I’m happy to rise any time to talk about workers’ rights in the people’s House—critical subject. I’m glad the government is bringing forward an effort to address that.

Speaker, most of my remarks for 20 minutes are going to be based upon things I would like introduced into this bill by way of amendments to improve it. I’m going to talk about particular workers that are on my mind that I believe are in a uniquely difficult position because of the work they do. And the work they do in our communities is essential. I would call these workers essential, even though we don’t always think of them that way. So, just so my colleagues who are listening right now and people watching at home understand what I’m going to talk about, that’s the premise of my contribution to debate this afternoon.

I want to begin by talking about delivery workers, particularly those working for the big dot-com companies, whether it’s DoorDash or Uber, these organizations. As the active transportation critic for the province, I have met many people who are working in this critical occupation that deliver food, deliver all kinds of things to people all over huge cities like this one here in Toronto.

I’m sad to say we have lost lives in some cases because of how unsafe our roads are. I want to just read into the record a gentleman’s name: Ali Sezgin Armagan, a 39-year-old recent immigrant from Türkiye who was killed at the intersection of Avenue Road and Elgin Avenue near a construction site. As is the case with all of our families—Speaker, I bet you in every single one of our families we could find this story. Mr. Armagan came to Canada to join his sister’s family and to start a new life. And the way he was making ends meet, which is the case for a lot of new immigrants, was through the dot-com economy, through the gig work sector.

It is not safe to drive a bicycle, even in a city as modern as Toronto, in some parts of the city. I want to say for the record as well that this particular stretch of Avenue Road has had four fatalities in the last nine years. I’m very happy we have an administration in the city of Toronto under Mayor Olivia Chow that is putting some resources, finally, into looking at critical parts of the city.

But I find it very sad, and I want to read into the record some of the comments from Ali’s family in retrospect of this. His sister Aysen said, “I’m broken inside... Nothing seems to calm me.”

I was there the other night for a group bike ride put on by a number of different road safety advocates. As we rode around that area of downtown/midtown Toronto, a number of conversations were shared. And it’s upsetting for me to hear that in the biggest city in Ontario, in the most modern city with the capacity for probably the most services to ensure safety, someone like Ali loses his life, not even a year after being here.

I invite members, if you have a moment, to look at the Toronto Star’s article. I’ve shared it with the labour minister. And if they haven’t already, I hope the government reaches out to this family because this shouldn’t happen. Everybody needs to be able to get home safe, Speaker—everybody—but we also need to have the infrastructure, because one thing we know about human beings is that we make mistakes. We always make mistakes. That’s part of being human. But we have to design our small towns, our suburban towns, our big metropolises like Toronto in a way that accounts for human error and makes sure everybody can get home safe, and I don’t see that in this bill.

What I know in the record of this House, in the Hansard, is that a number of colleagues have tried, through different measures, particularly the member for University–Rosedale, to introduce a Vision Zero approach to how we deal with road safety in the province of Ontario, and that requires significant investments in segregated lanes for people who use bicycles, strollers, scooters, so they can have that safety. And they exist—they exist in this city. I have ridden on them myself. They exist back home in Ottawa, but they’re always competing with other infrastructure priorities. There’s a number of countries around the world that have set that as the goal, Vision Zero.

The goal is no fatalities, because what happens right now with the Ministry of Transportation Ontario is they say we have some of the safest roads in the world because only this many people have been critically injured, only this many people have died. But I would like to set the bar in a different place, Speaker. I would like to set the bar in a place that everybody gets home safely, and before I move on from this to something else, I want to also acknowledge for the record how empathetic I am, and I’m sure everyone in this House is—not for Ali and his family, who are grieving the loss of his life right now—can you imagine how it feels to be the driver of the dump truck that was involved in this incident? To that gentleman’s credit, he stayed at the scene. He stayed at the scene, he co-operated with police, he’s being investigated, but can you imagine what his life is going to be like now?

