Hi everybody so as I'm taping this I have begun my 35th year in the classroom and I'm really looking forward to coming out on September 30th on behalf of the Edmonton Regional Learning Consortium and you know really kind of getting at this idea of really elevating student reading and writing. I think first and foremost it's really a volume issue, a volume problem. Kids are not reading enough. They're not writing enough. There's a lot of fake readers. If you agree with me on that then I think this day coming up will be really valuable because what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at moving kids from sort of compliant reading and writing to engaged reading and writing. There's a big difference right between reading and writing that's sort of task oriented and reading and writing that's more more generative and so I really do believe even after all these years that all my kids really do like to read and they really do like to write and I look forward to sharing some of that thinking with you. So please come and join us teachers in Alberta, teachers across Edmonton. Come and see us September 30th at the Fantasyland Hotel and we'll have a very rich day discussing you know elevating adolescent reading and writing.


On the 19th of August 2001, a day after the first hijacking happened, the Nick Jr. channel was again hijacked during an ending of the show Little Bear as the Nick Jr. logo again went too far, after a report of someone who watched it ended up dying on the spot. The rumor turned out to be a hoax, or so I'd thought. I while you call a worker at Microsoft, I had been hired recently to work for patches to fix anomalous operating systems, making sure that computers don't develop strange bugs at all. It started in early November, I still remember reading the story of the first part, I was walking around at a park in rural Texas. I was walking alone for so long, I didn't feel like I was going to find something on the floor. While I was walking on the yellow grass, I found something. It was a DVD that dated from 2001. I had to ask myself whether I should take a look at the tape or not. When I returned home, I brought the disc with me. I decided to turn on my old Windows Vista PC, and as I was inserting the DVD in, my computer displayed an exclamation message that read, Do not view what you will see. You will soon regret it for yourself. Amidst enough, I closed the message, and the video player opened up as the video was going to play. It started with the normal average end credits to a little bear, nothing much to see here, so I fast forwarded them a bit and then stopped at the Milvano logo, though it started glitching to a pitch black screen. This was when the anomalous part of the video began. When the visuals returned, the Milvano logo was continuing to play, until it cuts to the Nick Jr. logo, showing Nick and Jr. playing catch, but with air. The screen then started glitching as the audio stopped, then, Nick and Jr. then stood still without doing anything. Nick's word mark was backwards, marked as kin, and that the perspective made it look like Nick was staring at Jr. This reminded me of the anomalous videos I encountered in one of those disturbed computers. Unsettling music then started playing in the background, and at the 26 mark, Nick opened his mouth as he started speaking to Jr. Tell me. The screen glitches again as more text was shown. He said, What is stronger? Again, more text was being shown as Nick spoke, his voice was a cacophony of digital noise that somehow coalesced into a semblance of speech. Then the human heart. His voice sounded as if it were emanating from a realm far beyond the screen. The words started to echo in my mind as I saw some letters in the text being bold. My eyes widened while looking at the bold letters to the point where I could see the word, eat, being written there. The screen glitches again, until I saw Nick beginning to grow in a natural manner as his arms started to get rapidly longer. After that, he said. Which shatters over and over. Nick continued to grow more unnaturally as another piece of text was shown. This time, he said. And still lives without reason. While the text was being shown, I had seen the bold letters in the three messages that Nick said to Junior. The letters echoed in my mind and then I soon realized that when these letters were put together, said bold letters would make a sentence that would read, eat, or buy. The screen then suddenly cuts to white. Before then, what faded was a distraught picture of Junior looking at an ominous standing figure of Nick, now resembling a monster that went by the name of Kirk Cobb, with long claws, a hay-shaped head and a large eye with orange sclera. Nick began to scream loudly as the distorted Nick figure said. Who is the figure on the screen? Then Nick started to glitch significantly for a little bit as he then said. The end of all things.  Nick started to make a sinister grin as he said to Junior. The sound of decaying flesh. After that, the figure continued glitching as the last piece of text was shown. The figure then said. And you're doomed. The entire screen abruptly glitches to pitch black, and then, an image of the now-scared Junior began to fade into existence. Then afterwards, the figure then began to fade into existence as he appears to be behind Junior. He looks directly at him, and then he said. The said figure then began to open his mouth, and the glitching sound of his laugh was heard. Junior then let out a distorted blood-curdling scream as the figure continued to get closer to him.  The Nick figure continued to get closer at Junior until the entire screen continued to glitch heavily. Before then, the scene snapped to black. I didn't even care to know what happened next. I took out the disc, and then I turned off the computer. Then I threw the disc out into the ground. Whose idea was it to leave behind a DVD disc like this? Who made this? Who did it? Weeks later, I received news that one of the students went missing after seeing the disc themselves. I was at a loss on what to do. I tried contacting Nick Junior, but they hadn't responded to me in months, and they wouldn't especially like having angry visitors over. So then I tried to contact Nickelodeon about this, and this is what they said to me. We were very sorry about this experience you had. The DVD was made by our now imprisoned teenage employee named, Ivan Blastasov, a relative of 3D modeling designer Dr. Blastasov, who hijacked the Nick Junior channel twice to air two anomalous logos of the company he made as he felt like Nick Junior wasn't itchy for his taste. And so we had rejected the logo previously as it was way too dark for kids, to the point where we got complaints from angry parents who said that their children were traumatized by this anomalous logo bumper and we know it was him all along. So we had to fire him for good, he has been imprisoned since then. We are very sorry for the inconvenience. To this day, only a YouTube video uploaded by Seasmo, MK700, is the only known source of the footage. It is called, Nick Junior Anomaly, 2001, Found Footage, Version 2.


