Next, we have Question Period. And I recognize the member for Brampton Center. For my mic to turn on, perfect. Good morning, Speaker. My first question is to the Premier. The Auditor General's report on the government's COVID-19 response paints a picture of a confused and bloated decision-making process with the Premier in the middle, and experts on public health left out in the cold. Among her findings, the Auditor General says, and I'll quote, Ontario's command structure evolved to become overly cumbersome, and it was not dominated by public health expertise. End quote. Why did the Premier tell people on a daily basis that Ontario's response was being led by public health advice when in fact it was not? The Government House Theory. Thank you, Madam Speaker. We appreciate, obviously, the report of the Auditor General. And, Speaker, you will know that, of course, that all aspects of COVID-19, the battle against COVID-19, have been in coordination with the Chief Medical Officer of Health and Public Health officials across the province, Mr. Speaker. I would suggest that's why we have had such an impressive result in the province of Ontario. If the Auditor General has pointed out areas in which the government can improve and recommendations for future governments who might face a similar pandemic, Speaker, of course, we'll take a look at that. Obviously, this is something that no government has faced in many, many generations. It was a whole-of-government approach that we put in place to deal with this. And that approach, of course, obviously included the advice and support of medical officials across the province. Thank you. Thank you. The supplementary question. Speaker, the Premier has gone on for months saying that he follows the advice of the Chief Medical Officer of Health. But the Auditor General has proven this to be false. And in fact, she goes on to say, and I'll quote, the Chief Medical Officer of Health and other public health officials did not lead Ontario's response to COVID-19, end quote. The Auditor notes that in provinces like British Columbia, the Chief Medical Officer takes the lead. Why is the Premier sidelined Ontario's Chief Medical Officer and other public health experts and told the public the complete opposite? Right. Nice, Leader. Again, Mr. Speaker, the Chief Medical Officer of Health, of course, has been guiding, helping guide Ontario's response to COVID-19 right from the beginning, Speaker. In fact, not only through Wave 1, but as we prepared for the second wave, the Chief Medical Officer's advice helped ensure that a safe restart for our schools was in place. He helped ensure that our second wave action plan was in place, a very comprehensive plan that has helped, whether it was on testing, Mr. Speaker, on contact tracing. And the Chief Medical Officer of Health has been the lead of that. Of course, we work with other Chief Medical Officers of Health in all of the regions and the different public health regions across the province. They have been instrumental in helping us battle COVID-19. They will continue to be instrumental in doing that. The Chief Medical Officer of Health, of course, is one of the co-chairs of one of the command tables, Speaker, he's out there. Often he was at the select committee just last week, Speaker. He will continue to be very important, and I would encourage the opposition to do the right thing and help us extend his appointment right through to September. Thank you. And the final supplementary. Speaker, thank you. And through you to the government house leader, I'd actually encourage this government house leader to read the auditor general's report, because today's report confirms what families already knew. The Ford government has ignored public health experts. Like the Liberals before them, they ignored years of reports and urgent recommendations from the SARS commission. They delayed implementing critical steps to stop the spread, and they refused to take proactive measures to fight back against COVID-19. The auditor general says very clearly, and I'll quote, we saw delays and conflicts and confusion in decision making, end quote. Why did the government create so much chaos instead of accepting the advice from public health experts that could have prevented COVID-19 infections and deaths in the province of Ontario? Thank you. Manos, leader. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Again, Mr. Speaker, the results speak for themselves with respect to Ontario's response to COVID-19. It was a whole-of-government approach to COVID-19. This is something that no jurisdiction has faced in generations. Speaker, we took the lessons from SARS. We took the lessons from H1N1, and we acted very quickly when the first wave hit. In fact, we were one of the first jurisdictions to close down schools thanks to the advice of the Chief Medical Officer of Health and the quick work of the Minister of Education. We were one of the first jurisdictions to initiate a lockdown. We were one of the first jurisdictions to institute a state of emergency, Mr. Speaker. We did all of that by bringing together, as I said, a whole-of-government approach to tackling this, working with Chief Medical Officers of Health in the regions. I am sure that there are instances where the government could have moved quicker. I'm not going to say that there wasn't, but we have learned... Response? Certainly learned a lot, and in responding to a pandemic that nobody has seen in well over 100 years, Mr. Speaker. I think the people of Ontario have done a great job. Thank you. The next question, the member for Domiskaming Cochrane. Thank you, Speaker. My questions to the Premier. For months, the Premier has assisted that all decisions about handling the pandemic were led by the Chief Medical Officer of Health. But the Auditor General was very clear in her findings today, and I quote, the Chief Medical Officer of Health and other public officials, other public health officials, did not lead on terrorist response to COVID-19. Oh, no. If the Chief Medical Officer of Health did not lead the response, who did? Thank you. Good morning, Senator. Again, Mr. Speaker, as I've said already on a number of occasions, the Chief Medical Officer, the advice of the Chief Medical Officer of Health was instrumental in helping us attack not only the first wave of COVID-19, but in also helping us prepare for the second wave, Mr. Speaker. It was on the advice of the Chief Medical Officer of Health in cooperation with public Chief Medical Officers of Health across the province that we put in place a plan to safely reopen our schools, that we increased testing from 4,000 tests a day, up to 50,000 tests a day, Speaker. It is on the advice of the Chief Medical Officer of Health that we have been able to flatten the curve in the first wave, in fact, leading the country. We brought in a state of emergency before any other jurisdiction in the country. Order. We've done that by working with the Chief Medical Officer of Health. But again, Mr. Speaker, it's a whole-of-government approach that we took to this by working with our officials. I note that the members' opposite response certainly don't believe that the advice of the Chief Medical Officer of Health is valued. They stand daily in this place and ask us to reduce the recommendations of the Chief Medical Officer of Health. We'll follow that advice and we'll continue to follow that advice. Supplementary question. The order, General, is very clear. Not only did the Chief Medical Officer of Health not lead on terrorist response to COVID-19, many at the government's command table were actually unclear on what his role was. In her report, the order calls on the government to, and I quote, immediately assess the role and strength of the Chief Medical Officer of Health to lead on terrorist response in addressing subsequent waves of COVID-19. End of quote. Will the government pull the motion to extend the term of the Chief Medical Officer and actually follow the order, General's recommendation? Deputy Premier and Minister of Health. Thank you, Speaker. No, we will not pull that motion. We have the absolute confidence in Dr. Williams. Dr. Williams has been providing us with advice and recommendations since the beginning of this pandemic and was actually in charge of the table. He didn't chair the table because that was an administrative job. We needed Dr. Williams to be able to participate in what was happening at the committee. Dr. Williams has through... Proficial opposition can order. In charge of the response from a health perspective and provided recommendations to our government which we have followed. We're here. And the final supplementary. The order has been clear that the Chief Medical Officer of Health has not taken a leadership role in Ontario's COVID response. And has not been allowed to use the power of his office to take actions that could have saved lives. Wow. She has called the government to assess the role and strength of the Chief Medical Officer of Health to lead Ontario's response. But instead of doing that, the government suddenly decided this week to rubber stamp an extension of his term. Why is the government ignoring the recommendations of Ontario's Auditor General? Mr. Cobb. Thank you. In fact, we respect the Auditor General and her report contains many recommendations and insights that will be helpful to us in dealing with COVID-19. However, there are also some factual inaccuracies contained in the Auditor General's report which we brought to her attention which have been discussed. I have discussed them with her myself. And we have agreed to disagree that there are some issues particularly with respect to the role of the Chief Medical Officer of Health and the role that he's played in this pandemic. We continue to rely on Dr. Williams' recommendations and advice and he has been a leader from a health perspective in this pandemic from day one. We continue to rely on him and will continue to do so. Again, the member for Tamiskam and Cochrane. I'd like to start my question with a quote from Doug Ford from September 25th, 2018. Unlike the Liberals, we respect the Auditor General. We respect the Auditor General. We refer to other members by their ministerial title or their writing name. Place your question. The Ford government suddenly, without any notice, announced plans to extend the term of the Chief Medical Officer of Health and had MPPs sitting here until midnight, literally in the dead of the night in an attempt to force it through before today's report. They knew this report was coming from the Auditor today. Were they attempting to rubber stamp an extension before the rest of Ontario, before the people of Ontario could see the findings in today's report from Ontario's Auditor General? Members, will please take their seats. To respond for the government, Minister of Health. Absolutely not. The Dr. Williams, we have the absolute confidence in him. Dr. Williams has 30 years of public health experience, both as the Chief Medical Officer of Health for Ontario, as well as the local Medical Officer of Health in Thunder Bay for many years. 30 years, he has the knowledge and experience. To have someone else come in as a new person, as the Chief Medical Officer of Health in the middle of a pandemic would be irresponsible and we are not irresponsible. We take this very seriously. We are making decisions in the best interests of the health and wellbeing of the people of Ontario. Absolutely. Order. The supplementary question. Thank you. For months, the Premier has insisted that his COVID-19 response has been informed by public health experts and that every measure was proposed by the Chief Medical Officer of Health. The Premier says he's a perfect dance partner. But perhaps only because the Premier always gets to lead. That's right. Will the Premier agree to put Dr. Williams in front of an all-party committee to review his appointment as the Chief Medical Officer of Health? Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. In fact, last night, this chamber did seek unanimous consent to have the Chief Medical Officer of Health appear before a Select Committee of Parliament and that was turned down by the members opposite, Mr. Speaker. In fact, we also tried to put a motion forward to extend and provide more opportunity for the opposition to speak, not once, not twice, but 10 separate occasions. They turned it down, Mr. Speaker. We then went further and asked for unanimous consent to return this House today at one o'clock for further discussions with respect to the Chief Medical Officer of Health. They turned it down, Mr. Speaker. So again, it is the same thing with the NDP. Say one thing, but do another. The next question, order. The next question, the member for Ottawa-West Nippian. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Francophone Affairs Minister. In my writing in Ottawa-West Nippian, there is a French community. It's diversified and dynamic. Recently, I told my community that a new French school would open in Leslie Park. Good news for Franco-Ontarians in Ottawa during this pandemic. Will the minister tell us what concrete measures have been implemented to support the Francophone community since the beginning of the pandemic? Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am proud of the various measures that we have implemented in order to support Franco-Ontarians in Ontario during this crisis. In the budget of 2020, we announced a 2 million investment on two years for a fund that would be sent to non-profit Francophone organizations. We have created a working group to support Francophone organizations. This tops on a $500,000 investment that is aimed at supporting Francophone products and services. This answers a need in the Francophone community. Also, we have announced an investment of $1 million to the Pafo community. Mr. Speaker, we listen to the Francophone community. We want to understand their needs during this pandemic. Thank you. I would like to thank the minister for her support to the Francophone community. My office works in collaboration with the APO on various projects. For example, we work on the Francophonie... Maison de la Francophonie. I was happy to celebrate the opening of this facility. I was with the minister, and this was done just before the pandemic started. May the minister talk to us in detail about her new working group with AFO. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the member. This new working group working with our minister and the Francophonie Assembly of Ontario wants to optimize the help and support offered to Francophone communities. We implemented various recommendations from the ministerial council during the budget. The aim was to answer to the request of Francophones. We have invested $600 million for broadband Internet. We have invested more millions for micro-credit help for specialized work and also an emergency fund of $25 million for arts and culture. I'm really happy to be able to work with the AFO to help Francophone organizations. I'm happy to offer my support during this difficult time. Thank you. The fan shot. Thank you, Speaker. My question is to the premier. In her report today, the auditor general cites example after example of the Ford government's delaying urgent action needed to save lives. Staff in long-term care were working without personal protective equipment for nearly a month after the medical officers first requested it. Staff in long-term care worked in multiple facilities for over a month because the chief medical officer refused to issue an order to for-profit homes. As the auditor notes, provinces that acted earlier saved hundreds, even thousands of lives and failed to act on the lessons that should have been learned from SARS. Will the premier now admit that those failures cost lives in long-term care? The minister of long-term care. Thank you, Speaker. And thank you to the member opposite for the question. We're in a 100-year global pandemic that is affecting the entire world. We must not lose context of that. Global competition for PPE, global competition for supplies, and a government that was moving swiftly and decisively from the beginning, taking the best evidence and the expert advice of not only the chief medical officer of health, but all the science and medical advice and public health care advice that there was culminating in decisions made through the chief medical officer of health for long-term care. PPE supplies were sent to our homes on an as-needed basis. There was no home that went without. Now, we have a much better situation with our own manufacturing here in Ontario in Wave 2. And that is because of a determination and a united front on so many people, hundreds of people working together, not only on the front line, but behind the scenes making this happen and never giving up, being determined to get it done. And we have. Supplementary question. Speaker, families are worried about loved ones in long-term care. Families, loved ones are worried about their loved ones in long-term care. And they aren't just worried that the government failed to learn the lessons from SARS. And countless previous reports, they're terrified because it's been clear the Premier has learned very little. And they have failed the decisions, their decisions have caused 2,000 seniors to die in long-term care. And it's being repeated again. Why is the Premier still refusing to admit that the government has failed seniors in long-term care? Can you take the scene? Minister of Long-Term Care. Thank you, Speaker. Once again, my heart goes out to absolutely everyone who's impacted by this, and particularly to the residents and families and staff affected in long-term care. As the Minister of Long-Term Care, there is nothing more important to me and to our government than our most vulnerable citizens in Ontario. And we will continue to work with everyone who's willing to be a coalition of the willing to do the right thing, to get the supplies to our long-term care homes. As we have been doing, this is in context of a global pandemic where science is evolving. We have been using the precautionary principle all along to the best of everyone's ability, taking the expert advice of our chief medical officer of health, and using every measure and every tool. And I will insist on that as we move forward and as I have done, as our government continues to put the priority in long-term care, the dollars behind it. And you've heard me mention over a billion dollars, and we will continue to advance, rebuild, and repair long-term care. So badly neglect. Thank you. Thank you. The next question, Member for Ottawa. Thank you, Speaker. My question's for the Premier. So for months now, we've been asking for your command table to appear before the Select Committee on Emergency Management oversight. And people all across Ontario have been asking for the same kind of transparency with no response. And I think I know why. The Auditor General confirmed that the command table ballooned to 500 people. We couldn't fit them in this room. Maybe if we got, I didn't even know we could get them in the galleries, which is absolutely incredible. The Auditor General also found that public health advice was diminished, and decisions were not dominated by public health expertise. Every day the Premier stands up and says, I am taking the advice of the docs. I'm taking the advice of the experts. He's listening to the docs. Well, it's very clear, at least from the Auditor General report, that that hasn't been happening. So Speaker, through you to the Premier, why does the Premier continue to say that he's taking public health advice, the advice of experts, when clearly Mr. Health. Thank you, Speaker. And I would say to the member opposite, because we have been taking the advice of the Chief Medical Officer of Health. And the others at the command table. Now, I think it's really important to note the Auditor General did comment on the fact that there were, at some point, 500 people on the call. However, 500 people were not participating in the call. 500 people were on the call to obtain information. They were from various ministries. It's very important when you're dealing with a pandemic, such as we are, that you have a cross-government approach, that there are 13 or 14 ministries involved. Health, of course, is the primary. Ministry of Long-Term Care, Ministry of Solicitor General, others. Education, it goes on and on. It's important for us to know what is happening in other ministries, to get it out of those silos. Member for Lannar, Cronack, Kingston, come to order. But throughout the Chief Medical Officer of Health, the Public Health Measures Table, Public Health Ontario, were the key people at the command table that were providing and discussing the advice and recommendations that they were going to give to government, which we have accepted. It's a comprehensive question. It's a supplementary question. It's a comprehensive question. Speaker, the previous I was saying that Buck stops here. And clearly, the same thing's happening today, because it's not stopping with the Premier. He's not responding to this. So what the Auditor General has said is, the structure's led to delays and confusions. And if you hear what we've been saying in this House is delayed decision-making, like not stopping workers from working in more than one home, like not raising their wages, like not having a plan for school, like not having a plan to move seniors out of long-term care when we've had months, because the decisions aren't being made. And people on those calls are saying, they don't know who's making the decision. So I just want to know, Ontarians just want to know, we all want to know, how are you going to fix it? Minister of Health. Thank you, Speaker. Decisions were being made and were made quickly from the beginning of this pandemic. Ontario was the first province that designated the coronavirus as a disease reportable to public health so that the local public health units could then be prepared to test, trace, and contact, do the contact isolation and management. That happened. Ontario declared a state of emergency just after Quebec. Ontario moved into action. So despite some of the statements that were made by the Auditor General, even though we didn't create the public health command table until February, actions were still being taken and continued to happen in a very quick response. We had to create a lab system which didn't exist as a coordinated entity, unlike what was happening in some other jurisdictions. But we needed to create a lab system and we did that in record time. We also created a system for increase our testing from 4,000 a day to 70,000 a day. And I think the results speak for themselves. Ontario right now has the lowest per capita numbers of COVID-19, of any jurisdiction in North America, except for the Atlantic bubble and the territories. That speaks to success, not delay. Very good. Thank you. The next question, the members of Ottawa, West, and Fiume. Thank you, Speaker. The next question is for the Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry. Speaker, just a few weeks ago, the ministry announced that forest fire season had officially come to an end here in Ontario. Back at the onset of this pandemic, there were legitimate concerns being raised that COVID-19 would make it harder for our provincial crews to fight forest fires. As we know, COVID has placed an enormous burden on people across the