It’s my sincere privilege to welcome the great mayor of the city of Windsor, Drew Dilkens, who’s in the members’ gallery today.

It’s a privilege for me to stand up today. I actually watched some of the debate on TV. I listened to the debate. I want to say that I’m really glad that the new minister is here so he can listen to this debate.

But I found it interesting that today, our first day back in this House after four months, this is the bill that we’re talking about. We’re not talking about the greenbelt. We’re not talking about the scandals. We’re not talking about the lies. We’re talking about a bill, Working for Workers.

What I don’t understand is that some of the things they’ve talked about over the last little while—the minister talked about it, his three or four other speakers talked about it, my colleagues talked about it, some of my own members have talked about it—but they talk about firefighters as if in some way on this side of the House we don’t care about firefighters. Somehow, you’re trying to make that. Now, that’s a lie. We know that’s a lie. But I’ve got to tell you, Madam Speaker—

Interjections.

So let’s be clear—and I’m going to tell you a story because I think it’s important, because it happens in every community from coast to coast to coast when it comes to our firefighters. Unfortunately, for me and my family, it happened to my wife. She was driving down Lundy’s Lane in Niagara Falls coming home from school. She was a vice-principal. A drunk driver came out of the Sundowner and hit her head on. The first responders were there. The firefighters were there. EMS was there. And if they didn’t go to that call, guess what? My wife would have been dead.

So I don’t like it when you stand up and tell me, “Oh, we’re putting this into a bill about firefighters, because you don’t care about firefighters.” Some of my best friends are firefighters. I attended two events this weekend, one honouring two of our colleagues that passed away this year, and I’ll be here next Sunday for the celebration to talk about it. But Saturday night, I was there for volunteers; we have volunteer firefighters in Niagara. But I’m going to tell you, when you talk about firefighters, you stand up and you say, “It’s in the bill.” I can’t call you a liar because I’ll get called out, but the reality is, it’s not in the bill. It’s not in the bill.

The other part of the bill that you guys talked about, for those watching at home and listening—like I said, I’m glad the minister is here, because you talked about women’s washrooms. I think it’s a good thing. I think the washrooms should be good for women; they should be good for men; they should be good for everyone. I don’t think that’s a bad idea. I think we should take a look at it and make sure they’re clean and how that’s going to be done in every workplace.

But then, not one mention—not by the three who talked after the minister, not by the colleague in the corner who talked—not one mention about Bill 124. By the way, who does it attack?

To the new labour minister, if you really care about firefighters and you really care about women having proper facilities when they get into the trades, what should you do? Maybe my colleagues can help me. What would you think would be a fair and reasonable thing to do?

Madam Speaker, I don’t mean to pick on you at all. I’m just looking at you because I don’t want to get in trouble. I want to make sure I’m doing this right. But here’s the reality: Today, we’re doing a bill, Working for Workers. Everybody agree with that? Everybody on that side agree with that? Guess what we had at lunch today. What did we have at lunch today? About 5,000 workers, from every part of the province. They came from Windsor; they came from the north; they came from Niagara.

Actually, my group from Niagara, do you know why they’re here? A lot of them were senior citizens. It’s because your government has decided to shut down our urgent care centre, so instead of operating 24 hours a day, guess what they’re operating now? Ten. You talk about Ontario growing. Well, Fort Erie is growing. It’s going to have over 40,000 residents. They got on a little yellow bus. You know those yellow buses for schools? We’ve all rode in those. Guess what they don’t have? Washrooms. They were seniors. They had to make a couple of stops on the way. But they came.

You know who else was there? Unfortunately, the minister is not here right now, but I’ve got to say this. Guess who was there? Unifor was there. I talked to their president; I talked to Lana. SEIU was there. They were there in their purple shirts, some in tears. You know who else was there? CUPE. Some of you did an incredible job and have done an incredible job. Nobody ever goes after the health coalition on their facts or their figures. They are so good. The health coalition organized the rally. You know who else was there? Anybody here on my side know?

Interjection: And they weren’t there.

