I very much appreciated the comments from my colleague the member for Thunder Bay–Superior North. I wanted to ask her thoughts as to what it says about a government that basically, at the very same time they bring in this legislation, eliminates paid sick days for workers in this province. After eliminating two paid sick days that workers had back in 2018 when they were first elected and now eliminating the temporary program, does that suggest that this really is a government that is working for workers, that would do something like that, that would take away the ability of workers to access paid sick days so they can stay home if they are sick?

Economist Mike Moffat put out a report just recently showing that typically in Ontario, about 80,000 people move and about 80,000 people move in from other provinces. This past year, under this government, we have seen 50,000 more people leave Ontario than are coming to this province, and many of the people who are leaving are the skilled trades workers that we will need to build the houses that we need here in Ontario. Many of them are the health care workers that we need to shore up our health care workforce. And the reason that they are giving for leaving is because of this government’s failure to deal with the affordability crisis.

I would like to hear from this member what the government is doing to try to retain those mainly young adults who are leaving the province in droves, going to Alberta, going to the east coast because this province has simply become too unaffordable.

I’m very proud of the track record of the NDP in fighting for presumptive coverage to those kinds of cancers for firefighters. I know that the former leader of the official opposition, Andrea Horwath, had brought in a private member’s bill—I believe it was her first private member’s bill, shortly after she was elected to this place—to make that presumptive coverage available to firefighters. A former member for Parkdale–High Park, Cheri DiNovo, also brought in private member’s legislation to ensure that there was WSIB coverage for PTSD for first responders.

So, yes, of course, we would support those measures. We have supported them always in the past. We have pushed the government to bring in those kinds of changes.

I appreciate the question from the member, and I know he’s expecting an answer from me. However, I would like him to show me the schedule in the bill where that measure is set out, because there is no schedule in the bill that talks about presumptive coverage for those cancers for firefighters.

Now, I understand that in the media releases around the bill, when the minister has been speaking to the bill, that is what he says the bill will enable. But this legislation actually makes no reference to presumptive coverage for cancers for firefighters. That is in the regulations. Let’s see the regulations, let’s talk about the regulations, and then we can discuss further.

Absolutely, Speaker, anti-scab legislation would be an important step that this government could take to show that they are actually working for workers. We know that when workers band together to withdraw their labour, that is the only tool that they really have. So scab labour undercuts the ability of workers to obtain their rights, and it undermines the financial security of the workers’ families and the viability of the employer’s firm itself.

I am pleased to rise to continue the debate on Bill 79, Working for Workers 3 from this government. When I was last speaking to this bill, I was giving some examples of the pervasiveness of wage theft in the province of Ontario, which is something that this government could have taken action on, this bill would have been an opportunity to take action on, but they have not. I use the example of wage theft as a case study of how increasing fines for violations of labour laws will do nothing unless there are those strong, proactive inspections in place, unless there is strong, proactive enforcement in place and unless this government closes the loopholes that we see far too often in our labour legislation that have allowed employers to get away with wage theft for so many years.

One of the tools that this government could have used to deal with the issue of wage theft is, of course, around worker misclassification. That is how so many workers do not get the wages and benefits that are owed to them under the Employment Standards Act, because their employer illegally classifies them as an independent contractor rather than an employee who has full rights and entitlements under the Employment Standards Act. That is particularly the case for the farm workers, the migrant temporary foreign workers that the first schedule of this government’s bill is supposed to protect, because those temporary foreign workers are completely exempt from the Employment Standards Act. So it is one thing for this government to say they’re cracking down on scumbag employers, but it is quite another thing to actually protect the temporary foreign workers who are at greatest risk of being taken advantage of and being exploited by unethical employers.

We know that the number of inspections that the Ministry of Labour has conducted dropped significantly; there were 3,500 in 2017 and just over 200 in 2022. So while we welcome the increase in fines, we’re waiting to see other changes that the ministry has to make in order to actually help protect migrant workers.

It’s interesting that since we were last debating this legislation, the government introduced a new measure that is significantly going to harm migrant workers, and that is to remove OHIP coverage for uninsured people. Certainly, we know that migrant workers are among the largest group of uninsured people in this province who do not have access to OHIP, and we have heard the OMA, we have heard doctors in Ontario describe this government decision to remove that OHIP coverage as inhumane, as despicable, as barbaric—as all kinds of words that have been hurled at this government for the action that it is taking that is going to directly and significantly harm migrant workers.

