I am pleased to present this petition on paid sick days. It reads:

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas there is overwhelming evidence to show that paid sick days significantly reduce the spread of infectious disease, promote preventative health care and reduce health care system costs; and

“Whereas 60% of Ontario workers do not have access to paid sick days, and cannot afford to lose their pay if they are sick; and

“Whereas low-wage and precarious workers are the most likely to be denied paid sick days; and

“Whereas enabling workers to stay home when they are sick without losing pay helps limit the spread of illness in the workplace and allows workers to recover faster; and

“Whereas during an infectious disease emergency, it is unreasonable and dangerous to public health to make workers choose between protecting their communities and providing for their families; and

“Whereas legislating paid sick days through the Employment Standards Act, with transitional financial support for struggling small businesses, will ensure that workers have seamless, uninterrupted access to their pay;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to immediately amend the Employment Standards Act to provide Ontario workers with 10 employer-paid days of personal emergency leave each year and additional paid sick leave in the case of an infectious disease emergency.”

I fully support this petition, affix my signature and will send it to the table with page Sarah.

Thank you to all of my colleagues for the cough drops. I don’t think I’m sick; we’ll find out tomorrow.

Speaker, as we’re talking about building infrastructure safely, I wanted to be able to share something from a submission that was made by the Professional Engineers Government of Ontario. These are the folks who are professional engineers who work in different government ministries. PEGO—the Professional Engineers Government of Ontario—members deliver some of the largest infrastructure projects in the province. They write standards, codes and regulations. They approve major industrial projects and enforce and regulate environmental projects and operations. This includes the provincial highway network, the Ontario building code, land surveying, food safety, workplace safety, safe drinking water—speaking of safe drinking water, thank you, Paras—and clean air.

Speaker, as Ontario grows, its infrastructure and public service needs are growing too, and as we’re building our roads and our clean water systems and infrastructure, we want to know that people can rely on them. We want to make sure engineers have eyes on the projects and are involved in the planning.

To my earlier comment: Metrolinx doesn’t have any engineers on staff. I forget how many executives they’ve got and whatnot, but they don’t have engineers. They contract those out.

The Professional Engineers Government of Ontario work across government ministries to make sure that the government does things well and that we have infrastructure, we have projects that somebody who knows what the metrics should be and knows what the safety requirements are—that they have been involved. For example, I don’t think there are any who work in the Ministry of Energy; somebody can correct me, but that’s my understanding. That’s a little scary. But they are much less expensive than contracting out to the private sector. For every dollar that’s spent on the professional engineers in the government, we spend more than $10 on the private sector. About 30 years ago, they did about 40% of the engineering work in Ontario; now, based on the figures, it looks like less than 5%. That means that we—you as a government, but we as a province—are now contracting out and not relying on in-house, which surprises me. I would think the government would want information, knowledge and wisdom to be in-house. It means that private sector engineers are often compensated double the rate of the engineers who work in the government of Ontario. They charge 200% to 300% more for the same work of this government.

This government is always looking for ways to be more efficient, but let’s also look at that efficiency coming with safety. If you compare that work, why on earth wouldn’t you want that engineering expertise, the industry expertise, to be in-house? Maybe the government would have less opportunities to repeal all of their good ideas if they actually did their due diligence.

Anyway, as I am looking at the clock, I will say I am finally coming to the end of this one-hour lead, which is the second one-hour speech on locates I have given as the very proud and enthusiastic critic for infrastructure, transportation and highways.

I think that the take-away from this and all legislation that has to do with building infrastructure is that we want it done well. Yes, people want it done quickly and they want it done predictably. They want a start date and an end date that they can count on. The government has a lot of improving to do in that regard. But where this piece of legislation is concerned, I will say it is it a novel thing to be able to stand in this House and say that I hear there was a collaborative process and consultation went well, that industry and community stakeholders were in agreement with what is presented in this bill. That sounds like a new way—kind of an old-fashioned way—of governing, and I would like to see more pieces of legislation that actually went through a process and out the other side.

Speaker, I’m a little bit early, but I am glad to be finished my hour and to again have my voice on the record.

As I have said, this is a bill that came forward initially—so, many moons ago, the private members’ bill that was a collaborative effort between the member from Sarnia–Lambton and the former member from Hamilton East–Stoney Creek. There is nothing contentious in this bill; there wasn’t in that private members’ bill.

When you talk about the northern call centre—I just want to flag for the minister the comments from the member from Nickel Belt and others who have highlighted the challenges of northern community members and One Call, or getting those locates inside a timely way. That continues to be on a case-by-case basis. There are still improvements to be made, but that’s outside of this bill.

Everything I’ve heard from folks, with the few exceptions I highlighted, seems supportable. We’ll have to wait and see.

I’m telling you that not to be able to defend something the government is doing, but to be able to say to the government, “Look what happens when you learn from people who do the work. You get a piece of legislation that we don’t crumple up and throw back at you and that you won’t have to repeal.” Anyway, they’re lessons for everyone.