To my colleague: I listened. You mentioned about individuals who work for Soul Space with mental health and addictions. This government continues to put forward bills that help workers while we see time and time again that flat-out rejection of measures that we know are needed to support workers right now. This is clarity on application of the Westray law and deeming and scab labour and increased sick days—a clear solution by workers, for workers.

In light of removing the requirement for sick notes—often mental health workers need sick notes because of what they have on their job, PTSD or other work-related illnesses, which seems like a belated nod to common sense. Why does this bill stop short of extending this to include more comprehensive job protection measures? What do you see is missing here?

Questions?

I wanted to say thank you for a very thoughtful presentation from the member from Ottawa Centre. I listened intently, obviously, because many of the organizations he mentioned, in particular Rideauwood as well as CHC in Somerset, are very important to the constituents that I represent as well, and I’ve had interactions with them over the past 18 years. I know our government has done a lot of work—and I appreciate the member opposite bringing the fact in that we have made some investments, including at Dave Smith treatment centre, including at the Queensway Carleton health unit and of course the nurse practitioner-led clinic.

But I do have a question for him, and that is, in his constituency he holds the Royal Ottawa hospital as well as the Roberts Smart Centre for very vulnerable youth. I believe both of those need expansions. In terms of the Royal, it needs an emergency centre, and certainly Roberts Smart, dealing with the most vulnerable youth in the province of Ontario—it’s almost heartbreaking to see the place that they’re actually encased in—and I call it “encased.” I’d like his views on those two properties. Well, it’s actually one property but two very different types of mental health institutions.

One of the things that really bothered most Canadians, not just the people from Pictou County, Nova Scotia, about Westray was the lack of accountability. The member opposite mentioned that. They evaded that type of accountability for quite some time. It was people like Vern Theriault, who is a friend of mine and who has written a book on Westray, that advocated for the Westray act in Parliament, where I was a staffer at the time.

What I would ask the member opposite is, does he have any further suggestion of accountability mechanisms that he doesn’t see within this legislation, and if so, what are they? I’d be interested, not just as a member of this assembly but as somebody who comes from the community where the Westray mine disaster occurred.

It’s a pleasure today to stand and speak about this bill. It has a number of measures to support workers in it, and many of them make sense. Almost all of them make sense.

I’m going to focus my remarks on schedule 6 of this bill, but before I do that, I just want to mention one measure which makes a lot of sense to me, and that is to get rid of family doctor notes and replace them with something else, like an attestation or whatever is decided in the future when it comes to justifying sick day entitlements. That’s going to save valuable time for family doctors, something that we need to create more of to resolve our health care crisis. It goes back to the practice that was in place under the previous Liberal government, and I think it’s a bit of red tape that this government should not have created in the first place.

Let me get to schedule 6, which modifies the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997. It addresses wildland firefighters and fire investigators. This is a very seasonal kind of work. In the middle of the firefighting season, we could have around a thousand people in Ontario working in the ministry on wildland firefighting. It’s good to know that the workplace safety and insurance coverage will be applied to these workers. We’re talking about not only firefighters, but you’ve got helicopter and water bomber pilots and people who work with the radio, warehousing and logistics, as well as firefighting. What this bill covers is, it covers PTSD and it covers skin cancer, and it covers it in a way where there’s a presumption that if you suffer from these things, you don’t have the burden of proof to show that it was caused by your workplace.

We know that a lot of things that burn in fires are carcinogenic, and there’s also an issue with protective equipment which contains these forever chemicals. I’ll get to that a bit later but let me just say that I very much support the idea that Bill 190 would extend this presumptive coverage for post-traumatic stress disorder to wildland firefighters and wildland fire investigators, and as well extend the presumptive coverage for skin cancer.

One thing that I want to mention in addition to smoke and the carcinogenic effects of smoke is the firefighters’ protective clothing. It’s called turnout gear. It’s essential for working in dangerous environments, like where there’s a fire. You’ve got waterproofing, heatproofing, fireproofing and so on. The firefighting community has raised concerns about whether these chemicals—these per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS, otherwise known as “forever chemicals” because they degrade with great difficulty in the environment—can affect the health of firefighters. Some of them have been linked to cancer, and they’re used in the current gear.

