I’d like to welcome to the House today a young gentleman who, as a student, is destined to be a future law student, a future trial lawyer and maybe even a future parliamentarian: young Mr. Liam MacCarthy.

It is an honour to recognize some students who are here with us today from Ontario Tech University’s humanities society. Welcome to Alexandra Sanita, Tamara Talhouk, Kyli Jenkins, and Dryden Arseneau. The future is bright with these young people here with us today.

Speaker, we know that student success is very, very important, and I know that all members agree that students need to be given every opportunity to succeed in the workforce—ready to go forward with rewarding careers, whether they go to post-secondary by way of university, college, a trade, or another path.

Our government announced that, starting with students entering grade 9 in September 2024, they will be required, toward their Ontario secondary school diploma, to obtain a technological education credit. This is just one example of our government supporting all students for the jobs of tomorrow.

How does this bill further support student learning?

Since we’re talking about acting for all children, all students, all citizens, let us remember that the workforce is constantly changing and our education system needs to adapt in response. It’s 2023, and our curriculum should reflect this, particularly in math, science, literacy, and civics.

If left with a Liberal government, aided and abetted by the NDP, our curriculum would be left just as outdated as those parties are.

To the member opposite: Does the opposition really believe that curriculum should stay stagnant and become irrelevant, or should it change with the times? What does the member opposite say about that?

I am proud to recognize, in the members’ gallery today, four students from Ontario Tech University in my riding: Dakoda Cluett, Joshua Sankarlal, Corey Law, and Megan Good.

Welcome to your House.

Thank you to the member opposite. I believe the member who has just asked the question is coming near to her 10th anniversary as a parliamentarian, if my knowledge of history is correct, so she would have had the opportunity to join a Parliament with a minority government in 2013, I believe, and then would have been in the opposition under both a Liberal government and a PC government.

Having been here for 10 years as a parliamentarian—and me as a private citizen before being here, I think we both are familiar with the need for supports, the need to address this problem, the need to end practices that see offenders going from one institution to another, the need for transparency. I submit that this bill addresses all of those things in a very positive, constructive and necessary way.

No doubt the member has seen, in her time over the past decade as a parliamentarian, that previous governments either failed to address it or did not address it sufficiently. We are building on what we started in the previous mandate to go forward further.

—strengthening tools available to institutions in order to address instances of faculty or staff sexual misconduct against students; that is, specifically deeming sexual abuse of a student to be just cause for dismissal;

—secondly, preventing the use of non-disclosure agreements to address instances where an employee leaves an institution to be an employee at another institution and their prior wrongdoing remains a secret; of course, such a person would create greater risk at the new institution; and finally

—requiring institutions to have codes of conduct regarding faculty and staff sexual misconduct.

This proposed act, Bill 28, has two main features to it: It’s about fairness and balance. There is much talk about rights, and we believe in the rights of all citizens. We all must live together. We are on a journey in our short lives here together, and we have to respect each other. Students and children have rights to an in-person education. Parents have the right to expect that their children will have the best learning and educational environment possible, and they have the right to stability and the right to be able to rely upon all aspects of the education system.

And yes, our wonderful, dedicated CUPE employees have the right to a fair wage and the right to a safe workplace and the right to respect, but no rights are absolute. And when we speak of the charter, the very first section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms indicates that the rights in this charter are guaranteed—

Interjections.