As a strong believer in parliamentary democracy, it’s an honour for me to stand before you and my colleagues to express my support for Bill 133, An Act to proclaim the month of September as Kids’ Online Safety and Privacy Month. I also wish to sincerely thank the member for Ottawa–Vanier for putting forth this legislation.

I agree that we need to raise awareness about online safety and privacy for children, and that kids need to be aware of the risks online and how to protect themselves. It’s always encouraging when we, as parliamentarians, can put aside the party labels and work together for a worthwhile common goal: in this case, the safety of children.

Speaker, my colleagues and I in the PC caucus are pleased to support Bill 133 because we believe it will complement the many actions we have taken to ensure Ontario’s schools are safe and supportive learning centres for children and youth. Most recently, our government announced that we are strengthening the rules around cellphone use during class time, and students who are caught with vaping, cannabis or nicotine products in school. We are also ordering school boards to remove social media websites from all school networks and devices. We made this announcement to remove unnecessary distractions from the classroom and, of course, to safeguard the mental and physical health of our students. Excessive cellphone and social media usage can have a negative impact on students’ mental health, and there’s no question that children are at much greater risk of harms posed by digital platforms than ever.

Our government understands that positive mental health is critically important to students’ achievements and overall well-being. For that reason, we are investing $117.65 million in student mental health supports for the coming school year. Just to put things into perspective, that’s an increase of 577% since the 2017-18 school year, when the previous Liberal government was still in charge. And since 2020, our government has opened 22 youth wellness hubs that provide mental health supports to over 31 communities, and we have plans to open another five hubs.

We made the vaping and cellphones announcement in April, but I want to remind this House that our government has made many, many other announcements in recent years that have helped to keep kids safe. For example, our government brought greater safety to our classrooms by introducing a no-tolerance policy that means that teachers who have serious criminal convictions and charges against them are not allowed in front of the classroom. We are now publicly posting the names of educators who are convicted of serious criminal offences. We took these actions, Speaker, because we believe in putting families, and the rights of parents, first.

Many parents would say that bullying is a serious problem in our schools and it poses a threat to the mental and physical health and well-being of children. I’m proud to say that our government has taken action. Nearly three years ago, we issued Policy/Program Memorandum 144, which provides direction to school boards regarding bullying prevention and intervention in schools. Every school board must establish a comprehensive and achievable plan to deal with bullying and all schools within that board must implement the plan.

There’s no question, Speaker, that based upon the actions that we have taken, our government is very serious about keeping children safe, so I call upon my colleagues to vote in favour of Bill 133. Let’s make September our province’s Kids’ Online Safety and Privacy Month.

Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking MPP Ghamari for identifying this gap in the legislation. Many of us are aware that Canada requires appropriately sized life jackets or personal flotation devices to be in the boat. However, there is in fact no law requiring children or anyone else to wear those life jackets or flotation devices.

What’s more, we do not even require children to wear a life jacket while water-skiing or tubing. This is an existing gap in our legislation that we need to close to better protect children’s safety on water. Parents, guardians and other persons supervising children playing have an important role to keep children safe while on provincial waters. As a parent and a member of my community, I am in full support of this bill.

This bill is an important and timely one, especially when summer is just around the corner. This bill will ensure that children are safe on our provincial waters. It will also raise awareness of water safety and prevent drownings. For the physical safety of Ontario’s children, I look forward to the passing of this bill.