I enjoyed listening to my colleague the member from Sudbury.

I do want to remind the member from Essex that from 2013 to 2018, this province led the G7 in jobs and growth, and we were in the top three for foreign direct investment for those five years as well, so we can throw that stuff back and forth.

The reality is that the Working for Workers Four Act isn’t working that hard for workers. There are good things in it, but they are watered down. One of the things I think we have to grapple with in here, as the member mentioned, is the fact that the nature of work is changing. We’re now having a second class of employees who are employee contractors. It’s not just going to happen with delivery people. They’re traditional jobs. They’re the same jobs. They’re not new jobs. It’s going to happen all across our economy, so we actually have to watch how corporations are treating people who will be doing this work for them. It’s just starting now.

But the question that’s really on my mind this morning is: How often did the member from Sudbury get sent home from school?

I want to thank the member from Sudbury for really pointing out the many, many ways that this government is actually working against workers, and certainly working against those who have permanent injuries, where we have seen people living in poverty on the one hand and not able to access benefits, and on the other hand we hear a government that brags about how much money they’re giving back to employers.

The question I wanted to ask about is really about misclassification and wage theft. I’m thinking about the trucking industry. We’re seeing this misclassification with Uber drivers and so on, but in the trucking industry, I’m aware of a great deal of wage theft that’s not being addressed. Also, this classification of drivers as “Driver Inc.”, which was supposed to be banned, is still very much taking place. Those workers have no benefits whatsoever if they get into an accident. They’re kind of high and dry.

Speaker, Friday was a rough day in Sudbury. On Friday, the Sudbury Action Centre for Youth, SACY, announced they’re closing their doors. They weren’t able to make ends meet, weren’t able to make payroll. This is an organization that really helps youth—marginalized youths, transgender youths, youths who are homeless and youths who are using drugs, and provides service and support for them. This is part of a bigger problem when it comes to drug use across Ontario.

In 2019, I brought forward a private member’s motion to declare a medical emergency in northern Ontario for opioid use and opioid deaths. I was voted down by the Conservative government, but I think we could have that same motion, a mercy motion, for all of Ontario right now. The death count from opioid-related deaths since 2018 is 20,000 Ontarians who have died—20,000.

Meanwhile, Sudbury has been waiting for 30 months for a response on a supervised consumption site. For an arbitrary reason, the Conservative government decided they were going to cap the number of supervised consumption sites to 21. To date, we only have 17, and still no funding for Sudbury.

Another bad news story in Sudbury was that, on Friday, Réseau Access was giving notice to their last employee, the only employee who was able to stay at our supervised consumption site, The Spot, because of no provincial funding, even though they have been operating for a year and three months.

It’s a sad day in Sudbury, Speaker. It shouldn’t have come to this. It’s going to be difficult in the days ahead.