I’m always happy to speak to labour legislation coming from the Conservative government—for anyone who was around during the 1990s and witnessed the Harris government, we know how Conservatives really feel about workers. If you weren’t around during the 1990s or don’t remember the Harris government, I’ll let you in on a secret: They’re not big on standing up for workers. They love standing up for big business, but not workers. But this government and the Minister of Labour want us to forget that history. They put forward legislation like today, titled it Working for Workers, and hope that the window dressing is enough to erase the decades of attacking workers. But it’s not enough, because they are still attacking workers today.

Speaker, before I get into what should be in this bill, I want to say that many of the changes in this legislation are supportable. Earlier this week, through media, we heard about a lot of changes the minister claimed he was making to support workers, but, strangely, not a lot is actually in the bill. I understand that the government has a pattern of introducing legislation and leaving a lot of the meat to regulatory changes down the road, but it’s fair to say it’s a little strange that most of what the minister claims he’s doing isn’t made law through the legislation he tabled. It’s not even mentioned in the bill. It’s concerning because we all know that regulatory changes do not go under the same level of scrutiny as legislation amendments. With this government, it’s all about the details—and when it’s done through regulations, I do get concerned about how transparent and open those details are.

It’s important to note that the minister and the rest of the Conservative government wasted no time in legislating direct attacks on the collective bargaining rights of unionized workers like nurses, education workers, paramedics, corrections officers and many more with Bill 124 and Bill 28, both—Madam Speaker, you know this—unconstitutional bills. Yet changes that might actually make things better for workers, weren’t included in the bill we’re debating today.

Speaker, the government side may be critical—which they have been in the past—of my response to this bill, but for me, this is personal. I’ve been a worker my entire life. I worked in a plant, working steady midnights for 20 years at General Motors. My union is the reason I have the life I have today—make no mistake about that—including being able to provide for my children, my three daughters, helping my five grandkids. It’s because of the union. Without that support of my brothers and sisters in the labour movement, working to advance the quality of life for their members, I wouldn’t be here today.

I’m passionate about this issue. I remember that my passion for standing up for workers and the labour movement was criticized by the PC Party. Listen to this, even to my other colleagues: When I ran in Niagara Falls in a by-election, it was our current labour minister himself who warned the people of my community that they should be scared if I win, because I was from a union. Now the minister walks around and acts like unions are his best friends, and he wants to pretend that he stands up for workers.

Make no mistake about it: His opinion on workers’ rights hasn’t changed. This member wanted Ontario to adopt a US-style right-to-work law, going back to when Tim Hudak was the leader of the official opposition—which I really want to mention, because the Conservatives forget about this: The PCs were in opposition for 15 years.

He was the first member on the government side to not only stand up—I’m going to repeat this. He was the first member on the government side to not only stand up and vote in support of anti-union, anti-worker Bills 124 and 28; he also was the first to clap.

We found out yesterday their government doesn’t even support paid sick days. I’m going to add to that: Everybody in this room—everybody—if you’re off sick, you get paid. We’ve had members who had long-term sicknesses in this chamber, unfortunately; they got paid. Workers deserve paid sick days. You shouldn’t have to go to work because you can’t afford to put food on your plate or pay the rent. Paid sick days are important in the province of Ontario.

Now, some people might say, “Look at this legislation. It’s helping workers in our province.” Well, when it matters most, when it isn’t the public relations exercise of this government, they go back to their old ways. We saw that in the two bills, as I’ve already said.

Think about this, Madam Speaker: Look no further than what they did to the lowest-paid education workers in this province, the people making an average of $39,000 who are going to food banks at the end of their week, the people who make our schools function every day and those who support students with special needs. This government attacked them and took away their charter rights. They used the “notwithstanding” clause to strip those workers of their rights, and they did it to workers in a largely women-led sector—a pattern, I believe, from this government.

