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.