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.

I’m going to ask the member a question about schedule 1 to the present proposed bill. When I speak about the riding of Essex, we have some really great employers in the riding of Essex in the greenhouse industry, in the vegetable-growing industry. They’re so great that the employees, the international agricultural workers, come and work for the same employers year after year, decade after decade, and even generation after generation. That’s how great the greenhouse industry is in the riding of Essex.

But as we all know, in every barrel there’s one or two bad apples. In the event that there is a bad apple who tries to take away somebody’s passport, what does schedule 1 do to protect those workers?

It’s my pleasure to be here to speak about government Bill 79, Working for Workers Act 3, the empire strikes back.

It’s interesting, Speaker; I was asked to give an interview about this bill after it was tabled. They asked me what I thought about it, and I said, “Honestly, it’s a headline bill.” It’s a bill that was talked about a lot during the March break while we weren’t sitting—there were at least three press conferences that I knew of—and then tabled when we came back, and then sort of, surprise, we’re debating the next day.

If you really want to work for workers and help workers, I feel like, share the bill early on. Have the conversation. Let’s work together to figure out where the strengths and weakness are and where we can improve these bills. But I don’t get the sense from that. What I get the sense of from this bill is we want to do some press conferences and talk about the great stuff that we’re doing.

You see it in the questions, Speaker. Through debate today, multiple times the Conservative government has gotten up to ask, “Will you support firefighter cancer coverage?” It’s not in this bill. It was in the press conferences, but it’s not in this bill. “Will you support clean washrooms? Will you support gender washrooms?” It’s not in this bill. It was in the press conferences, it was in the headlines, but it’s not in this bill.

What about the young worker apprentices? I don’t think that’s in this bill either. We had a lot of conversation about it and it was talked about in many headlines, but it’s not in this bill. So it leads me to believe that the government, perhaps, is not as interested in working for workers as they are giving the papers the appearance that they’re working for workers.

I’ll go on a tangent on the clean washrooms. I think it’s a great idea to bring in clean washrooms and gender washrooms. I also think we should do a step above that now, because we no longer need to have porta-potties. There are washroom facilities that you can bring on a trailer that are much nicer than a porta-potty, that also include showers. If we want to really work for workers, let’s not go for the bare minimum. Let’s go above and beyond.

The other thing that stands out to me with the washrooms—which isn’t in the bill, and I’ll move on, I promise, Speaker—is that when I drive down from Highway 69, some of the gas stations are closed in the evening, but they have roadside stops for the truckers. Some of those are not super pleasant. My former colleague from Thunder Bay–Atikokan used to talk about coming down from Superior, and in the winter, they just close the washrooms completely. These are run by the MTO; these are government washrooms. So it makes me wonder, if we can’t keep our own washrooms open and clean, then how good are we going to be at enforcing that a third party does it on a work site? It’s neither here nor there because it’s not in the bill.

Really, this is a bill—and the OFL has called it the lowest of the low-hanging fruit. I have an image in my mind at our camp—cottage for people in southern Ontario; we say camp—big crabapple tree, and every year in the fall when the crabapples fall, the bears come out and just eat them off the ground. It is one of those things—it’s not a terrible bill, but it really is just low-hanging fruit. There are better things that we can do and focus on.

We’ve talked about it in the past. You want to help workers? Paid sick days: I know it sounds like an “us versus them” type thing, but it really would help a lot of workers, and small businesses as well, because when workers are sick and they go to work sick, they get their colleagues sick, including their employer. It would really help people to be able to stay home with their sick kid or stay home when they’re sick themselves. These are the things that workers are looking for. It’s not that this bill is bad, right? There’s supportable stuff in it, for sure. But there’s more we could do. There are more things that workers are looking for from us.

We had some conversation about very unscrupulous employers taking advantage of migrant workers and withholding their passports. Throw the book at them; I agree with you guys on that. I think, absolutely, that’s important. But there aren’t many details about how this is going to work. So the first thing I thought about is, how do we ensure that migrant workers have this information? How do we ensure that they’re aware of the laws? Because I don’t know the laws in other countries that I go to. How do we ensure that migrant workers are aware of these laws? How do we ensure those migrant workers for whom English isn’t their first language, that it is available in their language? How do we ensure there are no reprisals for workers who bring this up? Because it is not uncommon in a workplace that when a worker brings up safety concerns or any kinds of concerns, there’s suddenly a lack of work. There’s enough work for all of his friends. But for the squeaky wheel, there’s no more work. “I’m sorry, lack of work.”

I’ve seen that. I worked in construction for more than a decade. On construction sites, the person who asks questions—all of a sudden there’s not enough work. Construction is booming in the summer, but there’s not enough work for the guy who asked some questions. So if you’re a migrant worker and your family and you are depending on this work every year as you come into Canada and then go back home, and come into Canada and go back home, are you going to risk that you might not be able to come back into Canada if you bring up any safety questions?

