Further questions?

Just a month ago, I met with the firefighters here in Mississauga, and their recommendations were the two items that we put, the thyroid cancer and the pancreatic cancer, on this bill. We were able to deliver it for them right away, in not even three months. So our government is continuing to work with the workers in this province, and we’re going to continue to work with workers in the province of Ontario.

Not only that, we’re going back to 1960. Think about 1960: I wasn’t even born in 1960. Pretty well a lot of us in the House weren’t born in 1960. We’re going back that far, and I think our government will continue working with workers in this province very closely.

From there, he came over to Port Credit, and he started working at the Texaco refinery because after the Second World War, he was in the Middle East working in a refinery there. His skills at the time were not recognized. That was difficult, because he wanted to bring my mother over from Italy, and he couldn’t afford to do it until he was able to get his skills up to par to bring her over and raise a family here. So it’s very important that we recognize the skills of immigrants who come to this province and even the discrimination against immigrants who come to this province, because still today—I was born here, my kids were born here, and we’re still discriminated against for being Italians. That should stop here in the province.

I’d like to thank the member for his comments. I just want to express my condolences on the loss of your father due to occupational disease. It’s terrible.

We’ve noticed on the official opposition side that nowhere in the bill is it included that firefighters will be protected with presumptive coverage for pancreatic and thyroid cancer, but we welcome that. It’s unfortunate that it’s not codified within this legislation.

I did want to also mirror the words of the Occupational Disease Reform Alliance. They noted a fellow who unfortunately passed away. His name was Bud Simpson. He worked at Fibreglass Sarnia for 36 years. Sarnia is the occupational disease capital and the heart of the petrochemical industry. In 2011, the World Health Organization said that it had the most polluted air in the country. Despite that, multiple exposures are not covered under WSIB, as I’m sure you know. Would you like to see that included in reforms to WSIB covering multiple exposures?

Point of order.

I would like to put a question to my friend the honourable member from Mississauga–Lakeshore. He has a proud history of Italian heritage, and so do I. We all know that newcomers to this country and this province have helped build this province into the great province it is today. Newcomers bring with them skills and talents, and these need to be recognized by the province of Ontario. I’m inviting the member to comment on that and how this bill addresses that.

During my time as the critic for community safety and correctional services, I worked alongside firefighters to make a number of changes, like changes that ensured survivor benefits would be protected when their partners died from occupational disease. That was originally called Bill 98, and the government of the day took that, put it into government legislation and fixed that problem. I’ve been working with them since the beginning—since I was first elected.

Right now, we recognize 17 cancers connected to the work of being a firefighter. Pancreatic and thyroid have yet to be added formally. We were hoping to see it in this bill. The government announcements and whatnot—that’s good. We hope they will follow through with that. Of course, we support that, but, again, it’s reassuring when we see it in writing, and until that happens, I will not only support it, I will continue to chase it.

Meegwetch to the member from Oshawa. In Sioux Lookout, prior to 1997, we had two hospitals for 5,000 people: We had the federal hospital for Indians, and we had a provincial hospital for—I don’t know—white people. Then we amalgamated, and now we have a provincial hospital.

I share that because the member spoke about Bill 124. It seems the health care system has not improved. I remember being involved in the health care sector. We were paying agency nurses at a rate of $1,200 to $1,500 per day, and when we hire agency nurses, it has an impact on the wellness of the people who are being served. What would—including removing Bill 124, how will it improve the health and the lives of people?

Questions?

Thank you to the member from Oshawa for your remarks. The member from Oshawa was talking about the announcements. She talked, I’m guessing, about what our government is doing for job-protected leave for military reservists, expanding cancer coverage for firefighters, enhancing fines to protect workers, cleaner washrooms on construction sites, remote work protection and making sure we are preparing students for skilled trade jobs and helping newcomers.

My question to the member opposite is very simple: Do you support these initiatives taken by the government to support our workers?

Next question.

I’d like to thank the member from Oshawa for her comments. I know that she’s a member who stands with workers in thought, word and deed, but I wondered if the member could take us back in time to a time when Oshawa GM was under threat, a time when the Premier actually said, after meeting with GM executives, “They told me straight-up there’s nothing we can do”—as if taking his orders from somebody else—“the ship has already left the dock.”

But at that time, speaking of the title of this bill, Working for Workers, I would like the member to describe how Oshawa workers stood up for workers when this government rolled over and turned their back on workers.

