Well, certainly what we saw in 2019, or what I saw personally in 2019 during the flooding in Cumberland were men and women who had, on 24 hours’ notice or less, put their entire lives on hold. We had students, we had people who worked in office and retail, and we had a lawyer who had to go and tell the partners, “Look, I can’t show up for work tomorrow because I’m going to head up to Ottawa and help save people’s homes.” That is noble work that our reserve army does for us, and I think we owe them the security of being able to say, “Yes, when you go home, your job will be protected. If, because of what you’ve done and what you’ve seen you need to take some time off to recover psychologically or from a health perspective, your job will be protected for that period of time as well.”

The government is certainly taking a step-by-step approach as opposed to going big. I know the NDP would prefer to go big, but they’d also prefer to get nothing done.

The important element that needs to come next, though, is the inspection regime, the enforcement regime and the penalty regime for organizations, companies etc. that may not end up providing the level of access or the level of facilities that the legislation and the regulations might call for. That’s act 2 to act 1. Act 1 is pretty good.

It’s an honour to rise this afternoon and speak to Bill 79, Working for Workers Act, 2023. I think this is the third Working for Workers Act, so I suppose my first criticism would be the lack of creativity in the name, Madam Speaker. But, overall, having just had a day or so to read it, there are some promising changes that will be beneficial to Ontario workers, so I’d like to start on some of those high notes maybe before getting into some of the areas where there are some gaps.

I’d like to talk about the more flexible job protections that are proposed by the government for military reservists. Military reservists in Canada are very special, because they offer their service to help defend our country, to help protect our communities, while also maintaining their other full-time employment. These individuals can be deployed at very short notice right across our country to help keep us and our neighbours and our families safe. They typically serve one or more evenings a week and during the weekends and spend several weeks a year training for these jobs. Reserve units are located in hundreds of communities right across our country and, of course, our province, and they’re always there when we need them the most.

No matter your role in the reserve, I want to take a moment to thank the brave women and men in Canada’s reserve army for their dedication to our country and to their community.

I had the opportunity, Madam Speaker, to work with reservists very directly in the spring of 2019, when Ottawa was suffering enormous flooding in the west end of the city, in Carp, in Constance Bay and in the east end of Ottawa, in the community I represent along the Ottawa River in Cumberland Village. Between Ottawa and Gatineau, more than 6,000 homes were flooded or at imminent risk. Roads and bridges were flooded out and forced to close. At least two people died in this flooding. Thousands were without power, were without water. Some were left stranded without food as a result. Many, of course, had to evacuate their homes out of threat of being flooded out altogether.

Anyone who witnessed the devastation of this flooding in Ottawa—whether in person, on the ground, or in photographs or in video afterwards—knows just how bad it got in our nation’s capital. The reason I bring this up is because, in Cumberland, we had the honour and the benefit of working with the Canadian Armed Forces reserve from the 33 Domestic Response Company, who came to the rescue during the flooding to help residents of Cumberland, in east Ottawa.

Many of these reservists, as I said, if not all of them, are employed full-time in other lines of work and had literally almost no notice to pack up their entire life, tell their boss, “Sorry, I’m not coming in tomorrow” and head out to Ottawa to help. In fact, one young woman who was interviewed at the time of the floods mentioned that she had less than 24 hours’ notice to give to her employer so that she could come to Ottawa and help save these homes. They carried sandbags along the river, shoring up homes that were at risk of flooding. They helped evacuate people to safer areas. They worked to protect the Lemieux Island Water Purification Plant. Many of them described it as some of the proudest moments of their lives, helping protect these families in Cumberland and across Ottawa.

So I want to thank the reservists who were involved in that operation in 2019. I understand that it’s very difficult to call your boss and say, “I’m not coming in tomorrow,” on short notice, “and I might not come in for days and days and maybe weeks on end.” Obviously, we want to ensure that they have the protection of being able to return to their job, not only when their service is over, but when some of the other issues that might arise from their service might need to be dealt with as well. We want to make sure that they have that protection. I know those reservists who participated in 2019 and all those who benefited from that great work will understand the importance of the measures that are being proposed by the government.

The other area that I wanted to speak to, Madam Speaker, was the increased fines and protections relating to the treatment of migrant workers. From what I understand—again, it’s only been a few hours since we’ve had the bill and had an opportunity to review it, but from what I understand, the proposed changes would establish increased fines for employers and people who are convicted of taking possession of or retaining a foreign national’s passport or work permit.

