 Pardon me, I am so sorry to interrupt the member from the risk of being Cochrane, but the clock is such that the time for debate in this matter is now over for the moment. You will have an opportunity to get into your debate the next time this is called. But now it's time for member statements. And the first member statement goes to the member from Nickel Belt. Thank you, Speaker. Today I'm asking the government to restore all courses and jobs caught from Laurentian University and to put in place a moratorium on any further cuts. This is in order to ensure that all students are able to continue their education and graduate as planned. I'm also calling on the government to make sure that the current students in all of the programs affected by the restructuring of Laurentian University are able to obtain a diploma or degree in the same program or major in which they were registered as of April 9, 2021, without additional courses, without additional costs, or having to transfer out of our area. There is an urgent need to act now to stop students from being forced to leave our region and to ensure that they can build the life and career they chose for themselves in Sudbury and in the north. The French community has expressed its desire to return French language programs to a university made for and by the French community. Close the Indigenous program, Speaker, one of the best of its kind in Canada. It is a real blow to reconciliation. I am calling on the government for unconditional support for Laurentian University. We, the people of Sudbury and the northeast, deserve equity of access to university education. Thank you, Speaker. Thank you. Member Statements. The Member for Richmond, Bill. Thank you, Mr Speaker. The COVID-19 pandemic has created many challenges for businesses, especially small businesses. Our government has taken actions to help, but we also know how powerful local support can be helping businesses get through these challenging times. I am thankful for the support provided by the Richmond Hill Board of Trade, the Richmond Hill BIA, Richmond Hill Chinese Business Association, the Richmond Hill Economic Development Office of the City. Together, they formed the Recovery Richmond Hill Task Force. Because of the efforts, we witnessed the success of businesses in Richmond Hill. The 30th Richmond Hill Business Achievement Award held last week clearly demonstrated that this successful continues. Even during hard times, having received this award myself in 1998, I know how helpful it is in uplifting small businesses. With a positive outlook and through the support of the local BOT, BIA and CBA, we will surely have a speedy economic recovery once the pandemic is under control. Please join me to congratulate and recognize the successful businesses and award recipients, including Cargoons Alto Works, Canada-China Trade Innovation Alliance, Sweetwater Go-Made Catering, Richmond Hill Soccer Club, United Canada C-17 Media, Bamboo Dental, Rootnet Law, Quality Meets, Papa G's Quality Meets. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Thank you. The next Member's statement, the Member for York South-West. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise today to give voice to the members of our community of York South-Western who are deeply concerned about their lack of access to COVID facines. Essential workers and their families want to know why their community has zero mobile pop-up clinics and not one permanent facine facility. It is well-recognized that the Toronto Public Health and the province of York South-Western is a hot sports and one of high-risk of COVID transmission. How can this government acknowledge that alarming fact and not provide the facines to those that need it the most? Essential workers in my community need the facines and they need the basic days this government has voted against over 25 times and have leached to the game, finally promised them, but not delivered on. Every day that goes by that an individual in high-risk has to go to work sick and every day they haven't yet received their facine puts an entire community at risk. How is it we can have 1,500 cases but 100,000 people and still nothing is done to help our community? When will the government acknowledge the risk our community faces and provide us with what our communities have mobile clinics and permanent COVID facine facility? We need the government to step up to the plate, take aggressive action and stop the facine inequities and disparities that exist and make real plans to provide for hot-hit communities like York South Boston. