It’s my honour to rise in the House as the MPP for Perth–Wellington and the parliamentary assistant—one of two—to the Minister of Education to speak on the Keeping Students in Class Act, 2022. It’s also great to see our colleagues here this morning at 5 a.m. I think of all the workers today that woke up before sunrise to go to work, and I’m glad we’re here to debate this important legislation, Mr. Speaker.

This past September, students from across Ontario began their school year normally for the first time in nearly two years. Speaking to parents and students across both Perth and Wellington counties, and indeed the entire province, the response has been uniformly concrete: Our kids must stay in class from September to June.

Earlier this fall, I had the privilege to attend a commencement in my riding, as I’m sure many other members in this place are doing as well. It was wonderful to see the community, staff and students come together again in person to celebrate their achievements. However, it was the speech from the valedictorian that struck me the most after I left, and I feel it is necessary to share some of what was said with this place. She said that while she was truly grateful to attend commencement and to see her friends and teachers again, she and her classmates “were robbed of their high school experience” because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a powerful address—

Interjection.

It was a powerful address to parents, community members, students and educators in attendance.

I’ve had the privilege to speak to a couple of classrooms as well since my election, including one grade 11 classroom recently. Speaker, to see students back in the classroom learning and rebuilding relationships was heartening, but it was also informative for me. One student told me that she was just happy not to be learning through a screen o anymore. Mr. Speaker, the learning disruptions caused by the pandemic resulted in hardship in every student. However, in this grade 11 class, I saw students nearing the end of their high school journey, making important life decisions and learning critical skills, and realized that they cannot suffer from disruptions anymore.

Now is the time for concrete action that will make sure students stay in school. We know that school is not just a place for learning but also a place to make many feel supported and grow. Returning to school with a full slate of extracurricular activities has allowed students to regain lost skills, improve their mental health and physical health and to have some semblance of normal in their lives again. In short, we will not allow students to be robbed of their school experience.

We in this House must recognize how important a normal, stable and enjoyable school year is for parents and their children across the province. We must also fully recognize that two years of pandemic-related learning disruptions have left Ontario students in need of a plan to help them recover from learning loss over this period. Parents across Ontario know there is no substitute for in-person learning. We now have access to irrefutable data telling the tragic story of learning loss due to the disruptions over the past couple of years. The EQAO assessment results from the 2021-22 school year revealed exactly what parents throughout the province have been saying: Our students have seen decidedly weaker grades across all levels, particularly in the subject of math. Additionally, results from assessing reading and writing in our earliest learners has revealed a sharp decline in pre-pandemic testing. It is true that other jurisdictions around the world have shown a similar decline in math, reading and writing scores for their students. However, we as legislators cannot accept this to be the norm.

We now know the root cause of decline of these scores: disruptions to in-person learning. Speaker, that is why our government made every preparation to require students to be in in-class learning, on time and in person, so that kids could catch up on their learning, develop life skills and job skills required to succeed in the modern, 21st-century world, and simply to see their friends again in a normal classroom. Ontario’s Plan to Catch Up was informed through expert consultations to ensure a return to a normal school year—nothing short of a whole academic year.

Returning to the classroom means making the necessary investments to do so. I’m proud to say this government has risen to the occasion on this matter. This government is making historic investments to provide top-quality publicly funded education for our children—

Interjection.

I’ve negotiated for 21 years, and I know my colleague has also negotiated, and we know that 98% of negotiations don’t end up in strikes.

We heard the minister this morning talking about 72 hours to the deadline. Anybody who has negotiated in their life knows that deals get done at the last minute. Why? Because both parties—and you talked about the rock and the shoe. Anybody who negotiates knows that. So the minister should do his job, sit at the table and get the deal done.

I’m asking you, since you have experience: What do you think this government should do to get this deal done?

Thank you for the reminder, Speaker.

The reality of this is about the need to negotiate. The Conservative government has implied several times that the union wants to strike. The union doesn’t want to strike. I’ve been on strike—I never wanted to. It has to do with a fair bargaining agreement. The pebble and the shoe—the reason people sign is because things are fair, and the reason they withdraw their labour is because things are unfair.

The member is absolutely correct that negotiations typically go down to the wire, but only when parties are interested.

