Further debate?

There’s no such thing as a bad petition; there are ones that are way too long—and the incredibly long one from the member from Peterborough are going to be, if this motion passes today or tomorrow morning, the last two petitions heard in this House—a good example and a not-so-good example.

But the problem that they’re trying to fix, the loophole that the government identified, is their own. They’re creating their own problem. I don’t understand what the purpose of that is. For the life of me, Speaker, I don’t.

Another one: private members’ bills. The government House leader raised points about private members’ bills that I agree with in a way but also that I disagree with in a way. Private members’ bills: So each member in this House who’s not a minister has the ability—there is a draw, and during the session each member has the ability to bring one piece of private legislation forward in the House, one time per session. It’s a pretty big deal, right? Once again, you pick issues that are relevant to the people you represent, relevant to your area, relevant to a cause that’s really important. Sometimes that’s something that is not really a government priority, but it’s something that could be, should be made into legislation.

The latest one—I’m trying to think—is Orthodox Christian Week, presented by the member from Humber River–Black Creek. It had universal approval.

So now we have one private member’s bill a day, except on Mondays, but Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 6 o’clock until 6:45. We’ve been battling each other all day, and from 6 to 6:45 sometimes we’re not at our best. We’re not at our friendliest sometimes, Speaker, and sometimes it slips through.

It used to be it was on Thursdays. The House leader has a point that not everyone got to vote on that bill because if the vote was deferred till Monday—or if it wasn’t deferred, not everybody got to vote on it. That’s a fair point. But when all the private members’ bills were held in one session, the actual tone of the chamber was different.

I loved Thursday afternoons. I was here all the time because, often, it was less partisan. People spoke more often like I’m speaking now, without notes, just from the heart. And although sometimes the issues weren’t earth-shattering to the general population, we had some of the best debates—sometimes oppositional, but some of the best debates that we ever had in this Legislature. It wasn’t just people in the backrooms writing notes; it was people actually sharing opinions and opposing opinions, and sometimes changing each other’s minds. We lost that. We lost that when it was moved from Thursdays. That we disagree—is it something that is actually really going to change how the system works for the people of Ontario? No. We’ll work with what we have, but it is an example of what is on paper sometimes doesn’t work as well in reality.

The government just made another change in this standing order. So there is something, ministerial statements—sometimes when a bill is introduced, a minister makes a statement, but more often on a special day like International Women’s Day. The government has 20 minutes, recognized opposition parties have five and the independents had to ask for unanimous consent. It’s important for people to realize that any rule here can be superseded by something called a unanimous consent motion. If someone asks for something and everyone agrees, it happens. A unanimous consent motion trumps everything. But for whatever reason, the government said no to International Women’s Day for the independents to speak. In the end, they changed their mind, and I commend them for that.

Now they’re going to change the standing orders so that the opposition and the independents share eight minutes, and the opposition speaks first. I don’t think that’s an improvement necessarily, but I just want to make it clear: When these standing orders pass—they’re going to pass. The government has a huge majority, so they’re going to pass.

Which is a great one.

I understand how majorities work. They’re going to pass.

I just want to put it for the record here that in a ministerial statement, we will maintain our five minutes and we will pass the three minutes along to the independents. We’re not going to battle that every time. We believe that everyone in this House should have a right to speak. We also believe that this House is built on the party system and there are certain decisions that should be made by parties, not necessarily by independent members, but we do believe that people should be allowed to speak, so that’s how we’re going to handle that. Just to make it clear, we do not want to prevent people from speaking.

There’s another change that the government is making with—this committee is so new that I don’t even—the procedure and House affairs committee, correct?

Interjection: Yes.

So a few standing order changes ago—the government House leader says this was to improve the democratic process. We disagree. It used to be—and I’m not going to be very technical in this. I’m not a lawyer; I’m a farmer. It used to be the parties advised or recommended who from their party should go on the various committees, and we picked that by who had interest in the committee and who we thought would be the best on the committee. We submitted the names and, in the vast majority of cases, that’s who got on the committee. Then the committee decided who was Chair and Vice-Chair, but that was also in consultation with the House leaders of the various parties. Now there are two House leaders, two parties, but that’s how it used to be done.

Then it was changed—and the government House leader said that; he was very plain about that—that the government House leader decided who was on the committees. That’s kind of the same as if I, as opposition House leader, decided who was the minister of certain ministries. It doesn’t make practical sense. And it’s not needed, either, because they have a majority in the House and they have a majority on all the committees, so nothing is actually going to happen at committee if the government doesn’t want it to happen.

With the new standing order changes, the government has moved the decision of who goes on what committee from the government House leader to the committee of procedure and House affairs. But that committee is constructed exactly the same way as all the other committees, so whoever the government wants to put on the committee from the opposition—that is what’s going to happen, because they have a majority. So it takes it one step away from the House leader—

I said this the last time we talked about standing order changes: We have a good working relationship, and I hope that we can continue to build on that by actually taking suggestions from the opposition seriously, about who we feel would be the best on committees.

At the end of the day, the government has the control of the procedure and House affairs committee. I agree that the member from Oshawa is a fierce, independent Chair, but as the Chair, she shouldn’t—and I don’t think the other Chairs should, either—influence how the committee votes. She’s the referee. The committee members should do that. But the majority of the committee members are of the government side. So, at the end of the day, as long as the process continues that the government picks all the committee members, it doesn’t really matter if it’s done at procedure and House affairs or if it’s done by the House leader as a motion here. In fact, it’s a bit less transparent when it’s done at the committee of procedure and House affairs. It sounds better, but it actually isn’t any better, and it won’t work any better, either.

The standing orders shouldn’t make things work better for one party or another party; they should make the system work better for everyone.

I’ll give you an example. We’re about to change petitions. Years ago, there was no time limit on petitions at all. One of the few tools that the opposition has to change the government’s mind on an issue is to slow things down. When a bill is widely consulted and it’s non-contentious and we all agree, it should sail through the House—first, second, third reading and committee. And when they are like that, they do. The Veterinarians Act, the ARIO Act—which that long petition was read about—we all agree with that bill. There is nothing holding that bill back. It’s going to sail through the House.

