Le gouvernement conservateur prend ses décisions en secret, sans consulter et surtout sans tenir compte de la réalité des Ontariens du Nord. La réalité, c’est que les Franco-Ontariens du Nord veulent une université par, pour et avec les francophones à Sudbury, pas à quatre heures de Sudbury.

Ma question est pour le premier ministre : quand est-ce que le gouvernement conservateur va financer l’Université de Sudbury?

Cette pétition s’appelle « Appuyer l’Université de Sudbury.

« À l’Assemblée législative de l’Ontario :

« Alors que les Franco-Ontarien(ne)s du Nord ont travaillé pendant un siècle pour la création d’une institution d’enseignement supérieur francophone pour, par et avec les Franco-Ontarien(ne)s à travers l’Université de Sudbury; et

« Alors que 65,9 % des Franco-Ontarien(ne)s croient que la province devrait financer l’Université de Sudbury pour la mise en place de sa programmation d’enseignement universitaire en français; et

« Alors que les Franco-Ontarien(ne)s travaillent toujours pour leur droit d’obtenir la même qualité d’enseignement dans la langue minoritaire française que dans la langue majoritaire anglaise tel que garanti par la Charte; et

« Alors que des études ont démontré qu’à terme, l’Université de Sudbury générerait 89,3 millions de dollars pour la région; et

« Alors qu’il y a 8 500 Franco-Ontarien(ne)s âgés entre 10 et 19 ans qui auraient l’option d’intégrer un établissement d’études supérieures en français près de chez eux dans les 10 prochaines années;

« Nous, soussignés, pétitionnons l’Assemblée législative de l’Ontario : de garantir le financement de 10 millions de dollars par année tel que demandé par l’Université de Sudbury pour assurer l’avenir de l’Université de Sudbury, une université pour, par et avec les Franco-Ontarien(ne)s, et ce dès maintenant. »

Moi, j’aime bien cette pétition. J’y affixe mon nom et la donne à la table avec la page Sophia.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas strikes and lockouts are rare: on average, 97% of collective agreements are negotiated without work disruption; and

“Whereas anti-replacement workers laws have existed in Quebec since 1978,” as well as “in British Columbia since 1993, and in Ontario under the NDP government,” which “was repealed by the Harris conservative government;

“Whereas anti-scab legislation has reduced the length and divisiveness of labour disputes; and

“Whereas the use of scab labour during a strike or lockout is damaging to the social fabric of a community in the short” term and the “long term, as well as the well-being of its residents;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To pass the anti-scab labour bill to ban the use of replacement workers during a strike or lockout.”

I support this petition wholeheartedly. I have been on a picket line while scabs crossed the picket line. I will affix my signature and provide it to Minuka for the tabling.

The number of working people who are accessing food banks on a regular basis has continued to climb since 2018, when the Conservative government was elected. I know that’s the fault of the Liberal government, but it continues to climb every year. In fact, in Toronto, food bank clients with full-time employment have doubled in the past year—in 2022—to 33%.

How is this working for workers if full-time workers are going to food banks?

Thank you very much, Speaker, and welcome back, colleagues, to our first day following the summer session.

I want to recognize the new Minister of Labour. I recognize it’s his first day officially in the House. I enjoyed his debate. I was listening fulsomely earlier. I love in these afternoon debates that we have the opportunity to get to know each other on a different level. We get that opportunity to hear about each other’s family and background. He shared a little about his father and his grandfather.

My dad actually was here at Queen’s Park today. I didn’t introduce him at introductions because he was outside protesting. Bill Moore, my stepdad, a member of my Unifor Local 598, he worked at Falconbridge for 31 years and he’s been nearly 30 years as a pensioner standing up for worker rights.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree because I’ve been standing up for worker rights for a little over two decades now, first as a steelworker. I was very proud as a steelworker to speak on behalf of workers and represent them as a steward. My passion was always health and safety. Afterward it was my pleasure to be nominated and then elected as MPP for Sudbury and re-elected again. I spent the last five years speaking on behalf of the people of my city and was thrilled to be the labour critic, because labour gets overlooked a lot. Labour is supposed to be a balance between employers and employees. The Minister of Labour is supposed to ensure that balance, but traditionally, we don’t see that. We really don’t see that.

Not to go too far into the weeds, I just want to recognize my dad being here, because how often does your dad get to come and visit you at work?

I’ll be honest with you, Speaker, the first time I came here, when I was elected—I was here once as a steelworker. I sat over here and I was escorted out of the building. When I returned, when I was walking here as an MPP, it was very interesting because it was the first time I ever came to Queen’s Park by myself, the first time I ever came to Queen’s Park walking on the sidewalk and not marching with others, and it was the first time there wasn’t a barricade preventing me from coming through the door. A lot can change in 10 years.

Just because today is Franco-Ontarian Day, I just want to say a few words in French.

Aujourd’hui, c’est la journée franco-ontarienne, et moi, je suis très fier de la communauté de Sudbury—et je suis très fier de cette Chambre et de tous mes collègues. Le drapeau franco-ontarien a été créé à Sudbury. C’est très important pour ma communauté. Maintenant, ce drapeau est un symbole de l’Assemblée législative de l’Ontario, et ça, c’est très important. Merci beaucoup à tous mes collègues—conservateurs, libéraux, vert et du parti néo-démocratique—pour ce drapeau ici dans notre Chambre.

This bill was tabled last March and it was rushed into debate. It was tabled just before March break and there were several press conferences about it. Today, actually, in the debate you’ll hear a few things that were brought up that really aren’t in this bill. It’s easy to check because if you pull up the bill and you do control-F, you can search by keywords.

As much as they talk about firefighters—and I really do understand how important it is to have presumptive legislation for people suffering from occupational diseases and cancers—it’s not in this bill. It’s a great talking point. It’s a great headline. I’m assuming the regulation was changed, but it is not in this bill. It just doesn’t exist. You see that in the debate. We saw it in March, and we saw it again this time, where there’s not much to this bill. It’s not that it’s a bad bill; it’s just low-hanging fruit.

This time of year, in my community—well, probably all communities—is when the apples start to spoil and fall on the ground. As bears are getting ready for hibernation, it’s not uncommon in my neighbourhood to see a bear come out from the bush and, if you have an apple tree, probably tear down some of the branches for the ones that haven’t fallen. That really is my image when I think of low-hanging fruit. Those apples that fell on the ground will help a bear get fat, but they’re not really ideal. They’re not what workers are screaming for. I’ll get into it further on.