When you have a government that is preparing for a strike, when they put this much effort—this giant bill—into it instead of negotiating, they are not dedicated to resolving this. They’re not dedicated to keeping children in class. They’re dedicated to punishing these workers who are standing up for their rights. That’s their priority; it isn’t feeding children, it isn’t about a decent wage for hard-working families. It is about punishing people and flexing their muscles.

This is something I would call a straw man argument. That is when you put up something that has no substance and you pretend that it’s factual and that it’s something you can press against, but, like straw, it would bend and flop over with any decent argument.

The reality is, we’re not in favour of a strike any more than you are. We’re not in favour of students out of school—

I want to be clear: We are aligned on the need for children to stay in class. We are aligned on the importance. But where we divide is that we believe there is a way to do this through negotiation, and not through legislation that will harm workers and that will punish people. There’s a better way.

Our government is committed to keeping students in class. The government of Ontario has been engaging in negotiations with education sector unions following the expiry of their collective agreement on August 31, 2022. As of today, it’s more than two months.

Why do the NDP support a strike and keeping students outside the classroom? Why do they ignore the fact that students have to be in the classroom? And why do they punish students and their parents?

I’m getting to the best part, member from Brampton North.

These investments include an additional $683 million in this budget we just passed for this year’s funding to school boards, for a total of $26.6 billion. I want to compare this to the NDP-backed Liberal government just a few short years ago, Speaker. Our Progressive Conservative government and this Premier are investing more than $2.7 billion this year compared to the final year of the last previous Liberal government. This clearly demonstrates our commitment to improving student success, in contrast to the failed policies and practices of the previous NDP-backed Liberal government. These investments will go directly into our children’s classrooms to ensure they receive the top-quality education they deserve and the high standard of learning parents rightly demand.

What our students learn in the classroom is directly correlated to their future success. As such, we must continue to update Ontario’s various curricula, guaranteeing the instruction of necessary life and job skills to support a family and one day realize the dream of home ownership, and everything else included in the Canadian dream.

The previous Liberal government failed at nearly every turn to ensure our children’s studies kept up with the changing times. Neglected by the previous Liberal government, Ontario schools failed to address a rapidly changing world. I’ll provide an example, Speaker: Ontario’s elementary science and technology curriculum, which this government, under Minister Lecce, swiftly modernized, was last updated in 2007, the year Facebook and Twitter came online. This is unacceptable, and our government has made it a priority to constantly look for new ways to update and modernize curricula in ways that best work for students.

Another example includes Ontario’s grade 9 math curriculum, which the Liberals neglected to update since 2008, the same year the iPhone 3G was introduced. This neglect was shameful, and that’s partly why, in 2018 and again in 2022, the people of Ontario sent the Ontario Liberal Party to be independent members on the opposite benches in record-low numbers, and elected this party and this Premier, not once but twice, with a greater majority. Speaker, in doing so, the people of Ontario have given our government a renewed mandate to ensure student success is well-funded and looked after, and, most importantly, that students remain in class.

Ontario’s students deserve to learn in an environment that best equips them for the future. Our schools will finally include financial literacy, something the opposition previously neglected. For the first time, Ontario students will learn about mortgages, interest payments and the impacts of debt accumulation. These are foundational aspects of sound fiscal management which will help them succeed in life.

Students in Ontario and, indeed, across this nation and the western world have experienced declines in math. This cannot be understated, and we will not allow it to be so. We are investing $25 million in a new skills-focused curriculum that will ensure every board has a math specialist available with a special focus on early intervention. This government is also fighting the unions in court to ensure educators meet grade 9 math standards. Our students deserve no less than this common-sense requirement for education, and our government will keep taking every step necessary to ensure teachers are well-equipped to do their job.

For the past four years, this government placed a critical emphasis on science, engineering, technology and math, or STEM studies, in our classrooms. These subjects contain not only the keys to many successful futures for our students, but they represent areas of need in this province that will grow as time progresses. The success of Ontario’s future economy depends on the actions we take now. Under the leadership of Premier Ford, our government is ensuring that students will now explore how science relates to careers in the skilled trades and how emerging and new technologies impact these careers. These new learning expectations within the curriculum will ensure Ontario’s students are at the forefront of emerging innovation and thought, and able to compete in the global economy.