Until recently, there has been not that much information regarding the specific types of PFAS chemicals and the quantities and where in the equipment that was located. It was only last year in the United States that the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued a report which studied this really, really carefully, where the PFAS chemicals were in the firefighting gear. So this is a relatively new thing, and because of that, we should be a little bit careful and realize that that could be affecting the health of firefighters.

I want to go on now a little bit past schedule 6, because I think it’s important to cover wildland firefighters for skin cancer and PTSD, but there are a couple of things I think that this bill could have done to help with our ability to maintain a strong workforce to fight wildland fires.

When I went to visit Thunder Bay recently, I found out that in Thunder Bay, the Ministry of Natural Resources has been losing firefighters to the Thunder Bay city fire department because, again, fighting fires is a seasonal job. Because it’s a seasonal job, a lot of the times the workers are finding other things to do in the off-season, or we hire a lot of students who then go to class. But then, if people are thinking about starting a career, they move to something like the city fire department, which was documented in Thunder Bay. That is not a good thing for having a strong, experienced workforce to fight wildland fires.

Something that could be done by our government to improve working conditions and to preserve that institutional wildland firefighting knowledge is to have more crew leaders who are full-time, year-round employees. They may not be fighting fires all year round, but the idea is that we can find other things for them to do in the government. This has been done in the past.

What are crew leaders? These are people who would lead a team of four people; get dropped, say, by helicopter into a fire area; and they’d be carrying equipment as well—maybe, I was told, a long hose, like a 2,400-foot hose and other equipment to fight fire. None of these crew leaders are full-time right now. It would be a good thing to make sure that they’re full-time so they make a career of being a wildland firefighter and preserve that institutional memory, which allows them to fight fires more effectively and more safely for the rest of their crew.

This is not a trivial task. It will require a little bit of extra management effort to make sure that they have other useful things to do during the other parts of the year. But I think it would be something that would be good to do. Otherwise, we’ll get more turnover than is optimal.

The government said recently that they would be creating 100 permanent positions. I think we’re still waiting, if I’m not mistaken, for clarification about what exactly that means. Which jobs will become permanent positions? Does that mean year-round or what?

Another thing that’s missing that I think could help that I discovered when I was speaking to a company in Thunder Bay, and also firefighters, is there’s a shortage of helicopter pilots. There’s a shortage of pilots but especially helicopter pilots.

I went and talked to a friend of mine who commanded a helicopter squadron in the Canadian Forces and was also a dean at a community college, so he knew a lot about training and about what it takes to train highly skilled helicopter pilots. I asked him, “What is the barrier to getting people to go into a career as a helicopter pilot?” He said, “The barrier is it’s very expensive to become a helicopter pilot.”

First of all, you have to get your fixed-wing licence. You have to spend hundreds of hours to get your licence to be a fixed-wing pilot. Each one of these hours, you’re operating a substantial piece of equipment, so that’s a lot of hours of fuel and wear and tear on the equipment to get that experience. Only then can you go and become a helicopter pilot.

And you can’t just become any kind of helicopter pilot who flies from one airport to another airport; you have to have special skills. So, for example, you might have to hover over rough ground while discharging firefighters and their equipment, and that’s not something that you would do if you’re only trained to fly from airport to airport.

So one of the things that we need to do to relieve this helicopter pilot shortage—and I know that this government has looked into ways to get more skilled labour to help our economy, but when it comes to helicopter pilots, who are in short supply, are important for our mining industry and also natural resources, fighting wildland fires, we have to think carefully about whether we should be helping with the cost of training to become a helicopter pilot for these purposes.

I believe that this bill has a number of good measures. But, generally speaking, I think there are many other things that could be done, and I’ve tried to address a couple of them in my speech today. I look forward to answering any questions.

Further debate?

Really great question. I know a little less about the trucking industry, but again, in that previous employment I had, I had occasion to talk to the teamsters’ union and other organizations operating in that sector. They told me a lot about this, about how one of the ways in which companies try to save money is hiring folks with precarious immigration status. Now, let’s be real: We want those folks to get those jobs, we want them to be employed, but we don’t want them to be unsafe on the job.