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member for Oakville North Burlington. Thank you, Speaker. Last week I was pleased to make an announcement that was great news for our community of Oakville North Burlington. The governments of Ontario and Canada have jointly invested 3.7 million dollars in 32 schools in my community through the investing in Canada infrastructure program. This funding will help to protect students and staff from COVID-19 by improving ventilation, upgrading IT, outdoor learning and other safety measures. We'll also support building retrofit and upgrades to local schools and childcare facilities located in schools. Other upgrades include installing water bottle refilling stations and new walls and doors to enhance physical distancing. This funding builds on the more than one billion dollars the Ontario government has invested since 2019 in new schools and childcare spaces. As well, every year the Ontario government invests 1.4 billion dollars in maintenance and improvements to school facilities. I'm pleased that 32 of our schools are getting the funding and attention they need to improve safety for students and staff. Ours is a fast-growing community with young families and our government is funding three new schools and a major addition. I want to thank the Minister of Education for his work to ensure that schools in Oakville, North Burlington get the vital support they need. Thank you. Thank you. Member Statements, the Member for Sudbury. Thank you very much, Speaker. Speaker, the Ontario Small Business Support Grant is failing many small business owners in my riding of Sudbury. Here's what's been happening. They applied for the grant, they're denied, they don't understand why. They applied, they're told they're approved yet never received a dime. They applied, they make a small error and have been trying to rectify it with literally no response from the Ministry at all. A local salon owner told me, since February I've received emails stating my bank information is incorrect. I had it rectified with an approval email. Well, over six weeks later, I still have not received any grant money. I've called several times, I've emailed them and I haven't gotten any response. Mike Browning has four businesses in Sudbury, Speaker. He has two Coast Tacos, Beards, Plurples and the Vinyl Emporium. His four businesses run under one umbrella company, so Mark can only apply for the Small Business Support Grant once, even though he has four businesses. Mark made a small error in his initial grant application in January. The Ministry said they would help him resolve this. However, Speaker, nearly three months later, Mark is still waiting for details. As Mark said, I'm currently floating on about 60K of borrowed money, so knowing that roughly half that coming later this year would help me sleep at night. Speaker, new Democrats believe that small businesses have suffered enough. I am hearing similar stories from small businesses across my riding and from the small businesses in my colleagues' ridings. The government must take a look at this program immediately, so business owners can access the support they were promised. Frankly, it's not too much to expect that the Ministry answered a phone when small businesses called. Member Statements, the Member for Ottawa, Vanie. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Speaker. Over the last year, we have all seen the resilience of our communities in their fight against the pandemic. Our community associations play an important role in our communities and are doing exceptional work that must be recognized. The members of these community associations are volunteers who are very devoted and who devote their efforts to help their friends and neighborhoods. I appreciate the essential role that community associations play in politics. The added value of community association is the proximity they have with our constituents. Working with them allows us to better understand the need and interest of the residents and we draw great benefits from working with them on local issues. Given their important work, I believe that giving the community association a more formalized role in our political system would be beneficial. We all know that these associations suffer from a lack of resources, depend entirely on their volunteers and the civic duty of the community. While I am impressed and grateful for all they managed to accomplish, I believe that they need more support from the different levels of government. Providing the community association with the ability to more effectively accomplish the work they already do for the residents of our writing would in fact assist us in doing our job as elected officials. I certainly hope we can make some progress on that front soon, which will require, of course, a great deal of collaboration. Merci, Mr. President. Thank you. Member Statements, the member for Etobicoke Lakeshore. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Always a pleasure to rise here. And today I'm rising to commend a young man who has invested time and effort into raising awareness of litter in one of our most beautiful resources, Hummer Bay, Etobicoke Lakeshore. Mark Tureski became a certified scuba diver a year ago and decided to use his skills as a diver and a photographer to record images of the floor of Lake Ontario around Hummer Bay. