Back to the Premier: Speaker, as the Minister of Education knows, the majority of these workers are women.

I met with Charity, one of these workers, and she told me that despite having a full-time job, she goes to food banks on a regular basis to feed her children.

Education workers like Charity keep our communities safe and running. They put their heart and soul, and their health and safety, on the line to protect our children. They should earn enough to be able to feed their families without going to food banks.

Speaker, all workers deserve dignity.

My question is, will the Conservative government commit to a pay increase, so education workers like Charity won’t have to rely on food banks to feed their children?

Thank you to the member from Mississauga–Malton. I am also very happy to be hearing about skilled-trades opportunities for young people, and for international people interested in becoming permanent residents.

I do worry about worker health and safety, however. We know that workers keep dying at Fiera Foods, we know that young truck drivers are dying on the highways—many of these come here as temporary foreign workers—and we also know that WSIB is not there when workers receive a permanent injury. So what I’m wondering is, what is in the plans? What will this government do to protect the health and well-being—in other words, the safety—of workers, whether Canadian-born or here hoping to become permanent residents, when businesses are warned of inspections before they take place?

Mr. Speaker, through you to the member opposite from London–Fanshawe, thank you for bringing that important thing. You definitely talked about the clog in the system at the OINP program. That’s exactly what we’ve done: We have moved on to the online tool that we are using right now with an additional 26 employees. Full-time employees have been added on so that we can take care of those issues.

Definitely, I understand and agree with you that we need to do more because at this time, we have over 350,000 jobs being unfilled. We need more immigrants to fulfill those jobs. Thank you for the question.

I always say this, Mr. Speaker: People need jobs and jobs need people. But what is the missing link between the two is the skill set required for the people to do those jobs, and this is exactly what this bill is doing: helping and supporting those Ontarians to get those skills and fill those jobs. Those jobs are extremely important. When they bring in a cheque, they’re not only bringing financial stability to themselves; they’re actually contributing to our society.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, member, for the wonderful question.

My thoughts are always with those families of those who have been injured in a workplace accident, and those who have in fact passed due to a workplace incident. Mr. Speaker, I truly believe everyone deserves to come home after a hard day’s work. One life lost is too many, in fact. This is why I truly believe that we have a responsibility at our ministry. Our government is making sure it’s doing everything in its power to keep workers safe, and this includes boots on the ground. Today and tomorrow, we actually have—that’s the reason we actually had invested heavily through Working for Workers Acts 1 and 2, and hiring a lot of those inspectors, as well.

So to the member opposite, I want to assure you that we are a government that works for the workers. The health and safety of our Ontarian workers will always be a top priority.

Talking about health care, Mr. Speaker, our government continues to ensure that its health care system is prepared to respond to any crisis and protect the health and well-being of the people of Ontario. We are investing an additional $3.3 billion in 2022-23, bringing the total additional investment in the hospitals to $8.8 billion since 2018-19.

The member talked about the investment; we are actually building up a hospital in Brampton. We are redeveloping a hospital in Mississauga with Trillium Health Partners. These are critical investments, and to build on the 10,600 health care workers added to the system since the winter of 2020, the government is investing a vital $230 million in 2022-23 to enhance the existing program.

Mr. Speaker, we believe the health of Ontarians is our top priority. We are investing into it. We will keep investing the important, vital dollars into this health care system.