Further questions? I recognize the member from Chatham-Kent–Leamington.

Thank you, Speaker, and good afternoon. I want to thank my colleague the member for Richmond Hill for an excellent presentation. I know that before politics she was a successful and long-term employer. Based on that experience and now your experience in politics, I’d like to know how the hiring and employment experience is being made fairer under the Working for Workers Five Act in your opinion.

Okay, time for questions. We have the member from Toronto Centre.

Thank you for that wonderful presentation. I’m curious about the intention of the bill and how to ensure that workers in Ontario are adequately protected. Of course, we all recognize that wage theft is a significant issue, and oftentimes it’s hard to track, hard to prosecute.

I’m just very, very curious to understanding how we can address that particular crisis with respect to wage theft if there isn’t actual enforcement. So can the speaker kindly speak to that particular operational piece? How are you going to get this enforced?

I think it’s important for us to recognize that workers will oftentimes fear reprisals from calling out and asking for wages that are owed to them if their employer holds all the power. And what I’m looking for in this bill is, how is this bill protecting workers against actions such as wage theft, where they are not going to be facing termination if they are demanding what is duly owed to them?

Thank you, member from Toronto Centre. Yes, I believe I’ve covered how we have protected our workers, especially on the construction sites. We make sure that we give them the dignity and respect that they deserve, and even a simple thing—we think it’s simple, but it’s really not simple in making sure sanitary—the washrooms that they are using on a daily basis.

I still remember when we go to different events that have construction sites, when we go into the washroom, it’s not an easy thing. But not only have we kept it sanitary; we are also caring about the women that will be using it if the site is going—if that construction is going on for more than three months and we have over 20 workers, we will have the products that are needed for this. So we are doing everything we can to protect our workers and give them the comfort, dignity and respect.

But in this bill, we are also making sure that we control the bad actors and make sure, if they are not doing their part as good employers, they will be fined. The fines are getting more and more—like, double what they used to be. We also care about the employees’ safety in everything that they do. Perhaps in my business, it’s not as much of a concern—safety—but in other areas there are safety concerns, and we have been working on those through this bill.

Back to the member from Richmond Hill. I’m going to stay on the topic of wage theft. I’m discouraged to hear that, in the member’s own words, there isn’t enough or anything in the bill that deals with the matter proactively, trying to stop wage theft in Ontario.

So I want to be able to highlight the fact that, if we are raising the fines for bad employers, that is a good thing. But I also want to point out that the Workers’ Action Centre has noted that higher fines will not actually protect workers in the face of wrongful dismissal because what’s really needed are proactive inspections and meaningful collection on orders, and that’s not in the bill. My question to the member from Richmond Hill is, why is it not in the bill?

I want to thank the member from Richmond Hill for her comments. I also want to congratulate the Associate Minister of Women’s Social and Economic Opportunity for her work in increasing the number of women moving into good-paying careers in the trades.

To do that, we need to create an environment that’s both healthy and welcoming for women to work in the trades. I’m wondering if you could comment a little more on how this bill helps create that welcoming and healthy environment.

Further questions?

Seeing none, further debate?

Thank you to the member from Toronto Centre. As I say, we made sure that we covered things on bad actors—sorry, just now, I thought that was the question you were asking me. But this bill here does not apply to something specifically, like what you just asked about the wages. And we are protecting the workers. If the bad actors are not doing their part, we will be fining them in all sorts of ways. So we are on top of this.

As I say, even little things like sanitary washrooms are being taken care of in the construction sites, all these other things we have been working on—but it’s not specifically listed in this bill.

By the numbers that we have received and the increase in the number of female skilled workers, we can see the difference. And little things—I don’t mean to highlight just the sanitary part of this bill, but just that information itself, by providing the menstrual products for women, already tells them the kind of support that we are going to give them. They are welcome and we want to encourage them to be part of the skilled trades.

I really want to say join us to be happy and let us, together, work on this. Yes, there is still a lot of work to be done. This part, as you mentioned, is being done, but may not have specifically been mentioned in this bill.