As my colleagues have shared from their time on finance committee, where they were hearing over and over from those who are fighting against Bill 124 because they are doing important work in health care or in our public sector, they feel demoralized. They feel disrespected—“humiliated” I think is what they have said.

If the government were to relent, if the government were to acknowledge that this has been ruled unconstitutional and stop fighting nurses in court, I think morale would also improve among those who are fleeing the province to work in health care elsewhere, but also we need to be able recruit and retain. We need to be able to keep staffing—not keep. We need to be able to get staffing levels to the place where health care can be best provided—safe levels. We’re not there right now.

I think that is a huge thing. Anyone in health care has told us that. Everyone in health care has told us that. They’ve told this government as well. I’m sorry, they’re not listening.

I am glad to have investment in Oshawa and in Durham region to help people find meaningful work. I am glad to know that we’re on the government’s radar, frankly. But I don’t know where it is in this legislation.

Again, to what I had said earlier, this government has been making announcements about positive things that we support, that would make a difference in communities, but we’re not seeing it in the statute. We are not seeing it physically in Bill 79, the Working for Workers Act.

I would be very glad to meet with that member and have a better understanding of the specifics because I’m happy to get onside with workers in my community. I just don’t know what that looks like because I haven’t seen it.

We heard the minister’s question and response earlier this morning about the gendered washrooms being clean. It’s not in the bill. So this “just trust us; it will be in regulation”—a lot has to happen from that announcement to it actually happening. Is that in regulation? It’s not in statute. If things mattered to this government, I would imagine that they would put it in the bill. I guess my answer to the member across is, I will cross my fingers, we’ll see, and I’ll support good ideas if and when they happen.

Thank you to the member for Oshawa for her speech this afternoon. Bill 79 does propose changes to support the rollout of our employment services transformation. Ontario is expanding its new employment services to five more regions, being London, Windsor-Sarnia, Kitchener-Waterloo, Barrie, Durham and Ottawa, and this is helping more people move towards meaningful and purpose-driven careers close to home.

I’d like to ask the member, because I believe Oshawa is in Durham, don’t you agree that we should be doing everything we can to help those on social assistance, including in your area of Durham, find meaningful work?

It’s an honour to rise this afternoon and speak to Bill 79, Working for Workers Act, 2023. I think this is the third Working for Workers Act, so I suppose my first criticism would be the lack of creativity in the name, Madam Speaker. But, overall, having just had a day or so to read it, there are some promising changes that will be beneficial to Ontario workers, so I’d like to start on some of those high notes maybe before getting into some of the areas where there are some gaps.

I’d like to talk about the more flexible job protections that are proposed by the government for military reservists. Military reservists in Canada are very special, because they offer their service to help defend our country, to help protect our communities, while also maintaining their other full-time employment. These individuals can be deployed at very short notice right across our country to help keep us and our neighbours and our families safe. They typically serve one or more evenings a week and during the weekends and spend several weeks a year training for these jobs. Reserve units are located in hundreds of communities right across our country and, of course, our province, and they’re always there when we need them the most.

No matter your role in the reserve, I want to take a moment to thank the brave women and men in Canada’s reserve army for their dedication to our country and to their community.

I had the opportunity, Madam Speaker, to work with reservists very directly in the spring of 2019, when Ottawa was suffering enormous flooding in the west end of the city, in Carp, in Constance Bay and in the east end of Ottawa, in the community I represent along the Ottawa River in Cumberland Village. Between Ottawa and Gatineau, more than 6,000 homes were flooded or at imminent risk. Roads and bridges were flooded out and forced to close. At least two people died in this flooding. Thousands were without power, were without water. Some were left stranded without food as a result. Many, of course, had to evacuate their homes out of threat of being flooded out altogether.

Anyone who witnessed the devastation of this flooding in Ottawa—whether in person, on the ground, or in photographs or in video afterwards—knows just how bad it got in our nation’s capital. The reason I bring this up is because, in Cumberland, we had the honour and the benefit of working with the Canadian Armed Forces reserve from the 33 Domestic Response Company, who came to the rescue during the flooding to help residents of Cumberland, in east Ottawa.