province. They're worried about getting through this pandemic. They're worried about their health. They're worried about their businesses. And they're worried about their livelihoods. The last thing people need to worry about is having a forest fire rip through their community. Speaker, through you to the minister, could he please tell the House what the government did this year to ensure that Ontario was adequately prepared for forest fire season in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic? To respond, Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry. I want to thank the member from Ottawa, West Nippian for that question, for the excellent question. There's no question that the COVID-19 outbreak presented a new set of challenges for firefighters and communities threatened by fire. Everyone in this House can appreciate it, the added level of risk of fighting fires during a global pandemic. This year, funding for emergency firefighting was increased by $30.2 million at the start of the year to help support fire response activities further into the season. This increase also helped to ensure the ministry was able to put adequate safety measures in place to protect our fire rangers from COVID-19. Speaker, we also placed an even stronger focus on early detection and combating detected fires with full force in order to keep them small. And also we implemented a restricted fire zone across Ontario's legislated fire region from April to May 16 to reduce the risk of preventable human-caused fires. Speaker, we took an approach that would keep Northern and remote communities safe and that's exactly what we were able to achieve. And the supplementary question. I would like to thank the minister through you, Speaker, for his answer. It is great to see that the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry is continuing to take the issue of forest fires seriously and that it stepped up to the plate to make sure that Ontarians were kept safe from forest fires over this last season. Speaker, I want to note that this year's forest fire season was more intense than the 2019 season but lower than Ontario's 10-year average. However, forest fires and the conditions that caused them are very unpredictable as I'm sure the minister very well knows.  Through you, Speaker, can the minister please tell the House what his ministry is doing to ensure that the province is prepared for future fire seasons where we may not be so lucky when it comes to numbers and size of forest fires? Minister to reply. Thank you again, Speaker, to the member from Ottawa, West Nippee. And as he mentioned, the 2020 fire season was below Ontario's 10-year average in both the number of fires and the total hectares burned. This fire season started slowly due to lingering snow cover and above normal precipitation in the spring. In the summer months, for the most part, Ontario did not experience many long, hot or dry periods that would produce extreme fire hazards. Speaker, I want to thank the incredible work that Ontario's Fire Rangers did this year. During the last year, some of these fearless frontline workers were also deployed to help fight in the wildfires in Australia, Quebec and Oregon. As the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, we are committed to adapting to whatever the fire season may look like each and every year. We have a mitigation program in place to minimize the devastation caused by wildfires. We do this by working with municipal, Indigenous and industrial partners to develop info on the risk of living in a fire-free, fire-prone environment, assisting communities in development of community wildfire protection plans. We're working with our partners to protect the people of Ontario. The next question, the member for Waterloo. Thank you very much, my questions to the Premier. Speaker, yesterday the Premier admitted that his new rules for businesses aren't fair, but that it didn't matter because he wasn't really going to enforce them anyway. The Premier keeps standing up in his press conferences and telling us that his heart breaks for businesses and families struggling. But at some point, something else is going to break. And that's the people's willingness to put up with his governments continued, mixed messages and constantly changing rules. One day he's calling people yahoos and telling them he's hitting the roof and the next his hands are tied and there's nothing he can do. So the question is, can the Premier clarify once and for all what rules he expects businesses to follow and which ones he's fine with them ignoring or breaking or should they just follow the government's lead and make things up and hope for the best? Government House Leader. Yeah, Mr. Speaker, I think you see the inconsistency of what we're hearing. The Chief Medical Officer of Health of the province of Ontario has come with recommendations with Toronto and Peele and the member opposite just in this question and last night, the members opposite suggested that we ignore the advice of the Chief Medical Officer of Health and do what they want, Mr. Speaker. We're listening to the Chief Medical Officer of Health. We're putting the people of the province of Ontario first and as the Minister of Health just said that is why we have some of the best results in all of North America, Mr. Speaker. These are very difficult, challenging decisions that we're having to make. Nobody likes to have to make these decisions but we're doing it because it is in the best interest of the people of the province of Ontario because the sooner we flatten this curve, the sooner we return a strong vibrant economy. Thank you. And the supplementary question. So it's actually the auditor general who has said that, Mr. Speaker, we believe the auditor general and but let's let's retract here. If you're a big corporation who's got extra cash to hire the Premier's friends and PC party insiders, the rules don't apply. If you're openly breaking the rules but you run a barbecue restaurant in the Premier's backyard, you can do whatever you want.  You're on your own. And you wonder why people are so frustrated. But after reading the auditor's report this morning and realizing that the Premier had no idea what he was doing in any part of this pandemic, I guess it makes a bit more sense. Speaker, through you to anyone over there. I guess who's anybody who's willing to step up and finally provide some leadership. Does this government just not have a clue of what you are doing or do you just not care? Members, please take their seats. Government host leader. Again, Mr. Speaker, a strange question given that the rules that are in place today in Piel and in Toronto are the same rules that were in place through the advice of the Chief Medical Officer of Health in March, which they approved of, in April, which they approved of, in May, which they approved of, in June, which they approved of, throughout half of July, which they approved of, Mr. Speaker. Now all of a sudden, they want us to set aside the advice of the Chief Medical Officer of Health and do what they say, Mr. Speaker. The only inconsistency here is from the members of the opposite. We have places in this province, in particular, Piel region with a high positivity rate. We're going to focus on getting that rate down, protecting the people of Piel region, protecting the people of the city of Toronto. When they had the opportunity to stand in their place and debate this last night, they chose on 11 separate occasions to say no, Mr. Speaker. Well, I said we would bring this legislature back early today. They said no, Mr. Speaker. The only people who are irresponsible are the NDP. Order. Order. The House will come to order. The official opposition will come to order. The next question, the member for Lanark, Frontenac, Kingston. Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Premier. Let's review the facts rather than the fiction of COVID. COVID is from the family of coronaviruses, the same family as the common cold, and shares about 80% of the same characteristics. The majority of people have immunities to COVID. That is why so few people have symptoms and are infectious. The young and the healthy are not at risk. An asymptomatic transmission is now known to be a falsehood. The PCR test is false, faulty, according to the government's own experts. Lockdowns are ineffective, as stated by the who and many other doctors throughout the world. And as CTV reported last week, 98% of all deaths in Canada occurred in long-term care. As your long-term care minister has already publicly stated, it's much like a bad flu season. Speaker, the Premier's daily theatrics are looking a lot like a cheap soap opera selling drama and fear. The question's been placed. Deputy Premier and Minister of Health to reply. Thank you, Speaker. And what I would like to say to the member opposite through you, Speaker, is you must be joking. You must be joking. Over 3,500 people in Ontario have died from COVID. We are doing everything in our power to protect the health and well-being of the people of Ontario. We have had to take the steps that we've had to take. Nobody wants to take these steps. We recognize that there has been serious difficulties for many as a result of this. But if we don't take action, there are going to be many, many more people that are going to die. And we don't want that. And I'm sure no one else here wants that. We have to take the reactions that we're taking to save lives. Yeah. We start the clock. The supplementary question. The Premier, I believe the first vaccine the people of Ontario need is an injection of facts and truth about COVID. The truth is that 98% of all deaths in Canada have occurred in long-term care. The truth is 99.5% of infected people will fully recover. The truth is a number of cases is not a measurement of risk or infection. The truth is, in the name of helping, we're harming both the healthy and the vulnerable. The truth is we're passing on a legacy of extraordinary debt to our children and grandchildren. Speaker, the truth is that the fear being created by our Premier with these daily theatrics is doing far more harm than the virus ever could. Speaker, can the Premier please tell the people of Ontario what evidence is he waiting for and what will ever convince him that his policies are far more dangerous than the virus? Minister of Health. Thank you, Speaker. Well, I would say again through you, Mr. Speaker, to the member opposite, the actual facts are not, as you state them. The actual facts are that people have died, 3,500 people have died. The suggestion you've made it is that if people are long-term care and they die, somehow it doesn't matter. We think it does matter. People are people. We respect our seniors. We need to protect them. They are the most vulnerable people in our society. It is our responsibility and our duty and our honour to protect them because of what they've done for our country. We need to take the steps that we're taking. We recognise that there are difficulties for people economically. We are providing economic supports, but you can't have an economy that's going to function if you don't have healthy people. And that is our primary responsibility to protect the health and wellbeing of the people of Ontario. That's always been the case and always will be the case. The next question, the member for Ottawa, West Nippian. Thank you, Speaker. My question is for the Minister of Environment, Conservation and Parks. Since the 1960s, the natural landscape and threats, such as excessive nutrients and pollutants, invasive species and climate change have put significant stress on the ecological health of Lake Simcoe. This has resulted in poor water quality, degraded habitats and a collapse