Let me just thank the deputy government House leader for introducing this latest round of standing order changes, which I think continue to build on the hard work that we are doing to modernize how the assembly works.

Madam Speaker, you know that this government has been seized with ensuring that the standing orders reflect a 21st-century Legislative Assembly and the work that all members are expected to do.

One of the hallmarks, of course, of standing orders is that they are a living, breathing document that is to change in time so that we can reflect modern circumstances within an assembly.

For far too long in this place, the standing orders remained unchanged, and that certainly was the case prior to us coming into government. In fact, I’ve heard a number of members on both sides of the House remark at the speed and the number of changes to the standing orders that have occurred during our time of office, and that there were probably more standing order changes that have occurred under the last number of years than happened at any time outside of the first years since Confederation, when this place was being organized. I take great pride in having accomplished that; I think it is one of the greatest achievements that this government has made. It is part of ensuring that our democracy works better.

I have no illusion that all members will always be happy with the changes to the standing orders that we have brought forward, but I am very, very comfortable in asserting and challenging anybody who would counter that the changes that we have made and the changes that we are making will not make this a better, more representative Parliament for all parliamentarians.

I just want to take a brief moment, because I think it is quite important for us to look back at some of the other standing order changes that we have made, and I want to do this in the context of what I am sure will be a barrage of criticism that you constantly get when you do these things; it’s what you always hear. If a government brings something forward, you’re going to get the barrage of criticism. But the hallmark of good government, the hallmark of good legislation, is to really fundamentally see, in the absence of the government, what would the other parties do differently? What would they change from what you brought forward?

In that context, I want to look over some of the items that we have done on the standing orders. I have a lot of time, so I’m sure you’ll permit me to reflect back on some of these things.

Back in 2019, some of the initial changes that we brought on—you won’t remember, Madam Speaker, because you weren’t elected at that time, and, frankly, it’s good that you don’t remember these, because, in fact, our Legislature, I think, was not as democratic a place as it is today because of these changes. So those members elected in 2022 will have a much different Legislative Assembly than those who were elected in 2018.

But let me go over some of the changes. In 2019, a modification in the daily order of business to increase the profile of members’ statements by moving them from the afternoon to the morning, before question period: Now, that might seem like a little thing, but members will know, at 1 o’clock or 3 o’clock, when we’d come into the place and do members’ statements, the chamber is completely empty. Members are usually at committee meetings. It is not the time of day when the galleries are full. And we decided to elevate members’ statements—to do it at a time when the chamber is full, when galleries are full and when most of the media are here watching and when most of the attention of Ontarians is faced on question period. We would do members’ statements before question period. I ask very sincerely to members opposite, would that be something that they would remove from a future standing order change if they ever got the opportunity to do it?

You know how proud I am of being a Canadian. We returned the royal anthem to the once-a-month singing, when we do our national anthem. We returned the royal anthem. I’m a very proud monarchist and was very, very happy that we were able to do that.

We explicitly permitted—imagine this, Madam Speaker; I know you will find this amazing—the use of laptops, tablets and smart phones in a non-disruptive manner in the chamber. Imagine, a 21st-century Legislature did not allow members to use your smart phones, your laptops, your iPads in the daily functioning of your business, but that was something that was in the rules in this place. Would the members opposite remove that standing order? I highly doubt that they would, Madam Speaker.

We outlined the format for introduction of visitors in the chamber. Members will know it still goes on a little bit longer, but members will know that that would go on for a very, very, very long period of time, and members would be making speeches as opposed to introducing the visitors. So we did that. I doubt that they would change that.

We eliminated the need for a minister to verbally refer a question to a colleague during question period, which is the practice in other Canadian Legislatures—again, you will not remember, Madam Speaker, because you were elected in 2022—and we still have it. Every day a question comes, and 99% of the questions go to the Premier. Under the previous system, the Premier would have to get up in his place and refer the question to the appropriate minister, which actually kills time and means less questions for the opposition to have, and ultimately, the appropriate minister would also answer the question anyway. So it gave more time to the opposition, and it was a procedure that was used in no other Legislature in Canada and, frankly, no other Western parliamentary democracy.

We allowed the electronic distribution of background materials to reports and sessional papers that are tabled in the Legislature. Imagine that before we made this change, you were not able to electronically distribute these documents. Is this something that the opposition will take away if they ever get the opportunity to serve on this side of the House? I doubt it.

Now, we know for sure that the Liberals, the independent Liberals, who have systematically refused to accept the verdict of the people of the province of Ontario, have—

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.