So it is now time for questions. I recognize the leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. Thanks very much. Thanks very much, Speaker. My first question is for the Premier. Last week, the Premier announced a plan to vaccinate people who were aged 18-plus in hotspot neighbourhoods. In fact, he said, and I quote, we have mobile units as we speak going out there right now to get people vaccinated. Speaker, why did the Premier tell thousands of Ontarians that they could get vaccinated right now when he knew that there was no plan at all to do so? To apply, the Deputy Premier and Minister of Health. Thank you very much, Speaker. Well, in fact, there is a plan to vaccinate people over 18 in hotspot areas. They can't be booked through the online booking tool, but they can be booked through the public health units, and they can be booked through some of the units that are starting up. For example, there is one in a hotspot area at BAPS Charities on Highway 427 using their own booking tool. Yesterday, within the first hour, they booked 4,500 appointments with people of all ages. So, yes, in fact, people 18 years of age and older can be done in a number of these clinics, in a number of these pop-up units, and in a number of the mobile testing areas. Last speaker, back to the Premier. Health units had no idea that this was coming. They were put in a scramble with no extra resources and no vaccines. In fact, Maureen Adams, in the chair of Scarborough Health Network Board, said this. Scarborough continues to struggle with the incomprehensible disparity in vaccine distribution for Canada's most diverse community, and one of Ontario's most severe hotspots in some areas, 24% positivity rate. So, why did the Premier tell Ontarians 18 years, 18 age and up, that they could actually get vaccines when they really had no plan, and in fact, folks couldn't get the vaccines, as the Premier promised? Thank you. Well, there is a plan to make sure that every Ontarian who wants to receive a vaccine can get one. The public health units are very well aware of the plan. They are implementing it in their own ways, because there are different ways. They're used to their own circumstances. They know their own geography. They know where people are. They know whether mass vaccination clinics are going to work best, or whether it should be done in pharmacies, or whether it should be done through working with the public, the other units that are available to them. But what I can say with respect to Scarborough is the problem there right now is lack of vaccines. We have had problems with all of the vaccines in the most recent time, including three delays in the arrival of the Moderna vaccine, which is scheduled to arrive today, but we have to wait to see if it actually arrives. So, we have been moving the vaccines around to make sure that places can stay open. But in the case of Scarborough, it's the lack of supply. I know the federal government is doing whatever they can to get the supplies to us, but we are reliant on the federal government to send them to us. And if we don't have the vaccines, we have to close the clinics temporarily. But it is only temporary until we get the vaccines. Yesterday, the Premier actually mocked Ontarians by saying it was very simple to get a vaccination booked. The reaction from one hotspot recipient is this, Speaker, and I quote, if Doug Ford wants people 18 to 49 to stop complaining that booking a vaccine is going to... I'm going to interrupt the member and remind her that she has to refer to the Premier by the title of the Premier. I'll read the quote with the removal of the Premier's actual name. If the Premier wants people 18 to 49 to stop complaining that booking a vaccine is confusing, he could stop lying about the availability of appointments and... I'm going to ask the Leader of the Opposition to withdraw. So, the re-reader of the question is this. When is this Premier going to stop insulting Ontarians? When is he going to stop blaming Ontarians for his failure and actually do the work necessary to protect them from this third wave of COVID-19? Thank you very much, Speaker. And I would say to the Leader of the Official Opposition, through you, Mr Speaker, that that is absolutely not the case. The Premier has been taking every step possible to preserve the health and safety of every single Ontarian. That has been our goal throughout. That is behind every step that we've been taken. We want to make sure that everyone who wants to receive a vaccine can get one. That's why we're offering them in so many locations in the mass vaccination clinics, in pharmacies, in primary care facilities, in specialty clinics, pop-up clinics, mobile clinics. There's a variety of ways that people can access them. Everyone from those who are 18 years of age and up in hotspots, and people who are at the appropriate ages for appropriate vaccines that are currently available. So that's what the Premier is working on. That's what I'm working on. That's what we're working on on this side. Please join us and help out instead of complaining. The next question, once again, the Leader of the Opposition. Thank you so much. My next question is also for the Premier. There really is no effective plan to vaccinate essential workers who don't have the choice to stay home and keep themselves safe. In fact, yesterday, this government actually passed the buck to employers, asking them to organize, pay for, and operate clinics in workplaces. Speaker, what happens to those workers whose employers can't or won't pay for and operate an on-site clinic? Are they just out of luck? Well, there is a plan to deal with that. For example, let me use the example of the BAPS charities in Etobicoke that are opening a clinic to be able to vaccinate people 18 years of age or older workers. One of the requirements for opening one of these clinics is to be able to vaccinate not just your workers or, in this case, your congregants, but to be able to supply vaccines to people in the surrounding areas. As it happens, this is a temple that is an industrial area in Etobicoke, and they are inviting workers from all of the surrounding areas to be able to come in on their lunch hours whenever they're able to do so. They've already booked over 4,500 applicants in the first hour of operation. I have no doubt they're going to be very successful. They estimate that they will be able to vaccinate over 30,000 people within about a two-week period. So that is significant, Speaker. That is reaching people in those areas. Supplementary question. Speaker, I think everybody realizes that essential frontline workers who are going to work each and every day are right now the most vulnerable to this virus, to the variance of concern in the third wave.  They don't have time, and they can't afford, Speaker. They can't afford to stand in line for hours and hours waiting for their appointment at a pop-up clinic. So my question is to this Premier, why is he refusing to provide workers in this province, those frontline heroes with paid time off to get their vaccination? It is a barrier, and it will be removed if the Premier does the right thing here. Why won't he? Labor training on skills development. Well, Mr. Speaker, I'm proud to say that across this province, employers and workers are working together every single day to ensure that as many people can get vaccinated as quickly as possible. But, Mr. Speaker, let me remind the member opposite that we were the first jurisdiction in the country to pass job-protected leave. If any workers in self-isolation in quarantine, if your mom or dad who has to stay home and look after a son or a daughter because of the disruptions in the school system, you can't be fired for that. Mr. Speaker, furthermore, we've eliminated the need for sick notes during COVID-19. But I'm also extremely proud to say that we were the first jurisdiction to pass job-protected leave so any worker can go and get his or her vaccination. We'll continue to stand with every worker of this province so we get through COVID-19. And the final supplementary. Thank you, Speaker. You know, it really is frightening how out of touch this government is that they don't understand what vulnerable workers face in terms of an ability to pay the bills and how much they rely on every single hour of wage that they toil for every single day. They just don't get it. So we have a premier that walked us right into this third wave with his eyes wide open. He then had no plan to vaccinate these frontline essential workers. He refuses to give them paid time off to get their vaccine and certainly paid sick days are not on the agenda. My question is, when is this premier going to stop insulting Ontarians? When is he going to stop pretending that he had a plan in place to get them vaccinated? And when will he do the work necessary to protect those frontline essential workers? You are the most vulnerable in our province. Thank you very much, Speaker. Well, there is a plan in place and it is working because we have already provided over 3.4 million vaccines to people who somehow have been able to find their way through the system and to create appointments. We already have 2.4 million appointments booked to receive doses of which 59,548 were booked yesterday. So yesterday we also set a record for the number of daily vaccines administered 112,647. So clearly something is working. People are finding their way. They are going to the pharmacies. We've doubled the number of pharmacies. We have the mass vaccination clinics. Many people are now going to primary care providers because they feel more comfortable if they have pre-existing conditions to be able to do that. There is a way for people to make sure that they can get their vaccination. They don't have to wait in line for hours. They don't have to wait hours on the phone. It's quick. It's easy to do and we recommend everybody. Thank you. The next question, a member for Essex. Thank you very much, Speaker. Speaker, the question is to the Premier. There are more and more disturbing questions about how this government has selected its vaccine hotspot regions and why some of those regions that are represented by government members have been labeled hotspot regions despite the government's own data and its own evidence to the contrary. Speaker, no one should be playing politics with getting Ontarians vaccines. This is not a case of the government. Because if it were just simply a massive oversight, they could make it right today. They could change the areas in which they distribute and identify vaccine hotspots. That's why we've written to the auditor general to look into this because the data does not lie. Speaker, will the Premier come clean and tell us why his government has placed some of the areas worst hit areas of COVID in our province so far down on the vaccination list? Unbelievable. Unbelievable that you should make any sort of suggestion what we're dealing with the life and death of people across this province that there was some political interference in it. In fact, if anything is the case, it's exactly the opposite. So let me tell you. I'll tell you about Canada if you want to know about Canada. Based on public health Ontario analysis, K2V in Canada was identified as being in the top three death files, top fifth for COVID-19 based on COVID-19 hospitalization and mortality through mid-January 2021. The postal code was also high in factors associated with greater vulnerability and negative impacts of COVID-19, specifically sociodemic barriers, which resulted in it being prioritized in a hotspot community. More to say in my supplementary speaker. Thank you. Is that there are people in Windsor and in Hamilton right now who are in desperate need of a vaccine and no one can explain why they were left out. It is clear Ontarians need transparency about how these decisions were made, not more backroom muddling with urgent public health matters directly in front of a speaker. My question to the premier again, will this government fully cooperate with any review? The auditor general may determine is necessary and do one better and reveal exactly why this hotspot vaccine distribution system has rolled out so poorly. Well, clearly there is a need for more education on this issue on the other side of this house to understand exactly what's happened. I've just explained about the K2V designation. I can also advise you that the hotspots were informed by the science advisory table using public health Ontario data. Their advice was accepted by the vaccine task force, which is comprised of many people who are outside of government. These are people who are specifically knowledgeable in this issue who then accepted the advice of the science advisory table and then directed the both this list or generals office and the ministry of health to then implement that plan. That's how it was decided and that's what we are relying upon is the advice of the health science advisory table and the medical experts here. As we respond more vaccines and more hotspots are identified by the science advisory table and the medical experts, we will be able to expand. But right now we're short on supply. We need to receive more support. Thank you. Thank you. The next question. The member for Perry Sound. Let's go back. