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.

It is always a pleasure to rise in this place and speak on behalf of the people I represent in London West. I’m pleased to contribute to the debate that has unfolded in this Legislature over the past four weeks on the address from the Lieutenant Governor in the government’s throne speech.

A throne speech is what opens a session of a new Parliament. It is a big picture of you, of the government’s priorities, and the issues that it is planning to focus on in this session of government.

It’s interesting; as I’ve said, four weeks ago we all gathered here to listen to the address from the speech from the throne, and now, in the waning days, we understand, of this very rare summer session, we are continuing to debate that speech.

Speaker, the context in which this debate is taking place is certainly of huge concern to all of us in this place, and, in particular, for the people we represent.

Our health care system is crumbling around us, and we hear this all the time in the stories that constituents bring to our offices. Some of us have had personal experiences with family members who have also encountered the fraying of that health care system that we need to be able to rely on.

Housing is a major concern for every Ontarian in this province, every constituent who is represented by MPPs in this chamber. In London, our wait-list for subsidized housing has grown to over 6,000 people; it’s an increase of over 1,000 in just the last four years.

We also have a climate emergency that has never been more apparent and more frightening, when we consider the implications of not taking action to address climate change.

Unfortunately, this throne speech is not a document that gives Ontarians hope that any of those issues will be addressed.

It doesn’t give Ontarians hope, who are grappling with the reality of an 8.1% inflation rate—unprecedented. I read a petition just earlier today that referred to the first-ever 4.5%, I think, inflation rate. That petition was written just a year ago, and now we are looking at inflation of over 8%.

The affordability challenges that people in this province are facing are very real, and they are having an incredibly difficult impact on people’s lives. People need to feel hopeful that the government, the people they have elected to govern in the best interest of all of the citizens in this province—they need to feel hopeful that the decisions that are made are going to be ones that help them in their daily lives, that help them with the health care system, that help them with housing, that help them with affordability, and that take bold action to address the climate crisis.

I want to get back to health care. I’m going to spend a significant amount of time, during my remarks, on what is happening in our health care system and what I am seeing in London and the surrounding areas.

As you are probably aware, Speaker, there are about 25 hospitals across the province that have closed or reduced hours in their emergency rooms and other areas of the hospital. This includes many of the small hospitals surrounding the city of London.

We had St. Marys, Seaforth, Clinton, Listowel, Wingham, Walkerton, Chesley—all of those are small hospitals in southwestern Ontario, in the immediate vicinity of London, that had to either close their ERs or cut back services.

The reality is, in these small hospitals they only have, typically, a very small number of staff. So when you have staff who are on leave or who are sick with COVID, it can have a dramatic effect on the hospital’s ability to operate.

So, in the case of those small hospitals, the pressure that’s being experienced is directly related to the health care worker staffing pressures, and how that has manifested in London, at London Health Sciences Centre, are some cutbacks in some hospital programs. We heard that the maternity ward at LHSC was preparing pregnant women that they should be ready for the possibility that they may not be able to get a scheduled induction if they need one. The epilepsy unit announced a temporary closure because of the staffing shortage.

In addition to these cutbacks in hospital services, we’re also seeing a growing list of people in our communities who don’t have access to family doctors, and we know what happens when people don’t want have access to primary care. They can’t get access to the preventive screening tests that they need to prevent a visit to the emergency room. They are not able to get things looked at before they become acute and lead them into a crisis situation in the hospital. This is a problem that I certainly encountered from the very beginning, when I was elected in 2013, but I have never seen it as bad as it has been. Every day, we hear from two or three constituents, at least, who can’t get access to a family doctor.

I want to give you an example of one of the recent calls that we took. A 90-year-old man had a heart problem and called his family doctor, but his family doctor was fully booked and ready to leave on vacation. They had someone to cover, but there was a gap of three or four days until that coverage was going to be in place. He tried to go to urgent care in the city, but it was closed. He was going to try to go to emergency, but he was concerned about how hard it was to be seen and was reluctant to go to emergency, and with good reason. We just saw, over the weekend, in London, the emergency room posted a sign that prepared people in that room to be ready to wait 20 hours. That was the number that was written on the sign. People are looking at a 20-hour wait to have their health issue looked at.

Speaker, I want to get back to what I said initially—that this is very directly related to the shortage of health care workers that we are experiencing across the system.

I want to read a quote from one of the CEOs of one of these small hospitals, Michael Barrett. He is the CEO for the South Bruce Grey Health Centre hospitals, and he talked about the fact that the hospital corporation is using private agency nurses to fill the gaps and help maintain some coverage of the ERs. He told a reporter, “It is concerning that a considerable amount of money is being spent on agency nurses and we’re not in a position because of the collective agreement to be able to do the same for our own staff.

“We pay agency nurses considerably more than what we pay our staff.”

He said he wants to do everything he can to entice his staff to work these difficult shifts. But other than raising the concern, as he said he and others like him have—he was unaware of the government doing anything to help hospitals like his deal with this staffing pressure.

