I want to thank the member from Brantford–Brant for your comments today. I share your concern about firefighters in this province. I’ve got both an uncle and a cousin who are on the Toronto Fire Services here, and you know, the expansion to include pancreatic and thyroid cancers to provide protections for firefighters across the province is actually a step in the right direction.

But when I talk to firefighters, they’re also concerned about their colleagues, their fellow workers, who are impacted by Bill 124. Bill 124 removes the right to collective bargaining for public sector workers across this province, except for firefighters and police. The courts have already decided that this is a violation of the charter rights of those workers. Your government is actually appealing that bill.

Would you support a repealing of Bill 124 as part of this legislation in order to support workers across this province?

I appreciate that question, and it’s interesting. I also met with firefighters when they came here and had their legislative day. What they said to me was exactly what we are doing, that they needed these protections for their members.

Again, I’ve never seen a government work so quickly that the ask comes in when I had my last meeting with them after the election, and we’re announcing that change to legislation today to include those types of cancers in presumptive legislation.

It’s interesting how those things are all tied together, emotional trauma and physical trauma. It’s amazing how an awareness day—you can think, “Oh, what’s an awareness day?” But the conversations I’ve had with first responders about the experience they have had through their trauma—it’s absolutely amazing how having that awareness day has led to that.

It’s the same thing here. We need to acknowledge and we need to do something about it. Providing the supports for firefighters in adding these two types of cancers to presumptive legislation just speaks to how much our government cares for first responders.

I’m looking forward to Working for Workers 4 and to see what else we can do to support workers in the province of Ontario. I appreciate those, and I very much look forward to his support when we pass this legislation.

As far as mass termination goes, the reality is that we’ve seen the largest shift of work to remote work in history. In the fourth quarter of 2022, about 2.2 million people in Ontario worked from home; about 1.4 million are doing so on an exclusive basis and another 800,000 were doing so on a hybrid basis. To respond to this increase in remote work and a changing economy, we are introducing legislation that puts workers first. We are updating how a workplace is defined in Ontario’s labour laws to extend these protections to those who work from home. Furthermore, our government is also proposing changes that would require employers to provide new hires with basic information in writing about their job, such as pay, work locations and hours of work, even before their first shift.

But what’s really fascinating to me is that I haven’t really heard any negative parts about this legislation at all yet from the opposition. I guess my question back to them will be: We appreciate your ideas. We look forward to having another piece of legislation in Working for Workers 4. And will you be voting in favour of this legislation and supporting workers in the province of Ontario?

That’s why it’s so exciting to see that, starting this fall, students in grade 11 can transition to a full-time skilled trades apprenticeship program and earn their Ontario secondary school diploma at the same time. They don’t need to give up on their OSSD in order to pursue the dream of a trade. In fact, in the new high school that we announced in St. George, I know, working with the school boards, we hope to be graduating students who can challenge their first exam in the trade of their choice. I’m very excited about that.

I appreciated the comments about first responders from the member, but I want to invite him, in the answer to my question, to reflect on the fact that there are many first responders in this province. Firefighters do fantastic work, taking great risks, but so did Christine Mandegarian, a member of SEIU who went into the equivalent of a burning building, a long-term-care home infected with COVID, and lost her life. Do you know who was there for Christine, Speaker? Her union, the SEIU. Do you know what so many other care workers need in this province? A union.

I want to know from the member, who I believe does care about first responders, what his government will do to help workers like Christine—who, sadly, left us—form a union and get the respect they deserve? That’s really working for workers.

I want to thank the member opposite for his strong words and all his work that he’s done both on firefighting and as an avid public servant and MPP for his area.

I know that previously he introduced a very important private member’s bill on PTSD for first responders specifically to address what firefighters go through. I wanted to ask him to elaborate a little bit about how that private member’s bill and this bill complement each other, how they really show respect and honour to those who put themselves on the front line.

Thank you to the member from Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas for the presentation. I know that you spoke about some of the issues with regard to the firefighters, and that we need to add pancreatic and thyroid cancers as part of the presumptive occupational illnesses for firefighters.

Perhaps if you can elaborate on the importance of the work that firefighters do in this role—I say that because I know that last month we had a very tragic house fire in Pikangikum First Nation, where we lost three people. So again, can you elaborate on the presumptive list and the addition of these cancers?

Thank you for your presentation. I want to ask about—I’m very glad to see that some cancers are now being recognized as affecting firefighters. That’s terrific; it’s an important change. But I worry very much about the workers I know—I’ve been involved with the Thunder Bay injured workers support group for many years. There are workers who worked at the mill in Dryden. For many, many years, they’ve been waiting to have the neurological damage and lung damage recognized, but WSIB is still refusing to do that.

I’m wondering if you anticipate changing the direction of WSIB so that it’s really there for workers when they need it.

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?

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.

To your point—and thank you for the opposition’s statement—like many of us in the House, I’m privileged to have some very hard-working and dedicated firefighters in my riding. Firefighters die of cancer at a rate four times higher than the general population. On average, 50 to 60 firefighters die of cancer yearly in Canada, and half of those are from Ontario.

Will the member please support our proposal to expand WSIB to expand presumptive coverage?