I spoke very briefly, maybe about five minutes or a little less, before question period yesterday on this bill. Mainly, I was able to mention to the Minister of Labour that, while at FONOM, I was able to speak with two wildland firefighters about the bill, and they were very excited about the presumptive coverage. It was actually during question period that I was able to go over and show the Minister of Labour the photo we took together. I’m glad that we were able to work on all sides to have that pass. I think that’s a wonderful thing to be able to have.

There are six schedules to this bill. I’m going to try to touch on all of them, but some of them are a little lighter, so I’ll skim over them.

For example, in schedule 1, there’s a section that just corrects French language. As long as my colleague is happy with the translation, I’m not going to overrule him; his French is obviously much better than mine.

There’s a subsection in schedule 1 about high school apprenticeships, and I think there’s potential with this, and I know there is some legislation that has to be built in around this. I think it’s really important.

As a high school student, I was steered away from shop classes. My best friend really loved auto shop; I wanted to take auto shop just so I could have a small conversation with him. My guidance counsellor said, “Well, you’ve got good grades; you don’t need shop,” and steered me away from it. And then after I graduated from college and graduated from university, I started taking an apprenticeship as an electrician.

So I think there is a missed opportunity for a lot of our students. Also, I have some concerns about this—because, as you can tell, Speaker, I’m not an electrician today. It wasn’t a good fit for me to be an electrician. I realized during my apprenticeship that many of my colleagues loved doing their job, and I just was going to work and getting a paycheque. So my concern for these students is that, when you pick a career path early on in your life, maybe it isn’t what you want to do; it doesn’t mean it’s a bad career, but it’s not a good fit for you. I want to ensure that our students are set up for success so that they are not pigeonholed into one career, so they don’t have to backtrack and upgrade if they want to switch careers. I’m also concerned that it could limit their possibility to move forward. Before starting here, I was hired at Vale, and one of the requirements to work at Vale was to have post-secondary education or to be a tradesperson. Many, many workplaces have functions in place where you’re unable to climb the ladder if you don’t have a post-secondary degree. There’s an expectation. So it may limit you in terms of being a foreman or moving on in your career, past that.

I think these are things that we can resolve, but I think this is the time, during debate, where we could talk about, what are things that we want to do and will this pathway allow people, if they decide trades isn’t for them, to move into different career paths?

I’m also concerned when it comes to trades. I’ve been hearing more and more conversations about unscrupulous employers—not the largest employers, but there are smaller employers that are using a black market economy, where the journeyman is going out with helpers or people who are apprentices but who are not registered to be apprentices, and then they find out after working for two or three years that they have no hours, even though they’ve worked thousands of hours. This is something we have to focus on as well—these workplace helpers, these undocumented apprentices.

Yesterday I was meeting with the carpenters union and we talked about the black market that has arisen on the trades side. We have to focus on that, not just because it’s exploitive of those workers, but because there’s a lot of tax theft that happens through the black market, where people are paying with cash. I know people are trying to cut corners and save money, but the reality is that when you are paying with cash, if someone gets hurt, there isn’t WSIB for them; when you are paying with cash, you may or may not have a qualified tradesperson.

When I was an electrician, we went to a house where they did renovations and someone unqualified had wired it with speaker wire. Speaker wire is not designed for 120 volts to run through it, and pretty much you’ve created a fire hazard in your newly renovated rec room.

There are things that we can do when we ensure that these trade jobs—and as the minister often says and we all say, these are good-paying trades jobs, but they’re not good-paying if you’re paid under the table; they’re not good-paying if you’re not recognized as a real apprentice; and they’re not good-paying if you never have that pathway to becoming a Red Seal tradesperson or journeyperson. In order to do this, we have to increase inspections and enforcement. In 2018-19, there were 2,345 proactive workplace inspections; by 2022-23, the number had dropped down to 788. We went from more than 2,000 inspections to less than 1,000. That is a really precarious drop, and I think this is why these workplace helpers are rising up and this underground economy is rising up. We really have to have people going out into workplaces and talking to people and checking for their apprentice card and making sure the documents are there. If we’re promising people this pathway to a better future with these good-paying jobs—as the carpenters union tells me all the time, they always get their apprentices to go back and show the guidance counsellors their first paycheque. If we’re trying to get people into these good-paying jobs, but they’re being exploited by bad bosses, it’s our responsibility as legislators, as the people who make the laws of the land, to ensure these laws are enforced.

