Visiting Queen’s Park for, I believe, the first time are the mayor of Orangeville, Lisa Post; councillor of Orangeville Todd Taylor, who also happened to serve as s Dufferin county councillor; and the CAO for the county of Dufferin, Sonya Pritchard. Welcome to the House.

J’aimerais souhaiter la bienvenue à Anne-Marie Gélineault, Francine Vaillancourt, Sébastien Fontaine et Catherine Chereau-Sharp du Conseil scolaire du Grand Nord. Bienvenue.

I just want to wish a happy birthday to my colleague Sarah Jama and our wonderful Trevor. Happy birthday.

Today, I’d like to welcome to the House Drew Spoelstra, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. He’s here with his provincial directors, but more importantly, a number of young farmers from across Ontario. I’d like to welcome Vanessa Renaud, Angela Cammaert, Julie McIntosh, Derek Van De Walle, Jonathan Miller, Brad Snobelen and Matt Chapple.

I’d like to invite everyone to the OFA reception later this afternoon in the dining room.

I’d also like to give a warm welcome to Stephanie, who’s with me today, a student from York University.

I want to take the opportunity to welcome, from Thunder Bay–Atikokan, my good friend Bill Groenheide, who’s here with the OFA today.

Il me fait plaisir de vous présenter et souhaiter la bienvenue à Denis Labelle, président, et Jeannette Labrèche, deux représentants du Nord pour l’Association des conseils scolaires des écoles publiques de l’Ontario. Bienvenue à Queen’s Park. Encore, ça m’a fait plaisir de vous voir ce matin au déjeuner.

We want to welcome the amazing French public school board trustees and leaders from across Ontario. Thank you for your leadership in Ontario.

J’aimerais accueillir nos amis de l’ACÉPO, l’Association des conseils scolaires des écoles publiques de l’Ontario, aujourd’hui, y compris leur président, Denis Labelle; leur vice-présidente, Samia Ouled Ali, qui habite dans ma circonscription d’Ottawa-Ouest–Nepean; la directrice générale, Isabelle Girard; aussi d’Ottawa, Christian-Charle Bouchard; et tous les conseillers scolaires et les directeurs d’éducation qui nous joignent ce matin. Bienvenue.

I would also like to welcome, from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, Teresa Van Raay, Andrea McCoy-Naperstkow, Clint Cameron and Jonathan Miller. I’m looking forward to our meeting this afternoon.

We have with us in the Speaker’s gallery today Oleh Nikolenko, the consul general of Ukraine in Toronto. Please join me in warmly welcoming our guest to the Legislative Assembly today.

It’s my pleasure to rise in the House today to highlight very exciting news for Brampton. Just in time for the 2024-25 Ontario Hockey League season, I’m proud to announce that Brampton will be getting our own OHL team when the Steelheads come to town. That’s right; after more than a decade since the Battalion left, OHL hockey is coming back to Brampton. This is great news, not just for my constituents, but for hockey fans across Brampton.

And yes, Mr. Speaker, Brampton is a hockey town. Brampton is proud to have developed some of the best talent the game has seen, including Cassie Campbell, Sean Monahan, Rick Nash and Tyler Seguin, just to name a few. More recently, our city was proud to host Hockey Night in Brampton last August, where Brampton’s passionate hockey fan base came together to raise over $1 million for our second hospital.

This move represents why Brampton is the place to be. With our vibrant and diverse population and our passion for developing the next generation of sports talent, Brampton is quickly becoming the breeding ground for sports excellence nationwide. Not only will this move give Brampton youth a chance to play for their hometown, but it will give our city front-row seats to watch them grow into the next generation of hockey stars.

I can’t wait to don a Brampton Steelheads jersey and cheer on our boys this fall.

I’d like to welcome to the House Dave Buchanan and Kunal Thukral, here from HCLTech. They’re hosting a reception today in 228.

I’d like to introduce Alexandre Beaudin, project lead, development of collective intelligence at ACÉPO, the association of French-language public school boards.

In short, yes, we’ll continue to work to ensure that across Ontario.

I would say, to date, we’ve done a number of important things as a government to ensure women have equal opportunities to men and are paid equally. We have a pay equity commissioner we’ve been working very closely with: Kadie Ward.