Welcome, artists and creative people to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins, and today I'm bringing you a lesson in pastel painting where I discuss the power of a neutral palette. Now this is part three. There are two previous videos that discuss this more, but it's not necessary to see those videos. This is an all-inclusive video in itself of this particular painting. However, I like to add Bible verses to my paintings. However, if you would like to see the other two, the very first one called the power of a neutral palette is exclusive to my Patreon page. It is part one, and if you would like to become a member of my Patreon page, there's the website there. In that particular video, I go more into the color theory behind neutrals, how you can make them yourselves with pastels. Also, I use Photoshop to really get a little deeper with color and value and neutrals. Now part two is also the power of a neutral palette where I create this little mini painting with the same neutral palette that I use for this painting, and I also teach about doing a value sketch. And they don't have to be this large, but it's really for you guys who have been asking more about just some basic drawing tips and techniques. So check out part two if you're interested in that. Now also two, I do sell prints and products of my work. Of course, the originals are available. If anybody's ever interested, you can contact me. I have my contact info at the end of the video, but I found out today, if I get this video posted in time, I'll put the date up here, that prints and products are actually shipped free today. So if you would like a canvas print, a regular print, a coffee mug, a pillow, a tote bag, whatever with any of my products, you can check it out and get free shipping today only. All right, I think it's time to paint, right? So here's the lovely photo of a field behind my house where I decided to paint a neutral palette. Okay, it's time to begin our larger version of the neutral palette painting. And I've chosen for this particular larger version to use UART sanded paper, actually have some right here that I can show you. UART paper, the 400 grade, I know a lot of pastel artists talk about this a lot. It's a really versatile paper. You can put water on it, you can wash it off. One challenge to UART though is especially in humid climates, it will curl. And I have not found any way to prevent this, especially living in the Tampa, Florida area. Even when I've bought it, I've put it under books. I've tried to keep it in the coolest place, but lo and behold, I still get curling. But I have a quick little fix for that. I did have another video where I shared how you can actually iron it. And I give tips on that, but I found another neat new little way to fix UART paper. I'm going to make another video on that. So I got it nice and flat. This piece was all curled up. And I got it nice and flat with that technique. So there's a teaser for you. But anyway, we've got our sketch done, our value sketch done. We've got our mini painting done with the palette. And I've zoomed in a little bit to show you this palette of neutral colors with a bolder, more highly saturated color intensity for the underpaint. All right, so my setup is basically, I usually keep the camera on this side because I'm left-handed. Sometimes I'll use my right hand if it's more convenient. But I have my iPad over to my right. And sometimes I'll work from a photo. Sometimes I'll work from my iPad. But I wanted to have my value sketch up here to refer to my mini painting and the actual image of the field. And by the way, the field that I took the picture of is literally right out that window for that beautiful foggy morning when I saw it. And it was bathed in neutral color because of the fog and because of the early morning light. Okay, so it's time to get started. I've got my pastels. Only thing I've got to do now is grab my coffee, my water, and put on some soothing, peaceful music. All right, let's paint. Now I've zoomed in here to show you the color choices. These are the actual ones that I used for the mini demo. I may have grabbed one or two other neutrals. My neutral palette is literally right next to me and put them back in their spot, but not many. And surprisingly, not many pastels were needed for this particular painting. These, again, are the underpainting selections to give it that nice warm. These are going to be our bowls underneath the neutral palette. And sorry if this keeps focusing on my hand. And so those obviously I have in varying degrees of value. Darkest, next to darkest, medium, medium to light and light. So if you have anything that's these five values that is in the magenta, I mean you could even do this with reds and oranges and yellows, but just some warmer tones. And that's really all you need for the underpainting selection. Now notice other than that, all of these are really more neutral colors. You don't see any really bold colors jumping out at you. These are my green choices. They all look kind of like dead greens. Nothing is really like that bright, vibrant green. And again, darkest value down to lightest value. Some of these are a little cooler, like maybe that one. And actually, this one over here is a lighter value. This one's actually got some green in it. It could actually go down here. And then I've got some cooler blues. Some have a little more green in it than others, but again, according to value. And then I've got a purple that I use sparingly. And then I've just got kind of a, this is more of a dulled out brown, kind of a taupe color. And then some lighter versions of that. So that's our neutral palette with our bold underpainting, which really has a neat effect. All right, time to paint. Okay, so I have my UART paper taped down flat. And these are the charcoal pencils that I used, actually not this one, for the value study and getting in basically just a general sketch. But for this one, I really, I could block all this in just with the pastels, but I think I will just sketch in. I'll use this lightest of the charcoal pencils to kind of get an idea in. Now, I had talked about doing more drawing instruction for Monet Cafe videos for beginner lessons. And while I won't go into a lot of detail with this one, I will go over some of the basics of how I approach things. Landscapes are not as tedious for drawing as say a person or an animal, but you still want to get things right. I know a lot of times people think you don't have to draw that well to paint, but I disagree with that. I think if you improve your drawing skills, it's such a great foundation for a good painting. Now notice what I did. I didn't break out a ruler. I just marked this off. I know it's approximately an 8x10. 