Therefore, it's now time for a question period. The Leader of Her Majesty's Library. Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Premier. I have heard story after story from students and parents that have been positively impacted by Ontario's demonstration and provincial schools. Just look at each and every family here today. They represent the countless success stories and soon-to-be success stories. Blind, deaf and learning disabled students are able to flourish because of these schools. I have heard a student say that the demonstration school actually saved their life. Mr. Speaker, this government can't play games with the education of these children. Mr. Speaker, my question is very direct, very straightforward to the Premier. Will you commit to keeping the Ontario Provincial Demonstration Schools open for years to come? Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And I want to welcome all of the parents and the families here today. It's very important that we have this conversation and you're very welcome. Thank you for coming to the legislature. Our government's committed to the success and well-being of every child in this province, Mr. Speaker. We're committed to giving every child access to the programming that they need. And I know that there have been successes in the programming in the provincial and demonstration schools, Mr. Speaker. And one of the challenges that we have is that there are children who are not in the provincial and demonstration schools who actually need access to programming, Mr. Speaker, such as is in the provincial and demonstration schools. So we launched consultations to better understand how students currently attending the provincial and demonstration schools are being supported, Mr. Speaker. And I know the Minister of Education will have more to say about that process. The member for Prince Edward Hastings. Speaker, back to the Premier. The Minister of Ontario got to meet Lexi. I had the chance to speak with 10-year-old Lexi a couple of weeks ago at my constituency office in Belleville. And let me tell you, this is one intelligent girl who is as cute as a button. When we sat in my office, she had prepared text that she read for me. It was in a large font spaced out and she did extremely well. But when I asked her to read something that I had on my desk that was in a 12-point font, she was so thrilled and she actually broke down in tears. And that's completely unacceptable that that should happen. She deserves a future just like other kids do, Mr. Speaker. She wants to go to Saginaw next year like her brother did and have the future that her brother now has. But there are kids like Lexi in every county and every city right across Ontario. Speaker, my question to the Premier is simple. Why does she think it's acceptable to put the education of students learning disabilities in year-to-year chaos when it would be unacceptable for any other student? Thank you, Premier. Education. Yes, thank you. And I too would like to welcome all the families that are here today from both the demonstration schools and the provincial schools around the province. And I want to respond to the member by saying we get it that the demonstration schools provide a wonderful program. The demonstration schools provide a very effective program. But what you're reporting, which is here's a child who needs the programming. There are thousands of children around Ontario who need the programming. And we need to figure it out how... We're going to start taking advantage of it. I'm going to start calling it. We need to figure out... Answer. We need to figure out how can we deliver program to kids all over the province who can't read because we want all the... Thank you. Final supplementary. Thank you and good morning, Speaker. My question is for the Premier. Marie de Rozier lives in North Bay and her daughter, Amanda, is rolled at the Sagan Asuka demonstration school. She wrote to our leader, quote, without these schools, students like my daughter would not be employable because they would never make it through high school. My daughter is 15 years old and was reading at a grade one level in September of this school year. Today, after six months at Sagan Asuka, she's reading at a grade three level with hopes of reaching age level reading within another year. She continued, the closure of these schools will mean that these students will never reach their full potential. Speaker, will the Premier stand here today and promise Marie de Rozier that these schools will remain open in the years ahead so that her daughter will have the opportunity to graduate high school? Thank you. Just to be clear, Speaker, I want everyone to be aware that the application process for the demonstration schools, the enrollment in the provincial schools for the deaf will be continuing. Those processes are starting up again for the 2016-17 year. So for any of the students who are currently enrolled at a demonstration school and are in year one of the program and who the school says require a second year, then those children would be able to complete that second year. It's the principles that actually designate whether the student should go for one year or whether they need to continue for a second year. But for those students who are in the first year of a program and the principal recommends they continue in the second year, they will be able to do that. A member from Leeds Grand Park. My question is for the premier. Parents from my riding with children at Belleville's Saganaska demonstration school are among the hundreds here today. They've been spared for one year, but their fight isn't over. They fought too hard to maintain these life-changing programs to risk what might happen after this year. As one mom in my riding told me, quote, this school will not leave my child, but will change the trajectory of his life. If the government was truly listening to these parents like her, they'd stop trying to close these schools and work to put more kids in them. Speaker, will the premier guarantee that these schools will be open after the 2016-2017 year? Will she assure parents with us today that the families won't be put in next year? Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. As the Minister of Education has said, there was a consultation to better understand how students who are currently attending the provincial and demonstration schools can best be supported and beyond that to determine how we can support these kids and their families and how we can support the thousands of kids and their families. Member from Leeds-Grandville. Finish, please. We can provide access to programs that are much needed for the thousands of kids and families who don't have access at this point, Mr. Speaker, because surely that is a point that we can agree on. That, of course, the kids and the families who are here are extremely important. But, Mr. Speaker, there are thousands of kids outside of these schools who also need support and that's what we need to determine. We, as a society, provide access to all of the kids who need the programs. Supplementary, the member from Simple Grade. Back to the Premier. Mr. Speaker, my constituent Ruth Borosho's son, Nathaniel, struggles with learning disabilities. Last fall, Nathaniel was accepted to the Trillium Demonstration School in Milton. Ruth tells me he entered grade 7 this year with zero ability to read. Nathaniel surpassed kindergarten reading and is moving to grade 3 reading. Ms. Borosho states her son's success at Trillium is incredible and I agree. Speaker, Ms. Borosho told the Toronto Star yesterday and I quote, they can open the applications and close the door again. They haven't told the teachers they'll have their jobs back in September. They haven't told the councillors and support staff they'll have their jobs back in September. Please explain to educators why these issues remain unanswered and why she's leaving such uncertainty out there. Have a heart. Clean it up today. Thank you. Mr. Speaker, I know that the Minister of Education is going to want to speak to the logistics around the staffing, but Mr. Speaker, I just want to be perfectly clear. I understand how important these programs are to the children and the families who are here today. But Mr. Speaker, it is our responsibility to make sure that we don't stand in the way of a change that could actually provide more service and more programming to children across the province. So if the member opposite is asking me will we never change those opportunities will we stand in the way of other kids getting the program that they need know. I won't commit to that Mr. Speaker. I believe that the education system has to continue to evolve. My hope for this consultation was and I said this to the Minister of Education before it started my hope was that we'd be able to work with the families who have the programs and with the families outside of the programs to figure out how we can solve for the problem of the kids who do not have access to this program. Mr. Speaker. Thank you very much Speaker. Back to the Premier. Your government is failing students and families who rely on your provinces demonstration schools. Robarts and amethysts give young people opportunities to build their skills and their confidence and hope so that they can look ahead optimistically to the future. In a meeting just last Friday with families from my riding I learned of a young lady who so honestly said Speaker when she's sitting in a classroom full of classmates knowing she learns differently she never feels more alone. Premier, Speaker that's not the inclusion these young people deserve. This young lady wants to learn amongst her peers despite the short term solution that we heard the Minister announce yesterday the Liberals have done nothing to help families plan for long term. So we need to hear from the Premier today and we commit to all of the families from Huron and across Ontario today that she'll remove the cap and keep the school. Education. Yes, thank you Speaker and I just want to clarify the situation. The formal consultation process ended on April the 8th. I'm actually still having some meetings with various parties and so we haven't made any decisions yet in terms of how do we provide programming in the future as the Premier has noted we want to find a way that will provide good solid programming of the nature provided in a variety of locations but we haven't made any decisions about how we do that. But what I can assure is that we have also not just notify the media of the decision before we did that yesterday we notified the unions we notified the principals we noted Thank you. I stand you sit I'm trying to speak I stand you sit New question the leader of the third party Thank you very much Speaker my questions to the Premier for months families and students with exceptional learning needs have pleaded with this government to keep their schools open they've organized they've gathered thousands of signatures and rallied from Belleville to London today hundreds of families from across the province join us here at Queen's Park united for one reason and one reason only the future of our provincial and demonstration schools it boggles the mind of some of our most vulnerable children it all comes down to