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, 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.

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.