Ontario Hansard - 25-November2009

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: It's a pleasure to join the debate. I want to congratulate my colleague from Timmins-James Bay. As always, he contributes very well to debate here, and I often enjoy his ability to bring to this Legislature the unique experiences that they face up north and what they're doing with the logging industry there.

One of the challenges that we in the official opposition find with this piece of legislation is that while the minister here will not accept or revise apprenticeship ratios to one to one, we will be recognizing certification in other provinces in which apprentice-journeyman ratios are one to one. That is something that my colleague from Simcoe North, in particular, has raised several times in this chamber, as has my colleague from Simcoe-Grey, Jim Wilson, who is the critic for this piece of legislation.

It's one of those concerns that we have and one that we're going to continue to push right up until 2011, when we face another election. I think it's something that this McGuinty Liberal government must look at. This, we feel, could put Ontario apprentices at a disadvantage in trying to find skilled trade jobs in this great province.

So I think there is more to be done, not only in this chamber but certainly across the province-how we can get those apprentice-to-journeyman ratios to be equal at one to one, and how we can ensure we are at a competitive advantage when dealing with apprentice-journeyman ratios elsewhere. We don't think that this is adequately addressed, and we'll continue to pursue that.