Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Thank you to my colleague the member for Waterloo for that question.

Certainly, as a former school board trustee—also as somebody who did a lot of research on work-integrated learning in the post-secondary sector, looking at co-op opportunities, internships, etc.—we know how vulnerable young people are, whether they’re in high school or college or university, when they go into workplaces in these kinds of co-op or internships or other kinds of work-integrated learning opportunities, and how important it is for young people to understand their rights in the workplace and their right to refuse unsafe work. Because too often young people are nervous about asserting their right to enforce unsafe work, because they fear reprisals from their employers. So there’s a lot that we could do in school curriculum to raise awareness of those rights and to educate young people on how to exert those rights.

The other thing we have learned is about the importance of proactive inspections. Too much of the labour protections that are available to workers rely on workers going forward to file complaints. It’s so important that there be proactive inspections to make sure that workplaces are safe, to make sure that employees understand their rights. But under this government, we have seen a dramatic decrease in the number of proactive inspections that have taken place, we have seen a dramatic decrease in the number of fines that have been levied. So proactive inspections are very important to make sure that workers’ rights are protected in the workplace.

Thank you to the member for Kitchener Centre for that question. I actually have introduced in the past legislation that would add new provisions in the Employment Standards Act to clarify whether a worker is legitimately a contract worker or is actually an employee, and so too often, especially with gig workers, Uber drivers, food delivery workers, they have been misclassified as contract workers and then denied the benefits of the Employment Standards Act.

This government has actually legislated them as second-class workers, giving them these digital rights that are lesser than the benefits and protections of the Employment Standards Act, and said , “Oh, we care about gig workers,” but there is a lot of work that can be done to ensure that workers are not misclassified as contractors when they are actually employees of a company.

It’s unfortunate that the government in its Working for Workers Four excluded wildland firefighters, and I want to acknowledge the advocacy of many of my colleagues from the north in particular who really pushed for wildland firefighters to have the same access to presumptive coverage as other firefighters. So it’s too bad that it took that advocacy, but we are going to push to make sure that workers get the coverage they deserve for occupational illnesses.

It’s a pleasure to rise today on behalf of the people I represent in London West to participate in this debate on the fifth iteration of the Conservative’s working for some workers agenda.

I want to focus my remarks today mainly on schedule 2, and also on schedule 4. Schedule 2 is the section of the act that deals with changes to the Employment Standards Act. In particular, I want to talk about the change that is introduced to allow employees to be sick, to stay home from work without requiring a sick note from a doctor.

Certainly, in my time as MPP, I have done quite a bit of work on what kinds of changes are needed in the Employment Standards Act to support workers who are sick in this province, and certainly removing the requirement for a doctor to provide a sick note is something that is long overdue. It was in place in this province, in fact, prior to this government getting elected. In the dying days of the Liberal government, when they were desperately looking for measures that would maintain some kind of popularity, with their backs to the walls they brought in some much-needed changes to the Employment Standards Act and labour laws in Ontario. One of the changes they brought in, as I said, was to remove the requirement for sick notes for employees who had to be absent from work because of illness.

The other change that they made, thanks to the incredible advocacy of the labour movement in this province, worker advocates and NDP members on this side of the House, was to ensure that workers who are sick get to stay home without losing their pay. Because we know that paid sick days are a critical public health measure to enable, in particular, the lowest-wage workers to actually stay home when they are sick, because too many workers who are sick in this province worry that if they stay home on an unpaid sick day, they won’t have enough money at the end of the month to pay the rent, to buy the groceries, to pay the utility bills. So one of the most important things that we can do to protect public health in the province and also to support workers in the province is to provide paid sick days. While this legislation very sensibly removes the requirement for sick notes, it doesn’t say anything about ensuring that sick days are paid.

I also want to give a shout-out to the Ontario Medical Association, to all of the family physicians in this province, who have been calling repeatedly for the elimination of sick notes because of the time that it consumes for family doctors. We know that there is a dire shortage of family physicians in this province. There are 2.3 million Ontarians right now—that number is projected to increase to over four million Ontarians—who do not have access to a primary care provider: a family physician or a nurse practitioner. We need to do everything possible to make sure that the family doctors who are practising in this province are able to accommodate more patients. Just in the London area, Speaker, we have 84,000 people in the city of London or around the city the London who don’t have access to a family doctor.