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is did the opposition come to order? Minister of Health come to order. Member for Essex come to order. The member for Flamborough, Glenbrook come to order. If this continues, I'll start warning. The next question, the member for Perry Sound, Muskoka. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Minister of Health. Just over two weeks ago, the minister stood in this house and told the house that we've reached a milestone in administering over 2 million vaccines less than three weeks later, and our province has surpassed another milestone by administering over 3.3 million doses to Ontarians across the province. I know that the minister and everyone in government continues to work day and night to ensure more and more Ontarians can receive these life-saving vaccines. Would the minister please tell the members of this house how our government plans to ensure vaccines are going to those most at risk in hotspots across the province? The Minister of Health. Thank you, Speaker, and thank you to the member from Perry Sound, Muskoka for the question and for the great work that you're doing with your constituents. Since day one, Speaker, our government has been committed to vaccinating Ontarians as quickly and safely as possible. We also know that COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted certain neighborhoods and communities across the province, and we understand that administering vaccines to people who live in these areas is critical to reducing the impact of COVID-19 as quickly as possible. That is why as part of the second phase of our vaccine rollout, we have identified 114 highly impacted neighborhoods by postal code, which will be reached through mass immunization clinics, mobile teams, and pop-up clinics. Through a collaborative effort with our vaccination partners, we will be administering vaccines in high-risk congregate settings, residential buildings, faith-based locations, and locations occupied by large employers in hotspot neighborhoods. Mr. Speaker, our government will continue to protect the most vulnerable in Aboriginal communities across our province. This supplementary question. Thank you, Minister, and thank you to all those in the front lines for helping us administer vaccines. Mr. Speaker, it's reassuring to hear the Minister talk about our plan to ensure these areas that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 are going to be receiving the vaccines they need. I'm confident Ontarians can rest assured that we are well on our way to getting a vaccine into the arm of anyone that wants one. I know a number of factors were considered when determining what postal codes would be included within the 14 public health units that have hotspot neighborhoods. Would the Minister please tell us how these hotspot neighborhoods were determined? Again, the Minister of Health. Thank you, Speaker. Thank you to the member I'd be happy to. Let me be clear, hotspots have been identified based on historic and ongoing rates of COVID-19 deaths, hospitalizations, and transmissions. These communities were identified based not only on high rates of COVID-19, but also outbreak data, research and analysis conducted by Ontario's COVID-19 science advisory table, low testing rates, and sociodemographic barriers that may result in vaccine hesitancy. Also, many of these areas, particularly in Toronto, have a high proportion of the population living in congregate settings, such as long-term care homes, condominium buildings, supportive housing, and homeless shelters, and as a result are at higher risk of transmission and outbreaks. Mr. Speaker, we are determined to have the most effective and equitable vaccine campaign in the country. The next question, a member for Scarborough Southwest. Speaker, at around 10.30 p.m. last night, Scarborough Health Network had to make the heartbreaking decision to contact residents across Scarborough to cancel approximately 10,000 vaccine appointments between today and Monday due to vaccine shortages. Mr. Speaker, I would really like to get my question across because 10,000 people just found out they're not getting their vaccines and I want the Minister of Education to listen and I want all of the government members to listen. I'm outraged. It's outraging what you guys are doing. Mr. Speaker, I have stood in this house for months now, months and months addressing the issue of vaccination for Scarborough, like a broken record. I honestly feel like a broken record and frankly begging for an equitable distribution of vaccines, not just for Scarborough Southwest, but for all of Scarborough, only to get baseless, empty promises. The cumulative did results of all the failures. It's what's the result is what we're seeing right now with Scarborough Health Network having to close two of their biggest vaccine operations at Centenary Hospital and at Centennial College because this government failed to provide our community with the minimum amount of vaccines necessary. Mr. Speaker, where are the 1.2 million unused vaccine dosages and when will the government take our communities please seriously? Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I certainly have been listening to the requests that you have been providing and I have continued to reassure you that the vaccine doses are allocated based on population and based on risk. Based on the population, they've been developed equitably across the province. Based on risk, as the member will know, you have a number of hotspot neighbourhoods in Scarborough and extra doses have been allocated. However, the issue here is of supply and that is something that is beyond our control. That is in the control of the federal government and while we know the federal government is making every effort that they can right now to get supplies to us, as the member will know a number of those vaccine shipments have been either reduced significantly or missed in the last several months while we now have an ample supply of Pfizer coming in. That wasn't the case during the middle of February. We also know that we received a shipment of Moderna the week of March 22nd, it was only 30% of what was originally expected and we were told by the federal government that we would receive. The remaining 70% of our allocation 225,600 doses was further delayed and delivered to Ontario over the Easter weekend. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The supplementary question. If the government was actually doing an equitable distribution, then why is it that the according to the ICS data which shows the province has vaccinated fewer people in hotspots than in non-hotspots? If you are receiving a small amount of and I'm not taking away blame from the federal government, I understand that both governments have responsibility, but if the federal government was giving a short amount, you should have prioritized hotspots like Scarborough. Why aren't you giving us more vaccines? Last week, government announced that the launch of mobile clinics without giving any notice to public health units, the community health clinics, health networks across Scarborough, across the province or any information about rollouts, registration or any details. Time and time again, this government expects local health networks to clean up their mess. Mr. Speaker, Scarborough has upwards of 24% positivity rates and they're transferring patients to hospitals across the province and our ICUs are full. This week, a couple in their 40s were transferred to another ICU while their five-year-old child needed to be admitted because there was no one else to look after them. Thank you. Every person in Ontario is important wherever they live and Scarborough is of course included in that. However, to suggest that the public health units did not know about the pop-up units and the other methods of receiving the vaccines, they were unaware of that, is simply not the case. We have conversations three times a week with the directors of public hospitals and with the public health units, medical officers of health, they are very well aware of what is in the plan and what they're going to be doing in their own area. In fact, in some areas, they have identified their own hotspots, which they're entitled to do, because they can use their own allocation. But also any suggestion that we are not allowing them or giving them the information about when we're not receiving the full amount, is not the case. Often we don't know ourselves until the day that we're supposed to be receiving them. Then we're told that we're not going to receive them. Under the circumstances, we are rolling out the vaccines well. We've got over 3.4 million doses in people's arms and with the latter part of your question about people having to be transferred, that is to preserve the capacity in our intensive care units to make sure that any Ontarian that needs to be admitted to hospital into intensive care. Thank you very much. The next question, the member for Scarborough Gisler. My question is to the Premier. We know that every person in the province is important. The science table has told us, however, that not every person shares the same risk of this virus. The science table has told us that by postal code, we need to manage the distribution of vaccines because some people are at more risk. The people of Scarborough have been at the front line of this pandemic for over a year in terms of positivity rates, hospitalization and death. And we must act. We must act. The fact that your government, the Premier announces that people in hotspots over 18 can go and get a vaccine one week. And then today, the two leading clinics in Scarborough that have been smoothly administering vaccines to people over 50 has been forced to close and to cancel 10,000 appointments. So my question to this government, why is the Premier announcing expanded programs with no planning behind them? And why are you leaving the... Thank you. And I'll remind members to make their comments through the Chair to reply. Again, the Minister of Health. Thank you, Speaker. Well, I can share the member opposite that no one is being left behind. No one in Scarborough is being left behind. No one in any other part of Ontario is being left behind. The issue is one of supply, that the supplies are not coming in on the dates that we expect to receive them. That is through the federal government that that happens. And we know they're working very hard