It’s fortunate that I switched my House duty with my colleague today because last week, as you know, the government House leader gave us an update of what we’re going to be debating this week, and Bill 149 wasn’t on that list of things we would be debating. I found it odd because, on Thursday morning, they brought it for debate so the minister could have his hour lead, and then it collapsed because of question period. We couldn’t proceed. They didn’t call it back in the afternoon. This is a weird standard that they’ve set for these employment bills, because on second reading, they brought forward the debate at 5 p.m. on a Thursday—or a Wednesday; I apologize. They brought forward the debate at 5 p.m.—I believe it was on a Thursday—the minister had his hour lead, and then because of orders of the day, at 6 p.m. we went to different business, and then we didn’t resume debate until 11:30 p.m.

If you want to have fulsome debate, you have to hear the criticisms of the bill. It isn’t that this bill is a terrible bill—there are good parts to it; there are some terrible parts to it. Honestly, in this bill, there are some good parts, there’s a really bad part, and there’s a bunch of parts that really didn’t have to be there because they are already existing laws.

The bill is Bill 149. Technically, it’s called An Act to amend various statutes with respect to employment and labour and other matters. It has four schedules. It’s an omnibus bill. Schedule 1 is the Digital Platform Workers’ Rights Act; I’m going to get to that in a minute. Schedule 2 is the Employment Standards Act. Schedule 3 is Fair Access to Regulated Professions and Compulsory Trades Act. And schedule 4 is the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act.

I’m going to start with part of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act because that’s the part of the bill, for the most part, that is very positive. That’s the part of the bill that was basically piggybacked from a private member’s bill that my colleague from Niagara Centre had—

Interjection.

Knowing how the occupational disease affects people, from my background with health and safety working in the mining industry, I know that, like Captain Bowman, a lot of these people are really just hanging on to hear that there will be some good news for their family. They know the finish line is coming. They just want to hear something. They want to hear that their WSIB claim has been accepted, that there will be some compensation and recognition for what they’re going through and what their family is going through. And I’m very happy to hear that Captain Bowman had heard that this bill was moving forward before.

Last week, I was able to go up and talk to the family and let them know that, although we do have issues with this bill—primarily the Digital Platform Workers’ Rights Act, which is a bizarre name for something that’s kneecapping digital workers—we would be supporting this bill because of the importance of what it’s going to do for firefighters in our province. We’ll have another way to work on this digital workers’ section.

So that being said, that’s the cornerstone of the bill. That’s the solid part of the bill. There are some sort of wishy-washy things in the bill that are not really legislation that I’ll get into afterwards.

I do want to talk about this Digital Platform Workers’ Rights Act. This is one of those creative writing things. I’ve said often that a lot of these Conservative bills are basically for headlines. This sounds like a great thing. These are your gig workers—if you don’t want to read through it—these are your Uber drivers, food delivery drivers; these are these app workers. It sounds like a fantastic thing, “digital platform workers’ rights”—you’re going to have some rights. We know these workers have been exploited and taken advantage of, but it really doesn’t do anything for them. What it does is, it spells out that they can make a complaint, and the complaint can be investigated—and that sounds great—but it also enshrines that you’re only paid for the time that you’re active in service. If you think of this morning, for example—I think up to now there have been seven people who spoke. Some spoke for 10 minutes. Some spoke for maybe a minute and a half, to answer a question or to ask a question. You would only be paid for the time that you spoke. It doesn’t matter that you came to the Legislature. It didn’t matter that you’re on House duty for hours on end. It didn’t matter that you’re in committee—and I’m not taking cheap shots at anybody. We work hard here; I know it’s a joke to say that politicians don’t. We work hard, and there are a lot of hours in here. But if we were protected under this Digital Platform Workers’ Rights Act, I’d be getting paid right now, but nobody else would—not even you, Speaker; you’d probably get the least amount, because you just get up for a second to say, “Further debate?” or “I recognize the member.” This is unfair in any workplace.

When I was a flash furnace operator, I was paid to fill the trains with slag, and I was paid when the trains were switching out. When I was waiting for new pots to come in, my pay didn’t stop.