Dr. Andrew Park, who is the president of the Ontario Medical Association and also a constituent of mine in London West and an emergency room physician at London Health Sciences Centre, has told me stories of people who have actually come into emergency because they don’t have a family doctor and their employer is requiring them to get a sick note. They’ve come into emergency just so that they can get that sick note that their employer requires because without it, they could lose their employment.

So it is a very sensible measure that this government has introduced in this legislation, something that we definitely support. But it is unfortunate that one of the first things that this government did in 2018 when they were elected was to bring back sick notes. It has taken this crisis in our health care system—the demands, the calls from family physicians to remove the administrative burden of sick notes—that finally got this government to take action.

But in 2018, when this government brought back sick notes—which they’re now removing—they also made some other changes to the leave provisions of the Employment Standards Act. As I said, prior to the election of this government, there were two paid days that sick workers were entitled to under the Employment Standards Act, and there were an additional eight unpaid days, personal emergency leave days, that were available for every employee in this province.

When this government got elected, they eliminated the two paid sick days. The eight days that were remaining, all unpaid, they categorized them to make it very specific that workers could take three unpaid days if they were sick, they could take three unpaid days if they had family responsibility obligations and they could take two unpaid days if they needed a bereavement leave.

So not only do we need paid sick days in this province, we certainly need more than three. Yet, what this government thought was reasonable for workers in Ontario was to restrict every worker to only three unpaid sick days.

Then, of course, COVID hit. Many of us recall those dark days at the beginning of the pandemic, when there was not a lot known about how contagious COVID was. We certainly heard loud and clear from public health professionals that it had the potential to just ravage workplaces with spreading contagion from workers who were forced to go to work sick because they didn’t have access to paid sick days, and they only had access to three unpaid sick days.

So, in March 2020, we saw this government introduce a new kind of leave, infectious disease emergency leave, to allow unpaid leave for workers who were diagnosed with COVID so that they could stay home and prevent spreading infection to their co-workers and their customers. But of course, we know from studies that public health units did in Peel and other places that workers were still going to work sick because unpaid infectious disease emergency leave was not enough to enable a worker to stay home if they were sick.

Finally, after many iterations of my legislation, the Stay Home If You Are Sick Act, the government finally, and very sensibly, brought in three paid infectious disease emergency leave days. That was very successful. That worked for over a period of almost two years, until March 2023, giving workers who were dealing with COVID or who had family members dealing with COVID access to paid days so they could stay home.

This bill was an opportunity for the government to not only remove the requirement for sick notes but also to take action to make sure that workers don’t have to make that choice—that impossible choice—between staying home sick and losing a day’s pay or going in sick and infecting their co-workers and their customers. And we know that for workers, especially low-wage workers in this province, with the skyrocketing costs of rent, the cost of living out of control, it’s hard. It’s hard to have to make that decision. Or if they have a sick child, do they keep their child at home and have to take that loss of a day’s pay or do they keep their fingers crossed and send their child to school? What we really need to see, Speaker, is paid sick days. I really hope that the next version of Working for Workers will include that.

I know that the government is very proud of this bill because of what it will do to support women at Ontario workplaces, especially in the skilled trades. I do want to give a shout-out to Carpenters Local 1946 in London. They hosted the Ontario apprenticeship showcase at the end of April. It was a wonderful opportunity to go, and there were a number of women carpenters who were participating in the competition, and I got to talk to some of them. I learned about the program that the Carpenters Union has called Sisters in the Brotherhood and the advocacy that they are doing, which is great.

What this bill does to support women workers is it requires menstrual products to be provided on larger construction sites. At least, the regulations to this bill will do that, because there’s nothing in the bill that addresses menstrual products, but we will take the government at their word and look forward to those regulations. The bill requires that washrooms be clean and sanitary. That is certainly something that every worker should be able to access, but it’s already in legislation, so it’s good that this legislation requires it again. It also adds virtual harassment to the definitions of “workplace harassment” and “workplace sexual harassment” in the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Now, those provisions on harassment are outlined in schedule 4 of this bill.