There are a lot of things still yet to be done, and if the direction is correct, I would ask and invite the member to join me to support this bill. Together, let’s make this bill something that will work the best for everybody, and everything that we see that has not been covered, mention it so that we can focus on it and improve on it.

I would like to ask the member, through the Speaker, if she could share a little bit more about her thoughts on gig workers and how we should include consideration for them in labour motions and bills coming forward in the coming time.

Thanks to the member from London West. Certainly she has a strong history of advocating for worker rights in Ontario—with the sick notes, with the paid sick days, the Stay Home If You are Sick bill.

As both former trustees, I wanted to ask you about the proposed changes in the Building Opportunities in the Skilled Trades Act, which simplify the ability for individuals interested in skilled trades to find apprenticeship opportunities through high school streams and online job portals.

Now, we do have a very successful program in Ontario called the OYAP program, and it’s a very competitive program, I actually want to say. The proposed changes also allow for alternative qualifying criteria for individuals who lack certain academic requirements, keeping health and safety at the forefront of apprenticeships and those opportunities to learn on the job, but having the qualifications to ensure that students stay safe.

I wanted to get your comments on what precautions or measures need to be in place to ensure that students are safe as apprentices.

Questions? Questions?

Thank you to the member opposite. I know that paramedics and first responders, such as firefighters and wildfire firefighters, have unique challenges in their occupations which we are appreciative of, what they do, but the challenges they have in their jobs are oftentimes very troubling and very concerning. The government has taken initiatives to support firefighters.

In this particular legislation, we are helping to support the aspects of wildland firefighters with PTSD and some of the mental health issues surrounding what goes with the territory in those jobs. Is that something you’re supportive of with respect to this bill?

Thank you to the member for Kitchener Centre for that question. I actually have introduced in the past legislation that would add new provisions in the Employment Standards Act to clarify whether a worker is legitimately a contract worker or is actually an employee, and so too often, especially with gig workers, Uber drivers, food delivery workers, they have been misclassified as contract workers and then denied the benefits of the Employment Standards Act.

This government has actually legislated them as second-class workers, giving them these digital rights that are lesser than the benefits and protections of the Employment Standards Act, and said , “Oh, we care about gig workers,” but there is a lot of work that can be done to ensure that workers are not misclassified as contractors when they are actually employees of a company.

It’s unfortunate that the government in its Working for Workers Four excluded wildland firefighters, and I want to acknowledge the advocacy of many of my colleagues from the north in particular who really pushed for wildland firefighters to have the same access to presumptive coverage as other firefighters. So it’s too bad that it took that advocacy, but we are going to push to make sure that workers get the coverage they deserve for occupational illnesses.

Further questions? Further questions? Further questions? Seeing none—the member from Waterloo.

Thank you to my colleague the member for Waterloo for that question.

Certainly, as a former school board trustee—also as somebody who did a lot of research on work-integrated learning in the post-secondary sector, looking at co-op opportunities, internships, etc.—we know how vulnerable young people are, whether they’re in high school or college or university, when they go into workplaces in these kinds of co-op or internships or other kinds of work-integrated learning opportunities, and how important it is for young people to understand their rights in the workplace and their right to refuse unsafe work. Because too often young people are nervous about asserting their right to enforce unsafe work, because they fear reprisals from their employers. So there’s a lot that we could do in school curriculum to raise awareness of those rights and to educate young people on how to exert those rights.

The other thing we have learned is about the importance of proactive inspections. Too much of the labour protections that are available to workers rely on workers going forward to file complaints. It’s so important that there be proactive inspections to make sure that workplaces are safe, to make sure that employees understand their rights. But under this government, we have seen a dramatic decrease in the number of proactive inspections that have taken place, we have seen a dramatic decrease in the number of fines that have been levied. So proactive inspections are very important to make sure that workers’ rights are protected in the workplace.

You’ve got to look to the left.

Interjections.

The member from London West actually had some really good commentary on workplace sexual violence, and also the caring economy, where a vast majority of those employees are women. One of the other areas, Madam Speaker, that is predominantly held with female employees is the retail sector, and I know this for a fact. My daughter is a business leader at Aerie and, boy, if you’re selling bras and underwear as a female retail worker in Ontario, there’s some areas that get a little dicey.