But on bills that are highly contentious, like the greenbelt bill that had to be rescinded—years ago, with the standing orders, we could have read petitions for days. We could have done all kinds of things and hopefully protected the government from itself. Because the fact that this government has had to rescind legislation—not change it but rescind it—on several occasions, it means, well, it’s bad governance, but it’s also that the government hasn’t allowed the House to do its job to slow down legislation that has obviously got a lot of public opposition.

These standing order changes they’ve made today aren’t going to improve that. Are they going to damage it beyond repair? No. There are several standing order changes here that are housekeeping. It is a living document. There are things that are going to go smoother, as the government House leader said, when they made a standing order change that we could use computers. We all used computers. We were all breaking the rules, so they changed the rules. Great.

But these aren’t the kind of standing order changes that actually strengthen our democratic system and make the legislation that comes out of this place stronger. We could make changes in the standing orders that would improve the legislation coming out of this place. The government has a right to put forward and to pass their agenda. They won the election. We’re not arguing that. But if they made some changes that actually would give the opposition the time, give the public the time to actually make their views known before the legislation was passed, it might have saved them massive embarrassment, massive amounts of money—and it would have served the people so much better.

I’ll give you an example, Speaker. We just had the budget yesterday. In the budget, they’re talking about what we all know: There’s a housing crisis in this province. We all know this. In the budget is, “Oh, yeah, we’ve listened to municipalities, and they need infrastructure. They need water, sewer, roads.” And you know what? They do. But last year, they weren’t talking about water, sewer and infrastructure. They were talking about, “We need land for houses. We need the greenbelt.” So they wasted a whole year talking about land when, instead of taking development fees away from municipalities, they could have been going a year ago already on what municipalities needed. They wasted a whole year. That’s an example of bad consultation and of having rules in this place that actually sometimes don’t benefit Ontarians.

With that, Speaker, I would like to share my time with the member from Nickel Belt and the member from Niagara Falls.

It appears to.

No, they won’t.

I will be speaking against the changes to petitions. I want to give you an example as to why it is important to read, word for word, a petition. Do I agree with a petition that lasts for 15 minutes? No. Would I agree to a change that says, “You have no more than 90 seconds. You have no more than 60 seconds to present a petition”? Absolutely. But that you cannot read word for word, I don’t agree with that.

I want to give an example that happened in this House on February 20, so the day that we were coming back. That day, a hip hop artist called Bishop Brigante was at Queen’s Park. He had come to Queen’s Park because he is a 45-year-old man that was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in stage 4 and is going through therapy. He had decided that what happened to him should not happen to anybody else. It took him two years before he was able to gain access to the colonoscopy, and he wants rules for access to colonoscopies to change.

There are bodies of evidence that show that it should start earlier than 50 years old, which is the benchmark in Ontario for where you get the colonoscopy. So he took from his experience, and he wrote a petition himself. Is he an expert in health care? Absolutely not, but he is someone with lived experience who now knows full well that, had he had access to a colonoscopy when his symptoms first started and he started to go to the doctor, he would not have waited until stage 4 to start his treatment. His prognosis would be different, and things should change. So he wrote this petition.

The petition is quite simple. It asks for the age limit to be dropped from 50 to 30 if you have symptoms that you have problems with your colon. That’s all that the petition said. It was a normal petition.

But I want to read to you what he said about coming in here. I introduced him, Bishop Brigante. I introduced his wife, Melanie McVey; his dad, Oscar Parra; his friend Atiba Roach, who all came because they wanted to be there when I read his petition. And here’s what he had to say:

“We had been put into this balcony and I had seen this room on the news before, never paid” any attention to it “because I was never into politics, but I remember seeing it and I remember being in there. I was like, oh my goodness, what, where are we? This is like some secret stuff or something, it’s the government, you know what I mean? You just don’t know.

“If you don’t know, it’s very surreal. But again, eye on the prize: What is going to happen here? Let’s wait” and see.

And then I introduced his family.

He says, “People stood up” and clapped and then “France ... read the petition”—and this is where it becomes really meaningful, Speaker. At that moment, “I literally left my body. And I started thinking about the nightmare again, the moment that I was diagnosed with cancer, the fear, the terror, the sadness, the disbelief, the grip that I had on my girl’s hand, holding on for dear life.

“As France was reading the petition, I thought of millions of other people after me that are going to experience that nightmare and I said, ‘Change has to come.’ And every word that France said in that petition reading was so powerful that I started seeing in my mind, the millions dropped down to hundreds of thousands, dropped down to thousands.” It “just kept decreasing, victims of this horrible disease. I envisioned it, it happened in my mind, and then I came back into my body and I sat there, just like, I looked at France and, you know, she thanked me and everything and I was just like, God bless you. And I so believe ... that out-of-body experience of seeing all of those casualties become people who just got to live their lives and the number just dropped so drastically.

“It was the most powerful thing that I’ve ever experienced in my body and it just gave me more purpose.”

I wanted to share that because this is what happens when you read the words of somebody who has really put in a lot of time, effort and energy. When I read his petition, he and his wife had collected over 17,000 signatures on that petition. That petition now stands at over 35,000 signatures.

You have to realize that this man is still going through cancer treatment. He is on his 10th round of chemotherapy—chemotherapy that is just brutally hard when you’re diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer, chemotherapy that lasts for three days in a row, 24 hours. You come out of there with no strength, no ability to do anything, but you keep fighting because your life depends on it. And even in that state of—he could have taken off. He doesn’t. He wanted to fight for other people so that what happened to him does not happen to other people.

They came here to listen to the words that he had written. He could not read it for himself because it’s only MPPs. I read it for him, and it was really powerful for him, for his family. And I can tell you, the minute that it got read in the House, it went from 17,000 to 35,000 signatures. It had meaning. But it also had meaning that I did not have to summarize what he had said. Those were his words—the words of a person who has gone through really tough times because he did not get access to diagnostic tests, a colonoscopy, in time.