priorities children should always be our priority speaker they should always be our priority this Premier listen to families and commit to keeping these schools open long term or will she turn her back on our most vulnerable children Well Mr Speaker as I said our priority actually is all the children in this province it is absolutely fundamental that we provide the programming that kids need the supports that they need which is why Mr Speaker we value the programming in the provincial and demonstration schools we know that there are aspects of those programs that are very very successful Mr Speaker and we want to make sure that as we go through this process that we provide opportunities for the thousands of kids that don't have access to that program Mr Speaker to those programs that we provide those opportunities so that every child in the province gets the opportunity that they deserve Thank you Supplement You know Speaker the Premier has the final word when it comes to prioritization of what this government sees as important and I guess vulnerable children just don't check the boxes for the Premier when it comes to priorities Families should not be forced to fight for the opportunity for their children to throw Provincial schools for the deaf allow students to be immersed in an ASL or LSQ environment essential for individual expression demonstration schools boost reading comprehension and confidence for students with exceptional learning needs The Premier confirmed that her government has no plans to close any provincial or demonstration school in this year or next year or in the long term Speaker Thank you I cannot in good conscience say that we will never change anything about the delivery of programming and education which is exactly what the leader of the third party and the leader of the opposition are asking I cannot in good conscience say that as we see changes in society as we see changes in health Mr. Speaker I know that there's a huge debate about the programming for deaf and deaf blind children Mr. Speaker the availability of ASL in our schools and LSQ Mr. Speaker it's something that I dealt with when I was Minister of Education and a former member here Gary Malkowski worked with me to change regulations so that there would be more ASL delivered in our schools I understand that there are debates that have to be engaged one of those debates is how do we make sure that programming that works for kids has the opportunity to work for all kids in the province who need it Mr. Speaker Final supplementary Speaker closing enrollment without notice to families and students for these schools was the wrong thing to do was a callous and inappropriate move for this government to take for what did this premier think was going to happen of course students and families rally to try to save the very thing that they need to make sure that their kids could reach their potential Speaker for months for at least a month New Democrats have been raising this issue in the house and for a while now this government has dodged any commitment to actually backtracking on their wrong decision so now here we are hundreds of people on the law of the legislature this afternoon this government has made a commitment in a small change of direction in September but what all of these families and all of these people need to know is that the change is permanent and they will not close the demonstrations and provincial schools Thank you I will say that what the leader of the third party is asking is that we determine that it is impossible to provide more programming and more opportunities for the thousands of kids who are not in these schools what the leader of the third party is saying is you cannot change the delivery of program in this province that's just not reasonable we have to be able to work with the families as I said before one of the conversations that the minister of education and I had was how do we work with the families to determine what's in the best interest of the kids who are here today and the kids who are in these schools and accessing these programs but beyond that what is the solution for the kids who are not in these schools so the enrollment has been very open but final decisions haven't been made we pray that we have the opportunity to work with families to come up with solutions that work for these kids and all of the kids in the province new question the leader of the third party I don't understand why this government thinks they need to rob peter to pay paul it seems they do that on every single file and it's the wronger who can admit when she's wrong and overturn some of her bad decisions whether it's backing off on a plan to double drug costs for seniors lifting the freeze on enrollment at the provincial and demonstration schools are backing off on bad regulation changes for child care when will the premier reconsider her undemocratic plan to change election financing laws and open the process to include non-partisan panel well Mr. Speaker you know I believe that the house leaders are meeting either today or in the very near future to talk about what the committee process will be Mr. Speaker as we move to bring legislation forward in the spring in the next few weeks so that we can move to getting legislation to first reading Mr. Speaker and have a broad consultation across the province after first reading and then again after second reading Mr. Speaker so I'm looking forward to that input I'm looking forward to that discussion that should take place into May and June and into the summer and into the fall Mr. Speaker and I look forward to all of that input as we together move to what I believe there's a fair degree of consensus in terms of the changes that need to be made to fundraising but we need that input in order to get it right Supplementary Speaker the premier is making a mistake by writing new election laws by herself without prior consultation with civil society other political parties of Ontarians at a time when people are increasingly cynical about politics one party changing election rules all by itself is only going to make people more cynical Will this premier respect the democratic rights of Ontarians to have a say in their own electoral system and open up the process Mr. Speaker the process that we're putting forward there is a broad consensus there are other jurisdictions that have moved on many of the changes that we're proposing the federal government some other provinces Mr. Speaker given that and given that we're proposing that we bring legislation we move to consultation after first reading across the province and then again after second reading that Mr. Speaker is quintessentially the democratic process that is how that is how this legislature works that is how decisions are made it's not one party that's the role of the legislature Mr. Speaker is to bring forward legislation to have a debate and to listen to that debate and then to make changes based on it and to move forward that's what we're going to do Mr. Speaker and I look forward to the input as you know I ask for input from the leaders of the opposition parties I hope I will hear from them Mr. Speaker as we draft the legislation but for sure we will hear from people across the province as we go into the consultation Mr. Speaker Mr. Speaker what a difference a little bit of power makes members of the liberal front bench once called it anti-democratic to unilaterally change election law Speaker they saw rightly that changing election laws without consensus and public buy-in is bad for democracy people deserve to know that our democracy is fair Speaker and the party writing the rules doesn't have its thumb on the scale this premier who is instrumental in creating the system of ministerial quotas appearing to sell access to government decision makers and shaking the public trust is not one to be now changing the rules on her own will this premier open up the process of updating campaign financing to a fast moving independent panel and start to rebuild Ontario's trust in their government thank you Governor House leader well thank you very much Speaker I really don't understand Speaker why the NDP leader is undermining the role of the legislators we are exactly elected for the sole purpose of developing legislation that is exactly the job that is given to us by the people of Ontario Speaker you don't need a great 10 civic lesson to know that I hope I don't know what she tells her schools in great 10 classes as to what the role of the legislators is it is to bring forward legislation it is to hold public consultations it is to listen from Ontario it is to then make amendments through the clause by clause process Speaker I look forward to speaking with the other house leaders this afternoon to talk about how we can develop a process that will ensure that Ontarians from across this great province have an opportunity to provide the input experts to come forward to provide the input Speaker that is our role as legislators we should be doing our job by following suit thank you new question my question is to the Minister of Education this morning Minister today there are 5 families in Sarnia Lampton who are counting on the life changing education that their children receive at the Amethyst demonstration school in London there are dozens more whose children have graduated from the intensive program at Amethyst and are now thriving in this secondary and post secondary education there are even more families Madam Minister eager to apply for admission to Amethyst knowing in their hearts that the education their children receive from this school will change their child's future forever yet these families fear that this government is preparing to close Amethyst these concerned parents and students I have met with have contacted my office and described the Amethyst demonstration schools as essential a blessing Minister will you commit today to keeping Amethyst open not just for current students but also for future enrollment by students from Sarnia Lampton across Ontario I want to make it clear Speaker that we're concerned about all special needs students wherever they may be in the province and it's precisely because we're concerned about the students who are deaf blind or who have severe special learning disability needs it's precisely because of that that we started the consultations in the first place because we want to figure out how we can provide the best program possible particularly for all those students with severe learning disabilities and for all those students in southwestern Ontario or in eastern Ontario who are deaf or hard of hearing it's because we are concerned about those students that we entered into the consultations at this point no decisions have been made on the outcome of the consultations Thank you supplementary Member for Melvin Middle Sets London Thank you very much Mr. Speaker Minister you started the consultations but you shut down enrollment and you refuse to offer future employment for the teachers that are working at these schools and you're a master in this process but thankfully you realize you made a mistake and because of the parents are here in the protest you started the admittance process again I have a constituent of mine and due to his age, Josh this is his