You hear the member opposite hollering and screaming about it, and she has every right to do that because it was—

Now, we’re changing the standing orders to allow for the opposition to split their time, eight minutes guaranteed—three minutes. We’ll come away, and we will put it on for the independents in proportion to the size of their caucus. They don’t need to ask for permission anymore. It is automatic. It’s guaranteed. The opposition and the independents will work together to have their time on any ministerial statement.

As you know, the standing orders, as they have been for a very, very, very long time, give the official opposition five minutes, and we’re suggesting that an additional three minutes be added on so that the independent members can have that time. Nobody’s ever suggested any other changes to it, so we’re adding on time for the opposition to speak to a ministerial statement.

Now, some have suggested that adding that amount of time for a small group of independents is too much time, given the size of the official opposition in comparison—I mean, the official opposition is twice the size. Some have suggested it’s too much time. But what we’re allowing them to do is, the clock will be extended to eight minutes with the lead-off happening by the official opposition. They can extend that time up to eight minutes.

Again, this never happened before, right? As I said, as independents, you need to ask for permission from the government to reply. Now again, not on an opposition day motion because, you will remember, as I said—I want to clarify: not on opposition day motion, because on an opposition day motion, the independents never had the right to reply until we made that change that gave them the guarantee to reply. This is on a ministerial statement now, right? So we’re now adding time, taking away time and adding it so that all members can participate in a ministerial statement without having to ask for permission.

Well, what does the independent member from Haldimand say. I can read the whole quote. This is what she said:

“I think people would be shocked if the House leader has the ability to tinker with these standing orders to the degree that is occurring. We are all elected officials who should have the same parliamentary privilege. And this erosion of parliamentary privilege is an erosion of democracy, in my opinion.... They’re punting responsibility over to the NDP to ... wedge the NDP against the independent members. And you know, I believe that the NDP will treat us independent members fairly.”

So the independent member is now not worried about us as we worried about the NDP not giving them the time to speak. The independents would still rather ask me for permission than share an extended amount of time with—now, I know the opposition House leader. I know him. We work very, very well together. He’s a very gracious and good human being, a wonderful parliamentarian, and I think that the opposition will be able to work together with this extended amount of time. I reject the member for Haldimand who insists that she ask me for permission to speak in this place. It’s not the way it should be. It should be guaranteed in the standing orders, and that is what this change is going to do. It’s part of this continuing bipartisan nature of working together, right? We can do that, and we will do it.

Now, we’re going even further. We’re allowing the procedure and House affairs committee to appoint and revise the membership of other committees. Now, this is a new committee, procedure and House affairs, that was brought together—as you know, we’re in the process of decant of this building. We’re looking for another place to exercise democracy while this building is closed down and undergoing an expensive renovation. So we created a new committee called the procedure and House affairs committee, which is a very powerful committee of this place, to be fair. We didn’t take the chairmanship on ourselves; just so members will remember, we actually insisted in the standing orders that the Chair of this committee be from the official opposition. We thought that helps ensure accountability, especially in the process of decant.

But what we’re saying is that the membership of committees will come from the procedure and House affairs committee. Presently, these motions, as you will know, occupy House time. The proposal would see that the House appoint the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs and empower the committee to appoint other committees and their memberships. It’s a practice that is already in use in the House of Commons. It works very well there, and we know that it will work here.

This is in reflection of comments made by the NDP. Again, in the spirit of working together and listening to them, they did ask that appointments to committees be taken out of the government’s hands because, again, Madam Speaker, in this place, the House leader can get up and appoint whoever he wants—or she wants, whoever the House leader is—to any committee that they feel. It takes up government time; it takes up the time of the government, but I can get up in my place after question period today and I can move anybody to any committee that I pleasantly feel without any regard. Well, now that will happen through the procedure and House affairs committee, where members from all parties will have the opportunity to comment and have a role.

I do have a quote here from that debate on how important it was to remove the House leader. It was a very impassioned speech. It was a great speech, to be honest with you. I enjoyed it a lot. But I’m not going to read the quote from the member because I think the member recalls how impassioned he was that it not be just the House leader that appoints people to committee. So I’m fulfilling the demands of the opposition, yet again working in a bipartisan fashion; we’re doing that.

I’m also going to allow, if the House approves, substitutions on committees at any time and not just for 30 minutes. This just reflects the nature of what this place is, how busy members are, the fact that we are going to be approaching a decant at some point in time, that members will be scattered a bit more than they are right now. Some times, just through no fault of their own, members aren’t there and need to be replaced. If you don’t do it in the first 30 minutes, well, then everything changes.