Let’s be frank: Nobody gets in line for a colonoscopy. It’s not something—on a scale of zero to 10, how much fun is it to get a colonoscopy? It rates a zero. It’s no fun at all. People don’t volunteer. Ontarians are not going to throw down the doors: “I want a colonoscopy.” No, no, no—none of that. He knows that. He also knows that a lot of people, and I would say a lot of BIPOC—Black, Indigenous, people of colour—are seeing a high rate of colorectal cancer diagnosed at stage 4 because they do not have access.

What this man is trying to do is change this. And what I read into record is basically his words. That I was able to read the words that he had put on a petition, word for word for him, onto the record, in a place that he had never come before—he had never been here before. He did not even know what the “NDP” stood for. He’s not a political activist or anything like this, but somebody who believed that having his words read in the Legislative Assembly had meaning, and now, we are about to take that away.

Had he come to me tomorrow, I would not be able to read his words into the record; I would have to summarize his words into the record. This is wrong. People are allowed to be heard. If some of the petitions are too long, put a time limit on it. We put a time limit on members’ statements, and everybody respects that more or less—90, 92, 93 seconds, and then end of story. Your microphone goes off and it’s finished. If petitions are too long, do the same thing, but don’t change it so that the people who take the time to write down a petition that is meaningful to them, that we would not be able to read their words into the record.

There are not very many chances for people to speak in this House. We have to speak for them. Let us read words that they want us to speak for them. I give the example of Bishop Brigante, a 45-year-old man diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, but I could go through most of the petitions that I read and the same.

I want to talk about Helena Shepherd-Snider. She is the woman who picked up the phone while her husband was having a heart attack and discovered that 911 was not available. She lives in my riding. In a big part of my riding 911 is not available. She is one who wrote the petition that I read into the record many times to make 911 available everywhere. It is meaningful to her that I read her words into the record. She goes out and gets—this petition, same thing—thousands and thousands of names of people who live mainly in northern Ontario where we don’t have access to 911.

Another petition, “Make Highway 144 Safe at Marina Road.” That came from Chantal—I’m not sure I’m allowed to say her last name. That came from Chantal. Same thing—she lives in Onaping Falls. She has seen many accidents. We have had multiple deaths every single year on Highway 144 at Marina Road, where there’s two great big S turns followed by a train track going across. When I read that petition, “Make Highway 144 Safe at Marina Road,” I read the words of the constituents who want to make things better.

To take away that little opportunity for people to have their voices heard at Queen’s Park is wrong. To limit the time, I fully agree. Put a limit of 60 seconds, put a limit of 45 seconds, if you want, on petitions. Put a limit of 90 seconds. Like, I don’t care. But what the member from Peterborough–Kawartha has been doing to read petitions signed by one person that last 17 minutes is disrespectful to all of the people who have written their own petitions, have gone out and gathered signatures from people they know, from their families, their friends, their co-workers and then want to hear their words read at Queen’s Park. Don’t take that away from the people of Ontario. They deserve to be heard.

I recognize the member from Nickel Belt.

Further debate?

I don’t have a lot of time, so I’m going to try and get out as much as I can.

I want to talk about the government’s record on accountability and on their record of limiting dissent and muzzling the voices of the opposition and the people of Ontario. These latest changes to the standing orders represent the latest in a long line of undemocratic changes this government, under this Premier, has made to our system.

First, I want to talk about the government’s changes to our committees. I’ve had the opportunity for the last 10 years, over the course of four terms, to sit on committees. I was also a Vice-Chair. Unfortunately, the current minister decided to take me off that, and then when I got on other committees, he did the same thing. It just happened in the last standing order changes. Then when I sat on committee as an appointee, because one of our members couldn’t go on government agencies, I enjoyed my time researching, making sure I asked very good questions, not embarrassing myself, because it’s part of my role quite frankly. I believe every single MPP should sit on committees and it shouldn’t be up to one individual to take people off. But do you know what happened at that committee? That afternoon, we had another one of these changes to the standing orders, and you know what they did? They took three women off the committees—three women off the committees. It didn’t make any sense to me.

I just want to say to them, I think that all people should have the opportunity to sit on committee and it shouldn’t be up to one person. I listened to him for his hour this morning and he talked about our member who’s going to be the Chair of the new committee once these standing orders are done, and our House leader even mentioned it. The reality is, when you go to committee, it doesn’t matter if you include the independents and a Liberal or the NDP; they have the majority. So every single vote you go to, they are going to win. That’s the way it is. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a bill that you talk about on the greenbelt—as we all know what happened with the greenbelt. It doesn’t matter if it’s Bill 124 or Bill 23, when it comes down to the vote, they always have more than what the Liberals have, the NDP and the independents.

I can relate to it kind of like a hockey game, right. I’m a big sports guy. I love baseball, I love hockey, and I can relate to that. So you to go the hockey game and say, “Oh, the Leafs lost a tough one last night, 1-0.” You go, “Yeah, a good game,” blah, blah. The reality is, they lost.

So it doesn’t matter if you’ve got eight Conservative MPPs on a committee and you decide to have three from the NDP, one from the Liberals and one from the independents; you’re going to lose eight to five. But the moral of that story is what? You still lose, no matter what you do. So changing that isn’t going to change anything.

But what should change is that we should make sure that the way it was before—and I don’t support the Liberals on a lot of things, but the one thing the Liberals never did was take the opposition, meaning the NDP, off committees. They never did it—because I was on governance; I was on estimates. The Liberals never took us off. They said, “What does the NDP want? Who do they want to sit on this committee?” And the reason why you would do that is, some people—I’ll use our financial critic. She’s very good at it. She does a great job. I watched her on TV last night; I was very, very impressed. I’m very proud that she’s part of my caucus. She’s got some talent around that. And there are other people who have different talents. So you try to line the talent up to the committees—who are going to go to the committee, present themselves well, make sure we’re asking fair and just questions.