The idea of having washrooms for women: Absolutely, it’s a great idea, but just having a washroom and having that be your bare standard—no pun intended—just a washroom by itself? That’s not enough.

I worked construction for 10 years. It is freaking cold. If you think it is a delight to sit on a plastic seat in the middle of nowhere as you’re putting up the building—because the building is what breaks the wind—and take off all of your equipment inside this little tiny room where you can barely fit your knees, so you can sit down on a freezing cold seat—if you think that’s working for workers, you’ve lost your way.

I speculate—and I don’t begrudge anybody; we welcome different backgrounds and we share different information—it’s because you’re not talking to workers enough, or if you are, you’re not listening enough. There are whole systems that you can bring in for washrooms that are heated and plumbed. You can have hot showers. If we want to set a standard, if you want to say you’re working for workers and you want to attract people to the trades, then get them off a board with a hole in it, with a pot that holds human waste, and get them into flushable toilets, because that’s how we attract people to trades.

There’s nothing romantic about it. I’m a blue-collar guy. I’m a knuckle-dragger. I did that work, and I’m proud to be part of a union that does that sort of work with miners and labourers coming out of construction. We love it. We like to get dirty. It’s fun. But honestly, if you can improve it a little bit, a couple of gruff guys will growl a little bit, but I’ll tell you: If you improve their work life, they’ll fight you if you try to get rid of it.

When I was a furnace operator, we had to lift boxes of clay, about 20 pounds each, and one year on our health and safety committee, we got a hydraulic lift for it. I remember Rudy—Rudy looked like Clint Eastwood. Back when you could smoke in the workplace, I never saw Rudy without a cigarette in his mouth. Once we had an SO₂ leak, and it was all white, and every once in a while I would see his cigarette glow through the white.

Rudy had a voice kind of like this when he talked, a super-growly voice, and I remember when he saw these platforms, Rudy said, “What’s next? Rainbow-coloured clay?” About a month later, Rudy’s hydraulic lift broke, and I thought we were going to have a work refusal, because lifting 20 pounds of clay every day, every few shifts, every time you do a trip gets hard on the back. You see the insight of it, and so we need to make these changes.

If we want to work for workers, I’m right beside you. I’m 100% aligned. This is my life’s passion. I love working for workers, but that’s not what this bill is doing. It’s more of a headline. It’s the low-hanging fruit of the bill. I want to make sure that we get to better parts of the bill, things that really should be in there.

I mentioned, for example, the firefighter cancer coverage. I believe it’s in regulations—I can’t remember, through the summer—but it’s not in this bill. All through the headlines, they talked about it, as if it was coming in the bill: “We’re going to debate this bill. We’re going to make sure that the NDP doesn’t vote against this.” First, we wouldn’t vote against it. Second, it’s not in the bill.

I remember in debate, people asking questions from the Conservative side: “Will you support firefighters? Why won’t you support them?” It’s not in the bill. It’s like asking if I support mowing my neighbour’s lawn or something. It’s just not here, so it doesn’t make sense to talk about things like that. I think it’s great to say, “We’re very proud that we did this.” I’m very proud that my colleague from London West tabled paid sick days several times. I’m very proud of it. I think it’s an excellent bill, one that should be in here and should be passed.

What I’m saying is that we need to ensure that we put forward good legislation. If you’re going to have a press conference, don’t pretend it’s in the bill; just say, “Hey, we’re changing the regulations.”

The clean washrooms, the washrooms for women—I talked a little about this earlier—I think it’s great, but the bar can be raised and the bar should be raised when it comes to washrooms. Think of the washrooms we have here at Queen’s Park. That’s the sort of washroom that people want in their workplace. I know you can’t get it everywhere; I understand that. But saying, “Porta-potties is the best we can do”—it is not the best we can do.

You can write legislation saying that you’re going to have a trailer that’s going to have running water, that’s going to have soap and water, that’s going to have warm water, that’s going to have a place for people to wash their hands before they eat food. You can put all this in legislation and then say, “Unless it’s impractical or unable to provide.” You can do things like that, but bring the bar up to where it is. If you really believe—and I do believe that my colleagues think this—that the trades are an important job and we’re in a crisis for filling trades, then make it attractive for people.

I know that, traditionally, we think of women as being more delicate and softer, and they shouldn’t have to wander down to Tim Hortons farther away and stuff, but I’m going to tell you, guys would like a decent washroom too. We have all been there. Every single one of you here has been to a public facility that is not very clean, right? Where you’re a little bit happy that you don’t have to sit, that you can sort of stand back. So let’s bring the hygiene standard up for everybody and attract more people to it.

The other thing about this, when I think about washrooms in workplaces and construction sites, is that the regulation is great; put it forward and say, “You have to have washrooms. They have to be on-site and maintained and cleaned.” But I drive back and forth from Sudbury to Toronto for work on a regular basis and not all of the gas stations are open 24 hours. They have these little road stops, these pull-off areas for people who are driving a truck, and they have porta-potties in there. Some of these are okay, but some are not great at all. Some of them are really, really disgusting, and those are MTO ones. Those are ones that the government has their thumb on. If we can’t maintain the ones that the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario is responsible for, how are we going to ensure that we enforce construction sites all across this province with the number of inspectors that we have?

That gets back to why I’m saying that it’s a headline bill. It sounds great for someone who doesn’t work in the area. It sounds great for somebody who isn’t involved with construction sites. But for someone who’s on a construction site, it’s just hot air. It’s a “believe it when I see it” sort of thing.

Farther north, you get past Sault Ste. Marie and those washrooms on the side of the road are closed in winter. They don’t even have washrooms. Those are also provincially owned.

Another thing that was brought up—and I heard it today again—was about the young worker apprentices and how this is a great part of this bill. But, Speaker, this is not in the bill. There’s nothing about the young worker apprentices in this bill. It might be coming in the next one, but it’s not in this bill. And so when we get to questions and comments later on and someone says, “Will you support firefighter coverage or young worker apprentices?”, just make sure it’s in the bill. Do a quick scan.

That’s the sort of thing where I’m thinking to myself that perhaps it’s not so much that the Conservative government is working for workers, Speaker. Maybe that’s not the priority. I think the priority is to have headlines so that other people think that they are. A lot of people, if they’ve never had to deal with WSIB—Workplace Safety and Insurance Board or workers’ comp—believe that it works and that the issues only happen in rare cases, but the reality is, WSIB is a pretty unforgiving animal, and it doesn’t work for most people. For a lot of people who have a long-term injury, they end up on ODSP. They end up in poverty. But if you talk about it like it works, then people might believe that.