When I was working on a road safety bill, I rode my bicycle from Ottawa to Toronto and met a bunch of really interesting people and talked about road safety. One of the people I’ll never forget was a dump truck driver in Brighton, Ontario. He invited me up into his cab, asked me to check the mirrors and he asked me what I could see, and I couldn’t see a lot, Speaker. I could see barely off the bumper. He told me that the technology exists for cameras to be in place, for sensors to be in place to make sure that he can see what’s around that truck when he’s off the construction site and moving around the community. His name’s Ben, and Ben told me if he’s on a construction site, there’s a flag person helping him around, watching wherever the truck is going. He can see the flag person dressed very brightly with flags in hand, but that flag person does not follow Ben off the job site, and this critical incident where Ali was killed happened at the entrance to the construction site.

I want to believe that in a country as modern as Canada, a place as vibrant as Ontario, where we celebrate the need to have economic activity in jobs—we have to have more legislation on road safety.

I’ve been talking to the minister responsible, at transportation, and his parliamentary assistant, and I’m hoping we can collaborate together in the next year so we can send out a message to everybody, because we all have an interest in road safety, to make sure that’s a priority, so no more tragedies happen that can be prevented.

I think what it would seem, Speaker—from what I know about this particular matter, because I met Ali’s family—is this was a preventable accident if segregated lanes were possible, if better technology was available to the driver of that vehicle. We will see what bears out in the police investigation. I wanted to remember this for the record because it’s 2024, and this is the fifth cyclist death in Ontario of which I’m aware—fifth.

I want to move off of talking about road safety—the need for us to protect workers, particularly road workers—and I want to talk about mental health and addictions workers because, as I see it, these are some of the greatest unsung heroes of our province. I’ve had occasion to talk to the minister responsible and I appreciate the audiences he’s had with people all over Ontario on this matter. He and I share the belief that you don’t go into this profession for the paycheque; you go into it because it’s your calling.

I want to specifically talk about a particular place in our city, Rideauwood Addiction and Family Services. They serve over 3,000 clients a year, generally speaking, and they’re people who are almost at the end of their rope, struggling with an addictive behaviour or, as a family member, trying to help someone in their family with an addictive behaviour. Recently, they were pushed right to the brink, if you can believe it, of a possible strike. Can you imagine what’s going through someone’s mind, working at that facility, knowing your critical role in helping that person in their healing journey, if you’re staring down the prospect of having to close your workplace?

Just for a little bit more detail, to actually get in the door at Rideauwood to meet with someone, for someone in a self-harm-crisis position, someone who has been in an emergency room, in a police cruiser, in a paramedic bus, there’s a six-month wait for treatment—six months. If you’re not in an imminent-risk-of-self-harm position, it’s a year-and-a-half wait-list to get into Rideauwood. I am blessed to live in Ottawa, a place rather like Toronto, with a lot of resources. I know a lot of other communities represented in this House don’t have the benefit of some of the resources we have, but that’s the reality.

So you can imagine what was going through the minds of the Rideauwood workers when they were looking at a strike deadline of May 3 and realizing some of the families desperate to see them wouldn’t get to see them and that potentially life-threatening situations could happen. That is a lot to handle.

I’m very happy to say that these workers, recently unionized, two or three years ago through OPSEU Local 454, secured, at the eleventh hour, a tentative agreement. I want to thank the minister responsible because I wrote him, and I expressed the particular role Rideauwood plays in our community. I encouraged the government to contact the parties; they don’t have a role in negotiations, to be clear, but just to say, “You matter to this province. We really need these workers to stay on the job.” I want to believe that played a role.

But do you know, just for the record, Speaker, what didn’t play a positive role in this matter? I think it’s a lesson for every other, frankly, public and private sector workplace. The employer in this particular matter had contacted an anti-union law firm. They are known as Hicks Morley. This is one of my least-favourite legal organizations in Ontario because I’ve run into them a number of times as a union organizer myself working in hotels, working in light manufacturing. Their sole purpose, if you go to their website, if you read their materials, is union avoidance and preventing unions from being formed in the first place and, when you have a union, playing hardball tactics to create disputes.

Look, we’re allowed to have our speech in this province. We’re allowed to express ourselves. We’re allowed to organize. These are all charter-protected rights. It doesn’t mean I have to like the way some people use them. I certainly don’t like the fact that this firm, Hicks Morley, for the record, I believe was playing a very negative role. I want to encourage every single employer across the entire province—because I believe the vast majority do—to take a constructive attitude to the bargaining table and to tune out, as much as possible, those voices that want to pick fights and cause lasting damage in a workplace.

