Another question?

Thank you. I appreciate the question.

Absolutely, additional provisions to protect women in the trades should have been included in this legislation. As a matter of fact, there’s a number of things that should have been included in this legislation. It’s very narrow in its scope on almost every single schedule in this bill. I think if we’re going to talk about working for workers, we need to create the workplace conditions that make work safe for all workers: free of harassment, sexual and gender-based violence. We also need to make sure that when workers are injured, they’re actually taken care of, which was one of the things that I think was missing from one of the schedules of the bill that talked about injured workers. I think there are many ways in which this bill could have had an expanded scope to create a bill that truly worked for workers.

Ça fait tout le temps plaisir d’avoir la chance de parler, puis aussi de poser une question.

J’entendais la collègue parler, sa présentation. Moi, j’ai un neveu qui a travaillé comme sapeur de feu. En plus de ça, il était un « crew leader ». Il a fait ça pendant des années, puis il a changé d’emploi parce que—je lui ai demandé : « Pourquoi, Travis, tu es parti, que tu n’es pas resté dans le milieu? » Parce qu’il était un « crew leader ». Il était bien respecté. Il aimait ce qu’il faisait. Mais il se sentait dénigré. Il se sentait comme s’il n’était pas respecté.

Premièrement, il n’était pas bien payé. Il dit : « On se fait débarquer dans des lieux de travail et on n’est même pas compensé pour vivre dans des tentes, vivre dans des conditions qui, on peut dire, sont assez difficiles, là. » Puis ils se font déménager assez souvent. Le gouvernement a eu l’opportunité d’adresser, de payer—on sait que la province brûlait cet été, là. On a vu un tapon de feu—on voit comment il y a eu d’impact à cause de la planète qui se réchauffe.

Comment le gouvernement—j’aimerais que la députée réponde à ma question. Vous avez eu l’opportunité. Pourquoi ne pas rémunérer ces personnes-là comme il faut, et leur donner des augmentations—pas 1 %, comme le projet de loi 124? Retirez le projet de loi 124, puis rémunérez ces personnes-là, puis donnez-leur aussi des payes de—comment est-ce que je te dirais ça—

Thank you to the member opposite for her debate time. I definitely listened intently as she raised the Plastimet fire. We know the case of Bob Shaw and the cancer that he obtained through that, and the presumptive legislation that came from that fire and Bob, due to the work of Andrea Horwath, who was the previous leader of the NDP and is now the mayor of Hamilton, who worked diligently to ensure that that legislation was passed. We’re pleased to see that expanded, but I find it unconscionable that it is not in this legislation.

Can the member please explain why they do not feel it is necessary to embed it in legislation and ensure that it is there to support firefighters forever in time?

Well, thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate that.

I want to commend the member for Flamborough–Glanbrook on her remarks today on Working for Workers. I had a question. It’s something dear to my heart; I’ve been involved with the 1st Hussars back in Sarnia–Lambton. Could you speak a little more about the expansion and improvements to the military reservists and what we’re looking at doing there?

We’re going to move to questions.

The member for Flamborough–Glanbrook to respond.

I want to thank you for your very thoughtful comments on everything that’s being brought forward with this bill. The member brought up a very interesting point. I was listening to the adjustments of PPE, which is something I’ve actually heard personally from constituents: women forced to wear PPE that was designed for men and perhaps less safe as a result. I’m wondering if the member wanted to comment further on what this will do for women in the trades.

I’m pleased to have the opportunity to be able to weigh in on Bill 79, the Working for Workers Act, at third reading. I don’t believe I had the opportunity under second reading before the Legislature rose, so it’s a great time to be able to stand up and speak on behalf of workers and to really talk about what New Democrats would do for workers in the province of Ontario, which we know is very different than what we have seen the Ford government do.

They have claimed to be supporters of workers, and yet we have seen several examples of where they’ve clearly not been on the side of workers: for example, cancelling and freezing the minimum wage for three years when they first came into office. It was just put into place that workers in this province were finally going to get an increase to minimum wage, something that the New Democrats had to fight the Liberals forever to be able to get them that minimum wage increase, and when the Ford government came in, they cancelled that increase right away, of course, once again affecting and attacking the most vulnerable people in our province.

Sick days: We, again as New Democrats, had fought with the Liberals to get paid sick days put in place, and the minute the Ford government came in, they cancelled those paid sick days. We’ve seen what happened during COVID when people did not have access to those paid sick days and we had to fight tooth and nail, really, the Conservative government to be able to get paid sick days put in place. But now they’ve also been cancelled, as the time has run out on them, and, quite frankly, we’re seeing another rise in COVID cases. We have our hospitals in Hamilton, for sure, who are now asking people who work within the hospital system to wear masks once again, so we know that those paid sick days are so critical to the fabric of our community.