We’ve brought forward amendments for this bill. After it passed second reading, we brought forward amendments, and I just want to talk about some of the amendments that were there because it doesn’t really—all of these were voted down by the way, and so I think discussing them sheds a light onto what working for workers really means.

The first amendment that we had brought forward was about expanding the definition of a foreign national. We heard a lot about this. My hat is off to the former Minister of Labour for trying to do something about this. I’m not trying to discourage this. There was a big story in the paper about an employer who had basically held the international workers’ passports hostage, and they had deplorable working conditions. The former minister was trying to do something about it. We wanted to expand the current definition of “foreign national” so that they’d have more employment protection for more people who are working like this. That was voted down. What’s ironic, though, was the example that the minister was talking about that spurred this provincial legislation—unless we expand the definition of “foreign national,” it won’t actually help those workers in that story. That was voted down by the committee.

Our next amendment was—I mentioned earlier my colleague from London West and her Stay Home If You Are Sick Act, a paid sick days act. We brought that forward as an amendment. We said, “If you want to work for workers, here’s how we can do it.” The reality is, if you want to help people in a workplace—if you’re sick, it’s nice to be able to stay home. Each and every one of us here has the ability to stay home, as elected officials. I’m not putting down anybody, because we have really busy schedules and we’re always out there doing a lot of stuff. But if we’re sick, we can stay home. We have that flexibility; a lot of workers don’t, and a lot of those workers who don’t are in precarious workplaces. They’re gig workers, they’re minimum wage workers, and they cannot afford to have a day off, especially with the price of rent—especially with the price of rent right here in Toronto, but across the province. Rents and mortgages are so high that I don’t understand how someone who is sick and who doesn’t have paid sick days can afford to take the day off or can stay home with a child who is sick. I grew up in a family like that. I grew up below the poverty line. I remember going to school and the school sending me home because I was too sick. My mom sent me because she could not afford to have a day off. I don’t even know how I got there—walking to school. That’s the reality for a lot of people. We talk about workers, but let’s not put blinders on—let’s remember that workers include the kids too. Whatever situation the family is in, the kids are in that situation. If the parents are stressed financially, if the parents are worried about making ends meet, if the parents are worried about being evicted, those kids know. They may not know all of it, but they know there’s stress in the workplace. So you’re not just taking care of workers; you’re taking care of the children of the province as well. Further amendments that went into it were also about basically matching the wording of the Stay Home If You Are Sick Act.

During earlier debate, they talked about leave for Canadian armed services reserves—we thought this was such a good idea, that it should be paid leave. You can work this out so that if there is income, it’s supplemented so they don’t fall down. So if you’re involved in your position as a reservist, it guarantees you a certain amount of pay—then you just don’t lose money for being a reserve. We thought it was such a good idea. Why don’t we ensure that the brave men and women who serve our country don’t lose pay for being in the reserves? That was voted down. We felt like it was a good “working for workers” provision; the Conservative government felt otherwise. Included in there, we also thought that—and I didn’t realize this until I spoke with the researcher. The Employment Standards Act: If you have an employee who’s in the reserves—when they go off to the reserves, then you don’t have to contribute to their benefits plan while they’re gone. We didn’t think that was fair. These are people who go above and beyond to serve the country, and we thought that they should get their benefits. We thought it was important. If we’re going to stand here—and we will about a month from now. We’re going to stand and we’re going to talk about Remembrance Day and the importance of people who have served. My colleagues across the aisle—I’ve heard many great stories about family members. One of my colleagues—I can’t remember his riding, but I know he’s very close to his Legion. We believe this—all of us here. I know sometimes this is an “us and them” philosophy, but I believe everyone here understands the importance of our military and the people who volunteer for that. But we felt like they should have their benefits continue while they’re gone, and the Conservative government voted against that.

The next amendment is helping employers transition to the paid leave. We don’t want an undue burden for the employers. We understand that it’s difficult for an employer to make ends meet, as well, especially in tough times like this. So if we’re going to tell employers, as government, “You should pay these people while they’re gone. They’re not making wages, they’re not working in your workplace, but you should pay them”—well, how do we transition to that and ensure that employer is successful? We wanted to ensure the employer was successful so the employee can be successful, so that their kids could be successful. It’s a really great situation, but that, too, was voted down by the Conservative government.

We tried to bring in anti-scab legislation. I’m going to talk about anti-scab later on—anti-replacement worker? I don’t know what you’re comfortable with. Where I’m from, we say “scab.”

The reality is, these extend and lengthen lockouts and labour disputes and strikes. It divides community. It is not good for anybody. It’s not good for the people who cross the line. It’s not good for the people outside the line. It’s not good for the management, the people who have to deal with these relationships afterward. It doesn’t exist in Quebec. For the longest time, it used to not exist in Ontario. If you want to work for workers, it’s a great way to do it. The Conservative government voted no on that amendment.

We wanted to lower the diesel particulate matter to 0.02. There are miners all across the province who have had “Make 20 the Limit”—I’ll get into DPM later on, but it’s 0.02 particulates. Now, to his credit, the former Minister of Labour, did reduce it to 120, but it’s still 100 more than what’s considered safe for the scientific community. So we thought, why don’t we bring this forward? Why don’t we bring this forward so there’s a plan to get to where it is? That was voted down as well.

We spoke very adamantly about OW and ODSP, about giving away personal information of people on OW and ODSP. We read an entire letter. My colleague—I know everyone by their first name; I’m trying to do their riding—from Scarborough Southwest and I each read the letter that came from the privacy commissioner strongly urging the government not to do this. I thought this made sense as an amendment. Sometimes when you’re in a position of leadership, it’s hard to make a decision, but if you have someone who’s an expert in the matter and they’re urging you, you can delay at least. You can say, “Well, yeah, let’s pass this amendment and re-look into what we’re doing.” But that, too, the Conservative government voted against.

We also thought that we would finally introduce the member from Nickel Belt’s bill—I’m a co-sponsor of this one—the Respecting Workers in Health Care and in Related Fields Act. We’re in a crisis when it comes to health care. You may have heard from the noise outside that there was a huge health care rally. It was a big one. It filled the entire lawn. There were a lot of people there. That’s tough to do on a Monday morning. But look, health care workers are out there in spades, so if you think you’re doing a good job for health care workers, the Conservative government really isn’t.

