Our province’s labour shortage is impacting the financial well-being of families across Ontario. Our labour shortage increases the cost of items they purchase every day. It is disrupting businesses and the supply chain and threatens economic stability.

The Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement nominee program is vital to help fill critical vacancies in our labour market and help support jobs in my riding. Unfortunately, this agreement will expire this fall. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development: What is our government doing to not only renew this program but help to expand it?

Thank you for the reminder, Speaker.

I’m going to try to be brief, because I know there are many of my colleagues who want to speak to this as well. We are talking about changing the schedule, but we’re talking about changing the schedule to 5 a.m. and sitting early—3 p.m. to 1 p.m.—so that the Conservative government can rush through legislation to attack the most vulnerable and lowest-paid workers in the education sector. This is cruel, and this is heartless.

Today during question period, I talked about Charity. I reminded this Premier that I spoke about Charity in August, and today again I spoke about Charity and the fact that she works full-time and goes to food banks to feed her kids. Essentially, the minister and the Premier are her employer, and they are comfortable—the Minister of Education, the Minister of Labour, the Premier of the Conservative Party are comfortable that their employees have to go to food banks to feed their kids. And, Speaker, they have the audacity to say this is about taking care of children. The Minister of Education said “equitable access to nutrition.”

I want to tell you, Speaker, I’ve talked about growing up below the poverty line, growing up poor. My back-to-school clothes for every year of my life until I was 16 were from the Salvation Army. You could collect clothing, and you paid 25 cents for a bag. They wouldn’t charge 25 cents to my mom, because we were that poor.

There are people in this province who are living in deep, deep poverty, and this Conservative government gave a standing ovation when they attacked these workers. It is disgraceful. And asking us to come back so you can attack them earlier, so you can hit them earlier, kick them while they’re down, is disgraceful.

I promised earlier I was going to be short, but I want to circle back to Charity, who messaged me after the question. She said, “I am terrified. I already have to go to food banks. What’s going to happen next when they do this? My kids tonight will be going trick-or-treating in the same Halloween costumes as last year because I can’t afford new ones.”

This is an embarrassment for the party, and I hope that all workers remember this.

Thank you, Speaker—

Interjections.

This government is wanting to fast-track it by making the House sit at 5 a.m. to start debating and then two hours in the afternoon, reclaiming some time there and changing the rules a bit to allow us to get through this faster, to get this piece of legislation to and through and passed so that they are ready with that great big huge hammer to stick it to those education workers—those most poorly paid education workers in the province, who at 5 a.m., Speaker, while the government is feeling quite pleased with themselves because they’re going to stick it to those education workers—they’re not going to let them strike—a lot of them are going to be getting up and getting ready to go to work. The custodial staff is going to be—if not already at work, at school—heading in to do important work. We’ve been talking about, we’ve been learning—some of us have been learning—about pandemic protocols, about cleanliness, about cleaning, and those custodial and janitorial workers and support staff are doing their darnedest, and they haven’t had what they needed all the way long.

So at 5 a.m., while we’ve got folks being smug because—like I said, stick it to ’em—we will be standing here in our place as New Democrats, glad to bring voice to this House on behalf of those workers, but they’ll already be starting their day, and they won’t be able to fill the galleries, which I know that they would like to do. They won’t be able to come to committee, because “Ram it through,” “Get ’er done”—right—“Run ’em over.”

Speaker, we’ve talked a bit about Bill 115—and I’m going to keep this connected to the motion, don’t you worry. My colleague from Waterloo talked about what brought her here—that Bill 115 was a big part of that. Well, my journey was different—not as public but about the same, because I was a teacher at the time and I got my teeth kicked in by the last Liberal government, maybe the actual last Liberal government. It was super anti-democratic. They stole our sick days and legislated us back to work and all sorts of stuff that turned out to not have been legal.

They and the province have learned—well, I don’t know about those members of the province—a valuable lesson about the cost of trampling rights. The courts have made their ruling, and it’s a hefty amount of money that is being repaid.

At the time when I got my teeth kicked in—I don’t know if that was the part I wasn’t allowed to say—by the then Liberal government, I got involved with my local union. I hadn’t been involved before that time. I got involved because it wasn’t right, because it wasn’t fair. It was anti-democratic. That manoeuvre of the Liberal government woke up a bunch of us to our responsibilities, as union members and as members of the labour community at large, to stand up for our rights to collectively bargain. I had no idea that I had collective bargaining rights. I was just doing a job that I thought was super important. But then I learned, and I was willing to stand up and defend those rights.

That’s what this government is doing, and I don’t know that they get that yet.

You are awakening a beast. You are going to have education workers who are going to wake up and realize their full potential, and all of you are going to feel it. Those of you who have dabbled in education and a labour minister who has said he’s a labour minister were the first ones to stand today and clap about ramming it through super fast, that we have this motion that is meant to make it all be finished and over and done with—wait for it—before the education workers are even on strike. That’s the difference to Bill 115—they were heavy-handed, and they laid the smackdown and brought the hammer down, but they had already gone on strike.

This government has said, “Well, we don’t like that. They may have the right to collectively bargain, but we’re going to take it away. They may have the right to strike”—they have the right to strike. And this government has said, “Well, I don’t like that.” So this government, by rushing this through by the end of this week, before they even go on strike—you are ready to lay it down for them, these workers you purport to care about? The party of the people or whatever—I forget; I don’t read their bumper stickers.

Interjection.

Speaker, I don’t mean to make light of it.

We will have the chance at 5 a.m., and we will come prepared with all of the letters that you are ignoring, that your inboxes are filled with—stories of workers in this province who are doing their darnedest. They can’t pay their own way, they can’t look after their families, they can’t feed their families, and you guys are saying, “Take it or leave it.”

You’re sending cheques in the mail for whatever parents wanted—200 bucks here, 200 bucks there.

You could hire education workers. You could be putting money into education. Instead, you’re saying, “You’re not the boss of me. We don’t like the rights that you have, and we are going to override them.”

That is shameful. It’s awful, but they think it’s great. They’re clapping and they’re saying something about how it’s about the kids. They wouldn’t know what is best for the kids. They don’t listen to the kids. They’re not listening to education workers. And I would say shame on every single one of them.

I hope that when you go back to your ridings that you hear it, and I hope that you hear it for a long time—because you’re picking a fight that you may think you’re going to win because you’ve got the biggest hammer here, but in the long term, these kids you pretend to care about are watching.

Interjections.

Those kids are watching. They care about their custodial staff. They care about their EAs. They care about their ECEs. They care about their teachers. They care about the principals—