Do you know what happened? Those workers, mostly women, stood up to this government, and we rallied with them. I rallied with them in front of my office. There were close to 1,000 that day, the day that they rallied at my office, and do you know what? This government threatened them with fines of $4,000 a day if they didn’t go into work. Do you know what most of those women said? They stood up to the government and they said, “Fine us, because you’re not taking away our rights.” I know it’s early in the morning, but I think the women deserve a round of applause for standing up for themselves in the labour movement. And the PCs—you can clap on that, because you have some women on that side who I respect and I talk to all the time.

What does this mean for workers? It means that they can’t trust this government when it comes to protecting their rights. It means that they have to rally and stand up for themselves when this government steamrolls their basic constitutional rights. This approach has a ripple effect in our community. It sows distrust for the government, and it negatively impacts so many areas of the province.

As the critic for long-term care, I’m going to give you some examples.

The title of the bill before us is Working for Workers—and I’m going to speak about Bill 124 and how that worked for workers, but before we get into the details of that horrible anti-worker legislation, let’s take a look at what it has caused. It has created a staffing shortage in health care. It has created a staffing shortage in long-term care, retirement homes and home care.

We all know, and I repeat it as much as I can here because I don’t want people to forget, that 5,400 seniors—our moms, our dads, our aunts, our uncles, our brothers and sisters—died in long-term care and retirement homes, and 78% of those died in for-profit homes, because it wasn’t about care; it was about profit.

Workers don’t feel respected.

I know everybody knows about this, but I’m going to repeat it again: Staffing agencies are ripping off non-profit long-term-care homes at the rate of $150 per hour because of this crisis. And, yet, we continue to fight in court with Bill 124 and limit wages at 1%, including benefits—it’s a total compensation package of 1%. When inflation is running at 6.5%, 7.5%, that’s a pay cut of 6% to our heroes. All this is happening under this government’s watch because they don’t truly stand up for workers.

I want to talk about this government and about their record on workers. We’ve been hearing a lot about how this government has been working for workers. They’re talking a lot about how they care about workers, trade unions, and how they want to have a new type of Conservative party, but their record is very different. It’s a different story. This government has one of the worst records on labour issues in the history of the province of Ontario and, quite frankly, all across Canada.

We learned this week that this government will be ending the paid sick days program next week. Does that sound like something a government that is working for workers would do? They can make as many excuses as they like, but the government could absolutely include paid sick days if they wanted. If they really cared about workers and their rights and their well-being, they would absolutely include paid sick days, but they made a choice not to. Nobody in the province of Ontario should be forced to go to work when they are sick. This is unacceptable in one of the richest provinces in the country.

But that’s not all—in fact, it’s part of a pattern of this government going after workers.

Of course, there’s Bill 124, a bill that opened up the collective agreements—negotiated, fair collective agreements—of our nurses and our front-line health care workers and imposed a 1% wage increase, including benefits. That’s disgusting in and of itself, but you have to remember that this happened during 7% and in some cases 8% inflation. So, in fact, this government forced a 6%—at least 6%—pay cut on our nurses, front-line health care workers and the other occupations that I already mentioned in this speech.

We were happy in November of last year to hear that the courts—rightly, in my opinion—struck down Bill 124. The Ontario Superior Court ruled on November 29, 2022, that Bill 124 was unconstitutional and a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That decision was a hard-fought victory for nurses, front-line workers and the other workplaces I’ve mentioned who have given up so much over the last few years, working through a deadly pandemic, working through staffing shortages, emergency room closures, increased violence and harassment in our hospitals.

But it didn’t stop Premier Ford and the Conservative government. You know what they did? They challenged those nurses in court. They weren’t satisfied to move on and accept the court’s decision that it was unconstitutional. Instead, they decided it was a good use of their time—and, quite frankly, taxpayers’ money. All the court cases this government has lost have been paid for by taxpayers. I want everybody to understand that, and it’s in the hundreds of millions of dollars which could have gone, quite frankly, to paid sick days, to mental health and all the other things I think they could have done.