The member for Nickel Belt and I co-sponsored a bill that would create a wage floor and it would provide pensions and guarantees and benefits and for people. It really is how we solve it any time there’s an issue when it comes to filling labour: Basically, you pay people decently, you give them some benefits, you have a pension, you make it a career instead of a gig job that people want to quit, and you attract people and you keep them. That, too, was voted down.

The last one that was voted down: My colleague from Niagara, a strong labour person as well, had brought forward a deeming bill. Now, I know it’s more complex; the title was fancier than that. But really, for most people who understand this, it’s about deeming. It has to do with WSIB. What happens is, you’re injured in the workplace and you’re losing money. You’re not able to return to work. So what the WSIB is able to do is deem you able to do a job, and they can remove you from WSIB. You’re physically not able to do certain jobs, but if they come up with, for example, that you can be a parking lot attendant and they believe that’s a job you’re deemed able to do—and that’s great if you can. But Speaker, the number of parking lot attendant jobs has really dwindled. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but most of them are automated. So if you’re deemed able to do a job, it doesn’t matter if that job actually exists, it doesn’t matter if they’re hiring in that job, it doesn’t matter if you’re able to get the job, you’re removed from the WSIB. This is a thing that punishes workers—workers who are working in the workplace and injured, unable to continue the work, and then the Conservative government right now but whoever is in power at the time, the WSIB is under their mandate. The Minister of Labour has responsibility to the WSIB.

So what happens in that situation is that you have a worker who’s injured, who feels like there’s a safety net for them when they’re injured so that they can get better. And then the pressure—first of all, you don’t make as much money as you did, so you feel that pressure, and then you feel the pressure that you’re going be removed from WSIB: psychological, mental and also financial pressure, knowing you’re not even going to be able to make ends meet. And then you have basically the government of Ontario telling you, “Well, you can get a phantom job.” It doesn’t exist, but you could get one. The only way that works, Speaker, is if you can pay your bills with phantom paycheques, but you can’t. So what you do, actually, instead of working for workers, is you’re punishing workers. So this deeming bill—the member from Niagara Falls tabled it in the last session as well. He tabled it again this session. You could pass this and actually be working for workers, and I’m talking about a lot of workers who have been poorly affected by this bill.

I already spoke about this—sorry, I’m going through my notes. I’m all over the place when I’m talking.

I mentioned this bill was a bill about the low-hanging fruit. Again, I’ll say it’s not that it’s a bad bill, Speaker; it’s just that you could be more ambitious. There’s a lot of work to be done. One thing I think that my colleagues from the Conservative Party and I would agree on is that the Liberals did a very poor job when it came to taking care of workers. I was president of my labour council in Sudbury when the Liberal government was in power. Just before the election, they did a huge survey about what they should do to address workplace issues and what labour laws were important. Basically, about a year before the election, they had a package that was presentable and they sat on it, and basically licked their finger and checked which way the wind was flowing. When they thought they would lose the election, they passed a few things out at the last minute, but they were not a working-for-workers party. It’s an interesting thing, because the Liberal government always wants people to believe that they are who they are in their ads. But the reality, I believe, is that when they run, when they campaign, they campaign to the left. They campaign like the New Democrats, right? But when they come into power, they’re more like Conservatives. You look at the greenbelt, more recently, and privatizing the greenbelt, or I know it’s a hot-button issue, so let’s go with the 407, selling off the 407, something we all owned. That’s something New Democrats would never do. That’s not in our DNA. We don’t believe in privatizing stuff. We think that making a couple of your friends wealthy isn’t in the public interest, so we would never have done that.

What happened is, the Liberals sold off Hydro One to private interests, and hydro now is more expensive than ever. The 407: The number of people who just don’t take the 407 because the cost of the 407 is—well, I haven’t been able to confirm this; I do know it’s the highest in North America, but I’m willing to bet it is the highest in the world—the highest in the world for tolls. And you know where all that money goes? Not in our pockets, not for the people of Ontario who paid to build the place. That money for the 407 goes to private developers who are incredibly wealthy. They’re so wealthy, I don’t think they have to take the 407. They could helicopter into town. They don’t have to deal with travelling on the ground.

I was just talking about your deeming bill and how important it was. This really is a bill that doesn’t address things. The point of not addressing and the low-hanging fruit in March was pretty apparent, but if you went through the last summer, if you saw how bad people are suffering through the summertime, you would see that this is definitely not reflecting the needs of workers in Ontario. We have workers working full-time who can’t afford rent and food—unbelievable. And I’m talking about well-paid workers.

Last summer, I was on the campaign trail. I met an engineer. An engineer pays pretty well. She wanted to save for a house, her and her partner, both with good-paying jobs. She said, “I don’t even know if I can afford my rent.” Something has gone wrong here. I know the Conservative government loves to blame the federal government, but I’m not buying it. There’s some accountability that you have here as well. When it comes to it, when people are working full time—the next generation of kids, my son and younger, they don’t even think they’re going to own a house. The only way they’re going to own a house is when they inherit it. When they think of having a place of their own, “their own” means them and several of their friends. When I was my son’s age, when I was going to school, I worked on the weekend and caught an odd shift and I had my own apartment. The price of housing and apartment rentals in Sudbury was about $100 difference, and you basically chose based on where you wanted to go. Now, there were some really beautiful apartments that were a lot more, but I’m talking an average apartment that you wouldn’t be embarrassed to bring your mom to. You basically picked where you wanted to go. Do you want to be near the school? Do you want to be near the lake? Do you want to be downtown where the bars are? Where do you want to live? Fifty to a hundred bucks’ difference—that was it. Now it’s like an investment. I look at some of the rental ads and I feel like I’m looking at a De Beers anniversary engagement ring. How can your rent be two months’ salary? It doesn’t make any sense to me. There is nothing being done to tackle this. I know the pretence was that the greenbelt was going to do it, but look, no one’s buying it. We’re all friends here. We can say it openly.

I talked about paid sick days earlier. This is a really good bill. I know sometimes you’re hesitant to support a bill that comes from another party, but the reality is that this has been in place in a lot of places for a long time already. New York is one of those areas where it’s been in place. There’s good data about it. I encourage my colleagues from the Conservative Party to look into it, because all of the boogeymen around paid sick days and the abuse and all that stuff, in all of the data they have from New York, haven’t happened. It just hasn’t happened. What has happened, for the most part, is people don’t come to work sick.