Many of these reservists, as I said, if not all of them, are employed full-time in other lines of work and had literally almost no notice to pack up their entire life, tell their boss, “Sorry, I’m not coming in tomorrow” and head out to Ottawa to help. In fact, one young woman who was interviewed at the time of the floods mentioned that she had less than 24 hours’ notice to give to her employer so that she could come to Ottawa and help save these homes. They carried sandbags along the river, shoring up homes that were at risk of flooding. They helped evacuate people to safer areas. They worked to protect the Lemieux Island Water Purification Plant. Many of them described it as some of the proudest moments of their lives, helping protect these families in Cumberland and across Ottawa.

So I want to thank the reservists who were involved in that operation in 2019. I understand that it’s very difficult to call your boss and say, “I’m not coming in tomorrow,” on short notice, “and I might not come in for days and days and maybe weeks on end.” Obviously, we want to ensure that they have the protection of being able to return to their job, not only when their service is over, but when some of the other issues that might arise from their service might need to be dealt with as well. We want to make sure that they have that protection. I know those reservists who participated in 2019 and all those who benefited from that great work will understand the importance of the measures that are being proposed by the government.

The other area that I wanted to speak to, Madam Speaker, was the increased fines and protections relating to the treatment of migrant workers. From what I understand—again, it’s only been a few hours since we’ve had the bill and had an opportunity to review it, but from what I understand, the proposed changes would establish increased fines for employers and people who are convicted of taking possession of or retaining a foreign national’s passport or work permit.

In eastern Ontario, as many know—I know the member from Renfrew knows—we have a vibrant agricultural sector. Ottawa is one of the largest farming communities in Ontario, certainly in all of Canada, and many of our farmers and our farm operations rely heavily on migrant workers to fulfill the needs on the farm, to help ensure that we all have food to eat and that our farming system remains as vibrant and as sustainable as it is. So we need to ensure that the protections are in place for these migrant workers. We should all agree that treating these workers with respect, treating these workers with compassion and treating these workers as the vitally important workforce they are for our agricultural community is of the utmost importance.

While I agree certainly with the proposals the government is making in terms of fines and jail time for withholding passports etc., we also need to be talking about the working conditions that many of these migrant workers face. There are many farmers who do an absolutely amazing job treating their migrant workers with respect and dignity—proper housing, proper pay etc.—but there are always bad apples. In any line of work there are bad apples, and we need to ensure that those bad apples are filtered out, treated and punished appropriately—not just on the passport side of things though, too; on the housing side, on the pay side, on the treatment as workers on the farms. I’d like to see the government pay a little bit closer attention to those elements of migrant work as well as we move forward.

Certainly I would agree—I know the NDP spent some time hammering away on this during their debate—that some of the most vulnerable workers may not have the confidence or the position to come forward to speak up about some of the treatment they might be facing, but I’m not sure that that’s a reason to vote against this legislation. Yes, there will be people who don’t come forward because of those reasons—that’s almost certain, to be sure—but not proposing stricter fines or not proposing stricter requirements simply because some people might be afraid or unable to come forward isn’t really a reason not to do that. If anything, those measures need to be in place and we need to figure out how to give these workers the confidence and give these workers the avenue, the platform etc. to be able to come forward without risks—not vote against it simply because those don’t exist yet.

I’m also very encouraged, Madam Speaker, to see the removal of barriers for women in the construction industry. We know that there is an enormous gap in construction and the trades from a labour perspective. This is obviously traditionally a male-dominated sector or sectors—lots of reasons around that, to be sure. Anything that can be done to encourage women to participate in the skilled trades, in construction etc., will obviously give those women another opportunity for employment, but will help the industry get to the numbers of workers that it needs to fulfill the obligations that we have in terms of our goals for housing construction and infrastructure etc. Making the working environment for women in these trades—offering them more protections; offering them the same ability to use washroom facilities that men, at least, take for granted; having proper equipment that suits the needs that women have that are unique to them—is obviously a step in the right direction.

But if the government really wanted to remove barriers that women are facing in the workforce, they would repeal Bill 124, which targets sectors of the economy that are predominantly women in the workforce in those sectors of the economy. They would also do things like support my private member’s bill, Bill 5, to help stop harassment and abuse by local leaders in municipalities. We know that there have been any number of cases where women in cities have been psychologically, physically, sexually harassed and abused in recent years. It’s happened in Ottawa; it’s happened in Barrie; it’s happened in Brampton; it’s happened in Mississauga. It’s likely happened in almost every community across the province, Madam Speaker. And while anyone who does these things who works at a construction site, who works at a farm, who works at Walmart or any other employer in the province would almost certainly lose their job pretty quickly for this type of behaviour, of course, for municipally elected officials, there is no ability to remove them from office. So I do hope that the government will support Bill 5 when it comes up for second reading at the end of May, as they did in the last legislative session, so that we can offer protections to women in our municipalities who suffer this kind of harassment and abuse all too often.

