Well, the member opposite said no. You probably could conclude the time when Mike Harris laid off a whole bunch of nurses, but I’m talking about nurses just exiting, nurses who don’t want to be here anymore.

I went to a graduation ceremony at Laurentian University. I met a wonderful young woman who was studying nursing. I was on the stage, got to shake her hand and everything, as many of us get invited to. I saw her at the reception afterwards. I said, “Congratulations. We really need nurses.” And she said, “I’m never working in this field. I had my placements. It is a terrible working condition. Nursing today is not like it was when I started the course. I’ll never work in this field ever. I just paid my tuition, so I thought I should graduate my final year.” That’s the reality for people. The reason the Conservative government counts the number of people signing up to be nurses is because they don’t want to pay attention to the number who are exiting, who are taking their pensions early, who are graduating and saying, “No, not for me, man.”

We have to address this. I’m here to help you. It sounds like I’m insulting you, but I’m here to help you, because this is a crisis that is affecting all of us. We cannot have a health care system where people don’t want to be there and working. I don’t want to work in health care. That’s a specialized job where you care about people and you take care of people in vulnerable moments. It’s critical. I’ve been in the hospital. I had vertigo a couple of years ago and had no idea what was wrong with me. I just felt nauseous. I was concerned about all kinds of stuff. The people who work in health care—amazing, amazing. When you’re at your most vulnerable, that’s who you put your faith in.

But with Bill 124, for 53 months, we treated these workers—not just in health care but all public sector—like dirt. I’m going to take that back. Not “we”—the Conservative government chose to treat them like dirt. You’ve got to wear that. And there was a pandemic and in the worst conditions of time, you treated them terribly.

The outcome of this: When Bill 124 was ruled unconstitutional, I started getting phone calls from hospitals, from school boards, asking, “Is there going to be additional funding? Because now we have these payouts.” All these unions that have these clauses allowing them to renegotiate—when they renegotiate what’s happening is, when they go to arbitration, the arbitrator says, “Yes. You were entitled to this. You should have got this.” They’re getting these payouts, and it creates this additional crunch on hospitals that are already underfunded. They’re feeling this crunch and saying, “Now we’ve got this giant price tag, courtesy of the Conservative government, but there is no extra funding to date or announcements or promise of funding to date from the Conservative government.” So I look forward on Tuesday in the budget for the relief that the school boards, the schools, the hospitals and other organizations like that are desperately looking for when it comes to that sort of money.

The other thing, when I was thinking about cost of living and expenses, was the minimum wage, because Bill 124 was one of the first things the Conservative government did, but freezing minimum wage was probably the first thing. There was an expectation that minimum wage was going to climb, but before it could, the Conservative government passed a law to freeze it at $14 an hour, and they froze it for two years at $14 an hour.

Deena Ladd said, “What he did”—talking about the Premier—“was basically take away a dollar increase, then take away the adjustments for two years, and then start to adjust it again in 2021.” So 2018, nothing; 2019 nothing; 2020, nothing; 2021, it started to readjust. So, if you cost that out, each minimum wage worker would since have earned between $3,000 and $6,000 more between 2018 and 2021.

I’m starting to think that the reason they don’t want to go after the wage theft is because they are helping people with wage theft. Between $3,000 and $6,000 from minimum wage workers was stolen from their pockets that they were entitled to.

The authors of the estimate write, “Many minimum wage workers put their own health at risk to keep working on the front lines of our economy throughout the pandemic. The three-year delay in raising the minimum wage to $15 cost them dearly.” That’s a sad thing.

Minimum wage used to be a whole different thing. Whenever I hear minimum wage, I always think of Chris Rock saying minimum wage means if they could pay you less, they would. And do you know what? The Conservative government is allowing multi-billion-dollar companies to pay workers less. They’re finding a loophole in the digital worker rights protections act, which is a fantastically fictional name because it doesn’t offer any protections for these workers. What it does is protect these large gig companies—Uber, the food delivery companies, the driver services—to pay workers less than minimum wage.