Schedule 2 has to do with advertising job postings. If you publicly advertise a job, you have to declare that it’s for an existing vacancy or not. I’m not aware of issues when people are putting out jobs that don’t exist, but I suppose it’s happening. Then it requires the employer to respond to applicants who have applied for the job and who have had the interview and just let them know they weren’t successful. I think that makes sense. I know it’s a standard that we have as New Democrats. Our workers are unionized. We have OPSEU and we have COPE workers—OPSEU workers here at Queen’s Park and COPE workers in our constituency offices. When we have job postings, it’s all very regulated because we work very closely with our unions about the job postings and procedures, and one of those things that HR ensures they always do is respond to the people who have applied to let them know if they’ve been selected or not. It also requires the employer to retain copies of all the prescribed information for three years, I guess so they can prove—or if they’re audited they can show it. I think this sounds good; I’m just not sure how many employees out there are putting this at the top of their job hunt wish list in terms of what they want. It’s great that if you applied for a job, someone is going to phone you and say, “Hey, you didn’t get it,” but the reality is that a lot of people would figure that out when weeks go by and they didn’t get a response. It’s a nice, polite thing; you can’t really argue against it, but I don’t know how much it helps people at the end of the day.

For example, something that would help people is enforcing wage theft—in 2018, it was about $10 million, and that wasn’t collected.

The Workers Action Centre sent a quote to me: “There’s an epidemic of wage theft in this province. Increasing fines will not, by itself, address the crisis....

“We need effective collection of stolen wages when the Ministry of Labour has ordered an employer to pay back workers’ wages.”

I thought this was fascinating, because I’ve always had this number of $10 million of wage theft in my head, because that was the number in 2018: The Toronto Star did an investigation on wage theft, and between 2020 and 2022, in those two years, there were more than 8,000—almost 8,500—successful claims for workplace violations for wage theft. If you calculate all those together, workers in our province are owed more than $36 million by employers who have stolen money from them, the wage theft employers. And by the end of 2022, the government was able to recover less than half, less than 40% of that. So if you’re into the numbers, $36 million was owed to Ontario workers, and the Ontario government was only able to collect $13 million, so these bad actors who are ripping people off, these bad bosses we hear about when the Conservatives speak about being tough on bad bosses, got to keep $23 million of stolen wages from employees—$23 million in wage theft they got to keep in their pockets, that they stole out of the pockets of workers. That’s something we need to resolve.

What we need is a way to protect workers from reprisals, as well, because that wage theft number that I spoke about earlier—the $36 million that was stolen from workers—that’s only from workers who were able to report this and tell people what happened. That number is probably a lot higher, because a lot of employees are afraid to report anything because they will be fired, and it’s better to at least have some money in your pocket to pay your bills, especially with the cost of everything going up. Many people, because of the high cost of living, because of the rent going through the roof, can’t afford to report it or say anything. And there are a lot of newcomers to our province who are waiting for their Canadian citizenship to come through, and they are not going to say a word to wreck any of that.

So what we need are those proactive inspections. We need to get those workplace inspectors back into the workplaces. We need real protection from wrongful dismissal, not two or three years from now, when we make it up to you but—that real strong protection for those workers.

And honestly, we need to start collecting the money. There’s an incentive. If you’re a bad boss out there and you know that less than half, less than 40% of that—$23 million is what they got to keep—of the $36 million was taken back, that incentivizes you to continue doing what you’re doing because they’re probably not going to catch you, and if they do, you don’t have to pay it back anyway.

We have to be united on this, and I think the Conservative government would be—but I’ve been saying this for a long time. I’ve been saying this for six years. I’ve been asking about estimates on this. Instead of that $10 million going down, it’s increasing. We cannot have the amount of wage theft climbing on a regular basis.