I’m going to circle back to the enforcement of those workplace health and safety and anti-harassment strategies. Does the member from London West have any concerns around employers enforcing their own anti-harassment policies that are now guided by this legislation?

I just wanted to ask the member from London West if she could comment on the improvements on the fines. There have been increases to the fines for those who have not paid wages and the wage theft issue. Could you speak to that?

We were talking a lot this winter with the group from the wildland firefighters and I know I’ve heard, in some of the quotes, that people who have lost loved ones to the health consequences of fighting fires were happy to see the changes in recognizing cancer, retroactively looking into the compensation and considering PTSD in health conditions for that. And the lifting of Bill 124—there was a lot of harm from Bill 124 and I’m glad to see it finally, hopefully, getting out of the way so that we can move on and ensure that people have good compensation for the work that they do.

Something that I want to recognize is a few quotes from the sector about what they would like to see: The Canadian Wildfire Network is worried about turnover still. We didn’t see increases in pay, and because of that, OPSEU says workers are getting paid $22 to $26 an hour. If you think of what it’s like to be in a bush and fighting a fire, it’s pretty intense, front-line work, and they come with a lot of expertise. So $22 to $26 an hour, OPSEU says isn’t quite cutting it, and that’s kind of why we see understaffing.

As we look ahead to this summer and the concerns we have about it being an unprecedented wildfire season, we know that we’re short firefighters by the tune of about 25%. We were hoping to have 190 fire crews and we’ve only hired 143. So, when we see labour shortages, we have to be sure that we’re doing a good job in compensating people for the work they’re doing and so on.

I was also happy to see the reduction of sick notes, because we know 2.3 million people in Ontario don’t have a family doctor. So we can reduce this administrative barrier and the impact it has on our health care sector.

I do also want to echo my concern that we still don’t have paid sick days. As a social worker, I worked with too many low-income families, single parents who had to put food on the table, and so they went to work sick, and really, it caused a lot of spread of COVID—and that’s just COVID. We know that our emergency rooms are overwhelmed with RSV and cold and flu season. If we had paid sick days, we know that this would reduce the burden on our health care system dramatically.

And we know that this negatively impacts low-income families: 70% of families who make less than $25,000 have no access to sick days. So this is a policy that disproportionately negatively impacts low-income folks, who are the most vulnerable, trying to feed their families. If you have a choice between eating and going to work sick, you will go to work sick to feed your family, so I urge the government that, going forward, it considers the benefits of paid sick days in their legislation. We’ve seen that, in US cities that had paid sick days, they saw 40% reduction in influenza rates during flu waves, so it would do a lot to ease the burden on our already stretched health care system.

I do want to commend the government for improving working conditions. I have been in workplaces; I think a lot of women I know—I spoke to a lot of women from the Carpenters Union, just like my colleague from London West. They’ve been trailblazers in trying to create safe spaces for women in the trades. I think period products—making that equitable to women across our province is valuable.

I have a constituent, Victoria, who started a period equity program—just like a little library. I have a friend, Karen Farley, who started the Period Pin product, so people could find access to menstruation products wherever they work.

But we know that equity is a big topic and so I was hoping to see more for gig workers. We really have to use our time to address the issues facing gig workers. They spend 40% of their time to 52% of their time working but unpaid. They’re paid far below minimum wage, which is really unacceptable. Where does that money go? It goes to Lyft; it goes to Uber; it leaves the province of Ontario as soon as it comes through the cash.

We need to show respect to these immigrant workers, people who are marginalized, people who speak English as a second language, who aren’t being paid equitably for the service that they do.

I’d like to thank the member from Kitchener Centre for her comments. Some of the concerns that we have with Bill 190 are, in particular, the way it amends the Occupational Health and Safety Act, especially where they’re taking information that is being posted electronically rather than being posted in the workplace. It will include the names of joint health and safety committee members. Also, the way in which it will allow the meetings for joint health and safety committees—that they’ll no longer be required to meet within the workplace.

Do you think this is a wise move forward, or will this actually make the information more difficult to retrieve and those meetings be less meaningful if they’re not happening within the workplace?