I was hoping that I’d hear something from the member about the bill, but I only heard this dissertation and this indictment of the WSIB and the worker’s compensation plans.

But then I heard from the member from Sudbury talking about recruitment into the police forces. I can tell you, when I talk to people who are considering a career in policing, it isn’t the compensation, because they’re well compensated. Police are well compensated. But I’ll tell you what they’re concerned about. They’re concerned about getting into a career when people like the NDP continue to go around and call for the defunding of the police and look for every opportunity to attack the brave members of our police forces across this province and across this country.

If you want to attract people to the police forces, stop attacking them every chance you get and end with your ridiculous campaign of defunding the police. That’s what you need to do.

I’d like to thank the member from Thunder Bay–Superior North for her comments that are truly in support of workers. It’s disturbing that the WSIB has taken so long to recognize workplace exposures and is still rather reluctant to recognize multiple exposures, especially where there are clusters of industrial disease.

As an omnibus bill, Working for Workers could have addressed so many other pressing issues which impacted workers. I wonder if the member could talk about the disturbing problem of deeming, or phantom jobs.

Oh, yes, you have to start on Ontario Works.

And I can also tell you that if you talk to people who are homeless, find out how many of those homeless people had workplace injuries and were not able to get any support to go on. They’re homeless, and that’s what we do to people.

So I’m extremely worried about what is going to happen to those young workers who are going to enter the skilled trades with so much enthusiasm and life force and energy, and we know that some of those workers will experience serious injuries—statistically, we know that—and we know that they are going to be thrown under the bus, because that’s what happens to all other workers in this province.

There is also another piece that we don’t talk about here very much, and that is the fact that there are these incentives for employers to hide the fact that an accident has taken place. They bribe the other employees with fancy leather jackets, or whatever it is, so that they don’t report the accident. That means that the injured worker, again, is left on their own, his or her own, with no support and no ability to verify what has actually happened to them. It’s become a very dirty business. This government sent employers—what was it?—over $2 billion returned to employers while denying workers the money that they have paid, that they are legally entitled to. They are entitled to that support, but it was given back to employers, and I can tell you workers are so angry about that, so hurt, and the hurt is real because it affects their—

I would like to point out again that the Meredith Principles from over a hundred years ago “rest on the historic compromise in which employers fund the compensation system and share the liability”—

Interjection.

Interjection.

Interjection.

“Employers would be protected from lawsuits by injured workers and be able to calculate payments as a cost of doing business.

“Injured workers would receive prompt benefits for as long as the disability lasted in a non-adversarial system.”

Isn’t that amazing? It’s so far from what is happening now. I implore the government to look seriously at turning WSIB back to what it was intended to do.

Thank you to member from Thunder Bay–Superior North for her comments. There are a lot of good things in this bill. Some of the things that I thought the member opposite would be supporting include the fact that we’re having a provision in here to make sure we have sanitary washrooms on construction sites to promote worker dignity, as well as make sure we have women-only washrooms and increase the standards for bathroom hygiene on construction sites for all workers, and also that we have personal protective equipment which is designed for women and fits them properly. I would just ask the member opposite if you would support those parts of what we’re offering here, because it’s going to help get more women into the trades.

Questions?

The member from Thunder Bay–Superior North.

You have to start on Ontario Works.

That’s what we do to workers.

She talked about Steve the electrician. The Minister of Labour likes to talk about the good trades jobs, how important they are, but he doesn’t want to talk about Steve. He doesn’t want to talk about public sector electricians, where contractors make $20 more than they do.

I wonder if the member could explain to us how Bill 124 capping workers’ wages, like Steve’s, at 1%, is not the Conservative government working for workers, especially when you look at how much Steve’s boss makes and that he was able to get a 6% increase, while Bill 124 capped Steve’s wages, which were much lower, at 1%.

I would like to review a quote from Jeffery Lang, president and CEO of the WSIB, regarding the announcement of expanding cancer coverage for firefighters: “When anybody is facing a work-related illness, we are here to help. Our team gets to work as quickly as possible to help people and this change will help us get started faster for firefighters and fire investigators with thyroid and pancreatic cancers.”

My question to the member is, will you vote with us on this bill and vote to support our firefighters?

I very much appreciated the comments from my colleague the member for Thunder Bay–Superior North. I wanted to ask her thoughts as to what it says about a government that basically, at the very same time they bring in this legislation, eliminates paid sick days for workers in this province. After eliminating two paid sick days that workers had back in 2018 when they were first elected and now eliminating the temporary program, does that suggest that this really is a government that is working for workers, that would do something like that, that would take away the ability of workers to access paid sick days so they can stay home if they are sick?

Further questions?

Further debate? I recognize the member for Essex.

Further debate?