last chance to have a hope for his future but your government is only committing to one year for Josh and most students need more than that Minister the application process alone takes a year to start your actions today will deter students from applying for next year and due to uncertainty Mr. Speaker sorry the school system may not get the necessary applications leading to your argument that there's not enough students for the programs Mr. Speaker will the minister commit today to keeping the Robart school for the deaf the Amethyst demonstration school open in London beyond this coming school year or was her decision yesterday simply to shut her down the protest Minister as I noted earlier the formal consultations ended on April the 8th one of the meetings that we had with the parents the parents had said would we reopen the process for this years that people had already put together the binders put together the psychological testing and I committed to them at one of the parent meetings that once the formal consultations were over we would look at whether or not we would reopen the process for this year I followed through on that commitment when the formal consultation process was done we announced yesterday that in fact the application process is open again for the 2016-17 years that's exactly what I committed to determining I determined that the process is open for the 2016-17 years thank you Mr. Speaker my question is to the Minister of Education the government keeps saying more children need access to specialized programming that's available at demonstration and provincial schools so why did the minister cap enrollment in the first place if more children need access to these programs why are they even thinking about closing them it just doesn't make sense children with exceptional learning needs deserve better from this government we know these programs are successful and the minister himself admits it will the minister tell families in the gallery and those that are at home today that the provincial and demonstration schools will remain open after the 2016-17 school year just said we're just in the process of completing the consultations we're reviewing the information that has come in and no decision has been made as a result of the consultations but we do respect the fact that these are highly successful programs and that's why we have reopened the admission to ensure that those who have submitted their applications for the 2016-17 year that that process will go forward and we are committed though to figuring out how do we manage to serve kids with severe learning disabilities from all across the province there are children from all across the province with severe learning disabilities who are not being adequately served right now and that's a problem we need to fix we need to make sure that students all over the province thank you supplementary thank you speaker back to the minister of education this government is failing vulnerable children their spin doesn't make sense in fact the minister's own briefing note that I obtained through a freedom of information request shows that the consultation process ends with a discussion with unions on details of staff impact that directly shows that they were considering closing these schools all along seems like the minister started consulting with the end goal of closing schools without actually listening to what was said and speaker that is shameful today the minister should listen to children and families listen to what these schools have meant to them children are begging the minister to listen again will the minister of education guarantee that these important schools will stay open beyond the 2016-17 school year will she make a long-term commitment to these worried families thank you thank you minister what I what I will commit to is that we want to find a way to serve all the children in the province with severe learning disabilities the fact that we have heard over and over again from children and families all across the province that children who have average or above intelligence who are in grade 7 or grade 8 or grade 9 or grade 10 are unable to read beyond a kindergarten or grade 1 level that says to me that we have a problem and there is a problem that we need to solve and that we need to make a commitment to all those students that we are looking at how do we design programs to best serve children with severe learning disabilities all over the province that is what the consultations are about thank you thank you very much my question is to the minister of children and youth services I am sure I speak for all members of this house when I say collectively that we were deeply saddened by the tragic news in Attawapiskat this weekend the First Nations community of less than 2,000 people saw 11 people try to take their lives on Saturday night this community has seen over suicide attempts since last September and the community declared state of emergency over the weekend and I know that the minister of children and youth services and the minister of health and long term care visited Attawapiskat yesterday can the minister of children and youth services please update this house on the visit and what was heard from the community of Attawapiskat minister of children and youth services thank you speaker and I want to thank the member from Prescott Russell for this very important and serious question and yes I did travel yesterday with the minister of health to the Attawapiskat community to speak not just the community but the youth themselves speaker and their leadership and we heard how we must all work together on short medium and long term solutions to address very serious challenges facing this community and their youth our government will be providing additional assistance to the community following the government's emergency medical assistance team also known as an EMAT assessment an EMAT reconnaissance team working with the local bound council as well as the Winnebago area health authority to determine how EMAT can best provide assistance in this community the assessment led to some very important action speaker our government will be taking which will be touched on in the supplementary thank you thank you very much speaker and it is an immediate action to address the crisis in Attawapiskat but speaker we've heard time and again that these under serviced areas face serious and chronic problems and a visit from the ministers while it's informative and important it's not enough if we're really going to address the epidemic problems the First Nations communities face like Attawapiskat Speaker through you did the minister come to any agreements with the community about the best way to move Attawapiskat will receive the full supports that they need Minister of health and long-term care Minister of health long-term care Thank you Mr. Speaker and we are actually right now deploying 13 healthcare personnel including mental health workers we're providing two million dollars in support but I want to speak to just how moved Tracy and I were in Attawapiskat yesterday the incredible leadership demonstrated by the local chief chief council we were accompanied by Perry Bellegard who is the national chief of the assembly of First Nations but the youth that we met and we met dozens of youth Mr. Speaker who are demonstrating such tremendous courage and determination all we need to do Mr. Speaker is follow the path that they themselves have set out for us to follow in terms of providing not just the immediate support that we announced yesterday but that long-term support to ensure their futures we stand side by side with those youth with the local leadership in the community and Perry Bellegard to make sure that we're working hard and with our federal partners to solve this crisis Mr. Speaker Thank you Mr. Speaker Mr. Speaker my question is to the minister Christina please Thank you Member Minister of Education My constituents are concerned about the current situation regarding demonstration and provincial schools in Ontario Ontario has recognized its duty to provide education to deaf students for well over 100 years My constituents like Anne and Harold Wall are worried that without dedicated schools for deaf children these children will not have the full ability to participate in academic, social and extracurricular aspects of their education How can they learn when they don't have the opportunity to communicate? Minister will you do the right thing and eliminate the ongoing uncertainty, anxiety and the fear of closure of the demonstration and provincial schools in Ontario Yes or no Thank you Minister Thank you very much and you mentioned schools for the deaf and I believe that students who live in your riding would be going to the school for the deaf the Drury school for the deaf and Milton would be probably the usual placement or partly possibly at the east end side of your riding it might be Whitney and Belleville and I have said all along that we are operating the school for the deaf in Milton Drury and the school for the deaf in Belleville Whitney we understand that those are the schools that offer a program in ASL American Sign Language ASL is the teaching language those two schools for the deaf and we have committed right from the beginning that those are not schools that we have been consulting on that certainly those schools will continue to operate and that that is not Thank you Supplementary the members from First Wellington Thank you Mr. Speaker My question is for the Minister of Education Chris Sonderman from Shakespeare attends Amethyst demonstration school this specialized school environment has increased his confidence and his learning has progressed at an exceptional rate Without Amethyst his family tells me they don't think he could have graduated high school with a diploma and Speaker his mother said she says our students did not create Ontario's deficit and we should not jeopardize their future to fix it Speaker will the Minister please explain to Chris and his family why she is willing to jeopardize his future will she do the right thing and guarantee The Minister the Minister of Sport please finish Speaker will she do the right thing and guarantee that Chris's school will remain open Thank you first of all I want to assure everyone that this is not about money this is about how do we provide the best programming possible to schools to students who are deaf and to students who have severe learning disabilities and it's precisely because of people like Chris who have been able to attend the program and who have been successful in the program that they have graduated and gone on to employment it is precisely because we see that's at that success that we want to look at how can more students enjoy the success of the member from here on Bruce come to order it has nothing excuse me excuse me the second time today please when I stand you sit and the member from here on Bruce just kept right on going when I asked her to come to order you have one wrap up sentence let me just assure people that the reason that we are looking at the consultations is so that we can do a better job for our still children thank you new question thank you speaker my question is to the president of the treasury board two days ago more than 