of the cold water fisheries. After significant concern and calls for the former government to finally take action to improve and protect the health of the Lake Simcoe watershed, a Lake Simcoe Protection Act was introduced and in the following year, in 2009, the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan was released. Speaker, the restoration and protection of Lake Simcoe and the Great Lakes have been included in this government's Made in Ontario plan. Given that it has been 10 years since the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan was announced, can the minister tell the House what improvements have been made in Lake Simcoe over the past decade? To reply for the government, the member for Barry Innesville. Thank you, Speaker, and thank you to the member for Ottawa, West Nippian for that question. Due to the collective efforts of our government and its many partners, we are seeing progress towards protection and restoration efforts that are so important to the natural areas and features in the Lake Simcoe watershed. This summer, the Minister of Environment, Conservation and Parks released a 10-year report on Lake Simcoe to detail the progress that Ontario has made on this vulnerable body of water. Some key improvements highlighted in the report are the improved dissolved oxygen in the deep waters that's helped the fish population and the creation and restoration of 120 hectares of wetland and the restoration of 15 kilometres of degraded shorelines. Speaker, we made great progress so far and I look forward to building upon these efforts with great partners like our youth for Lake Simcoe and Zoe and her team who continue to help us protect and restore Lake Simcoe. Thank you. Supplementary question. Thank you, Speaker. I know that this is an important priority for my friend, the MPP for Berry Innisfil. Achieving the objectives of the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan in the long term requires continued commitment from all partners and levels of government. Speaker, recent research shows that due to concerted efforts of government and other partners, phosphorus loads from sewage treatment plants in the watershed have been reduced by approximately 50% since 2009. In the lake, total spring and ice-free phosphorus concentration have dropped significantly from 1980 to 2018. These are promising proof points of progress but restoring Lake Simcoe will take longer than 10 years to complete. Speaker, it's important that the government conduct ongoing scientific research and monitoring. It is also critical that the plan adapts over time so that it continually addresses emerging threats. So, can the minister please inform the House about what the government is doing to support future improvement efforts in Lake Simcoe? Member for Berry Innisfil. Thank you, Speaker. And we have solid commitment amongst all my provincial colleagues along Lake Simcoe and our government has continued its commitment to protecting Ontario's water resources and addressing the most significant challenges facing Lake Simcoe and the significant environment challenges that is. That is why we are engaging in public consultation with stakeholders on the review of the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan. We'll continue to invest ongoing research and monitoring like we continue to do in education and actions around Lake Simcoe. And most recently, we announced actions on Lake Simcoe by providing 481,000 in provincial funding for four new partner-led projects that are key in making sure that we restore and protect Lake Simcoe and its watershed. This is in addition to the already 15 partner-led projects that are underway in the watershed that have received over 375,000 funding from the Ministry of Environment, Conservation, and Parks. Speaker, we'll continue to ensure that each project we support results in the best outcomes for Lake Simcoe and its watershed. And we look forward to learning more about the federal government's funding commitments to support ongoing improvements. Thank you. The next question, the member for Scarborough Southwest. Thank you, Speaker. Mr. Speaker, Scarborough families are struggling right now. They're not only experiencing abnormally high COVID-19 cases, they're also slipping further into poverty and unemployment. Some Scarborough ridings have positivity rates and actually some of them border my riding as well as some of the government members ridings have positivity rate of 15%, some of the highest in the province, combined with low testing capacity and an overwhelmed hospital system. But still, this government is refusing to act. After years of being under overlooked and underfunded by liberals, this conservative government has brought us to a breaking point. When will the government, Mr. Speaker, commit to providing the people of Scarborough with the resources, including enough testing, contact tracers they deserve so people are not falling through the cracks? Thank you, Speaker. Minister Powell. Thank you, Speaker. And I thank the member very much for the question. We certainly recognize there are parts of the city of Toronto that are considered hotspots where there's very serious concerns that are high positivity rates and people are living in apartments where there's maybe several generations of family there. I think this is a situation that really calls for all three levels of government to take action. We have had several discussions I have with Mayor Tory recognizing that parts of Etobicoke, parts of Scarborough are very hard hit areas. He has requested some assistance from the federal government with respect to quarantine accommodation, which I certainly would agree with and which we will both ask the federal government to assist in providing that so that if someone is diagnosed with COVID that they can move away from their family members and be isolated themselves until they're well. Response. But there's also work that we need to do on the provincial level, which I'll be pleased to speak about in my supplemental. And the supplementary question. Thank you, Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate the response and I do appreciate the intention, but we need action right now. The government is sitting on $9.3 billion in unallocated pandemic support money, and yet here we are. And I know yesterday we heard the government members talk about how that's safe for a rainy day, but it's pouring. And I don't know what kind of storm we're heading towards, but we need to act right now to stop the spread from getting further into these communities. Where is the money going that the $9.3 billion that's allocated because it's not coming to our communities? My office is getting calls every day from across Garborough and not just Garborough Southwest, actually, across Garborough about workplaces with COVID-19 cases and about having to go to work sick, lack of PPE, not enough testing, about families losing the businesses they've worked so hard to build. And about having to stand in line at food banks, just check out some of the lines at our food banks, losing their shifts due to lockdown and now facing the risk of eviction. And I could go on, Mr. Speaker. But my question is, what will it take for the government to see that with each day this government refuses to act? People in Garborough, many of whom are racialized, many of whom are working precarious jobs, are at the risk of losing their livelihoods. Thank you. To respond, the member for Willoughby. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to direct that member's attention to Page Blood and 73 of the budget, about two-thirds of the way down the page. She will see three drawdowns on the standard contingency, on the health contingency, as well as the people and jobs fund. And if we go to Page 187 at the bottom of the page, we will see the remaining contingency at the bottom of the page, Speaker, is $2.6 billion, not $9.3 billion, as that member asserts. Whereas the money gone was another question she asked. Well, Speaker, when our front-line health officials said they need more masks, we were able to provide 600 million of them. When our front-line health officials said, we need more gloves, we provided 900 million of them, Speaker. When the commercial rent relief program came upon us, we were able to respond with $241 million in direct supports. Speaker, this government has moved through a prudent and adaptive matter through this uncertain and changing situation that is COVID-19. We will not apologize for treating taxpayer money with respect throughout this difficult time. Yes! The next question, the member for Glen Gary Prescott, Russell. Thank you, Speaker. Question to the Premier. The Premier is allowing big-box stores to remain open during the Toronto and Peel region lockdowns because they'll limit the number of people in their stores. Small business owners can do that. They've proven it to us. But no, the Premier is forcing them to close while allowing big-box stores to remain open and sell the very items that small business owners make their living from. The Premier said he spoke to the CEO of Walmart Canada and concluded it would be a, quote, logistical nightmare for big-box stores to close off aisles with non-essential items. Yes, it would be quite the nightmare for them to spend an evening of reorganizing to continue to rake in millions in profit. Do you know what the real nightmare is, Mr. Speaker? The hell that small business owners are going through right now and the complete and continued failure of this government to support them when they need it most. So, Mr. Speaker, why can't small businesses be allowed to operate with very strict limits the same way big-box stores have been allowed to? Where's the logic in this? Mr. Vellis. Thank you, Speaker, and thank you to the member of the question. The logic here is the fact that with the big-box stores, they are selling essential goods and services that people need to live through the course of the pandemic. Many of them have pharmacies. Many of them have grocery sections. That is why they're staying on. It's difficult in a pandemic. It's difficult to make these decisions, but that is the reason why they're staying open so people can have access to the goods and services that they need in order to be able to live through this pandemic. As for the smaller stores, I know this is difficult for many small businesses. However, even though they can't remain open, they are still able to receive orders online or by telephone. People can still pick up from them, and we encourage people to do that.  Do takeout orders. Response? We need to help each other get through this pandemic, and that is the way that we can show our help to the small businesses, to the restaurants and others that have to be closed during this period of time for the safety of the people in both. Thank you very much. The supplementary question. Merci, Monsieur. Thank you, Speaker. Speaker, Ontarians are ready to do their part to avoid COVID-19 spreading, but right now people are losing patience. If big box stores can open, because they can limit the number of people going in, why can't the government trust SMEs, our SMEs, to do the same? So to the Premier, what are you telling SMEs that you're forced to close their doors who are selling the same items as big box stores and are following protocols and procedures? How are you justifying favoring big box stores which is affecting our SMEs, those Ontarians who are living hell because of what you're doing? The Associate Minister of Small Business and Red Tape Production. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And as I have said many times before, there is no sugarcoating it. This is a very difficult time for businesses, small businesses in particular, but I think it's irresponsible for the member opposite to cast out on the advice of public health officials. Every decision this government has made, these are some of the toughest decisions when it comes down to closing businesses, but it is based off of the best public health advice that we are receiving. In my community, I have community transmission rates of, or sorry, positivity rates of 20%. So I urge the members opposite not to politicize this. This is support that we are bringing forward to small businesses, $600 million. We doubled the relief programs, and 90% rent relief for those impacted by these restrictions. Response? But these guidelines have been supported by public health and recommended to us by public health officials. Thank you. The next question is from St. Catharines. Thank you, Speaker. My question is to the Premier. Last week, I had a 70-year-old grandmother, a residential school survivor, Melito Soup in St. Catharines, evicted from her home. This is because the landlord-tenant board failed her. Before the eviction hearing, Melito's family's lawyer could not successfully fax a stave eviction order to the landlord-tenant board, and no one would pick up the phone despite dozens of attempts. Eventually, the family had to express post-it. The landlord-tenant board eventually responded with an approved stave eviction two days before the sheriff derived, an older stamp with a request date that was wrong by weeks. The worst part, the landlord-tenant board never sent the order to the sheriff, so she was evicted anyways. Will the Premier stand up today and tell the residents in Niagara and St. Catharines how he will fix this mess so that residents like Melito are not left homeless during a global pandemic? The Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing to apply. Thanks, Speaker, and I want to thank the honorable member for the question. I wanted to know that we've been working very diligently with all of our municipal partners to try to keep people housed during the pandemic. As members of this House will know, the Attorney General moved very quickly early on in the pandemic. He's been working diligently with Tribunals, Ontario regarding issues around the backlog at the landlord-tenant board. But in the interim, Speaker, we've had exceptional cooperation with our 47 service managers and our two indigenous program administrators. Many of them have been bolstering their rent bank and have been helping those most vulnerable. While I don't know all the details of this situation, I will tell the member that we will review what has happened to her constituent. We will make the residential enforcement unit available and make them aware of the situation. I thank her for bringing it forward today. The supplementary question. Thank you, Speaker. I think it might be a little too late. This story is tragic, but this is not news to you. Last month, legal clinics across this province sent you a report about these issues with the landlord-tenant board during COVID-19. I here in St. Catherine's tenants and landlords having to wait on the phone for four hours, problems with accessing their virtual hearings, fax machines that do not work, paperwork was lost, lands in junk mail are filed late, like in the case of miso soup. We are lucky in St. Catherine's to have the passionate, hard-working Niagara legal clinic, but they cannot fix this chaos that the landlord-tenant board does. But you can, you refuse to provide a rent subsidy for tenants and landlords during this pandemic, but even worse, we have processed that limits access to justice. Mr. Premier, what are you doing for tenants in the second wave of the pandemic when the landlord-tenant board is struggling to function and creating a crisis of evictions in Niagara and in St. Catherine's? Thank you. I remind the members to make their comments to the chair, the response, the member for Durham, parliamentary assistant. Thank you, Speaker. I appreciate the chance to speak on such an important priority for our government. Throughout the COVID-19 emergency and recovery, our government has been focused on keeping Ontarians safe and addressing the impacts of COVID-19 on tenants and landlords. The landlord-tenant board began expanding operations in August to resume hearing cases brought by tenants and landlords while continuing to prioritize the health and safety of Ontarians. Speaker, we recognize we want the LTV to be able to draw on its full operating strength as it manages these unprecedented challenges, a big backlog, while acting on the guidance of public health experts to keep Ontarians safe. As a result of the work we've done to urgently appoint new adjudicators, the LTV can count on a roster of adjudicators larger than its usual complement, more than twice its normal capacity, Speaker, as services gradually resume, this full complement of adjudicators will strengthen the LTV. Thank you very much. Thank you. And the next question, the member for Simcoe Gray. Thank you, Speaker. My question is for the Minister of Health. Since I last raised this issue in this house, Ontario has lost another young boy to cystic fibrosis. The death the CF community believes was totally avoidable if he had been given access to the life-saving medication Trikafta. After months of delay over uncertainties regarding pricing policies, Health Canada has now finally granted priority review status to Trikafta. Beth Fanstone, who the Minister knows, informs me that the Federal Minister of Health has committed to working with the Pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance and the provinces to expedite the drug approval process and the Pan-Canadian pricing process for Trikafta and other vertex CF drugs. So my question, Speaker, to the Minister of Health is, can she tell Ms. Vanstone and her daughter, Maddie, what Ontario is doing to expedite these processes? The Minister of Health. Thank you very much. And thank you to the member for your question. I know this is a matter of particular interest and concern to you, as it is to me as well. This is good news from Vertex. So Vertex has indicated that they are moving forward, of course, with this request to Health Canada for a priority review. They've indicated they're planning to move forward with future cystic fibrosis medications in Canada. Vertex has also confirmed that Health Canada has granted priority review and that they have 60 days to submit their file to Health Canada. I don't believe the submission has been made as yet, although it's expected to be made very soon. As soon as that's done, as soon as it's approved by Health Canada, we will do everything that we can in Ontario to move forward because this is great news for people with cystic fibrosis and we want to make sure that this medication can be available to them as quickly as possible. A supplementary question? Well, thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I take the minister on her word as an honorable member and a fantastic human being that she'll do everything she can. But, you know, when you look at this for the years, we've been talking about our Cambie and Kaleidiko and now Trikafta, all Vertex, cystic fibrosis drugs. The frustration is unbelievable in the CF community. As you know, in my writing, I have two little boys, one boy's on a trial of Kaleidiko and he's doing very well. His little brother not doing so well with cystic fibrosis because he doesn't have access to these life-saving drugs because of the cost. So the frustration's huge, a 12-year-old boy just died and if you look at the thousands of emails on the internet with the cystic fibrosis community, they truly believe that Trikafta would have saved this young boy. So I just, again, plead on behalf of these patients to do everything you can. You're going to be the largest purchaser of these drugs in Canada, so you've got influence. Please continue to do everything you can to date the process hasn't been working. Please do everything you can to improve it on behalf of these patients. The minister of health. Thank you. You're absolutely right. This is a matter of frustration to people across the province of Ontario. Probably each and every one of us as members has constituents that either have cystic fibrosis themselves or have children that do. This is a very important matter for me. There at the ADM in the Ministry of Health provides me with updates on a regular basis because I am as anxious as anyone to provide these medications because I know they are life-saving, all three of them. But particularly Trikafta seems to have a particular potential. So I can assure the member and assure the members of this House that we will do everything that we can to move this forward as quickly as possible as soon as it's been reviewed and approved by Health Canada. So thank you. Thank you. The next question, the member for York Southwest. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Premier. I'm getting many calls and emails from small businesses, owners and employees in my riding of York Southwestern. Very concerned about the government's recent announcement regarding COVID-19 lockdown and why the must close their doors to the public. But big box stores remain opened. These businesses barely survived in the first wave and now just before the holiday season, they cannot keep their doors open for customers. These main street businesses and their workers in our community deserve direct support and consideration. With $9.3 billion air marketer for pandemic relief from the federal government, why, Mr. Speaker, this government sitting on this money and selectively not spending on small businesses and workers who desperately needs this time? To respond, the associate minister for small business and red tape production. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. We recognize that the economic and financial burden posed upon our small businesses across this pandemic has been significant. That is why last week we doubled the funding available to these small businesses to $600 million. Businesses that have been impacted by these restrictions can apply immediately online through a single portal, a very easy application. On top of that, Mr. Speaker, we have provided direct supports through programs like digital main street that help businesses, $57 million investment, the largest investment by any government to help businesses go digital. We have put forward the main street PPE grant, $60 million of investment to help small businesses cover the cost of PPE. On top of that, those businesses can also be eligible for 90% rent relief in those areas of restrictions. These are difficult times for our businesses, but we are always going to be here to support them. Thank you very much. That concludes our question period for this morning. We have a different.


Hits that first turn, hugs the inside, here comes Lambert round the outside, lifting it. Wolfenin up the inside, smart move from him, tight going into turn three. Lambert on the outside, Dudek hugging the inside, here comes Wolfenin as well. He's through there, it's neck and neck for second place. Lambert's there vulnerable, very vulnerable. Yes, he recovers brilliantly, he's back into second place. But Dudek, he has been the rider of the night. Look at the way he's coped with that. Brilliant stuff from Patrick Dudek. Lambert determined there for a couple of laps. He looks like he's got plenty of speed, but that bike is very difficult to ride. He's got to hang on to it in every corner. Dudek comfortable out front once again. And Lambert there, we can see really struggling with that bike. They've given him something very difficult to ride. It's on his way to his first final though, this would be fantastic.