But no, do you know what they did? The minister decided who sits on committees—it wasn’t the NDP, it wasn’t our leader; it was a Conservative. I want people at home to understand this, because I think it’s very, very important to understand this.

When they say that they’re trying to make sure it’s democratic—it isn’t, when our leader says we want the member from St. Catharines or the member from Niagara Falls on the committee, and then the minister says, “Oh, no, we don’t want them on that committee. They might do the job. They might ask tough questions. They might not agree with the government. So what we’ll do is, we’ll take them off.”

Well, I hate to break it to this party over here, the Conservatives, but in the last election—they talk about a majority government, which they got. We can’t deny that. But the reality is—do you know what they got? They got 18% of the votes that were cast.

Well, this little guy over here from Niagara Falls, who’s five foot nothing—I got 50% of the vote. Do you know why I got that? Because I do my job, and I do it well. And the people who vote for me want me to sit on committees. They want me to come to Queen’s Park and talk about things that are important to us, whether that be the greenbelt—because we saw the fiasco with the greenbelt, where they’re telling us they want to build 1.5 million homes on the greenbelt. We all knew that wasn’t what it was about. The RCMP is going to prove it at some point in time. Or how about Bill 124, where you took away wages and benefits? They want me to go to that committee and talk about the bill and say, “Why are you attacking nurses? Why are you attacking health care workers?” They want me to come here.

That doesn’t mean that I’m going to stand up, when I go to committee, and say, “Hey, thanks for doing Bill 124” or “Thanks for doing Bill 23 and hurting our municipalities right across the province of Ontario.” I’m not going to do that. My job, as opposition, is to question exactly what this government is doing, whether it’s on the budget that was presented yesterday or whether it’s on bills.

And what we have here is a majority government that is not doing that. So what they’re doing is extremely undemocratic. It’s certainly not right for any MPP be taken off of committee.

What really got me going on this, the reason why I wanted to speak today was, the last committee I went to was government agencies—and I think the finance critic was there as well, and I think another member was there as well. That very day, after we did that committee, we had question period, then we all went for lunch; we were having a good time with our colleagues, having a sandwich or whatever. We come with new standing orders by that minister—and what did he do? The person that I replaced for that committee—because the individual was sick that day—was taken off the committee. But he didn’t stop there. It wasn’t good enough. He attacked two more women and took them off their committees. That’s wrong.

That same minister, over and over and over again, stood up in the last Parliament and said, “Do you know that member over there from the NDP? They don’t want to sit on committees. They don’t want to do their job. They don’t care about you.” That was the same thing they said—

One second. Point of order: I recognize the member for Chatham-Kent–Leamington.

I know, and I actually appreciate his comment because I would certainly never do that in the House, even though that same minister wouldn’t allow them to talk on International Women’s Day. But that was not my intention. My intention was to show that three people were taken off the committee. They just happened to be women, I suppose. At the end of the day, that’s a problem.

Or you want to talk about other bills? And I’ve had the privilege of doing this when I sat on the committees before they decided they didn’t want me as a Vice-Chair. They didn’t want me as a Chair. They didn’t want me to sit on committees. And I understand why. I actually take it as a compliment, because I’m doing my job—maybe something that we all should do, quite frankly. You don’t have to agree with how I do it. You don’t have to like how I do it, but that’s the way it is.

But I’ve had the privilege of standing and talking about Working for Workers. I’ve gone to those committees. And in fairness, I listened to it, because there are some things in some of the Working for Workers bills the NDP has supported.

Matter of fact, we’ve supported some of those bills. I supported my colleague Jeff Burch from Niagara Centre when he brought in a bill to make sure that firefighters were covered for cancer, when a captain died in Welland with the firefighters. I supported that. There are other things in the bill that I think they could do a better job on in Working for Workers. And in fairness, guess what I did? I raised those issues.

And some of you say, “Well, what issues did you raise that you got the government so upset?” I talked about deeming. “Well, what’s deeming?” That’s where an injured worker gets deemed as if he could do a job even though the job’s not there, and then they take that money—say he was making $20 an hour; he can now, they say, be a parking attendant for $17 and now his benefit is $3 an hour and it forces him to live in poverty.

Now, I think it’s fair and reasonable for somebody with a labour background to raise that issue during that bill. But if I’m not at committee, because the government doesn’t want me there, I can’t raise that on behalf of injured workers in the province of Ontario who basically have lost everything in some cases. They’ve lost their marriage. They’ve lost their home. They’ve lost their family. It’s one of the biggest injustices that I’ve seen here since I’ve been here for 10 years—and continues to be. Working for Workers would be one way to correct that, I believe.

I talked about when I went there to workers for workers. I talked about Bill 124. Think about that. Bill 23—I talk about all those bills, standing up for workers.

Those poor guys that are delivering our food there that work for Uber Eats. You know they’re working some hours in this province of Ontario for nothing? They’re not getting paid while they’re sitting there waiting for the next call. I’ve been here for only an hour, hour and a half. There’s only been one or two people speak, but we’re all getting paid. Is that right, that somebody’s doing that, when they’re using their own car, they have to pay insurance or risk their lives when they’re driving their bicycles?

I know I have to sit down, so thank you very much.

Point of order.

I look forward to this opportunity to join and, like the member opposite, I am going to talk a little bit about some of the committees and some of the things that they are talking about, some of the things they could take up.

And it’s really interesting to listen to the member opposite because—maybe he has not read the bill, because the very point that he was talking about is the fact that he was allegedly removed from committees. I don’t know; I haven’t followed his career. But I understand that the whole idea of this would be to allow the procedure and House affairs committee to actually appoint and revise members of the committee.

So, when you listen to that member, it sounds like one thing is happening, but in reality, this is exactly what the NDP have asked in the past. They asked to take committee appointments out of the hands of the government, and this absolutely fulfills that request. That’s exactly what’s happening. It’s very hard to have the member not take yes for an answer. I think that the whole idea is that this would be a process that’s no longer led by the government, the appointment of committees, and this would accomplish that by having committee membership be formed in a collaborative process at the committee.