8x10 is also, that's a little crooked, 8x10 is also a standard size. So if you work in standard sizes and a client wants to buy it, they can easily find frames, premade frames, instead of having to get custom frames. So sometimes that's good, but I don't like to stay bound by the size, standard size. So I leave myself a little room. I may want to stretch this out a little bit. Hey Jackson. So anyway, I just kind of divide things out into quadrants and I've learned to see things proportionately. You can see in my sketch here that I kind of did the same thing here. I know typically you don't want to put a horizon line like right in the middle, but this composition was such that I thought it worked well, especially since some of these trees back here were a little bit higher. That's really the horizon line back there. This is just the base of this tree. All right. So I kind of just look at my, and I did this from the photo. So I kind of get ideas with that. And then I noticed things like, I don't know if you can see how far I am over here. I noticed in the photo that kind of down the middle where the tree was, the tree was, didn't come all the way to the center, but pretty darn close. How far did it come from the top? It left a little bit of space up top. So it's an exercise in looking at positive and negative shapes. And the more you do it, the better you get at it. So I'm just going to sketch in here a little bit and keep those things in mind when you're drawing is looking at where things are in relation to other things. That's really, to me, one of the strengths in, or a good habit for drawing that will help you a lot. Okay. Now there's a gauge of just sort of getting things in, in general. And now all I need to do is get in these values with the bolder color selections that I showed early on. Now this is going to be one of my Patreon goals when I get to a certain amount of members is to definitely buy some new pastels. I am seriously in need of more pastels. I really haven't bought that many since the flooding of our home and I tried to save as much things as I could, but I have a, I have a pretty limited amount of pastels embarrassingly. But I really hope to replenish my supply and your Patreon support would really help me do that. Now this is really, I don't need to get too specific about this. This is more just getting the darks in down here. I can get the general location of where these grasses are and how they're growing once I get my values in. But I am going to add a little bit. That was the darkest dark. I am going to add a little bit of this other lighter value in this as well. And this is just kind of scumbling. I'm just getting, I'm not drawing here. I'm just getting in this because I'm going to, I'm going to scrub it in to get a, get a value study going. All right. Now I know another one of the darkest things. This tree actually isn't as dark as the foreground because it's in fog and it's a little further away. But I am going to go ahead and get, get it in with a darker value and I will lighten it as I work. And I'm running out of this pastel as I, as I'm talking here. UR paper is taking it down to nothing. I hope I can finish this underpainting. It's hard to hold even. All right. So now again, I'm going to add a little bit of this value here. This is going to give it some interest and I'm not pressing real hard just so you know. This is just a gently kind of scumbling this around. I'm also going to add a little bit more of this lighter value. I kind of want to lighten this tree up a little bit. See, I've got the three, the three values working with each other here. Now I do know that this area right in here, there's a base of the tree where, where these weeds kind of were growing. I'm going to try to hold this where I can work with it. They were darker. So let's get those in. They came up kind of high right here and then they tapered off and there was a few ones growing right in there. All right. And that's really it for the darkest values. The rest of them are going to be more of the mediums. Now let's see. We've got our darkest here, dark. This is also dark and then this is the next in line for dark. So now let's start working with this value. This is the next one. This is the third one down from darkest to lightest. And we've got this little area back in here kind of behind these trees. It's another thing of bushes or something back there. I can't remember. I could look out my window and see. And then also too, this is closer to the foreground. So it's fairly dark but it is like I explained in the little mini painting. It is bathed in fog and so it's going to be even a little bit lighter. This is that area where that fence is right here. Okay. And it's a little darker actually than this little valley right here. It's close to the same but I'm going to distinguish that a little bit more. I think I will darken this up a tad, this little fence row here with a little bit of this next value. And now these trees in the distance here, I'm going to give them the third value down and then I'm going to lighten them up with the next lighter value because right now these two values are just kind of blending together. Now this tree was a little darker than some of the other things. So I'm going to take that second value. It's like a tree that was just kind of out in the middle of the field. I wasn't sure if I was going to leave it in when I did it but I decided to do it. Okay. And now like I said, I'm going to lighten these up because they're further away and I've got this nice little peachy tone. I'm still not at my lightest value yet. You see this is going to give that illusion that these trees are further in the distance. And then when you do the painting you know you sneak some of these colors behind there. And below here actually is getting a little bit lighter in value. There's like that foggy fogginess on the field. I don't know if I need it quite this light. And usually things that are flat are lighter in value than things that are vertical. So let me add a little bit more of this dark in here to kind of separate that from that foggy field. All right. You see all these bright colors and we're going to cover it in neutral when we're done. All right. So we've got our general idea here except for the sky. And I'm going to get this lighter pink. I actually, I might even use a little bit of this. No, I won't because that's a really light sky. So let me get this lighter kind of pink color and nothing too specific other than just coating the whole thing. I also keep saying I'm going to fix my easel so it doesn't shake so much. And I keep forgetting that. And I kind of do like a little bit of this light of the paper showing through. We don't have to cover this so, so much like overly overwork it or anything. All right. So there is our value study. Now what I'm going to do before I start applying the other pastels is I'm going to grab my pipe foam insulation. And again, always a thank you. I don't, I'm not sure if Karen Margolis, I always say her name, Karen Margolis discovered this from another artist or someone suggested to her or she discovered it herself. I'm always very thankful for this because this pipe foam insulation you can get at any hardware store is an excellent tool for blending. I have found some other ones that work well too, but I happen to always have this right near me. Now what I'm going to do is I'm just scrubbing all this in, getting this value study. And all this is doing is covering the surface of the UR paper, kind of blending it into the sanded surface. And also it's taking it down a notch, so you actually