In eastern Ontario, as many know—I know the member from Renfrew knows—we have a vibrant agricultural sector. Ottawa is one of the largest farming communities in Ontario, certainly in all of Canada, and many of our farmers and our farm operations rely heavily on migrant workers to fulfill the needs on the farm, to help ensure that we all have food to eat and that our farming system remains as vibrant and as sustainable as it is. So we need to ensure that the protections are in place for these migrant workers. We should all agree that treating these workers with respect, treating these workers with compassion and treating these workers as the vitally important workforce they are for our agricultural community is of the utmost importance.

While I agree certainly with the proposals the government is making in terms of fines and jail time for withholding passports etc., we also need to be talking about the working conditions that many of these migrant workers face. There are many farmers who do an absolutely amazing job treating their migrant workers with respect and dignity—proper housing, proper pay etc.—but there are always bad apples. In any line of work there are bad apples, and we need to ensure that those bad apples are filtered out, treated and punished appropriately—not just on the passport side of things though, too; on the housing side, on the pay side, on the treatment as workers on the farms. I’d like to see the government pay a little bit closer attention to those elements of migrant work as well as we move forward.

Certainly I would agree—I know the NDP spent some time hammering away on this during their debate—that some of the most vulnerable workers may not have the confidence or the position to come forward to speak up about some of the treatment they might be facing, but I’m not sure that that’s a reason to vote against this legislation. Yes, there will be people who don’t come forward because of those reasons—that’s almost certain, to be sure—but not proposing stricter fines or not proposing stricter requirements simply because some people might be afraid or unable to come forward isn’t really a reason not to do that. If anything, those measures need to be in place and we need to figure out how to give these workers the confidence and give these workers the avenue, the platform etc. to be able to come forward without risks—not vote against it simply because those don’t exist yet.

I’m also very encouraged, Madam Speaker, to see the removal of barriers for women in the construction industry. We know that there is an enormous gap in construction and the trades from a labour perspective. This is obviously traditionally a male-dominated sector or sectors—lots of reasons around that, to be sure. Anything that can be done to encourage women to participate in the skilled trades, in construction etc., will obviously give those women another opportunity for employment, but will help the industry get to the numbers of workers that it needs to fulfill the obligations that we have in terms of our goals for housing construction and infrastructure etc. Making the working environment for women in these trades—offering them more protections; offering them the same ability to use washroom facilities that men, at least, take for granted; having proper equipment that suits the needs that women have that are unique to them—is obviously a step in the right direction.

But if the government really wanted to remove barriers that women are facing in the workforce, they would repeal Bill 124, which targets sectors of the economy that are predominantly women in the workforce in those sectors of the economy. They would also do things like support my private member’s bill, Bill 5, to help stop harassment and abuse by local leaders in municipalities. We know that there have been any number of cases where women in cities have been psychologically, physically, sexually harassed and abused in recent years. It’s happened in Ottawa; it’s happened in Barrie; it’s happened in Brampton; it’s happened in Mississauga. It’s likely happened in almost every community across the province, Madam Speaker. And while anyone who does these things who works at a construction site, who works at a farm, who works at Walmart or any other employer in the province would almost certainly lose their job pretty quickly for this type of behaviour, of course, for municipally elected officials, there is no ability to remove them from office. So I do hope that the government will support Bill 5 when it comes up for second reading at the end of May, as they did in the last legislative session, so that we can offer protections to women in our municipalities who suffer this kind of harassment and abuse all too often.

Perhaps the biggest absence from the bill that we’ve been able to see so far, Madam Speaker, is the lack of attention towards paid sick leave. We all know that people get sick from time to time. Your kids get sick. And no one should have to make a decision between going to work sick or staying home and not getting paid, putting the health of their children or their own health at risk in order to be able to continue to pay the bills, to buy groceries, to put a roof over their family’s head. And so we would hope that, as we move forward through the fourth and fifth and, I’m sure, sixth iteration that this government might come up with with the Working for Workers Act, that attention is paid to the need for paid sick leave so that all Ontarians can have that security of when you’re sick and need to stay home, that you don’t go to work, that you don’t spread whatever that sickness is, but you also don’t have to put your family’s security on the line because you fear being fired or losing out on a paycheque.