The other thing that we saw since this bill was last debated in the Legislature was the introduction of the budget that put in black and white, in print form, the government’s decision to eliminate paid sick days. That is a benefit that would significantly help temporary foreign workers, migrant workers—workers in this province who need access to paid sick days so that they can stay home if they are sick, which is the number one lesson that we should have learned from this pandemic: how important it is to enable workers to stay home if they are sick so they don’t have to go to crowded workplaces while they are ill, compromise their own ability to recover from illness and also risk spreading infection to co-workers and customers.

This government was shamed into finally implementing an inadequate paid sick day scheme. It took some time to get them there. The scheme was flawed, but at least it was something to help workers be able to stay home if they are sick. Some 60% of workers in this province do not have access to paid sick days, and that number goes up to 75%, 80%, 90% in some sectors, for some of the most vulnerable workers in this province: racialized workers in this province; workers who are at greatest risk of contracting illness in the workplace, who work in crowded warehouses or other places where they are at risk of either bringing illness into the workplace and infecting others or getting infected.

We heard during the pandemic—no one will forget that study from Peel Public Health at the very beginning of the pandemic where one in four workers admitted that they went to work sick because they didn’t have a choice, not because, of course, they wanted to put their co-workers at risk, but because they didn’t want to put their family at risk by not being able to pay the rent at the end of the month, not being able to buy the groceries. So that is the kind of legislation that would show that this government really is working for workers.

The final piece that I want to highlight is around Bill 124. We have heard for months—actually, since that legislation was introduced back in 2019, we have heard calls, strong calls, from health care workers across the province to drop that bill because it is an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of workers to bargain collectively with the government.

At a time when inflation has been as high as 12%, capping wage increases at 1% is nothing but a wage cut, and a significant wage cut, when we need health care workers more than ever. Health care workers are leaving the province in droves because of Bill 124. We know that from the data that’s collected on our health human resources workforce. We know that from—in London, when I go to speak to the London Health Sciences Centre or St. Joseph’s hospital about the health care worker shortage that they’re having, Bill 124 has a direct impact on that.

Dropping the appeal of the court decision that Bill 124 was unconstitutional would go a long way to working for workers in this province. But this government decided not to do that; instead, they have brought forward a package of measures that will make a little bit of a difference, a symbolic difference. The increased fine on employers who withhold passports will make a difference. But if this government really wanted to work for workers, there’s a lot more they could be doing.

It is a pleasure to rise today on behalf of the people I represent in London West to participate in the debate on Bill 79, An Act to amend various statutes with respect to employment and labour and other matters. We’ve heard from the government that this is their third iteration of their efforts to work for workers, and I can tell you that workers in this province view the government’s working for workers efforts as falling far short of what workers actually need. It has been interesting throughout this debate to observe this disconnect between what is actually in this bill, Bill 79, and what the government is talking about when they refer to this bill.

This bill has seven schedules. It amends a number of different pieces of legislation that already are in place. Schedule 1 deals with the Employment Protection for Foreign Nationals Act. This schedule increases the fines for employers who employ foreign nationals and take away their passports or work permit. Speaker, that is something that is desperately needed. We know that migrant workers, foreign national workers, are very vulnerable to exploitation and abuse by employers. They’re very vulnerable. We saw during the pandemic how vulnerable they were to COVID because of the working conditions they were facing.

Now what is not in this bill—while it talks about the increased fines, there are no details as to how enforcement is going to take place. How are we going to hold these employers accountable?

There’s no details about whether there are going to be proactive inspections of workplaces that employ foreign nationals. There’s no details about whether the ministry simply intends to create a new helpline for foreign nationals to call if they have been exploited by their employers. There’s no details about how migrant workers will find out their new protections with these increased fines. There’s no details about whether information will be available in multiple languages for migrant workers, and we know they come from many different countries around the world. There’s no details about the protections that would be available for foreign nationals, for migrant workers from reprisal if they report an employer. So those are the kinds of details that are missing from schedule 1.

But the most glaring omissions from this act—the details that we see nowhere in the legislation before us—are the things that the government is highlighting from this bill.