We know what the government needs to do. The government needs to repeal Bill 124. That has been the universal refrain of health sector workers and public sector workers since that unconstitutional—as we will find out—legislation was brought forward in this place.

The government needs to take some action on the violence that health care workers are experiencing in the workplace. I want to commend my colleague the member for Nickel Belt on her perseverance in trying to get legislation passed that will address the escalating violence that health care workers are facing on a daily basis.

We saw that a physician in London, actually, in the spring, was attacked by somebody with a knife and a hammer. Somehow, that person got into the hospital and assaulted the doctor.

We just recently saw an incident in Goderich where an armed man came in and threatened health care workers.

So, clearly, there is a need to take action on the violence that health care workers are facing.

But to get back to Bill 124 and the urgency of repealing that bill: We know that what that legislation does is cap any wage increases for public sector workers at 1%, and when you have a period in which inflation is 8.1%, a 1% increase is very clearly a loss of pay. It’s a cut in pay. It is not a wage increase at all. And it is just so disrespectful to these front-line workers who have been there for us throughout the pandemic, all through every single wave and I know will be there for us in the fall as that inevitable new wave materializes.

This is good for me to share, Speaker. I want to just read from an email I received from a nurse in London West. Her name is Lindsay Smale. She says, “Many of my co-workers chose to leave. They retired early or they moved to a position in a much less stressful environment”—she counts herself among them. “Many have left the profession entirely.” She says, “We are no longer able to provide the same level of care. Patients are suffering....

“Bill 124 is the biggest slap in the face to the very people who stepped up in a time of uncertainty, when we didn’t know if we were going to get sick at work or bring it home to our families.” She says she’s currently looking at obtaining an American nursing licence so she can go practise in the US, and she’s not the only health care worker who is looking to relocate because of the disrespect that they feel from this government, the inadequacy of the compensation and benefit packages that are offered and just the challenges working in such a high-stress environment.

Speaker, in the face of these issues with our health care workforce, one would have hoped that the throne speech would have offered some solutions. The Premier—the throne speech claimed that they would implement whatever measures are needed to deal with the health care pressures, and yet they didn’t. They did not repeal Bill 124. That should have been the very first bill that we were dealing with in this place. Instead, we saw this government bring forward legislation that is going to force—through financial coercion, if nothing else, but it’s going to force vulnerable seniors and people with disabilities who are in alternative-level-of-care beds in hospitals to move to a long-term-care home that is not of their choice and where they will very likely end their days. It could be miles away from their family, and this legislation shows no regard for the actual needs of those patients, those frail people, to have family members around them.

But worse than that is this government has pushed through that bill with no opportunity for public consultation whatsoever—no opportunity for experts to propose amendments that could possibly improve this bill; no opportunity to hear from people who have loved ones in long-term care and could talk about what it would mean to them if their loved one was forced or coerced—pressured to move from a hospital or else face a big bill, but pressured to move into a long-term-care home that was not of their choice.

The other thing that we have seen this fall is messages, signals from this government that they see privatization as the solution to Ontario’s health care woes. The research has confirmed what happens when you introduce a profit motive into the health care system: equity suffers; access suffers. Health care providers, who are treating patients—when there is money involved, they may be less likely to say that’s not actually a treatment you need, because they know they get a profit for providing that treatment.

The minister has talked about how Ontarians will get health care with their OHIP card and not their credit card, but the reality is, when you go to a for-profit clinic, that for-profit provider can charge you for a wide gamut of services that you will receive. From the food or the pain medication, there are lots of ways that for-profit providers can make a buck off services that are covered by OHIP but are delivered in a private for-profit system. The people I have heard from in London West are vigorously opposed to any privatization of our health care system.

Speaker, I want to just close by saying that this government, as we have seen so often over the last four years, missed another opportunity to actually engage with Ontarians, to actually put forward positive solutions that would address the pressures that people feel every day in their daily lives.

One thing I didn’t address yet when talking about affordability is the issue of ODSP. We saw, again, a budget that was rammed through without any opportunity for public input, a budget that includes only a paltry 5% increase to ODSP. That’s $58 more a month. That’s $14.50 more a week. For someone who is struggling to try to get by on $1,169 a month, when you can’t find housing for less than $1,200 a month in my community and many communities across the province, that is insulting. It is legislated poverty, as many people have pointed out, when this government uses the social assistance programs to keep people in a condition of poverty which they will never be able to get out of. We have heard from many people that a 5% increase is not enough. What we need to do is to double social assistance rates.

I want to congratulate the new member for Elgin–Middlesex–London on his inaugural remarks. It was a pleasure to listen to a bit of your history that brought you to this place, and it’s been a pleasure to get to know you since you first arrived, since we do share part of that boundary in the city of London.

You talked about the diversity of that riding, taking in part of the city of London, the city of St. Thomas and many of the rural areas in Elgin county. I wondered if you could just elaborate a little bit about how you approach representing a riding that is so varied, that brings together both those urban and rural communities within Elgin and London.