Our government has transformed the curriculum to now emphasize STEM education across all grades, embedding life and job skills that will support the next generation of scientists, innovators and entrepreneurs. For the first time in Ontario’s history, the revised curriculum includes required learning on real-world connections between science, technology, engineering and mathematics. And it includes food literacy. Coming from Perth–Wellington, it is great to see that that is included in the curriculum as well at such a young age, teaching our students the importance of our agricultural sector, food and healthy eating.

This government is also committed to building state-of-art schools which will play a major role in providing top-quality education spaces for Ontario students who need them now more than ever. Our classrooms are critical to the learning recovery for our students.

But, Speaker, we know that success inside the classroom can always use some help from outside the classroom. It is for this reason our government invested $176 million to expand free school-based—through school boards—tutoring supports, the largest publicly funded tutoring program ever in Canada for the students who need it the most. This investment will be used to improve the foundational reading and writing skills of our earliest learners, and to support them with better math literacy after a global decline during the two-year pandemic-related disruptions. This follows our government’s $15-million investment to deliver expanded summer learning opportunities.

Of course, Speaker, we know that schools provide much more than a space for education. Schools have always been important social settings for our kids to make friends and build life-lasting relationships. So it is clear, particularly for our young people, that pandemic-related disruptions have had a profound impact on the mental health of young people. Speaker, mental health is health. Our government and this Premier have made it a point to expand access to mental health supports well before the pandemic, but now more than ever, our children need our help.

This government is proud to have invested a historic $90 million in mental health supports for students, including an additional $10 million in new funding to expand access to much-needed mental health supports. For context, this investment represents a 420% increase on investment compared to the last mandate of the Wynne Liberal government. On this side of the chamber, we understand the critical importance that schools play in the lives of our students. That is why we must fight to make sure they stay in class, where they deserve to be.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to support our newly re-elected government’s continued determination to provide financial relief to hard-working Ontario families. It is real and tangible economic support at the most crucial of times that also respects the choice of parents. Through Support for Families, Support for Learners and the COVID-19 child benefit, our government, under our last mandate, made over $1.6 billion available in financial relief to Ontario families in the uncertain economic times of the pandemic. Mr. Speaker, it was shameful that the opposition voted against all three initiatives to support families and provide relief.

Recently, this government has added to already historic levels of direct support to parents, as I mentioned, by announcing the education catch-up payments, which I am pleased to say, as of this morning, 972,000 families have applied for. This is $365 million in financial relief put directly in the pockets of Ontario parents, which will help ensure our students recover from learning losses accrued during the pandemic and allow parents, who are best suited to make these decisions, to do so.

It is worth noting that every step of the way, as I mentioned, the NDP and the Liberals have opposed this financial relief because they believe in a one-size-fits-all approach drawn up by downtown Toronto bureaucrats far away from the families in need.

There is only one political party in this Legislature which consistently stands on the side of parents, and I’m proud to be a member of that party supporting parents and providing stability to students at every turn.

CUPE’s decision to walk out on students in this province by imposing a needless, but predictable, strike only proves their lack of support for the ones who need it the most: the students.

Speaker, I would like to take the time to set the record straight in this place: At no point, throughout the months of negotiation, has CUPE budged on their demand for a nearly 50% increase in compensation over four years—

Interjections.

It’s simple math that the opposition seems not to be able to do, Speaker.

While Ontarians in the private sector have faced wage stagnation and, in many cases, benefit rollbacks, CUPE believes it is reasonable to demand more than 11% in compensation annually for the next four years and, if not met, that Ontario students—who have suffered, as I’ve mentioned, extensively over the past two years—should be forced to bear the burden when the union once again goes on strike.

As education workers march steadfastly toward another strike, they’re being offered a deal that includes salary increases, year after year, and the protection of one of the most generous pension benefit plans in the nation. This includes 11 paid sick days at full pay and 120 short-term-leave days at 90% of their salary. By comparison, a worker working the same job at Porter Airlines—a great company—receives just five paid sick days and a pension plan that is not even remotely comparable.

CUPE’s eagerness to pursue another strike is unfortunate but expected. Education unions in this province have subjected parents and students to the same tactics of disruptions over many years. Before I was born, in 1989—since then, Ontario students have spent a total of 2,244 days out of the classroom due to union-driven strikes. Together, that totals over six years of being out of the classroom. To put that into context, that’s more than a student would spend in all of high school, even when there was an additional year of instruction for grade 13. I remember the strikes when I was in school, as well.