Okay, hello everyone. This is the Circuit Python Weekly for January 2nd, 2024. It's the time of week where we get together to talk about all things Circuit Python. I'm Jebler, and I'm sponsored by Adafruit to work on Circuit Python, which as you may know, is a version of Python designed to run on tiny computers known as microcontrollers. Circuit Python Development is sponsored primarily by Adafruit, so if you want to support Adafruit and Circuit Python, consider purchasing hardware from Adafruit.com. This meeting is hosted on the Adafruit Discord server. You can join at any time by going to adafruit.com. We hold the meeting in the Circuit Python DevText channel and the Circuit Python Voice channel. This meeting typically happens on Mondays at 2 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time, 11 a.m. U.S. Pacific Time, except when it coincides with the U.S. Holiday, as it did yesterday when we celebrated New Year's Day. In the Notestock, there is a link to a calendar you can view online or add to your favorite calendar app. We also send notifications about upcoming meetings via Discord. If you would like to receive these notifications, or if you'd like to speak in the meeting, ask us to add you to the Circuit Python Discord role. There is a Notestock that accompanies the meeting and recording. Before the meeting, we all add our notes to the document. Then after the meeting, it is uploaded to GitHub and linked from the video, so you can check around in the show notes to find the part that interests you the most. This meeting tends to run 30 to 60 minutes, although I'm guessing we will run shorter today as we've got a fairly small number of people in just after the holiday. After each meeting, we post the meeting, the link to the next meeting document. Melissa, if you could mute that would be very helpful. After each meeting, we post the link to the upcoming notes document so that you can add your notes at any time during the week. And of course, if you wish to participate but cannot attend or it's just inconvenient to speak live or for whatever reason, you can leave your hub reports and status updates in the document for us to read during the meeting, and the host will read those out. All right, so this meeting is held in five parts. Next up is community news where we take a look at the Python on hardware newsletter. After that is the state of Circuit Python, the libraries in Blinka where we look at some numbers that describe the project health. Then it's time for y'all to participate with me and we continue with hunger ports, an opportunity to highlight the good things that folks in this community have been doing because it's really important to take the time to recognize the awesome people around us in the community. The fourth part and really the meat of the meeting is the status updates where we want to hear what you've been up to since we last got together and what you're going to be up to in the near future. So please take a couple of minutes and update us on what is going on with you. And the final part is called in the weeds if there's something that doesn't fit within the structure. For instance, because it calls for more discussion, then this is when we do it at the end of the meeting. If you do have one of these topics, please add it at your earliest convenience and we just take those in the order that they are in the document and that covers how the meeting will go. So I'm excited to start telling you about some community news. MicroPython version 1.22.0 was released over the holidays. The latest release introduces SSL and TLS support to async.io for both client and server and the interface is the same as on standard CPython. Custor pools are now sorted and this provides a performance boost. And the final item that might be of interest is that this was also the fix for a security vulnerability known as CVE 2023-71-58. And I also just want to note that CircuitPython is not affected by this in any of our binary builds because the vulnerability exists when you enable a feature that CircuitPython does not use. So for your CircuitPython machines you don't have to worry about that. Alright next up we have a magazine review of one of Adafruit's products. The title is CircuitPython powering Adafruit's Memento camera board makes programming vision apps a snap. And in the notes doc you can find a link both to the product and to the review on Hector.io and cnxsoftware.com. Alright next we have a project. The CT6 is a Raspberry Pi Pico W-powered four-port home energy monitor running on a Raspberry Pi Pico W with MicroPython. And there are links to Hector.io and GitHub if you want to learn more about that. And that rounds out the extracts from the newsletter that I picked. There is a lot of stuff in this community-run newsletter that is curated by our very own Anne B also known as Anne Engineer. And it is emailed every Monday. You can also find the complete archives on adafruitdaily.com slash category slash CircuitPython. And the aim as always is to highlight the latest Python on hardware related news from around the web and that includes CircuitPython, Python and MicroPython. We really want to have news and projects come from the community and you can do that by editing next week's draft on GitHub and submitting a pull request with the changes. You can also email CPnews at adafruit.com or tag a post with hashtag CircuitPython on Mastodon, Blue Sky or X, formerly known as Twitter. All right. Next up is the state of CircuitPython, the libraries and Blinka. So we have a little bot called Adabot that runs every night or in the wee hours of the night and summarizes seven days of activity. And this is actually the report that was generated Monday morning, just so that we take the time to recognize everybody when it shifts by one day, then we might miss a day. So this won't include any activity from Monday. It includes the previous seven days, which were pretty quiet because of the holiday that many folks observe. All right. So overall, we had 17 pull requests merged from 10 authors and five reviewers. And there are a couple of names here that are less familiar to me. So I really want to thank, in particular, HowToFlow, TeenNiche and JINST Komoda for your contributions, whatever those were. And of course, thank you to the reviewers. Tektrick, nice to see you popping up on this list. And issues-wise, we had 11 closed issues by six people, while 19 issues were opened by 17 people, which of course puts us net up on issues. So next, I'm going to tell you about the core, which is the part of CircuitPython that is written in the C language that you load onto your device, typically as a UF2 file. In the core, we had four pull requests merged from four authors and two reviewers. We've got 20 open pull requests at the moment, about half of which are draft and half of which are not. And of course, we encourage you with those older PRs to move them out of draft state if you can. And if you're waiting on us for action, please ask because we don't always understand that you're waiting for something from us. It's really good to see some of those move forward. Issues-wise, we saw five closed issues by 13 people. No, five issues closed by three people while we saw 13 issues opened by 12 people. So it's within the core that most of those additional new issues were. And that leaves us with 690 open issues. We organize those by milestones to keep people apprised of what work Adafruit is prioritizing. And so the important ones right now are the 8.2x milestone, which are bugs that we plan to fix in the stable version of CircuitPython. And that stands at zero open issues. So that's great. It means we may not see another 8.2 release unless we become aware of new problems. Next up, the 900 milestone. These are the issues that we want to address before we release the stable version 9, which is our kind of next big feature upgrade. It's got lots of good stuff in there, but it also has 49 open issues that we need to address before that is ready for folks to use. Finally, we've got 13 issues not assigned to milestone.  And Scott and Dan are continuing to take some time off. So we may not be categorizing those in the near future. But that doesn't mean that we don't appreciate your issue reports when you follow them. And this is also to say those 573 long term issues that represents that Adafruit doesn't prioritize that right now, but we would love anyone to pick up some of those issues and work on them and improve CircuitPython in a way that is relevant to your use cases. Alright, and with that said, I'm also going to read the library section today. The libraries are the part of CircuitPython that's implemented in Python code. Traditionally, it's much easier for folks to pick up how to contribute to the libraries than how to contribute to the core. And that is one reason that we separate these out. Anyway, statistics, we had eight pull requests merged from four authors with two reviewers. And there is a list of merged pull requests in the notes document. That leaves us with 57 open pull requests ranging in age from one to 501 days. And issues wise, we saw two closed issues, and six open issues by two and five people respectively, that leaves 711 open issues, 19 of which are tagged as good first issue. You can see this and a lot more information at circuitpython.org slash contributing. And I have a little more to tell you about contributing to CircuitPython. If you're interested in contributing to CircuitPython on the Python side of things, check out that link I just mentioned circuitpython.org slash contributing. You'll find a list of open PRs and a list of open issues. If you're looking to contribute, this is a great place to start. If you're interested in reviewing, check out the list of open PRs. Take a look at the code. If you have the hardware to test it, do so. Otherwise, you can have a look at the syntax, spelling, etc. Leave a comment to let us know you looked at it. And once you're comfortable with that, we can talk about leveling you up into the review team. If you're interested in contributing code or documentation, check out the open issues. You can sort by label. So you search for good first issue if you're just getting started, or bug or enhancement if you're looking for something a little bit more complicated. We have a guide on contributing to CircuitPython using Git and GitHub. And we're always available on Discord to help you get started with that. So let us know if you need any assistance. Don't let the process intimidate you. We want you to be able to contribute in a way that works for you. And something that isn't on this list is we have a bundle called the Community Bundle. If you want to start selling totally new in CircuitPython, it doesn't exist yet. You've got an idea for washing machine interface in CircuitPython. You can also create a whole new Python library and later contribute it to us via the Community Bundle where you retain full control of your project. But it becomes easy to install with tools like Circuit. So that's yet another way to contribute. All right. And with that, I've got a few more statistics to tell you about. We track our PyPI Weekly downloads. And in the last seven days, there were 90,423 PyPI downloads, which is down a little bit from our usual. I think we usually top 100,000. But no surprise, as a lot of people were taking some time off. And there is a list of the top 10 libraries by download count in the document. And last up, library updates in the last seven days. We saw four updated libraries. The list is in the notes document. And one new library that is in that Community Bundle I was mentioning to you. And that is from our very own Cedar Grove, Cgrover, who has contributed the Wave Builder library. And I believe there's also a write up of Wave Builder in the newsletter this week. So check that out. It is kind of cool. And with that, I am going to get to take a brief break from talking as Melissa tells us about Blinka. Hello, so Blinka is our Circle Python compatibility layer for MicroPython Raspberry Pi and other single board computers. This time we had five pull requests merged by two authors and two reviewers. There were there are currently eight open pull requests amongst other repositories. There were four closed issues by one person and zero open by zero people leaving a net of 80 open issues. There were 10,635 PI PI downloads in the last week. 9,225 PI wheels downloads in the last month and we are 128 ports. I think a bunch of the people who took time off from Circle Python were working on Blinka because that is those are some higher numbers than we've been seeing in a while. But anyway, that wraps up this new Circuit Python the libraries on Blinka. If you want to respond to that, no, Melissa, please. Yeah, actually, I think a lot of that is because I've been