I’m skipping over section 3, but I’ll go back to it. Section 3 is about sick notes.

Section 4 has to do with fines. Section 4 is about these higher maximum fines for individuals who are convicted of an offence. If you were convicted of an offence, your maximum fine used to be $50,000, and it’s now going up to $100,000. Again, this is an example of the Conservative government saying that we’re being tough on bad bosses, we’re sticking it to the bad bosses.

But I’ve asked in the past, during estimates and other meetings: How many times has the maximum penalty been filed? How many employers have gotten this maximum penalty? Surely, if you’re raising it from $50,000, it must have been handed out time and time again, and these bad bosses are continuing to do it, so you’ve got to raise it to $100,000. The reality, though, is that fines of the previous maximum of $50,000 are almost never levied. I tried looking for data, and the highest fine I could find, from 2022, was $31,250. For individuals, we’ve increased their maximum fine, from $50,000 to $100,000, but we’ve only ever had them pay about $33,000, so we never hit that maximum of $50,000 in the first place. And corporations—their fines start at $100,000 and go up to $500,000, but the maximum fine that anyone in Ontario, in 2022, was ever given was $31,000. So why are we raising the maximum fines—my gut is so that during press conferences and headlines, they can say how tough they’re being on these bad bosses, but the reality is, it doesn’t look like they are at all. This is meaningless if you’re not enforcing. It’s meaningless if you’re not doing the maximum. If the highest fine is almost $20,000 less than the previous maximum, what’s the point? How is that going to hold anyone accountable, and what’s the point of raising this?

So there’s this theme of being tough on bad bosses, but if you look into that—I mentioned wage theft earlier. The last bill had a section on wage theft. I’m not going down the path of how it was already a law and they added another law to duplicate it. But it was already a law. Ontario workers had to come together and prove that $36 million was stolen from them, but the bad bosses got to keep $23 million of that, of wage theft. This bill is increasing the maximum bad-boss fine to $100,000, but the highest fine levied before was $20,000 less than the previous max of $50,000. That doesn’t make sense.

It’s not in this bill, but there’s a section on penalties in the Employment Standards Act that says if you’re a bad boss, you get a penalty like a fine, like a ticket. In 2018, the Conservative government decreased those administrative penalties, if you violate the Employment Standards Act. It used to be $350, but that was dropped down to $250, and the $700 penalty was dropped to $500, and the $1,500 penalty was dropped down to $1,000. In reality, it’s an incentive to be worse, because the higher the penalty was in the past, the more that these bad bosses will save under the Conservative government. You would save a hundred bucks if it was a small penalty of $350, but you’ll save 500 bucks for the $1,500 penalty. So I don’t buy into this. It’s a smokescreen.

I’ve said this before on these bills—that these are headline bills. They sound good at a press conference, but if you scratch beneath the surface, there’s not much there about what’s happening.

So, section 3—I said I’d come back to section 3, about sick notes. This is an example of that. It sounds great in a statement. You get to come forward and say, “We’re ending sick notes”—something we’ve been calling for for a very long time. But when you read the section, it says the new subsections 6 and 6.1 would allow employers to retain the right to require evidence reasonable in the circumstances of entitlement to sick leave, but they would prohibit employers from requiring a certificate from a qualified health practitioner as evidence. So you can ask people why they’re sick and how they’re sick and to prove that they’re sick—but technically, they can’t ask you that, because you can’t ask for the health requirements of it. It feels very murky to me, and maybe, through committee, this will be straightened out and clarified. But when I read this, it sounds like you technically can but you technically can’t—so, ultimately, what you’ll have is people asking for sick notes because the law isn’t clear. If it was just, “You can’t do this anymore. You can’t ask for sick notes,” that would be very clear for people, and people would understand. It would help employers, who need that clarity. The Minister of Red Tape Reduction was always talking about how there are too many rules and people are getting confused. Don’t write a complicated rule that you can ask what you can’t ask; just make it clear. Sick notes are a waste of time. Just get rid of it.

