Thanks, Madam Chair. I, too, would like to thank the committee for allowing me to sit in on their proceedings with regard to Bill 20. As the chair said, the Employment Standards Act is almost kind of like a sacred piece of legislation where you try to balance the rights and interests of workers and employers. I think it does generally reach that kind of proper balance. I think that the committee worked very hard to improve particularly the group termination notice provisions of the bill that was brought forward. It really wasn't clear who would initiate the notice and where it would go and how employees would find out about it and so on. I think they made some great strides in improving much of that. I want to thank them for their efforts at doing that.
I'm still quite concerned with the emergency leave provisions in the bill. It is unpaid leave, and right now, with the federal government, that unpaid really is paid leave because you can apply for federal benefits. When the federal government ends those benefits, if we were in another emergency situation, there would be no pay for someone who needs to take emergency leave. This issue was raised by the Status of Women in their submission, and I think the issue is that it really wouldn't create any kind of an incentive for people to self-isolate if there was a pandemic going on. You would have people that would be going to work sick and possibly spreading things and so on. That issue has not been addressed in the bill. I know there is a recommendation that is going to come forward shortly that will attempt to try to deal with that but in any event that, I think, remains a piece of unfinished business.
The one area that I'm most concerned about is the group termination notice provision. That is because, at the end of the day, if and when these changes are adopted, workers will lose weeks of paid work. I think that is indisputable, and I will ask the Minister for his interpretation. Workers will lose weeks of paid work if this goes ahead as is. In any event, I do have some further comments and questions for the Minister when we get into actually reviewing the bill, and of course, I'm going to be bringing forward a couple of relatively small amendments to try to even up the balancing, I think, a little bit better to improve the bill a little bit further. Again, I want to thank the committee for its hard work. This is a difficult, complex set of changes that had been proposed, and I think that the committee did a good job at trying to reach a better balance. Thanks, Madam Chair.