will get a little bit more layering. And I sometimes tend to work in sections, dark to light or light to dark, but light to dark is actually really good if you've already got your your thing kind of clean because now then you wouldn't drag all the the dark colors. Oh, I heard a neat and other little thing the other day is that supposedly you can wash these like in maybe the washer. That would be interesting, huh? All right, so this is actually kind of scrubbing it off of my board a lot, but that's okay. Still got our general values in here. Okay, now I'm just going to kind of wipe this off on a paper towel before I go on to the next areas. And by the way, I have sometimes people ask, oh, is it okay if I share? I recreated your painting. Is it okay if I share it in the Monet Cafe art group on Facebook or of course in our Patreon group? I totally encourage you to share. But yes, always that's the point of these. You can take this and emulate it exactly as close as you can get and share it. That's why I paint. I don't paint to enter my art in shows. I don't get all hung up over having to be in this art association or that art, even though it's great. I mean, that's awesome. But my I love to teach and I love it because now I'm going to get the sky and I'm wiping it off. I love it because I didn't have any formal art training other than a few art classes, majoring in graphic design. I just always loved it. And I so many years ago was forced to try to learn this pastel medium all by myself. And there weren't as many online resources back then. So it was quite frustrating. And and I felt like I had the scratch and claw to learn about pastel painting. And so I think this is just my way to give back. And I love it. I love providing lessons. And that's what that's what it's all about here in Monet Cafe. I love that people are all over the world. And they're learning and everybody's helping each other. So that's really cool. And that's also why I thank you for your support on my Patreon page, because it is allowing me giving me some more time to be able to paint and to provide more lessons. And I have a goal, hopefully, to be able to get an assistant to help me because I'm a one woman show right now with the filming, the painting, the editing, the marketing and everything. So I'd love to get an assistant. So but thank you patrons for your support. You've helped me more than you know. All right.  And that is it for bold color. The rest is going to be neutral. And if you're one of my patrons, you've had access to the first part of this video, which is on the power of neutrals. I go into more of some of the scientific and and reasoning as to what makes a neutral, you know, as far as the color wheel and and the real definition of a neutral and how they're achieved. So if you want to see that video, that's only for my patrons, but you can see it if you become a patron for $5 a month. Otherwise, all of this is free on Monet Cafe. I'll never stop bringing free videos to Monet Cafe. All right, it's time to get started with this. And I'm excited. All right, now that we have this very highly saturated warm underpainting, it's time to apply the pastels with a neutral palette and neutrals only. It's a similar technique that I did when I did this painting here. It was actually I got a lot of feedback. I used an oil paint underpainting and did the same thing where I applied more warm undertones with the oil paint and put neutral pastels on top and see the vibrancy it creates. Still kind of a muted feel, but you've got that little bit of color fun because of the underpainting and a couple little pops of color, you know, with some of the the teals that I added in the background. So I do have another video I'm going to be making where I do an oil painting underpainting and fix something that could be an issue down the road with longevity. So I heard a lot of you guys and I appreciate your feedback and I've got a solution for that. So hopefully another video upcoming soon. Okay, so let's start painting here. I'm going to, at first, again refer back to the little palette that I showed you. Other than these, I'm done with the bold colors. It's all neutrals from here forward. I am going to speed up the rest of the painting process from this point on, but I will add some music for your listening pleasure and I'm not speeding it up so fast that you can't still see what I'm doing. I just try to keep my video time around an hour or less because it really does help with my upload speed because I have pretty slow Wi-Fi where I am out in the country, but do enjoy and I will pop back in. I have a few more comments I like to make during this as to give a little more description as to what I'm doing and I hope you guys are enjoying this. I know I'm enjoying working with neutrals. I'm definitely going to do this technique again. For some reason, this little tree was bothering me in this painting. I think it was perhaps maybe a little too far over to the right or too large or I don't know, I just felt like it was distracting. So yes, you can actually take a stiff brush. That was one where the handle had broken off and kind of brush off the majority of the pastel and still have some layers to work with here. I also thought I'd mentioned too that I kind of re-established that brilliant bold pink that was originally underneath and the underpainting. I also added a little bit more of the warm tones to the background trees. I did reintroduce some of those warmer tones because I kind of wanted those background trees to glow and I added a little more pink to the sky. If I did this painting over again, I would not overwork it as much as I did. I think I would use broader strokes, fewer strokes, and keep it even more loose and free. Kind of like the first little painting. If you didn't see part two of this series, go back and watch that one. It just had a real spontaneity about it. I got pulled away from this painting quite a few times and sometimes that breaks your rhythm and you come back and sometimes you get a little frustrated. But all in all, I was happy with the painting as an end result and it definitely was a great exercise. I do think I will use this technique more where I do a more brilliant underpainting with neutrals primarily on top. I think it's a neat effect. All right, more painting. I'm finishing this up at this point, getting close anyway. And again, I really enjoyed this. Now I'm very motivated to buy more neutrals. I think I mentioned in the previous lesson part two that I've got my eye on Blue Earth Pastels. They're made by Dakota Pastels and I do believe they have a little, I'll have to share with you guys on my Patreon page. I think they have a little discount on their set that I want to get called the Nomad set. It's got some nice neutrals in it. So I hope you guys enjoyed this. Here's the final and as always, happy painting and also thank you. Thank you. Thank you to my patrons from my Patreon page. You guys are really helping me to create more videos and special content for my patrons, but also just to keep these free videos coming to Monet Cafe. So everybody should thank my patrons. Thanks guys so much. Happy painting and blessings.


