I’ll be sharing my time with the member from Spadina–Fort York and the member from Windsor West.

Speaker, this bill, Bill 128, is a contemptible bill. Some bills are like a fine steak. They’re richly marbled. They’re deep red. They’re clearly an object of substance and nourishment. And others are like a hot dog that’s been on a roller grill of a 7-Eleven for 24 hours—wrinkled, mysterious and oddly coloured.

This contemptible bill is that hot dog. Not only will it give political heartburn to anyone who actually votes for it, it will make people sick who have it stuffed down their throat. And that is the government’s goal: to not only chew on it themselves, but also to stuff it down the throats of those education workers who were true front-line heroes through the height of the pandemic.

This government bill will destabilize education and shortchange Ontario families. For those who have suffered through and are suffering through the health care crisis that has been provoked by Bill 124, who have been in packed ERs—when they’re open—they know that a bill that punishes those front-line workers, that demoralizes them, that drives them out of the sector is one that undermines the critical services that we need to have in this society.

And that’s what this bill will do. It will beat up education assistants, early childhood educators, custodians and librarians. That process of driving people out has already started. I hear from parents now who tell me they are desperate to get support for their children in the classroom, but the wait for that support is backed up so that they don’t get the assistance that they need. And that’s even in a situation where those workers are doing the best they absolutely can. They are committed to the children in their care, they work hard, but they can’t keep up.

I’ve talked to those education assistants directly, at the door, who tell me about their desperation in trying to keep up with the demands, the needs of the children that they’re responsible for. But they tell me they’re short-handed and they can’t do anything, but, every day, put on the equivalent of an educational Band-Aid to try and get through the day.

So this bill is about beating up on those workers. It’s about undermining the quality of education in this province. To say otherwise is to subject the facts to the worst kind of abuse. When you decide to demoralize and drive out the very education workers that you need to make the system function, then you can’t argue that your priority is education, that your priority is children and families. And when you look at this government’s record on education over the last four and a half years, you can recognize quickly that any commitment or any claim they make to a commitment to Ontario’s children and families is not a real commitment.

Speaker, I want to look at some of the extraordinary elements in this bill. There is a section entitled, “Application of charter and Human Rights Code and limits on courts, etc.” This is the section that explicitly undermines human rights and constitutional protections. Now, most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the Human Rights Code or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms or our Constitution, but when governments act in a way that is abusive, they somehow know there is a backstop, that there’s legislation or laws in place that will give them protection against government acting in a way that is abusive, that is arbitrary, that is damaging.

In Canada, we have a problem with our Constitution in that we have something called the “notwithstanding” clause so that governments can declare what they brought forward is not covered by the Constitution. Legal experts have said that where this exemption is used, it should be used very sparingly. Well, I have to tell you, Speaker, this bill takes full advantage of that “notwithstanding” clause that exempts this bill from constitutional protections. When you do that, you’re saying right off the top that you recognize that what you’re doing is unconstitutional. You’re not beating around the bush. You’re not hiding this away in some obscure clause. You’re saying right off, “You don’t have any constitutional protection. We’re taking that away from you. We’re going to beat you up, and you don’t have any legal option to fight back.” That’s what’s going on. But that’s not the end of the attack on our fundamental rights, because the bill also says explicitly that the Human Rights Code does not apply.

What’s extraordinary to me is that this government stopped there. They could have said the Employment Standards Act doesn’t apply, or the Occupational Health and Safety Act. What about the Ten Commandments? Clearly, they were underperforming with this bill, because they could have tried to wipe out jurisdiction of any other law protecting workers. But I have to say, the damage they’ve done is enough.

I do want to note that the bill goes on for pages about how the government and its servants are protected, shielded, held harmless, explicitly exempt from any kind of legal action whatsoever with regard to fundamental laws in this society. You have to be doing some pretty grim stuff to put those sorts of protections for yourself in legislation. You have to be messing around at a pretty profound level to say, “We’re exempt from the Human Rights Code and from Canada’s Constitution.” You have to be very clear that you are putting aside people’s rights, that you are trampling on those rights, that you are stuffing this ugly mess down people’s throats. That’s the ground that’s cleared by these exemptions.

All of us in this society need to be protected from governments that go down the wrong road. When you use the “notwithstanding” clause, when you say that the Human Rights Code doesn’t apply, it isn’t just the workers in this case who will be harmed. Everyone in this society knows that the next time the government hits against this guardrail, that guardrail has been weakened.

So we’ve got a bill that not only undermines the quality of education and beats up on a dedicated group of people who are trying to give our children the education they need, but this bill hurts the quality of education and undermines our fundamental rights in this society. Speaker, that is simply wrong.

This bill needs to be withdrawn. It needs to be thrown out. This government needs to sit down with the education workers and actually negotiate, not dictate, and come to a deal that everyone can live with to protect the quality of education.

With that, I turn the floor over to my colleague.