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.

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?

Thank you also for talking about WSIB. There’s some irony, because I’ve been fighting very hard to get WSIB coverage for wildland forest fighters. But there are many, many problems with WSIB: 46% of permanently injured workers live close to or under the poverty line; 9% live in deep poverty. We also know that this government boasts frequently about a 30% cut to WSIB premiums to employers and then a return of $1.5 billion to employers.

And what really worries me, and perhaps you can comment on this, is that the government talks about having cut costs to employers, so they’re talking about bringing in all these new industries. Sounds great, but they’ve thrown workers under the bus. That’s what it sounds like. So, what protection is going to be there for workers when we already know that they are not being supported for injuries that they have now? There will surely be injuries in these new workplaces, and there’s not going to be anything there for them. Can you please comment?