And it doesn’t matter the government: I want to remind members of all parties in this House that a common denominator of these strikes, as I mentioned, is not the Premier nor the political party. No, Speaker—for the NDP, in just one term—and I’m here to improve the name of Rae in this place—over 1,000 instructional days were lost in the classroom due to union-led disruptions. My Liberal colleagues in this House faced the same types of walkouts and school closures. For nearly—

Interjections.

There is only one commonality in classroom disruptions, and it occurs almost like clockwork. That commonality, Speaker, is the education unions. That’s not fair, that’s not reasonable and it’s not acceptable. To that end, we will guarantee Ontario students remain in the classroom where they belong, where they’re best positioned to recover from the lost studies and learn the skills and knowledge they need to succeed. While CUPE is choosing to impose strikes on Ontario families, parents and kids, Ontario’s government is choosing to keep kids in class.

To the grade 11 students I recently had the privilege to visit, those attending commencement, the students who are again learning in person and participating in extracurricular activities, know this: Your government, Premier Ford, Minister Lecce and all of us on this side of the House will not allow your school year to be robbed from you. And to the parents of Ontario: You can be assured that your children will remain in class with a normal, stable, enjoyable school year from September to June.

To her question about this bill in particular, we’re ensuring students stay in class so they can have those supports, and providing a good and fair deal to the union and CUPE.

Our government has been at the negotiating table, as has already been mentioned, for over two months with this particular bargaining group, we offered them a fair deal, and they still chose to proceed with strike action. And we increased our amount this past Sunday, Speaker. We increased the amount to 10% over a four-year term for the lowest-paid workers: $43,000 is the limit; we raised that too. We provided an additional deal to them, and they still chose to pursue the strike. So, unfortunately, we are here in this place debating this piece of legislation to ensure students stay in school on November 4 and moving forward.

I would like to read an email from one of my constituents:

“Hello,

“We are parents of a grade 7 student....

“Our child is thriving this year and she is quite upset at the thought of school being disrupted, but she is also old enough”—

Interjections.

“As parents and taxpayers, we are appalled at the heavy-handed approach to the lowest-income earners in the education sector....

“The cost of living has gotten out of control yet wages have not kept up.” Then, they thank me for my time.

What I would like to know is, what does this member say to constituents whose emails he receives, I’m sure, quite the same within his own community?

I’m going to ask the official opposition to come to order. The member for Perth–Wellington has the floor.

Thank you to my colleague from Perth–Wellington for his wonderful presentation. He gave a lot of facts about the education system—how we reform and how we modify the education system in Ontario after daycare.

My son Venorth is talking about mental health during this time. He just graduated as an automotive engineer. He’s still suffering with his mental health. We even talked about it last week. He did some of the practical exams through the virtual. As an engineer, it’s a difficult thing to do. I ask the member, why is the government not tolerating even one day of learning disruption? Is mental health one of the reasons?

Thank you to my colleague, obviously, for that great question. The reason we’re here this morning so early is to ensure our students are in class for the entire period from September to June, ensuring that they have the ability to interact with their friends in person, ensuring that they’re able to learn in class and do projects together in class and to experience everything we all remember from our time in elementary school and high school and beyond. So this is why we are here today: to ensure that our students remain in class moving forward.

We have been committed since the election—the Premier, the Minister of Education have been clear: We cannot tolerate any disruptions to in-person learning, so we will be in this House to ensure that students can remain in the classroom from September to June, Speaker.

I just want to thank the member for speaking early today. Last night, because the House adjourned, I was able to go home and hand out treats to the kids who came to the door. It was so great to see the little ones dressed up in their princess and witch costumes and Superman costumes. You know what? Seeing the smiles on their faces, being together with their friends—and we had the opportunity to chat with some of the parents back and forth as they got their little bags of chips and went along in the neighbourhood. But the biggest part was the smiles on those kids’ faces and the sociability of the kids being together.

I guess the question that I’m asking the member is, why is this so important for our children that we take care of this legislation today?

I want to relay some comments from a constituent of mine from St. Catharines, since I don’t feel that a lot of the other members on the opposite side have actually had time to read these emails, but we’ve taken the time. I just want to quote a few things: “As an education worker, I have never felt more like giving up in my field as a library technician. I worked for 10 years as a casual employee making pittance above minimum wage with no paid sick time or benefits.”