Now look, Madam Speaker, to be honest, the reality is that, on committees today, Conservatives have an overwhelming majority—overwhelming majority. You remember, Madam Speaker, that, again, we went the distance here and we said, although we have such an overwhelming mandate from the people, in order to make committees work better, we did a motion in this House and unilaterally provided more opposition members to our committees. We thought that was important, because in committees, this place would have had one NDP member, eight or nine Conservative members, and that’s not reflective of how a committee should be. So we unilaterally gave more opposition members to be on committees. We did that. We thought it was important to do back then, and I’m very proud that we did that.

We’re also making changes to the standing orders that would forbid the verbatim reading of text of a petition, Madam Speaker. I just think that this is a loophole that needs to be closed. Petitions are one of the most important things that we do here. It is a very, very important thing that we do here—petitions. I know members collect petitions and they want to bring them and present them to the House. Many table them. Some get up in their place and make a statement on them. But they should not be allowed to be used as a 15-minute speech for a member, because then you frustrate the ability to actually present petitions. So the loophole that we are closing is allowing members to still, obviously, rise and talk about a petition—a petition, for instance, could be, “I’m very upset that the previous Liberal government closed over 600 schools, predominantly in rural Ontario, destroying the fabric of the nature, and I’m presenting this petition,” and then you sit down, as opposed to going on for 15 minutes about all of the bad things that the Liberals did in their time in government. Everybody knows that; they don’t need to be refreshed on that. But we need more time to present petitions. There are some members here who present a lot of petitions. They do a lot of very good work, and this just closes that loophole.

We’re also sending more power, again, to the procedure and House affairs committee to amend private bills and the fees that were charged on private bills. This is a small thing, but I think it’s an important update. I know all members know, but for the masses watching at home: Private bills are very small bills that, if a corporation needs to be revived, somebody can petition the House and we would revive that corporation. The fees haven’t been changed to do that since 1929. In 1868, the fee was $60. The fee was increased to $100, and in 1929, the fee was at $150, and here we stand today. It’s $150 to have that done. We are going to be asking the procedure and House affairs committee to review and come back with a fee framework that more closely aligns with today’s reality. To be clear, these private bills are an important part—but there is a substantial amount of work that goes, not only by parliamentarians, but by officials who review these private bills; legislative counsel, which has to review all of these bills. We are going to be asking the procedure and House affairs committee to review that for us and come back with a new framework that works and then to be responsible for looking at that framework for us, as a Legislature, whenever it is required.

We’re also, of course, making changes that will ensure that when committees are struck, as I said, membership of those committees will go to the procedure and House affairs committee.

I know the independent Liberals are going to be suggesting that we’re removing their ability to serve on committees. We’re removing the ability, yes, for them to automatically serve on committees. We’re putting it in the hands of the procedure and House affairs committee to decide what committees they should serve on or if they should serve on committees. This is consistent with every other Western parliamentary democracy.

Remember that we also added the ability for reports from committees to be debated in this place for 30 minutes, at any time when they’re reported back. So not only do we give more questions to independents, not only do we give them the right to serve on committees, unlike other jurisdictions, not only have we made them Chairs and Vice-Chairs—not only have we put them in the seat—but we have also added a provision that allows for debate in this House.

This is what the Liberal independent House leader said—I’ll read the quote entirely, and I’ll tell you why I’m going to get to it. So—I think I’ve read it once, but I’m going to read it again: “Once again, the government has demonstrated it is committed to silencing the voices of 16 members in the Legislature. Worst of all, these changes were put forward without any consultation at all with the independent members, despite many offers to work with them to make reasonable changes. The independent members represent more than 1.8 million people. Ontarians deserve to have their duly elected representatives empowered to participate in every aspect of the Legislature.”

Madam Speaker, that member also serves as a presiding officer in this place, and I think that is a very difficult position for that member to be in. This is a presiding officer who has made a decision on a standing order, on changes that this House has not yet fully debated or passed, which by its nature will call into question any rulings that person makes when sitting in that chair. That is certainly something that that independent caucus is going to have to look at.

Moreover, we have a situation where this House now will have the opportunity to reflect on an additional series of standing order changes that I believe will make this place a more accountable Legislature, that will provide more opportunity for members to participate in debate, which grow and make it even, as I said, more democratic—