When I was a kid, working at Baskin-Robbins in the winter, when it was slow and we had fewer people, I wasn’t paid just when people showed up to get ice cream. I was paid for the amount of time I was there ready, willing, waiting to work. That’s what needs to happen for these app workers.

In this thing, when it says that you have a right to complain that your employer is paying you less than minimum wage per hour—but nothing will happen, because the Conservative government is enshrining the right for these companies to pay their workers less than minimum wage per hour. You’re only paid for your engaged time. That means that, for example, if you stop by a grocery store or a pharmacy on the way home and you have to pick up soap, bread or something like that, the cashier would only be paid for the time that you got there, and when they scan your device, and while they did the transaction. Then, their pay stops. Think about a chess match. Every time they hit the clock—that’s how these workers are paid.

There was a document—I know I can’t hold it up, but I’m going to have it to read from. Legislated Poverty was from RideFair. This was presented to us the day before we went to committee on this: “Under current city and provincial regulations, Toronto’s ride-hail drivers’ median pay is an estimated $6.37-$10.60/hour, a collective annual loss of up to ~$200 million/year.”

This is about app delivery drivers. This is about ride-share companies, like Lyft and Uber. This is an amazing business plan. You come up with the app, and the workers provide all the equipment. The workers do all of the work. They pay for their vehicles. It doesn’t matter if it’s a car—you want to get an Uber Black, you get a high-end car, and you’re paying a lease on it. You’re doing food delivery, and you get on an e-bike that some people are renting or trying to pay off. And you hear about these rates of pay—because Uber is telling you that you make about 30 bucks an hour. That’s 30 bucks an hour if you only count the time when you’re working.

The Conservative government has created a law where—“Yes, we stand with Uber. We stand with the billionaires.” This is sort of a familiar refrain from the Conservative government. They love billionaires, but they don’t stand with regular working-class people.

A couple of quotes in here: “Toronto ride-hail drivers received an estimated median pay as low as $6.37/hr”— that’s before the deductions. That’s before gas. That’s before their lease. That’s before they pay for the bike. That’s out-of-pocket expenses.

Our minimum wage is $16.55. I want you to compare that—and I’m going to say it again: $16.55. What the Conservative government is saying is, “It’s okay if a company pays their workers $6.37 an hour instead.” That is flabbergasting. In this economy, in this time of financial strife, when people are feeling the affordability pinch—middle-class people, higher-income people are thinking about what they’re purchasing. They’re putting things back on the shelves. People who can afford it are just saying, “This is ridiculous, the way we’re being gouged.”

You have a Conservative government saying, “I think it’s great that this billionaire company is exploiting these workers. In fact, I’m going to write it into law so they can keep getting away with it.” It’s disgraceful.

Further, they did some analysis on this, and their estimate was that Uber’s proposed—Uber says they make 120% of minimum wage for engaged time, but only while they’re actually working. While they’re waiting for an order to come in, and if Uber decides—they know how the app works. If Uber decides, “I’m going to keep sending it to this person and ignore this person”—it’s only while they’re going; you get zero while you’re waiting.

One of the deputants who spoke to us at clause-by-clause told us about being out in snowstorms—because you get more orders for food in snowstorms—and waiting in Toronto with his bike and making $2.50 an hour, which, coincidentally, is what they estimate that works out to, actually, as an hourly minimum wage. It’s a little bit of smoke and mirrors, because the engaged time pay is pretty good, but if Uber doesn’t give you any deliveries, it’s pretty bad.

Again, think of us all here: Right now, I’m getting paid because I’m engaged; none of you are. None of you deserve a cent for what you’re doing. It makes no sense. It’s completely unfair.

So Uber is telling people—they’ve got a thing called Uber math; I guess that’s a trending thing. Basically, what they say is, you’re making $40.69 an hour—which is great, if you actually made that for the hour, but that’s only when they add up your engaged time over a long period. So, your engaged time, seven hours and 24 minutes—do you know how long the worker has to work to have seven hours and 24 minutes of engaged time? It’s 26 hours and 18 minutes. So to work an eight-hour shift for Uber, you have to work more than 24 hours a day. If you break it down to what they actually make per hour, in this instance, it’s $11.45.