The other thing too is, why are we raising this? Perhaps I don’t know, right? Our critic might have a better handle on it, but one of the things I thought about is, we’ve precipitated this. We have examples where this was happening multiple times. How do we drill down with the recommendations that we’re moving forward? Possibly they are, but I’m not aware of it.

Also, we have Ministry of Labour inspectors who go out. Have they been following up on reported cases happening? Are they visiting worksites unannounced to see what’s happening? Do they have the ability, perhaps with a translator, to speak to workers on their own, away from the employer, to really find out what’s happening? That’s what Ministry of Labour inspectors do in my workplace. But my workplace is established. It’s been there for more than 100 years before I came here.

The other part is—and you hear this a lot during debate: Why won’t we do this? I talked about paid sick days, but repealing Bill 124 is in no man’s land. So every couple of days, in the news you find out that the employees have won back pay, employees have filed a grievance, employees have been able to move forward on negotiations, but Bill 124 still exists and the government is still appealing it. If you read the Superior Court of Justice report on this—if you thought you were going to win the first time, you didn’t. You’re definitely not going to win this time. That is ironclad, and it’s a little embarrassing how ironclad it is. But what you’re doing is you’re punishing a lot of workers.

I talked about police officers as well. The police services, when they met with me, the first thing they said is Bill 124 is keeping people out of the service and we need people to protect their communities. The Conservative government loves to wrap their arms around the police, and I think they provide an excellent service. I don’t have anything bad to say about the GSPS where I live, but if you can’t attract people to a profession that every little kid plays when they’re little, something has gone wrong, and what’s gone wrong is Bill 124.

We could be raising the minimum wage. The Conservative government very often talks about the number of unfilled jobs as if people don’t want to go to work. People can’t afford to make ends meet while going to work on minimum wage. They can’t afford the rent; they can’t afford food. What they want are careers. Minimum wage jobs don’t provide careers to people and they don’t provide substance to people. Why do you think it’s acceptable as the government to have workers go to work full time and then take their kids to a food bank to feed them? It’s disgraceful; it really is. You inherited it, but you didn’t fix it, and it’s gotten worse over time. This stopgap with food banks was supposed to be a temporary measure. It is growing now as an industry unto itself.

I would love to go back to my community and tell the food bank, “You’re no longer needed. We’re putting you out of business.” I’d love to be able to tell them that. The reality is, though, more than likely they’re going to be busier than ever, busier than ever and busier than ever. It’s cyclical, because as more and more people go to food banks, less and less people have the ability to donate food or money or time to volunteer to the food bank, and the bottom is going to collapse on that.

There’s a section on occupational health and safety, and I asked my colleague from Sault Ste. Marie if he’d be willing to bring it forward and get the data. I don’t think anyone knows—I mean, some people may know this in the ministry, obviously. It’s about raising the fines from $1.5 million to $2 million. I worked in health and safety for 17 years. I like to pay attention to the news and stuff, and I don’t remember a lot of record-breaking fines. So raising it is fine, but if no one’s being fined, what does that mean?

I do know when it comes to health and safety that the Westray Act, in terms of finding employers liable for workplace deaths, is almost never used—almost never. It’s not that I think that every time there’s a workplace death the employer or supervisor is liable, but if I were to sit on the side of the road and watch cars go by for 10 years or 20 years, sooner or later, someone is going to speed and break the rules. But for some reason, when it comes to workplace deaths, it’s always the worker’s fault. It’s always the worker. That’s what’s missing in here: actually protecting workers.

I only have one second, Speaker, so I’ll save you the time from standing and cutting me off.

Further questions?

It’s now time for questions and answers.

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

Report continues in volume B.

I appreciate the member’s presentation, but you said that you don’t think there are many bad actors out there and that’s why the Occupational Health and Safety Act fining them $1.5 million to $2 million is not as applicable. But actually there are a lot of bad actors out there.

I would like to also ask you about the holding of the passport for foreign workers. We are giving them a fine of $500,000 maximum to make sure that they will not hold the passports for these individuals. Do you think that it’s doing something to support and protect our workers?

Thank you very much, Speaker, and to the member. Families are struggling. The price of food is going up. Gas is going up. Hydro is going up. Rents are going up. Interest rates are going up. In this budget, there’s nothing in there that says to the families, “Here’s that little bit of help to make your life easier.” As a matter of fact, in things like education, the government is making their lives harder. If you have a child with special needs that are not being met at school, guess what? The message is, you’re on your own. If your child is struggling with school and can’t get the help that they need, here’s the message—

Can you explain to me why the Working for Workers Act doesn’t actually work for workers?