It goes on to say, “Ford is taking away the right to strike and refuses to bargain in good faith. The bullying must stop. Parents want their children to remain in school; some of these parents are also education workers. But those same workers must not be held hostage in schools to ensure that.

“Instead, Lecce must stay at the table and negotiate in good faith with the hard-working CUPE negotiation team.”

I want to ask the member from Perth: Do you believe what you have said? Do you feel that five cents to the lowest-wage earners is good and keeping up with the cost of inflation—five cents?

Thank you for the quick response.

Further debate?

Thank you to the member from Perth–Wellington for your passionate presentation. I am just as passionate as you are because the parents and students in Richmond Hill have been coming to me and they say now they are more relieved, because they thought there will be a strike. So I’m happy that we are working so hard to fight to make sure that the kids will be back in class. My question is, why is our government not tolerating even one day of learning disruption?

The next question.

I’ll be sharing my time with the member from Spadina–Fort York and the member from Windsor West.

Speaker, this bill, Bill 128, is a contemptible bill. Some bills are like a fine steak. They’re richly marbled. They’re deep red. They’re clearly an object of substance and nourishment. And others are like a hot dog that’s been on a roller grill of a 7-Eleven for 24 hours—wrinkled, mysterious and oddly coloured.

This contemptible bill is that hot dog. Not only will it give political heartburn to anyone who actually votes for it, it will make people sick who have it stuffed down their throat. And that is the government’s goal: to not only chew on it themselves, but also to stuff it down the throats of those education workers who were true front-line heroes through the height of the pandemic.

This government bill will destabilize education and shortchange Ontario families. For those who have suffered through and are suffering through the health care crisis that has been provoked by Bill 124, who have been in packed ERs—when they’re open—they know that a bill that punishes those front-line workers, that demoralizes them, that drives them out of the sector is one that undermines the critical services that we need to have in this society.

And that’s what this bill will do. It will beat up education assistants, early childhood educators, custodians and librarians. That process of driving people out has already started. I hear from parents now who tell me they are desperate to get support for their children in the classroom, but the wait for that support is backed up so that they don’t get the assistance that they need. And that’s even in a situation where those workers are doing the best they absolutely can. They are committed to the children in their care, they work hard, but they can’t keep up.

I’ve talked to those education assistants directly, at the door, who tell me about their desperation in trying to keep up with the demands, the needs of the children that they’re responsible for. But they tell me they’re short-handed and they can’t do anything, but, every day, put on the equivalent of an educational Band-Aid to try and get through the day.

So this bill is about beating up on those workers. It’s about undermining the quality of education in this province. To say otherwise is to subject the facts to the worst kind of abuse. When you decide to demoralize and drive out the very education workers that you need to make the system function, then you can’t argue that your priority is education, that your priority is children and families. And when you look at this government’s record on education over the last four and a half years, you can recognize quickly that any commitment or any claim they make to a commitment to Ontario’s children and families is not a real commitment.

Speaker, I want to look at some of the extraordinary elements in this bill. There is a section entitled, “Application of charter and Human Rights Code and limits on courts, etc.” This is the section that explicitly undermines human rights and constitutional protections. Now, most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the Human Rights Code or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms or our Constitution, but when governments act in a way that is abusive, they somehow know there is a backstop, that there’s legislation or laws in place that will give them protection against government acting in a way that is abusive, that is arbitrary, that is damaging.

In Canada, we have a problem with our Constitution in that we have something called the “notwithstanding” clause so that governments can declare what they brought forward is not covered by the Constitution. Legal experts have said that where this exemption is used, it should be used very sparingly. Well, I have to tell you, Speaker, this bill takes full advantage of that “notwithstanding” clause that exempts this bill from constitutional protections. When you do that, you’re saying right off the top that you recognize that what you’re doing is unconstitutional. You’re not beating around the bush. You’re not hiding this away in some obscure clause. You’re saying right off, “You don’t have any constitutional protection. We’re taking that away from you. We’re going to beat you up, and you don’t have any legal option to fight back.” That’s what’s going on. But that’s not the end of the attack on our fundamental rights, because the bill also says explicitly that the Human Rights Code does not apply.

What’s extraordinary to me is that this government stopped there. They could have said the Employment Standards Act doesn’t apply, or the Occupational Health and Safety Act. What about the Ten Commandments? Clearly, they were underperforming with this bill, because they could have tried to wipe out jurisdiction of any other law protecting workers. But I have to say, the damage they’ve done is enough.