So when I went to the rally—I was fortunate enough to be a labour guy myself for the last 40 years—I ran into a lot of my old friends, whether with Unifor or some in the OFL. Some of them, I got some really nice pictures to put in my scrapbook when I’m not doing this job any longer. Then I listened to our leader, Marit Stiles, get up and do a great speech. Then, because I know the health coalition wants to be fair to everybody, guess who else spoke? The leader of the Green Party got up and spoke. Now, he didn’t have a lot of members with him, because they don’t have a lot of members in the Green Party, but he went up and did a good job. Then the Liberals went up and spoke. I think they were five or six. Their van was all there, for sure. So they got up and spoke.

Madam Speaker, and I’m looking at you directly for this reason: Do you know who didn’t speak on the day that they’re bringing Bill 79, the Working for Workers Act? Guess who didn’t speak: the new minister. He didn’t go and speak. Premier Ford didn’t go and speak. When you have 5,000 workers and all they want to hear from their government is, “We’re not going to privatize health care. We’ve learned our lesson with the greenbelt. We made a mistake”—although I think it was calculated. They knew exactly what it was. It wasn’t a mistake. But we know that when workers, families and communities stand together, we can get the government to back down.

You would think that they’re so proud of their bill—where is it? Oh, here it is. I’ll hold this up. They’re so proud of their bill, on the first day back in this House, where we haven’t sat for over four months—they don’t come and speak to workers. They didn’t speak to the OFL. They didn’t speak to Unifor. Think about that today.

So why do you bring Bill 79 here today and try to say to the province of Ontario, “We’re for workers”? The only party for workers in the province of Ontario is the NDP. It always has been and it always will be. We will not hide, and we’ll be out on that front lawn every time there’s an injustice.

And what were they talking about today? Because again, working for workers—they were talking about sick days, how they need sick days. One of the first bills they attacked as a government was that they got rid of the three days of sick days. Do you guys remember that, when they attacked us?

Anti-scab: This summer, workers have said, “Enough is enough,” including to their own leadership, when they turned down some tendered agreements, saying, “We need a bigger piece of the pie. We need to make sure that if corporations are making a lot of money—sometimes billions and trillions of dollars—we need a share in that enormous wealth.” Do you know why they need it? Does anybody know? They need affordability. They need to buy their groceries. They need it to pay their rent, especially in the new builds; right? Because—Madam Speaker, I think you’re from an area where you know this—the new builds, there’s no rent control on them. They can put those rents wherever they want, and what we’re seeing here in Toronto is $3,100, $3,200, $3,300. So workers deserve to get some of that pie.

I want to say clearly to every single worker in the province of Ontario—union, non-union—that an injury to one worker is an injury to all. I’m saying that to my colleagues in the skilled trades. I’m saying that to my health care workers, to our teachers. I’m saying it to every single worker—EMS, firefighters, police officers—that the only way we win is if we stick together. And don’t get fooled by Bill 79 that they actually care about workers.

I’m going to do this because I think I’m a pretty honest guy—I know that’s unusual in some places sometimes in here, but I’m going to be honest about this, because the new minister, I’m pleased that he’s here. But he was in charge, before he became the labour minister, of the environment—think about that—in one of the biggest scams that we’ve ever had in the province of Ontario, trying to develop on the greenbelt.

And they talk. They talk about immigration. They talk about allowing new Canadians to do the jobs that they’re trained to do here in this country. They talk about young people. You can’t stand up and say that when every single one of you over there supported every single bill to develop on the greenbelt. Because who were you hurting? We know in the province of Ontario today, because we have migrant workers—they’re workers too. We know in the province today, right here in Ontario, mostly around Toronto, we’re losing 329 acres of prime farmland every single day. And who is that going to hurt? It’s going to hurt our kids and our grandkids. Because if we’re a province or a country that can’t feed itself, you’re going to be in trouble.

You would think—to my colleagues who are listening here; I don’t think they’re listening to me anyway. You would have thought that after COVID-19 we would have learned a valuable lesson: We can’t rely on other countries to provide for us.

