Tomorrow, we celebrate International Women’s Day and work towards a gender-equal world. I’m a proud member of a caucus that has 21 female members and eight female ministers.

Sadly, as we celebrate our victories, we still live in a world where inequity and gender-based violence occur. Human trafficking and intimate partner violence are realities in our community, and unfortunately these happen silently too close to home.

After October 7, we were shell-shocked by the brutality of the attack on Israel, an attack that used premeditated rape and sexual mutilation as weapons of war. These acts were made more painful because their existence was widely denied and that denial was defeating and deafening. These women’s voices were silenced. Their stories were not believed.

Our government has zero tolerance for violence against women and children in all its forms, and we stand with the victims of violence. That’s why, this year, we invested nearly $247 million to support victims and almost $29 million in violence prevention initiatives. Our province is investing an overall $1.4 billion over the next three years to end gender-based violence and support victims.

Last year, we invested $5.5 million in the Women’s Economic Security Program to expand and increase training opportunities for low-income women to equip them with the skills, knowledge and experience to increase their financial security.

Our government supports women. We believe in women. We listen to women. Thank you.

On this International Women’s Day, I want to say welcome and happy International Women’s Day. But I want to also thank all of the young women who have come here for the Remarkable Assembly women’s day, and in particular, Nailani Cavero from Brampton Centre. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I am honoured to stand in the House and recognize International Women’s Day. On March 8 each year, Ontario joins communities around the world to celebrate the countless achievements of women. International Women’s Day is an important opportunity to highlight the actions we are taking to remove barriers and create better opportunities for women and girls.

Women are the beating heart of our province. They are teachers, scientists, tradespeople and farmers who work hard every day to build Ontario. They are our mothers, our wives, and sisters and daughters—the people in our lives who mean so much to us. They are inspirational role models who show future generations of girls that they can be anything they want to be.

Interjections.

This past year, the world’s top professional women’s hockey league, the PWHL, was established with teams in Toronto and Ottawa, and the first game in league history was played right here in Toronto.

Two women directors with close ties to Ontario were nominated for Oscars. Nisha Pahuja, based here in Toronto and in Brampton, was nominated for her documentary To Kill a Tiger. It’s a phenomenal movie. And Celine Song, a Queen’s University alum, received two nominations for her film Past Lives. I know the House will join me in wishing them all the best this Sunday at the Oscars.

We are grateful to all the women who make our province great. However, despite the progress we have made, women and girls do continue to face disproportionate barriers to achieving their full potential. As Ontario’s Associate Minister of Women’s Social and Economic Opportunity, my job is to ensure that women have the support they need to overcome these barriers.

The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is “Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress.”

The government of Ontario is making historic investments to support women to succeed in their careers, in their communities and in their lives. Women represent half of Ontario’s workforce, but they are more likely to be employed in part-time or minimum-wage jobs. With the rising cost of living across the province, it is this government that’s standing up for Ontarians. We increased the minimum wage just last fall, and we continue to raise the minimum wage with annual increases to reflect the cost of living.

We’re also working across government to make life more affordable. We introduced the CARE tax credit, which will provide about 300,000 families with up to 75% of their eligible child care expenses, and the low-income individuals and families tax credit—the LIFT tax credit—which will result in Ontario personal income tax being reduced or eliminated for about 1.7 million people.

In order to continue to bring children out of poverty, our government invested roughly $1.2 billion last year in the Ontario Child Benefit.

Our government knows that access to safe and high-quality child care is also vital for families. That’s why, under the leadership of our Minister of Education and Premier Ford, we have delivered unprecedented cost-saving measures for parents in need of child care. High-quality child care plays a key role in supporting a family’s economic prosperity and increasing women’s participation in the workforce.

Children are a blessing—I know, because I have five of them—but many women are now choosing not to have kids because of fear that having a child impacts their ability to build a career and their earnings and all the access that there is to future leadership positions. Mothers in Ontario often see their earnings decline, take more time off work for family responsibilities and are given less consideration for management roles, but nobody should have to choose between their children and their career.

