It is certainly my honour to rise once again to participate in the debate on the Stay Home If You Are Sick Act. This is a bill that is certainly more timely and more urgent than either of the two times that it was debated before in this Legislature, and I urge all of my colleagues in the House today to vote to pass this legislation, to finally give Ontario workers the support that they need to recover from illness, to care for a sick child, without having to worry about losing their income or potentially even their job.

This is the third time that this bill has been debated in this Legislature. I first brought it forward in December of 2020, as Ontario’s deadly second wave was just starting to peak and as workplaces surged to become the most common site of COVID-19 outbreaks. And at that time, they surpassed even long-term-care homes.

The importance of providing workers with paid sick days was reflected in the unprecedented support that my bill received at that time. We had big-city mayors. We had mayors across the province. We had boards of health. We had municipal councillors. We had medical officers of health. We had health care professionals, health policy experts, economists, unions and small businesses and employer networks.

Unfortunately, Speaker, the bill did not pass when it was debated in February 2021, but the government obviously felt the pressure from this near-unanimous call for the government to move forward with paid sick days, and they did move a tiny step forward when they announced the worker income protection benefit in April of that year. That program gives workers three paid sick days for any COVID-related leave that was taken between April 19 and September 25.

On this side of the House, when that bill was brought forward by the government to establish the worker income protection benefit, we did support it—even though it was temporary, even though it was completely inadequate when COVID self-isolation requirements were at 10 days, and even though the benefit that the government introduced only covered COVID and it excluded all other illnesses. Although the program was recently extended to March 2023, it has not been made permanent. It has not been expanded to cover other sicknesses, other illnesses. It remains temporary, and it remains at only three days, and it remains completely inadequate.

Speaker, many Ontarians have had COVID two, three, maybe even four times. I’m not sure about you, but I myself have had COVID twice already, and the first time, I self-isolated for 10 days. The second time, I self-isolated for five days. And fortunately, I was able to isolate at home over those 15 days without any impact on my salary. I was able to work from home because of the nature of the job that I do. But if I didn’t have that ability, Speaker, three of those 15 days that I had stayed home could have been paid under the worker income protection benefit program, but the remaining days would all have been unpaid. And if I had been sick with anything else—like the flu, like stomach flu, like strep throat, whatever—the time that I spent in bed to recover would have been entirely unpaid. There would have been no support from this government.

Speaker, for workers who are living paycheque to paycheque, that could mean not being able to pay the rent, not being able to buy the groceries; it could even mean losing their job if their employer insisted that they come in to work. That is a choice that no worker should have to make.

But within this province, that is the reality for the majority of workers in Ontario. Almost 60% of workers in this province do not have access to paid sick days from their employer, and that figure rises to 75% for workers who are racialized or immigrant or low-income; these are usually workers who are in front-line and essential jobs. They are the workers who clean our buildings, who bag our groceries, who prepare our food, who care for our children and our seniors, who keep our transit systems running and our factories and supply chains going. These are the workers who have been hit harder by COVID than anyone else in Ontario.

We saw in the Toronto Star an investigative report on the impact of COVID-19 on workers through WSIB claims that were filed, and we saw that at least 108 workers in this province died from work-related COVID infections between March 2020 and the end of 2021, and the majority of those fatalities were in manufacturing. They were recorded among workers who were making bubble gum, who were producing baby clothes, who were making plastic jerry cans. These, of course, are workers who could not work from home during pandemic lockdowns but were exposed to significant workplace risks that many of us would have flatly refused.

They cannot work from home if their child has a mild fever or a runny nose. They’ll have to take the risk of sending their child to child care or school and hoping they don’t get that call to come to pick them up, or they will have to take the risk that their financial security will be jeopardized if they take a cut in pay to stay home with their child. We are in the midst of the worst affordability crisis in decades, Speaker, which means that these workers are put in an impossible position.

And during a global pandemic, of course, it is also a recipe for public health disaster. Early in the pandemic, we saw a study from Peel Public Health that showed that of 8,000 workers who were surveyed, almost 2,000 of those workers—fully one quarter—reported to work sick, including 80 who actually had a positive COVID test result. They did not go in to work sick because they wanted to infect their co-workers or because they didn’t believe in public health advice to stay home. They went in to work because they had no choice. They knew that if they missed a day of work, they would miss a day of pay. And for workers, as I said, who are living paycheque to paycheque, that is simply not an option.

So, Speaker, I gave the government a second chance to re-think my bill when we brought it forward about a year ago last fall; still they voted it down. Today, this government can show that working for workers is more than just an empty slogan. They can show that they understand the consequences to worker health and to public health and to our economy when workers can’t stay home to recover or to care for a sick child. They can actually do something to address the crisis in our pediatric hospitals and our overwhelmed pediatric emergency rooms and ICU beds. We’ve heard the Minister of Health talk about the province’s plan, but clearly that plan is not working.

