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.

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 to the member from Guelph. The Conservative government, all morning now, for five hours, as the colleague had said, has been saying that there’s no way to stop a strike unless they mandatorily take away their collective bargaining rights and force them to continue using food banks.

Do you believe there’s any way that we can negotiate a way to keep schools open and elevate the wages of these workers so they aren’t going to food banks?