I can go on and on about this, but there are other parts of the bill to get to. I’m spelling this out as clear as I can, though, because this is punishing for workers. We had several come who are Uber drivers and food delivery workers, and I asked one of them—I’ll hear, often, when people hear of somebody who has a job that doesn’t pay well, “Just quit and get another job.” So I said, “Why don’t you just quit and get another job?” He said, “There are no other jobs. I have to put food on the table for my family, and so what I do is, I sit in my car and I wait. I don’t spend time with my family. I sit in my car for 16 to 18 hours a day, and then I collapse from exhaustion and sleep, and I sit in my car again.”

Interjection.

The member opposite is talking about these jobs that are existing, and I think it’s a good opportunity for me to transition to another thing we heard during the deputations and when we had amendments.

The number one thing we heard from people, from amendments—I talked earlier about WSIB and how it’s going to help the firefighters, but the number one thing we heard was to bring in an end to deeming.

Our member from Niagara Falls, Wayne Gates, has a deeming bill that he has tabled more than once. What this does is that, if you’re an injured worker—and a lot of people, if they’re not injured, think WSIB works well. The sad reality is, for a lot of workers, when you are injured, you are first in line to the poverty line. It is a sad reality for way too many workers. The Ontario Disability Support Program is made up of way too many workers who have been injured on the job.

There is a historic agreement that brought forward the Workmen’s Compensation Act, now WSIB, and the idea was that workers would give up the right to sue. In the States, you see these multi-million dollar lawsuits, when you’re injured on the job. Workers in Ontario gave up that right so they could have access to fair compensation. But what’s happening is, workers are not getting fair compensation.

That’s a whole other kettle of fish, the larger picture—but to rub their nose in it, to even thumb down harder on these workers, they have a process called deeming. So what you can do is, if you’re injured and you have restrictions—let’s say that you have a back injury and you can’t stand for long periods of time. Many times, a doctor who has never even seen you, never analyzed you, never met with you, just went through your case files, and this doctor can deem you able to do another job. The doctor can say, “Do you know what? You could be a parking lot attendant.” The reality is—I don’t know if you’ve been gone out to a lot of places—not a lot of parking lot attendants even exist anymore. It doesn’t matter if you live in a rural area where there aren’t even any parking lots—because places in Sudbury, like mine, outside of downtown, parking is free almost everywhere. It doesn’t matter if there are no jobs; they deem you able to do that job, and they bring your benefits down. You don’t have the job. You’ve got a phantom job.

The problem with this scenario is that it’s not like they say, “We think you can do this job,” and they send you out to do the job and they pay you for the job; they just say, “You could do this phantom job, and you can buy your groceries and pay your rent with the phantom cheques you’re going to get from it.” It is a broken, punishing system that is punishing people living with disabilities they got from their workplace. It is punching down on the weakest people in our province.

The Conservative government voted against our amendment to end deeming. The Conservative government voted against the deeming bill. The Conservative government doesn’t want deeming to end. In a bill that is called Working for Workers, I cannot imagine anything more working against workers than not bringing in deeming. In fact, we tried to bring the amendment forward, and they said, “You can’t bring it forward; it’s out of order,” because they don’t talk about deeming in this bill. The standing orders say that, and that’s fair enough. My colleague the member from Niagara Falls asked for unanimous consent so we could debate the idea of even talking about it, so that we could even discuss the idea of having it. They still had the opportunity to vote it down at that point, but they didn’t want to talk about it because their mind is made up.

There is nothing this government loves more than to punch down on an injured worker. There is nothing they love more than putting their fingers in their ears when workers say, “This ability to deem me is punishing me and making my life more difficult.” There is nothing they like more than turning their back on injured workers and saying, “You’ve got it good enough.”

I know one of my colleagues from across the aisle is going to yell out about the 5% increase for ODSP, which a lot of these workers end up on. Basically, in the old days, we would have called this welfare. “ODSP,” I guess, has a better ring to it when you’re embarrassed about how you’re treating people who are living in poverty. But when you think of that 5% increase, I want you to imagine that there’s a waterline; this is the poverty line. This is where it was for people on ODSP, and that 5% increase brought you to here. You still can’t breathe. You’re still underwater. You still can’t pay your bills. But the good news is you got that 5%, so you should be thankful.

