My question is to the Premier.

While families across the province are waiting for $10-a-day child care, this government’s low-wage policies threaten the program. Already, child care centres across Ontario are having to close rooms and limit enrolment due to staffing challenges. Families are on wait-lists that are growing.

Experts have said that Ontario needs another 65,000 ECEs and child care staff by 2026.

The Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario has urged this government to implement a province-wide salary scale for registered ECEs and child care staff to address staffing issues. Why is the government refusing to do so?

The average ECE in Ontario spends just three years working in the sector. Ontario will not be able to offer $10-a-day child care without child care workers.

The Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care says that none of the strategies the government has put on the table will work until we deal with the low wages.

Will the minister listen to the experts and take action to address the staffing shortage by paying child care workers fair wages?

This petition is titled “Invest in Ontario’s Arts and Culture Sector.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the arts and culture sector contributes $28.7 billion to Ontario’s GDP and creates over 300,000 jobs;

“Whereas the Ontario Arts Council budget has not been increased” not even “at Ontario’s rate of inflation, exacerbating the income precarity of artists and cultural workers, some of whom are earning less than $25,000 per year, and still less for those from equity-deserving groups;

“Whereas the income precarity was worsened during the pandemic through issues of regulatory unfairness in the arts and culture sector, disproportionately impacting the performing arts sector and OAC-determined priority groups, including BIPOC, Indigenous, women, people with disabilities, and LGBTQIA2S+ artists and cultural workers;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to sustain the Ontario Arts Council budget of $65 million in the 2023 provincial budget and adequately invest in the arts and culture sector, including supports for equity-deserving groups, small, medium and grassroots collectives in our communities, and individual artists to ensure their personal and economic survival.”

I couldn’t agree more with this. I will affix my signature to this petition.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas it takes an average of 18 months for people in Ontario to get an official dementia diagnosis, with some patients often waiting years to complete diagnostic testing and more than half of those suspected of having dementia never get a full diagnosis;

“Whereas a PET scan test approved in Ontario in 2017, which can be key to detecting Alzheimer’s early is still not covered under OHIP and research findings show that Ontario will spend $27.8 billion between 2023 and 2043 on alternate-level-of-care (ALC) and long-term-care (LTC) costs associated with people living with dementia;

“Whereas the government must follow through with its commitment to ensure Ontario’s health care system has the capacity to meet the current and future needs of people living with dementia and their care partners;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to develop, commit to, and fund a comprehensive Ontario dementia strategy.”

I fully support this petition and will affix my signature to it.

I want to thank my colleague, the member from Scarborough Southwest, for her presentation. One of the key pieces of this bill that the minister and this government is highlighting is—using the government’s own words—that “scumbag employers” will be fined more than before. I think the member will agree with me that we all support bad employers being fined more. But what the people, I’m sure, would like to know is, what is this government going to do with the fines? Is any of that money going to the workers who were employed by these “scumbag employers”? Will the workers who had to deal with these “scumbag employers,” who are now being fined more, be compensated in any way? Can the member please share with this House what the government’s plans are, if any?