And so I listened intently as he was speaking and tried to figure out what the heck is he talking about when what we’re actually doing, had he read this, is exactly what he was railing against. I’ve always been at a loss when he speaks, so let me, at least, talk a little bit about some of those very committees that he was referring to and the things that happen in those committees.

I like getting called to committees. I don’t get called very often, but when I do go, I like the committee work. I don’t care whether it’s our members, opposition members, independent members who are asking the questions. I love that. I love the opportunity because we’ve got such a stellar record in the province of Ontario to talk about that I can’t wait for any format to get out there and talk about it. I could talk about it at any of the committees that I get called to with my economic development portfolio. I can talk all day—and it’s going to be tough to contain it in 20 minutes, but I could talk all day at the committees about the 700,000 jobs that were created.

I love going to committee. I’ve been to estimates, where I talk about how we got there and I talk about the fact—and I’ve stood in this Legislature and shared this not only in committee, but here in the Legislature day after day, week after week, month after month, and, as it’s turned out to be, year after year, with these growing numbers of jobs that have been created, and we share how it happened. That’s why I like going to these committees. It doesn’t really matter how they’re formed or who’s sitting there. We just like the opportunity to be able to share this great news about the province of Ontario and the turnaround that we’ve seen.

Now, we can never forget that, under the previous government—I sat on that side for six and a half years and shook my head almost every day. I couldn’t understand why they were so anti-business, we lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs. I could not understand how this could happen. I mean, I could see how it happened. I would go to committee and I would talk and I would ask the questions. I remember talking to the Minister of Finance and asking, “How can you let this happen? How can, under your watch, all of these things happen?” I remember sitting with the then Minister of Economic Development from the then government and saying, “You’ve lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs.” I can’t remember how they could answer, but I just remember it was not a very solid answer trying to tell how you lost 300,000.

I could stand here all day and tell you how we gained 700,000 jobs, and that was all, as I said in the last committee that I attended, because we cut the cost of doing business by $8 billion every year. At committee, I stood there and was able to be asked by members and tell them what the answer was.

We reduced the cost of WSIB in Ontario by 50%. They asked, “How did you do that? How did you come up with the number? How were you able to form that?” And we told them: Because there was so much cash in the WSIB—workplace safety insurance. There was so much cash there, it was beyond any financial requirement, any legal requirement. In fact, it was way beyond any moral requirement to have that much cash stashed there. So we reduced the premiums.

We didn’t touch the benefits; they’re still as strong as they’ve always been. But the premiums were reduced by 50%. That’s $2.5 billion in savings to business every single year and a big reason why companies like Ford and GM are doing so strong in their turnover to electric vehicles here in Ontario. We reduced the cost of WSIB for everybody, but it’s a major number to these large employers. They employ 100,000 people in the province of Ontario and that’s a significant savings for those kinds of companies.

At committee, I stood up, and I was able—at the last committee I was at, actually, I was asked by an NDP member about this very topic, and I went on to be able to say to that member that the second thing we did was we reduced the accelerated capital cost allowance. It meant businesses could write off the cost of their new equipment because they’re buying and expanding. They write that off in-year, saving them $1 billion a year. The member did press on these numbers, and I was able to talk about how we got to those numbers and how we reduced the cost of industrial and commercial hydro by 15%—$1.3 billion in savings. I went on and on at the committee and talked about how we got to the $8 billion.

To me, it’s a really valuable opportunity to be able to go to these committees that are formed by, again, all the parties. How they’re going to be formed now is going to be having the procedure and House affairs committee—they will appoint and they will revise the membership of all the other committees. Again, to the member who was talking about how he kept getting removed from committees, the NDP have asked to take committee appointments out of the hands of the government. This fulfills that request.

I will talk a little bit more about the last time I went to committee. I think it was estimates I went to. At estimates, I was asked a question about our trade offices. I was asked that very question the last time I went to estimates. I was able to talk about the fact that we have trade offices all around the world and that our trade offices have attracted almost $11 billion in new investments. Going to that committee was a really good opportunity for the opposition members to learn the fact that 10,000 really good, brand-new, good-paying jobs were created just through the Ontario trade and investment offices that we have around the world. I was able, in fact, to discuss that our Dallas office alone has created close to 120 jobs.

There are four companies I would talk about. Thryv is a new company that opened a regional headquarters in Toronto. This is out of Dallas and our Dallas trade and investment office; a TIO, we call it. ePac Flexible Packaging invested in a new line of equipment in their Mississauga facility. Search Wizards announced a new office in Ontario. And a 3-D company announced a $2.5-million investment to acquire a company in Markham and increase the staff of their engineering in Waterloo. I’m able, at committee, to be able to talk about those kinds of things.

I think it’s really important that the opposition get that opportunity to ask us. This is how it gives us a chance for them to be able to see some of the things that are happening in other offices and, quite frankly, around the world. And it’s a really good opportunity for them to see what’s going on in some of their own communities with some of the major announcements.

We have a regional development program that I discussed at committee. We launched it in 2019. It was a really neat launch in November of 2019. It was in around Oxford county. We had a lot of the regional mayors who came that particular night, and they learned that we were putting $140 million in this regional development program and that part of it will be able to help municipalities build industrial parks, that we’re going to use that money not just for businesses but for the municipalities to build industrial parks. It was a really good opportunity for the opposition to learn about that. I think that’s what you see in these committees—a good two-way discussion that can happen.

Incidentally, out of that $140-million RDP—regional development program—we’ve attracted $1.4 billion in investments; 2,600 jobs have been created in all the ridings. Everybody in this room basically has been touched by one of these four programs that we have.

In fact, if you’re in eastern Ontario, we have the Eastern Ontario Development Fund. There’s the Southwestern Ontario Development Fund. In the north, we have the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund. And in all Ontario, pan-Ontario, including the GTA, we have AMIC, the advanced manufacturing innovation competitiveness stream.