Someone who is working day in and day out in this province is probably just making it. Many folks are just making it. With the cost of rent, with the increased cost of mortgages, with inflation rates, with the cost of food, we know that people are living paycheque to paycheque more and more, each and every day. When you don’t have that safety net of a paid sick day, it puts families and homes—their valuable homes—at risk, and that is something that we really don’t have room to allow to happen.

I can tell you, I hear on a daily basis from friends of mine who are at risk of being homeless. They’ve lived in homes for years that they’ve rented, and now those landlords are selling those homes. They’re terrified about where they’re going to go, and to be able to pay the rent. One, for instance, is a teacher in an elementary school and works part-time as a bartender at night to be able to make the difference, to take care of her and her kids. She is one of these people who are facing eviction, and she has no idea where she’s going to go. She has health concerns. She can’t just not go to work, and she has to be able to feed her family. This struggle is real for her, and I feel for my friend, but there is just not the affordable housing that our community needs.

Another woman I know—again, another single mom—her place is also for sale, and she is struggling, trying to figure out how she is possibly going to make it work. She’s like, “I think I can pay up to $3,000 a month. That’s stretching it, but I think I can make it.” Now, that’s a lot of money—$3,000 a month, just to be able to afford to pay the rent. These are the workers in our province. These are the people who this bill is supposed to be about, and yet there is nothing in this bill to protect the workers of this province.

What else did I see in here? What else have you done? Was it Bill 28 that tried to stomp on the charter rights of Canadians? We’ve seen what happened there, as people across this province protested day in and day out, until this government had to reverse their decision—which is something that we see happen on a regular basis around here. The greenbelt decision being reversed is probably the fourth time, I think, in the six years that this government has been elected that they’ve had to reverse course on legislation they put forward, backtrack and come back in with new legislation to make up for the mistakes that they have been caught with.

I think the only mistakes that this Premier truly thinks he has made is that he gets caught, and that people stand up to him, and they are the workers of this province—

Constitutional rights—there we go. That one went there.

Bill 124, again, is another hit against workers that we have seen in this province: nurses, correctional workers, any public service worker. They’re left out to be able to receive the increased wages that their bosses, I’m sure, are receiving. They’ve been frozen at a 1% increase, and that hurts when we have a 19% increase in inflation of food in our communities. A 1% increase just certainly isn’t going to cut it.

I’ve been looking at some information, as I was a speaker the other evening at the Frozen in Time town hall, to talk about ODSP and OW and how those rates have been frozen for so many years, and the effect that that has on our community and what it has on folks. The reason that I’m raising this is, well, first of all, because they need to be increased—doubled; there’s absolutely no doubt. A person on ODSP is making $1,227 a month; a person on Ontario Works, $733 a month. The average rent in Hamilton is $1,800 a month for a one-bedroom, probably pretty-much-nothing apartment, so those folks are definitely struggling.

But what that brought up to me in this point and why I wanted to raise it is because in my notes from that town hall that night, I talked about Canada’s Market Basket Measure, which is a formula to determine how much an income has to be, to be able to survive in the community. For folks in Hamilton to be able to live modestly, it’s $49,952. A person earning minimum wage is not coming close to that mark, and it’s forcing them into extreme poverty. It’s forcing them into tents in our communities.

We’re seeing this time and time again. We have so many people who are going to work every day; they’re sleeping in tents, they’re sleeping in cars, they’re couch-surfing, they’re living with their parents and they’re just trying to figure out how to make it work in the province of Ontario when they simply cannot afford to do so.

Another thing in this bill in schedule 4 is the collection of personal data from post-secondary institutions relating to employment services programs in the province. So I’ll take you back again: People who are on Ontario Works or ODSP, the employment services were rammed through our local municipalities—and it was a knowledge base, it was a relationship base where they understood our city or our small little town or wherever the person lived, and they could relate to the jobs that made sense there, what was working and what wasn’t.

When this government again decided to attack the most vulnerable people and thinks that the best social service and social safety net is a job—even when you’re disabled, they think that everybody can go to work—they contracted out the employment services. They took it away from our municipalities. Hamilton is a municipality that bid for the contract to be able to provide this service, and they lost the bid. They lost the bid to a private company. This is how it went—“contracting out of employment services for the Muskoka-Kawarthas, the Peel region and the Hamilton-Niagara region. The Hamilton-Niagara contract has been awarded to American firm Fedcap. The Peel region’s services will be contracted out to WCG, a subsidiary of Australian company”—

Thank you.

We’re going to move to further debate.