That’s the message the Conservative government gives to people: “We’re holding your head underwater. You’re not going to be able to survive.” Imagine the stress and the reality of that. “We cannot wait to do it. We’re going to pull you up 5%, but you’re not going to get to the surface. And not just that; we’re going to brag to people who don’t know enough about ODSP that we locked it in so as inflation rises, as the water goes up, you get to go up too, but never to the surface. We’re always going to keep you under the poverty line—and not a little under; far under. You can see the surface, but you can’t get to it.”

Imagine the ceiling, Speaker. It’s probably about 20, 30 feet above me. That’s where we’re holding these disabled workers. That’s where we’re holding these people, in poverty. That’s a government decision. The budget will come out probably at the end of next month or mid-month, and I’m going to predict “ODSP” won’t be a word in that budget. I’ll give you five bucks if it changes, but I’m telling you it’s not going to change.

Those are the bad parts of the bill, the main parts.

The other part of the bill that I want to talk about—I’m going to run out of time again because I’m not getting my full hour this morning. I think this is important too. When I was talking about the Digital Platform Workers’ Rights Act—this isn’t just an opinion that these workers are getting ripped off. If you go to any Tim Hortons, people will tell you they’re getting ripped off; they know they are.

It’s not like the Conservative government is waiting for an expert to tell them that these workers are misclassified as independent contractors. They’re not independent. They’re reliant on the app company for the job. There has been the Ontario Superior Court of Justice and an Ontario Ministry of Labour employment standards officer both indicating these app workers have been misclassified as independent contractors. So it’s not a handful of people talking about it. It’s not a guy who does the job who’s griping about it. These are authoritative figures. I know that there isn’t a court case the Conservative government loves to lose enough, when you think of Bill 124 and all the other court cases they lost, but the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has said that these workers are misclassified. And the Minister of Labour—it’s his bill. One of his employment standards officers has said they’re misclassified.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has certified the landmark $400-million class action lawsuit against Uber, filed on behalf of Uber drivers who have been misclassified as independent contractors by the ride-sharing giant. So what they do is, they look at the claim and they say, “Yes, I think you have a case.” They’re going to have to make a ruling on it. When there’s a $400-million class action lawsuit, they have a decent look at that before proceeding. They said, “I think it has merit to be heard.” You are not an independent contractor if you don’t control your hours and you don’t control your pay.

We also heard from nurses who said, “I’m not an independent contractor, and I have some flexibility in how I do my work as well.”

So I think that these workers are going to win, in the same way that I thought the workers from Bill 124 were going to win, in the same way I thought the workers from Bill 28 were going to win. Those workers won too.

I think the government could save the province a ton of money if they listened to me once in a while, because they’re getting it wrong again and again. Honestly, two days ago there was a motion to have night sittings, and the first thing I thought is, “Well, we need those night sittings because of the legislation they’re going to have to walk back later.” The majority of our time, basically, is walking back legislation from a Conservative government who loves nothing more than a “ready, fire, aim” philosophy of Legislature.

On February 22, 2022, Ministry of Labour employment standards officer Katherine Haire “found several violations of the Employment Standards Act—and employment lawyers and advocates say the ruling sends a clear message on the issue of employment status that gig platform workers have long fought for.

“Haire ordered the company to pay Uber Eats courier Saurabh Sharma wages he argued were deducted without notice last August, along with wages to make up for missing public holiday pay and minimum wage discrepancies.” This added up to $919.37. “The ruling also dinged the company for not allowing required breaks during all of Sharma’s shifts.”

So there’s a Ministry of Labour bill, and the Ministry of Labour inspector in 2022 said, “These are workers who are being violated by the Employment Standards Act.” And instead of the Minister of Labour from the Conservative government saying, “I never realized this. What a travesty that these workers are being punished by this billion-dollar company. What I should do is stand up for these workers. I should be the voice of these workers”—remember the slogan, “For the Little Guy”? You don’t hear it anymore, because nobody believes it—but that’s what the Ministry of Labour should have done. It should have been there for the little guy. Instead, they passed this act, this section, the digital workers’ rights protection act. They passed it so that those employees can no longer phone the employment standards agency inspector to have a complaint, because the employment standards agency won’t apply to those workers anymore. That’s the rights they have. The rights they have are that their rights were removed, and that’s what the Conservative government is trying to tell you is great in this bill.