Let’s say that I came here sick and then I gave it to everybody, and you go home and you give it to your friends. I’m not talking about COVID; I’m talking about that cold. We have all been in a situation where someone shows up for work, and they have that raspy voice, and they’re like, “Sorry, I’ve got a bad cold,” and you think to yourself, “Great. Now I have a bad cold.” If you have paid sick days, then people don’t come to work sick. They don’t come with that phlegmy, gross-sounding voice that we’ve all suffered through and then give it to everyone else at work and have the productivity go down or have people have to miss days because they get sick. It’s a bill that we need to support.

Anti-scab legislation: I want to talk about this because it feels loaded sometimes for people. I know some people are more comfortable with “anti replacement worker.” I’m old school. A “replacement worker”—I used to be the worker safety rep at the Copper Cliff Smelter. Jody Leveille is my replacement worker. Jody does that job now. If I’ve moved on to another job or if I were to retire, then someone replaces me. When we talk about anti-scab, we’re talking about somebody who is on strike, in a legal position to be on strike or is legally locked out by their employer.

The only strength you have as a worker is to withdraw your labour. More and more companies are multinationals with super deep pockets, so the impact that you can have from withdrawing your labour becomes more difficult. If you work for a worldwide company, one where the CEO might not be able to even point to where you’re located, let alone know that Rudy’s has the best hamburgers in town, your ability to influence them through market share becomes pretty depleted. And it becomes extra depleted when the local government has said that, “Well, if you want to, you can hire and bring in replacement workers as much as you want.”

That’s just in terms of balance, because the Ministry of Labour, you have to remember, is about labour—the workers—and employers too. It’s about both and finding balance to them.

I once got yelled at because I called the minister the “minister of employers” because I felt like he was blind to the need of workers. But it’s because of precedent in the past.

I talked earlier, Speaker, about sitting over here at Queen’s Park when I was a steelworker. I was on strike at that time. I was on strike for a year. The member from Nickel Belt brought forward anti-scab legislation, and it was debated. One of the reasons we got kicked out was because we were incredibly frustrated, because we saw the Liberal government—basically what they did, Speaker, is they got up and they counted how many Conservatives were there, and then they decided to run to the back. I didn’t know these were lobbies behind us. I actually thought of them as little mouse holes they went to hide in because they were too embarrassed. My MPP was one of the members who ran in the back because he didn’t want me to know he voted against it. He just didn’t show up for the vote. I was sitting here. My colleagues, my brothers and sisters from the steelworkers, were in the galleries. We were trying to get this to go forward.

The data is there. The information is there. But the Conservatives voted against it. The Liberals used them so they could say, “It wasn’t us.” The Liberals came into power guaranteeing they would bring back anti-scab legislation. Mike Harris cut it. New Democrats brought it in; I’m proud to be a New Democrat and that we brought forward anti-scab legislation. Mike Harris cut it. He got rid of it. The Liberal Party promised—broke their promise—that they were going to bring it back. I guess you only had 15 years; how are you going to do it?

It was tabled every single term. You can only table once each term, but it was tabled every single time and was brought forward for debate. I watched as it was voted down. That’s heartbreaking when you’re on a picket line.

When you’re on a picket line and you’re looking at your kids—I have three kids. My daughter was young. My daughter was just starting kindergarten back then. When you’re looking at your kids and they’re unable to go to hockey or dance, when they’re not able to participate in certain things, when you’re worried about what’s going to be in their lunch, when every week you’re having spaghetti for dinner—and you know that there’s a government here that is allowing people to go across and extend the length of your labour dispute—to do your job, to use your locker.

In my workplace, Speaker, they gave my locker to somebody. They didn’t even remove the pictures from my locker; they just gave it up to someone else to use. So, every day, this guy came in to do my job and looked at pictures of my kids while taking food out of their mouths. That’s disgusting.

You want to talk about working for workers for real? Anti-scab legislation—I’m going to give you the opportunity to vote for this this year. This is the right thing to do. It’s the time to do it. You want to tell people you’re working for workers? You want to say you’re friends of the union? Put your money where your mouth is. Because I’m not shy to say that I’m supportive of it—at all. And none of my colleagues on this side are.

In fact, when we tabled an anti-scab bill last year, we had too many people co-signing. We had to rewrite the original draft because we had too many people on the list. My colleague from Niagara Falls agreed to remove his name so we would be able to have the people who had actual strikes and lockouts in the area that were using scabs to be on that bill.

My colleague from Toronto–St. Paul’s talked about ACTRA earlier today, with repetitions about the importance of anti-scab legislation. ACTRA’s commercial workers have been locked out for more than 500 days. I think today is 517 days that they’ve been locked out. You know how much help they’ve had from the Conservative government?

As the old mayor of Toronto would say, “Nobody!” Zero. They had no help at all. I asked in this House right here, right here in this chair in the corner office, I asked the Premier how comfortable he was that government ads from the province of Ontario were using these union-busting ad agencies that were using scab workers. Of course, he didn’t answer, because he rarely answers. It was deflected away.

During estimates, I asked the Minister of Labour, “Why do you support scab work?” His thing was, “They appear to be in negotiation. I don’t want to get involved.” I reminded the Minister of Labour that, if you’re sitting on the fence, your backside’s going to face somebody.

The reality though, Speaker, is that if you don’t want to get involved, then don’t use scab labour. There are a lot of ad agencies you can go to. I’m not saying not to advertise. I’m just saying, in the middle of a labour dispute, if you don’t want to show favouritism to the worker side and you don’t want to show favouritism to the employer side, then pull out completely. But don’t think you’re fooling the workers of Ontario if you are hiring and giving money to employers who use scab labour. If you think anyone believes you’re working for workers, you’re out to lunch. You’ve lost the thread.

Bill 124: I’ve got to be honest, Speaker, I can’t believe we’re still talking about Bill 124. This bill is a train wreck. When people look back at the last half decade of this government and they see Bill 124, they’re going to roll their eyes. I can’t believe that any Conservative MPP can go anywhere and talk about workers without someone yelling out “Bill 124” to you.

Bill 124, just if anyone is watching or reading this later on, caps public sector workers at 1%. We are in a level of financial crisis like you’ve never seen before. I can’t remember if it’s 6.5% or 7% just last year alone, but typically the cost of living is 2% to 3% every year. So if you cap somebody at 1%, basically what you’re doing is, you’re giving them a haircut. You’re telling them you’re not taking home as much money as you did last time. Your spending power is going to go down.