I think the government could investigate health and safety rules, and if anybody who is working one of those jobs is watching this, an option you have with your colleagues is joining a union, forming a union or scoping into an existing union, because those are the organizations that are supposed to exist at a community level to keep you safe. It is your right in this province to organize a union without retaliation, and if that retaliation happens, the system is going to be there to protect you. That’s why I’m very proud to be a pro-union politician.

Thank you to the member from Kingston and the Islands for your comments. Wildland firefighting—there used to be permanent jobs there, so I don’t think it’s going to be hard for them to figure out how to use them over the full year. One thing they could do would be to update the training manual so that workers aren’t told to wear a bandana as a way of protecting themselves from smoke inhalation.

You’re talking about retention, and we heard from the speaker earlier that the wages are actually quite a bit lower than they were years ago. They’ve been offered bonuses, but there’s a difference between a bonus and a wage increase. I wonder if you could just talk about what that difference is in terms of retention and really attracting people to stay.

Questions? I recognized member from Toronto–Danforth—no, no, no.

Further debate?

Niagara Centre.

I’ve always believed that there should be a reverse onus where the WSIB would have to prove that it does not have to do with firefighting if it’s a cancer that is associated with firefighting. Is that something that the member would support?

That’s a very good question, and I know that this idea of which kinds of workplace injuries or cancers, for example, and how long that person has been working—it has changed recently, but the answer is, I don’t know. I don’t have enough experience. But what I will say is that I believe in, as much as possible, facts and evidence.

Now, deciding who has the burden of proof, that’s a different question. It depends on what kind of precautions you want to take. I’d certainly be open to it, but I haven’t really thought carefully about that, I will admit.

I would even go beyond construction sites. Another very dangerous occupation is agriculture. The very last trip I made to southwestern Ontario, I heard a story from somebody I was driving with about how somebody in their family died at a young age from a farming accident.

So I think that anything we can do—every generation, we’re going to make improvements to workplace safety, and I support that.

It’s really important to make sure that people just aren’t attracted by the bonus, but they’re attracted by the job and doing it well.

I want to thank the member opposite from Kingston and the Islands for some great remarks. I know the member comes from a science background.

Early in my career, I was unfortunately a witness to a construction accident. I got to know two workers, one of whom had died on the site, and I’ll never forget the image of the last conversation I had with him.

This legislation has some supports for investigating a comprehensive review of fatalities in the construction sector and expanding on the types of equipment to be provided on construction projects. That’s where I witnessed this particular accident.

So I would like to get the member’s thoughts, his overview of this sector as it is today, when it comes to fatalities and whether or not he thinks this legislation goes in the right direction.

I’m glad that wildland firefighting is getting such an airing of conversation today because it’s certainly an important topic, and I appreciate the comments and remarks and Q&As from the member opposite.

I’m going to go ahead and make some assumptions here. I’m going to assume that you supported the 107 FTEs that we added to wildland firefighting this year, which I don’t think you bothered to mention in your comments. I think you probably didn’t bother to send out anything on your social media channels encouraging people to apply to be wildland firefighters in Ontario this year when we were offering that recruitment and retention bonus.

I am heartened that you’re concerned so much about wildland firefighters, but I’d like to know, from the member, what exactly did you do to get more people to enter into wildland firefighting this year to keep Ontarians safe?

Further questions?

I want to thank the member for that question. Growing up like I did and knowing that your father had cancer, and you knew that there was no hope for him, and being at home watching him deteriorate every day was very hard on me. I believe that every worker should be able to come home every night and be with their family. So, yes, I believe we should do more.

And we are doing more. Over the years, you can see how we have improved our workplaces in Ontario. I wish other jurisdictions in the world would do what we’re doing.

There’s always more work to be done. I’m not going to say there isn’t. There’s always more work to be done, but we are going in the right direction, more than I can say for the previous government, which did nothing for workers in the province of Ontario. So I know we have to do more work but we are doing work to get to that place.

I want to thank the member for his comments. I found those very informative. I knew about your workplace history, but I didn’t know about your dad. That’s quite a story.

I had occasion to learn a bit about the Hoggs Hollow tragedy of March 17, 1960, that involved five immigrant Italian workers. I’m sure that was part of what you were remembering at the celebration—sorry, not a celebration; the day of mourning that you referenced.

