Mr. Speaker, over 50% of workers in Toronto cannot access full-time employment; that is work that comes with a pension, benefits or job security. Even those who thought they were full-time employees today can wake up tomorrow to find they have been reclassified as independent contractors.
On behalf of all the temp workers in my riding, all of those in Davenport not knowing whether their short-term contract will be renewed, to the freelancers and self-employed I meet at the Common, to all of them holding down multiple part-time jobs and squeezing into a packed Dufferin bus to pick up their kids from expensive child care, to new Canadians and new young workers from Queen Street to Eglinton working for free as unpaid interns, I want to thank United Way Toronto and researchers at McMaster University for their incredibly important report tabled last week on the outrageous growth of precarious work in the greater Toronto and Hamilton area.
We must bring Canada's labour laws and policies into the 21st century to reflect the reality of work today.