Again, this government’s actions are simply not matching their words. Premier Ford and the Conservatives talk the talk about our health care heroes and how much they love and respect nurses, but when it comes to walking the walk and actually having the backs of our health care workers, instead they attack their collective bargaining rights and force them to accept a net pay cut. We know Bill 124 has actively made the staffing crisis in health care worse. Their own documents—your own documents prove it.

Then, of course, we have Bill 28—which was an attack not just on education workers but on the constitutional rights of every single worker in the province of Ontario and Canada.

Some of you may know that before I was an MPP, I was a city councillor, but also a union president, Unifor Local 199 in Niagara. I’m very proud of that. I was involved in the labour movement in the Mike Harris days. Those were tough times for the labour movement—make no mistake about it—where he took away anti-scab. But you know what? I want people to hear this—especially on that side: Even Mike Harris, one of the most conservative Premiers we’ve ever had in the history of Canada, quite frankly, even he never used the “notwithstanding” clause to attack workers. Think about that. That shows you just how extreme this government really is.

What do Bill 124 and Bill 28 have in common? Besides attacking collective bargaining rights of workers, of course—what do those bills have in common? They are both examples of a government attacking female-dominated professions. It’s this government time and time again attacking jobs that are disproportionately women—this government and this labour minister, quite frankly, talk about supporting women in the trades, but again their record tells a very different story. It shows them attacking, stripping away the rights of female workers in the province of Ontario.

And then we have the government’s record on WSIB and, in particular, deeming. I cannot believe I’m still talking about deeming three years later. It just doesn’t make sense—particularly since we have Working for Workers 3 and I’m sure I’ll be standing up here in two years, three years from now on Working for Workers 49. I’m sure it’s just going to continue to go on.

Deeming hasn’t been in one of those bills yet. By the way, we’ve asked the government to do it over and over again. I introduced a bill just this past December, and what this bill would do is end the practice of deeming that leads to so many of our injured workers here in the province living in poverty. In fact, I introduced a bill in 2019. It passed first reading, but the government chose not to move forward—disgraceful. So I introduced it again—I’m like a boomerang, I just keep coming back. You know, you can do whatever you want to me, but just like you throw that boomerang, I’m coming back. If I believe it should be there, I’m coming back. Just so you know, I’m not going away. Would a government that is actually working for workers have injured workers living in poverty in the province of Ontario?

I also want to address something the Minister of Labour said the other day in the House, because I think this is important. The minister mentioned that he was happy to go after “scumbag employers” in the province of Ontario, which again we’re seeing a pattern here: sounds nice, sounds good, but what action has the government taken?

What about the employer that passed Bill 124, opening up the collective agreements of nurses and health care workers and keeping their wages under the rate of inflation in the midst of a global pandemic? What about the employer that passed Bill 28 which attacked education workers and used the “notwithstanding” clause to attack their collective bargaining rights? What about the employer that still deems injured workers, keeps them living in poverty in the province of Ontario? What about the employer that won’t past anti-scab legislation? Madam Speaker, by the way, anti-scab was brought in under the Mike Harris government—

Interjection: No, it was taken away.

Thank you to the member from Niagara Falls. Early on in this debate, he questioned Working for Workers as a bit of a smokescreen. And he talked about Bill 28, which punished the lowest-paid public sector workers. He talked about Bill 124, which froze wages for public sector workers at 1% so every year it was a massive wage cut and violated their ability to collectively bargain. He talked about the removal of sick days, which were removed when the Conservative government was first elected and then removed again yesterday.

He also talked about his involvement in the union, how it allowed him to care for his three daughters and his five grandchildren. This morning, I was reading an email from the United Steelworkers, Local 1944, the Telus workers. There’s 6,800 members. They bargained wage increases, enhanced job security, paid domestic violence leave, benefit increases and pension increases.

The Conservative government loves to talk about how much they love unions, especially the trade unions. If they really love unions, do you think it would make more sense for them to make it easier to join a union, like passing card-check certification?