It is a great pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill 149, An Act to amend various statutes with respect to employment and labour and other matters.

I regret that the labour critic for the official opposition, the member for Sudbury, is unable to be here, and that is because the government called this bill at—I think it was close to midnight on Thursday, which is when the member for Sudbury had the opportunity to begin his leadoff remarks on this legislation. He has done extensive consultation with stakeholders in labour, with unions, with worker advocates, to get their feedback on this bill. Unfortunately, he was unable to complete his one-hour remarks, which would have been, I think, very helpful for the government to be able to hear, because he has done the kind of extensive consultation that this government has repeatedly failed to do—if they really want to understand the issues that working people in this province are facing, and if they really want to bring forward legislation that would actually address the issues that workers are struggling with in this province.

Bill 149 amends four separate pieces of legislation. It amends the Digital Platform Workers’ Rights Act, 2022, which, interestingly, is not even in force yet. Once again, we see this government passing legislation—quite recently; that legislation was debated in this House, passed in this House, back in 2022. It’s not even in force, and yet the government is bringing forward amendments to its sloppy legislation that they had drafted initially, that already requires revisions. This bill also amends the Employment Standards Act—and I’ll have quite a bit more to say about the amendments to the Employment Standards Act. It amends the Fair Access to Regulated Professions and Compulsory Trades Act, 2006. And finally, it amends the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act.

I’m going to start with the final schedule, schedule 4, the amendments to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act. This legislation finally provides the presumptive coverage for esophageal cancer in firefighters. We heard lots of boasting from this government about how they were going to be moving ahead with these changes in their last employment omnibus bill. They made that commitment. We fully support that commitment. Through the efforts of my colleague the member for Niagara Centre, we actually led that initiative to provide that presumptive coverage, and I want to thank and congratulate my colleague for his efforts, for his advocacy on behalf of Captain Craig Bowman, and for the private member’s bill that he brought forward, Bill 127, which had first reading in June 2023. The government could have moved forward with this change several months ago, with that private member’s bill; they could have moved forward with this change when they introduced their previous employment omnibus bill, but they didn’t. But here we are today, and we appreciate that change. It is a long-overdue change that is well past due in this province.

We also want to highlight that this presumptive coverage is not just important for firefighters who work in municipal fire services across this province, but it should be extended to include wildfire fire workers. That category of firefighters is excluded from the definition of firefighters that is covered by presumptive clauses under the WSIA.

That change is not included in this legislation, and I have to question why. We know that with the impact of climate change we are seeing severe weather events on a scale that we haven’t experienced before in this province. We all remember the smoke that was coming from the wildfires in Quebec and northern Ontario and the impact that was having on our air quality here in Ontario and well down into the United States. Wildfire fire workers have been combatting these consequences of climate change to an extent that we haven’t seen before, and yet they are excluded from this ability to access presumptive coverage under WSIA.

Not only did the government exclude wildfire fire workers from this legislation, but they have cut the number of fire crews that we have in this province when they reduced funding for wildfire management programs by 67%. A 67% reduction to funding for wildfire management programs as we are in the midst of—or in the summer, certainly—a wildfire crisis across the province. We are 50 fire crews short because of this government’s decision to cut that funding for wildfire management programs.

Otherwise, Speaker, the changes that are set out in the first three schedules of this bill will have some impact on workers in the province, but they are very much baby steps. They are the kind of incremental changes that workers don’t deserve. Workers deserve a government that is going to listen to the challenges that they are facing and make the kind of changes that would really have an impact on their lives.

I’m going to now go to schedule 1 of the bill, the Digital Platform Workers’ Rights Act, 2022. A new section is added that requires that a pay period as set out in the act not exceed the prescribed number of days. What does this section do, Speaker? What this does is it waters down the already flimsy minimum-wage protections of the Digital Platform Workers’ Rights Act by adding the clause “Unless the regulations provide otherwise” to section 9(2) of the act. That section of the current legislation sets out that employers must pay minimum wage for assignments. In other words, the minimum-wage provisions only apply when a gig worker—a digital platform worker, an Uber driver, a Skip the Dishes delivery person—the minimum wage only applies to when that worker is in the process of delivering. It does not apply to the time between assignments and to the time it takes to get to an assignment or to the next assignment. What that means is that these workers are effectively protected by the minimum wage provisions of this bill just an estimated 60% of the time that they are on the job.

Speaker, I think that you were a member in this House when I brought forward a private member’s bill called the Preventing Worker Misclassification Act, which was also legislation that would protect digital platform workers, the gig workers. We have seen an erosion of the quality of work in this province. We have seen an explosion of the gig economy, with too many workers forced to patchwork together gig jobs, contract jobs, jobs which, until the government introduced its bill, had no protections whatsoever in terms of labour.

This is at a time when we are seeing, internationally, recognition for gig workers to be recognized as the employees they are. We’re seeing decisions in Spain, the UK, New York City, other jurisdictions, where the courts have ruled that digital workers are employees and should be covered by all of the protections and benefits of the Employment Standards Act, and that’s what my bill would have done.

My bill addressed worker misclassification. It addressed the reality that too many gig workers are doing work that should be legitimately covered by the Employment Standards Act but are completely excluded. It created a new test for how you identify an employee under the Employment Standards Act, so that those gig workers would not be misclassified as independent contractors; those gig workers would be recognized as the employees that they are, and therefore entitled to minimum wage protections—fancy that, Speaker. They would be entitled to vacation pay. They would be entitled to scheduled breaks in the days that they work. They would be entitled to protections around hours worked.