on this. We know they are. But the reality is that sometimes we don't receive the supplies that we need. And that is why in this particular case, this community clinic is required to close a very short period of time. We did receive the Pfizer vaccine several days ago, but it is now being distributed across the units. This will be a very short term issue. But the supplies are being allocated equitably to all of those areas, including the number of hotspot areas that exist in Scarborough. We have been working with community partners since the very beginning, working with community health centres, working with groups that have social activities under regular circumstances. We want to make sure that people can go to places where they feel comfortable, where vaccine hesitancy can be dealt with and that people can get as many needles into as many arms as possible as quickly as possible. Thank you. The supplementary question. Thank you, Speaker. Back to you, the Minister. You know, I believe that the people of this province are concerned about the decisions that your government is making. As I said, one week you're opening up mobile clinics to people over 18 in hotspots. The next minute, the clinics vaccinating those most at risk over 50 have been forced to close. One minute, you're telling schools that they can continue to do in-person learning. The next day, you're shutting them down. And it's confusing for people. And it shows an incompetence of this government. And we give you ideas. I have asked this government to make vaccine leave, paid leave for people who are essential workers, like the people in Scarborough, a part of the plan so that they can safely get their vaccine. And there's been no action. There's been no action on the advice that's going to save lives. So when are you going to start planning proactively so that the people of Scarborough aren't put at further risk? Again, I'll ask members to make their comments through the Chair. Minister of Health. Thank you very much, Speaker. Well, we have been planning since the beginning of this pandemic. We have planned to expand capacity. We have created over 3,100 more beds and increased our intensive care capacity by 14%. We've also built up a testing system so that we can now test over 60,000 people a day, which we are doing on a regular basis. We have already administered 3.4 million vaccines with more to come in a variety of units. We've just doubled the number of pharmacies across Ontario where people can receive the vaccines. There is a plan. But as a member will know, COVID is moving very quickly, especially with these variants. And so we have to respond to that, and we are responding to that. We have regular modeling that comes to us from the science advisory table that helps us with the decisions that we need to make going forward. We are listening to the concerns that have been expressed by other members. In fact, several members suggested that we have pop-up clinics that move into apartment buildings with frail elderly seniors and others. We are doing that. We are going to where people are to make sure that we can reach everyone who wants to receive a vaccine. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Minister of Children's and Women's Issues. Speaker, the measure is taken to protect Ontarians from the virus of confined families to their homes for extended periods of time. The risk of domestic violence is something many girls and women live with every day. Even in normal circumstances, it can be difficult for people to know what resources are available to them and to reach out for support. This is even more difficult with less interactions with colleagues, friends and family members. Every person deserves to be safe in their home and feel safe no matter where they go. And if they do not feel safe, they need to know where they can go for help. Can the Minister please explain how the government is providing shelters the resources they require to help those in need? The Associate Minister for Children and Women's Issues. Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the member from the Skolka Parry Sound, my hard-working neighbour for the North. Our Minister of Finance said in his budget that in order to have a healthy economy, we need healthy people. And I couldn't agree more. And I would add that we cannot have healthy people or a healthy economy without keeping them safe. Our government and our Premier takes the issue of domestic violence very seriously and we have zero tolerance for anyone who commits these acts. Violence against women is a threat and burden and its removal should be a priority for every Ontarian and every person in this house. Speaker, I am proud to say that our government has been making investments since the very beginning of the pandemic to support our heroes on the front lines who are helping those fleeing violence in such turbulent times. Shelters have remained open throughout the pandemic. We have provided $70 million in funding to ensure proper infection and prevention control in residential settings to keep everyone safe. And Speaker, we also have a public campaign to inform those who are fleeing violence that they are not alone and have a place to go. Supplementary question. Thank you Mr. Speaker and thank you to the Minister for that response. Speaker, I'm happy to hear shelters have continued to be a constant in our communities across Ontario during these difficult times and that our government is prioritizing the safety and well-being of those fleeing domestic violence. With more women accessing services, I want to know how our government is adequately supporting the shelter system. In order to provide women and children the sport, they require we must make sure the tools are available both in urban areas and in rural and remote areas like my riding at Perry Sound Muskoka. Shelter staff are frontline heroes serving vulnerable members in our communities during the pandemic. To keep shelter staff and residents protected from COVID-19, shelters have had additional expenses in order to provide adequate supports. Can the Minister please share what additional supports there are for women fleeing violence and what others can do if they think someone is in danger? Thank you Mr. Speaker and thank you again to the member for that question. Speaker, our government is taking action to make sure those who are not safe at home have somewhere safe to go. We recognize the increased demands on shelters throughout the pandemic. That is why through the work of our Attorney General Doug Downey we provided an emergency payment of $2.7 million last year to help ensure that over 50 community agencies remain accessible for women and children who are fleeing violence. We also invested $3.6 million specifically for rural and remote supports so women can get the help they need right in their communities. That allows women access to support without having to drive or fly long distances to get the help they need. And Speaker, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to our incredible shelter workers for their tireless efforts to support women and children in our province. These workers have shown resiliency by adapting their work as safety measures continue to change. These workers have shown true Ontario spirit this past year and their work does not go unnoticed. Thank you. The next question, the member for subject. Thank you very much Speaker. My question is to the Premier. Speaker, the Minister of Colleges and University said he knew about Laurentian's financial problems for more than six months before the CCA process began. However, because the minister stood by and did nothing to protect Laurentian University for massive cuts, on Monday, more than 70 French and English programs at Laurentian campus were cut and over 100 employees lost their jobs. Speaker, this minister has failed. He did nothing to protect Francophone and Indigenous students at University de Sabarie. He did nothing to protect nursing, psychology and social work students from 100th University. He did nothing to protect arts, theater and women's studies students from Thornlow University. He did nothing to protect Laurentian. If he's not willing to do anything, then he shouldn't be the minister full stop. My question to you, Speaker. Will the Premier do the right thing and remove him? To apply on behalf of the government, member for Northumberland, Peterborough South and Parliamentary System. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I thank the member for that question. We understand the very personal and difficult situation that many students, faculty and staff are in right now. Let me be clear, Mr. Speaker, that the courses of 90 percent of students at Laurentian have not been affected. For the 10 percent who have, we are ensuring that they have a pathway to graduation. Mr. Speaker, with 45 publicly assisted post-secondary institutions in Ontario, we know that COVID has placed unique challenges on all of them. That's why the minister and I have had a number of consultation sessions with all of them over the course of the last year and a half. We've made investments of over 126 million for additional financial supports to support with COVID challenges. 466 million to address critical capital upgrades and repairs. Doubled mental health funding to support students. What's the one thing in common on all of those measures is that that member voted against every single one of them. The supplementary question, member for Muskegawak James speaking. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is also to the Premier. Last week, the Minister of Colleges and Universities indicated that the situation at Laurentian would not affect students. It was on March 10th when the minister said that students will not be affected by what's happening at Laurentian. And recently, he said that he's working for students so that they can continue their studies without interruption. Clearly, he's not able to put his money where his mouth is. We've talked about Madame Boulage-Rose from Hearst, who is studying in the midwife program. It's one of 69 programs that have been cut, and it's the only program of this type offered in French in Canada. The minister, will he tell Madame Boulage that her career is worth something, and will he resign? Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, let me be clear. The courses of 90% of students have not been affected, and for the 10% of those who have been affected, we will ensure them a pathway to graduation. But, Mr. Speaker, let me talk about the financial situation that that member and the other member mentioned that was recently brought to our government's attention. Those members wrote identifying 15 million needed in supports. Mr. Speaker, widely shared media reports have shown over 300 million dollars in liability concerns with that university. Something of this magnitude requires thorough and independent analysis. That's why we appointed Dr. Allen Harrison to address this. We respect the independent legal proceedings. We respect the independent analysis so deeply needed in this situation. And when the minister said we'll explore greater financial transparency among universities, I hope that those two members and this party across will support us in those measures. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the minister of education and I'll let him get to his seat so he can hear it. Mr. Speaker, the need for investment in education has never been so obvious as during the pandemic. Instead, the government has decided to cut nearly 790 million from education. Sure, the announcement today for school infrastructure is good news, but it doesn't reverse the damage done to our school and funding is still deficient. Teachers are already being laid off for the next school year, including French teachers that are urgently needed to address the ever-present shortage. This means that class sizes are going to be larger, resources will be further spread thin, and students' needs and safety will be further compromised. Thanks to the federal for stepping up, but education is the responsibility of the province and this government isn't pulling its weight. So why is the minister abandoning our education workers and family by cutting education funding for the next school year? Mr. Speaker, I'm very proud that today with the federal government minister Scott and I announced a over 500 million net new investment, one-time investment to improve our schools, the facilities that our kids depend on to learn. We appreciate, Speaker, that these investments today will help us improve the safety of these facilities as we work to get students back $525 million for 3200 net new projects. Now this is a one-time expenditure, it will help. That's in addition to the half a billion dollars we invest every single year to build new schools. In addition to the 1.3 billion dollars we invest every single year to maintain excellence within our school spaces. And Mr. Speaker, under our plan, because of our investments, because we followed the science, 7,000 more staff have been hired, we have one of the lowest case rates amongst youth under 20 in the nation. That is because we have invested, it's because I've listened to the medical officer of health and we will work every single day to improve the safety of schools and get kids back to class. And the supplementary question. Thank you. And again to the minister of education, just this week the government announced that schools would once again close for an indeterminate amount of time. We have been hearing from education workers, students and parents for months on end that measures in school have not been enough that they feel unsafe in school and that they are in dire need of more support. A $8 billion investment in our education system would be a game changer, but the government thinks that Iowa 413 is more important. They are willing to spend $8 billion on an unwanted project that will destroy our environment, taking funding from our education system. So what does the minister have to say to the countless education workers and families that will feel the devastating impacts of the government budget cut while is government built an unwanted highway? Mr. Education. Mr. Speaker, we are investing in public education as we have done each and every year under our government more funding than when the former liberal government was in power at the peak of spending in the education portfolio. $700 million more announced in the most recent budget. But Mr. Speaker, it's not just about that. It's what we did during the pandemic, a $1.6 billion plan, the most comprehensive protocol that followed the medical advice. We hired 7,000 more teachers, 95% or rather 7,000 more staff, and 95% of our air ventilation systems within our schools have been improved. A $224 million investment to build up our online learning and remote learning capacity, that infrastructure, to make sure that when we need it, like we do today, based exclusively on the rising transmission in the community that can create risk for our schools. It's now that these investments are best supporting children in the continuity of learning. We are going to continue to be there for students, particularly as we look to September, with investments in the grant for student needs, investments in school boards, and safety to ensure kids could have a good quality education and that they remain safe in 2021 and beyond. Thank you very much. The next question is from the Member for Kerry-Son, Miss Coco. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. About a month ago, the Minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines made an exciting announcement about the future of the province's world-leading mineral exploration and development sector. Ontario's critical mineral strategy is the first of its kind in this province, and it will help generate investment in the mining sector, increase the province's competitiveness in the global market, and create jobs and opportunities for northern and indigenous communities. Our government recognizes that the mineral sector needs to be a key driver of Ontario's economic recovery, given that it contributes over $13.1 billion annually. Mr. Speaker, the pandemic has affected the entire mineral sector, but it is particularly challenging for junior exploration companies. What is the government doing through Budget 2021, if passed, to support our mineral sector to ensure they can lead the way for Ontario's economic recovery? I'd prefer Peterborough Quartha, a parliamentary assistant. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We know that the mineral exploration and mining sector is an important driver of economic growth in this province. Unfortunately, the impact of COVID-19 has exasperated an existing challenge for junior companies, the challenge of raising capital for exploration. Our government appreciates the mining sector, and we know that the junior companies rely on raising capital to finance their exploration. The success of these exploration companies is essential for a thriving sector. They're responsible for 50% of the discoveries that led to Ontario's new mines. That's why, in the 2021 Budget, we've outlined our plans to create the new Ontario Junior Exploration Program, or JEP. To support junior exploration companies, Ontario plans to invest $5 million over the next two years in JEP. We know that junior miners are the rock at the base of our mineral sector, and we know that critical minerals are critical for our economic recovery. Thank you for that answer. I know just how important the mineral sector is and how many jobs this industry can create. Many of the jobs within the mining sector are skilled trades, skilled labourers, dump truck operators, crane operators, site foremen and supervisors, and the list goes on. These are jobs our government is looking to create and support, particularly as many workers in Ontario looked up skill and changed their career path post COVID-19. We know how important it is for junior explorers to raise capital in order to make exciting new discoveries. The success of junior companies leads to millions of dollars in further investment, creates these skilled jobs and helps build strong communities in the north. Would member please tell us more about the Ontario Junior Exploration Program and how to help junior companies if the budget is passed? Parliamentary Assistant. Thank you Speaker and thank you again for the question. Through the program, junior companies can apply for funding to cover eligible costs up to $200,000. This program will attract investment as businesses leverage their funding to raise capital in the private markets. And just listen to what Gary Clark, the Executive Director of the Ontario Prospectors Association had to say. Quote, on behalf of the OPA, I'd like to thank the government for reigniting the Ontario Junior Exploration Program to support our members. This program is critical to help small exploration projects in Ontario raise money so they can find the minds of the future. It's great to see this government continue its strong record for supporting the mineral exploration and mining sector. We're letting the people of Ontario know that Ontario is open for business, open for jobs, and that's exactly what this program does. The Ontario Junior Exploration Program will bring investment to Ontario's North and I'm so excited to see the results of that. Thank you Speaker. Thank you. The next question, Member for London North Centre. My question is to the Premier. Speaker, the new COVID variants of concern are spreading like wildfire in London. Between March 28th and April 3rd, nearly 30% of COVID tests from the N6A postal code came back as positive, making it the highest in the province. And yet the Premier is dragging his feet, sitting on his wallet, and has not declared N6A a hotspot. On April 12th, the members from London and France, London West and I wrote to the Premier asking him to declare N6A a hotspot and to stop the spread by introducing mobile vaccination units and more funding for contact tracing and testing. We've heard no response from the Premier despite the urgency of this issue. Will the Premier declare N6A a hotspot and commit to providing whatever resources are necessary to get these new variants under control? Thank you very much, Speaker. I thank the member for the question. What we have done is identified 114 hotspots in different parts of the province based on the criteria that I've outlined earlier, historic data, areas of risk, and so on. As we will be receiving more supplies of the vaccine, we will be able to designate more hotspots, but we need to make sure, given the concerns that we've had with respect to the vaccines coming in on time, to make sure that we have sufficient quantities of the vaccines to be able to provide the vaccines in those areas. But we are doing whatever we can in order to make sure that we can maintain space in our hospitals, that we can do the testing that we need to do, including some of the rapid testing, to try and reduce the transmission of the variants of concern, which are, you're absolutely right, they're moving very quickly, they're more difficult to deal with, they're more hostile, they result in more hospitalizations, more ICU beds being occupied, and unfortunately more deaths. So we are taking every step that we can to make sure that we have the capacity, both in terms of hospitals, as well as vaccine supply to deal with it. Supplementary. Back to the Premier. Time is of the essence. Dithering and delaying will cost people their lives. Go to the science advisory table and designate London's N6A as a hot spot. London Health Sciences Centre has been caring for patients from the GTA. In addition to Londoners with COVID, our ICU has the highest number of people in critical care on record, and now our hospitals have had to cancel surgical procedures. Our health unit is now counting on Londoners to do their own contact tracing because they're overwhelmed trying to track down cases with the new variants of concern. We need provincial support now. London is doing its part to help the province, and now the province needs to help London. Will the Premier stop ignoring London, declare it a hot spot, and provide our community with the resources it needs today? No part of Ontario is being ignored, including London. We have already provided extra contact tracers to many parts of the province to allow them to follow up on the cases, but you're absolutely right. The variants of concern are moving very quickly, and we need to be very nimble and move quickly to respond to them, which is what we are doing, which is why we declared the state of emergency and implemented the state at home order, which is why we are redeploying staff from other parts of the province to work in the hotspot areas, which is why we're also transferring patients from one part of the province to other hospitals, trying to keep them as close as possible to their home zone, recognizing that it's hard for them to be away for their families, and making sure that we had to ramp down the hospitalizations and surgical procedures and diagnostic procedures in order to provide space in our hospitals for COVID patients, still caring for those other patients as well. So we are moving quickly. We are responding to the need. We are responding to the increase in the variants, and we'll do whatever we can to protect the health and safety of all Ontarians. The next question, the member for Guelph. Thank you, Speaker. My question is for the Premier. Small businesses across the province are going out of business. I participated in a town hall this morning with small businesses who are barely hanging on. They've