Thank you for the question. Yes, our government has a really ambitious plan to build across Ontario, and to deliver on that plan, we need all kinds of workers and we need women in the trades. Currently, only one in 10 construction workers in Ontario is a woman. To attract more women to these really well-paying and rewarding careers, we need to make our job sites safe and welcoming.

The standard for PPE fit and sizing in construction has historically been a male body. This has made it harder for women and others outside of the standard fit and sizing to find equipment that properly fits the proportions of a woman’s body, with many having to refashion ill-fitting garments or equipment to fit, potentially compromising the effectiveness of the PPE. The proposed changes would clarify and make explicit the requirement that PPE and clothing be a proper fit, taking into account all factors, including consideration of diverse body types.

With all due respect to the member from Flamborough–Glanbrook, you keep saying that this is in the bill, but the provision for washrooms for women, not in the bill; the provisions for presumptive legislation for firefighters, not in the bill. It’s a disservice to the people of the province of Ontario when you say something that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Here’s my question. National Steel Car in Hamilton: We know there were three deaths in less than two years in Hamilton. Quoc Le, Fraser Cowan and Collin Grayley all lost their lives on the job in what is known around Hamilton to be a very, very dangerous work site.

Your government cut workplace inspections, and very rarely do you inspect and very rarely do you levy fines. When you do finally levy fines, those awards never go to the grieving families who are left without a loved one to provide for their families. What do you have to say to the families of Quoc Le, Fraser Cowan—

Privatization—and not even in our own country to be able to provide services to the people of Ontario is absolutely shameful. And now we’re seeing in legislation that they want to be able to collect personal data, that they want to be able to get that data. What do they need it for in the States? It always makes me question them.

“Under the new model, providers only get paid for employment services functions provided to social assistance recipients when a job-match is made, with fees set according to the difficulty of the case.” So it’s a performance-based framework that we have given to another country to be able to deal with and to support, which should be support services and employment services to the most vulnerable people in our communities.

Interjection.

Let’s just take a scenario of someone on Ontario Works: They’re making $733 a month. They’re definitely struggling. Let’s take it a little further—let’s take it as someone who is currently in a tent in one of the parks in our city. They’re making $733. They could have some mental health issues. They could have some addiction issues, or they’re getting clean from addiction issues. But what comes with all of that? Do they have a place to wash their clothes? Do they have a place to have a shower? Do they have a place to get good food intake to be able to go to work? Now we have an employment service that has no idea what’s happening in our community going to force this person to get a job and being paid to get this person a job. How are they going to work when they have nowhere to sleep, nowhere to clean, nowhere to brush their teeth, nowhere to eat, unless they’re eating out of food banks? And when this person fails, the person goes back on the list and they’re able to get another placement, and they get paid for the same placement again? I’m not really sure.

We do have some cases that have been sent to us about these same employment services and problems that people have had, so I have a couple of case summaries here, but I just want to touch on a few aspects of it. Remember, this is employment services; they’re supposed to support these same individuals to get them into the workforce and whatever they need. They’ve been denied gas money, which they should be entitled to, to travel to approved activities—being told incorrectly that she didn’t qualify for assistance for going to college, and confidentiality issues with her personal information being shared in ways that she did not authorize. And now, here, we see in this legislation the government doubling down. So I’ve talked a lot about that.

There are a few other things—and time goes fast around here when you have a lot to say, so I’m going to leave it there. There are obviously issues with that that I’ve raised my concerns about.

I want to talk about schedule 2. Schedule 2, I believe, is—a reservist who needs to have time away from their work to be able to serve our country. I wholeheartedly agree with this. I think whatever we can do for someone in the reserves is still not enough. But I also want to remind the government that those same reservists come home. We deploy them. We send them to war. We send them to things that no one should have to see. They do that to protect us or to protect others, and we do nothing to protect them when they come home.

In Hamilton, we have identified—and this number is from last year, so it may even be more than that now. We have identified 97 homeless veteran individuals on our streets of Hamilton alone—Hamilton, surrounding, we have over 300.

I was working with the former Minister of Housing on bringing a Homes for Heroes project to the city of Hamilton, wraparound supports—to ensure that veterans in our communities have a safe place, with the supportive wraparound supports around them, to ensure that we’re getting them back to their families, getting them back to their loved ones, getting them back to work, getting them into a healthier place. Unfortunately, we have not been able to find land.

I don’t know what the developers on the other side are saying—

Interjection.

I’m not bashing her on it. I don’t know what is happening over there. I really want that land. That’s all I know. I know that the veterans in our communities deserve to have that space, and I think it’s an actual great model going forward of how we can do supportive housing in our communities. We know that Homes for Heroes has already happened in Kingston, and I think London was another one that was on the list as a possibility, but Hamilton is critical to be able to have that support of the Homes for Heroes.

