 Therefore, it is now time for statements by members, the member from Nipi and Carlton. Thank you very much, Speaker. It is my profound pleasure today to introduce 8,500 signatures on a hydro fairness petition that have been presented to me by my City Councilor for Osgoode Ward, George DeRuz. He has been working very hard on this program. He launched it in March. It ran through to October. We had a hydro meeting with the Ombudsman for Hydro 1 that we co-sponsored with local City Councilor Scott Moffitt and Michael Cackish. In fact, rural City Councilors in the City of Ottawa have helped contribute to George's petition campaign. I would like to acknowledge Councilor Moffitt, Blay, El Shantieri and Monette. Also, many volunteers wrote our constituency worked hard to ensure that the 8,500 signatures were collected. I will note, Speaker, that they were all hand signed. This is not an e-petition. This was a lot of work, including from residents as well as small businesses, over 20 in the Osgoode Ward, but they came from West Carlton, Cumberland, Manitouk, all over the City of Ottawa. It was pointed out to me earlier today by George that in 2014, Bob Shirelli, who is a local Ottawa member, also a former Mayor of Ottawa and Energy Minister, once compared our electricity system to Walmart. In the view of George Daruse and many people in the City of Ottawa, they want to know if Bob Shirelli can comment about it being Walmart, why can't they price match? That's a question of George had and one I'm happy to bring to the floor of the Assembly. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Further members? Statements to the member from Toronto. Thank you, Speaker. Speaker, there is a town near Sudbury called Gogama. And very few people in Ontario know it. In some ways that's good because if it would be known well, Speaker, it would be known because it would have gone through what the people of Lac-Magantic went through. Last year, a train carrying a large load of oil went through that town, and but for a few hundred metres, when it crashed, when it created an incredible fire, it could have burned alive everyone in that village, people who were asleep. It's well over a year. There was a clean up done by CN and I'll say clean up in quotation marks because, Speaker, there's still dead fish coming to the surface in the river that runs by Gogama, it is still possible to throw a rock in that river and have a spout of oil come up, have an oil sheen come over that lake, sorry, come over that river. Speaker, it's a wonderful thing that the people of that town were not burned alive. It is a wonderful thing. But the people of that town and the surrounding community are now living with oil contamination that is unsupportable, indefensible. CN has to clean up, the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change has to prosecute CN if it does not clean up and clean up immediately. We're going into a second winter, the oil is still there, the people of Gogama cannot be forgotten. Thank you, Speaker. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This past Thursday, I had the pleasure to attend an announcement with the Minister of Research, Innovation and Science in my great writing of Ms. Saga Brempton South. Minister Muridi announced $763,000 from the Ontario Research Fund for Sheridan Colleges Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Design Technologies. Sheridan is an excellent place to learn the knowledge and skills that young people need to succeed in the knowledge-based economy. And the college is a key part of our community's accelerated economic growth and long-term prosperity. Sheridan College has built invaluable relationships with businesses in my region. Working together, they provide students with new skills, training and opportunities needed to succeed. Mr. Muridi and I saw how Sheridan's 3-D printing technology can produce durable and complex parts essential to the medical and aerospace industries, which are important to my writing and Ontario. Thank you, Mr. Muridi, for the investment in Sheridan College and its students. Mr. Speaker, I would also like to thank Dr. Farzad Regni for his tour of Sheridan's Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Design Technologies. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you for the member's statement, the member from Thorn Hill. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And I want to remind everybody today, it's October 19th, and that means Child Abuse Prevention Month, the month of October, and specifically today. We're saying go Jays go, but we're also saying go purple. We're purple today, and the CN Tower tonight is going to be lit up purple as well. And hopefully we're going to be celebrating Jays win today. I want to remind people that it's our duty. It's everybody in the community's job to keep children safe and to report any possible abuse or neglect of children in the community. We have fantastic children's aid societies here in Ontario. In fact, Theresa McCalla, she's a communication specialist from Catholic Children's Aid Society of Toronto, and she specifically sent me the hashtag that people should post on Twitter today with the hashtag go purple. And I just want to remind everybody that the Children's Aid Society are there to keep children safe. 97% of children that are investigated do stay with their families. So let's look up October underscore is underscore CAPM. Do the hashtag go purple. And for more information, go to OACAS.org. Hashtag go purple. Thank you. Go purple. Thank you. Member Savis, the member from Hamilton Mountain. Thank you, Speaker. Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting Yes I Can Nursery in Toronto, an organization that provides autism supports and childcare. This organization provides services to 110 children from all over Toronto. Some children depend so much on these services that they travel hours to get there. They place great value on those services, and apparently they're not alone, or at least they weren't. The Premier herself has visited them many times in support of the excellent model of child services. Now she is not there for them when they need her. Instead, Kathleen Wynne's government is cutting their funding. The advocate for children and youth has said that when you enter this nursery, you can just feel the possibility. If Yes I Can does not receive this funding, these families will lose this possibility. The government claims to be committed to improving services for children with autism. But here they are, refusing to fund an organization that provides needed services. Why is the Premier letting things get worse for children with autism? Speaker, today is the 26th birthday of Yes I Can. I call on the Premier to celebrate the milestone by stabilizing the funding for Yes I Can. Will she do the right thing and put these families' minds at ease, or will she just be blowing out their candles? Thank you, Mr. Speaker. During our recent constituency week, I had the opportunity to visit