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, Mark Saw was alarming and disappointing. He found a tremendous amount of litter scattered on the floor of the lake. Alongside the floor and fauna, Mark found brand names and logos, coffee cups and COVID masks, cans, bottles and bags. Mr. Speaker, I believe we can all do better. I am proud to see Ontario is working to keep our neighborhoods, parks and waterways clean and free of litter and waste by reducing and diverting waste from landfills, looking for opportunities to recover waste and resources and finding new purposes for packaging and products. We are working on a draft blue box regulation that makes recycling easier for Ontario by standardizing what goes into the blue box and expanding services to more communities across the province. The proposed changes would make the producers of products and packaging fully responsible for waste they create, starting in 2023. This new goal of this new regulation is to improve recycling and address the pollution and litter while saving taxpayers money. On Tuesday, May 11th, as we observe Ontario's provincial day of litter, action on litter, I hope that everybody will pause and think of Mark's video of litter on the floor of Lake Ontario and thank him for reminding us that to reduce, reuse and recycle is not just a phrase, but a way of life. Thank you. Thank you. Next statement, the member for Brampton North. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In Brampton North, my writing and in Brampton, we continue to see increasing cases of positivity. Recently, Brampton's positivity case was 22.2%. In Mississauga, it was 14.5%. So what does this mean? It means that one in five COVID-19 tests are coming back as positive. And the Peel Regional Health mentioned that if you're out shopping, just assume that the person next to you may have COVID. The government must immediately upgrade Brampton to hotspot category for vaccines, supply and open up more pop-up clinics for those 18 to 49 as this age group is in need of it. The urgency and intentionality of which we've seen the Toronto Public Health is working is incredible. We see it on TV every day, lines of people, 18 plus going to get vaccinated. So my question to the government is why is Brampton not getting its fair share of vaccine allocation? Why is Brampton not included in the 18 plus pop-up clinics like they were seeing in Toronto and Durham and in other regions? We need this government to stop hiding behind accusations of supply and start doing better for our region. Our community and organizations are willing and ready, Mr. Speaker, for pop-up clinics. Thank you. Member Statements, the member for Ottawa West, Nipian. Thank you, Speaker. Dave Kalil has been known as Ottawa's piano man for over 44 years now. Born and raised in Ottawa, attending the old Laurentian High School in Ottawa, West Nipian, he started playing at Jay's Steakhouse on Wellington Street in 1976. Kalil has played all over Ottawa and across Canada at the nozzle, whispers, the saucy noodle, down and under, to name just a few. For the past 19 years, he has been part of Ottawa's original dueling piano show with Tyler Keely and Todd Huckabone. They wowed crowds at Fact Tuesdays, the Marshes, Sends House, as well as many weddings and festivals. When the pandemic hit, we know that musicians were hit hard. Mr. Kalil decided to play a few songs on Facebook Live Stream on March 14th, 2020. 30 people watched. From then on, he's played a show called Take a Break every Saturday and sometimes twice a week. They recently celebrated their 50th show and are still going strong. My shows typically draw between 100 and 150 people now, Mr. Kalil said. One night, someone offered $1 a person to my favorite charity. Since then, they have raised over $56,000 to go to support local charities like the Ottawa Food Bank, the Mission, and the Pearly Ritos Veteran Home. Mr. Kalil summed it up as a beautiful organic movement of generosity. Speaker, Take a Break is online every Saturday at 7.30 p.m. on Dave Kalil's Facebook page. Please log on, enjoy, and consider making a donation. Thank you, Speaker. Thank you very much. The next member's statement, the member for Markham Union Bill. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This month, I was delighted to host my first consultation for my private member's bill, Bill 270, Senior Volunteer Appreciation Week Act 2021. The level of support I received on this bill was remarkable, and it was wonderful to connect with the members of Markham Union Bill to hear their personal experience with volunteering. The one I want to share in this house today, Mr. Aaron Prasad has been an active volunteer for more than 10 years. Throughout these years, he has been involved in a wide range of activities from modifying homes, teaching students how to manage money to currency, volunteering for the Ontario Trillium Foundation. Mr. Prasad expressed the personal satisfaction that comes with volunteering and stressed on his belief that it's a beautiful way to open new opportunities. His strong desire to give back to the community began before his retirement and continues to this day. Speaker, Bill 270, if passed, will proclaim the first seven days of June as Senior Volunteer Appreciation Week and encourage Ontarians to wear a yellow-colored item to display their appreciation. I want to thank members from all sides who support and spoke on this bill during the second reading. Ontario is home for a vibrant community of seniors. And Bill 270 is another step forward for Ontario to recognize our older adults who selflessly continue to serve their communities. Speakers, I look forward to speaking more about this bill as it goes to third reading. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes our member's statements for this morning.