working on focusing on Blinka these last couple weeks. Yeah, very cool. It's nice to see some stuff happening there. Yeah. Okay, with that, I will move on to Hug Reports. Hug Reports is a chance to highlight folks in the Circuit Python community and beyond for doing awesome things. I'll start then we'll go down the list in the document order to give everybody a chance to participate. If your text only are missing the meeting, I'll read your notes when I get to them in the list. And if I happen to skip over you by mistake, please drop a note in the text channel and I will get back to you. And so I have a group hug because I've been spending a little time away from y'all and it's just nice to be back and getting back into things. But I also have a hug for Paul Cutler. He interviewed me last week for his podcast with any luck. I think that episode is airing in about two to three weeks. So look for it. And if I understand correctly with this episode, Paul Cutler will have interviewed all the Adafruit folks who are working on Circuit Python at the moment for some definition of everybody because we've got a lot of people who chip in on that. Anyway, next up, a hug for Cedar Grove. I mentioned your Waveform library and I think it's really cool. And I also didn't know about the project you talk about down in your status updates CG35. That also looks very cool. And also a preemptive hug to everybody who will share your ideas with Adafruit and the community about your Circuit Python 24, Circuit Python 2024 vision and goals. And I'm going to say a little bit more about that down in the in the weeds section when we get there. But now I've got notes from folks to read. So Antic Data writes thanks to me for figuring out the proper fix for getting hashlib onto a broader array of boards. C. Grover says a hug for M. Martin Ortiz on GitHub for comments and suggestions regarding the range slicer repo. Thank you. And a group hug to the team and the community. Then I have some notes from DJ Devon 3 who has a hug for Jose Posada for the Touch Slider library. One for Delci for an excellent GUI design of an Elkar's theme touch display. To Justin for a neat idea for consolidating repeated code across libraries that use sockets. One for Dan H for helping in Discord and doing some last-minute holiday bug report reviews. A hug for Fumiguy for streaming work on a grid layout soft keyboard. Because a touch display keyboard requires so many cells it brought up some inefficiencies in the way grids were previously loaded. He tackled that as well. It's been awesome watching him improve grid layout and creating the foundation for touch keyboard related projects. And finally a group holiday hug. All right. More notes from Fumiguy who has hugs for Bear and Dated and DJ Devon 3 all for helping folks on Discord in the Help with channel. To me for the font bundle. A hug for Melissa for adding vector IO implementation to Blinky Display IO. And a group hug. And rounding out the section. I don't know that I've ever read every hug report in a meeting before but understandably people are still taking their holiday time and their family time and that's super important. So anyway Scott Tan Newd writes a hug for Jebler for keeping things going while Dan and I are out and one for Fumiguy for doing the next two deep dives. And that concludes our reports and brings us over to the status updates. I actually forgot to write mine in there but I wanted to give a group hug to everyone. Thank you very much. All right well if you haven't written your status updates now's a great time. Anyway so status updates it's time to tell folks what you're up to as an individual. I will start and again we'll go through the document in order. When I call on you take a couple of minutes to talk about what you've been doing since the last meeting and what you'll be doing until the next meeting. It's also an opportunity to provide quick tips and tricks related to what folks are working on. But if it becomes a discussion then we'll move it to in the weeds. And I don't uh yeah. Of course we also want to hear what's going on outside of CircuitPython to know each other a little better as people. But anyway I will get started. So last week I mostly did some small things. I was kind of not working but I kind of was. So there was a problem that you could run the build command called make translate which you need to do when you change certain things in the Cpy in the in the CircuitPython source. But if you didn't do another step before that you could create a file that was missing some stuff that needed to be there. So I made this make translate check for the problem and automatically resolve it. So hopefully that won't trouble people in the future.  This was brought up by a community member and Anecdata offered a pull request to to do this but the build wasn't quite right so I went and did it in a different way. And once this PR is merged hash lib will be supported on basically every board where it fit within the available flash size. So that'll be really cool. I helped review some pull requests and I also made a pull request to merge the changes from version 8.2 into main and I'm blanking on what that particular change was but there was a particular change to do with socket handling that we wanted there was made in 8.2x and we also wanted in main. The week before that I was working on jpeg enhancements and those are now merged to the main branch. There's still I don't think they're in a release yet I'm not sure and I also made some bundler enhancements related to that. So up this week I'm looking at how to integrate the jpeg decoding into the portal based library on boards that support it and I need to figure out who to talk to internally so that we can use the font bundle in learning system guides. There's that link download project bundle and it does not know to look in the font bundle for necessary libraries and so they just won't be there so we can't use that functionality yet and then I will probably be coding the changes to the screenshot builder which is a python project that's just on github and then I had another random thought about you know what are things where we have a binary file that's associated or you know that we want to use in circuit python and and the idea is what if you could just import waveforms to use with synthio I think that would be really cool. There are a couple of libraries of free waveform samples out there one is called akwf and it would be neat if somebody created a bundle that just incorporated all of those and made them easy to install with circup and import but anyway next up we have notes from a bunch of other folks so cgrover writes continue to refine the synthio waveform object tool wavebuilder updated the playground notes to include some experimental sounds and release the class to the community bundle designed a basement add-on board for JP's fader wave PCB this add-on provides an i2s amplifier or stereodact connection when using the itzy bitzy rp2040 next on the list is to prototype a port of the cg35 reverse polish calculator for use with the new 3.5 inch capacitive touch tft display hoping that will work more reliably with the tiny on-screen keys I assume the other board is a resistive touchscreen and if you don't know the cp35 emulates the iconic hp35 calculator and in the note stock there is a link to the github repo for that check it out it looks it looks cool it looks good all right next notes from djdevin3 who says continue to integrating touch features into feather weather using circumpile on slider by jose mozada for tft pwm brightness control really excited to work with foamy guys new touchscreen layout to create a fully self-contained device no need to connect via usb or web workflow to change ssid password or preferences it can be done on the touch display itself albeit it is still a work in progress the change from display dot show to display dot group group equals group has created a different syntax to switch between display groups i'm using it in a way that i hadn't seen as an example in a learn guide yet and it's easy enough for absolute beginners to understand eventually i'd like to write a touch gooey playground note and finally update a jp's weather matrix display to work with updated nine point x code on the matrix portal s3 it also uses the newer open weather map two point five one call api there's a link to dj devin's example on github it's obviously not an official thing just a personal project based on a user support question all right next up i have notes from fed a2 i've ordered the new risk 64 milk v duo linux microcontroller there is a new release with a new version of the chip and they now support Arduino IDE for the smaller core i'm trying to put circuit python on these boards as they are quite powerful very cheap and pin compatible with the raspberry pico i hope i can get a memento so that i can test an i naturalist library i've been working on on the portal and other esp32 boards this allows to download images from i naturalist no api key required and now with the camera it will be interesting to upload images as well and next is foamy guy these are their updates confirm the existence of an issue in adafruit request and tested the fix in the proposed pull request worked on the soft keyboard helper library and worked on pie game display library for use with blinker display i o solve the major show stopping issues with the latest versions but a few smaller quirks remain mostly around manual refresh calls will poke a little further but plan to make a release even if i can't get it perfect so that will be compatible with the latest versions of blinker display i o and with that maker melissa we're ready to hear from you on it i this last week or a couple weeks i added vector i o to blinker display i o and removed pillow as a requirement i figured out a workaround for an issue with the raspberry pi 5 where the c e 0 and c e 1 pins were in use i fixed some of the raspberry pi installer scripts and i will be testing out the speaker bonnet with pi 5 probably today and i'll look at that working if it isn't and that's from that thank you melissa and we'll round up this section with notes from scott who writes my mom passed away peacefully just before christmas we're headed on a delayed family trip january 4th to the 15th back in my office on the 16th and picking things up then kicked off circa python 2024 yesterday and will go all month there is a link to the adafruit blog in the uh notes document scott writes i'll try and post updates every few days when i get emails from circuit python 2024 at adafruit.com submitted a talk proposal to pi cascades about circuit python workflows the deadline is january 4th in case anyone else wants to apply and finally got the 13-inch e-ink working with circuit python but it will need another keyword argument in e-paper display because it addresses pixels in both directions and there is a link to a mastodon post about that all right and that concludes status updates and brings us to the in the weeds section and um justin has the first item so um if your mic is uh if you're talking today please go ahead yeah uh good morning everybody and happy new year um i guess my first question is going to be is it worth talking about these two things this week with so few people or would it be better to just move them on to next weeks when we have more people back i think you know definitely it would be helpful if dan and scott were here because i would kind of look to them for for guidance on this stuff but if you want to go through it just to let people know what you're up to since you didn't do a status update kind of tackle it from that point of view might be useful yeah i would be happy to um so this first one so basically based on some feedback i had originally created a socket manager in from requests and basically got some pr feedback on a high level to kind of separate stuff out had some back and forth and rebuilt a new library called connection manager that does all of that there is the pull request there with some pretty high level comments for anyone who wants to review it in that pull request also has the two prs for the changes in both the requests and mqtt that people can go look at and see i worked pretty hard to make sure that there wasn't a lot of increase in size and also did some things with logging and things like that so feel free to look at that pr make comments if you are someone that's got some general expertise there that would be awesome and appreciated and kind of as a side note on this second bullet point i'm a heavy pie charm user have been for a very long time and so whenever anyone asks comments on it i usually ask or i respond and someone had asked if there were stubs for specific boards for the pins i had been making them by hand for the small handful of boards