I want to now draw the government’s attention to another bill that I introduced, along with the member for Toronto Centre as my co-sponsor, called Bill 114, the Safe Night Out Act. I’m not sure if members are aware that, currently, in the Occupational Health and Safety Act, there are three definitions: There’s a definition of “workplace harassment,” a definition of “workplace sexual harassment” and a definition of “workplace violence,” but no definition of workplace sexual violence.

The Safe Night Out Act amends the Occupational Health and Safety Act to explicitly recognize workplace sexual violence, which, as we know too well, often occurs in the context of intimate partner violence. We have seen intimate partner violence follow workers to their places of employment far too often, putting those workers at risk, putting their coworkers at risk and resulting in huge productivity losses for those companies where workers are working. That was a big part of the reason that I introduced the domestic violence and sexual violence leave act, which ensured that workers who are experiencing domestic violence or sexual violence were able to access leave to deal with the violence.

I would encourage the government to look at Bill 114, that private member’s bill that is on the order paper right now, the Safe Night Out Act, that talks about workplace sexual violence and acknowledges that it often occurs in the context of domestic or intimate partner relationships, because we have an epidemic of intimate partner violence in this province. We were pleased to see the government pass through second reading of Bill 173, the bill to formally declare an epidemic of intimate partner violence in the province of Ontario, but that declaration has not yet been made. Although the bill has been passed, we are still waiting for that declaration. That would go a long way, Speaker, to supporting women in this province and to supporting women in Ontario workplaces.

The other piece of Bill 114, the Safe Night Out Act, that I would encourage the government to look at is the requirements for training on workplace sexual harassment. My bill had required employers to complete training on workplace sexual harassment and ensure that every person in the workplace also completes training, because we know that one of the sectors that has the largest number of women workers in this province is the hospitality industry. Hospitality workers are overwhelmingly female and they are very vulnerable to workplace sexual harassment, and they get far too little support from their employers—sometimes their employer is the perpetrator of workplace sexual harassment. So it’s very, very important. You can have the definition of workplace sexual harassment in the Occupational Health and Safety Act, but the training to understand workplace sexual harassment and to take actions to prevent it is very important.

The other point that I wanted to make in the very short time I have left is around the need for the government to look more closely at the kinds of occupations that women are working in. If the government wanted to support women workers in Ontario, they would know that women predominantly work in caring jobs. They work in health care and education, as child care workers, as PSWs, as educators, and yet, we have seen a government that has failed to recognize the economic importance of the care economy. They have failed to recognize that care jobs represent one in five jobs in this province.

The care economy, in fact, is twice as big as either the construction sector or the finance sector. It is three times as big as the manufacturing sector. It is 38% bigger than the manufacturing sector. The care economy is a significant driver of the provincial economy in this province, and so we have to value the jobs that are performed by care workers. We have to value the economic significance of the care economy, and we have to put in place provisions that are going to support that care economy and support those workers, the majority of whom are female, in those care economy jobs.

Finally, I just want to talk about the other jobs that tend to be more occupied by women: They are cleaning, catering, cashiering and clerical, and those are often jobs that women perform in contract positions where they are denied the full benefits and protections of the Employment Standards Act, because they are often misclassified as not being employees under the act and simply being contract workers. Again, this is another important improvement that the government could have included in this Working for Workers Act to end the misclassification of workers in this province, mainly low-wage workers, racialized workers, women workers, and it’s definitely a missed opportunity that they chose not to do that.

Speaker, there are some good things in this bill. Removing sick notes, the requirement for sick notes—glad that the doctors finally got the government to do that—but we need to see a lot more from this government if they want to show us that they’re serious about supporting workers in Ontario.

My question is actually to the minister. Certainly, he will recall during COVID when the government brought in the infectious disease emergency leave, and that gave 10 days of leave. Two days of those were to be paid, and it also eliminated sick notes. So while we are pleased to see the long-overdue elimination of sick notes in the bill, we do not see any change to the 10 days of personal emergency leave, we don’t see any requirement for paid sick days. Even in the COVID bill, it had two paid sick days. We’ve been advocating for 10 paid sick days, which is what they have at the federal level.

Can the minister let us know why they took the elimination of sick notes but did not put in a requirement for paid sick days?