence in Ontario?

Back to the Premier: Community-based investments like interval and transitional houses save lives, yet they still don’t receive annualized funding like many other public sectors do. What this means is that resources that could be put into preventing violence are instead put towards administrative hurdles and the precarity of short-term financial outlooks.

My question is back to the Premier. Will he commit to funding gender-based violence prevention and intervention through annualized funding, so that front-line workers, counsellors, agencies, sexual assault and rape crisis centres, shelters and all the community-based spaces and human beings who are caring for folks who have experienced violence aren’t left nickel-and-diming, which squeezes staff and the programs needed, and ultimately hurts women and children?