And so that legislation that I introduced was debated in this chamber, and the government refused to support that direction. The government refused to acknowledge the rights that digital workers should have and that the courts, as I said, are recognizing in other jurisdictions. Instead, they went ahead with their own Digital Platform Workers’ Rights Act.

So let’s talk some more about digital platform workers. They spend, on average, as I said, about 40% of their work time waiting for deliveries or rides, and that is the 40% of their workday that is not going to be covered, now, by any of the protections of the government’s Digital Platform Workers’ Rights Act. It would also allow large international companies like Uber and Lyft to avoid paying workers, as I mentioned, for the time that they are not actually on assignment.

The amendments to this act do not protect platform worker wages from being further reduced below minimum wage, because when 40% of your workday is not covered by any minimum wage protections, you can imagine that, over the course of a workweek, a digital platform worker, when it’s all averaged out, will actually be earning much less than is required by Ontario’s minimum wage laws.

In the short time I have left—it’s surprising how quickly 20 minutes go—I want to talk about the schedule of the bill that the government claims is going to provide some pay transparency. Speaker, I don’t think you were elected at the time, but when the Liberal government, just prior to its ouster by the people of this province in 2018—just prior to that election, the Liberal government of the time introduced a Pay Transparency Act.

I have to commend and acknowledge the hard work and the efforts of the Equal Pay Coalition, and in particular, the two lawyers who have been driving forces behind the Equal Pay Coalition and driving forces behind advocacy to get the government to move forward with pay transparency legislation. Those two lawyers, that I’ve had the great privilege of working closely with, are Fay Faraday and Jan Borowy. They have been formidable champions of equal pay and pay equity and pay transparency.

Again, we have seen in other jurisdictions, other countries, that pay transparency is a critical tool to help close the gender wage gap in Ontario. It is a critical tool to ensure that women are no longer earning 75% of what a man earns.

Every year, Equal Pay Day is recognized in Ontario—not by this government, of course; they don’t want to draw any attention to the fact they have failed to do anything effective to help close that gender wage gap, but on this side of the House, we certainly highlight Equal Pay Day each year, which marks how much further into the next year a woman has to work in order to earn the same amount that her male counterpart would have earned in the previous year. And, Speaker, typically, that day falls somewhere at the end of March or early April, because that is the reality for women in this province—in particular, it is the reality for racialized women, women who are living with a disability, Indigenous women. Equal Pay Day for some women actually falls much closer into the middle of the year, or even the following autumn. That is how underpaid certain groups of women are in this province. So pay transparency is, as I said, a critical tool to help close the gender wage gap.

So what this bill does is it requires employers to post information about expected compensation levels for any position that they are hiring for. Does this address the goal of the previous legislation, the Pay Transparency Act, Speaker? Not in the slightest. This very modest, simple requirement will not go anywhere as far as we need to go, which was set out in the previous Pay Transparency Act.

In fact, Speaker, instead, we could have saved the government some time. Instead of working on a schedule—a change that’s included in the bill—the government could have enacted the Pay Transparency Act because that legislation was introduced, as I said, just prior to the 2018 election. It was debated in this House for second reading, went to committee, it was debated in this House for third reading—it was passed, Speaker. It got royal assent, Speaker. Has it been enacted, Speaker? No, it has not. This government pulled that legislation and has been sitting on that legislation while they claimed to be doing a consultation with employers about that bill.

Now, that would have been something that would have really made a difference for women workers in this province—had the government announced that they were going to actually enact the Pay Transparency Act. It’s the provisions in that Pay Transparency Act which—again, I want to credit Jan Borowy and her efforts for helping improve that legislation at committee and ensuring that those measures that were included in that bill would actually start to close that gender wage gap that has been so damaging for women in Ontario.

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—

My question is to the Premier. When this government’s temporary and inadequate program of paid sick days was introduced two years ago, the Minister of Labour famously said that as long as there is COVID, there will be paid sick days for Ontario workers. Well, that flawed program is expiring on March 31, and COVID is still very much with us, along with many other infectious diseases.

Will the minister commit today to providing 10 permanent paid sick days so that workers can stay home if they are sick with COVID or any other illness after March 31?

Almost 60% of Ontario workers do not have paid sick days from their employer, especially if they are racialized or low wage. Instead of supporting their corporate friends, will the government start working for those workers and legislate 10 permanent paid sick days now?

I can assure the member from Whitby that the NDP would never say yes to privatization. The NDP would never say yes to watering down climate targets. The NDP would never support some of the initiatives that this government has brought forward that are going to make people’s lives worse, not better.

What we have heard from the labour movement consistently is a campaign for paid sick days. For goodness’ sake, workers in this province need access to 10 permanent employer-paid sick days. Instead, we have a government that cancelled the paid sick days that were available to workers before they were elected and has now brought in three inadequate paid sick days to cover three years of the pandemic, when we’re looking at a seventh wave. Workers who had to access those three paid sick days in an earlier wave have no recourse if they get COVID. They’re going to have to make that choice: “Do I go into work infected—tested positive for COVID—so I don’t risk losing my paycheque? Or do I stay home and possibly not be able to pay the rent?”