Perhaps the biggest absence from the bill that we’ve been able to see so far, Madam Speaker, is the lack of attention towards paid sick leave. We all know that people get sick from time to time. Your kids get sick. And no one should have to make a decision between going to work sick or staying home and not getting paid, putting the health of their children or their own health at risk in order to be able to continue to pay the bills, to buy groceries, to put a roof over their family’s head. And so we would hope that, as we move forward through the fourth and fifth and, I’m sure, sixth iteration that this government might come up with with the Working for Workers Act, that attention is paid to the need for paid sick leave so that all Ontarians can have that security of when you’re sick and need to stay home, that you don’t go to work, that you don’t spread whatever that sickness is, but you also don’t have to put your family’s security on the line because you fear being fired or losing out on a paycheque.

Questions?

I want to thank the member for Orléans for what I would say was a pretty balanced approach to what is and isn’t in Bill 79, contrary to what I heard from the New Democrats earlier, where they wanted to go back for 20 years and a litany of things that they don’t like. Because, you see, they have abandoned workers in this province, but we’re supporting workers in this province. And I appreciate what the member for Orléans had to say about the positive aspects of this bill, because no bill can address everything, otherwise they’d be that thick. But this bill is about supporting workers and also making sure that Ontario has the workforce to see that we can advance and progress over the next several years and the next number of decades.

So you did talk about the flooding in 2019 and your support for reservists, and I couldn’t agree with you more. Can you elaborate a little more on some of the aspects of that part of the bill that you find really positive and will be really good for families that have someone serving in the reserves?

Well, certainly what we saw in 2019, or what I saw personally in 2019 during the flooding in Cumberland were men and women who had, on 24 hours’ notice or less, put their entire lives on hold. We had students, we had people who worked in office and retail, and we had a lawyer who had to go and tell the partners, “Look, I can’t show up for work tomorrow because I’m going to head up to Ottawa and help save people’s homes.” That is noble work that our reserve army does for us, and I think we owe them the security of being able to say, “Yes, when you go home, your job will be protected. If, because of what you’ve done and what you’ve seen you need to take some time off to recover psychologically or from a health perspective, your job will be protected for that period of time as well.”

The government is certainly taking a step-by-step approach as opposed to going big. I know the NDP would prefer to go big, but they’d also prefer to get nothing done.

The important element that needs to come next, though, is the inspection regime, the enforcement regime and the penalty regime for organizations, companies etc. that may not end up providing the level of access or the level of facilities that the legislation and the regulations might call for. That’s act 2 to act 1. Act 1 is pretty good.

We typically take a whole-of-government approach to bills when we’re putting them forward. I want to give a shout-out in particular to the Associate Minister of Women’s Social and Economic Opportunity. She did a number of round tables in my riding. One of the things that came up in the round table for women in business, especially in the trades, was some of the challenges around simple things like the washroom. Here we have in this bill some changes to that, to make it more accessible for women, to effectively double the number of washrooms, the number of porta-potties at worksites. There were a number of other things that came up from those round tables, and I’m expecting to see some of those come in future bills.

But my question to the member is—I know there are things that are missing in it. I’m hoping that you will agree that this is actually a positive move forward on something as simple as having appropriate washrooms for both males and females. Would you agree with that?

I would like to thank the member from Orléans for his presentation. We’ve heard from government members claiming there will be presumptive coverage for pancreatic and thyroid cancers for firefighters, yet it does not exist within the bill. Earlier, I’d spoken to the government members about Bud Simpson, a Sarnia native who passed away from nasopharyngeal and gastrointestinal cancer which metastasized to his brain.

But I also wanted to share, from the Occupational Disease Reform Alliance, somebody from Peterborough who worked at General Electric—his widow’s name is Sara Sharpe. He worked there for 42 years and, unfortunately, he passed away just after he was nicely retired, with esophageal cancer. He passed away within two weeks.

My question to the member: Would you like to see multiple exposures covered in presumptive coverage, such as we’ve discussed?