Effective December 31, 2022, average child care fees in Ontario were reduced by 50% from 2020 levels, relieving parents of over $1.1 billion in child care costs in 2022-23. To date, our government has increased access to safe, reliable and affordable child care through the creation of over 46,000 child care spaces since taking office in 2018, including over 31,000 in publicly funded schools.

A strong child care and early learning sector will help more women achieve financial independence and better enable them to provide for their families. In fact, the Financial Accountability Officer found that the labour participation rate of mothers with children between the ages of zero to five increased from 76.5% in 2021 to 78.9% in 2022. It’s a 2.4% increase in just under one year, and that’s the highest increase on record since 1976 for all core-age mothers participating in the job market. That’s something to celebrate.

I’m particularly proud of the expansion of the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care program, the CWELCC. It is helping to build a stronger Ontario by increasing women’s participation in the workforce.

Speaker, Ontario is facing pressing labour shortages over the next decade. Small businesses in Ontario are missing out on more than $16 billion in revenue in 2022 because of labour shortages. Our Associate Minister of Small Business is out there actively advocating for the many women who have small businesses that are helping to drive Ontario’s economy, and we thank her for that. But because of these labour shortages, according to the study of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, $16 billion in revenue is being lost.

Women are under-represented in higher paying roles and sectors like the skilled trades and STEM fields. In 2022, women accounted for only 8% of the labour force in the trades, transport and related occupations in Ontario. Our government is determined to see these numbers improve. We’re taking action to encourage more women to start a career in the skilled trades and land a better job with a bigger paycheque.

My colleague the Minister of Education is modernizing Ontario’s curriculum, increasing exposure to STEM, skilled trades and apprenticeship pathways at an earlier age. My colleague the Minister of Colleges and Universities recently invested $100 million to support STEM programming at publicly assisted colleges and universities. These changes will help ensure that more girls and young women grow up considering and preparing for rewarding and in-demand careers, including sectors where women are traditionally under-represented.

I recently participated in a round table with the Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development, where we listened to women in the skilled trades and discussed solutions. It was such a vibrant conversation about the real barriers that women are facing on the jobsite. That’s why we’ve implemented solutions like ensuring that there are washrooms designated for women on construction sites and requiring that women have properly fitted personal protective equipment on the job.

As a part of our government’s $1-billion skilled trades strategy, we are also working with schools to build passion for the trades in early life. Through the Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program, we’ve invested $22 million to give high school students the chance to explore the trades through co-operative education courses, introducing young women to the trades earlier and providing them with supports and guidance they need from when they’re first interested, and all the way to the job site. It’s so crucial to getting them hooked in and enjoying a vibrant career in the trades.

To ensure we are retaining women in the skilled trades who can be leaders for the next generation, we are creating Skills Development Funds Training Stream, which supports organizations that empower workers and job seekers who face higher barriers to entry, and the results speak for themselves.

Just last year, we saw a historic increase in apprenticeship registrations, including nearly a 30% jump in the amount of women. Not only that, more women are getting jobs than ever before. I had the chance to go into mines and go on different job sites and speak to women who have had their lives completely changed because they started working in the skilled trades.

I met one woman recently at George Brown College who lost her job during the pandemic—because of the pandemic—and had a young five-year-old to take care of. She said, “You know what? I’ve got to make a change,” and Lilly went and registered at George Brown College and now, she is working at George Brown College after going through the welding program.

In three years, her life has been changed, and now, she feels empowered and is able to be a role model to her son and all of the women who are going through George Brown College into the trades. It’s significant.

So last year alone, 180,000 jobs were created in Ontario, and in 2023, Ontario created more manufacturing jobs than all 50 states combined. That’s significant. Last month, Ontario led the nation in job creation. Nearly 24,000 new jobs were added in our economy just in the month of January, and 9,700 of them were in construction. Ontario accounted for 65% of all jobs created in the country and we’re leading the nation in job creation.

It’s a fact that under the previous Liberal government, we lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs. And because of the leadership of Premier Ford, who was elected to bring this back, to make a turn, we’ve seen now 700,000 men and women go back to work. A strong economy means opportunity for women.