I'd like to call for members' statements. The member from Helgen, Middlesex, London. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to rise today to highlight Suicide Prevention Day, which was just held on September 10th. Suicide Prevention Day has been recognized for the last 13 years, the first one taking place in September of 2003 by the International Association of Suicide Prevention. This year focused on three key points to suicide prevention, connect, communicate, and care. It is crucial to connect with those who have been affected by suicide, whether someone who may be at risk, a family member, or friend, or loved one who has been lost to suicide. We cannot overlook the importance of a connected society. You must be alert when a friend, coworker, or family member is disconnecting themselves from the community. The next point is communication.  Members of our communities have a role to play and must be open to discussing the risk of suicide. We should encourage everyone to discuss these matters in a considerate manner. The third point in the discussion regarding suicide prevention is care. We must ensure a strong healthcare system that can support and treat those at risk. The City of St. Thomas acknowledged Suicide Prevention Day by raising a flag that is memory of Nicholas Knapp. His mother, Penny, has been a tireless advocate for suicide prevention since the last of her son nearly a decade ago. There is more the government can do to prevent suicide. Our communities have lost too many people. Thank you very much. Well done. Thank you. Further member statements? The member from Windsor West. Thank you, Speaker. Let's get way down to business, Speaker. Energy to power our heaters, our refrigerator, and our lights is a basic need. But skyrocketing prices mean that more and more people are struggling to afford everyday necessities. I've heard from too many single parents and low-income families who can't buy new school supplies for their children because of their skyrocketing hydro bill. I've heard from too many seniors that set their alarms for 2 a.m. just to do their laundry. And there are still too many young people in Windsor that are not working or underemployed that will be forced this winter to choose between heating and eating. Our Royal Canadian Legion pays nearly 3,000 a month in hydro when that money should be spent on programming and services. At our downtown mission, last April's rate hike is equivalent to the cost of one meal per month for someone in need. I would ask that a page please walk over and deliver the hydro bills that I've received to the minister of energy and the premier so that they can no longer look away as people in Ontario struggle to afford the most basic costs of living. I'd like to thank everyone in Windsor and Essex County that have sent me their bills. The government could have used yesterday's throne speech to truly change direction and work for Ontario families. They could have halted the sale of Hydro One. Instead, they chose to stay the course and continue to work for only themselves. Thank you, Speaker. Thank you. Member Stiglitz, the member from Durham. I had a great summer in the writing of Durham. I spent my time exploring different events and festivities in my writing and I spent time listening to my constituents and local issues while celebrating numerous events across the writing such as Clarendon Heritage Week, Powow in Skogog, Blue Bear Festival in Bowmanville and Blockstack. I also attended the Blockstack Oxford and Port Prairie Fears. I could not help but wonder what these events would be without the hard work and dedication of volunteers. I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you how grateful I am to be living in a wonderful writing such as Durham. So rich with volunteerism. They spend hours of their time planning, organizing and providing support for others and this is without the expectation of reward. They are the cornerstone of my community and it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that today. So thank you, volunteers of the Durham writing for the tireless work you have completed over the summer and throughout the years that allow us to ensure that there are a variety of events to keep our community close and entertain our families. You guys give of yourself without expectation of anything in return and saying that you make Durham a great place is quite an understatement. With that being said, let me make one request of my community. When attending a local event, find a volunteer, give them high five and say thank you because without them we would have no fun fairs or festivals to bring our children to and there would be no one to plan charitable events that so many organizations rely up on. Thank you. Thank you, Speaker. Thank you for the member's favorite member from here on this. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I'm pleased to rise today to say thank you. Thank you to the thousands of people who have signed, taken the time to sign the petitions raising their voice collectively to tell the Ontario government that they no longer can afford the ever rising electricity costs that this government is imposing upon them. Petitions are being shared in senior departments. They're being shared in the lunch room of manufacturing manufacturers. They're being shared throughout fall fairs. The list could go on and on. But in particular, I want to give real examples of the concerns that are being raised because of the mismanagement of the energy file. Gail from Paisley said that they took over the grocery store in 2014. We spent $410,000 on an ultra-efficient refrigeration display equipment and associated condensers, fans and heat reclaimed systems. $29,000 on new LED lighting and $75,000 on a new double-entry door to keep the heat and coolness in the store. We did all the renovations in the name of energy efficiency. We applied for a hydro-1 electricity grant and received a total of $24,000, about 5% of their total investment. And now their costs are reaching $6,000 a month. That story can be echoed in Blythe. And for the individuals who are living on their own, they don't know where the money is going to come from one month to another to meet these costs. Ontario needs to do better. Thank you very much. Thank you for the member states and the member from Niagara Falls. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to give you two numbers. The first is 2,000 and the second is 24. These numbers relate to a petition that I circulated in my writing. The petition called for the government to address the crisis with hydro rates and stop the sale of hydro-1. In just 24 hours, 24 signatures, over 2,000 seniors, workers, business owners and young people all asked me to tell the Premier enough is enough. But I can tell you our plan to give residents relief on their hydro bill does not end with a rebate of the HST and neither should for this government. Hydro is an absolute crisis in this province. The Premier should announce she is stopping the sale off of hydro-1.  The rebate for the HST in 2017 does not do enough for the 4,000 residents who are behind on their hydro bills in my writing or the residents who are choosing between paying their hydro bill or buying groceries. I have constituents coming into my office who break down crying over their bills. Premier, the crisis is real in my writing and in Ontario. Mr. Speaker, from the people of Niagara to the Premier of Ontario, we ask you that you stop the sale of hydro-1. Recognize that people can afford their bills and work with us to make life more affordable in Niagara and rain across Ontario. Thank you very much. The member from Kingston and the Islands. Mr. Speaker, on August 20, the community of Kingston and the Islands welcomed the tragically hip home. Fans from across the country were transfixed as the band performed a heartfelt concert at the K-Rock Centre. When a band becomes legendary, their place of origin is inevitably swept up with it. The hip's gift to Canadian cultural identity and by virtue to Kingston, to this province and to this country is unparalleled. 