i have and it was a holiday and i had a lecture time and i was like i wonder how hard it would be to automate this and so i put together a quick script again you can look at it here it's linked here and it actually goes out and builds a custom board stub for all of the boards that are in the repo that can be used and would love to talk to people about potentially automating this and actually having them all get built even going as far as making sure that other things that weren't on the board were removed from the stubs as well i had looked at some stuff from how the matrix is built as well so so feel free to look at these two things if you're interested make comments if you can and i will bring these back up next week where we can go into them a little bit more detail all right the second one looks pretty neat i have helped with some with the stubs and i had not come up with a good idea around how to provide different files for each board so i'm curious would this mean like there would be a different pip installable stubs library for each board that circuit python supports or how would that function yeah so there would be two ways to me that would be the most ideal way in that way as you're building things for different ones you can kind of see on the last thing so instead of circuit python stubs you'd have circuit python stubs adafruit feather esp32 s3 i know there was lots of talk i didn't follow it all the way with the fonts and things and trying to figure out like do we want to have all of the you know just adafruit want to have all of these different things up on pi pi and things like that the other option would be to have them go out and trying to find a way that you could easily copy them so right now what i've always done is i just copied into the root of my project and rename it borr.diy pyi and then it works fine and then it's a small file at the end so even if it lands on the microcontroller it's not going to hurt anything and so i think there's options so it'd be interesting to find out if people are willing to you know if adafruit wants to have all of those on their pi by account or not or if there's something else so i'm happy to tackle and try to figure out what makes the most sense so yeah and i would actually review the repo for someone to pull down manually so i'd have to review like how do we actually build how do we do the releasing process of the circuit python stubs i'd have to refresh my memory about that and i you know would worry that you'd hit some kind of rate limit on pi pi when you want to upload upload 400 packages in quick succession but i think it's a cool idea i'm really glad that you did this you can also i can also try to do some research and i will just go do this i know you can have secondary comments when you install something and so we might be to do them as like sub versions or modules and so you would do what you know you would install circuit python stubs like with adafruit feather esp32 or whatever and it would know to grab that particular board so i can definitely do some looking into that to see if we can get it all into one package so i'm thought of the rate limiting of you know 400 simul boards and which will just go up from here so yeah yeah all right well thanks for that yeah i'm i'm interested in that idea but yeah when uh when scott and dan are able to participate i think and tim you'll you'll just get more more useful info about particularly the request stuff than i can provide but thank you very much all right and then i just wanted to talk a little bit more about circuit python 2024 normally scott would do that and as you heard he is out spending family time so anyway this is based on a blog post on the adafruit blog and for a number of years we've solicited anybody in the community to kind of give us your vision for where circuit python should move in 2024 or what it is you hope to accomplish with circuit python in 2024 and um yeah so just talking about some goal setting and on the adafruit blog and linked in the notes document you can find um links to recaps of the past years and you can also find instructions on how to contribute to this year so the the top way is to email a special email address that is in that blog post and that will help scott kind of pull those into his wrap up although i think we're also talking about taking um comments on social media such as mastodon and we really just want to hear from folks what is your vision for circuit python and we're not going to all come to one collective vision because we all have different different things that are important to us but it's really helpful to know what what are people wanting to do with circuit python what are the weaknesses that they see and that that helps us that helps everybody because you know we talk about this stuff and anyway yeah so head to the Adafruit blog and look for that circuit python 2024 post and let us know your thoughts and with that I am going to wrap up this meeting um I want to thank everybody who left their notes and those couple of you who were here to participate live this has been the circuit python weekly meeting for january 2nd 2024 to support folks like me who work on circuit python it's really helpful when you purchase your stuff from the Adafruit shop at Adafruit.com if you're outside of the U.S. there is a link to distributors in various countries it's at the bottom of the Adafruit page and we love it if you would buy from them as well the video for this meeting is released on youtube at youtube.com slash Adafruit and the podcast will go up on major podcast services it will also be linked in the python for microcontrollers newsletter which has all kinds of cool python on hardware stuff visit AdafruitDaily.com to subscribe the next meeting will be held next monday as usual at 2 p.m eastern 11 am pacific that'll be monday january 8th 2024 the meeting is held on Adafruit discord which you can join at any time by going to adafru.it slash discord to be notified about the meeting and any changes to the time or day and to be unable to speak in the meeting you can ask to be added to the circuit python needs to roll on discord we hope to see you next week thank you everybody


On December 14, 2017, the fair and open internet, as we know it, was laid to rest. Ebenezer Pie smirked as he declared net neutrality an unnecessary rule and left internet users everywhere at the mercy of service providers who can now control who gets what internet content and at what speed. The ghost of internet past visited Ebenezer Pie before this vote, appearing as an enthusiastic creator. The ghost hauntingly asked him, don't you remember how wide the web once was? How easily any curious and excited entrepreneur could share their content with the world, knowing that it could be accessed as easily as any other site. The ghost then showed him how well the internet functioned when everyone had an equal shot at accessing and enjoying the web and how happy users were when they could visit all the sites they liked at the same fast speeds. Then the ghost of internet present visited Ebenezer Pie, appearing to him in the shape of an industry lobbyist. This ghost whispered, thanks for the help Pie. Consumers will be fine, I promise. They'll hardly even notice as their favorite websites creep slower and slower. Besides, we have pre-selected sites, they can enjoy at maximum speed. They'll get used to it. Our favorite sites will become their favorite sites, not that they have much of a choice. The ghost chuckled as he watched Ebenezer Pie cast his deciding vote to strike down net neutrality. But the ghost of internet future is the most powerful it has yet to give up on the open internet. That future is us, all of us. Every person who uses, fights for, and demands a better internet. It is everyone who has been infuriated by the FCC's blatant disregard for the millions of people who wrote to them and told them to uphold that neutrality. It is the creators, the dreamers, the determined, and those who fight for the public interest every day. The internet of the future will be open. We won't stop fighting until it is.


Welcome to Toffy TV, it is the Everton News Daily. Frank Llanpard has given his pre-match press conference ahead of Everton's huge game this weekend at home to Bremford on Sunday. The manager confirmed that Fabian Delph is ruled out possibly for the season, although he didn't fully commit to that, but he's definitely out of this one with the muscle injury. Everton will know probably more next week, but with only nine days left of the season and three games in that, you would imagine Delph probably won't play again this season. What the manager did say was that Donnie van der Beech and Ben Goffrey may be in contention to be in the squad on Sunday, but if not Sunday then for Crystal Palace next Thursday. The manager was upseamed up beat, talking about ever knowing the job, knowing what they have to do, very close, knowing that we need four points out of the next three games for safety. He'd obviously, like all of us, won it done as quickly as possible, talked about the supporters and how fantastic the fans have been and said he'd never take that for granted, but he's been absolutely delighted with it and talked about the send-off that the players were giving for Leicester and for Wafford about the crowd at Finch Farm and all of that. Obviously, there's something in place for Sunday with the greeting of the team coach at Godderson Road at 2.30 on Sunday. I'm sure it'll be absolutely packed there. I'm sure the blue smoke will be everywhere and the players will be given a rochers welcome. Obviously, by the time Everton kick off on Sunday, if Leeds have lost the home to Brighton and Burnley have lost the Tottenham, then Everton would only need a point against Bremford by the time we kick off, but obviously we want to finish with a win, but not a finish, we want to win again Sunday, just in case those of us haven't gone that way and then it takes the pressure off Crystal Palace on Thursday. The manager was full of praise for Bremford, full of praise for Christian Eriksson in his press conference as well. One thing that was interesting, he was asked about Delhi and his situation, it wouldn't really be drawn on it other than to say he's had a conversation with them and he needs to keep working hard to stay in contention, but he didn't seem like the biggest endorsement in the Wales, so we'll have to see what happens with Delhi this summer, whether he remains an Everton player or whether Everton tries to move him on because he's not started a single game yet. It's not like we've been amazing since he got here, so we'll have to see and again, if Everton could get safety on Sunday, then maybe the Palace game will be an opportunity to give someone like Delhi a full game, start and be able to have a look at him and maybe others along the way, maybe it's got a brand weight as well to get a bit more experience or whatever, but that's jumping ahead of ourselves, we still need to get these points and we've got to take it that we need four points in these next two home games to look after ourselves, we can't be relying on other clubs doing us a favour. Apparently Everton are to trigger the clause in Ask Me a Begavitch's contract for a further year, the former Bournemouth and Chelsea goalkeeper signed last summer on a one-year deal with the option of a one-year extension and according to reports Everton are to trigger that and Begavitch will remain at Gouldersham Park for next season as well and Everton also ready to offer Lewis Warrington a new deal. They've been talking for a while and it looks as though he's going to put penta paper on a new deal to remain at Gouldersham Park, he's had an excellent loan spell at Tramirovers, he's done really well there, so good news for Warrington signing a new contract as well and finally Everton today have been linked with a move for Sport and Lisbon and Portugal International Jau Palina, the 26-year-old midfielder impressed in the European Championships and Everton have apparently watched them on four or five occasions. Portugies press saying Everton very interested on in making him an Everton player this summer. There's also other links around but unlikely ones in my opinion but that one is carried by two or three journalists in Portugal so who knows. Again let's get our Premier League status sorted out first and then we can start to look at the summer transfer window business. So don't forget 230 Gouldersham Road if you're going on the mat you want to welcome the team coach into Gouldersham Park on Sunday, that's on Gouldersham Road, get there and do your bit. Make sure you give the video a thumbs up, subscribe if you haven't and if you want more videos join us on page and the link is in the description and the QR code is on the screen now. See you later.