I apologize. I didn’t mean to say that. It’s hurtful, Speaker. It is hurtful to these people.

We had people come to the deputations and talk about how excited they were for these laws, because they have been affected by them. Then, I had to break their heart and say, “Do you know these were already laws that they’re not enforcing?” They already exist as laws. In fact, we’re wasting time talking about this being a duplicate law.

With the resources the Conservative government has—actually, the resources that any government would have—in terms of manpower, institutional knowledge and lawyers, surely somebody in that party would have put up their hand and said, “You guys know this is already law. It’s already part of the Employment Standards Act.” I would imagine that happened, and the Minister of Labour said, “Yes, but I’ve got to get in the papers. I want to go around the province and pose for photos saying, ‘Look what I’m doing.’” But they’re not doing anything. In mining, we call that, all sizzle, no stink. It’s a pretend law.

The third one that was already a law is about requiring Canadian experience in job postings. This is already part of the 2013 Human Rights Code, so it’s more than a decade old. The reason that it’s not enforced is because first you have to know—a lot of these workers are immigrated workers, newcomers to Canada—the Human Rights Code of Ontario, then you have to file a complaint. You have to know how to file a complaint, and then you have to wait for the complaint to be heard. Right now, if you know, if you filed a complaint, if you’re able to wait for it, you’re going to wait between three to five years because there’s a backlog of over 9,000 cases. You would think there’s a backlog of 9,000 cases because there have been so many complaints and it hasn’t been enforced—and that could be part of it, but the reality is, most people don’t even know this exists.

In fact, the Conservative government got away with all kinds of press releases about doing this without people knowing about it. They had people come to the deputations, talking about how good this will be for them, because people they represented have been exploited this way and didn’t know it was part of the Ontario Human Rights Code from 2013. The people who did figure it out and filed the complaints have to wait three to five years. The reason they have to wait is because when the Conservative government came to power, they failed to reappoint and retain the experienced adjudicators. When those people phased out, they didn’t appoint new people. When they finally did appoint new staff, they appointed staff who weren’t qualified and didn’t understand what they were doing. They had no expertise in human rights law. So that learning curve becomes steep and slows things down even more.

This isn’t about helping workers. This is about helping Conservatives have press conferences to pretend they’re helping workers. This shouldn’t even be in here. Make it an announcement that you’re going to enforce these. Make it an announcement that you’re going to start collecting the almost $10 million that has been stolen out of workers’ pockets. Make the announcement that you know there’s a backlog of 9,000 cases and you’re going to hire even more people to have this taken care of; you’re going to make sure everyone knows that these are already existing laws.

You’re going to bring a campaign—the Super Bowl had an ad that taxpayers paid for that was all fluff. It was just an “Imagine Ontario” thing. You want to have an ad? Have an ad at the Super Bowl saying, “If you work in Ontario, we’re not allowing you to rip off our employees. We’re not allowing you to get away with wage theft; we’re not allowing you to not pay people for trial periods; we’re not going to allow to you ask for Canadian work experience, because those are illegal in our province and have been for more than a decade. We’re going to enforce the laws. We’re all for great employers, but if you’re not a great employer, we’re going to hold you to account the same way we would hold bad employees to account.” That’s what they should be doing. But that’s not the goal. The goal is to be in front of the camera, to have a photo and to fool people to think that you’re doing something for them, and that’s disgraceful.

The next one is technically already almost a law; I didn’t want to throw it in with the other three. This is about pay transparency. I got this from the Equal Pay Coalition. Pay transparency laws allow people to find more fairness in pay. Basically, there was a bill in 2018 that had passed in April that would require pay transparency to come forward. It’s technically almost a law because it has never been dissolved; it just has never gone to have the LG read it into law. In 2018, Ontario’s Pay Transparency Act came through, and it was never repealed; it was just blocked.

I want to move to the section here where they spell it out: “Doesn’t Ontario already have a Pay Transparency Act?” Yes, it does. It passed in April 2018. It was scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2019, to give some ramp-up time, and then employers would have to do it in 2020. But after the 2018 provincial election, when the Conservative government came in to power in November 2018—it was one of the first things they did; they rushed this in as quickly as they could—they indefinitely suspended the Pay Transparency Act from coming into effect. They knew the blowback, if they actually repealed it, would be devastating, so they suspended it. You just tell people, “We’re going to put it on a shelf and look at it later”—they’re never going to look at it. So in schedule 32 of that Restoring Trust, Transparency and Accountability Act—they tabled that for a little while to wait on it. They didn’t repeal it. They just blocked it from taking effect.

Then in this bill, they came forward and said, “We’re going to have pay transparency.” But all you really have to do to be in compliance with this new version of pay transparency—you literally can say, “I have a job posting, and you could make between minimum wage and a million dollars an hour.” That’s all you need to do. I don’t think employers are going to do that, but it is not going to meet the moment of what is expected for this section of the act.

Pay transparency is a way for workers to understand what the average pay is where they work already. It’s a way that, in workplaces where there’s a gender wage gap, female employees can find out how much the male employees are making and can question why they’re making less. We know that it’s an ongoing issue. We know it’s being addressed, but if you don’t have the data, you can’t move it forward. All this in this bill—again, another headline moment where you can say, “We’re bringing forward pay transparency.” All it really requires you to do is say there’s a scope of pay. Previously, I think it’s about 20% that women would make less than men—you could have that as your scope; you could do a 20% change. It gives no real data to anyone to measure anything. It just gives you the ability to say, “It’s between here, $0, and $5 million,” and then you’re aligned with this bill.

Speaker, I think you’re going to stand up and stop me.