11.7 million Canadians shared in the three-hour concert which would not have been possible without the CBC and the hip's collaborative approach. Gord's pantomime playfulness towards the end of the concert was a gentle reminder for all of us to find the joie de vie even in the face of diversity. Thank you to the countless city staff, Kingston City Police, Frontenac Paramedics and Kingston Firefighters and numerous volunteers who worked tirelessly to ensure that the concert was safe for all. I especially want to thank the tragically hip for capturing the heart of the nation. National spotlight on that unforgettable night, unforgettable night. For the hip, for the love of Gord and for your searing and poignant message that night that touched the heart of our nation, we will be forever thankful. Further member statements, the member from Bruce Gray, Owen Sallow. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I rise today in recognition of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in Ontario. I'm pleased to update this House that since we unanimously agreed last spring to recognize September as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, a new movement has spawned coast to coast and it will surely impact the lives of all children diagnosed with cancer. More than 40 buildings from Charlotte Town to the Vancouver Legislature have lit up in gold in support of the MAGI project, as it is now known. From Childhood Cancer Awareness to the Big Book of Care and Go Gold for Kids to the MAGI project, we need to continue to stand united to conquer what's known as the number one cause of disease related death for children ages one to 14. I want to thank our supporters who are in the public gallery for joining us today. Canadian Childhood Oncology Research Network, OPACC, Childhood Cancer Canada, ChildCan, Magans Walk, and the Pediatric Oncology Group of Ontario, with my constituent and advocate Neil Rourke and MAGI Jenkins' parents, David and Maureen. The fight against childhood cancer, the fight against childhood cancer should never be fought alone. That is what the gold ribbons we are wearing today symbolize. I wear my pen proudly in an honor of three young people who I have a personal connection with. Kona Higgins, the son of dear family friends from the UK who sadly passed away from cancer at the age of 17. Hailey Nuttle, the daughter of dear family friends, the Ruth and Nuttle families who passed away at the age of eight, and Brennan Rourke, a young man from Bruce Gray Owen Sound, whose father Neil is now a tireless advocate, a member of the Advocacy for Canadian Childhood Oncology Research Network, raising funds and awareness for young girls and boys whose childhoods have been regretfully cut short. Neil recently shared with me that the World Health Organization has found that globally for children before their 20th birthday, 821 are diagnosed and 164 die every day from a form of childhood cancer. So let us be reminded that we need to do more. I respectfully ask all of us to commit to take action and work tirelessly to ensure we give children and youth every opportunity to grow and thrive and live in a world that is free from this life-threatening disease. It is my hope that we will soon, for the dream of my hero, Terry Fox, find a cure for all cancers. Somewhere, the hurting must stop. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you. I thank our guests for being here. Neil, in particular, visited my writing, but also I wish to ask if you would keep in your minds the people that are actually biking across Canada as we speak. Speaker Chris Collins from New Brunswick, who lost a child to cancer, is a friend of mine, and he asked me to thank you for the support that you showed today. So thank you very much. I have a couple of other statements. The member from Beaches East York. Well, thank you, Speaker. I rise today to bring greetings, congratulations on behalf of our summer Olympians, who represented Canada in Rio, and to congratulate local volunteers in Beaches East York who planned a great parade to welcome them all home. So last month we all watched and cheered as athletes from across Ontario ran, swam, cycled, rode their way to glory. We celebrate not just those who won medals, but those also who achieved personal best or who fought their way through injuries in order to achieve their goals. And among those we cheered was Penny Oleksiak, a 16-year-old Monarch Park student from Beaches East York. She was raised in the Beaches. She swam at Wayne Summerville Pool and Glenn Ames Public School, and Penny won four medals in Rio, inspired a whole generation of young Beaches and Canadians to pursue their dreams. And she also inspired two local leaders, Joanna Carlo and Alice McMurray, who planned a great parade on her return. The parade walked down Woodbine, down to Queen Street, to Q Gardens. It was attended by the Premier, the Eleanor McMahon, the Minister of Culture, Sport and Tourism, local MPP, myself, actually, and the local MP and the member of City Council. Mr. Speaker, I want us all to celebrate the incredible success Ontario had, both in the Summer Libris, but also to acknowledge that we now have the Paralympics going on down in Rio, and there's more reasons to cheer. Another Beaches East York resident, Victoria Nolan, who has won a bronze medal in rowing. Despite her affliction, she's completely blind, Speaker. Thank you. Thank you very much, Speaker. Viewing the Ottawa Valley did not have their eyes fixed to their television sets and Eganville's Melissa Bishop returned to the Olympics in Rio to represent Canada in the women's 800 metres. Finishing with the second best time in the qualifiers, Melissa secured her place in the Olympic Finals with the whole country watching. Melissa went on to run a tremendous race for her personal best time and a Canadian record of 15702. Sadly, she finished fourth amid a controversy that Melissa showing the first-class person that she is stayed on the high road and didn't wait in. She has since continued to conduct herself with the highest level of professionalism with her eyes fixed on future competitions. This past Saturday, Eganville welcomed Melissa home in perhaps the biggest parade the village has ever seen. The parade was followed by a dinner later that evening where people could once again honour and congratulate their Olympian. Even though she is one of the world's best in her sport, Melissa is an amazingly humble person. It has been an honour for me to have followed her athletic progress through the years. Melissa has made the valley and indeed all of Canada shine brightly on the world stage. In addition, through her many visits to local schools, Melissa has inspired a generation of youngsters to believe in themselves. One of those children is our granddaughter, Mae, who now hopes to one day be able to run like Melissa. Melissa once inspired some older folks like me, who recently got a new hip. But as I said to Melissa on Saturday, I won't be challenging her anytime soon. I was thrilled when Melissa announced that she plans to compete in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Melissa, we're so proud of you. All that you've accomplished through your tremendous sacrifice and hard work, the valley loudly and proudly calls you our Olympian. We and all of Canada will march closely over the next four years and will be enthusiastically cheering you once again when you take to the track in Tokyo. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to correct my statement during my member's statement. I said that in 24 hours we had 24 signatures. I got that wrong. It was in 24 hours we had 2,000 signatures. Thank you very much. Mr. Speaker, it's now time for reports by committees.