Speaker, we’ve also taken a number of bold steps. To think that up until this Premier was elected, we virtually ignored 50% of the workforce in building the critical infrastructure we need—the hospitals, the schools, the bridges, everything we need in this province. Statistically, it’s working. We now see a 30% increase in women registration in apprenticeships; we see a 116% increase in the building trades.

We’re going to keep working to ensure that every young girl across Ontario achieves their full potential.

In the supplementary, I’ll turn it over to my colleague.

Today marks Equal Pay Day. It’s the day when we mark how far into the next year women have to work to catch up to what most men had earned the previous year. When you’re racialized, Indigenous, a member of the LQBTQ community, the wait for equal pay day is even longer. Women of all age groups, across the board, earn less than men.

So my question to the Premier is, will he commit to ensuring that every woman worker earns as much as her male counterparts?

Closing the gender pay gap and supporting women and gender-diverse peoples’ economic equality is a government responsibility.

Women frequently work in jobs taking care of people and the community—from the doctors, nurses and PSWs who keep our health care system going to the ECEs in our child care centres who care for our children while we’re at work.

Will the Premier commit to properly funding the strong public services that support women’s economic equality?

Interjections.

If we don’t have strong public services like affordable child care and health care and education, women will be left behind. If child care is so out of reach, you’re not going to be able to climb the corporate ladder. If you’re at home taking care of your aging parents, you can’t log those extra hours to get that promotion.

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about lately: our mothers and our grandmothers who fought so hard for these rights and services so that we and our daughters—my daughters—our granddaughters, all of us women in this chamber can have a chance. In an increasingly hostile environment for women, we cannot take those rights and services for granted.

What is the Premier’s plan to protect the rights and services that women have fought so hard for?

Interjections.

We believe people doing the same work should be paid the same regardless of their gender; workers in the health care system expect the same. That’s why front-line health care workers belonging to SEIU and the Ontario Nurses’ Association have spent over a decade fighting for a gender-neutral wage under the Pay Equity Act. The Premier calls these working women heroes—he loves to call them heroes—but he has done nothing to improve their wages or work with them on the Pay Equity Act. Instead, he has repeatedly taken them to court.

Why is the Premier repeatedly taking hard-working women to court instead of giving them what they’re owed?

Speaker, our government will always stand up for pay equity in the workplace and for a woman’s right to be paid fairly for the work that she does.

Employers cannot pay women less based on their gender. And we will continue to hold bad actors accountable, which is why we have the pay equity commission, which has been working with us very closely to ensure we close that gap.

Let’s be real, Mr. Speaker. We can’t go back to the failed policies of the Liberals, supported by the NDP, that chased away thousands of jobs. Do you know what that did? It forced many women to be the sole income earner for homes. It forced many women on social assistance, forcing the government to have to take care of them.

This is why we changed the name of our ministry to “women’s social and economic opportunity”—because we believe in empowering women, because we believe that women can do the jobs that any man can do. That’s why we’ve invested billions in the skills development program, the invest in women program and the Women’s Economic Security Program. We’ve done historic changes to our child care program. We’ve closed the gap. We’ve seen more women working today than we have before. And we’re going continue to do this work.

That’s why if a woman chooses to go to work, we want to make sure we have the infrastructure in place to support that choice. That’s also why we’ve been able to secure the largest portion of funding from the federal government out of any province in Canada, through our Minister of Education, to ensure that the portion of families who need child care from a for-profit child care service provider can still get the child care they deserve. We’ve seen that this has made an impact. More women with children aged zero to five are working—the first time we’ve had an increase since 1976.

These are things to celebrate, and these are the things that we’re doing in our government to make sure that we’re bringing back our economy, through our Minister of Economic Development, attracting many businesses back to Canada and Ontario so that women are able to be at the forefront of these beneficiaries.

The OECD global report on pay transparency and pay equity stated that Ontario’s Pay Equity Act punches well above the global legislative weight, having one of the most rigorous applications. Ontario was one of the first governments, globally, to articulate and legislate pay equity based on the foundational concept of equal pay for work of equal value.