I believe that has not happened at Rideauwood. I think they’re going to grow out of this experience, but I really hope the Hicks Morleys of Ontario are not going to be guiding their future workplace decisions, particularly for harm reduction and addiction services workers.

In the time I have left, to benefit this debate, I also want to talk about what harm reduction and addictions workers in my city are doing for themselves because I think it’s a phenomenal model that could be embraced by other particular funding agencies of the government that could grow in other communities. I want to talk about an initiative called Soul Space.

Soul Space is a non-profit that started up in our community devoted solely to the issue of respite and connection for harm reduction and addictions workers. So, you can imagine what you see on a regular basis if your job is harm reduction, if your job is addiction and mental health services. You’re seeing traumatic cases every single day. Most people I know who get into this profession—again, as a vocation—they have lived experience themselves or their family. That’s what takes them into the profession. But it doesn’t mean you’re not human, and it doesn’t mean that when you see people hurting and struggling, that it doesn’t stay with you, it doesn’t follow you home, it doesn’t impact your mental health.

Soul Space is a non-profit that was started up specifically to provide those outreach workers an opportunity to get out of the workplace and to connect with their colleagues in the wilderness, at conference retreats, to talk about what they’re seeing. It is phenomenal. I have here, Speaker—it’s not a prop. I have their annual report. I went to their meeting, and I listened to the good that this organization, Soul Space, has done. They operate out of First United Church in the west end of Ottawa Centre, and I think this is precisely the work that the province should be encouraging across every single community. We need to be able to have that opportunity for these folks to get out of these very intense workplace environments that they love, and we need to give them the opportunity to interact with each other, to vent, to grieve, to explore creative ideas about how their work could be done differently. In some cases, as I’ve heard through community organizations, there was a specific retreat for Black mental health workers recently: the Soul Sisters retreat, organized though Soul Space. It was the first of its kind in Ottawa—and it’s 2024. So, I’m very excited when I see initiatives like this.

The “working for workers” theme in this House is a good theme, but what I hope to do in the run-up to the next budget cycle in Ontario is to encourage this organization to be receiving regular public funding to encourage Soul Space to grow in other communities, not just in Ottawa and Toronto, but in Sudbury, in Windsor, in London, in Peterborough, in Belleville: places where I’ve heard that these are communities where the overdose crisis has been very, very present.

When we see those people running to the scene, it’s like any first responder. When we see those people running to the scene and we thank them later and we salute them and we take off our hat to them, that’s great, but we also need to remember that, long after we celebrate them, they also have to live with what they see on the job every single day. It’s true for a police officer; it’s true for a firefighter; it’s true for a nurse. But it’s also true for mental health and addictions workers, who are generally paid much below what a comparable worker in the hospital system is paid. So, we can work on the compensation piece as an employer of these great people, but we can also work on what we offer them outside the workplace. And that’s a very positive story, I believe.

Let me shout out two more initiatives before my time is up, Speaker. I want to shout out the drug overdose prevention and education response team at the Somerset West Community Health Centre. This is an organization run out of one of our community health centres that employs people after hours, after the harm reduction facility in that centre is closed, between 5 p.m. and the following morning, to respond to incidents of mental crisis and potential violence for people—because we know the toxicity of the drug supply on our streets is leading people to act out in irrational and not socially productive ways. But if you know—and I’ve talked to police officers in detail about this, Speaker—that a community unarmed response is what you need, the question that is getting posed in our city is, who do you call?

Well, this particular program, which the government, to their credit, has funded, has been one of the numbers for small business owners and residents to call. And they’ve had over 35,000 interactions with people in crisis and they’ve been able to de-escalate an incredible amount of situations with which I’m familiar.

I want to talk for a second about Liza Sare from the Tamis café and restaurant. It’s a beautiful Filipino restaurant, by the way, on Bank Street, if you have a chance to go there—Bank and Gilmour. But Liza called me apoplectic and upset because someone had broken into her car; someone had been wandering into the restaurant and bothering customers, making people feel unsafe, and she was asking me, “So, what do I do? How can I help? I see someone suffering, but I can’t tolerate this behaviour in my restaurant and the staff are scared.”