Madam Speaker, thank you very much. Good evening. I’m so happy to have been called upon to offer—

The member for Essex does such an outstanding job speaking to all the government legislation that he’s so proud of and fond of because it says such wondrous things for the community of Essex and the rest of the people of Ontario.

I’m happy to be able to stand up and speak to the Working for Workers Act. It is a great piece of legislation, and it’s great for a number of reasons. When you look at the facts, when you look at how much effort our government, under the leadership of our Premier Doug Ford and Minister of Labour Monte McNaughton—the outstanding work that’s been done by our government to put workers first. When we talk about working for workers, it means something. It means a lot. It means that our job here is to ensure that—

Interjection.

Every element of work that’s being done in this particular area has been so important in making sure that we’re not leaving anyone behind. Whether we’re talking about workers, our soldiers who are deployed in Afghanistan, brave men and women who put their lives on hold to protect our freedoms, these types of changes are going to help address reservists and troop shortages in the Canadian Armed Forces and ease the burden felt by current reservists and members of the Armed Forces. If these are passed, these changes are going to make Ontario the first province in this entire country to allow reservists to take time to recover from an illness or an injury as a result of participating in these activities.

These are just some of the areas of work that we are doing to support our men and women in the Armed Forces, and we’re working on introducing new legislation that would guarantee that military reservists can return to civilian jobs after deployment even if they are going to need extra time to be able to recover from any type of physical or mental challenges they would have had as a result of their time in the reserves. It’s important to note that they are not being paid when they’re on reservist leave; however, the employment is deemed to be continuous. Seniority and length of service credits will continue to accumulate during their leave. They’re entitled to be reinstated to the same position, assuming that position still exists at the time they are able to return or to a comparable position if it is not. The employer is not required to continue any benefit plans during an employee’s leave.

These are just a few points touching on some of the work that our government is doing, again under the leadership of our Premier, to ensure that reservists are being treated with dignity and with the respect they deserve after putting their lives, in many respects, on hold to support our freedoms.

Interjections.

I think the work we are doing as a government to make changes to mass termination entitlement and job description benefits for workers in Ontario is outstanding as well. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw such a tremendous shift to remote work—the largest shift to remote work that we’ve seen in history. In the fourth quarter of 2022, about 2.2 million people in Ontario were working from home with about 1.4 million doing so on an exclusive basis and about 800,000 doing so on a hybrid basis.

Now, just take that into perspective: I think what we learned through COVID was there were some tremendous positives. We did see that opportunity for people to be able to work from home, which presented an incredibly opportunity for them to upskill themselves as well. Being able to work from home gives a tremendous addition to that work-life balance, but for a lot of people, they were afforded an opportunity to upskill. For a lot of people, it was an opportunity to be able to examine their current position they were in and look at other opportunities that might exist to them.

That is something that we saw change in a tremendous way, and we saw also as a result of that the opportunity to have people move into a lot of our smaller communities across this province. Certainly myself, coming from the city of Sault Ste. Marie, I was always proud to be able to see a growth in my community of people relocating because of the work-life balance you can have in a smaller place. And when you look at just the simple cost of real estate in the downtown Toronto core, and what people saw as an opportunity to be able to move from the downtown core and move into smaller communities across this province but still be able to work in that downtown core, that was a tremendous positive.

There is a changing economy, though, of course, that comes with that. Our government wanted to respond to that increase in remote work and so we have introduced legislation that is putting workers first. Our government is updating how a workplace is defined in Ontario’s labour laws to extend the same protections that everybody else is afforded to those people who are working from home. Furthermore, we’re also proposing changes that would require employers to provide new hires with basic information in writing about their job, such as pay, work location and hours of work, before their first shift. These are, again, building on changes from our previous iterations of the Working for Workers Act, 2021 and 2022 and are part of our plan to make Ontario and help the province become more competitive.

Now, in terms of the size of business that would be able to meet this proposal for mass terminations, it would apply to medium- or large-sized employers if there are 50 or more employees, now including employees who work exclusively remotely. If those individuals were terminated at an employer’s establishment within a four-week period, mass termination provisions under the ESA—the Employment Standards Act—would click in to protect those workers’ interests. These mass termination policies are providing workers with greater notice or pay in lieu of notice. Mass terminations can make it more difficult for employees to find alternate employment, and by providing employees with these protections, once again our government is standing up for workers who are being laid off in large numbers at the same time.

When we look at provisions for health and safety, this is an area—I know I only have a few short minutes to speak about this, but realistically, I don’t know if we’re ever going to be able to do everything that we need to do to make sure that workplace safety is always treated as of the most paramount importance in the workplace. It’s one of these areas that, as much as from a policy perspective, a lawmaker’s perspective, we want to do everything we can and we are putting a great deal of effort into doing everything that we can as policy-makers to ensure that workplaces are the safest they can be, but of course, on those work sites—a message that I would like to just say in about a minute or less here: Having been personally impacted in my own family and friends lives with having lost loved ones and very close friends in workplace accidents, I can say that it is imperative that every worker on every job site is always making sure that their safety comes first. That is absolutely imperative.

