I’m pleased today to be able to speak to Bill 149, the Working for Workers Four Act. I’ll get into it a bit later, but Working for Workers Four Act is like most movie sequels: By the time they get to the fourth sequel, you realize that they’re losing the plot.

Here’s what’s good in the bill: There are good little snippets and scenes, and one of them is—okay, well, they’re making sure that the pay periods for digital workers are regular and that they’re regulated. That’s a good thing. The problem is we’re not really addressing the problems that face gig workers. I said earlier today in questions, deliveries and transporting people, like a taxi does, are not new jobs. It’s just that corporations have found a different way to employ people on contract so they’re kind of contract employees.

So here’s the thing: If we think it’s just going to be deliveries and taxis, transporting people, it’s not. The way our economy is changing is going to create more opportunities for people to take advantage of people, and that’s the thing that we need to address. That’s what’s missing in this bill. That’s what I mean when I say I think it’s lost the plot.

You go to the second part of the bill, where they are looking at the Employment Standards Act. Including the trial period as a pay period for workers is a good thing to do, no question—long overdue. It should have been done a long time ago.

Banning advertising of a Canadian requirement is a good thing.

Ensuring that employees aren’t penalized for dine-and-dash or gas-and-dash, or for customers that take advantage of service employees by not paying the bill: That’s a good thing. That’s a good reason to support this bill.

The tipping stuff is good as well, too. What I would like to see—and it’s not in this act—is that it’s not just enough to retain this and to post it for employees, but it’s also important that customers know. How many of us go almost everywhere now and we get asked for a tip electronically? I tip because I think it’s the right thing to do, but we don’t know—and maybe this isn’t a labour thing—it’s probably not; it should be a consumer thing. How come we don’t know where that tip goes? It will be a challenge to enforce this. I think if employers had to post the tipping policy where people were making tips, that would be a good thing—again, maybe not necessarily a labour thing, but it would be a good consumer thing that would help employees.

Now, on pay transparency: We did have a Pay Transparency Act here in Ontario. It was passed in 2018. It should have been enacted in November 2018, but the government put an indeterminate pause on that. They’re never going to enact it—it’s not going to happen—and the measures that are included here are not nearly what’s needed to ensure gender pay equity. We heard the member from Sudbury talking about that this morning. Even some people looked at the bill in 2018 and said it could have been stronger. That’s something that should be in the plot. That’s something we’ve been talking about for a long time, for decades, here in Ontario, and we can’t seem to get there. Why is that?

Now, the fair access to regulated professions and compulsory trades: I think that’s the thing in this bill that’s most compelling to me. It gives me more of a reason to vote for the bill. It’s a good thing. It has been something that, again, for decades and decades and decades, we’ve been trying to work with regulated professions to make sure that people would have access; that the people who come to this country and were trained somewhere else and have skills—that their skills would be recognized and somehow we would, if we needed to, help them upgrade those skills, not just because we should do it, but just because it’s the right thing to do. It’s the human thing to do. It’s morally the right thing to do. Somebody else paid to make sure that person got those skills—somewhere else, another jurisdiction. It’s just good economic sense to do it, and that’s why I think this is another measure that’s going to help this. It’s something that governments of all stripes have struggled with for decades, so I want to congratulate the minister on this being put in the bill.

The WSIB changes, especially with regard to presumption for esophageal cancers: again, a good thing. The question that did come up at committee, and I think it’s fair, is that wildland firefighters are not included. Why is that? Why is there a difference? The interesting thing is, wildland firefighters are not organized, generally, and they earn between $16 to $19 an hour. So they’re taking a risk that’s maybe the same, maybe greater, but it’s in the same ballpark; they’re getting paid less, and we’re not covering them. Why is that? I hope, in the questions and answers, that somebody can explain to me why we’re not doing that, why there’s a hesitation, why they need to wait longer. It would only be fair.

We have workplace safety insurance in this province to make sure that people’s backs are covered. Some good things have happened with it in terms of managing the risk and making sure that premiums recognized the risk in the work. There’s a lot of good work that has been done over the last number of years, but the piece that’s missing is that we haven’t expanded coverage. We should actually be trying to get more people covered. That’s what insurance companies do. But this is a different kind of insurance company. It’s the people’s insurance company, for the people, and employers pay into it and governments of all stripes have maintained workplace safety insurance. We should be trying to make sure that more people are covered, and that’s why the wildland firefighters should be covered. They don’t make a lot of money. They take a lot of risks. I would hope that will come up in the questions and answers, sometime in this debate, because I really don’t understand why not.

I mentioned this this morning, as well: I have a private member’s bill, and I’ve talked to the minister about this and I’ve talked to the previous minister, and they were both very positive about it. It’s a bill that ensures that people doing the same job and taking the same risks should have the same coverage, even if their employer is different. Many of you may not know, but if you work in a retirement home, whether you work as a PSW or another worker in that home, the work is very similar in terms of risk profile for people who are working in long-term care. Well, people who are working in long-term care are covered by WSIB. They’re covered. That’s the law. It’s a schedule 1 employer.

But at some point, retirement homes were no longer a schedule 1 employer. Although you’ve got the same number of people, the same kind of work and the same kind of risks, they don’t have to be covered. It’s optional. Here’s the problem: Most insurance will cover you for your job, that one job that you have. Many workers in retirement homes have three different jobs. If they’re covered by WSIB and they get injured, they get paid for all their jobs. If they get injured at one of the retirement homes they work at, they get paid for that one job and not the other two. That’s not fair. People taking the same risks with the same people doing the same things should not be covered differently because their employer is different. They should not be excluded because their employer is different. It’s about the work; it’s about the risks that they take. That’s what insurance is all about, and I’m encouraged by the fact that both ministers have said to me that it’s something that they’re looking at.

We have to do it for many of these workers—these PSWs and developmental service workers—because it applies to them too. If you are in a group home, that’s a contract—you don’t have to be covered. But if you are in a provincial youth offender facility or a provincial facility that provides assistance to the developmentally disabled, you’re covered. It’s not fair that these people aren’t covered. Most of these workers are women, racialized, working three jobs. They’ve been working for a long time. They’re afraid to report injuries, because they can’t lose the income. They work with injuries because they won’t get covered for the other two jobs. They take big risks. There are people taking exactly the same risks that are working for a different employer—the province of Ontario or a long-term-care corporation—and they’re covered. They have to be covered.

So I’m going to support this bill; there are good things in it. But when it comes to WSIB, I think we need to get back to the plot—and that’s where we have an insurance program, so that workers will be protected in the event that they become injured at work, and so that their families will be taken care of. We’re taking really good care of some people—and some, not at all. I think that’s the thing that I would like to see in the Working for Workers Act 5—that we look towards coverage for wildland firefighters, that we look towards coverage for PSWs and developmental service workers who aren’t covered right now just simply because they’ve got the wrong employer.

In closing, to reiterate, I think when we get to the Working for Workers Act 5, there are some things we need to address, like expanding coverage of WSIB for workers who aren’t covered, who should be covered, making sure that when it comes to the gender pay gap that we actually put some measures in that are going to make sure that we address that.

We have a bill that’s still sitting on the books, not enacted, and the government can choose to enact it. It can choose to take some of the measures, add more measures—I think that’s a fair and reasonable expectation to have of the kind of things that we need to do to actually work for workers.

I thank you for your time.