We’re able to talk to these individual members at committee when they say, “What’s happening with this program? How did that money get spent? Where did you get that money? Where did you spend that money?” We’re able to tell them about their own ridings. I have a book here that lists every single dollar that has been issued to all of their ridings, as well. It’s a good opportunity for them to be able to ask me a question about, “How did you come up with the tens of millions of dollars that you invested?”, or in this particular case, $140 million.

I can tell you that in eastern Ontario and southern Ontario, we invested $105 million into 93 companies. That’s almost everybody’s riding of those two funds that have got businesses that were able to grow from it. In fact, that $104 million that we put in leveraged $1 billion in private investment. It created 2,100 jobs, so it was a really exciting day to be able to sit in committee and talk about these things, because we don’t get a good chance to talk about these kinds of things.

The AMIC program that I mentioned is $40 million. We’ve issued about $25 million of it so far in 12 different companies—$290 million, it generated in revenue, and 580 jobs came out of it. That’s the kind of thing that should be understood by the opposition and the independents, and that, you learn in committee when you ask these kinds of questions. So this is important, that we have this opportunity to discuss this, even today.

NOHFC, the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp.: $726 million in 6,000 projects since we were elected—6,000 projects. We looked at every one of those, one by one by one by one by one. It leveraged $2.3 billion in northern Ontario. It’s important to the northern members here to understand what’s happening. We want them to know, so that they can come to us and say, “How can I access some of that in my riding of Thunder Bay or Timiskaming–Cochrane?” They want to be able to know how to do that.

Timiskaming–Cochrane, by the way, has done particularly well under the NOHFC. They’ve got a lot of applications that they do; 9,500 jobs have been created by that. Having this chance today to speak about it is important, but also having the chance at committee is a really, really important opportunity as well.

I can think about some of the stats that we haven’t talked about yet. Ontario is leading the nation in job creation. I think that’s one of those facts that we need to continue to talk about—not only in job creation, where we’ve seen last year 180,000 jobs created last year alone, but we carried it over into January where 24,000 jobs were created in the month of January. So obviously we’re leading the nation. I think that was 93% or 95% of all jobs in Canada were created in Ontario in that particular month, and it happens month after month after month. That included 9,700 construction jobs, so it’s really fascinating to see what’s happening.

You’ve heard me talk about how many more manufacturing jobs were created in Ontario alone last year than every US state combined. That’s really something to be able to talk about, Speaker. And not only that, but there was a stat that I used, I think just today, in the Legislature—I can’t wait to go to committee and talk about this particular number—the foreign direct investment. Again, we have these offices all around the world that we work with. We have created more jobs in Ontario from foreign direct investment—that means companies like Volkswagen investing, or NextStar in Windsor investing—from 2018 to 2023, any year in there, than any Canadian province or any US state. That’s the strength of what’s happening, and I can’t wait to go to committee to be able to be asked about that at estimates. “How did you get there?”—that’s what I want one of them to be able to ask me. That’s why I want them on the committee. I want them to ask me those questions, so I have a chance to be able to say, “Here’s what we did in Ontario. Here’s the strength that we bring to all of the functions that we go to, all of the meetings around the world that we go to.”

I want them to also understand the feeling out there about Ontario, because I think that’s reflected, whether you see it here in the Legislature or you see it in a committee. I went to 15 countries over the course of last year when we had this unprecedented year. Don’t forget, Speaker: We’ve seen $28 billion of new investment in the EV sector alone come to Ontario in the last three years. These are the kinds of things that we want to be able to tell them. I want them to ask, “How did that happen? What did you do? What was said? What did you hear? What are people saying about Ontario?”

It’s fascinating that, last year, all of those countries, no matter where we went, all said two things—really, unprompted, they would say two things. They would say to us, number one, when we see all of the turmoil that’s going on around the world, whether it was post-COVID, we’re out of COVID, we’re not quite out of COVID—all of the turmoil that that has created. And then we look at Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine—this was before the Israel war right now. This was all before that, because I didn’t travel in November or December after that outbreak. But they would say to us, in all of this turmoil, the supply chain interruptions, questions about China interrupting the supply chain, all of the turmoil, all of this trouble—they look across the ocean and they see this sea of calm in Ontario. And they all offer this: It’s stable. It’s reliable. It’s dependable. It’s almost boring, in a good way, which is good. When you’re in this business, that’s a good thing to have, that there’s no surprises, that you can count on everything in Ontario. The second thing they said is that it was safe. Ontario is safe. We heard that universally.

So I’m eager to go to the next committee, to have the opposition ask us those kinds of questions and say, “Tell us.” On the next deal that we land, I want them to have that opportunity to ask us about the deal, and the next deal and the deal after that—because there are going to be more deals.

I remember going to France early in 2019 and meeting with Sanofi—brand new in this role, meeting with them, talking about all of the good things about Ontario. A year or so later, we landed a billion and a half dollars. It was our first big deal that we did as the government. I want to go to committee and share that excitement. And they should be proud, too, that we, collectively, the people of Ontario, landed these remarkable companies like Sanofi—a billion and a half investment. It turned out to be $3 billion in investment in the life sciences sector in three years; tens of billions in tech investments in the last three years; and, as I’ve said, $28 billion in the auto sector alone in the last three years.

I can’t wait for this year to unfold. We’ve already been to a few countries this year. We’ve already got some good deals packaged that we’re hoping we’ll be able to roll out. That’s the kind of thing. I want to stand in front of any committee they want and be able to say, “Look at what we’ve done. Look at what we’ve been able to achieve by working together.” That’s the beauty of our system that we have.

I thank you for this opportunity to be able to share my thoughts for 20 minutes.

Further debate?

I’m pleased to stand in this House and add what I hope are some thoughtful comments to this debate about the standing orders. For the folks playing along at home, the standing orders are the rules of this space and place. They’re the rules of the game. As we heard the government House leader this morning talk about, the fact that they have been mostly unchanged for a very long time—that this government, this government House leader made a lot of changes in a short period of time, as he put it, to modernize or whatnot, maybe to make it in the image of the government in this space; sometimes to frustrate the opposition.

