I, too, would like to welcome members of ACTRA in the galleries today.

It has been two years. It’s time to end the lockout.

It’s now been a year and a half since 9,000 ACTRA commercial actors have been unlawfully locked out of work by the ICA, the Institute of Canadian Agencies. As I’ve raised in this House, the ICA wants to cut wages up to 60% and eliminate benefits and retirement plans. They are not bargaining in good faith and are using scab replacement labour.

The Ford Conservatives talk a lot about the affordability crisis. What about locked-out actors whose livelihoods have been taken away from them? How do you expect them to survive?

The Ford government refuses to ban scab replacement labour, which is getting in the way of a fair bargaining process. Not only that; the Conservatives are giving business through government-paid advertising to the very agencies that are treating commercial actors so poorly. The government says they are working for workers, but their actions show otherwise.

There’s more: TVO CMG workers have been on strike for fair wage increases for nine weeks. After a decade of their real wages falling due to the rising cost of living and inflation, workers simply cannot afford to see their real wages fall anymore, yet they’re being asked to accept another three years of below-inflation wage increases. TVO is a public broadcaster, so the government itself is the employer here. They have the direct ability to intervene, and yet they don’t.

And here’s the thing no one understands: The workers are asking for binding arbitration, a neutral third party to resolve this, and even that the government refuses. Binding arbitration has been offered to other groups. Why not TVO CMG?