You done?

Interjection.

Interjection.

The reason why I did that is because I’ve been arguing about price-gouging. Because where I live, in my riding—Niagara-on-the-Lake, Niagara Falls and Fort Erie—we have the highest number of seniors in the entire province of Ontario, and they’re coming into my office, sir, and they’re crying because they can’t afford to buy their food; they can’t afford to heat their home; they can’t afford to pay for their medication. That’s what’s going on in the province of Ontario. And you know what? I lose sleep over it, because these are people that have given their entire life to this beautiful province, to their family, to their grandkids, and they’re breaking down in my office—

As far as the human resources, I can’t say it enough here; I say it almost every day: Bill 124. You’re fighting it in the courts. Nurses, PSWs are leaving in record numbers because of Bill 124. If you want to at least show respect at all to our heroes—because you guys call them heroes; we call them heroes as well—repeal Bill 124, and the crisis in health care in retention will go away.

But to your point: To stand up and have never once—your government has never once, including yourself, sir, who I sat at committee with—apologized for what happened to our seniors, to the 5,500 that died, the 3,800 who died in for-profit care. And the reason why they died there—ask the military. You brought the military in. And what did they tell you? They didn’t die because they were old and they had COVID. They died from dehydration, sir. You’re trying to tell me if we had the proper staffing in these homes, they wouldn’t have been taken care of? They found seniors that laid in their beds for 24 hours—24 hours after they died, because they had no staff. This is in the report. This isn’t coming from me.

I will always fight for seniors. I always have, matter of fact, for my entire 40 years that I’ve been involved in the labour movement and the 10 years I’ve been here. Thank you for the question.

I talk to a lot of employers. I go around and talk to them all the time, and you know what? Even small businesses that I talk to don’t want their employees coming to work sick. They also don’t want that they can’t afford to buy their groceries at the end of the week if they have to take a day off or a couple of days off because they’ve got the flu—not necessarily COVID. There’s a lot of other things that you get sick and you have to take three or four days off.

There should be sick days in the province of Ontario, without a doubt. The one thing we all have to admit is that we live in one of the richest provinces in all of Canada. Are you trying to tell me we can’t afford to provide sick days for workers? Are you trying to tell us that? Come on, think about it.

But do you know what happened to that program, sir? Do you know? I’m going to help you—you can look it up when you go home tonight. I don’t think the Leafs are playing tonight; the Jays played this afternoon.

Do you know what happened to that program? It was cancelled in the schools by the Harris government. Now that we want to bring it back, I think it’s great. I think we should do that because it gives a hand up to people who, like myself, are maybe less fortunate. I’m agreeing with you on your comment. How we get there, we may differ, but I think the programs going back into schools is a great idea for skilled trades.