closed their doors to keep us safe, but they need the government to have their back. Two rounds of funding for the Ontario business support grant program is not enough now that we're in a third wave lockdown. So, Speaker, will the Premier commit today to providing a third round of funding in the Ontario small business support grant so businesses who are barely hanging on can survive the third wave of the pandemic? Member for Flamborough, Glenbrook, and Parliamentary Assistant. Good morning. Speaker, we understand, our government understands that businesses have faced mounting pressure throughout this pandemic, and that is why, since day one, we have worked with small businesses to develop and contribute to programs that will help them get through these very difficult times. The Ontario, as the member noted, the Ontario small business support grant provides businesses who were forced to close or who have significantly reduced their services under the province-wide shutdown, a grant of up to $20,000 in funding. To date, we have made $1.4 billion in payments, with more than 100,000 businesses being approved for the grants. The extraordinary response to the program demonstrates just how important this assistance is to small businesses. Our government announced that this grant will be doubled for all eligible businesses, meaning those who received a payment will automatically receive a second one. Ontarians, Mr. Speaker, can rest assured that our government has and will continue to be there to support small business. Thank you. Supplementary question. Speaker, with all due respect, I don't think the Premier understands how desperate small businesses are. The government's mixed messaging and flip-flopping are creating confusion and chaos for small business owners. Whether it's, and for people, whether it's students and educators confused because we say schools are open one day and closed on the next day, or we say we're going to have vaccine clinics in certain neighborhoods, but then those vaccine clinics don't show up, small businesses are confused when they're told one day they can open and then a few days later they're going to have to close. The Restaurant Association estimates that cost small businesses over a hundred million dollars, just that one flip-flop alone from the Premier. So Speaker, if the government truly understands how tough it is for small businesses right now, they would commit to a third round of funding for the Ontario Small Business Support Grant today. Here's your chance to do the right thing. Member for Flamborough Glamour. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And to be very clear, our government will always, always stand and have the backs of small businesses across Ontario. Since last year, we have been partnering with the federal government to provide almost a billion dollars in urgent relief through the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance. As we mentioned, we are providing two rounds of payments up to $20,000 each in grants for small businesses that are eligible. And Mr. Speaker, businesses can use that money how they see fit. We've also been helping support our restaurant industry. Speaker, our government permanently allowed licensed restaurants and bars to include alcohol with food as part of takeout or delivery orders. And this enables restaurants and bars to maintain the new revenue streams the government opened to them in the early days of the pandemic. It has been a lifeline of support to boost businesses at critical times. And it's helping them refine their business model beyond the pandemic, allowing them to carve out new product offerings to increase their competitive edge. Mr. Speaker, if they want to find more information on the government supports available, they can do so at our government website. The next question. Member for St. Catherine. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions to the Premier. I could have literally chosen from dozens of examples of confusing eligibility or application errors that go nowhere with the Ontario Small Business Support Grant program. Businesses across Ontario are given form responses like, we will get back to you soon. Or just outright wrong information. Businesses in St. Catherine's like Hewitt, Cabab and Schwarma have been calling since January for an update. They were told to email in their concerns then have heard nothing for weeks. Finally, they received a response that said they were declined because their business is not on the list of eligible businesses, except they are eligible as a restaurant. So they emailed back to clarify. They then again heard nothing crickets. Premier, will you fix this chaos experience by too many businesses? Take some time to respond to your emails and allow us to help small businesses within our communities so that they have the help desperately needed. We have listened to small businesses. I have personally worked with small businesses certainly across my writing, but also across Hamilton Mountain Center. I've been told direct all of their queries to my office and I would gladly help any small business in the city of Hamilton or across the province. I'm looking at the member opposite we're dealing with with small businesses in Northern Ontario who have been very interested in our support program, our small business support program. We have already given businesses $1.4 billion in payments that's helping over 100,000 small businesses across Ontario and I will continue as will our government and our premier continue to work with all small businesses, helping them access this funding, helping them access the Main Street relief grant program and our PPE support program. Mr. Speaker, I will work with businesses in my writing and businesses in your writing if they're finding it difficult to access it, but the funding is... Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Back to the premier. That was a parochial answer. You promised businesses money. Now can you actually follow through pointing to how many signed up for the grant doesn't help the many businesses that are struggling with the loss of income today and waiting for answers. Details matter. Could you please just answer your emails? Another local business in St. Catherine, Superplac, incorrectly entered in one number on their form. I said one number. They knew their mistake right away and they have been trying to get it fixed through the ministry. They have received nothing but silence, Mr. Speaker. If the government cannot fix something as simple as an input error since January, of course, then Ontario is in big, big trouble. Premier, when will the minister be able to fix simple input errors and answer questions about timelines so that local businesses with local customers like Superplac can get through another lockdown in the third wave? Help them. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Flamboyle-Blander. Thank you, Speaker. All eligible applicants who applied by the deadline will receive a grant after their application has been reviewed and has been approved. Our government understands that small businesses do need the support, which is why the Ontario Small Business Support grant has made over $1.4 billion in payments, and that's just so far. While the process saw a high volume of applicants, we understand the extreme sense of urgency many small businesses are feeling during this very difficult time. We're working to further accelerate the processing of applications to ensure that businesses get the support that they need as quickly as possible and have taken many steps to speed up the process. We have tripled the number of public servants that review applications and have increased the resources required to process them in a timely and responsible way. As part of our 2021 budget, our government is providing an additional round of support to help eligible employers impacted by necessary public health restrictions. They will receive automatically a second payment in an amount. Thank you. The next question, the member for York Centre. Thank you, Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Education. Time after time, the Minister insisted that schools are safe. That's right, but not because of some ministry memo, but because kids are not generally harmed by COVID. Incredible studies reveal that kids transmit COVID far less than adults, but the real harm to Ontario's children results from the closure of schools. It's not COVID. It's lockdown that's putting our children at risk. Children's Hospital in Hamilton said that the number of youth hospitalized after attempted suicide has tripled. Costs to kids' health phone in 2020 have more than doubled. Many kids are self-harming. They're anxious. Sick kids is sighting a pandemic of eating disorders. Ontario's kids are in crisis. They're not in danger of COVID. They're in danger of this government, and the Minister knows he's doing harm. So what happened, Minister? Was it the polling? Was it the public pressure? Or was it pressure from the teachers' unions that made you capitulate? Why are you harming Ontario's kids? Minister of Education. Quite obviously it was the spike in community transmission in this province, which is why we took action. We have always had to decisively act, sometimes pivoting quickly in a pandemic and a crisis. As we did last March, we closed schools the first of the province to do so. We did so without, with the full knowledge that that action will help save lives. The fact is, Speaker, the Chief Medical Officer of Health has confirmed that schools have been safe. Every medical officer of health in the province has said the same, but in the words of sick kids, as the member opposite cited, the CEO of sick kids, Dr. Ronnie Kod, said on Monday, and I quote, I don't think we can open schools right now. We have to just now do our part and not fail our children, and do everything we can to drive down community transmission so that schools can be the first doors to open. We absolutely agree. I'm working with the Minister of Health, the Chief Medical Officer of Health, to ensure schools can reopen, but it must be safe, and we're going to work hard to do that, Mr. Speaker. Thank you. I've complete question period for this morning. Fender for Sudbury has informed me that he has a point of order. He wishes to raise. Thank you, Speaker. I rise on a point of order to correct my record. Yesterday during the morning's question period, and again during the afternoon's notice of members of satisfaction, I misspoke about the Laurentian Midwifery. It called the profession de sage femme. I recently connected with Lisa Morgan, the director of school Midwifery. I learned I'd made an error. Well, as factual, the government is allowing this important program to close. I misspoke when I said it was the only bilingual Midwifery program in Ontario. Laurentian's program is in fact the only bilingual Midwifery program in Canada, and the only Francophone program outside of Quebec. Thank you, Speaker. We now have a deferred vote on the motion for second reading of Bill 274, an act respecting the disclosure of information related to intimate partner violence. The bells will now ring for 30 minutes, during which time members may cast their votes. I'll ask the clerks to please prepare the lines.