200 parents came to the legislature to make their voices heard on minister's autism funding mistake instead of properly investing to ensure all kids with ASD regardless of age or sports they need the minister decided to try to make a good news announcement out of kicking kids five and over off the list for life changing essential therapy in the end speaker this minister holds the responsibility for the books where are her priorities why are they not helping some of our most vulnerable kids why is she trying to balance the books on the backs of kids the minister explained to families of kids stop the clock well that's not endearing you to me please finish thank you speaker will the president of the treasury board please explain to families of kids with children with ASD over the age of five why she doesn't think they're worth helping this question demonstrates a very serious problem they voted against yesterday included $333 million $333 million to kids with autism and they somehow interpret that as a cut that's irresponsible it's a very unfortunate it is unfair to the parent of kids with autism to suggest that we are cutting services when in fact can you see that please and it's certainly not minister skills for independence or pay later the minister has to live with the fact that her funding decision according to the experts will leave kids with ASD with higher rates of behavior of difficulties and possibly worse institutionalization a life confined to a room or even their own bed we've seen what this looks like speaker and it's devastating this is not the future for kids with ASD that they deserve in this province with the stroke of a pen she can refer to this decision and ensure that kids with autism get the IVI that they so desperately deserve thank you you see that please thank you minister fairness to the kids with autism in Ontario and the parents and families of kids with autism the NDP should be recognizing that 16,000 more kids are going to get access to evidence based care for autism speaker only the NDP could characterize 330 finish please the NDP could characterize an additional $333 million as a cut but speaker that's not the only thing they voted against in yesterday's budget bill they voted against free tuition for low income and middle income kids free tuition and I should not mention this province and the NDP who used to be the champion for low income people has turned their back on them and voted against them thank you thank you speaker my question is for the minister of finance minister yesterday this house passed bill 173 the jobs for today and tomorrow act and this piece of legislation is of course adjacent to our 2016 budget which will help to make Ontarians everyday lives better as a business person minister you and I have spoken on a number of occasions and as a business person you know that I'm a passionate advocate to make sure that we're building a strong economy and supporting creation of jobs the jobs of today and tomorrow act also outlines the next phase of our government's plan to do just that while helping people to reach their full potential and succeed in an evolving economy speaker could the minister please inform this house about how the 2016 budget and budget bill will improve the lives of everyday Ontarians thank you thank you Mr. Speaker and I'd like to thank the member for the question as the member said yesterday our government passed the jobs for today and tomorrow act the 2016 budget is part of our government's economic plan to build Ontario up and to deliver its number one priority to grow the economy and create jobs the four part plan includes investing in talents and skills including helping more people get and create the jobs of the future by expanding access to high quality college and university education the plan is making the largest investment in public infrastructure in Ontario's history and investing in low carbon economy driven by innovative high growth export oriented businesses Mr. Speaker the plan is also helping working Ontarians achieve more secure retirement thank you thank you minister you know many of my constituents have expressed support for a number of very important elements of this budget in particular the record investment in public infrastructure the investment in community care palliative care the free shingles vaccine and as a member of treasury board minister I'm proud of the work that not only treasury board but you our premier all our cabinet our caucus have done to make sure that we're working towards a balanced budget by 2017-18 while protecting the services that everyday Ontarians value so much minister could you tell us what other measures were enacted yesterday by the passing of the 2016 budget good question thank you Mr. Speaker I'm happy to answer the question from the member from Etobicoke center who's been a champion on treasury board as well and as the member said Ontarians we consulted with many Ontarians about their priorities and their values which a government has planned which our plan has outlined in the 2016 budget unfortunately yesterday the commission decided to let politics get in the way of supporting these initiatives that will help Ontarians both today and tomorrow for example yesterday they voted against $400 million to the business growth initiative to invest in our plan to grow the economy and create jobs they voted against transforming student financial assistance to make it more upfront and affordable they voted against providing an additional $1 billion for health care and increasing hospital based funding for Ontario leads to the low carbon economy that will ensure $1.9 billion in reinvestment in green projects and worse yet Mr. Speaker they voted against making everyday life easier for Ontarians by eliminating fees and costs like a dry clean and lowering hospital parking costs thank you Mr. Speaker can you say that please your question the member from the team my question is to the minister of education in my family someone I love grew up with a severe learning disability because of proper training he's now grown up to become a professor take a PhD and rise to very senior positions in the government of Canada I didn't fully appreciate his struggles until I heard Lexie a grade 5 student this morning who wants to continue to go to Saginawska read to us it was incredibly emotional she deserves to thrive just as those like her brother did before her responses from your government today have been less than reassuring their non-committal is increasing anxiety not just here in the gallery today but I'm sure across Ontario my constituent Kelly Foley son attended Saginawska she called the school life changing her son has been able to thrive because of that school I asked the minister to have some compassion today provide some long-term clarity to the people in this gallery make sure that those schools remain open without a cap and that there's a long-term thank you Minister of Education yes thank you very much and as I've said we're very concerned about kids who have severe learning disabilities we know that in the case of some of the children who are attending or who would like to attend the demonstration schools that there is a significant gap between their age level their presumed grade level and their access to reading we know that for some of the children they've been in special needs programs at their local school board and they've been unsuccessful and that the program that's delivered at the demonstration school is excellent and has been successful we know that there are others like your relative who have successfully had programs delivered in their local school boards so that they've been able to learn to read we need to figure out how can more students have success that's the purpose of the consultation is to figure out how more students can thank you minister of education this liberal government says it's for the people about the people but when put in the test nothing could be further from the truth they're cutting provincial and demonstration schools for children and students with special education needs and or blind or deaf blind the minister says it's not about money but they fired 50 education teachers and now they're threatening to close provincial and demonstration schools this liberal government's waste and management is seriously undermining special education services across and for parents of children with special needs it's catastrophic speaker why is this minister telling parents in my riding like Melanie Denny and dozens of others their children are getting more special education dollars when in fact she's cutting core special education resources and closing schools or threatening to close schools across the okay let me try and correct the list of bits of misinformation there somebody said there's not the minister will withdraw withdraw carry on firstly we are not looking at the schools for the blind the provincial school for the blind of which there is only one in Brantford we'll get the name of the city right is continuing the school at Brantford actually does the programming for the deaf blind at least in the English language side we are in fact have already said that we're not closing the AS schools for the deaf the the two big ones in Milton and Belleville so the idea that we are closing all these schools is just simply wrong what we are doing is looking at how we can provide better programming for for children who are deaf because we are concerned about the programming at some of the schools and how we can provide better good question thank you very much Mr. Speaker my question is to the premier the first line of the sunshine this law indicates very clearly that public disclosure is required for salary and benefits for anyone earning over $100,000 in the public sector for years new democrats have been calling for bringing public sector executive pay under control now according to the government sunshine list the CEO for OPG earned $787,000 however according to OPG itself that amount is close to double that and more like $1.4 million now on one hand we have the government disclosing one amount on the other hand we have the OPG itself disclosing another amount the question is simple how much did the CEO for OPG actually earn thank you Mr. Speaker Mr. Economic Development Employment and Infrastructure Mr. Speaker pleased to respond to the member on this behalf of our Minister of Energy and the fact is the current CEO Jeffrey Leash is earning 3% less than his predecessor Mr. Speaker and I've got to tell you when you look at this kind of position this is, I mean you're talking about a CEO that is in a position that you have to globally compete for that talent these are the folks Mr. Speaker that are running our nuclear units these are the folks that are running our entire energy production system these are not the places where you would go to get anybody that is anything less than the best in the world Mr. Speaker to ensure that Ontario Power Generation and our energy system is operating efficiently effectively and safely so Mr. Speaker this is not the place to go when it comes to trying to discount people's earnings this is the place where you want the best in the world and that's what we have supplementary in case anyone forgot the question