So if we continue down this road, we can only build, if we all join together against and ban this carbon tax. That is going to significantly impact women in Ontario.

You know, it was only a few years ago that Reuters announced there would be $300 billion spent on electric vehicles across the world and zero of it was coming to Canada. But thanks to our Minister of Economic Development, three years later, $28 billion in electric vehicles has landed in our province, putting men and women back to work every single day.

Bloomberg has now said that Canada is the number one jurisdiction around the world for electric vehicle parts. This is where we are. That is where we are. We have dethroned China from being the number-one position for the very first time, and our plan is to continue to build Ontario, make it the best place to do business in, and women are an integral part of that.

That’s why we’re helping more women create jobs for themselves and in their communities. Women are rising in the workforce leadership as entrepreneurs, with Canada ranking among the top three countries globally for female entrepreneurship.

We also know that women entrepreneurs face more barriers to accessing financing in growing their business. On average, women launch businesses with 53% less capital than men. As well, businesses with fewer than 20 employees and those in the service sector were among the hardest hit by the pandemic. Now, these are the two sectors where women-owned businesses were strongly represented. And that’s why Ontario has been leading initiatives to support small businesses and women entrepreneurs. One program I am particularly proud of is the Women’s Economic Security Program. This program provides training for low-income women to equip them with skills, knowledge and experience to find a job or start a business and increase their financial independence. Program participants can also access additional wraparound supports to help them succeed, like child care and transportation.

Last year, we built on the success of the Women’s Economic Security Program by increasing our investment by $500,000, bringing our total investment to $5.5 million, marking a nearly 10% increase in the program alone. We also expanded the Investing in Women’s Futures Program, bringing the total number of locations to 33 across Ontario. The Investing in Women’s Futures Program is about job readiness. It funds organizations across the province that provide safe spaces in skills training to help them gain financial independence but, most importantly, help them develop the confidence to be successful in any career that they choose. It helps them rebuild their lives after abuse and gives them counselling supports to empower them and lift them up. From 2021 to 2023, these programs have helped more than 14,000 women by providing flexible programs, wraparound services and have helped more than 3,600 women start their own businesses or get further training in education. And when you help one woman, you don’t just help her, you help the whole community around her—her children, her siblings, everyone.

The budget in 2023 included numerous programs to equip entrepreneurs with the tools and training needed to succeed in today’s digital economy—launching our $10-million new Digitalization Competence Centre, which provides training and support to small businesses looking to leverage emerging equipment and processes, and then there’s Futurpreneur Canada that helps young entrepreneurs access mentorship services and collateral-free loans and capital to grow their business.

I met some really amazing women and saw some new products like green cleaning products, a woman that has maternity-style workout clothing with the flaps for breastfeeding—amazing, practical solutions that women are creating businesses around and changing their whole lives.

These programs that we fund are really having an impact, as well as the 17 regional innovation centres and the 47 small business enterprise centres. They’re helping entrepreneurs across Ontario grow their businesses, hire employees—and that’s a big one. When you have a woman on the leadership team—or women—who are the heads of these companies, you have more diversity in your employees, and that’s what we want to see. When we have women at the head, you have more women in these companies. This is empowering the women to see themselves in these leadership roles, to see themselves being the CEO and the decision-makers. We are changing the course of our future for so many businesses, and women are at the forefront of it.

We’re helping women participate in the workforce. Helping them empowers them. It empowers them to support themselves and their families to achieve financial independence and increase their safety. We are increasing women’s safety through financial independence, because you’re allowing women to have the choice—the choice to get out, that ability to leave an abusive relationship, not be stuck in it because they can’t afford to leave. I’m telling you, it’s having an impact, and we’re seeing that every day when we go across Ontario and meet women who say, “Your programs helped me. Without your programs, I would still be stuck. Thank you.”

As we celebrate International Women’s Day, I’m proud of the steps our government is taking to empower women. Together, we can continue to improve opportunities for women, empower them to pursue their dreams and to build a stronger Ontario, because when women succeed, Ontario succeeds.

