The economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are making it challenging for businesses in Ontario to find the skilled women and men they need to grow and prosper. Small business owners continue to feel the pressure of the labour shortage, and the skilled and semi-skilled labour shortage remains one of the main factors limiting business growth. We know that small businesses are a significant contributor to Ontario’s economy, so it is essential to help them thrive and feel confident about the future.

Speaker, can the Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development share with the House what assistance our government is providing workers to train them with the skills they need to help restart our economy?

I listened intently to the member opposite—and of course, as we approach the 10-year anniversary of the passage of the 2012 budget, I was thinking about budgets throughout the years—and it was interesting to me to hear the member opposite say that his party has always stood with front-line workers, when we know that they were a party that propped up the Liberal government, including in a 2012 budget that froze wages across the board, that many public sector unions and labour partners across the province spoke out against.

So my question is, why would the member opposite be part of a party that passed legislation that spoke against the rights of workers and yet now won’t vote for anything that is ensuring that there is more staff in our long-term-care homes, more staff in our hospitals, and more supports for these front-line workers, who deserve all of our support in order to ensure that they are given the tools they need to provide world-class health care here in the province of Ontario?

I can assure the member from Whitby that the NDP would never say yes to privatization. The NDP would never say yes to watering down climate targets. The NDP would never support some of the initiatives that this government has brought forward that are going to make people’s lives worse, not better.

What we have heard from the labour movement consistently is a campaign for paid sick days. For goodness’ sake, workers in this province need access to 10 permanent employer-paid sick days. Instead, we have a government that cancelled the paid sick days that were available to workers before they were elected and has now brought in three inadequate paid sick days to cover three years of the pandemic, when we’re looking at a seventh wave. Workers who had to access those three paid sick days in an earlier wave have no recourse if they get COVID. They’re going to have to make that choice: “Do I go into work infected—tested positive for COVID—so I don’t risk losing my paycheque? Or do I stay home and possibly not be able to pay the rent?”

Just for those people who might be tuning in now or have been listening, what we’re debating is the motion in reply to the speech from the throne.

An important aspect in that particular speech, Speaker, and you’ll remember this—I’ll put my glasses on so I can quote it correctly. This is an investment of “more than $1 billion in a skilled trades strategy to reduce the harmful stigma around the trades, particularly for women and young people, while expanding training opportunities to help build the most highly skilled workforce in North America.” That’s been led and led well by our Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development. It also includes a partnership of several unions who, yes, supported us during the election, but who have been a key part of the success that we’ve had thus far.

From time to time when we’re debating this particular motion or other important motions or subsets coming out of what we’re debating today, all we hear is no. More stalling. More of the status quo. Are we going to hear that again? Skills development, opportunities for young men and young women in this province they haven’t had before—because of the leadership of that minister, the leadership of our Premier and of our cabinet. Is the member from London West going to stand in her place again and say no?

Mr. Speaker, I was listening and I just want to talk about the government—when there was a pandemic, we were the government who were here to bring the job-protected leave. We did not want any worker in the province to choose between their health and their job, and that’s what we did, thanks to the leadership of Premier Ford and the best-ever labour minister we have who’s delivered this.

Interjections.

On the other hand, Mr. Speaker, we’ve seen there are 370,000 jobs going unfilled. The question to the member opposite for London West is simple: Do you think we need to support these workers so we can fill these jobs?

I like to think I’m taller than the member from Oshawa and younger, but that’s not accurate.

To my colleague from London West, I appreciate your presentation, your remarks. I was listening intently. What I did notice, though, is that the member from Whitby just got up and talked about training, especially for women, skills development for women. Yet when my colleague was talking about nurses, when she was talking about the wage suppression bill, Bill 124, and their working conditions, when she was talking about how nurses—again, a largely women-led career—the Minister of Labour was heckling her. She’s talking about women in the workplace and violence in the workplace and the Minister of Labour was heckling her.

So I’m wondering if the member for London West could take another opportunity—maybe this time the gentleman on the other side of the House won’t heckle and won’t yell over her—to talk about what we can actually do for the front-line workers in our health care system; what is it that we can do to actually honour the skills that they have, to ensure that they are having a career that they want to stay in, so that the people who need health care have those front-line workers there to support them when they need it.

I’m pleased to ask the member who serves very, very well as the critic for labour—and I want to ask the member from Sudbury about the staffing shortage in the hospitals and what we’ve been talking about a lot in this room, but certainly talking about it in our communities, about nurses leaving good union jobs that used to be well-paying, that have benefits and protections, full-time hours. They are leaving those jobs in droves to go to private, sometimes fly-by-night agencies. I guess I don’t understand that, because obviously the protections in good union jobs—that’s something people aspire to. Can you talk to me maybe about the working conditions, or what the conditions are that would make them consider that or maybe even make them feel forced to do that?