We went through COVID, we went through a health care crisis, and the people on the front lines who were deemed essential workers—in health care, in long-term care—all these public sector workers were told, “You are not worth any money.” I want to be clear about this: When you tell someone that they are worth less, you are telling them they’re worthless. That’s what you’re telling the workers.

Bill 124 capped it. I was sitting on this side over here somewhere, but I remember talking about Bill 124 and what it stated, and I said, “You’re going to lose. I’m not a labour lawyer, but, come on, this bill is unconstitutional. You’re going to lose.” I should have put money on it. I should have bet with the minister on it, because in November 2022, Justice Markus Koehnen of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that Bill 124 breached the charter and was therefore void.

You have an unconstitutional law that we told you was unconstitutional—and honestly, Speaker, you know as well as I do that the Conservative government has great lawyers. They’re going to be busy now with the greenbelt. They have great lawyers. They knew it was unconstitutional. They have lawyers on their bench who could have told them it was unconstitutional. If a guy from the smelter can tell you it’s unconstitutional, I’m sure a guy who actually went to law school could tell you. So you have an unconstitutional bill, you table it anyway, and you go through it anyway. You fight and you pay the court costs to fight it. Then the justice for the Ontario Superior Court says, “You breached the charter. It’s void.” And do you go, “Oh, my God, I’m sorry about that,” and repeal it? No. Oh, no. You double down. I think the theory is—I believe the reason the Conservatives do this, Speaker, is because it’s not their money, right?

I talk about Zapp Brannigan—which seems inappropriate for a guy my age. In Futurama, Zapp Brannigan is like a caricature of Kirk from Star Trek. One of the phrases he says is, “I’ll send wave after wave of men to their death to fight my pointless battle.” I think of that when it comes to lawyer fees for the Conservative government. They fight everything. They lose everything, but they don’t care. It’s not their money; it’s taxpayer money. Blow as much as you want—because they will float a bill called Working for Workers and people will think they’re helping them out, and maybe people won’t notice that they’re just blowing taxpayer money left and right on all these ridiculous ideas.

Look, you lost the first time. If anyone wants to put bets—I’m going to say you’re going to lose the second one—I’m taking it. I’ll take any bet that you got on this. You’re going to lose the second one. I have read a lot of arbitrator decisions. They’re not the same as this level, but look, there’s no wiggle room in this. It’s not just that the Conservatives lost, Speaker, it’s that their own witnesses helped them to lose. Their own witnesses proved what they were saying was the opposite of what they were saying. I cannot imagine they’re going to do well in this, but still, they’re appealing the decision.

This has gotten so bad that police officers are now talking to MPPs about Bill 124 and how it affects attracting people to the force, because the wages are capped. We know that our police officers are hard-working. We recognize that. One of our colleagues served as a police officer. When you have a job that a lot of kids sort of play as kids—I think we all played that we were police officers or firefighters; it’s one of the first jobs you understand as a kid. If you can’t attract people to come into that field because of Bill 124, maybe it’s time to listen and figure out how it’s damaging workplaces and jobs.

Bill 124—I mentioned it before—is a wage-restraint law and it capped wage increases to 1%. That was the max you can get. There were a lot of workplaces that tried to bargain below the 1% so people had to fight to get the 1%, which is unbelievable. There were also other workplaces that really didn’t need this. They weren’t going to be affected by it, but they were lumped in there.

When this was tabled in 2019, you could tell this was important. They were elected in 2018. In early 2019, one of the first things the Conservative government said was, “Let’s punish workers. What’s the best way we can do that? Well, let’s freeze their wages at 1%.” The President of the Treasury Board, when it was tabled, said, “We want to shrink the province’s budget deficits.” What he didn’t say, but what I read into it, was, “Let’s shrink it on the backs of workers.” He said that Bill 124 would demonstrate respect for taxpayer dollars, ignoring all the people who were affected by it.

The outcome of this, though, is that with taxpayer dollars, you’ve blown a ton of money fighting this, and you’re blowing a ton of money appealing it. And just like with the Liberal government with Bill 115, you’re going to blow a ton of money on having to pay people out. You are wasting taxpayer dollars by doing this—not respecting them. You’re insulting the workers who are affected, and you’re insulting the workers who aren’t directly affected, because they’re going to have to pick up the tab and pay for your blunder, the Conservative mistake.

Do you know what’s happening because of Bill 124? Through the summer—when we were here just before we rose last time, I remember that one day Jessie who works in my office had to go home early because the smoke was so bad. I said, “You don’t have to stay here.” The smoke was that bad. We have an air purifier now to try to help with it. There were so many forest fires that when I was meeting with my colleagues who were state-elected officials, they were asking me why they got so much of our smoke from Canada. I’ve never seen fires like this—so many fires this summer. It was a hot summer. We said it was a hot labour summer. It was also a hot, burning summer. In Ontario, we were 50 fire crews short. In the summer that we had, when every time you turned on the news there was a fire somewhere, we were 50 crews short. Part of that was because the Conservative government had cut 67% of funding for wildfire management programs—67%; that’s more than half. I’m not great with math, but I know that without nearly 70% of your funding, you’re probably not going to do as good of a job. There was a myth for a long time about doing more with less. Come on, man. There’s no more fat to cut; we’ve gone through the muscle, we’re into the bone, and we’re going to start ripping out the marrow soon. You cannot cut 67% of funding for wildfire management programs and think that you’re going to do a decent job. God bless the workers out there bending over backwards to do this work.

This is what I was told when I met with OPSEU: “The wage-suppressing Bill 124 has negatively impacted many government departments and I am well aware of the high turnover that does persist in Ontario’s aviation, forest fire and emergency services because of low pay and precarious work, which has made the crisis even worse. Ultimately, this means there are not enough experienced fire rangers to lead crews.”

That is not working for workers or respecting workers. That makes things unsafe in a workplace that really is about a hazard and addressing a hazard, that provides safety for all of us.