Our government has been working hard to ensure that we can create that environment where that very sense that individuals possess and ought to possess that they need to be working in safe environments—where all of the deterrents are present for the employers to ensure that they’re creating safe environments. Some of the work that we’ve done in that area is ensuring that we have the highest maximum corporate fines in Canada under workplace health and safety legislation.

For instance, under our new act, the new—

I enjoyed listening to the member’s debate, but I didn’t hear him talk about paid sick days. Paid sick days are something that we know is greatly needed across this province. When the government first came into power in 2018, they cut the measly two paid days that were there. And then we were able to work hard enough as New Democrats to convince the government to bring some in throughout COVID, but those paid sick days are expiring March 31. We know that many people across this province are still needing those paid sick days. We still see folks with COVID being forced to take 10 days off.

Does the member not think that a true “working for workers” bill would have included paid sick day measures to ensure that people have the ability to stay home when they’re sick and to not spread any illness that we know is airborne currently in our communities?

Unfortunately, we are out of time for debate.

It is now time for questions and answers.

Thank you to the member from Sault Ste. Marie.

I’m just wondering if you can build on the additional amendments that are being made and tell us how the government is making amendments related to fines for holding passports and how this goes further to protect vulnerable workers.

Thank you to the member from Sudbury. I know how important workplace safety is to him, and it is for every one of us.

I think that looking at this from a committee perspective so that we can have those types of numbers is reasonable. In fact, I’m quite curious about it myself. I think that it really can be a demonstration of the efficacy of a lot of the work that’s being done.

But the challenge I find, and it is just the greatest challenge ultimately that I see in work sites, is ensuring that the individuals there appreciate the nature of their rights and appreciate the nature of standing up when they need to. A lot of the work that we are doing is trying to ensure that people understand that, appreciate that, and that employers also recognize that their stakes are quite high if they do not have that type of an environment.

I’m very pleased to be able to be a part of a government that recognizes that importance. I’m not sure if I’ve answered; my apologies.

I do want to say—

But I do want to say that this is the third Working for Workers Act, and that is how committed our government is to ensuring that we’re getting it right for the people of the province—

I want to thank the member from Sault Ste. Marie for his debate. It was excellent. He was talking about the Occupational Health and Safety Act and increasing the maximum fines from $1.5 million to $2 million. I don’t expect him to have an answer to this, because I wouldn’t have an answer either, but I was curious when I saw this: How many fines were sent out at the maximum, in the last five years or 10 years? And how many fines in general were sent out along that line that would give us the information for why we would need to have the fines increased?

I don’t expect you to know how many, but I just ask as a commitment, when it goes to committee, if you could find that information, provide it to the committee, so we can make decent recommendations if this actually makes sense to increase the fines. Or maybe the recommendation should be that there should be more fines.

I find it a challenge, Madam Speaker, when I listen to the concerns that get raised by the members opposite. All I seem to notice, or what we seem to see on a repetitive basis, is this consistent approach of, “Well, there isn’t this, there isn’t this, there isn’t this, there isn’t that.” It’s just this “no” mentality. It’s this constant negative mentality. I heard a comment earlier today. It’s why they will always be opposition, Madam Speaker, because everything is just oppositional all the time.

At some point in time I would hope that the opposition would consider their role as policy-makers, their role as people within our Legislature who are here to make a difference in people’s lives and really just say yes once in a while to some of the good work that’s being done for the people of this province.

This is a real challenge for too many people out there. To think of an employer holding a person’s passport or work permits, that’s fairly deplorable—obviously it is deplorable actions on behalf of those individuals.

Our government has looked at trying to remedy that by, again, increasing the punishments, increasing the fines. If it is a corporation, they would be liable to a fine of not more than $1 million, and if it is an individual, to an amount of not more than $500,000 or to a period of imprisonment of not more than 12 months. That punishment, of course, can be both, so you can go to jail for a year and you can be fined half a million dollars. That is a pretty significant punishment. When we in the legal world use terms like “general deterrence,” I think that is a very strong general deterrent for employers who behave in that fashion to recognize that they can’t, and if they do, the punishment is a severe one.

I think it’s a very, very strong reason to look at passing legislation like this so that we can really protect those individuals who are very vulnerable to their employers when they may hold their passport, take their passport, and not return it to them. That is just the type of action that, again, is how we work for workers and we’re protecting workers and standing up for the little guy in this province.

It’s getting late. Thank you, Speaker.

My question is, what is there in the bill or in the government’s plans to protect young workers? We know the WSIB is not there for workers, and so I’m very worried about the lives of young workers. I’m hoping you can tell me how the government will be protecting them.