I talked earlier about workers who were making about $6.50 an hour, a little over $2 an hour after deductions.

I want to remind everybody here that Uber, which is the largest company that does this, is worth $141.99 billion. I don’t know what they’re worth today, but that’s what they were—I looked it up during amendments: $141.99 billion. Do you know how they got rich that way? By paying people less than minimum wage. That is shameful.

I think we’re going to get the Feed Ontario report very soon again, and I’m going to predict—because it has been since 2018, since the Conservative government was elected—that more and more working people will be going to food banks. That number will increase again, like it has every single year.

Honestly, in 2018, when I talked about this, I was very fair to the Conservative government. You were just elected—not your fault; the Liberals did this. The Liberals created this trend. But the thing was, when you were elected, people were counting on you to fix it, as a Conservative government. People who were working full-time and going to food banks, people bringing their kids to food banks while having a full-time job—I talked about charity in the past, having to bring your kids to the food bank to put food on the table; working full-time in a job from the government and going to food banks. But that wasn’t fixed in 2018, or 2019, or 2020, or 2021, or 2022, or 2023—more than half a decade—and I have a feeling it’s not going to be fixed in 2024 either, because they are not listening to this.

There are sections of this bill that last time I called “already law.” I keep looking over at the clock because I got into these “they were already a law” parts last time, when they tabled this at 11:30 p.m. for me to speak. But, honestly, any time you want to talk about workers, I’ll come running.

Three schedules to this bill—already a law. Wage theft is already a law—it’s already illegal. In fact, the Ministry of Labour and the previous Minister of Labour are aware of this. They’re aware of almost $10 million that has been reported, that’s stolen from workers by bad employers. We heard during deputations, before amendments, that in fact the same employers do it all the time. It’s just not enforced. So they do it because they can get away with it. They know they will get away with it, because the Conservative government is aware of the $10 million that was stolen from employees—no effort to get that back, no progress. It’s not like the number goes down to $9 million, then $8 million. They’re not doing anything about it—open season, man.

Do you know what they’re doing? They’re holding press conferences to say that they’re announcing a bill that will have wage theft protection. What they’re not saying—because they want their picture in the paper, “Look what we’re doing for workers”—is that this actually exists as part of the Employment Standards Act, and it has for decades. We’re not enforcing it, but we want the photo op so people think that we’re working for workers.

The second part is a similar form of wage theft. It’s about when you’re doing trial work, when you’re training—that you have to be paid. This has been part of the Employment Standards Act, as well, for more than a decade. It’s just that employers rip people off, and the Conservative government doesn’t enforce it. Going out and standing in front of people and telling them, “Look at these great laws we’re bringing forward,” and not saying, “Yes, they’re already existing laws that we don’t want to enforce and we don’t care about,” is deceitful. It’s a terrible thing to do to people—

Interjection.

I apologize. I didn’t mean to say that. It’s hurtful, Speaker. It is hurtful to these people.

We had people come to the deputations and talk about how excited they were for these laws, because they have been affected by them. Then, I had to break their heart and say, “Do you know these were already laws that they’re not enforcing?” They already exist as laws. In fact, we’re wasting time talking about this being a duplicate law.

With the resources the Conservative government has—actually, the resources that any government would have—in terms of manpower, institutional knowledge and lawyers, surely somebody in that party would have put up their hand and said, “You guys know this is already law. It’s already part of the Employment Standards Act.” I would imagine that happened, and the Minister of Labour said, “Yes, but I’ve got to get in the papers. I want to go around the province and pose for photos saying, ‘Look what I’m doing.’” But they’re not doing anything. In mining, we call that, all sizzle, no stink. It’s a pretend law.

The third one that was already a law is about requiring Canadian experience in job postings. This is already part of the 2013 Human Rights Code, so it’s more than a decade old. The reason that it’s not enforced is because first you have to know—a lot of these workers are immigrated workers, newcomers to Canada—the Human Rights Code of Ontario, then you have to file a complaint. You have to know how to file a complaint, and then you have to wait for the complaint to be heard. Right now, if you know, if you filed a complaint, if you’re able to wait for it, you’re going to wait between three to five years because there’s a backlog of over 9,000 cases. You would think there’s a backlog of 9,000 cases because there have been so many complaints and it hasn’t been enforced—and that could be part of it, but the reality is, most people don’t even know this exists.