was about disclosure and there was absolutely no answer to that question for more than a decade the Liberals have promised to bring public sector executive pay under control now in fact they passed legislation in 2014 to try to address this issue and now they're promising to do something on this issue again it was a stretch goal for the Liberals back 10 years ago and it's a stretch goal again right now on top of all that we have information before us that this government has not been disclosing the full truth in their own sunshine list now Ontarians deserve transparency that is something they have a right to have now my question is simple the lack of information provided by this government how many other public sector executives are earning more than what the government admits to the President of the Treasury board Mr. Speaker thank you Speaker and I think as the minister said the income reported for Jeff Liash on the 2015 Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act was $787,472 that included his entire signing bonus plus his salary for 2015 from August to December he started in his position as CEO in August when it comes to the broader question of executive compensation frameworks we are moving forward with developing those frameworks for executive compensation it is not a simple task it is not as simple as they claim just make it double the premier salary we are taking a thoughtful approach we started with the college and university sector the frameworks are now out for consultation we are moving forward with agencies so it is important that we get this right we need to find the right balance between attracting the right people and having reasonable levels of compensation thank you Speaker my question is to the minister of training and universities minister yesterday the PC and NDP caucuses voted against budget bill 173 that will serve to relieve the financial burden that many families faced in poor secondary education many of the students in my writing of Durham rely on the interior student assistance program to help pay the cost of tuition my constituents were very pleased about the many changes our government made to OSAP in the 2016 budget minister would you kindly inform members of the house how our government is making poor secondary education more accessible and affordable across Ontario in 2016 thank you thank you Mr. Speaker and I want to thank the member from Durham for that excellent question Mr. Speaker our government strongly believes that all students regardless of their background or circumstances should be able to afford to go to college or university in our province of Ontario and that's why we have decided to transform OSAP in the 2016 budget that will lead to more students receiving more generous upfront grants and in many cases help students receive grants that exceeds our institution Mr. Speaker the student associations poverty reduction groups and the colleges and universities have praised the introduction of a simpler and upfront Ontario student grant the new Ontario student grant is a smarter way to allocate taxpayers dollars and the help of students who need it the most Mr. Speaker it is unfortunate that the members opposite said no to the 2016 budget bill and therefore said no to real action to break down the main barriers to post second education in our province of Ontario Thank you Thank you Speaker and thank you to the minister for that response it is disappointed that the members opposite voted against bill 173 but it is reassuring to hear that this government places such a high priority and providing access to education so many people can get good jobs and actively contribute to the economic growth in this wonderful province Minister despite the significant improvements the province has made since 2003 there remains a direct correlation between family income levels and the likelihood of attending college or university Minister you have spoken a great deal about the needs of students could you talk further about the impact of student financial assistance will have Thank you Minister Thank you Mr. Speaker again I want to thank the member for that question Mr. Speaker our government is working hard to break down the barriers that are preventing Ontarians from getting a post second education which is why in September 2017 all college university and career college students who come from families with household income of less than $50,000 will have the Ontario student grant that will cover their tuition in addition more than half of the students whose household income is below $83,000 will receive grants that will cover or exceed the average cost of tuition Mr. Speaker under the new Ontario student grants more than 150,000 students will have upfront grant that will cover more than the cost of average tuition and 250,000 students will have less debt than they would have under the current OSAP program I am pleased Mr. Speaker that this government under the leadership has broken down the barrier I deferred vote on the motion for closure of the motion of second reading of bill 100 an act to enact the Ontario Trails Act 2015 and to amend various acts calling the members this will be a five minute bill First, please take your seats On February 18, 2016 Mr. Plotow passed a second reading of bill 100 an act to enact the Ontario Trails Act 2015 and to amend various acts Mr. Crack has moved that the question now will be now put all those in favour of Mr. Crack's motion please rise one at a time be recognized by the court Mr. Crack Ms. Wynn Mr. Matthews Mr. Hoskins Mr. Sandals Mr. Dugas Mr. Delaney Mr. Gravel Mr. McMeacon Mr. Chan Mr. Moriti Mr. Couto Mr. Leel Mr. Flynn Mr. Zimmer Mr. Albinese Mr. Dixon Mr. Manga Ms. Wong Ms. Hunter Mr. Fraser Mr. Anderson Mr. Baker Mr. Baller Ms. Hogan Ms. Kuala Ms. Molly Ms. Martin Ms. McGarry Ms. McMahon Mr. Milch Mr. Nidoo Harris Mr. Potts Mr. Rinaldi Ms. Scott Ms. Thompson Mr. Monroe Mr. Houda Mr. Bailey Mr. Walker Mr. Smith Mr. Harris Mr. Nickles Mr. McDonnell Mr. Pettipies Mr. Cove Mr. Bisson Mr. Singh Mr. Taylor Mr. Natashack Ms. Armstrong Mr. Monta Mr. Hadfield Mr. Gretzky Mr. French Mr. 52 the Nays are 42 The eyes being 52 and the nays being 42 I declare the motion carry Mr. Couto has moved a second reading of bill 100 an act to enact the Ontario Trails Act 2015 into amend various acts is it the pleasure of the house of the motion carry I heard you know all those in favour please say aye Aye All those opposed please say nay In my opinion the ayes have it Calling the members this would be a 5 minute bill was moved second reading of bill 100 an act to enact the Ontario Trails Act 2015 into amend various acts All those in favour please rise one at a time be recognized by the court Mr. Couto Mr. Nacky Mr. Bradley Mr. Bradley Mr. Wins Mr. Hoskins Mr. Dugas Mr. McCharles Mr. Quinter Mr. Kohl Mr. Tukar Mr. Brardinetti Mr. Dillon Mr. Gravelle Mr. McMeekin Mr. Chan Mr. Moriti Mr. Leal Mr. Crack Mr. Wong Mr. Sergio Mr. Jasek Mr. Dahmerla Mr. Fraser Mr. Anderson Mr. Baker Mr. Ballard Mr. Don Mr. Kowala Mr. Mollie Mr. McMan Mr. Milch Mr. Arneil Mr. Arneil Mr. Fadela Mr. Miller Mr. Miller-Parisal-Moscoka Mr. Scott Mr. Walker Mr. Smith Mr. McDonnell Mr. Miller-Hamilton-Estony-Cree Mr. Miller-Hamilton-Estony-Cree Mr. Singh Mr. Horvath Mr. Besson Mr. Taylor Mr. Natascha Mr. Armstrong Mr. Montha Mr. Hatfield Mr. Gretzky Mr. Gaines Mr. French All those opposed, please rise one at a time to be recognized by the clerk. Mr. Hardiman Mr. Willson Mr. Brown Mr. Clark Mr. Yakibusky Mr. Thompson Mr. Monroe Mr. Yurek Mr. Harris Mr. Nichols Mr. Marteau Mr. Pettipi Mr. Koe The Ayes are 77, the Nays are 17 The Ayes being 77, the Nays being 17 I declare the motion carried. Bill de Semélection du Président de l'Oise The bill will be ordered for third reading Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport The Senate to the Standing Committee on the Legislative Assembly As requested There are no deferred further deferred, sorry Point of order of the member from the committee We would like to introduce long term family and friend of ours who is in the visitors gallery today Mr. Kermil Sadkou Thank you for joining us at Queen's Park We will defer the votes to the South Stance recess until 1pm this afternoon


What's up you guys, it's Zodana. So I teamed up with Sim Vivo to give away one of their Sim Sutra kits. It comes with all of this amazing stuff that you see right here. So if you guys are interested in learning how to sutra and getting one of these kits, head on over to my Instagram at adanathepa for the details on how you can enter to win. What's up you guys, it's Zodana. This who?   What's up you guys, it's Zodana. What's up you guys, it's Zodana. Welcome back to my channel for those of you who are new and welcome. If you know what this is, you can get your own sutra kit from Sim Vivo by going to www.sim-vivo.com. They have other trainers as well. This is not a sponsored video. Sim Vivo is not paying me for this but they were generous enough to send me this trainer kit to give them my honest opinion and review of the product and that is what I'm gonna do because that's what I always do. I keep it real with you guys. So I've already made this stitch here. Well, it's not a stitch, I'm sorry you guys. I've already made this cut here with my 10 blade. And that's this right here, this particular scalpel. I cut that but I will make another cut for you guys. I'm gonna try out the 11 blade for you. So I'm gonna do that right now. This is what I'm gonna use for my simple interrupted stitch. I've only done this one time before and that is the stitch is what I'm talking about.  Oh, there we go. And you guys, this is very, very sharp. So please be careful. If you do get your own, be very careful with this. I'm gonna go a little bit deeper, there we go. Okay, so I've made my cut. So that is my stitch. I used the 15 blade for that one. All right, so there are these, I can't remember what they call them. I think it said they were the Hagar needle pickups. So that's what we have here. I have my nylon 30 millimeter nylon suture needle right here. So I'm gonna open that for you all. See how it comes. So four steps in hand, your best friend, right? Pull them out. There we go. So this is how it comes. You have your 30 millimeter nylon needle right here. So I will go ahead and clip it and pull it out. This needle holder right here, I don't have a skin pickup. It has little claws on it. It's not personally my favorite because I guess I'm still a novice and I'm still learning. So I have to figure out the best way to hold the actual nylon thread with it. Maybe I go in through the middle. I don't know, but it makes it difficult for me. However, I'm going to try it. I'm gonna work with it. Like I said, I'm new at this. We learned you go in at 90 degree angle. You start off in the middle. So that is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna start off right here at this little kind of dot right there. I'm gonna pull this back, give myself a little bit of room to work. All right, so this dot, you go in 90 degrees. Pull it up. All right, so I'm in there.  