Mr. Speaker, we are working to correct the historical undervaluation of jobs typically held by women, and we’re going to continue to do that, and also ensure that women can choose to enter any sector they want, like STEM, like the skilled trades. We’re getting it done. We’re getting more women working in jobs that pay well so that they can take care of their family and keep themselves and their families safe.

I want to introduce Bruce Cazabon, vice-president, and Yves Laliberté, director of education, from le Conseil scolaire public du Nord-Est de l’Ontario. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

J’aimerais aussi souhaiter la bienvenue aux membres du Conseil des écoles publiques de l’Est de l’Ontario. Les membres du CEPEO sont ici à Queen’s Park avec d’autres membres de l’ACÉPO, l’Association des conseils scolaires des écoles publiques de l’Ontario. C’était un plaisir de les rencontrer, ces gens-là, pour déjeuner ce matin. On a eu de belles discussions.

Je voulais juste dire que je me joindrai aux membres du CEPEO jeudi soir au centre Shenkman à Orléans pour prendre part aux célébrations en l’honneur du 25^e anniversaire du Conseil des écoles publiques de l’Est de l’Ontario.

Merci d’être parmi nous aujourd’hui. Bienvenue à Queen’s Park.

The Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development.

The Associate Minister of Women’s Social and Economic Opportunity.

Again, the Associate Minister of Women’s Social and Economic Opportunity.

We are on the side of women—women being in the driver’s seat of their economic future, women who can have the choice to be in the C-suite or to work the front line. I am so proud of what we’re doing to ensure that we are fighting to see that women have any area that they want to get into.

I have been able to go down 10,000 feet in a mine, and guess who I found down there? I found women working down there. In a sector that has traditionally been male-dominated, we are seeing more women taking on the brave step to say, “I can be down in those mines. I can be working in Women in Wood,” which is another group that I have been able to meet with.

Do you know what else, Mr. Speaker? We’re ensuring that women have the opportunity to be in the leadership positions. We want to ensure that men will support women and give them the opportunity to take on these leadership positions.

We know that we’re going to see more women in these leadership positions that the—

I think the support and the fellowship that we have with women in every single sector, especially our front-line workers, is paramount.

I want to talk about the number of women on boards. I think our government has done some major things to ensure that we are seeing equal representation on boards. We want to keep encouraging this trend. More women are sitting on boards than ever before—and when you have more women at the head, you have a 75% increase of the rest of the company having gender equity.

These are the things that we’re doing. And we’re working in these sectors to ensure that we are putting women in these leadership positions everywhere in the province.

That’s why a quote from the chamber of commerce release said, “The good news is that women’s wages have grown faster than men’s in recent decades....” That’s because of the work we’re doing in our government to make sure that we’re building Ontario’s economy.

If we understand the economics, a poor economy means women suffer. And if we actually look at what’s happening today—we saw the federal Liberals, supported by the Liberals in this House, increase the carbon tax. Do you know who that impacts? That impacts women.

Right now, we have so many women who have to choose whether or not they’re going to put their child in swimming lessons or pay their hydro bill.

Mr. Speaker, we know a poor economy is what really impacts women. We saw, when jobs were being chased away, women had to become the sole income earners for homes. That’s terrible.

That’s why we’ve made the steps. Our Minister of Economic Development has attracted billions of dollars of new industry investments in Ontario, and women are going to be the beneficiaries of that.

Supporting women and supporting our economy means making sure that women are kept safe.

We’re going to continue to move forward and do what we’re doing to build Ontario’s economy, and women are at the forefront of that.

My question is for the Minister of Energy.

The Liberal carbon tax is one of the worst taxes this country has ever seen. It punishes families and small businesses, and it hurts Ontario’s growth and economic progress. This regressive tax is unnecessarily increasing the cost of everything Ontarians need on a daily basis. We know that the people of Ontario deserve better.

That’s why our government continues to remain laser-focused on fighting the carbon tax and keeping costs down. But the Liberal members across the aisle and the carbon tax queen herself, Bonnie Crombie, are working against us. That is unacceptable.

Can the minister please explain how the carbon tax is driving up the cost for everyday Ontarians?