But here we stand with a series of changes. Some of them are kind of housekeeping and not super relevant, and others are more consequential. I would say that some of them are highly problematic, and others, I’m not exactly what they will mean for this place, but we’ll talk a little bit about that.

The standing orders feel a little bit dry if people are tuning in to debate. It’s not an issue like health care, it isn’t something going on in our communities, but it is how we conduct ourselves in this room. It’s the rules that we play by. How many minutes for this, or how we’re allowed to table a bill, and all of that kind of stuff.

But it does still matter to the outside world in a few different aspects. One of them I’m going to talk about because this is in the sights of the government today. The government is making changes to petitions and how we’re allowed to share petitions in this space. I fundamentally have a problem with this, and I’ll tell you why.

There are only a handful of ways that the public can have their voice heard in this room—their actual voice. We represent their issues, we tell stories, and Lord knows I get lots of letters and I do well to share those letters in this space. But people come to committee and they present, and another way that they have their voices and their issues raised in this space is through petitions.

Petitions have a format. The government is taking away that we don’t have to get them certified. Okay, fine, whatever, but we still want them to be in order in the House. And it is a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario—not to the government, but to the whole Legislative Assembly of Ontario. That’s how it starts. It is to all of us, because regardless of what colour tie you have or what your politics are, we’re all represented to serve the members of our community.

In fact, when a member from your community comes to you and says, “I have a petition I want you to take to the Legislature,” sometimes, individually, we don’t love that petition. I’m sure the government members don’t love a lot of them, because they can be quite critical, or they raise ideas for solutions that may or may not be what the government wants to do or is planning to do.

And sometimes, they come to me as an opposition member and maybe, ideologically, I don’t love it, but we still are obligated and have the responsibility to bring them to this place and table it so that it gets before the government. Some of them, we do agree with as members, and we get up in this room and we read it into the Legislature.

And in that moment, the people who have written a petition in their words—“Whereas this is a problem,” and “Whereas this is happening,” and “Whereas this is a challenge that we’re seeing in our agency, in our community, in our family,” and “Whereas all these things are true, this is what we’re asking for.”

Speaker, to not be allowed to share the reasons for a petition, to not be allowed to share the “whereas-es,” as they’re called, but the rationale for the ask in this room, on the record, is really problematic.

I will admit, I have sat here, and I’ve listened to petitions that I know make the government members squirm. I remember the minister—hold on. The minister that just spoke: the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade, the member from Nipissing. I know that he was here as an opposition member for a while, and I’m willing to bet, if I checked Hansard, that there would be petitions that that member read petitioning the then government on specific issues.

It’s interesting, because there are government members in here, and some of them were in this space, kind of standing in this area. I see another member in the under-press who probably remembers taking up space on this side. There are those who served in opposition and are now government and know darn well that those petitions can come from their communities and that they matter to individuals. Then there’s a whole whack of shiny new government members who have never had the pleasure of serving in opposition—and I look forward for you to when you get to, by the way.

But I think, fundamentally, that saying we cannot share the voices of our communities is a problem. The member from Nickel Belt, who reads petitions all the time, collects them from her community, is amazing about that—even she was saying, “Fine, go ahead and shorten it, but don’t make me have to change the words of real people.”

Now, there’s a member who has been here three days and reading a petition that looks like a Santa list. As he read it, he said, “I want to thank Sally in my office for the work on this.” We’re not supposed to have our staff or ourselves write those petitions. It happens that we help people, we guide them. We might offer thoughtful suggestions. Let’s be real, there are issues that we all want to bring up in this House. But to take up that kind of time and block people from participating—if I’m only allowed to summarize petitions, then careful what you wish for, because I may get up and say, “Here’s a petition brought forward by this group and it’s called this,” and my summary may be, “And they think that what you’re doing is garbage and problematic and harmful.” That may be what you get because it didn’t explicitly say that I can’t.

My point is that silencing people in the province of Ontario is wrong.

Interjection: It’s kind of undemocratic.

It is kind of undemocratic. It is more than “kind of.”

So I would say that we should retain the voices of Ontarians in this Legislature, no matter how uncomfortable it makes individual government members. When I get up and I read the 413 petition, I know you’re mad at me and it gives you something to work with, but still, it has come to me as the critic for transportation from folks who have opinions. Why are they not allowed to share it?

If the government House leader and the government wants to modernize the petitions process—Ottawa. Some of them have heard of Ottawa. Some of them have been to Ottawa. Some of them think that they do things well there. In Ottawa, they have an online petition submission route as well, and here, we don’t. And I have no problem with having an in-paper, original-signature petition, but we’re not modern, kids.

There are opportunities, and we can talk about that, but this one, it just seems kind of that autocratic “this is how it will be,” and there’s no discussion, which is a problem.

Speaker, I also want to take the opportunity and raise that in these standing order changes, there are a lot of changes being put before the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. I have personal interest in that because I have the privilege of serving in that role as the committee Chair. And so I guess I have a lot of questions that—when this comes before the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, all of those changes, I’m wondering, logistically, what that will mean in terms of workload, in terms of responsibility, in terms of process. Because now we’ve got things like deciding a fee structure for private bills, whether $150, which I think it is currently, is too much, too little—I have no idea. I’m looking at this and I have no idea where this has come from. Has someone said it’s too much money, too little money?

So I don’t know where these changes are coming from, because certainly this is the first time I’ve seen it. The committee will have to figure out that sort of thing, and I would say that that’s a little bit in the weeds. That’s not necessarily a contentious thing; it’s just new.

But the committee deciding the membership of other committees, with the exception of its own committee—I think it’s interesting. The member from Timiskaming–Cochrane raised that it appears to move the responsibility for that to the committee. But, Speaker, as Chair—it’s a weird thing. It’s this non-partisan, kind of nebulous role that you’re maybe a referee sometimes. You’re not a member of the committee. You’re counted as a member of the committee, though. If there are seven government members and two NDP members, and one of them is the committee Chair, like in public accounts, that member is not allowed to vote, that member is not allowed to have a dissenting opinion, but they count as a member. There’s lots of stuff I’d like to talk about with committee structure, but I don’t believe for a second that, in reality, our committee is going to necessarily be able to make those decisions.