And where did we see that? We saw that with our PPE. You all remember that? You talk about the military in the bill and doing a little bit for the military; we should do all we can for the military. But remember during COVID what the military had to do, including some of the reservists? They had to go into long-term-care facilities and see the suffering that was going on in those facilities. Some of them had to do it—because they didn’t have PPE. Remember that?

Some people died—right here, my friends; we take it for granted every single day—from dehydration, a simple thing like giving them a glass of water. But they couldn’t give them the water. You know why? They didn’t have any staff, because you brought in Bill 124. You care about workers, yet you attacked workers, and workers left. PSWs left. These places didn’t have any staff.

Most of those, quite frankly—I’d say 80% of the seniors—that died in long-term-care facilities died in private homes. We know that, because what do they care about? Anytime you’re going to take care of a senior, what should it be about? Should it be about profit, or should it be about care? I’m thinking if it’s me, because I’m getting older—it was my birthday yesterday; I got a year older yesterday. Although I did have good news: The Jays won; so did the Bills. That was good for the day. But what do we need to do? We need to make sure our seniors are taken care of, and the military had to go in and expose what was going on.

But to get back to my original point: It was because we were relying on China and some in the States; even the States wouldn’t give us some PPE. We had to start doing it ourselves. The same thing is happening in our farmland. But I’ll get back to the minister. I think it’s important.

Minister, I’m going to look you straight across as I try to look at both of you, because you’re right across from me. Minister, you voted for Bill 124, one of the worst bills that I’ve ever seen. How much time do I got? Three and fifty—almost four minutes. Bill 124 attacked workers, mostly health care workers; some other jobs as well, but it was mostly in the health care sector where they felt it the worst. It capped their wages at 1%—and that included benefits. So the total compensation package at the bargaining table: 1%. If you wanted to improve your benefits, it came out of the 1%.

The “notwithstanding” clause, the next bill, where workers from coast to coast to coast, including from the west to the east, said, “This is the worst attack against workers that I’ve ever seen in my lifetime,” and what happened? The labour movement came together, and they said, “You are not going to do the ‘notwithstanding’ clause in the province of Ontario.” What happened? I know the unions met with Premier Ford. I know they met with—can I say Monte now, because he’s not here? They met with Monte and they said, “You guys have got to come to your senses. You have to back down on that bill.” So you know what happened? The labour movement came together, including the trades—auto workers, steelworkers, health care workers—and the government backed down on the “notwithstanding” clause.

Do you know what else they backed down on just last week? The greenbelt. But make no mistake about it: You’re not done with the greenbelt. There’s a lot more to uncover in that greenbelt—the corruption that went on; find out what the developers knew ahead of time.

I will be honest with you; I’ve never gone with a developer to Vegas. Just in case—I never met one in Vegas. I want to get that off the table.

And then, Bill 60—and I’ll get back to the rally today, because that’s what the rally was about today. The rally today was about standing up for workers from one part of the province to the other. And Bill 60—what does it want to do? It wants to privatize our health care system. Think about that: privatize our health care system—because what does health care become? And some of my colleagues will shake their head at me, but it’s true. What does it become? It becomes that somebody is going to make money on the backs of somebody being sick—and the colleagues over there are shaking their head at me; I can’t say who they are.

I’m going to tell the story about Joel—I guess I can’t say his name, but he’s from Ottawa, and he’ll tell you that at his hospital, doctors rented out their emergency rooms and their operating rooms on the weekends, started their own corporation, utilized their own nurses on the weekends, utilized the publicly funded janitor services to clean the operating rooms. And guess what happened? That corporation is now making money on the weekends. So when you stand there and shake your head—that’s a true story; I don’t make that up. It’s in the paper; you can google it. That’s exactly what has happened in Ottawa, and that’s exactly what’s happening in other communities right across this province.

That’s why 5,000 people who could have been anywhere today—some of them rode on that bus today for six or seven hours, coming from the north, coming from as far away as Windsor—

Interjection.