The thing, too, with sick notes is that in 2018, when the Conservative government was first elected, one of the things they did was table Bill 47. It removed a ton of worker rights and workers’ abilities. It turned back the clock on a lot of things that employers were able to do, and one of those things was about paid protection leave—it used to be paid sick days, and they had 10 of them; they peeled that back to three PEL days. And so now we’re at a point where Ontario is the third-worst when it comes to job-protected sick leave days. We’re behind Nova Scotia and Nunavut, but we’re the third-lowest when it comes to protective job leave. That alone is a little bit embarrassing, but on top of that, we’ve just come through a pandemic, where we all recognized that if you isolate yourself when you’re sick, it’s going to be better off for your family and community; it’s actually going to be better off for your workplace. We have all been in that meeting where the person comes in the room and they’re like, “I’ve got a bit of a cold.” The first thing you think is, “Thanks. Now I’ll have a bit of a cold.” I’d much rather the person stay home and get well and not share the cold with me, so I don’t share it with the family, so I don’t share it with my co-workers, so I don’t share it with a person when I’m going to pick up groceries. We know it’s better to stay home.

The other thing with sick notes is that there’s this mythology that the sick note is magically going to root out people who are lying about being sick. But that isn’t what happens with a sick note. When you need a sick note, you go to your doctor, and they write a note that says, “The patient claims they were sick. They’re not sick anymore.” They don’t diagnose you. They don’t prove it to anybody. It’s just a formality. So if you’re somebody who’s lying about being sick that day, the sick note is just an obstacle; it’s a formality. I don’t know what it is now—it used to be 15 bucks—but you pay a couple of bucks, you come in and you give it to them. It doesn’t prove anything. And that’s for people who are breaking those rules and using it unscrupulously. There are some people who would do that. But the majority of people, when they’re sick, they’re sick—legitimately sick.

With sick notes, what we’re doing is, we’re telling people who are sick, “Don’t stay home and take care of yourself. Bring yourself somewhere where other people are sick and vulnerable. Share your cold or whatever you have with those people. Go in that waiting room where everyone is right beside each other and coughing on each other. Go there, where moms are with their babies, and spread whatever cold you have that you’d normally get over in a day or two. Spread it around and share it with everybody else, and maybe get part of their colds too, so that you can get a piece of paper that says you were sick—“I saw the doctor. I showed him my runny nose, and he said ‘Yep, you’re sick. Go home. Have an Aspirin. Get some sleep. Have some soup.’” This is nonsense. Or, you can’t go because you’re so sick you can’t make it—if it’s anything gastro and you’ve got to be minutes to the washroom because you’re going to be physically sick, you’ll wait till you’re well, and you’ll miss another day of work because you’ve got to sit around in a busy walk-in clinic or doctor’s office or emergency room, which are clogging up for people who are actually sick that day, who were in emergency, while you’re waiting there, flipping through your phone and killing time, saying, “I used to be sick, but I’m not anymore. But my boss said I’ve got to be here. So, sorry, everybody else, I’m in the queue.” It makes no sense. It’s bad business, and it’s costly.

Section 5, I’ll just briefly skim over, just because—it will allow the Lieutenant Governor in Council to make regulations. I’m not really sure what the intent of that is, but LGIC tends to be thrown in a lot of Conservative bills, and so I just thought, “Ah, another thing for the LGIC to do.”

Interjection.

I’m glad to be able to ask a question of the member from Sudbury, who has been doing an excellent job across the province as our critic for labour.

There’s not too much of substance to criticize in this bill; it’s tinkering around the edges, as he talked about. Because this is the fifth Working for Workers act or whatever, I was hoping to see something protecting workers on strike, something about anti-scab legislation—I was pleased to co-sponsor that bill, and I wondered if there was any signal in here that we would put workers at the fore.

I want to start by thanking the Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development, because this is the fifth bill that has been brought forward from that ministry with hard work by himself and staff to bring these forward. We always hear from the opposition about what’s not in the bill—and I think it’s a great strategy of moving forward one at a time and really doing a deep dive into things that we want to address. So I thank him for that.