Which is really like not that, but hey. All right, so I see my needle and it's going in the wrong. Oh, there it is. So clearly this isn't supposed to happen. I'm not supposed to stick that right there. Like I said, you guys, novice learning, but I'm pulling it through. I'm gonna use my fingers to kind of finish this off because it's just easier for me, but you do the two, double, pull it through. Make sure that it's flat is what I was taught. You have that kind of flat stitch. You throw it once again, pull it through one last time and you pull it through. And then you'll take it, obviously, and you'll cut it because that's the interrupted part of the simple interrupted. So I'll get my handy dandy scissors. All right, and so that is my stitch. That's my first one. Let's do this again because I had a little trouble right here. Like this right here, that little hole shouldn't be there. So let's do this again. So when you do it in the middle, you then have to stitch it halfway through. And you guys, so this is really, I really like this trainer. First off, the trainer that I'm using in school, it's really like gelatinous and oily. And so it makes it a little bit difficult for us to actually do the stitches, but it's really good to learn because your skin is gonna have a little bit of give obviously with it, but sometimes it makes it a little bit hard. So again, we hold it. This is what we've learned. You don't really hold it like this to go in. You hold it like this, go in at 90 degrees and going in the middle because you have to put that hole in there. And then I can release it. And there it is coming through. Needle holder, pull it out. All right, that was a little better. Okay, and so then I'll drop my needle down where I know where it is, roll it twice. I think I can actually put a little bit more. There we go. Give a little bit more give with that, yeah. Roll it once, pull it through. And one more time, get that tip, pull it through, pull it tight to the other side and then just clip it off. There we go. I think I'm getting the hang of it. And so again, you'll go in. Go in with the needle. Again, split it down the middle. There's about, there we go. That's halfway. So this is a really good trainer to train on. The skin itself is tough, but it still has a lot of give, like the actual tissue that is supposed to be the skin. Okay, so I think I pulled it a little bit too much there. Training with the nylon, because this is usually what you're going to be using in surgery is actually good. So you get kind of like the feel of this particular thread. And then you just are learning how to do these throws. Okay, so that one was a little... So I really like this, this is good. I'm going to be spending a lot of time training on this because obviously the more that you train, the better that you're going to become with doing these different suturing techniques. Again, so you would split it again, so I would go here. You can, if I still think that it needs more space, grab my needle with the needle holder. This is my needle pickup. Pull it through and it twice. And YouTube videos are really good for this as well in terms of learning how to pull these sutures. But Simvio has a really good product here, making it easy for me.  After I'm done with this, it kind of went into the skin there, but it's there. But these are my simple interrupted. I'm not really sure what these other stitches would be, like some of the ones that I'll learn, I guess maybe like a mattress or a stitch. But these are some of the other stitches that they have that you can continue to train on. Like I said, I really only know the simple interrupted stitch right now, so that's the one that I'm working with. But I think I'm getting the hang of this and I think that this particular trainer is making it very easy to do that. Obviously, as I continue to practice and I continue to have more lessons like in school, as I said, I only did this one time before. I'll get better at this and I'll learn how to better do these different stitches and not waste any thread. But I think I'm doing a fairly decent job. If you guys want to learn how to do this, definitely get their trainer. They do have a book that it comes with this particular trainer comes with and it kind of gives you instructions on how to do some of these stitches. And like I said, you can go onto YouTube and figure that out as well. But the Sim Vivo training study guide helps you learn how to do some of these stitches. But I think my stitches look good. Like I feel like I did a really good job. Like look at this. This looks pretty good. You know, there, I don't know, maybe I pulled this one a little too tight. No, I think it's good. It's like well put together. So yeah, look at that. I had the little mishap here. But we're good. We're good. That's why this is training, right? So yeah, head on over to Sim Vivo. That's www.sim-vivo.com. If you want to get this particular trainer and like I said, there are other trainers as well, dissection trainers for INDs and actually like excising different things. You have various different nylon-sized threads. So learning how to suture with those are very important as well. I really like the feel of this. The fact that it's not oily and gelatinous, so it's not messy is great because then I can just continue to, I can literally, you guys, so I have my stitches in and then I can just go in right now, kind of ruin all my good hard work but easily snip them and start all over again and continue to train, right? And that's, it's that simple. Pull those out. And honestly, that's how they're gonna take your sutures out anyways. When they're, after you've had some stitches put in, they're gonna take your sutures like that. So I'm excited about this. I'm super excited. Thank you so much, Sim Vivo, for being so generous and allowing me to review this product. Very helpful and it's gonna come in very handy within these next couple of weeks and throughout the next 14 months of my clinical year. Also, if you wanna see more of these training videos, go ahead and hit up my comment section and let me know. And if there's some, I don't know, you have YouTube channels or YouTube videos that can actually show me how to do some other different types of stitches, leave that in the comment section below as well because I really wanna learn and train on my new Sim Vivo Suture Training Kit. All right, you guys, if you guys wanna see Aunt try to do this and for those of you who don't know who Aunt is, that's my husband, nothing. He has no medical training at all, nothing related. None. But if you wanna see him try to suture, leave that comment in the comment section below and we'll see if we can make that video happen. Yeah. I'm so excited. I'm really excited for that. So leave a bunch of comments to you guys because I really wanna do this. Thank you guys so much for watching. If you have any comments, leave them below. If you haven't already done so, go ahead and subscribe and follow me on adanathepa at Instagram. Thank you guys again. I will talk to you guys next time. Bye. Happy suturing.


This one was a impromptu session that was put in place because one of the speakers dropped off But I guarantee you it will be more exciting than the speaker that dropped off There are a bunch of topics we listed because that's something that we I've been hearing from a lot of people saying you know We need to talk about this. So I just listed no estimates no project. No backlog and this is some of the stuff that this been a lot of noise in In this community and outside the community around what's happening And what I want to do is over the next 45 minutes kind of spend maybe a good chunk of time first on the no estimates Movement that's happening. We spend enough time discussing that as a group and then we will move to other topics All right, this is not going to be a presentation Right. This is a fishbowl How many people have attended a fishbowl before a quick show of hand? All right, so the way a fishbowl works is basically we're going to create a circle over here and Around one of the table and then that would have let's say five chairs at any given point in time Four chairs can be occupied one chair is always empty if a new person from the audience wants to come and Present something add in a viewpoint. They take that chair one of the four people who were already sitting on the chair would leave and Keep that chair vacant for someone else to come in so this allows all of us to participate in a constructive manner Without it being very chaotic, right? And if that doesn't work really well, then I've got posted notes as a way of You know making that noise a little bit less and we will see how it goes right given we don't have too many people I think this format should be good enough for now How many people are familiar let's kind of dive into the topic right how many people here are familiar into the whole no estimate Movement. What does that mean? Two people three people show your hands. I know Okay Not many people Should I kind of take a stab at defining what the idea is? How many people believe estimates are absolutely necessary for running software projects? doing projects without this Estimates is such an integral part of software development How can you measure the velocity watch my video on agility? Velocity is killing agility defining what no estimate or the the idea behind the no estimate movement That's right, and I'll step a little bit back first even to explain Why we came up with relative story Relative sizing basically story points or other kinds of things, but where we came from let's take two minutes do a quick kind of Recap of how things have evolved Everyone's I'm sure familiar with effort estimation estimating projects estimating tasks in man ours Women ours whatever you prefer to call them right So back in the days we would say these are the list of things that needs to be done Each of these things are estimated in ours or days depending on some kind of an effort But that was referred to as effort estimation How long would it take for one person to finish this particular task or this particular feature? Whatever you're talking about, right? so let's say ours per person or Per week or whatever and what was the problem with this approach? Was there a problem with this approach effort estimation? What was the problem? So let's make sure we're all having one conversation So you're saying that when it was 50% done it really didn't mean it was actually 50% done I'm not sure if there was a problem especially with effort estimation, but we'll we'll take that point you had a point It is estimate right so One conversation or we'll switch to post-it notes So the estimate to what was the actual What we were finding on where what we were hoping is the gap between them would be Relatively less and bit more predictable because we are basing our plans on it, right? But if those numbers kind of are all over the place It was just getting more and more difficult to to use this as a measure Effort is not same as duration does that make sense? All right cool It changes based on the person skills. So this is very person dependent someone for someone This is a two-hour task for someone else. It could be an eight-hour task depending on their skill set So it's very person dependent, right? You had a point Same point. All right, awesome So so it expected more you need clarity to be able to be good at this, right? So these are few problems. We