getting ready for the meeting, the first meeting to review the RFQ and in-depth is tonight with one of the CN's out of India. So we we've just kind of reviewed stuff and made sure we had all our questions together and everything. So I'll be doing that in a couple hours. So yeah, so I didn't really do much on the voice side things or anything like that today. All right, well, I'm just I'm working on the conversion of the wiki skill to become a common query skill. I spent the last couple of days understanding intent parsing and how things are passed off and what fallback queries are and all that good stuff. And I found a bug in the question and answer skill, which is I guess, basically the common fallback skill for queries, but it ends up I guess being a common query thing and it sends out the messages for fallbacks when it gets its turn. But I refactored the loop because right now it breaks on the first match found. And I just said, go ahead and, you know, run through them all. So I can see what intense one tent matches they return to confidence levels. I noticed that it's always timing out after the third or fourth. So it's kind of weird how it works. It actually works like you would expect because not because it's coded right. So what it's doing is it's actually timing out after the third or fourth, which is it never finds anything in fallback anyway, once it gets done, unknown fallback. And because it always returns null intent matches, why it bothers, I don't know. But it always says, I couldn't find that. Or I didn't, you know, whatever it is, I don't know about that, whatever, which is interesting because now that they're going through all of them, and it's timing out on every one, you'll hear the answer before or after it'll say, I couldn't find that. And then it'll repeat the answer or play the answer. So I looked and it's a very tight time. It's like one millisecond, which is ridiculous for these things to get back and sending stuff on the message bus and whatnot. So anyway, I can put it back. I'm just I always instrument line up to document and log so I can see what's going on and I sort my log so I can see in time. And yeah, so I'm working on that. I mean, really at the end of the day, the work product tomorrow will be I'll have the wiki skill converted to common play framework. And that'll be that. And then I'll move on to something else. But I wanted to understand why I was seeing so many intent clashes.  And they were all open to everything that I can see. Now that I understand the code, I can see exactly what's going on where. And yeah, Converse is a interesting concept. I'll leave it at that should be deprecated, but I'll leave it at that. And I'll move on. So whoever goes next. Well, actually, I'll go next because speaking I kind of follow on from what you're saying. So I've been down a small rabbit hole on for the last day because of intense and, you know, why certain time or 10 start hitting and stuff. So what I've done, and I started this back with the weather skill, but didn't do a great job of it. And now that I see I need it again, I'm doing it. I'm doing a better job of it. I created a debug logging branch of Adapt.  Because Adapt is kind of complex and the boardings of the very older kind of complex. So unless you really know what's going on, it's hard to follow. So so yeah, I've been doing that just so I can see what is happening in the intent parser when I have a question about whether or not intense working, the way it's supposed to, or if there's an intent clash, I can see the differences between the intense and see why the clash is happening. And I may do something similar with PDACIUS and I may do something similar with core even the intense service because more happens after I wouldn't waste my time with it. I wouldn't waste my time with PDACIUS. It matches rarely, if ever anything. And on top of that, it's not I haven't gotten into it. And it's not clear to me that it's not getting some sort of feedback because it is a neural network. And so it wouldn't surprise me that I could be but the thing is they're PDACIUS is actually our top a high PDACIUS intent match is will turn a higher in the hierarchy of intense PDACIUS intent match high is above an adapt match. Yeah, the next time you see a PDACIUS high intent match, let me know. But the thing is, I noticed also the fallback skills, there's only two of them right now, which is duck duck go and Wolfram. But they are prioritized based upon reverse append order to the array. So, you know, they basically all go in from the common play framework as a, I think it's either a five or a 50 priority. But then it says, well, if there's any others in here of the same priority, bump the priority by one, are there any of those will bump it by one. Any of those? No. Okay, now go ahead and instantiate. So they actually end up going in in the reverse append order. But yeah, I mean, the bottom line is what Josh said was absolutely true. And he's been saying it for years, evidently, which is you can only get so far with flat reg X intent matching. And I tried to address that a little bit with the original PR, where we would basically have that hierarchical state kind of enabled versus disabled so that you could reduce them. But you're going to see all sorts of intent matches. And the wrong way to go about it is to start, I know what everybody tries to do. So it's going to be interesting. I've seen it. And it's going to be, you know, for this, let's increase the confidence level, but that's just a finger in the dike kind of thing. So there's going to be a lot of that. You know, the other thing is, we've never ran with margin on. And that opens up a whole completely different set of behaviors from the system. So now that I know it better from the foundation and the guts, it doesn't surprise me that it was working just quite well the way it was because it could was really single threaded, it could do one thing at a time. You know, you had kind of maybe, you know, alarms and timers can interrupt, but really pretty much all these skills, once they got hold, they just didn't allow you to interrupt them. They didn't have to deal with being interrupted or anything like that. It was very simplistic and single level. Yeah, so we probably might want to go back to turning margin off. But anyway, yeah, you're going to find a lot of that, I wouldn't waste a lot of time in those intent parses. I would, what I did is I just focused on what they're reporting back regarding confidence levels on their intent matches to see what's going on. And you can just, that's in the intent service dot pi in the skills sub-directory where you can log that. Yeah, let me figure out how these things work really well. And I need to figure