Schedule 5 of this bill talks about the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Again, it increases maximum fines for corporations that are convicted under the act, and yes, as in schedule 1, we need an increase in maximum fines to create effective deterrents to employers for contravening their legislative obligations to keep workers safe on the job. But what we don’t see in schedule 5 is any mention whatsoever of the addition of pancreatic and thyroid cancers as presumptive occupational illnesses for firefighters. Despite the government’s continued references to that being part of this bill, it actually does not appear in the legislation before us.

The other thing that is nowhere in this legislation is any mention of clean, gender-based bathrooms on construction work sites, which is what we have heard many times repeated by this government, that this legislation is going to make sure that women on job sites will have access to washrooms that are clean and decent. That is definitely something that is needed on job sites throughout this province. It is something that I think will help get more women into occupations that are male-dominated. It would be great to see this in this legislation, but it’s not here—it’s not here.

If this government is planning to pursue these measures through regulation, that would be important for people in this province, but the problem with regulation, of course, Speaker, is that it doesn’t have the same kind of accountability and due diligence that legislation has. There’s nothing that would have prevented this government from introducing the measures in the bill rather than through regulation. But even then we will wait to see if these regulations materialize, and we will wait to see if they actually do what this government has been talking about doing.

Schedule 2 of bill deals with the Employment Standards Act. Now this schedule does not increase fines for contravention of the Employment Standards Act, which would have been something that is desperately needed. We know that, for decades in the province, wage theft has been an ongoing and unresolved problem that workers experience in Ontario—that is employers who withhold money from workers, who don’t pay them what they are entitled to under the Employment Standards Act, who don’t pay vacation pay, who don’t even pay minimum wage sometimes. They pay them under the table to avoid the accountability that is in the legislation. Currently, what employees must do if they experience wage theft from their employer is make a complaint to the Ministry of Labour and wait for the results of an investigation. All too often, they wait months for the investigation to start. Many times, the investigation results in an order against the employer to repay those stolen wages to the employee, and that order is not enforced. In fact, we know that only one third of employers will repay the wages that are stolen from their employees in this province once they are notified that a complaint has been made. So two thirds of employees whose wages and benefits are stolen by their employer do not see the money that they are owed. This has been an ongoing problem in this province.

I want to share a couple of experiences of workers who have faced wage theft.

Helena Borody worked for three months without wages and then was fired without notice. She went to the Ministry of Labour. The Ministry of Labour slapped her former boss with a $4,800 order to pay. A year and a half later, no payment was received. Helena Borody said that going to the Ministry of Labour was a useless exercise because the Ministry of Labour did nothing to help enforce her rights and to help get that money that she was owed back from the employer.

In this Legislature, a couple of years ago, I shared some other experiences.

Isabelle Faure had an employer who was ordered to pay her $5,000 in back wages. The Ministry of Labour made that order to the employer, but nothing happened. Isabelle was unable to get those back wages paid. She said that she had no way of knowing that the Ministry of Labour would do essentially nothing to enforce its own regulations, and she has yet to receive her money.

Another employee in this province, Juan Jose Lira Cervantes, was owed more than $25,000 in lost wages and benefits. He went to the Ministry of Labour. The Ministry of Labour made an order against his employer, Domino’s Pizza, and the bill has never been paid. He has not been able to collect on those lost wages and benefits that were withheld by his employer. That is because of gaping loopholes in the Employment Standards Act that allow employers to get away with wage theft on a regular basis in Ontario. It’s because of inadequate fines in the Employment Standards Act to make sure that there is an effective deterrent for employers to steal the wages of their employees—

I very much appreciated the remarks from my colleague the member for Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas. She pointed to all of the missed opportunities in this bill to actually address the issues that workers in this province are facing. I wondered if she was as struck as I was by the absence of any mention of permanent paid sick days for Ontario workers, especially as we know that program is set to expire on March 31. Workers who are ill with COVID or any other disease or illness in this province will no longer have access to any support to enable them to stay home if they are sick. Would the member like to comment on that?

My question is to the minister.

The minister started his remarks by boasting about the temporary and inadequate paid sick days program that his government was forced to introduce, but he has told the media that the program has filled its purpose and it is expiring at the end of the month.

The legislation that we have here today would have been a perfect opportunity to amend the Employment Standards Act and finally bring in a permanent paid sick days program, like they have in BC, to cover all Ontario workers not just for COVID, but for any other illness or infectious disease that means that they have to stay home from work. Why did the minister not include that in this bill today?