can spend the rest of the evening just talking about the problems, but that's not going to help us Right. So what did we do? How did we address this these problems? We try to address this problem by Buffering yes, there was one technique looking at historical data for top estimation trying to give different estimations and How did that work? equally bad Right, then someone came up with a very smart idea called story points Right Anyone knows who came up with the idea of story points? My corn he gets way too much more credit than he deserves That's recorded on the video. This was back in the extreme programming days This is where story points come from And the idea was as simple as this which of these two as longest longer The bottle everyone agrees any doubts in your mind? You're hundred percent sure By how many centimeters? Now I'm forcing you to estimate or guess But the first question You were not guessing you were pretty sure, right? So this was a basic premise of story points and the idea was that human brains the way that we have evolved We are very good at relative sizing, but we're very bad at absolute measures So this was an absolute measure, right? You're saying two hours four hours ten days twenty days, right? This is this is something we humans are not capable yet and Probably the next 25 years. I don't see us getting better at this So the idea was to move away from this and move to this notion of relative sizing This is relative sizing But how does this help us? I'm kind of taking all the way going back talking about why this was bad Why story points was a good idea then I'm gonna talk about why story points is a horrible idea Then we're gonna talk about, you know, where do we move and then we'll open up the fishbowl once we've laid the foundation Right, so How do we use story points? So we basically relative sizing, right? So we've got relative sizing we look at two stories two tasks and we can say one is more complex more Volatile more ambiguous than the other one Right, but we still don't know how long it's gonna take to do this because that's very dependent on the who the person's gonna work on You know, what's their prior knowledge skill levels and also, you know the context of what you're trying to do So we came up with this idea of from effort estimation. We moved to relative Size estimates and a lot of people say, you know, you can take the relative size estimates Basically what we did actually let me kind of recap, right? So we did relative sizing we took bunch of things put them in different buckets and we said this is one point This is two points. This is five points or three points five points eight points. We used a non-linear scale Right. We use Fibonacci series or something else, which is a non-linear scale To to put these story points Everyone's with me so far and what was the rationale behind that the uncertainty, right? That's too complicated. Even you don't remember what it is. So let's simplify it, right? To do to do it to D link It's so hard. I can't even say to D link The mapping the direct mapping between effort and the actual points, right? so when when someone says something is one story point and Something else is two story point. It does not mean that this is going to take two x the time to do this everyone's on agreement with that and Then how do we calculate velocity? We just said we are going to do this so that you can't apply arithmetic on it And then we turned around and we said you add all the story points and that gives you the velocity So my velocity this time is 15 Next time I'm going to pick up 15 one-point histories and Guess what it's going to be a disaster So people were running into all kinds of challenges, right? One challenge was Even though we talk about relative sizing in the head Developers testers still keep thinking about effort. It's very hard to get out of that because for years You've been slapped on your knuckles and now when you say hey, give me a relative size You're like how many hours in my head? Oh five hours. So two story points and That was one of the big problems The what was the other problem with this problems with story points guys? But the whole point was not to arrive at numbers Right and so your point is the management still wants a time-based cadule and So inevitably we were forced to take these converted back to ours our days and show a dot on a timeline saying when this is going to hit that dot and That was a problem Not necessarily in my opinion with story points itself, but with the expectation of What you're going to derive out of this But that's what you would account into the complexity, right? It's it's it's complexity is simple But the number of times you need to do this a number of places you need to do this This is bigger than this other thing And we could do that. I think that there it has an advantage over effort estimation in my opinion, right? So it's not necessarily a problem.  So just to summarize this point quickly is a Story points itself is okay But story points with velocity led to this whole idea of it should keep increasing every sprint You need to keep getting better every sprint and when we started doing that It was very easy for smart programmers to game this Management wanted this to go up. I think that's the point you were trying to make Yes, we all agree that it is it's a tool for us to get better predictability But it ended up being a tool that I've been in companies where I've been asked why is the velocity not going up Was there ever an expectation of velocity going up? But you're doing things and you should get better at this, right? So shouldn't the velocity go up? comparing teams two teams velocity because one team is measuring in cookie points another team is measuring in beer bottles and people started comparing How many cookie points versus how many beer bottles and didn't really make much sense Right, so that was another problem. That's the second problem comparing teams But that was a hard problem because if I put myself into the the executive shoes, right? I want to know which of my teams need help Not that I want to monitor them But I need to know which of my teams need help and what tools does agile give me now to do that and Often the answer the naive answer was let's look at the velocity if these teams velocity is not good If this team's velocity is not going up, then these guys are bad. They need help But that created another train wreck, so we'll not go there, but that's another problem Shall we kind of summarize quickly because I think we all know 20 other problems that were there But one problem no one's spoken so far and I want to bring that because to me That's the most important point is story points in velocity focused way too much on output and Then focus on outcome. Does that make sense? I'll repeat myself Story points velocity and other kinds of things focused way too much on output Not on outcome What's the difference between output and outcome? Output is the number the number of lines of code you wrote the number of features you build the number of Tasks you completed yada yada yada outcome is Why were we doing this in the first place and if we did this did we actually achieve what we were trying to do our? Hypothesis was for example If we reduce the number of steps that it takes for someone to do a task Then the number of people doing the task more frequently will go up That's the outcome that we want But we got so caught up in measuring these and be so happy that we are achieving our velocity sprint on sprint that we forgot Even to measure the outcomes Yes That's all in theory honestly In fact in fact if you see someone's velocity pretty static, you know, they're gaming the system That's the first indication someone should look for if your velocity is pretty Constant it's being heavily gained Because velocity being constant is just in theory in practice. I have not seen this in the last 12 years That's what traditions do right you tell me what data you like to see and how you like to see it I'll show you that data Yeah, you're right, but I would strongly disagree with the second point that measuring value is very hard I I don't think measuring value is really hard because if you can't measure value Then you might well, let's shut your shop down and go because How do you know what you're doing is actually making any difference? Whatever you're doing it for but it takes a lot of time to do it so people like Will take that calculus into their head and say, oh, this is what I'm gonna get if I do it Okay, but you can't see that I mean I will make an extreme statement I Think you're right for some companies. It's it's hard. It takes while But I don't think for all companies. It's the case Right there are there are enough companies where they can find ways of measuring value in a much earlier way Maybe not 100% but some point of it because you need to validate whether you want to invest more on this or this is good enough Or you should pull the plug Right. I mean to me. That's that's an important point So these were all kind of the challenges that were occurring and what was the solution to this or what was the kind of new Idea around this is how do we tackle this? Has anyone seen this Jeff patterns? presentation on Flipping the iron triangle. Yes. No Let me erase this off the board No, this does not help. Thank you. All right, awesome Everyone's familiar with the iron triangle scope Costs time So I think traditionally with the first model that we defined what we were trying to do is we were trying to fix the scope and estimate The time and the cost They are a factor which builds on each other But we will try to estimate time so we can estimate the cost and we would determine whether how to balance this Triangle right and it turned out for all the reason we stated in the past that this was a terrible idea and then a Bunch of people said what happens if you invert this That's a interesting idea Time and cost is fixed What does that mean? you have You have a fixed set of people you have fixed cost of running your business etc etc so Kind of your cost is fixed in some sense You know you fix a time box Which is two weeks three weeks five weeks one week whatever works for you and you fix the time Then you estimate what scope fits into that time box This is where story points and other kinds of techniques kind of came in where you would go with the gut feeling the first time You would look at how many story points you completed next time You would do a projection based on that and then you would say okay Maybe we can take on so much so you're estimating what scope you can achieve in a fixed time Right, and then people said while this was a good improvement from here to here. We still have Not really solved the problem for all the reasons we were stating and then what's the no estimate movement now coming to the actual point Right, so I'll pause here What I want to do is maybe Get people to work in the groups a little bit so that everyone's voice can be heard and you can Think about what the no estimate was trying to do Yes, no, no, so this is no estimation is not yet here. This is basically the story point approach This was the effort estimation approach This is the story point approach or relative sizing approach the no estimate approach