I have serious concerns about what’s happening on our campuses across Ontario. I have heard from students and from staff alike. Our committee members heard from students.

Let me read you some of the Hansard from committee. This is an independent member—mandating mental health policies is “red tape.” At committee, we heard from a member who called the anti-hate provisions of this bill “red tape.” That member heard the testimonies of students who were made to feel so unwelcome and unsafe that they stopped going back to campus. The member is more concerned about burdening university staff than the well-being of our students.

We also heard the need for centralizing reporting of incidents. Again, committee members heard from the National Council of Canadian Muslims, which expressed a need for centralized reporting of hate crimes to the ministry—according to these, incidents of hate are far often not reported to institutions and aren’t addressed in a timely manner.

We heard from a lot of students who were saying, “I understand that government froze tuition, but how come my tuition keeps going up every year?” That was because of the extra costs. So the legislation will require universities and colleges to, up front, explain the costs for programs.

I mentioned in my speech, when I went, I remember my microbiology class—you pay for these expensive textbooks, but then you find out once you start class that you also had a lab coat and you had your little microbiology kit. I remember going to the library—and, of course, they ranged from all expenses.

We want students to know up front what the expense is going to be for all their programs, as well as a tuition breakdown.

So, working with our colleges and universities—and I also want to thank MPP Smith for her motion as well, working with the anti-hate policy.

We’re going to work together with the institutions, and we want to ensure that these policies are the same across all campuses. Whether you’re at Georgian College or at Lakehead, the same expectation is going to be there for all students.

And he would know—because you were a PA back in 2018, when our party came into government and Ontario had the highest tuition in all of Canada. And under the leadership of Premier Ford, we decreased that tuition by 10% and have continued to freeze it every year since.

Life is expensive—expensive for all families. We have a cost-of-living crisis, and the thought of increasing tuition for students was absolutely ridiculous. This was not something that we were going to do, and the Premier was quite clear about that.

We’ve heard from the leader of the Liberal Party. She’s interested in increasing tuition. I’m not quite sure where the NDP stand on it, but we’ve made an investment in our institutions, and we’re going to work with our institutions to ensure that they’re running as efficiently as possible. We’re already doing some great work and some great collaboration that’s happening with our institutions, and I look forward to continuing that work moving forward.

These are the students that I’m concerned about, the stories that I’ve heard about, but we’re going to work with our colleges and universities to ensure that we have an anti-hate policy in place to protect all of our students across this province.