out what they're doing on the inside. And part of the problem is that, you know, some of the data structures they're passed around adapt are dictionaries of lists of lists of dictionaries of lists of dictionaries. So, you know, trying to figure out, you know, what is what, what's doing what and why is takes a lot more time than I want to say. Yeah, I don't even know why we have a fallback unknown skill and a fallback skill base class at all. There were two of them, one of them was deprecated. We have newer one now. But they both really, to the best of my knowledge, I don't know what purpose they serve. But anyway, and we hit it, like three times, we hit an unknown, like fallback high priority medium and low and they never return anything, it seems, except nuns or structures of nuns. So I don't know, maybe I'll look service announcements for all your developers out there. If you're going to nest dictionaries, don't go more than one or two deep or I might confine you and kill you. Yeah, well, that's a good point. Anyway, yeah, it's going to be interesting depends upon how complex our UI is going to get in our use cases. But the good news is from Derek that I think it's going to be pretty simplistic. We play down to our level of competition, we should be fine. But yeah, I wouldn't spend too much time in predation and adapt it pretty straightforward because adapt is just reg X matching, basically. And word, some of its word count, which is kind of crazy, like three of the four words match. So I have a higher confidence level and stuff like that. It's but I don't know, it's done a lot of time in there. That's not going to be where you're going to find your problems. They're going to be at a higher level where things are not getting or getting clashed, right? Or it could even be that converse is hanging around. And I haven't looked at the converse methods and those skills that that are seemingly always in there. But, you know, the last guy that was pushed into the active skills array is going to have first whack at everything. So anyway. All right. So yeah, that's pretty much been means figuring out intent parsing. I should finish that up today. And then once I have all this written, I should use it whenever I want to use it to figure out what's going on. And another plug that if there are things about intent parsing that are not included in the documentation, which is probably true, that we should, you know, add them. So any notes and stuff. And I still have that that confluence document out there for intent parsing that may or may not have good stuff in it for documentation. I don't know if you've had a look at it or not. But yeah, I'm sure that we can improve the one that you did. Yeah, I didn't comment. Yeah, I think yeah, I was talking again as far as including any parts of the documentation. Yeah, let's have a look. Cool.  I was a very thank you. Just throw that out there. The figure of speech. And in terms of the unknown fallback, you know, that that provides the the last layer of, you know, what Microsoft should do when it doesn't understand something. So, you know, but it always returns a null empty structure. I haven't I haven't looked at it. But, you know, obviously, we're not doing anything at the moment. But there's the whole persona project, which, you know, theoretically would would take in those things that don't get answered and then learn from that and slow again. Well, I mean, that's that's what you have with Padatius, I believe. Padatius is designed to have a feedback loop so that it can learn. It's a neural network and it seems like it gets trained via the message bus at boot and never again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's currently no mechanism for it to actually like add in new new data and learn over time. But yeah, that there is there is a project that exists that was doing that. It's just not the priority at the moment. FYI also got an email from somebody not a well PR email where someone thinks we need to rename all of our pre-cups, so it's worth. Yeah. Yeah. If you're not going to respond, I'll I'll go in there and. Yeah, just don't kill anyone. Anyway, so for me, I empathize with them. I'm not a murderer, I promise. I have one that has the repository is one name. The skill name is another name or the director is another name, but the class instantiates is something different. And I think that's the question answer. Well, I think we have any problems with skills period. What are the three problems in computer science? Like naming things, naming things and naming things. No, I think it's naming things and off by one errors. Anyway, so today for me was we released adapt zero point four point two, which included some some bug fixes primarily and lots of documentation updates, you know, for the doc strings and things inside of it. I we've had an issue get raised around licensing of a third party package that I sent the email about. Derek, I didn't include you in that email, but it's boring stuff that you don't need to worry about. So don't. Anyway, I'm writing a response to the PR at the moment to the community you're aware about what's going on there. And what else are they? I started going back to the now that we've merged Microsoft now that we've released Microsoft Core 20102. I started going through the old PRs again that we might want to merge and fixed up fixed up a very old one that was like so close to merging that the community member just, you know, dropped off the radar. But essentially, it just checks for for ABX instruction set in the CPU info when installing because that's needed for precise. And so hopefully with this merged, it will just reduce the number of people that come to us saying their things broken when really their machine is just 10 years too old. Yeah. And I've also been in touch with well, reached out to Matamost so we can sort out some new licensing situation there. As we're hitting the limit on Matamost and that's about it for today, I think. My plan at the moment is to keep pushing through like do some PR merging in core because there's a whole bunch of stuff that's sitting there waiting for us. That's been waiting for the new major release. So I guess on the Matamost thing I brought that up a week or so ago. And there are several hundred people who haven't logged in since 2017 and several thousand who haven't logged in since 2018.  But I got to go ahead and Michael. Yeah, I think Michael said just whack everybody that hasn't been in 2017. Right off the bat. Yeah, we're not whack. But by whack, of course, we mean disabled. So if they ever really need to come back, that their their ideas till they're really active. Right, right, right. No killing. Please. I watch Al Capone and be untouchable.