What it does is it says that you have to pay at least minimum wage, but only for the amount of time you’re actually doing work, only while you’re doing work. So if you work it out per hour, while the person is working, they make less than seven bucks. It’s like $6.36, but let’s just say less than seven bucks—way below minimum wage. Then you take out the expenses, and it’s less than three bucks.

You think, if you have insurance and a car, you’re paying for your brakes, you’re paying for your gas, you’re paying for tires over time, and you’re making less than seven bucks an hour—and so instead of rushing to the aid of these workers to ensure that, “Hey, the Employment Standards Act says, ‘You have to pay minimum wage. It’s here; you’re only way down here. PS, you’re a multi-billion-dollar company. You’re not a struggling mom-and-pop. You’ve got billions of dollars, so you can at least pay minimum wage.’” Instead of doing that, what they said is, “No, no, we’ll write legislation. Did someone say billionaires? We’re running over. We’re right there for you because we’re going to write legislation to ensure that you can continue to pay these workers less than minimum wage.”

And so they started off the last session freezing minimum wage so that the lowest-paid workers wouldn’t get a raise, could barely make ends meet. They continued in this session by saying, “Is there a way we can pay workers even less? Oh, yes. Yes, there is a Conservative way to do that, absolutely. Let me tell you how I can help you out, Mr. Billionaire-Company-Owner and your shareholders.” Because there is nothing more important for the Conservative government than jumping for wealthy and well-connected friends over the top of just regular working-class people.

And the shortage of this—I was thinking—I was talking to my son, actually, who is going to graduate this year. When I was going to school, I had my own apartment. I had a job that paid just slightly over minimum wage, but I only worked on weekends. Any other day I worked was for other expenses, if I wanted to get new clothes or treat myself or something, but my core expenses—food, rent, hydro and all that—was by working on the weekend.

And when I wanted to find an apartment, it was based on where I wanted to live. Do I want to be near the beach—because Sudbury is fortunate to have a couple of beaches that are right downtown—or in the core city? Do I want to be near my school? Do I want to be downtown where the nightlife is? And all of that was a range of about 50 bucks. All of that was affordable. All of those places were places that you would bring your parents to and not feel embarrassed of the conditions.

Do you know what I see lately? I see people renting out their garages as if it’s an apartment, and for a rent that seems unbelievably high. A garage where you use the local restaurant’s bathroom is being rented as an apartment. That’s shameful. When you look at rents in Toronto where people are making minimum wage, because many people here represent downtown Toronto, I don’t know how you’d make ends meet. And in even my riding, looking for an apartment, it starts at about a grand. You’re not going to be able to afford that with minimum wage—not even close.

Here’s the reality of what’s going on with the investments, and I listened to the last hour about the investments and how great this is for the economy, but I have to tell you, I live in a reality in Ontario that seems different than the Conservative government’s. I live in a reality where more and more people come to me and tell me it has never been this bad. Affluent people tell me this, people struggling to make ends meet. Middle-class people tell me this. Definitely not-for-profit industries tell me this on a regular basis. They have never seen it this bad, this critical, this need for help.

The stats from Feed Ontario reflect this. This is from Feed Ontario, “Ontario’s food banks were visited more than 4,353,000 times throughout the year”—this is their last stat—“an increase of 42% over the last three years.” This is the startling one that hits me, especially as labour critic: There has been “a 47% increase in people with employment accessing food banks since 2018.” I think the stat is up to 2022, but every year, that number increases—47% increase in people working, going to food banks.

I shared stories about Charity, back when Bill 28 was attacking education workers, and Charity allowed me to share her story so many times. I really thank her, because there is a position where you wouldn’t want people to know this about you when you are working full-time at a government job, working for the province, being paid by the province and making so little money that you go to the food bank with your children. You don’t even have enough money to leave your children with somebody else to go to the food bank so they don’t have to know. You have to bring your kids with you. You have to tell them, “As a mom, I work full-time, but I don’t make enough from the government of Ontario, my employer, to make ends meet. I have to go to the food bank to feed you.” That’s disgraceful. And this trend keeps getting worse.

