Thank you again to the member from Ajax for the question.

I’ve travelled across Ontario listening to women’s stories, and I have learned of women’s washrooms being inaccessible for female staff. This is unacceptable, especially because only one in 10 construction workers in Ontario are women. If we want to attract more women to these well-paying and rewarding careers, we need to make sure our job sites are safer and equipped with appropriate resources.

Ontario is proposing to require women-only washrooms on construction sites. We’re also improving washrooms by requiring them to be completely enclosed, and to have adequate lighting, and to have hand sanitizer where running water is not accessible or possible. And we’re doubling the number of toilets on job sites to reduce the distance between washroom facilities.

These proposed regulatory amendments will meet labour demands and bring better jobs and bigger paycheques for women on these job sites in Ontario.

When women succeed, Ontario succeeds.

Thank you to the member opposite for her remarks. Recently, in my riding of Burlington, I met with a women-in-industry committee, who shared with me that a large number of women leave the skilled trades after three years because of a lack of bathroom facilities. We know that having sanitary washroom sites on construction sites is the right thing to do and it promotes workers’ dignity. Will the member across agree that our proposal to include women-only washrooms and increase standards for bathroom hygiene on construction sites for workers is a step in the right direction?

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?