everyone and welcome back to another Ethan Journal video. Today, this is the start of a few episodes series about the lore behind the company Dbrand. Now Dbrand is kind of been a fascinating company for me. They sponsor a lot of YouTubers here on YouTube. They have a website, they sell skins and cases and a lot of different stuff for a lot of products, but I've always noticed something strange about them. When I order my products, they always have like really funny, I don't know if they're being funny or not though, but like they have funny jokes in their emails, their boxes are like an unprofessional I guess you could say, and their website is littered with lore. And yeah, my monitor just said turn off, but yeah. But yeah, there's a lot of lore going on in Dbrand, and I would like to make a video discussing what I have found within Dbrand, and kind of see if we can uncover what Dbrand's goal actually is. So without further ado, let's get into the video. Okay everyone, so the beginning of me thinking of doing this video actually came from when I ordered my own thing from Dbrand. Not that long ago, for Easter weekend, as a present, my parents bought me a Dbrand case from my iPhone SE, which is actually recording this video. And it came in today, and looking at the email I got when it delivered, I saw this in the footer of the email, and I'm just gonna read it to you what it said. It says, reading an email footer from Dbrand is kind of like joining a secret club, one that entitles you to learn all of the most legally questionable aspects of our business. Creative accounting tricks, plan to destroy the sun, horrific industrial accidents that have claimed the lives of countless scientists. It's all down here in this fine print that sheds the light on things that probably should have stayed in the dark. On that note, remember how we call this a secret club? Well it's your responsibility to make sure it stays that way. If you fail to do so, just remember we know where you live. I don't know if I should be making this video, and this is, I'm hoping this is the joke, and that Dbrand's lore is actually not what they state, but you really never know with Dbrand, and that's the thing about their company. All of the emails are signed with the name A Robot, and it, this lore can go on forever, but this is essentially what sparked me to go into look researching Dbrand. This email is kind of shows that Dbrand might be doing something with the sun, and yes, I am pretty sure that if this is not just lore, I noticed on my box the little plastic mailer that they had. They had the entire side of it was just covered in text talking about matte black everything, which is an MKBHD thing, but because they've teamed up with him, I wonder if Dbrand has taken this to next level saying they want to make everything matte black, and their plan is, according to the bag on that box, and here's the, here's what it actually says itself if you want to read through the whole thing, but essentially talking about how they want to buy a laser without the money that we give them to destroy the sun. Okay Dbrand, what is this about? So let's go into some more information on their website. So looking at the footer, you can see that their copyright date is actually 40-22, so this seems to change as 2020 years go on, so maybe they're taking place 2,000 years in the future, I don't know for sure on this one. And then going up to the other part, robots at Dbrand.com Dbrand being a robot seems to come up a lot on their website and business, so there's something behind the robots deal. So clearly there are a lot of strange things going on on Dbrand's website between the fact that they have a copyright date 2,000 years in the future at 40-22 when as a recording this, the copyright date is 2022 for most businesses, unless you're verifying the future, which I don't actually know how businesses do that. And then the fact that almost everything that they send you via email, their newsletters, their contact forms, they never actually put a real person's name. It's always robot or signed a robot, including their contact form, which literally says robots at Dbrand.com. Even if you look at their tutorial videos, the voice sounds like a robot. Take a listen. If you just got your Dbrand grip for the iPhone SE, iPhone 8, or iPhone 7, relax. This is going to be easy. So there seems to be something going on with robots at Dbrand. And this kind of makes sense because, I mean, they do a lot of stuff with robots, like it looks like in some of their promotional videos that their stickers are made by robots, which makes sense. Like it's not like a human can make a decal that quickly and looks so precise. So they clearly do a lot of stuff with robots and machines. So that kind of makes sense, but this can all add to more of the lore. So that's enough to wrap up this video for you guys. Yes, I don't have much information yet, but I'm planning on coming out with a part two episode explaining more into the lore of Dbrand. If you have any more information about Dbrand that you'd like to share with me, please send me an email or leave something in the comments down below. I really need help planning the next episode of this because I don't know as much about Dbrand in the lore of Dbrand. Me and my dad are the only people in my family that have bought something from Dbrand. My dad has a phone case and I have a phone case. So essentially, we are the only people that have actually had communication with anything with Dbrand and I personally had to actually reach out to them due to a problem with my order not actually going through. There was a glitch in the order, but when I placed it, I waited a week and it still said processing. So I contacted them and about two emails later, I learned that the order had never gotten past processing due to a glitch. So I had to actually contact them and that's another part that made me want to make this video because all the emails were signed a robot. There's actually no humans. So I'm going to continue looking more into Dbrand and see what I can find. So stay tuned for a new episode coming soon. Until then, have a good rest of your day. Thank you for watching this video and see you next time. Bye-bye.


So anyway, we're going to talk about something that's totally out of video game related. Also I have a slamming head cold.  And I spent the entire weekend at the Alexis Park on the bed, which is not so what you will about the rib, but being in the AP in bed all weekend really sucked. And now I have a head cold. So this is Logan. He will be assisting. Howdy. Howdy. As needed. And maybe we'll be dragging other people on stage here too. This may turn into a giant dance of random people. First of all, that really is the title of the talk, not a statement about what we needed to do to the title. So people asked because it looks like they screwed up your title and they didn't have the final one in there.  Apparently it's the worst title ever. And I assume nobody was actually going to be here for this talk. So I think you're all in the wrong room. You're probably looking for the Android talk. I think it's in track one. Oh, that's Goon's in the hallway talking. Do they leave the doors open the entire time now? Yep. Wow, that's awesome. How lucky for you in the back. If you want to have a separate conversation in the back of the room, you are welcome to do it because we won't hear you up here. Also just to be clear, Logan, when he joined the Shmugroup did not choose his handle. He refused to come up with a name for himself, so we chose one for him. Just to be clear, it's pronounced Lolo, but it's actually L0L0 because it's really difficult to tell on screen, so if you want to send an email, that's how you get ahold of him. That's why it's always a good idea to pick a handle. Yeah, you always, always, always want to pick your own handle. When they give an option, what do you want the username to be?   That's actually not that bad. It doesn't involve the expletives or any discussion of the sexual prowess. Today is the trade deadline and what, 50 minutes for an hour for NLB for like the eight Major League Baseball fans that attend DEF CON, not a large overlap. They're all in here actually, it turns out, all eight baseball fans. If someone could tell me if Adam Dunn gets traded, I am the one Nationals fan in the country, so if you go to the Nationals website, it's actually personalized, hey Bruce, welcome back. We really appreciate it if you bought a couple thousand more season tickets. Anyway. Hasn't yet. Thank you. If we get like a ticker going, if you want to hack this VGA monitor and put a ticker on the bottom, like has Adam Dunn been traded, does this talk suck? First things first, what's the only thing you should believe? Nothing. Well, source code. Who said source code? Yeah, bingo. That's exactly what I was going for.  Like congratulations, sir. You get a gold star. Come on now. Thank you. It's really easy to get people to yell at DEF CON. So the first thing you shouldn't believe is the speakers. And usually that's my opening slide, and I'm just still going to say it verbally. Years and years and years ago, I remember coming to DEF CON and I was really excited about the partying, and the partying was pretty good, but some of the talks kind of sucked.   So when you walk into here and you stand in line, don't check your brain at the door, you know, continue to think. This project that we're going to show today is results of many late nights in the last two weeks in proper DEF CON form, but it's really just kind of our view of the world. And if you disagree, feel free to stand up. We'll even arm you with microphones if you want to be that guy and hijack it, we can go that. We can play that game because we're pretty good at doing that too. So we can hijacker our own talk back. Anyway, so what do we do here? What we really felt like doing with this project was trying to dig through source code and not look at the code at all. And what we really wanted to look at was the metadata associated with the code. And primarily, comments associated with the code and the commit statements. How many people in here are software developers? Yeah, how many people in here are software developers that don't suck? You all lie. We've all enraged at the end of a long night of coding, checked in something like this is the biggest ass-hattery ever.    Shift ZZ out. We've all done it. I've been curious about this for a long time of what do other people write? Because I know that's what I write. I write stuff and commit statements just to see if anyone reads them. I put things in things. It was actually in one of the Shrew Group internal lists years ago I was doing a project and I put something way down in some documentation. I'm like if anyone ever reads this, post to the list, purple monkey robot chicken.  How many people have done that? Like randomly, no one ever reads this. I don't know why the hell I even try. Yeah, right. So what we wanted to do was go through it, look for first of all just amusement factor. We're going to build a ginormous database and spend hundreds of hours doing this just for amusement but also because we think there's actually security specific information where people say things like hey, we need to go back and fix this later because it's a big vulnerability dot, dot, dot. Did that ever get checked again? Did that ever get modified? I don't know, let's go find out. And so the purpose of this project was really to provide an analytical tool to allow us to do that kind of analysis to find where people have said things in the metadata associated with code we plan on going back and doing this or this is a problem and using that to do stack analysis because it turns out that real stack analysis is hard and we didn't want to do anything difficult. But as we'll talk about later, row gears is almost as difficult to stack analysis of source code but apparently no one's actually trying to use row gears in here. There are a bunch of stack analysis tools out there that look at source code, that do a good job, there's a bunch of different philosophies on how to look at source code and it totally wasn't our point. We weren't trying to go actually look at the code itself. We figured we're just going to let the developers tell us what's wrong and honestly there are a number of instances where they just outright say hey, thank you. Sweet. I can use grep.  