It’s certainly an honour for me to rise today to discuss the Working for Workers Five Act. If passed, this bill would assist in making the workplace safer, introduce more young people to careers in the skilled trades, help new Canadians access jobs in their chosen fields, and support women working in the construction industry, among other sectors. This bill will expand on the progress made from the previous four Working for Workers acts by introducing amendments to further protect front-line workers, remove barriers to employment for new Canadians, open new pathways into the skilled trades, and support women at work. It would contribute to additional regulatory, legislative and policy actions designed to improve workplaces for employees and help employers fill vacant positions.

We know that we need more people working in the skilled trades. To help attract more young people into careers in the skilled trades, this bill proposes to create a new educational stream called Focused Apprenticeship Skills Training, as part of our government’s plan to ensure all students learn about the opportunities in well-paying careers found in the trades. The new stream will give students the opportunity to receive instruction on technical skills and be given the opportunity for hands-on learning experiences in secondary school systems.

Further, this bill provides a new online job-matching portal in order to help students find apprenticeship opportunities and network with employers; it’s also a great opportunity for employers to connect and do recruitment. This new online job-matching portal streamlines the process of finding opportunities faster, which will be important as they transition from education to the workforce. This government wants to put hard-working youth on the fast track to a well-paying career. Not only is this an endeavour our government wants to encourage, but it’s what the youth of Ontario want, as well.

Schools in my riding of Lanark–Frontenac–Kingston are already recognizing the value of this government’s vision. Smiths Falls District Collegiate Institute is incorporating a Specialist High Skills Major program that works in company with the requirements stipulated by the Ontario secondary school diploma. The program will let students focus on a career path that matches their skills by earning valuable industry certification in co-operative educational placements. The program has received positive commentary and demonstrates how our ministries are working together.

The Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Colleges and Universities, and the ministry of women’s and social economic opportunity are all working together to increase our sources for human resources in the trades.

Former Smiths Falls District Collegiate Institute principal Terry Gardiner said, “The Dual Credit Program represents an outstanding opportunity for students, whether entering trades, or trying a college course in their area of interest. It allows students the opportunity to ‘try on’ college and many students see that they can be successful.”

Speaker, students are inspired and excited about their education and future. Janet Sanderson, former principal of Granite Ridge Education Centre in Sharbot Lake, said, “It gives our students a chance to make informed decisions about their future. They get a taste of the college life. It gives them a chance to explore their post-secondary options and test the waters....” One Granite Ridge student said the Dual Credit Program gives him a reason to like school again.

Students will have the ability to make informed decisions about their future, through the introduction of a variety of careers—be that skills, trades, colleges or universities. Our government is ending the stigma of working in the trades. We hear the voices of Ontarians telling us there is a need for more skilled trades workers, as Minister Piccini mentioned yesterday. We hear them, we value them, and we are creating new paths for youth to become them. This stigma existed when I was in high school and trying to decide what to do. My parents said, “You need that university degree”—and I’m guilty of the same stigma with my kids. But there are now so many pathways to success, and the students need to explore that when they’re in their high school years. Through the Working for Workers Five Act, alternative pathways for people interested in the skilled trades would be opened up.

In addition to getting young people into the skilled trades, this government wants to help mature workers leverage their existing skills, education and work experience to land a position in the skilled trades sector. We want to give Canadians who are looking for a second career in the skilled trades a chance at a better job with a bigger paycheque. Through this bill, our government will work on removing barriers to entry into the skilled trades as a second career and providing avenues for a career transition. By doing this, our government will address labour shortages and drive economic growth through those seeking a second career in the skilled trades, regardless of their educational background—new opportunities, a brighter future.

Recent immigrants and international—

Thank you to the member for his comments this morning. It’s interesting—his background in labour as an electrician and direct experience in the sector.

If we look at the objectives of what this bill is trying to achieve with putting in new supports and stronger protections that would safeguard health and safety and dignity of workers, addressing online harassment at work, ensuring workers are protected; changes to regulations to address women’s needs on construction sites, conduct a comprehensive review of the facilities in the construction sector—a large number of major objectives here, which I would have thought were very practical and supportable.