In fact, the Conservative government got away with all kinds of press releases about doing this without people knowing about it. They had people come to the deputations, talking about how good this will be for them, because people they represented have been exploited this way and didn’t know it was part of the Ontario Human Rights Code from 2013. The people who did figure it out and filed the complaints have to wait three to five years. The reason they have to wait is because when the Conservative government came to power, they failed to reappoint and retain the experienced adjudicators. When those people phased out, they didn’t appoint new people. When they finally did appoint new staff, they appointed staff who weren’t qualified and didn’t understand what they were doing. They had no expertise in human rights law. So that learning curve becomes steep and slows things down even more.

This isn’t about helping workers. This is about helping Conservatives have press conferences to pretend they’re helping workers. This shouldn’t even be in here. Make it an announcement that you’re going to enforce these. Make it an announcement that you’re going to start collecting the almost $10 million that has been stolen out of workers’ pockets. Make the announcement that you know there’s a backlog of 9,000 cases and you’re going to hire even more people to have this taken care of; you’re going to make sure everyone knows that these are already existing laws.

You’re going to bring a campaign—the Super Bowl had an ad that taxpayers paid for that was all fluff. It was just an “Imagine Ontario” thing. You want to have an ad? Have an ad at the Super Bowl saying, “If you work in Ontario, we’re not allowing you to rip off our employees. We’re not allowing you to get away with wage theft; we’re not allowing you to not pay people for trial periods; we’re not going to allow to you ask for Canadian work experience, because those are illegal in our province and have been for more than a decade. We’re going to enforce the laws. We’re all for great employers, but if you’re not a great employer, we’re going to hold you to account the same way we would hold bad employees to account.” That’s what they should be doing. But that’s not the goal. The goal is to be in front of the camera, to have a photo and to fool people to think that you’re doing something for them, and that’s disgraceful.

The next one is technically already almost a law; I didn’t want to throw it in with the other three. This is about pay transparency. I got this from the Equal Pay Coalition. Pay transparency laws allow people to find more fairness in pay. Basically, there was a bill in 2018 that had passed in April that would require pay transparency to come forward. It’s technically almost a law because it has never been dissolved; it just has never gone to have the LG read it into law. In 2018, Ontario’s Pay Transparency Act came through, and it was never repealed; it was just blocked.

I want to move to the section here where they spell it out: “Doesn’t Ontario already have a Pay Transparency Act?” Yes, it does. It passed in April 2018. It was scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2019, to give some ramp-up time, and then employers would have to do it in 2020. But after the 2018 provincial election, when the Conservative government came in to power in November 2018—it was one of the first things they did; they rushed this in as quickly as they could—they indefinitely suspended the Pay Transparency Act from coming into effect. They knew the blowback, if they actually repealed it, would be devastating, so they suspended it. You just tell people, “We’re going to put it on a shelf and look at it later”—they’re never going to look at it. So in schedule 32 of that Restoring Trust, Transparency and Accountability Act—they tabled that for a little while to wait on it. They didn’t repeal it. They just blocked it from taking effect.

Then in this bill, they came forward and said, “We’re going to have pay transparency.” But all you really have to do to be in compliance with this new version of pay transparency—you literally can say, “I have a job posting, and you could make between minimum wage and a million dollars an hour.” That’s all you need to do. I don’t think employers are going to do that, but it is not going to meet the moment of what is expected for this section of the act.

Pay transparency is a way for workers to understand what the average pay is where they work already. It’s a way that, in workplaces where there’s a gender wage gap, female employees can find out how much the male employees are making and can question why they’re making less. We know that it’s an ongoing issue. We know it’s being addressed, but if you don’t have the data, you can’t move it forward. All this in this bill—again, another headline moment where you can say, “We’re bringing forward pay transparency.” All it really requires you to do is say there’s a scope of pay. Previously, I think it’s about 20% that women would make less than men—you could have that as your scope; you could do a 20% change. It gives no real data to anyone to measure anything. It just gives you the ability to say, “It’s between here, $0, and $5 million,” and then you’re aligned with this bill.

Speaker, I think you’re going to stand up and stop me.