Yesterday, Children’s Hospital in London announced the cancellation of children’s surgeries because of the crisis in the ER and the ICU beds. The Minister of Health’s response is to follow layers of protection: to mask, to keep vaccines up to date and to stay home if you are sick. But this government has failed to show leadership on masking, they’ve failed to launch a comprehensive vaccine campaign, but today, they can actually do something to enable workers to stay home when they are sick.

We know, Speaker, that paid sick days save lives. We know this from research that was done in the US early in the pandemic from research that the science advisory table helpfully put out that included definitive evidence that paid sick days reduce transmission in workplaces and schools. If parents have access to paid sick days, they can take a sick child to the doctor early rather than to the emergency department and reduce the pressure that pediatric ICUs are experiencing.

Paid sick days, Speaker, are also good for the economy. They make it much more likely that workers will participate in preventive health care. They’ll book screening tests. They’ll take their children to the doctor to get vaccines. They reduce workplace injury. They allow workers to recover faster and return to work. They reduce the problem of presenteeism, when workers go in to work and potentially infect their co-workers, but they actually aren’t in any condition to be able to do the job. This cost employers and our economy billions in lost productivity.

I want to give a shout-out, Speaker, to the Decent Work and Health Network, to the health care professionals who have advocated so strongly and consistently in support of my bill.

I just want to read from an editorial in the Ottawa Citizen yesterday by two doctors from the Decent Work and Health Network. They say, “As we have done countless times before, we implore our politicians to finally heed the science and choose to protect Ontarians, by passing Bill 4 into law.

“If our government wants to put children first, their families and caregivers need paid sick days now. Paid sick days save lives, protect our medically vulnerable and marginalized community members, and are crucial to supporting the health of essential and front-line workers and their families.” Pass my bill today.

It is an honour to rise on behalf of my constituents to support Bill 4, the Stay Home If You Are Sick Act. I’d like to thank my colleague the member for London West for bringing forward this important bill once again.

I’d also like to acknowledge organizations like Justice for Workers and the Decent Work and Health Network, among so many others, for continuing to push for paid sick days in this province.

Speaker, there are so many arguments in support of paid sick days, but I don’t have much time to speak, so I will raise three key points. The first is that paid sick days are good for public health and are a low-cost, preventative measure to reduce strain on our health care system. And our health care system is under tremendous strain right now. Ontario is in the midst of a health care crisis as respiratory illnesses like the flu, RSV and COVID are spreading. Hospitals are overwhelmed. Emergency rooms are overcrowded. Hallway health care is the norm. Children’s emergency departments and ICUs are bursting at the seams.

CTV News reported this week that a four-year-old child with Down syndrome, who was suffering from pneumonia, waited 40 hours in emergency before getting a bed. That’s the kind of stress our health care system is under.

Paid sick days are a cost-effective way to keep sickness from spreading and reduce the strain on our health care system. Paid sick days literally save lives. When people can stay home when they are sick, it dramatically reduces the spread of infectious diseases.

My second point is that we need to respect workers. Workers are who keep our province running. Everything we have and do is possible because of workers, but almost 60% of Ontario’s workers don’t have access to paid sick days. It’s disrespectful and harmful to make people go to work when they are sick or to expect them to stay home without any pay. Many workers don’t have that choice. They live paycheque to paycheque and cannot afford to lose pay. Providing all workers with paid sick days would provide them with the respect that they deserve.

My third and final point is that paid sick days are good for the economy. They’re good for business. Paid sick days keep workers and customers healthy. When workers stay at home when they’re sick, their colleagues stay healthy. Research shows that paid sick days reduce staff turnover, increase productivity and improve worker morale.

I urge this government: Please reduce the strain on our health care system, give workers the respect they deserve and help boost our economy by passing the Stay Home If You Are Sick Act. Let’s legislate paid sick days for all workers of this province.

I want to thank my colleagues who participated in the debate, and in particular my NDP colleagues from Parkdale–High Park, Scarborough Southwest and Humber River–Black Creek.

A couple of points were made that I want to reinforce. Our health care system is in the midst of a crisis that we have never seen before. We have an affordability crisis in this province. Paid sick days will reduce strain on our health care system. It will help parents get through this crisis we’re seeing in our pediatric hospitals, and it will give families the financial stability they need to stay home if they are sick.

I also appreciate the comments highlighting that paid sick days is an equity issue: The workers most likely not to have paid sick days are racialized workers, are low-income workers, are immigrant workers, are women workers. We need paid sick days to support those workers.

To the government members who spoke to my bill: I want to remind them that their worker income protection benefit is a temporary program. It’s going to end in March 2023. It’s only for COVID-related illnesses. It won’t cover workers who need to take a day off because they have the flu, the stomach flu, strep throat or any number of other illnesses. They can’t access those three paid sick days, and it is completely inadequate. We are in the third year of a global pandemic. Workers who used those three paid sick days last year are completely out of luck. It was a one-time three-paid-days benefit.

We need permanent paid sick days legislated in the Employment Standards Act, so that all Ontario workers have access to the financial security they need and are not facing that impossible choice of having to potentially infect their co-workers at work or lose their paycheque if they stay home.