There are lots of folks in Hamilton, veterans, who are ready. They’re at my fingertips. When I call them, they’re going to be there, ready to jump on those committees to support that initiative and bring Homes for Heroes to Hamilton.

I’m going to leave that portion there. I do want to talk very quickly in the less than two minutes I have left about the things that, again, are missing from this bill. We’ve heard of the presumptive legislation; that is nowhere to be seen in this bill. We have scoured it. It is not here.

We’ve heard a lot about washrooms and facilities on construction sites, to encourage more women on-site. Well, I think not just women, but everyone deserves to have a clean bathroom when at work, and that, again, is not in this bill. There is nowhere where we can find that in this legislation, and yet those are the main talking points if you listen to the government go on throughout their debates. The things that they’re talking about most are the firefighter presumptive legislation and the facilities for women on job sites, neither of which is in the bill.

If the members wanted to talk about these things through debate, it’s unfortunate that this wasn’t built into the bill, particularly the presumptive legislation for firefighters. That should be in here. It should be written in gold. We should be so grateful for what they have done and what they have given up to protect us. That legislation should be in here, front and centre, for everyone to see and to ensure that it is in legislation forever; that this government, when they decide that they’re just going to flip on their heads, can’t remove that too, like they did the paid sick days, and like they did for the increase for people on social services, and like they cut—I’ve said the minimum wage, the paid sick days.

There are so many things that we’ve seen this government reverse, that people need. I would hate to see that presumptive legislation be another one of those things, because they didn’t put it in legislation.

Oh, boy. Privatization.

I want to thank the member for her presentation. Schedule 5—and there are other schedules in this bill—talks about raising fines. You know, a government likes to look tough when they’re punishing those who are misbehaving, and one of the ways in which, of course, they like to say that is by raising fines.

When they’ve done studies on the matter, they find that to discourage bad behaviour, to discourage the breaking of rules, it’s not so much the level of a fine but the chances of getting caught that discourages, but we have a government that has shown in many different areas that they’ve reduced inspections as a result of their activities and the decisions that they make. What are your thoughts on that matter?

You know, there are so many things that we could do to ensure that workers are supported and regulations are in place, like better safety training on the job—we know that that has been left to the unions to be able to do that work, and I’m so grateful for them, but ensuring that the dollars are there to fund them and to support them.

I think increasing wages, increasing benefits, making sure that people have proper pensions, WSIB coverage, get rid of deeming—these are the types of things that people in this province need and want and have been asking for, for many years.

The government needs to truly stand up for workers, stand up for people who have been injured, stand up for families who have lost loved ones on the job by focusing on these kinds of issues.

We’ve seen the increases in our food banks. We have seen more tents pop up in our communities. You want to do something? Double the rates. When they actually have rates and they can somewhat afford to live, then we get them into the job field. You can’t stick someone who lives in a tent out to work when they can’t even afford to eat.

Think about a mom with a special-needs kid who doesn’t have an EA in the classroom and has to go and pick her kid up from school because they can’t handle the kid in school; there’s nobody there. What’s that mom going to do? She needs that paid sick day to be able to make up that cost.

But instead, we’re telling mom, “Listen, you’re going to struggle with supports because your kid hasn’t had any supports for autism, and we’re going to not keep the kid in school because we don’t have enough adults in the classroom, and then we’re going to tell you that you can’t pay the rent because you couldn’t go to work that day.” Paid sick days are a social safety net for vulnerable people and people who are working in our community.

Do you think that this bill, Bill 79, has done enough for sick workers—workers who get sick and need sick days on the job?

We’re going to move to questions for the member.

I thank the member for her speech. One of the things that I know is definitely within the bill is the credentials recognition. I know I’ve spent a lot of time in my professional engineer association finding foreign-trained engineers who were not able to get licensed. Certainly to make sure that we have our employees—or, rather, our citizens and permanent residents—have a chance to make a go of it is important, to work in their fields.

The proposal that the government has put forward includes several measures to help clarify the existing legislation where there might have been some gaps and to help people start work in their fields of choice, faster than ever. Would you agree that this is a move in the right direction and helps address the province’s labour shortage in critical sectors?

We’ve seen remarkable improvements under the new format compared to the old system, helping job seekers find gainful employment so that they can support their families. Would the member opposite agree that we should be doing everything we can to help those on social assistance find meaningful work?

To the member opposite: I know one of the issues that’s been coming into my office lately has been the terms of work, and this piece of legislation appears to address that, giving basic information to employees about their employment as soon as they begin. Having a written record of what your responsibilities are in terms of work is an important step to ensure that workers know what is expected of them and what the requirements of their employment may be.

Would the member opposite agree with the proposal in the legislation to require employers to provide new hires with information about their terms of employment?