a health care facility in my riding of Kitchener Center called the Sanctuary Refugee Clinic, and I'd like to tell you and members of the House a little bit about it. It's situated in an older home on King Street, that's the main street in Kitchener, and currently they have a patient roster of about 1,500 people. They offer very comprehensive care, they're like an urgent care clinic, but their special focus is seeing and treating newcomers. As I have shared previously in the legislature, Waterloo Region has welcomed over 1,200 Syrian newcomers to our community in the past year. The Sanctuary Refugee Clinic has already seen 500 of these individuals come through their doors with various health care and mental health issues. Speaker, it was very impressive to see firsthand the hardworking, selfless staff and volunteers who are led by Dr. Michael Stevenson provide health care with dignity to vulnerable refugees in Waterloo Region, and I want to commend them for the important work that they are performing every day at the Sanctuary Refugee Clinic as they patiently help people who are the newest members of our community. And I want to add that I'm very proud of the commitment that our government has made to welcoming Syrian newcomers to our province, helping them to settle in, helping them to find homes and get enrolled into schools and seeking out health support where needed. As a daughter of immigrants, when I look at the children of these newcomers, I see great possibilities for the future. Thank you very much. Thank you. Member of the State, Member from Prince Edward Hastings. Thank you Speaker. I'm getting to my feet today to tell you about Graham Walt. Graham is one of hundreds of farmers in my riding that got hammered this summer by the drought. When he spoke to my office today, he talked about how the corn harvest this year was just enough to feed the cows for this winter, and even then he had to get additional hay from Warkeworth and from York Region. But Speaker, Graham's problem extends well beyond the drought. Impact assessments in my riding have more than doubled for Class 1 agricultural land. An impact representative told 20 West Council last night that the supply of farmland since the last assessment had caused the price per acre to more than double. In Graham's case, it went up 125 percent at the property on Lakeside Drive in Ameliusburg in Prince Edward County. Back in September, the Minister of Agriculture showed up in Prince Edward County to assess the state of the drought and said he knew that my local farmers were feeling the brunt of the drought, but matters have only gotten worse. The questions that my constituents had that day about the crop insurance program have still gone unanswered. For many farmers, the drought was bad enough to knock them down, but a lot of them thought they could make it through the winter to next spring. But the latest news on assessments for Class 1 agricultural land might just be enough to knock them out. You can't increase assessment costs by 125 percent, have a drought all summer and expect the farmers to feed our city speaker. Once again, this government has taken a land problem in the GTA and let it dictate policy across the province. I know the Minister told the Peterborough Examiner it was hard to get some members of the government to care about what happens in rural Ontario, but I'll guarantee those members don't want to pay $10 for a quart of milk from eastern Ontario. My farmers like Bramwalt need more and can just talk from this government. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you. From the Member of State, Mr. Member from Tomiskamy Caucus. Thank you, Speaker. This week we celebrate Small Business Week and we all have a tremendous amount of respect for small businesses. They lay everything on the line with no safety net because they want to, you know, they want to prosper and they want to serve their community. And today I would like to focus on one small business in my riding in Erleton, Ontario, Erleton Grocery King. Michelle Morris, the Erleton Grocery Store was going to close and Michelle Morris in 2009 took up the torch and reopened as Erleton Grocery King to serve the people. Can you imagine a town of 1,500 people in the area with no grocery store? Michelle, Mike, he stepped up to the plate. When Mike started, took his business over, his hydro bill was $3,500 a month. Because as you know, grocery stores have a lot of freezers and coolers and lights. And Mike was prepared. He saw that number and he was prepared to live with that number. He called me a couple months ago and his hydro bill was $6,800 a month. He called me a few days ago and his last hydro bill was $7,500 for 35 days. Mike is almost down for the count. The Premier says she wants to create jobs in rural Ontario, but why have they gotten to the point where they're actually killing small business throughout the province? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to pay tribute to the late Dick Watts, a man who contributed so much to Regal Heights and a fantastic community in my riding of Davenport. Dick Watts was an inspiration to the residents of Regal Heights. He was the true soul of the Regal Heights community and for over three decades, real soul of the residents association as well. His vision and work have made the neighbourhood the vibrant community that it is today. As a local member of Provincial Parliament, I was fortunate to have met Dick Watts on a number of occasions at the many events organised in the Regal Heights area. His involvement within the Davenport community and in community development has been an inspiration both to me and to our community. Everywhere you look in Regal Heights, you see his influence, whether it is in the friendship and cooperation between residents or the garden in the park, which he helped build. Over the years, he planted trees, removed graffiti, organised community caroling and Canada Day processions, annual community clean-ups and art installations and planted bulbs on what is known today as Daffodil Hill on Davenport Road and Dufferin. Dick also promoted the history and heritage of the area by supporting the restoration of the portico at Regal Heights Public School and hosting annual heritage walking tours. His constant initiatives on behalf of the community are extensive and he did them all for the benefit of everyone. It is his true dedication to his community that made Dick Watts special. Sadly, Dick passed away at the age of 93 on October 12, 2015. Last week, I attended a ceremony with the local community, Dick's wife, family and friends to commemorate a recently renovated staircase at Regal Road and Glenholm Avenue that descends onto Davenport Road. This location was a very special place to Dick and so it was fitting that these steps were renamed the Dick Watts Steps. I know that now wherever the community assembles for an event, they will use Dick Step Watts and reflect on his continued legacy. I thank all members for their statements.