The first thing we're going to do is have a primer on code repositories but then I realized when I wrote the word primer on a slide everyone would say what the fuck's a primer? Because I always say primer.  A primer, if you want to be like all OED about this, is actually this description of elementary issues for a given topic kind of concept. This is, hey, you know anything about this? Let me give you a primer. Let me give you the little bits of information you need to understand it. Probably the best example of that is Jody Foster in Contact, which I happen to have right here. I'll see if I can do this. How long will it take to decode it? It could take forever. The best decryption people we have. She is the world's most famous linguist, so I recommend we follow her lead. Anyway, so honestly that's just one of those if you can't tell I have little rants I get into for those who've maybe seen me talk and the primer thing was one that kind of bugged me for a long time and plus Jody Foster, like I said, Taxi Driver. Taxi Driver fans.  Positories. I'm going to turn it over to you in just a second. Mostly because I'm going to curl up underneath the table and take a nap. There are three major repository suites as far as we're concerned. CVS, Subversion and Git. They're all pretty different. What's interesting is Git is really easy to use. Like it's one of those I equated to the church of Python. When you use Python, you read the Python documentation and the Python.org web page and that's all you ever need to know. That's it. There's nothing else on the page. At least that's the way it's portrayed by people that write Python. I didn't believe it for years. The first time I wrote something in Python I kind of squandered over the toilet and popped out some Python. I was like, oh, hey, it works. Cool. There's database integration in there. And Git was kind of the same way. I'm a really bad developer. The actual pinnacle of my development patheticness was we were writing some code for one of the Shmoo projects we were doing years ago and I sent it to another Shmoo and I kept having these weird error conditions where sometimes it just doesn't work. It just kind of cores and flakes out.  Sometimes the function just didn't exist so I dropped out of college when I was a CS major. Took data structures and algorithms three times. My sheet did not fail at all three times. So Subversion and CVS is about like rocket science to me so I was really happy that we could use something like Git because you can just Git clone and you get the entire frigging repository since the dawn of time and then Git log and Git all the logs associated with all the commit statements. Really easy. So we focused on those. Some RCS people still left in the room. Big great Beards on them. They got stuff in them. You're welcome to debate the finer points of code repositories but we focused on the ones that we were comfortable with and really just to be clear because I really wanted to do some PowerPoint graphics. You have Python and Git and they are the awesome. What are those on top? Crowns, thank you. I worked on that on the airplane. People were looking at me. I was walking by like I guys make it porn I think. Like 8-bit porn. The next slide they start going at it but I won't show you that. I'm going to turn it over to Logan now. You want to chat? I can sit down. Take the mic. You don't want to hold the mic? No. Hands in your pockets.  That slide is mostly true. Actually, we only crawled GitHub. Yeah. Pretty much it. Primarily the languages we saw were Python, Ruby and C and C++. So just to be clear when you submit a talk to most conferences this slide is in advance for some reason. I think it's more to hold people accountable that they've actually done some work. They claim it's to burn it to the CD but has anyone looked at the Defconn CD yet? Really? Is your box owned? Not that you know of. But we had to make these forward-looking statements a month ago about what we had done it was really more what we thought we would do and so we put in things like it was fine and as Logan pointed out we focused on GitHub because we were lazy. The name of the app that we put together is called Code Gleam. First had some jokes. I didn't actually.  I give it two stars. You can dance to it but the beat's a little off. It's still a prototype of the version mostly used in-house by us to do analysis. There are five parts of it. Like Bruce said, Python is great so we use Python. The first part is the crawler. That is basically just our piece that goes out and we'll crawl GitHub right now and look for repos that we tell it to look for and pull that down. It does support subversion so we didn't actually crawl any of those yet. Once the crawler pushes off a task to the file store, it stores the repository on disk. This is semi-complicated because as it turns out, OSes don't like large directory structures that are flat. It makes functions like stat really, really, really slow. What we did to counteract that is based on some input and as I found out later, this is how Git stores it. We hash each file in the repository and then store a directory structure based on that hash and store the actual file at the bottom of that hash and create a symboling point. It creates a nice tree structure that the OS can handle with large amounts of files. Then the parser comes in. The parser, basically, its entire function is to parse the code for comments and commit statements. The whole goal of this, right? To do this, we created essentially a base parser that uses a library called PyVCS. PyVCS is a nice little Python module that will extract interfaces to certain Subversion repositories like Git, Subversion, Mercurial, and Bizarre. There's other ones. I've never heard of the other two. You made those up. Anyone use Bizarre? Anyone use Mercurial? Anyone know Mercurial? The guy on Twitter? Sorry. Jokes are really slow today, guys. I mean, I got snot running out of my nose. It's not pretty up here. No one even laughed at that. See, that's how bad it is. That's just gross, really. Thank you. Hey, someone imported one. Where was that from, sir? Not you yourself. I don't know who you are. Anyone else for anything to throw? Anyone know why he threw that? All right.  Have people seen those? Yeah, where are those coming from? Can you understand that? What they say? The feds.  That seems a little strange. So that's how feds are being tagged this year?  You need to explain this! Ask it a question! This is not helpful! They have a surplus of...   They. You just keep using pro-dots. I don't even care.  Oh my god, all right, we're done. Go ahead. Mystery solved. So after the parse is done, it basically shows all that data in a pretty standard MySQL database, right? These are essentially the tables that we use for this. It's fairly normalized. It's a really technical term. Unlike, say, third normal order, which is really loose. You don't really understand it for the database wings. I didn't want to say it was actually in third normal form because you would have tried to call me out on that. Yeah, I would have tried to call you out. I made you prove it with diagrams, which would have gotten ugly. And from there, we built the Turbogear's trend in on it. This was the source of many long nights of coding. Turbogear's supposed to be easy, but when you start adding AJAX and you try to do things with jQuery, it's like trying to solve a mystery as to how that thing works. But in the end, it came out really well and pretty happy with it. Well, he is now. When he wasn't sleeping, he wasn't happy. He was a little grumpy for a few days because it's like going to bed at 4.30 in the morning and getting up at 7.00 to go to work. Yeah, there was one phone call in particular. Probably shouldn't have had. And from here on out, as we develop this more, we want to add just essentially code to just tie this all together very well. And more repose, of course. All right. So the end result of all that is a website that you can't get to right now. Woo-hoo! That is proper DEFCON form. Just in case you're wondering if you're going to submit a talk to DEFCON, the proper form is, well, we did the work. Here's most results, but we still have to finish it up. So it's not ready yet. You can't download it. Or you just get up really drunk and rant and have some woman in bikini next to you and no one pays attention, apparently. So anyway, so Parcel Flat Fliers commits blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.   Well, first, before we get down to that, actually, moving on to more statistical grammatical analysis where we use things that have spaces in it. RegEx. So we actually do have some RegEx stuff implemented and you'll be able to use once we get it online. Mostly, that's what we're worried about right now because we don't want you all ponying our server. So we started asking people, oh, and our RegEx so we're going to go throw it into mySQL database and hope for the best. We already had some instances where people in the commit statements and I'll challenge you, I'll just put this challenge out there. The commit statements then, when they get returned to the screen, will get not really escaped properly and so there was actually like markup language inside the commit statement so I was reading one and there was a text input box right in the middle of the screen. Like, huh, that doesn't bode well. Just to be clear, once we do lightness critter up, I would challenge you, if you know what things we're tracking, try to get yourself onto that task, onto that project then put in a malicious commit statement just to see if we get owned.  We were going to do a demo but the inner tube sucks so instead we're just going to show you it is a webpage. There's a browser, it's called Safari and we took a picture and it's not photoshopped. I swear to God. Look at this, does anyone can anyone tell me the seven dirty words? Everyone's just mumbling, it's like Tourette's now.     Anyway, so we took the seven dirty words and we made a histogram out of it in numbers, not Excel. Steve Jobs Forever.  Right, people? Open source project, please swear more because it's got really boring.  We're going to have to put some in just to make it exciting. And the lower order ones, the ones at the bottom, like tits, motherfucker, those never even made the list and there's a lot of comments, not once. And I might think honestly, if you're swearing and you're angry, typing motherfucker's a lot at work because you're going to type over two or three times and eventually you're like screw it. Fuck, there, we're done. We're here.  So here now we look for, we created our own slightly more generic dirty words.  People giggling at the last one for the ones that get that. No one committed that either. So as long as you're going after trying to pwn us through commit statements and comments, you might as well go and drop some Ligitbombs in there too. I said it. And commits me a little more aggressive.   And then the other ones, hell.   It's like a part of Simpson's episode.   Yeah, it's like Simpson's season two.  Anyway, still not that interesting. So we started to look at code quality comments.  Well, on average, at least once per every project someone said hack. Some of them had it a lot. It was like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.  These are areas that we started to focus on. When people actually said this is a hack, hey, guess what? We're going to go look at that.  Which I think is a little more aggressive terminology.  And we went back and we read a lot of the results here. And what we found is developers are more likely to make emotional comments than the commit statements. Presumably because they assume commit statements don't get up, put in your .tar.gz and shipped. The commit statements just kind of stay in a database somewhere and you presume that's why we took our flashlight out and tried to, it helps if you make the noise.  