It gives me great pleasure to welcome platoon chief Brent Shea from the London Fire Department, as well as deputy fire chief Mark Parkhurst from the Ajax fire service. Welcome to Queen’s Park. I look forward to our meeting.

Thank you to my colleague from Parkdale–High Park for your presentation, focusing on affordability and the Orwellian title of Bill 165.

When the standing committee met to discuss Bill 165, representatives from Unifor, including Samia Hashi and Doug Carter, testified at the committee and they stated that the Ontario Energy Board needs to do a much better job of monitoring gas companies’ investments in infrastructure. They actually stated to the committee, “When gas leaks are not fixed, Ontario families pay three times: They pay through delayed investment in upgrading and maintaining our gas infrastructure; they pay for it through climate change; they pay through the increased risks of major safety incidents.”

Would the member like to comment about how this government is not looking after affordability in this bill and actually could do so by listening to the representatives from Unifor?

It’s my great honour to welcome the amazing crew from NDP Western who are visiting Queen’s Park today, including Austin Wang, Liam Solomon, Alex Wild, Marek Brooking, Can Batili, Nicholas Pestill and Ismael Sayal. You’re all an inspiration.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t welcome members of my legislative and constituency team, Marie Rioux and Sarah Lehman.

I hope you have a great visit today.

It’s my honour to welcome housing advocates from across the province for our National Housing Day: Bradley Palmer, Mariana Cortes, Aishatu Ahmed, Ibrahim Elnaghi, Godfrey Benjamin, Keneisha Brown, Colleen Lamond, Soraya Naim and Gautam Mukherjee. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

As a former teacher librarian, it’s my great pleasure to welcome members from the Ontario Library Association as well as the Ontario School Library Association for their library days at Queen’s Park: Michael Ciccone, CEO and chief librarian at the London Public Library; Wendy Burch Jones, the vice-president of OSLA and with the Toronto District School Board; Johanna Gibson-Lawler, the president of OSLA and with the greater Essex school board; as well as Sarah Vaisler, who is the chief librarian and executive officer at Ajax Public Library. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I’d like to thank the member from Parkdale–High Park for her comments. The member stated that the government doesn’t know how to build and doesn’t know how to deliver on transit and cited the really infamous Eglinton Crosstown fiasco. What we’ve seen from this government is a disturbing ideological reliance on expensive, wasteful P3 contracts and very little respect for public dollars. It’s as though the government wants to take a back seat while others do the driving. They’re continuing this party with public money.

In the bill itself, though, it says that they are doing this to “support the creation of local and regional transit connections.” “Regional transit connections” shows up once. “Rural” doesn’t even show in up this bill. Does the member from Parkdale–High Park think that this plan will support regional models outside of the GTA such as in southwestern Ontario?

Speaker, it’s my pleasure to introduce the people from the Canadian Franchise Association. I hope you have wonderful meetings at Queen’s Park today.

I’d like to thank the member for her presentation. Recently, on the day to acknowledge missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirited individuals, I had the opportunity to attend my alma mater, Althouse College, who had taken and repurposed their library into an Indigenous learning space as well as an outdoor area.

Specifically, we are sitting on quite a vast footprint here at Queen’s Park. My question to the member: How would you like to see the outdoor space reimagined to include Indigenous peoples? How can you foresee us making sure that this is a welcome and open space, building on those relationships?

It’s my honour to introduce Michael Sud, formerly with the NDP Western university club. Michael is studying law and hopefully business, as well.

Welcome to Queen’s Park, Michael.

It’s an honour to welcome former MP for London North Centre, Glen Pearson, and his partner, Jane Roy, as part of the Feed Ontario breakfast. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I’d like to introduce two great groups of people, the wonderful people from Western University in my riding: Dr. Alan Shepard, Grace Parraga, Florentine Strzelczyk, Keith Gibbons, Peter White, Althea Blackburn-Evans, John Doerksen, Opiyo Oloya, Sophie Helpard and Sara Ridout. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

On behalf of the official opposition, I’d like to welcome Raida Chowdhury, our legislative learner, to Queen’s Park.