Madam Speaker, it gives me great honour to stand before you and the members of this Legislature to speak about International Women’s Day and what it should mean to all of us in this chamber.

We must always find opportunities to impact the lives of women and young girls by showing up for them and giving them a shot at having equal opportunities. This year’s UN-designated theme is “Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress,” so let us aim at tackling this empowerment that comes with gender inequality.

International Women’s Day is never to forget to celebrate the achievement of women, whether small or great. Awareness of our triumphs must not only be raised on this day, but every day. We must encourage a world that is diverse, equitable and inclusive; a world where we all value and celebrate our self-worth. We must come together collectively at all levels of government, corporations, institutions, to collectively work towards an inclusive and equitable world for women and young girls. We must raise awareness about discrimination, gender-based violence and gender parity, including this chamber, where only 47 of our 124 members are women. This is 2024. Gender parity is non-negotiable.

I hope that this government chooses to reflect on why they initially chose to deny us Liberals the right to address the chamber today and that they only relented after public pressure and media attention. I know that Ontarians noticed that the Conservatives chose to make International Women’s Day a partisan issue, instead of a moment for all of us to come together and celebrate women.

I wanted to start today championing women, because that’s what I love to do and that’s what I live for. Instead, I was forced to fight for my right to speak up to men, like countless women before me. I want to give one last shout-out to my caucus colleagues and other independents, as we stood side-by-side to call out this government for preventing us from speaking. I thank you.

To the member from London West: Thank you for standing in solidarity with us as well.

To the women in the governing party: I sincerely hope you felt our pain and raised your voices to the men who stood in our way, because loyalty to your party should never come second to standing up for all our women and our young girls.

I’m standing here very proud, representing my daughter—her name is Rayan Hazell—and all of our daughters today. I’m here fighting for their future and for their freedom of speech. I will always stand up for women, equality and women-inclusiveness. I want to always encourage every one of you in here today to stand-up for women and young girls, to help break barriers, inspire change and shape our society.

The people of Ontario elected us to represent them. They matter to all of us. May this message be delivered very strongly to our young girls who are tuning into this session, who are listening to us, who are looking up to us to lead them through these challenging times that women and young girls face on a daily basis just trying to be women. May this be a lesson learned: that collectively we will always be stronger, collectively we will inspire change and collectively we shall all overcome.

I’m grateful for the chance to speak on International Women’s Day, despite the government’s attempt to prevent the independent members from speaking and representing their constituents. They misused their power to silence opposition, contradicting the democratic principles they were elected to uphold. It’s wrong that we had to fight for the right to speak on behalf of our constituents in the Legislature today, and it was wrong when the government did not first give us unanimous consent on the first request to speak.

When you do the wrong thing, the right thing to do is apologize. I’m calling on the government to do that today.

But I am thankful, and I’m encouraged by the solidarity that I’ve seen here today among our independent colleagues, our NDP colleagues and the men who stood with us. That is what has always advanced women’s rights.

Now I’d like to focus on women’s issues in my community of Don Valley West. Supporting women benefits the economy and our society. Fair wages for nurses, who are mostly women, will improve our health care system.

My mother was a retired nurse and she was asked during the Harris years to work for free due to budget cuts, and that underscores the need to respect nurses. I stand here today for her and others like her, and to ensure my daughter and all of our daughters do not experience the same thing.

We can do more to support women, and we demand that support today from the government. I hope the government listens to these women’s voices.

Earlier today, the government and other members of the House spoke about the importance of International Women’s Day and the importance of us nurturing the leaders of tomorrow. I would like to ask the member for Parkdale–High Park how important it is to invest in said institutions, in our colleges and our universities, that are nurturing these leaders of tomorrow. Because I suspect it’s impossible—it’s impossible—for us to continue having women CEOs, presidents, chancellors, MPPs, all of these phenomenal women that we want to celebrate on International Women’s Day, without proper funding.

So, when the government’s own expert panel recommends $2.5 billion over three years, and the government invests roughly half that, what’s that impact on our post-secondary sector and students?