So, we are developing right now, Speaker, based upon this program, the drug overdose prevention and education response team, an unarmed crisis response system that is going to be coming on board this summer thanks to Somerset West Community Health Centre, thanks to the Centretown Community Health Centre, and they will be working with police as the first avenue of response for situations that don’t involve potentially lethal incidents where we do need the police. But these folks are going to be coming on stream.

I just want to acknowledge that we have a new deal with the province. Part of that new deal is keeping the downtown of Ottawa safe: safe on transit, safe in our streets. We have $28 million and we’re working on a plan because we have 120 days to respond to the government about how we want the money to be spent. I, for one, having met the experts on the DOPE outreach team, having seen first-hand what people at Rideauwood are capable of doing, think we should be investing in employee compensation top-ups. I think we should be investing in respite agencies like Soul Space. I think we should be investing in the unarmed response teams because they are best poised, in my opinion, Speaker, to help our neighbours who are suffering and who are in crisis. And I know the issue of overdose affects every single member in this House. All of us have interacted either personally in our own families or with family members who have been at the end of their rope through a situation like this.

So if, in thinking about how we work for workers, we can keep in our mind those people who, as they are working for us, are taking on enormous risk, and we ask ourselves, in a province with a budget of over $200 billion, how can we allocate some of this to make sure there are alternatives for people—and the good news, Speaker, is that in the city I am blessed to live in and serve, there are alternatives. They have been created at the community level. Are mistakes made? For sure. Are there things to evaluate? Yes, but we know that if we put the money into the wise community voices that have been around in planning, we can turn lives around.

I want to shout out Bobby Jamison, one of the creators of Soul Space, who himself was homeless, who himself suffered with addictive behaviours, who has talked about Soul Space and the unarmed response unit as being a lifeline for people who have walked his journey, in the future.

So, this isn’t just about numbers and metrics of interactions and diversions from prison or diversions from the emergency room or diversions from paramedics; this is about saving lives and not wasting the talents of people who could otherwise make this province incredible. I think about Bobby. I think of the Rideauwood workers. They are people with so much compassion and so much to offer. We can invest in them. The return will be huge.

Thanks for listening.

I listened to my friend from Brampton North intently. I have a question for him, given the intent about Working for Workers. There’s another bill before this House that would seem to suggest the government’s commitment to this may be a little fickle. I’m thinking about transit workers, the people who were there to move us around in the middle of the pandemic, who put themselves at risk, who are facing situations of violence on our transit system all the time—and we’ve talked about that in this place. Schedule 1 of Bill 131 before this House allows the TTC here in the great city of Toronto to enter into agreements with other regional transit authorities where the collective agreement signed with employees in those transit systems would not apply.

Can the member from Brampton North clarify if he believes in the value of collective bargaining agreements, if he believes that those collective bargaining agreements negotiated in good faith with employers in transit should remain in force in any transit arrangement this government comes up with?

I appreciated the comments about first responders from the member, but I want to invite him, in the answer to my question, to reflect on the fact that there are many first responders in this province. Firefighters do fantastic work, taking great risks, but so did Christine Mandegarian, a member of SEIU who went into the equivalent of a burning building, a long-term-care home infected with COVID, and lost her life. Do you know who was there for Christine, Speaker? Her union, the SEIU. Do you know what so many other care workers need in this province? A union.

I want to know from the member, who I believe does care about first responders, what his government will do to help workers like Christine—who, sadly, left us—form a union and get the respect they deserve? That’s really working for workers.

I just want to thank my seatmate and my friend from Thunder Bay–Superior North for those comments. And, just mindful for people watching, we have paramedics with us here in the chamber. We have people who put themselves in harm’s way every single day in communities. You spoke very eloquently about the need to have a WSIB system that will be there for workers, particularly when they get injured. And it hurts me to say this morning that there is a $6-billion surplus at the WSIB. As you said time and again, we have an organization that makes a business out of refuting claims. So do you have a message for paramedics this morning about the fact that—