This isn’t me. I know sometimes people think in opposition we just say stuff, because we want to hurt your feelings. This is Feed Ontario’s stats. I’m just amplifying it so you’re aware of it. You can’t look the other way. This data is not working for you. If more and more people every year are using food banks, well: (1) it’s the wrong direction; but (2) fewer and fewer people can afford to donate to food banks. I think if we’re going to do an oath or something we want to do substantially, that if you’re sitting on the government’s side, then you don’t get to stand outside of food banks and do photo ops, because they’re an earmark of the failure of the government. I don’t care if the government is Liberal or Conservative, Green Party or NDP, that you no longer get to stand around and brag about how much money was collected under your watch as government, when you can do something about it.

“The proportion of food bank clients with full-time employment doubled in the past year to 33% in 2022.” The following year up to 47%. This doesn’t make sense. This isn’t a success story.

Let me go on to other issues. Ontario Works—this also comes from Daily Bread Food Bank. A lot of people on Ontario Works, who are receiving it, are going to food banks. So Ontario Works is the money you would get if you can’t find employment or are unable to work—it used to be called welfare in the old days. It is below the poverty line. It is $733 a month. That’s the same amount it was in 2018. Since the Conservative government was elected, they didn’t increase Ontario Works at all. As inflation goes up every year, typically 2% to 3%—last year, I think it was between 6% and 7%—this has never gone up. You can’t find housing for $733 a month.

The slap in the face is there’s a portion of that that they say is for housing. I can’t remember off the top of my head what it is. But imagine them saying—let’s say 400 bucks is housing—“Don’t spend anything else because that’s for housing.” That’s a joke. You can’t get housing for $733. Basically, what you’ve done to these people is you’ve said, “Look, we know the poverty line is up here. We’re going to hold your head under the water here.”

They did the same thing for people who are disabled on ODSP, Ontario disability support. “Despite inflation having risen by 16.68%”—this is from Daily Bread—“a single individual on disability is receiving $1,229 per month to survive on,” which is, “$900 below the poverty line.” So you’re living with a disability; somehow, to make ends meet, you’ve got to come up with $900 a month.

For many of these people, it is their parents, typically seniors, who are helping to compensate for this. Many of these seniors I end up talking with are worried that they’re coming to the end of their lives and don’t know what’s going to happen to their children and are terrified for what’s going to happen to their children. I’m talking about adult children.

This is a broken system. Feed Ontario points out that, “Two out of three people who access food banks are social assistance recipients”—32.5% from ODSP, 26% from OW—“as their primary source of income.” We have a broken system that we all know is broken. No one is naive here. None of my colleagues from the other parties are naive. We just, as New Democrats, say it as loud as we can because we care about people who are starving to death. We care about people who can’t pay their bills. We think it’s important.

I know very often the Conservative government will say things like, “The best solution is a job.” It’s hard to get a job if you cannot find food, if you can’t buy clothing to go for job interviews, if you cannot get on your feet. There’s that old expression: “It’s hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you don’t own boots.” It’s hard to get a job if you don’t have clean clothes or new clothes or if you can’t afford to take the bus somewhere to apply for a job.

Poverty creates horrible conditions. Poverty is one of those systems that creates the social determinants of health, that creates people with lower immune systems who are more sick and a larger burden on our health care system. Solving poverty would save us money in so many other ways, but we’re not interested in solving poverty. What we are interested—not us. What the Conservative government is interested in is investing in $2.2-million ads for Metrolinx saying that the people of Toronto who are complaining that the project has taken more than 12 years to get finished are kind of whiny and don’t really understand what’s going really on.

If you haven’t seen this ad, you can’t find it because Metrolinx has pulled it, so you’ve got to go and look up a CBC article. But you’ve got to watch this ad. It is unbelievable. I can only imagine Phil Verster wrote this ad while riding in his limousine, and this is how he imagines the people who ride the TTC look like and speak like. It is absolutely insulting and out of touch, and I think it’s a reflection of how the Conservative government feels about the working-class people of Ontario.