Does the member not see these as objectives that are worth supporting?

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?

It’s an honour to rise this afternoon in support of Bill 190, the latest Working for Workers act, introduced by the Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development. This is our government’s fifth Working for Workers bill and the fourth one that I’ve had the privilege to speak about in the House. If passed, Bill 190 would expand on the historic reforms in the first four acts, which are already helping millions of Ontario workers.

I want to thank the minister and his team, including his parliamentary assistant from Ajax and his two former parliamentary assistants from Mississauga–Malton and Scarborough Centre, for all their work on this bill. Of course, I also want to mention the incredible work of our former minister, Monte McNaughton. They travelled across the province to consult with workers, unions and employers, advocating for the skilled trades and workers’ health and safety and many more.

I also want to thank all the stakeholders who joined us at my own labour round table in January at Lakeview Village in Mississauga–Lakeshore, including Finn Johnson from the Carpenters’ District Council of Ontario, Local 27; Moya MacKinnon from Achēv; and Artan Spahiu from Polycultural Immigrant and Community Services and about 20 more. Speaker, I know their feedback was invaluable in helping to shape Bill 190 and I know that, moving forward, we will continue to rely on their advice.

Before I begin my remarks, the Day of Mourning for workers killed or injured in the workplace was last week, on April 28. Thousands of people across the province held a moment of silence in memory of workers who made the ultimate sacrifice and as a powerful reminder of the ongoing need to improve workplace safety in Ontario.

I was able to attend an event at the Italian Fallen Workers Memorial at the Columbus Centre in North York with the Italian consul general Luca Zelioli, Vaughan mayor Steven Del Duca and many others to honour the memory of thousands of Italian fallen workers, including my own father, who was a welder at the old Texaco refinery in Port Credit. He died of lung cancer and asbestosis when I was only 18, so I want to thank the minister and his team for working to include asbestos in the Occupational Exposure Registry, which is expected next year.

Adam Melnick, the Canadian director of the International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Allied Workers, said, and I agree, that:

“We commend [the minister] and the government of Ontario, for recognizing the harm that asbestos continues to cause workers, and their families.

“The inclusion of asbestos in the provincial Occupational Exposure Registry is necessary to understand the ongoing dangers of asbestos in our already-built environment, and the destructive legacy” it has left for so many workers and their families, including my own. He said—and I agree—that this is a very important step towards a provincial asbestos strategy, so again, I want to thank the minister for this.

Speaker, I’ll begin today with schedule 1, which includes amendments to the Building Opportunities in the Skilled Trades Act. Back in 2013, the Conference Board of Canada reported that the skills gap—the gap between the skills our students are graduating with and the skills that our employees need across the province—was costing Ontario over $24 billion, or about 4% of the provincial GDP, because hundreds of thousands of skilled jobs are left vacant across the province. We’ve made great progress since then, but there are still about 237,000 jobs available, which is costing us billions in lost productivity. In part, this is because of the ongoing stigma against the skilled trades.

As the minister announced in Brampton last week, schedule 1 of Bill 190 would help to open new pathways into the skilled trades for older, experienced workers interested in the skilled trades as a second career, but who might not meet the current academic requirements to register as an apprentice. They would be able to use alternative criteria, like professional experience, to give them a second chance at a better job and a bigger paycheque.

We’re developing a new online job-matching platform to help employers and apprentices to network and share opportunities. And, Speaker, we’re building on the successful Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program with a new stream, Focused Apprenticeship Skills Training, to help provide more opportunities for grade 11 and grade 12 students to get hands-on learning experience and learn the critical skills they need to succeed in well-paying careers in the skilled trades through co-op credits in high school.

Speaker, this delivers on a commitment that the Premier made over a year ago to expand options for high school students, beginning in grade 11, to help them enter the skilled trades faster and work towards a full-time apprenticeship. I’d like to thank the minister again, as well as the Minister of Education, for their leadership on this policy.

