I thank you for the question. I fully support the tuition freeze. However, what I want to highlight is that at a time of an unprecedented affordability crisis—we know rents have gone up; this government has abolished rent control, for example; the cost of living has gone up; groceries have gone up—what hasn’t gone up is the amount of student assistance. In fact, as I referenced in my earlier remarks, the amount of OSAP has gone down by 40%. And even if you qualify for OSAP, that OSAP comes largely in the form not of grants, but loans. Again, as I mentioned, those loans no longer have a six-month interest-free grace period.

So our students need substantially more support. The tuition freeze is part of that, but I would be looking for vastly more, specifically in terms of additional financial support and increasing OSAP as well.

I see that you’re encouraging me to think back even further in history. I think something that’s often lost in the narrative is that, once upon a time, there was an NDP government in this province. During that period, post-secondary funding was last of all of the provinces in this country.

Interjection.

What I will tell you is that free speech is sacred here. We know that our post-secondary institutions are a bastion of free speech, and we need to make sure that they are safe places. We’ve seen a wave of various kinds of hatred and racism. We’ve seen anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism. We’ve seen hate speech directed to the LGBTQ2S+ community as well, and anti-Asian, anti-Black and towards women as well. So while we fight to ensure that there are safe places for us to speak freely, we do also want to make sure that the protections are in place so that students can study safely and focus on their studies.

If you’re asking will I support increased mental health supports, will I increase initiatives that will provide more funding to university and college students so that they don’t have to live hand-to-mouth, of course I will support initiatives of those types. The main crux of my criticism here is that this bill doesn’t come even close to going far enough to support our post-secondary sector and the students who will be the foundation of our economy going forward.