I rise to commemorate a friend of mine, a community leader and wise spirit, Pauline Rose Shirt (Nimikiiquay), who died this week. Pauline was beloved in our Toronto–Danforth community. I cannot do full justice to her story or her impact in this statement, but I want to note a few things.

Pauline was a Plains Cree Elder from Saddle Lake, Alberta, Red Tailed Hawk Clan, and member of the Three Fires society and Buffalo Dance society.

In 1974, Pauline and her then husband, Vern Harper, led the Native People’s Caravan. The caravan travelled from Vancouver to Ottawa to deliver a manifesto to the government on the treatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada.

Pauline was the Elder at George Brown College in Toronto, and in 2023, she was appointed to the Order of Ontario. Pauline served on the Elders Council of the Urban Indigenous Education Centre, starting in 2008.

In our community, she was best known for being the founder of Kapapamahchakwew, Wandering Spirit School. In 1976, after unsuccessfully trying to find a public school that was culturally appropriate for her son’s education, Pauline started the Wandering Spirit Survival School. In 1983, it was officially recognized as a cultural survival/native way school. In 2019, there was a remaining ceremony to return it to its origins: Wandering Spirit School.

She was a warm presence at powwows and First Nations celebrations throughout our community.

I want to convey my condolences to her remaining family and thank her now for all she did to build our community.

To the Premier: In December, the Ontario Energy Board decided to protect Enbridge Gas customers from unreasonable rate increases for new gas line installation. We’re talking about $300 per customer over the next four years. The next day, the Premier’s Minister of Energy said he would bring in a bill to overturn the decision and crank up the gas bills.

Will the Premier protect gas customers from higher Enbridge charges?

A 30% rate of profit is quite an extraordinary return. Can you talk about how it is that they’re able to secure such a high rate of return on this service?

I want to thank the two members for their presentations, and I’m posing this question to either of them: Can either member tell us how the elimination of the requirement that the WSIB file a strategic plan with its minister actually will make Ontario better? WSIB is not a small business; it’s an entity that I think would serve this province well by actually reporting regularly on its strategic plans. It needs to be held accountable. If you don’t know what they’re planning, you don’t know how to hold them accountable. Why do you want to make it less accountable?

Well, that was an interesting dodge.

Let’s try it again. The Premier has promised private gas plant companies that Ontario ratepayers will keep paying for the new gas plants even after they are shut down. The gas plant contracts will run to 2040, but those plants will be shut down long before then under federal law.

We already had one gas plant scandal under the Liberals. And it looks like the PC government is determined to do exactly the same thing.

How much will Ontario ratepayers be forced to pay for new gas plant contracts after these plants have been shut down?