Thank you, hey. Does anyone wear that shirt right now because I'll punch you in the face? Trying to be polite about it. Stepcon, stand in line before we punch people in the faces. So there was some randomly funny stuff. All cats always is a win.  You got two of our dirty words in one sentence. I thought that was nice. Killed two birds with one stone. Somebody blaming the cold meds. The CGI IRC which should scare you in its own right as a program. It's an IRC that's written in CGI. Ponying boxes through IRC to messages, right? Go find a bug in this thing and then just type the right command in the IRC channel and watch the guy's box until the web server gets pwned. Like, that's a fun attack vector. But he had things like nasty hack to make the angry smiley work. Then there was another hack to make another type of smiley work. Like, this guy had a problem making smiley's work in an IRC program. I thought you just displayed colon, prophecy. Is it any more complicated than that? Also, one person was kind enough to point out that moose were better than ponies. Okay, good, because if it was a boo, there was going to be a problem. We are big moose fans, as it turns out. Not so much the ponies, ponies are nice. Moose, they're for real people. Anyway, do you guys know why you get outlook messages from outlook users that have J's in them for smileys? Have any people noticed that behavior? It's because freaking Outlook converts the smiley to the Wingding smiley, which is the letter J to the Wingding's alphabet. When it gets sent out and you don't have the Wingding's loaded, the Wingding's like the inner tubes, then you get a J because that apparently is that character that they used. It's really annoying. Unicode, bane of my existence. Again, the guy that flagged Outlook and resides.  All right, so people are angrily doing drunken things. He's like, I'm out.  I broke the microphone. So we found our first result in the first five minutes, which was lucky, because again, when you unload Pandora's box on this, when you say we're going to do all this stuff and do this, have this ready for DEF CON, and it's three days before DEF CON, we're like, huh, we don't have a completed code yet, but I guess I'm going to start digging through the database and see if we could find anything. I was a little worried that we wouldn't find anything. So we did. The guy that sat here was looking for the word lame, and we found this phrase that said, this is kind of lame, but only explainable by people who could log in. How serious could that be? What was interesting about this bug is not only did we find it in one project, we found it in six different projects.  And someone was running a chat roulette in a room today at 10 a.m. Was anyone there? I saw references to it online. Was there anything disturbing? Yeah, that just seems like a lawsuit. Like, are you showing porn to a room of people like that? You just don't know what you're going to get. Oh, I didn't know gerbils would do that. Not appropriate ever, let alone at 10 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday. They're all working on these social networking projects and what they did is they just shared the code and it wasn't like they created the common library. Like, I mean, I flunked out of CS again but I can see the value in libraries because you can update them and they get updated independently of the freaking software. No, they just cut and pasted it. That looks good, including the comment that says kind of exploitable. And so what we found was this and even more verbose. So the only exploitable people so presumably not too big of a security hole. It allowed you, as long as you had an account and you were using HTTP off to get in, you could look at anything that anyone had protected anywhere in their social networking sites that they built with Ruby on Rails. Which, again, I mean, come on, we've seen Facebook do it so everybody, the cool kids have to do it when they start the new projects and like, I can appreciate that but it's ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. What we found and this is part of the tool is we track what versions of the pieces of software that contain the comments and contain the commit statements or at least eventually the commit statements. Commit statements are a little bit harder to tie to specific versions at the moment but the comments and so we can go through and say, hey, where does this comment still exist? And a number of the projects out of the six that we found, a couple of them had nuked the file all together but there are still a few projects out there that today have this junk of code in their live production systems. Come on, guys. You don't get to see O-Day. This is really lame O-Day. It's not Charlie Miller O-Day but it's O-Day. Come on. Yeah, what's O-Day themselves? That's the finer point, right? Like, is it O-Day if you said it? Like, hey, look, it's a security vulnerability. Like, all we did was grep. But yeah, we're calling it O-Day. We're bad like that. What else did we find? So we found, so this is a question because they fixed it. But again, presumably, not everyone deploys the latest version and part of the purpose here is to be able to determine specific versions of software that maybe you don't have easy access to right now but we want to go find other issues with, you know, I'm at some client site and they're running an old version of Puppet. In this case, they had just migrated to REST from XML RPC. So REST is a same kind of, it's like an RPC thing but a lot fuzzier. It's not as heavily restrained and they realize that you can just send unauthenticated REST requests and they would be obeyed. So I don't say anything wrong with this, this admin framework that will accept unauthenticated RPC commands. You know, have control of your entire enterprise? I don't know. It seems like an okay bug to me. Anyway, so again, this was patched a while ago but we were able to dig it up pretty quickly. This next one is very special to me. I'll read it because I realize you probably can't read this but basically this guy is talking about using a site key which is an extra bit of information that gets hashed into this database password in order to make it so that if the person who's snagging the broken in your box snags your config information also needs to go snag the database so that they can run an offline dictionary attack as opposed to just connect your database.    The guy's got lots of URLs in there. He's pointing to like the visual guide to cryptography to explain hashing. I mean, this is one of the most verbose and explained commit statements ever including, needless to say, if you upload this to GitHub or the YouTubes or otherwise place it in public view, you're kind of defeat the whole point. Just to be clear, we downloaded this from the YouTubes. So it did kind of defeat the whole point. Anyway, there were also some dead ends that we encountered when we were doing this. We're looking for the word security. Again, this is just basically an Uber rep at the moment. And it said the phrase add insecurity. And I'm like, excellent. I wonder how complicated a commit that was. Like my eyes got really big and admittedly this was yesterday. We were, so we're doing the actual analysis for this yesterday in our room. And it turns out that Logan doesn't have a laptop. Because, yeah, my fault I haven't bought one yet. Logan works for me. And I haven't bought a laptop. And she kindly reminded me when I said, hey, take your laptop out so it can work.   So I give him my laptop and I rip out, here's the douchebag thing I'm about to say. I rip out my iPad. One of two iPads. One of two iPads in the room, yeah. Real. You just hate me now. It's cool. I'm down with that. Anyway, I take out my iPad and they have no connection on the laptops. Working okay. But the 3G service on the iPad is literally like about five minutes after the hour. It's working okay. It's working okay. Working okay. About quarter to the hour. Can't get any data through. Start sucking, sucking, sucking. Five minutes after the hour. Works good again. Quarter to the hour.  It's working on the 3G service at all. I realize, oh, talks are letting out. And everyone's walking around assuming the DEF CON pose, which is, oh, ran into some dude, okay. And it kills the AT&T network here. So we were digging through and so I would execute a querying and I'd wait like five minutes for it to come back.  So I see this and I have to wait for like five more minutes to uncover how cool this is going to be. So I just got a code from a project that he just started that no one uses.  He even said, now you have to log in. Yay. I was really not happy because we really needed something to say. Anyway, so honestly, we are really at the point where we now have a functional tool. We will have the website up here in a little bit. We have GitHub announced the day that reached one million repositories in GitHub, which is a pretty I don't know how big Sourceforge is, but between the two of them, they represent a mammoth amount of open source software and our goal is to find a way around their terms and conditions and get them all.  Four and a half gigs was the cutoff point. Four and a half gigs, 476 projects was our first cutoff, I think. It was a temporary man on the IP and we moved it back later slowly and got a couple more. Yeah, just slow and steady. Like a 70s porno, you know, you just kind of got to work your way into it. It's okay, GitHub. This won't hurt very much at the end. Like a carrot instead of a cucumber. Whoa! Holy, wow, vegetable reference. Thank God you were close enough for the mic to that to be recorded. So we changed the schema a number of times. Honestly, importing the data isn't that hard right now. It takes a little time. But what we want to do in the long term is tie this directly to the repository so we can get changes as they happen. I cannot help but think that's a pun every time I say it. We want to get more data in there. We want to get more aggressive analytical capability. And honestly, we want to be able to quickly drill down and facilitate the analysis because right now when we find something, I still have to go to the Git repository and look at the code manually and see what's going on and then talk about it when I was describing code lame. We're tracking on the file diffs between versions so at some point we'll be able to correlate essentially what files change between each version and determine when these source comments are put in and taken out and moved around and stuff like that. So really in conclusion this is a pretty trivial analysis but I think there's a lot of hope here both from just kind of high comedic value but also from a security perspective as we get more and more and more projects in here we have to have more results and honestly we want to have more advanced analysis so people understand. There's a lot to be said about the quality of your comments and the quality of the commit statements and open source software. It speaks about the development process that people are using and how good it is and I think it would be nice to be able to figure out how good the open source community is doing over the years.  So we'll be up at www.ponsesac.com. You can follow Ponsesac on Twitter. We're not trying to be Twitter whores and honestly if you want an announcement I'm not going to mail you all individually. You can just follow us and we'll tell you when it's ready. Thanks to Brian Denney for his last minute of support. Brian, there he is. Brian, thanks Brian. I call Brian up at 9 o'clock on Tuesday. Hey man, what you doing? Why? We've got a big database in no website. Can you help us out? Shit. You knew we shouldn't have answered the phone. Anyway, that's all we got. I think any questions, comments? Mass exodus is plural. Alright, we're done. Thanks very much. Have fun, guys.