Speaking of ODSP, WSIB is somewhere we can invest money into. I talked the other day—yesterday, in fact—about how just raising it 5%, restoring that original 5% cut that was taken, I think, by Mike Harris back in the old days—it was promised prior to the election. Like a lot of election promises, it has kind of fallen apart because it has been almost two years since the last election. But people who are on WSIB are desperate for this 5% increase. If you restored that, it would make all the difference in the world.

I was surprised when I heard that. I thought they would be asking for a 10% or 20% increase. But they said, “Just restore the 5%.” Obviously, they would like anything, but that 5% would make a world of difference.

The thing with the WSIB is, if you’re never hurt, you think it works. If you work with people who are on WSIB, you realize how terrible it is, how broken it is. Recent government studies show that only around 170 of the approximately 3,000 annual fatal occupational cancer cases in Ontario are compensated. Imagine that: 3,000 people die from occupational cancers; about 170 of them are compensated, and I’m going to guess that those 170 are probably unionized workers who have full-time workers’ compensation officers—WSIB officers, I guess, now they would be called—and they have to fight.

I come out of a union, Local 6500. The Steelworkers have three full-time compensation officers, and I have met—because I was in health and safety, and our office that we would meet in regularly was across the hall from theirs. I have met so many retirees or people who had to retire early or people who have gone off on sick because of occupational disease. I have met so many of them who are desperate—desperate that they will hear that they had a reward before they die, so they know that their life meant something, so they know that their spouse and their kids will have something when they leave, their lives stolen from them. Speaker, 170 of the 3,000 every year get that phone call. They get into financial ruin when they’re on WSIB, and most of them end up on ODSP.

We have a limited amount of time because my colleague from Nickel Belt is going to be speaking soon.

I want to talk about supervised consumption sites.

Friday was a dark day in Sudbury. Friday, Heidi from Réseau Access—which was taking care of our supervised consumption site, The Spot—had to go and meet with her employees at The Spot. There is only one full-time employee left. She gave them their notice that they would have to close their doors. The supervised consumption site in Sudbury has been waiting just over three years for a response from the Conservative government. That cheque has never showed up. The city of Sudbury, recognizing the need, recognizing the costs to our EMS services, the cost to the people, the financial and also the emotional costs for people when their family members are dying and suffering from opioid overdose, invested for an entire year, waiting for the Premier to get off his wallet and cut a cheque for a provincial responsibility for health care—a cheque that never showed up. They saved lives for over a year. At Christmas, their funding ran out. People tried to stick around, but you’re not going to stick around very long in health care, so there’s only one employee left. The rest of the people are shuffling around from other organizations in Réseau to keep it going. On Friday, they heard it was closing.

The Conservative government arbitrarily said that 21 supervised consumption sites would be funded in the province. They took everybody who had their applications and said, “Jump through the hoops again and rewrite your applications.” Sudbury jumped through those hoops and rewrote them. To date, out of those 21, only 17 have been opened; the only one in northern Ontario is in Thunder Bay.

I want you to picture northern Ontario—the size of France. Sudbury would be at one corner, at the south end of France, and Thunder Bay would be up in the northwest corner. It would take you between 12 and 14 hours to drive there. It’s probably not going to work out too well for a supervised consumption site. It’s probably not going to be effective there—and it’s probably why Sudbury is the leader by proportion of the number of people who die by opioid overdose.

I called for help for this many, many times. I asked for a private member’s motion to declare a medical emergency. The Conservative government never answered those calls. The Conservative government voted against my motion.

We’re floating, in Ontario, around 20,000 deaths from opioid overdose. The Premier has his fingers in his ears—doesn’t care about those people; doesn’t care about their families; doesn’t care about their friends; doesn’t care about the deaths. They’re having a magical, wraparound service—that 20,000 people continue to die, and many more will continue to die.

I don’t know what this bill is, but it’s nothing to brag about. I only had a little bit of time to talk about the things that were wrong with it—but there was a lot wrong in Sudbury. And I’ll echo what I’ve been hearing time and time again from people across the province: It has never been this bad.