It is quite a contrast with some members of the other side. After the announcement, Cheri DiNovo, the former NDP member from Parkdale–High Park, shared her reaction on Twitter, which is now X. She wrote, “Who needs to learn history, science, reading when you can stay uneducated and vote Conservative?” As the minister said, there are many young people, including young women, who want to build a career for themselves in the skilled trades. The elitist attitude that the people in the trades are uneducated is exactly what has got Ontario into the labour crisis we face today.

As many members know, before I was elected, I was a dues-paying union member for 31 years at Unifor Local 707 and the Canadian Auto Workers before that. I worked for Ford Canada in Oakville for 31 years, most recently as a vehicle auditor. But when I was running for office in 2018, Michelle Baker, the Liberal chief of staff to Bonnie Crombie at the city of Mississauga, tweeted that I was just “a person who counts car parts.” You know what? If they were able to count, we wouldn’t have run the largest sub-national debt in the province of Ontario.

But I’m very proud of my career at Ford. Again, after my father died of asbestosis, it was an opportunity to support my family and build a better life, but it was a career that was in jeopardy under the former Liberal government as Ontario lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs. The former Liberal Minister of Finance said that assembly line manufacturing was just “a thing of the past.” This is why I ran for office against the former Minister of Finance, because the Liberals and NDP had abandoned working class people in Ontario.

Last week, I joined the Premier in Caledon to announce that the construction of the Highway 413 would begin next year, creating 3,500 more good union jobs. Victoria Mancinelli from LIUNA said that our government “has done more to advance skilled trades than any government in Ontario’s history.”

She said, “Careers in skilled trades have transformed lives. They have lifted individuals out of poverty, out of violence and difficult situations. They have empowered a sense of purpose, financial stability and a new outlook on life,” and, “Our province, our economy and our country can’t succeed, grow or function without” the incredible, intelligent and skilled workers in the trades. Insulting them is “appalling, ignorant and disrespectful.” I can’t say it better myself.

Next, schedule 2 of Bill 190 would amend the Employment Standards Act to make the hiring process more fair with several new requirements for employers. If passed, sections 8.5 and 8.6 would require job ads to clearly state whether a position is currently available or just for potential future needs. This was based on a story in the Toronto Star about so-called ghost jobs. Employers would also have to provide a decision within a reasonable time after a job interview.

We’re also reducing the administrative burden for sick workers and health care professionals and putting patients before paperwork. For example, Bill 190 would amend section 50 of the act to reduce paperwork burdens for health care workers by preventing employers from requiring sick notes for a worker’s job-protected leave. We know that family doctors already spend up to 19 hours every week filling out forms and other documents, including sick notes. That’s up to half of their work week spent on paperwork and other red tape instead of treating their patients.

The WSIB is also streamlining and modernizing their systems, enabling direct deposits, digital submissions and online claims. I know they’re working together with health sector organizations to explore even more options to reduce administrative burdens on workers and doctors.

Next, we would amend section 132 of the act to double the fines for individuals from $50,000 to $100,000 which would be the highest fine in Canada. We’re also proposing to increase the penalties for repeat offenders. Under the former Liberal government, penalties for repeat offenders who exploited their workers were only $1,000, less than the cost of an iPhone today. Our government is raising this penalty to $5,000 for each employee, each time, which again is one of the highest in Canada, because we know that it is completely unacceptable for bad actors to buy their way out of the consequences of putting their workers at risk.

Finally, I want to thank the minister for consulting on potential future amendments to the Employment Standards Act. In particular, I know he is looking at including IT workers in certain sections, to ensure that everyone is treated fairly and every worker has a basic right for lunch breaks and overtime pay.

Schedule 3 and 5 of Bill 190 would also help to provide fair access to the regulated professions, including engineers, lawyers, teachers and so on, for internationally trained workers. If passed, these professions would be required to develop new policies to accept alternative documents whenever the standard ones are not available for reasons beyond the control of a job applicant, such as a natural disaster or a war, like we’ve seen with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ontario would become the first province in Canada to require these professions to have a policy in place to accept alternative documents and to allow job applicants to get through several steps of the registration process all at once, so they’re not held up at any part of the process, which would be another first in Canada.