So I’m interested in the process, to know how people can be assured that the committee is able to work separate and apart from the Premier’s office. The PA to the Minister of Legislative Affairs sits on our committee. He’s a nice guy, and everything’s working well and we’re all getting along, but personally—and since the government House leader pointed out that I am “fiercely independent”—my mother used to say that I was so fierce. I think she was mocking me. Then the government House leader calls me fiercely independent. I don’t know if he’s mocking me or it’s just his assessment of me.

But I’m not convinced that I’m fiercely independent as a committee Chair. I’m pretty sure that I serve at the pleasure of the committee, and the committee serves at the pleasure of the government House leader, or the Premier or whoever else is making the decisions that get passed into any committee—not just this committee, all of them. The decisions that come in on a Post-it Note—all government members just nod and then vote that way, and turn back to their cellphones; that’s what it looks like. Not so much in our committee, so I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful that maybe there will be a process that can better reflect the skills and expertise of folks in this room in terms of the committee makeup.

Speaker, I will leave it there. I think it will be some interesting work to talk about what else in this building might require improvement. But I don’t think for a second that I actually get to be fiercely independent—though I’ll try. I’ll try.

With that, thank you, Speaker.

I’d like to say I’m pleased to rise today and speak to motion 24. I do have to say that this morning, when I first saw it, it got me quite exercised—and maybe I needed an exorcism. I’m not quite as exercised right now, but I’m still, I think, angry about it. But I’m going to get into that later, because I took a look at this, and I’m going to start with the stuff that I think is okay, because not everything can be all bad.

Ministerial statements: That change to eight minutes is reasonable. I think we can work with our colleagues, like we work with the independent colleagues here. That’s a reasonable thing. That will avoid all those unanimous consents and the unfortunate misunderstandings that come from some unanimous consents. I think that one of those misunderstandings is what brought us here today—a misunderstanding over unanimous consent—so I think that’s good.

I also want to say, Speaker, that I’ll be sharing my time with the member from Kingston and the Islands.

Now, late shows: It’s kind of meh. For late shows, anybody can answer a question. Well, the reality is that anybody can read the speech that they’ve been handed. To be fair, that’s what happens right now. It’s not a significant change. I’m not going to lose sleep over it.

I did have the pleasure of having the Attorney General here for a late show. I really do appreciate it when ministers show up, when they actually answer the question and we have a debate, but the reality is that the changes to late shows—it’s meh. It’s not going to make any difference. The reality is, they’re reading a speech; maybe it came from their office or maybe it came from the minister’s office. It probably came from the corner office, so what’s the difference?

Now, petitions: Petitions are 15 minutes a day—15 minutes a day—that the people get to have their say. They petition us. It’s their opportunity—15 minutes. There are challenges with petitions. I’ve seen some long petitions, and everybody is guilty of it. But there should be an opportunity for us to come together here and say, “Maybe we can figure this out,” so no one is actually taking too much time and not giving other people time.

What has been happening here this week with petitions—I know they’re trying to make a point. It’s silly. Do it once. It’s silly to do it the rest of the time. It’s overkill. It had to be embarrassing for the member. I would not make a member of our caucus do that. Maybe other people think that’s okay. It’s actually not our time. It’s not our time, and maybe that’s a thing we have to underscore: It’s the people’s time—15 minutes. How come we can’t just find a way to agree on 15 minutes?

Now, the part that’s got me exorcised, the part that’s got me really angry—and there are a few people here who were here this morning and know how angry I was. They also know how hard it is to make me angry. I’ve calmed down, but I’m still angry. I’m just not as angry as I was this morning. Ask my office staff. In the 42nd Parliament, we found a way to work together. We had four questions over here. Do you know what? I think that would be a reasonable thing for us to get back to. There are 16 independents; there are almost as many as at the end of the last Legislature. And I’m sure the Premier is going to give us more members, because he’s pretty good at doing that on a regular basis. The simple right for us to be on committee is important; the ability for us to sub in is important. That’s where the business of government is. That’s where we try to make things better. And to take that away from us, to take that away from all the independents—the Greens, the Conservative independents and the independent independents—is wrong. It’s just simply wrong.

We’re all supposed to be excited because there’s a change, bringing it to the committee of the interior—the committee of the interior is going to decide. I know the Chair is not very happy about it.

The reality is—who controls the committee? It’s the government House leader and the corner office. Shocking.

I appreciate it. It’s like putting lipstick on a pig.

At the end of the day, is it going to make a big difference? No, because the government House leader already controls that. He might argue that he’s planning for a minority government, and if that was the case—that he was thinking about a minority government and making sure that it would work in a minority government—then that would be a good thing. But as far as when there’s a majority government, it’s just the same stuff again, more of the same.

I’d like to put forward an amendment. Speaker, I move that the motion be amended as follows:

By deleting everything from “Standing order 115(b)” to “Standing order 115(f) is deleted” inclusive; and

By inserting the following: “Standing order 35(g) is amended by adding, ‘In addition to the Speaker’s allotment of questions to independent members under this standing order, the Speaker may also allot to independent members the slots that would otherwise be the third and fifth questions allotted to government members.’”

I know I’m sharing my time with the member for Kingston and the Islands, but, Speaker, I would just like to move adjournment of debate.

Anyway, I’m going to cede the floor to my colleague—yes, you can all leave. That was the signal, folks. Do you want to go? Go. I’m not that exciting—

Interjection: Down goes Fraser.

Okay, come on. Keep it going.

So I think I’ve said enough about what’s good and really not so good about these changes. I’d like to give some time to my colleague from Kingston and the Islands to say a few words. You all have a good night.

Procedure and House affairs.

What?