is a different approach Sure, so this is one way of doing the no estimate approach Okay, this is one way of doing what I was trying to say is maybe we now I've bored you guys enough Maybe we do a smaller group kind of a discussion saying what a no estimate would be right? We've seen that we've seen the problems and what should be the next evolution So I was kind of hoping you suggested one way of doing this. There are many ways of doing this Right, so can we do quick group discussions at tables? Yes, let's time box this for 10 minutes. I'm fixing the time box Discuss in your group. What all livers do you have? We talked about these livers here. Are there more livers you can play around with? Right, that will actually help expand the context Two minutes so kind of trying wrap up your discussion and come up with a conclusion people have woken up Does any group have I as I was walking around I saw still a lot of people defending why they need estimates And that's brilliant But it's not gonna help you as Einstein said doing the same thing over and over again faster is Height of stupidity you need to look at There are certain problems. Is there a different way whether you do it or not is a different question But here we are trying to explore is there an alternative, right? So if you're just defending why you need estimate, you'll never probably figure out Hey, there might be a better way to do this and guess what there are bunch of companies out there doing it So there's something to it, right a Bunch of companies a hundreds of companies. I don't know lots of companies Doing stuff out there without estimates Sorry, no, he's asking me to give data on how many companies are doing this and there's no way to know that data Unless someone goes and does a PhD research on this which will be published five years later by that time No estimate would be irrelevant Which table has actually a solution of a no estimate approach Potential solution I like that go for it You need to be crisp one minute done Awesome, how do you know that working in scrum highly motivated highly self-organized teams working in scrum seems oxymoron to me Never seen it. Sorry a seeding approach. What does that mean? I Don't So This is I So let's pause on that because I I'm not I'm I don't think we're gonna be very constructive going into that debate I'm saying let's look at is there an alternative way and then maybe you can decide, you know, what? This seems insane.  I'm not going there or you can say, you know what this kind of makes sense Let me try it out on the next project, right? And we will see so what I'm looking for is ideas from tables where they have come up with a solution Or maybe someone's actually experience doing something of a complete no estimate approach, right?  So we'll go there We thought about The future How sophisticated you can make the feature So what we thought this Is You're saying if we added another liver over here, which is basically you took the scope and can we slice the scope into grades Right into grades or into levels of sophistication or whatever terminology you want to use and maybe This is the bare necessity bare minimum bare minimum marketable feature and That minimal marketer feature you put out there and then you might decide you want to do more Scrap it. What do you want to do? So you're adding another liver, right? But Go on like what's the solution? This is good. But what what else? But you still need some estimate yet And you know that okay, you've got 10 features So if you want to take pictures to be done, so you want to be a Cheshire for improvement, right with the minimum, whatever the grade that you want, right? So Once you have done that, right, you continue to sort of add This is okay, let's let's talk about this solution It works when I've already got the project when I already am executing the project and I want to incrementally Deliver stuff, but when I even need to get the project right at the beginning, right? And you want to see the feasibility when I want to get the funds allocated either externally or internally I need to have some projection of the effort It's going to take and the company might decide you know what this is not worth Getting into at this point because it's going to take us two years to do it and it's going to cost us so much money Right, how do you tackle that question? What you're talking about is great it at the execution level You can start slicing and you can start doing things, but a lot of people get stuck even in the first point, right? So I guess it's good to split them into two parts and tackle them separately So that's where the title was no projects as well We are running out of time we have zero seconds left You can give us the answer Oh there is no such thing, but I have enough experience not having estimated for the last eight years and having Delivered successful products in businesses and I can quickly talk about some of the techniques we have used These are not silver bullets. These are not going to work in every context But I can quickly jump through and summarize what we have tried to do Right now I'm doing this at hike messenger It's a it's a hundred million user company And it's a it's a it's a pretty sizable. We have something what we call as an opportunity log These are all the kinds of things that the company could be building today to make millions of dollars or to make millions of people impact on millions of people We take three things Which we think are the most viable ones and we run through a one week Discovery on each of them during this one week of discovery, which is a fixed cycle We are figuring out what is the core hypothesis of this idea And how do we validate the core hypothesis of this idea? So all you get is one week you don't get more than it's a fixed time box You basically run in one week and you either have to come back with solid data That proves that this is something that the company should invest on right if you can't come back in a week This goes back into the backlog. We might revisit it at some point. You pick the next most promising idea from here Let's say you take this you go through one week of discovery There are a list of your riskiest assumptions riskiest hypothesis you run some experiments you validate that and you've got some data to You know sometimes it takes Sometimes in a week. It's hard to get all of these data, but that's where a lot of hacking Skills come in right what we do and what how we collect data now Let's assume some of this proves that this is actually going to increase our retention This is going to increase bring new user base other kinds of things. So we have some high-level Company-wide okay ours or metrics that we look at which which impacts the company could be things like retention of users could be Things like onboarding new users could be increasing sentiment analysis of the use sentiment score of the users, etc And what we do from there is basically if one of the projects satisfy one of the idea satisfy The need we will take that and that would go into what we call as a dual track Development cycle where on one track. We are constantly doing discovery of What is the next most important thing that would add value? Let me just complete because we don't have time hang on Let me just finish please We've taken bunch of hypothesis. We validated hypothesis. We believe that this is a thumbs up We need to go with this. We run this through a discovery track. This is an ongoing track. No time box So one other liver that we talked about is the time box we remove the time box liver and basically we run discovery in parallel we run delivery at every Discovery we produce some kind of a validated result that goes into a delivery track Which constantly keep adding stuff pushing stuff out into production, right? And at any point in time you can chop this off saying this is not making sense or pull this off So there is this notion of moving from Output based measurement to flow based measurement where we are looking at how much value are we adding by constantly looking at flow And splitting this into a discovery track and a delivery track helps us validate something before we start building it Validating the value before we start building it This is not going to do justice to the topic, but I know you had a question and then we'll come over there Hang on The company only has one week. We don't know We don't know we have no idea. We are saying one week is all we can afford It's a it's what money can the company invest on an experiment Choosing which work you will do based on the value it will provide Instead of choosing which work you will do based on the estimate of how long it will take That correct. That's correct. That's that's one essence of it but the other important thing is You have to have actually validated that it will add value before you start building it And then it doesn't matter if it's going to take one week two weeks three weeks But the other part to it is that I don't want to invest three weeks, but that's too long For something to backfire. So we will try and slice it down sophistication livers with one idea Right, we want to slice it down to the least sophisticated thing that will actually help us validate that what was the hypothesis Validated over here is actually coming back as real data Right. So instead of focusing on the time We are really focusing on validated value being added and both of them happening in parallel So you're prioritizing based on what your ROI is going to be essentially right based on what you validated And so then so I'm trying to think about in a larger company How you apply this right where you help leaders move away from feeling if you need to understand the investments going to take up front instead being able to communicate validated Hypothesized ROI and say this is our biggest ROI at this point So this is what our teams are going to chase after that at any point after you've applied those sophistication Lovers if it feels like this isn't what we wanted to be you just end it and pick up the next thing. Yeah, it's Right now at this company. We have 12 teams parallely doing this And this is basically happening in parallel at 12 teams level So it's not just one project there are multiple, you know teams working on this Hypothesis by hypothesis One hypothesis at a level a Hypothesis can cut across 20 features a hypothesis can be a dot on the screen Release is happening every single day Not to 100 million users but to 100 users point 5% of the users 1% of the users 5% of the users 20% of the users 100% of the user When the value is actually validated in the market, so you had a hypothesis you ran a bunch of experiments You said yes, this makes sense from the small database from the small hypothesis that you ran You feel this makes sense then you're going to invest a small amount of time to quickly get that out to 100 users 2,000 users to whatever statistically significant number of users and then you would decide whether you want to roll it to the Next set of users or you want to pull it back? Why should I care if it's waterfall or not it works for us It's actually really helping us. It's saving us millions of dollars of wasted Effort building stuff that no one wants Yep, I'm out. I'm out. I'll be here. I will be happy