I am proud to rise on behalf of the good people of Scarborough Southwest and speak to this important bill that I know my colleague from London West has brought multiple times now. In fact, I myself have moved a motion in this House asking the government to do this, and I know many of my colleagues have in the previous term, especially in the midst of the pandemic when the pandemic was raging through and COVID was raging through and many lives were lost.

It’s very simple. Paid sick days save lives. Let me say this again: Paid sick days save lives. We could have saved so many lives if we’d had proper support for our workers, especially front-line workers, many of whom we all—on this side of the House as well—called heroes during this pandemic.

Essential workers across this province—the majority of them, when we talk about front-line workers, are women: hard-working women, low-income. A lot of them don’t have job security. A lot of them make minimum wage and missing a day of work means missing a day of pay, which means whether we’re talking about paying their bills, whether we’re talking about food on the table, rent support, sustaining their family, their kids—all of that depends on that day of pay. It’s very difficult for someone to decide, well, do I call in sick? Do I miss that pay? What am I risking? People risked their lives to go to work just so they could have enough income and to make sure they didn’t lose their jobs.

Throughout the pandemic, I have named individuals, hard-working heroes whom we lost, like Christine Mandegarian, like Sharon Roberts, like Maureen Ambersley, health care workers who were on the front lines, saving other lives and instead lost their lives. I’ve talked to family members who still feel like they haven’t gotten justice because they know there are so many others who end up going to work, risking their lives every single day.

When we have a pandemic like this, and if it ever happens again—and we’re still not done with COVID, Speaker, but are we taking the right measures to protect these workers? If we have an individual—and I have so many stories, and I wish I had enough time to talk about them. Just recently, one grocery worker wrote to me and she said, “I live with five others in my family and we live in a two-bedroom apartment, and, for us, there is no isolation or anything. For me to go and risk, and know that I’m not protected and come back, my kids are at risk.” There are kids who are ending up in the hospital right now with ventilators, and the fact that we are not providing the support to these mothers, these workers, is risking the entire population, risking the labour force.

But it’s also costing us money. I know that maybe the human argument, the emotional argument, doesn’t work for this government, but if we’re going to talk about the money, if we’re going to talk about our health care system, you could do so much by protecting these lives or protecting these workers through paid sick days, and you’ll actually be saving money as well.

The other thing I want to mention before I run out of time is that I had a really wonderful event with migrant workers at Access Alliance, just on the border of my riding in Scarborough Southwest. Access Alliance hosted them, and Deena Ladd from the Decent Work and Health Network was there. Along with her and members from the Decent Work and Health Network, we had the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change and the Workers’ Action Centre, and they presented these wonderful stories of people who are on the front lines, who are working hard, and what they’re going through. I just have to tell you, I wish I could take some of these members on the government side and share with them the heartbreaking stories of so many and what they went through during the pandemic: how people ended up in the ICU, what they have struggled with, especially when we’re talking about migrant workers—who, by the way, don’t even have job security in the type of work they go through.

In the last few seconds that I have, I want to also mention some specific professionals we actually never talk about in this House. When we talk about health care, we talk about nurses, doctors and PSWs, and they’re wonderful and I salute all of them, but today I want to take a moment to talk about the other burnt-out health care professionals who are also exiting the system, and those are laboratory technologists, technicians, radiation technologists, respiratory therapists, laboratory assistants, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and phlebotomists, amongst others. I believe there was a lobby group this afternoon who were here, who were radiation therapists who talked about this. I think it’s important to name them, because they did not get the pandemic pay or the support from the government, but they were also on the front line working hard.

So, please, I hope the government will consider and pass this bill once and for all.

Nothing the minister says actually removes the barriers that internationally educated health care workers face in this province. The government says that they’re doing everything they can to work with internationally trained doctors and nurses to address the staffing shortage in health care. And, yet, data from the CPSO shows that only 739 applicants became members in 2020, compared to the 2,074 in 2019.

My question is, why was there a decrease when we’re in the middle of the pandemic and we’re facing a health care crisis?

The practice-ready assessment program, which was standardized, that this government cancelled in 2018, is actually working very well in seven other provinces. The model could have been used to implement a similar or even improved assessment process for doctors and nurses in Ontario. We could have had thousands of health care workers added to the system in as little as 12 weeks. I want everyone in Ontario to listen: In as little as 12 weeks, we could have had more health care workers in this province.

Will this government reverse its cuts? And why is this government dragging their feet in bringing in the solutions that can save lives in Ontario?