The government is also increasing the number of occupations that will be eligible for our Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program’s stream for in-demand skills, and schedule 5 would allow reviewers appointed under the Ontario Immigration Act to delegate their authority to other public servants to help increase the decision-making capacity in the program and to speed up decisions.

I know that moving forward, the minister is also consulting on a new trusted employer model to help reduce the administrative burden on reliable employers that are working with the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program, and I look forward to seeing this as part of Working for Workers number six.

Next, schedule 4 of the bill would amend the Occupational Health and Safety Act to help make the skilled trades more accessible for women and to support women at work. For the first time in Canada, employers at construction sites and other workplaces would be required to keep their washrooms clean and sanitary and to maintain records on washroom cleaning. As well, menstrual products would be required on large construction sites with more than 20 people where the project is expected to last for three months or more.

Speaker, these policies are a direct response to the women in the skilled trades, like Michelle Small in Mississauga, who have told us we need to do this to encourage more women to join the construction industry.

Schedule 4 would also modernize the definition of workplace harassment to include new protections against virtual harassment, including virtual sexual harassment, to better reflect the nature of the modern workplace. And again, Speaker, the minister will consult with victims of harassment, legal experts and other stakeholders to identify potential future amendments to create a duty to act for employers where investigations find that there has been harassment in the workplace.

Lastly, I want to thank the minister for the amendments to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act in schedule 6 of this bill that would help keep our front-line workers, including first responders, healthy and safe. This includes changes to section 14 and 15 of the act to improve coverage for skin cancer for firefighters, fire investigators and volunteers by lowering the current requirement from 15 years of service to 10. Speaker, this would be the lowest in Canada, and it responds to growing evidence that firefighters have an increased risk of developing cancer, and not just because of the exposure to toxic chemicals during emergencies. An audit in Mississauga in 2019 found asbestos in several of the fire stations where firefighters live, eat and sleep during their shift, including stations 102, 103 and 104 in Mississauga–Lakeshore.

Again, I want to thank the Minister of Finance for the $30-million Fire Protection Grant program that was announced in the 2024 budget. This will make a real difference to help protect firefighters from exposure to toxic chemicals like asbestos and many others.

Speaker, I was at station 104 in Port Credit just last night for a tour with the Mississauga historical society and a presentation by award-winning photographer Stephen Uhraney about his experience with the firefighters of station 104. I urge all members to visit the photo exhibit—it’s called On Duty—if you have a chance to come to Mississauga–Lakeshore.

Speaker, schedule 6 would also expand the coverage for certain cancers, heart injuries and PTSD to wildland firefighters and fire investigators who worked so hard to keep Ontario safe last year, during the most difficult wildfire season in the province’s history. These changes would ensure that they have the same coverage as municipal firefighters, so I want to thank the Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry and the member from Thunder Bay–Atikokan for all their work on this. Again, I know that the minister will continue to consult about expanding coverage even further; for example, for PTSD and for those who have to review body cam evidence. I look forward to speaking about that in Working for Workers Six.

Again, Speaker, I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak on Bill 190 this afternoon. As I said, this bill builds on the historic reforms that our government has already made. It is the next step to support workers, from our first responders to women in the skilled trades, to job seekers young and old, injured workers and everyone in between. I hope that all the members in this House will support this bill moving forward.

I appreciated listening to my colleague’s remarks. As I’ve travelled the province in the last couple of months visiting traditional home builders, modular or factory-built home builders, there’s one common theme: We need 1.5 million homes built in this province and we need the people to build them. No matter how much automation we invest in, we still need the skilled trades’ talent and expertise to get these houses built. The biggest concern these builders have is where we are going to get the labour. It is the number one constraint to their capacity, their growth, their potential.

My question to my colleague is how is this bill going to help accentuate, facilitate and, most importantly, complement the capacity increase we need to get more homes built and faster in this province?

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.