I do want to note that the bill goes on for pages about how the government and its servants are protected, shielded, held harmless, explicitly exempt from any kind of legal action whatsoever with regard to fundamental laws in this society. You have to be doing some pretty grim stuff to put those sorts of protections for yourself in legislation. You have to be messing around at a pretty profound level to say, “We’re exempt from the Human Rights Code and from Canada’s Constitution.” You have to be very clear that you are putting aside people’s rights, that you are trampling on those rights, that you are stuffing this ugly mess down people’s throats. That’s the ground that’s cleared by these exemptions.

All of us in this society need to be protected from governments that go down the wrong road. When you use the “notwithstanding” clause, when you say that the Human Rights Code doesn’t apply, it isn’t just the workers in this case who will be harmed. Everyone in this society knows that the next time the government hits against this guardrail, that guardrail has been weakened.

So we’ve got a bill that not only undermines the quality of education and beats up on a dedicated group of people who are trying to give our children the education they need, but this bill hurts the quality of education and undermines our fundamental rights in this society. Speaker, that is simply wrong.

This bill needs to be withdrawn. It needs to be thrown out. This government needs to sit down with the education workers and actually negotiate, not dictate, and come to a deal that everyone can live with to protect the quality of education.

With that, I turn the floor over to my colleague.

Something that I really want to point out here, because all I’m hearing from the government side—I’m not surprised; they’re Conservatives—is anti-union rhetoric. So I want to be clear: These education workers, the lowest-paid education workers, who make on average $39,000 a year or less, are not on strike. They’re not on strike. It hasn’t happened yet. And yet you have this bill that you tabled yesterday ready to go, and stand here and attack these workers. You talk about them keeping students out of school—these workers aren’t on strike. CUPE education workers have had zero days over the last eight years of being on strike. They’re not keeping kids out of classrooms, this government is keeping kids out of classrooms. That’s what’s happening.

As my colleague from Davenport pointed out, because of this government’s bad policies and lack of investment in the education system, there were 27 weeks that schools were shut down—27 weeks, the worst record in Canada and one of the worst in the entire world. It was you keeping kids out of school, and you know, while you were doing that, these education workers, these EAs, were still in the classrooms supporting some of the most vulnerable students. And you have the nerve to bring this kind of legislation forward and to sit there, smugly mocking me for what I’ve said, and attack these workers.

My colleagues that have spoken so far have all done a wonderful job of talking about how these workers work two, three jobs in some cases and have to go to the food bank to feed their families.

The Daily Bread Food Bank put out a report. The title of it: Government Public Policy Drives Number of Food Bank Visits. It’s a new report. Government policy—your policy—is driving the increase in the need for food banks. And when you all stand over there, especially the Minister of Education, and say, “This is about equity of access. This is about food security for students”—if you weren’t suppressing the wages of these education workers, if you weren’t suppressing the wages of our health care workers, if you weren’t suppressing the wages of those that work in developmental services, they wouldn’t be relying on food banks. It wouldn’t be happening.

And because you all seem completely unaware of the reality in the education system, it’s the education workers, out of their own pockets—those lowest-paid education workers, making under $40,000 a year—who are then taking money out of their own pockets to ensure that those students, when they come to school, have something to eat, to ensure that in the colder months they have a coat and a scarf and mittens. Because not only are you undervaluing and underpaying their parents and forcing their parents to go to food banks, you’re doing it to the workers in the education system and then saying, “Hey, it’s those greedy workers that are causing the problem.” That’s what you’re saying. It’s absolutely shameful.

I want to point out what my colleague pointed out, that there are 73 people on that side of the House—just after this election alone. The Premier increased, created—magically created—parliamentary assistants, who got a $16,000 pay bump. They were making $116,500 a year already, plus expenses, and they got $16,000. But these folks, who make under $40,000 a year, are greedy and unreasonable? Are you kidding me?

Should we talk about the ministers on that side of the House, that during the election it came out that the ministers—$165,000 a year, plus expenses—were taking money from their riding associations and saying, “Totally acceptable. We’re struggling to cover the cost of food and everyday essentials.” Are you kidding me? And then you stand here with this bill?