Near here, USW Local 1998, the Steelworkers union—they’re the staff-appointed union at the University of Toronto—recently voted 95.4% in favour of going on strike, if necessary. I want to spell that out, because I remember the power workers talked about a final vote offer, and the Premier got up and said, “I’ll force them back to work.” This is a strike vote, so just cool your jets a little bit. This gives the mandate, saying that the workers are frustrated and fed up, and that if they can’t reach a deal, they’re going to go on strike; they’ll have a vote to go on strike. The reason they’re saying this and the reason they’re giving their elected negotiating committee the right to call for this job action with such a strong mandate, up to and including a strike, is because the university is telling them, “Oh, Bill 124—we can’t give more than 1%.” The University of Toronto is a university with deep pockets. I walk home sometimes through their campus. You can get pretty tired walking through that campus. It’s a big place. They have a lot of money. They’re doing okay. They know they can’t argue about that funding, the money that they have. What they can argue about, though, is, “Oh, the Conservative government can’t let us do it.” This is what it means for workers.

I don’t see the Conservative government in the corner for workers. I see them in the corner for big business, time and time again. We saw this during COVID. Remember, during COVID, all the small businesses had to close down, but Walmart and Galen Weston’s Loblaws got to stay open? That didn’t help workers. That didn’t even help small business owners. It always comes that way. Whenever we ask questions about labour disputes—“I can’t get involved”. But the minute the Premier hears the whiff that there might be a final offer vote, he says, “I’ll legislate them back to work”—like that; he can’t wait.

There was an interesting development with ONA when it comes to Bill 124. ONA told me that ONA members are leaving their jobs because vacancies were not being filled, creating unmanageable workloads leading to burnout and exhaustion driving employees from the workplace—ONA, nurses. Just out front of these windows, you’ll see a whole bunch of hospitals. Lots of hospitals across the province are just desperate for nurses and health care workers—walking out the door.

One of the members opposite talked about tradespeople retiring—the average age is somewhere around 50—and that they’re walking out the doors. It isn’t just the workers. It’s not a numbers game; it’s a skills game, as well. If I was to be a new nurse, I want to be paired with a nurse who has been around for a long time, who can tell me and teach me what they’ve done.

It’s the same as in the trades. The reason you have an apprenticeship system in the trades is so that, as you’re learning, someone who has been there for a long time can help you improve, show you the things that you need to know, and take the stuff out of the book and show it works practically.

ONA, the Ontario Nurses’ Association, are basically quitting their jobs because of Bill 124—being burnt out. In the arbitrator’s decision on this, they gave them raises on top of the 3.5%; 3.5% this year, 3% next year, roughly about 11% of the two years for the average nurse.

Arbitrators are overruling your decisions to appeal this, because it’s wishy-washy now, because it’s unconstitutional. Ontario’s Financial Accountability Officer said the cost to the province will be approximately $900 million, just for ONA alone. There are a lot of workers in the public sector. When you talk about respecting taxpayers’ dollars, you’re not. You’re not. You’re going to be paying them $900 million just for this union alone, and that is if they don’t lose the appeal, because it increases by an additional $2.7 billion if you lose the appeal, which I’m willing to bet you will.

I don’t understand why you tabled it in the first place. I don’t understand why you fought it. I don’t understand why you continue to fight Bill 124, because you keep costing the taxpayers of Ontario more and more money. You keep insulting the public sector workers. These workers that you talk about are the heart and soul? These are public sector workers as well. You turn a blind eye to them.

In estimates, I asked the Minister of Labour, “Treasury Board said that Bill 124 would demonstrate respect for taxpayers’ dollars, so would you agree that you can better respect the taxpayers’ dollars if you could have saved all these lawyer fees and associated court costs?” He didn’t really know how to answer. I think he didn’t know how to answer, because it’s kind of true, right?

Something we could be doing and that should be in this bill is that we should be figuring out how to raise the minimum wage. Now, in my notes, I wrote down that the Conservative government often talks about the number of unfulfilled jobs. The new Minister of Labour said, I think in the third or fourth sentence, that we have got to fill these jobs. We have to pay people enough that they can buy food and put food on their table, put clothes on their kids’ backs, and pay their rent. I was at the Metro picket line on Bloor Street—I was with a bunch of them, but I went to the one on Bloor Street and workers there talked about not being able to buy the food at Metro. Imagine working at a grocery store and not being able to shop at the grocery store where you work. I hear this from tradespeople too.

I know the Conservative government loves to talk about the trades and the jobs are there. They’re great jobs. I was an electrician’s apprentice. I worked in construction. They’re good jobs and they pay well. They are good jobs, but more and more, these workers with these good-paying jobs that the minister likes to talk about aren’t able to buy the houses that they’re building.

I built some places that I couldn’t afford either. That happens, but the reality for a lot of people who are in the trades right now is that they can’t afford a house. There are no more starter houses. There are no more affordable houses.

More and more, we’re saying, “Come and get involved in trades, because you can work all day, long hours, and you’ll never be able to afford a house.” How is that message going to attract somebody? It’s not. It’s not going to. We need to address this.

Now, let’s just talk about the elephant in the room. We have minimum wage. I know it’s a delicate balance. If you’re an employer paying minimum wage, you’re trying to balance the books and all that stuff, but there are a large majority of people or workplaces who pay minimum wage that can—don’t tell me for a second that Walmart can’t afford to pay more than minimum wage. Don’t tell me for a second that McDonald’s can’t afford to pay more than minimum wage. Don’t argue with me that it’s going to raise prices. It’s going to raise prices because they can. We see this every day at the grocery store. Every day in the grocery store, we see this. They raise them because they can. My son who likes one particular brand of popcorn: Why is it at one store, the large chain, $4 more than the smaller store? Because they can.

You’re telling me Galen Weston can’t get a better price than a local mom-and-pop place? Come on. We’re getting gouged. We know it. The people of Ontario know it. They go to the grocery store and they see the price go up. They see that milk is $3 more than it used to be. What’s going on? We’re being gouged.

It’s the same as gas prices. I was talking about this on the drive down. The price of gas in Sudbury is a lot higher than it is here. I’m always told there’s this myth that the reason gas is a little pricier is because of the shipping. Look, if you go to North Bay, it’s about an hour and a half from where I live. It’s always 10 cents cheaper, and they always say it’s the shipping cost. Well, if it’s the shipping cost, then how come beer isn’t more? Because it’s an hour and a half for beer. How come it’s not more for a can of juice or a bottle of pop? How come it’s not more for milk? All of these are liquids that are being shipped. It’s because we’re getting gouged, and we know it. Because they can.

