Again to the Premier: When male students and female students go to post-secondary education in Ontario, they pay the same tuition. But when they graduate and go into the labour market, the value of the credential for women is suddenly worth less. Graduate surveys two years after graduation show that female grads in Ontario earn less than male grads across all levels of education and all fields of study; after five years, the gap is even wider.

Why has this government done so little to close the gender pay gap for post-secondary graduates?

My question is to the Premier. Speaker, the London Coordinating Committee to End Woman Abuse released a snapshot yesterday showing that there were more than 10,000 domestic and sexual violence crisis calls in the London area in 2022, an increase of 54% from the year before. The vast majority of those calls were from women. Over the same period, women were turned away 2,166 times from Anova’s women’s shelter because of a shortage of beds, a 62% increase from 2021. Anova is also seeing more severe cases of gender-based violence than ever before.

Speaker, will this year’s budget include the increased and stable funding that organizations like Anova, Atlohsa and London Abused Women’s Centre need to keep women and children safe?