Speaker, in the last minute and a half that I have, I want to point out—I have to point out—these education workers: largely a women-led profession. Nurses: largely a women-led profession. Developmental service workers: largely women-led. We don’t see this government coming for the public servants that are largely led by men in the field.

What this legislation says to every single woman in this province—and I cannot believe that we’re still having to have this conversation and debate this crap and have this fight—what this is saying to every woman in the province is what they’ve been saying for centuries—centuries—to women: “Just go sit in the corner over there and be quiet.” These women are speaking up, and you’re saying, “Go sit in the corner and be quiet. Here’s the scraps we’re going to give you, and you’d best be happy about it. And because you actually”—heaven forbid, as a woman—“had the nerve to speak up and fight back,” this government brings in this kind of legislation—

Interjection: Bullies.

It’s important, what my colleague just said—you need to negotiate, not dictate.

This is the scariest bill that I think has been before this House during the four years that we’ve been in this House.

I’m going to dedicate my time today to my grandson Shea, who is 10 months old, and to the children I saw on Halloween at CityPlace—the Halloween crawl there last year—and to all the children in Ontario, because I want all of the children in Ontario to grow up in a democracy. And a democracy means that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the fundamental law of the land and nobody overrides the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I would ask the Conservative MPPs in this House: Why did you run? Did you know this government never said in their election campaign that they were going to be using the “notwithstanding” clause to override workers’ rights in this country? They never said that they were going to use the “notwithstanding” clause to fundamentally strip all of us of our fundamental rights. When people talk about the “notwithstanding” clause, most people don’t understand what that means.

In this bill, it specifically states that they are overriding sections 2 and 7 through 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Section 2 is our fundamental freedoms—freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of speech. Those are the fundamental freedoms.

So to the Conservative MPPs in this House: You are under extreme pressure from your caucus to vote today to suspend the fundamental freedoms of the people of this province—

Interjections.

This is a slippery slope, because the Premier has said in the past, when they used this before, “We won’t be shy about using the ‘notwithstanding’ clause again.” In other words, he’s not going to be shy about stripping the people of Ontario of their fundamental freedoms and of their legal rights. That is extremely frightening. And it’s not just—this goes across party lines. This is not a Liberal, Conservative, NDP debate; this is a debate about the fundamentals of our democracy.

I’ll give you some quotes from other people who commented on the last time this government used the “notwithstanding” clause.

Brian Mulroney, the former Conservative Prime Minister of this country, said the “notwithstanding” clause is a grave flaw and it makes the charter not worth the paper it is printed on.

Bill Davis, the former Conservative Premier of this province and one of the drafters of our Constitution, condemned the Premier’s use of the “notwithstanding” clause, and he said it’s because you’re undermining our fundamental freedoms and legal rights. That’s not what the “notwithstanding” clause was to be used for.

Roy McMurtry, a former Conservative cabinet minister in this Legislature, as well as former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and former Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow wrote, the last time this government used the “notwithstanding” clause, “We condemn the Premier’s actions and call on those in cabinet and caucus to stand up to him.” A former Conservative cabinet minister in this House was calling on the Conservative MPPs to stand up to the Premier, and he said, “History will judge you by your silence.”

Andrew Coyne, the Globe and Mail columnist, said, “The Ford government is exactly the kind of government the charter was supposed to restrain. Handing it the ‘notwithstanding’ clause is like handing a drunk a loaded gun.”

Amnesty International, which usually doesn’t have much to do with a democracy like Canada—it usually deals with dictatorships or governments that are slipping into dictatorship, which is my big fear here, because we’ve watched, over the last 20 years, country after country slip into dictatorship, slip away from their democratic ideals. This government’s got Amnesty International criticizing it, and Amnesty International is condemning the use of the “notwithstanding” clause because it exhibits this government’s contempt for human rights.

And then the reason this government is doing this—so why use this loaded gun? Why strip Ontarians of their fundamental freedoms and of their legal rights? It’s because they want to impose a settlement on the lowest-paid education workers in our province—the ECEs, the special-needs assistants, the office administrators, the custodians, the librarians, the people who look after our children in schools all day. This is what this government wants to do.

I’ll just give a couple of examples of how low this is. One ECE says she is currently homeless, lives in her car and in shelters, and she’s dealing with pain and food insecurity—and this government is trying to impose a cap on their wages.

The member for Spadina–Fort York.