I just want to introduce for the record and get your reaction to the Heron Road Workers Memorial Bridge. That’s our tragedy in Ottawa. On August 10, 1966, it killed nine workers and injured 60 others when an improperly built bridge collapsed and sent 183 to hospital. It was a real tragedy, Speaker, and I’m just wondering if the member, inspired by his comments on this bill—do you think this should be written into the curriculum, that the children in elementary and secondary school should be required to learn a little bit about these sacrifices that were made to build the infrastructure and how we should never be repeating these precedents again, to make sure everybody gets to go to work safe and gets to come home safe?

I want to thank my colleague for speaking to the importance of this bill. You have a riding that’s very diverse. The member represents a lot of people, especially young people. In your riding you know that young people are the future and there is a lot of development that needs to happen in your riding.

I’m just wondering if you could speak to how this bill is going to help encourage a lot of young people, but especially women. Being the minister for women, I think it’s so important to see women get into the skilled trades. I just wonder if you can elaborate on how you think this bill is going to help support the many women and young people to engage in the trades and to help build Ontario.

Further questions?

Further questions?

I just want to thank the member for that response he just gave. I wholeheartedly agree. The word that I’m familiar with is “parity of esteem.” There should be a parity of esteem across critical occupations that keep our province going. I agree: Skilled trades are very important.

But back to my question, because I want to give my friend another chance to answer this, because I think this is something we can agree on in this House. I think elementary school kids and high school kids could benefit from health and safety experts—the member knows this well in the automotive industry—who have those lessons of history that we can teach young people in elementary and secondary school so tragedies like Hoggs Hollow, the Heron Road Workers Memorial Bridge, or, as I was talking about earlier in debate this afternoon, the 39-year-old Uber Eats driver who was killed on Avenue Road, the fourth cyclist killed this year—so all those people get to go home safe.

My question to the member: Would he support some collaborative work in this House to make sure labour history and health and safety are written into what the kids learn at school so that it becomes a priority for them too?

I want to thank the minister for that question. I think the skilled trades are very important. But you know what I do? I blame parents sometimes for the skilled trades, that they don’t want their children in the skilled trades. We want our children to be doctors, lawyers and accountants.

I noticed with my sons—I have two sons. I have one that’s 24 and one that’s 21. One is becoming a CPA; the other one is becoming a mining engineer. All their friends who are in the skilled trades right now are already buying houses because the skilled trades are well-paying jobs. When we were working at Ford Motor Co., all our skilled trades workers were making way more than we make here in this Legislature. It is a future for our children.

What we have to do in Ontario—because there’s been a stigma for many years for women, and young men as well, to get into the skilled trades—is we have to get rid of that stigma and have them come into the skilled trades so we can build the 1.5 million homes, we can build the 413 and the Brantford Bypass, we can build Ontario, build our hospitals and our long-term-care homes. Because without the workers we can’t get to where we have to get.

So I want to thank all these young kids out there that are watching today. Get into the skilled trades—

Interjection: Matthew McConaughey.

That’s what I do. I always look at what happened before to what happens now. I can use the 2017 budget in this House. Spending was $152 billion and today it’s $214 billion. I look at health care: Under the Liberal government it was $59.4 billion. Today it’s $85 billion. I could go on—even education. It was $23 billion. Today it’s $28 billion.

Yes, we can work with our young children in schools to have them know what happened before so they can move forward in the skilled trades and build Ontario. As I said, we need to build our hospitals, we need to build our long-term care. We need our highways and our transit. We need our skilled trades workers to build Ontario.

Every immigrant that does come into Canada, let’s get them in the skilled trades as well so we can continue building the better province that we all believe in.

Like you said, not only do we need homes, we need highways, we need transit, we need pretty well everything that was neglected for 15 years under the Liberal government. We lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs in the province of Ontario at that time because Ontario was not succeeding, it wasn’t punching at the level they should have been.

Right now, under this Premier and this Minister of Finance and yourself, we know that we have to continue to work together to get our young children and our immigrants who are coming into the country into the trades so we can build the 1.5 million homes and build the infrastructure we need to move Ontario to the place that it belongs.