But going back to minimum wage and the cost: The elephant in the room is that people who are working full time can’t pay their bills. That really is something that has to be addressed. And more and more people are going to food banks. I mentioned this earlier with my first question to the Minister of Labour; it had to do with the number of people accessing food banks. We can’t have working people accessing food banks. The previous Minister of Labour, in estimates just a couple of weeks ago—I said that I know this started with the Liberal government. It’s not fair to the Conservative government to say, “Hey, you’re elected, it’s 2018, and now there’s a record number of people going to food banks who are working full time—more than ever before.” It’s a problem they inherited. But let’s keep this in reality. They’ve been in power for five years, half a decade. That number should start to trend down, and it’s not; it’s getting worse, as my colleague said. It’s getting worse.

I think if you want to show leadership in government, let’s put food banks out of business. Let’s tell them, “We have a plan, and you’re not going to be needed in the next five years or 10 years. We’re going to continue to reduce this. You might have to worry about food going bad on your shelves, because we don’t think more and more people should be going to food banks—more and more seniors and retirees, more and more working people, more and more children. We think this is the wrong direction, and we want to turn around the other way.” That’s something that could be in this bill, but it’s not. I believe the Conservative government is pretty happy with people going to food banks. It doesn’t bother them. It bothers me.

The thing, too, with food banks, Speaker, is that it’s cyclical, because if you’re going to a food bank, you don’t have extra money to donate to a food bank. And as more and more people go, less and less people can donate. At one point, people are going to show up and those cupboards are going to be bare, and we’re going to have kids go hungry. We’re going to have adults too, but I feel like a lot of times people are okay with adults going hungry. But kids are going hungry.

Feed Ontario had shared recently, “Ontario’s food banks were visited more than 4,353,000 times throughout the year, an increase of 42% over the last three years,” and “There has been a 47% increase in people with employment accessing food banks since 2018.” That’s a lot of people going—47%. And I’ll remind you that that was since 2018, and the government was elected in 2018. Obviously, they can’t fix the Liberal mistake right in the beginning, but five years later, this number shouldn’t continue to climb. It should be going down. That’s what they should be celebrating. It’s substantial. Daily Bread locally here in Toronto, their stat I had from 2022 was, “The proportion of food bank clients with full-time employment has doubled in the past year”—2022—“to 33%.” That’s 33% of people going to that food bank, just that one Daily Bread Food Bank; it has doubled.

Here’s the other thing about food banks. I only have two minutes left, but I want to talk about this because it is important. People on Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program, people who are on support from the government of Ontario—some are unable to work. Look, you have people on OW and ODSP who have to go to food banks. I spelled this out a couple of other times. If you’re a single individual on OW—Ontario Works, the old welfare system, if people are watching at home and don’t know the latest information—you get $733 a month. I don’t know how anybody can afford rent. Inflation has risen in 2018—since the last stat—by 16.68%. If you’re on disability, you get a little more than $733; you get $1,229 per month to survive, which is $900 below the poverty line. I looked up the numbers just to make sure. The government of Ontario website says that Ontario recipients receive up to $733 a month for basic needs and shelter, so that’s everything to make ends meet. A single person on ODSP with no dependents will receive a maximum of $1,308 per month. So they’re about the same; there’s about a $50 difference between the two stats, Daily Bread’s and the local numbers. We’ll use the higher numbers, though.

My riding, if you want to get a one-bedroom apartment, if you want some sort of dignity and to live by yourself, you’re looking at about a grand. In the former Minister of Labour’s riding, it was $1,200 to $1,400, but a grand is easier for math. So you have a thousand bucks just to cover your rent. On OW, you make $733. That means that every month, you’ve got to come up with $267—every single month: $267.

How do you find a job, how do you move forward in life when you don’t have enough money for food, when you’ve got to find more than $250 just to have a roof over your head and not get evicted? How do you focus on anything else besides basic survival with these terrible rates? It’s disgraceful. It has nothing to do with working for workers.

My clock is up. Sorry, Speaker.

I appreciate the member opposite talking about these members. We talked about this in the bill, the importance of having supports for these members so they don’t lose pay when they’re gone, so they don’t lose their benefits when they’re gone. That’s what I’m talking about. I said several times in the bill and previously in second reading of the bill that this is a headline bill. This isn’t really about helping people. It’s the bare minimum you can do to help somebody.

What I’m saying is that I also believe that reservists are an important part of our society, and the work they do is very valuable. I have friends in the reserves. I think what they do is honourable, and I’m very proud of people like John. But the reality is, I think we can do better than what they’re offering here, and we should be doing better.

This is about people’s credentials being recognized. I have to tell you that there is no stronger advocate in this room whom I’ve ever spoken with than the member from Scarborough Southwest. We have regular meetings as part of the labour file and looking at this. It’s shameful—I believe my colleagues feel the same way—that people come over here with credentials—and I’m talking about doctorates or tradespeople—and aren’t able to find work or able to do the work that they’re so successful in. And we need to build a faster pathway for them to get the credentials they need to fill those jobs.

On something like this, I’m aligned on it 100%. I know that we need people to come here and be new Canadians. I’m thrilled with everyone who chooses Sudbury as their home. And I want them to be as successful as they can be, as quickly as they can be.

I want to thank again the member for Scarborough Southwest for all of her advocacy and passion on this file.

Look, the reality is, a lot of these workers whose wages are being stolen from them by their employer are not well-paid to begin with. Every dollar is very, very important and goes much further to them. Why a Conservative government would say they’re working for workers but won’t help address wage theft from employers makes no sense to me at all. And I 100% agree with the member from Ottawa West–Nepean that we should be focusing on this. Workers work hard and they deserve every single dollar that’s coming to them.

I mentioned earlier in a response about the need for us to recognize the qualifications people have when they come here from other countries, and that if there are certain things we have to adjust so that we hit the right threshold, there should be a way to fast-track them. So, 100%, I think that’s an important issue as well.

The problem, though, Speaker, is that in these bills—and we hear it all the time, and I’ve got to tell you, it’s frustrating. People in my community tell me all the time. You put forward a bill with a poison pill in it, and maybe not this one specifically, but time and time again, there’s a bill and part of the bill is pretty good and part of it has stuff that no one would be able to support. Then what the Conservative government loves to do, Speaker, is point at the good part of the bill and say, “This is what the member voted against.” Let’s not do that anymore. Let’s not play games. Let’s have bills that actually help people. Let’s pull out the poison pills from them. It doesn’t make sense; it’s a nonsense thing. Honestly, if you think somebody, at the door, believes that I don’t support long-term care or whatever your nugget is—come on, let’s just get back to reality.