Good morning, everyone. I appreciate the privilege to be able to stand here in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to comment on the motion to change the rules that govern the legislative process and the rights of members of the House, among other things.

Changes to standing orders have an impact on members, and a motion to change the rules should be an opportunity to improve the way we function here in this House. Now, with the changes that are being proposed in this motion, I do have some important concerns that I’m here to share this morning.

For one thing, I will say, what a missed opportunity to make things less acrimonious in here by working together on procedural changes instead of being forced to react to what is being decided by the government alone. Because that’s what I did—that’s what I did when I was asked by a reporter what I thought about the proposed changes, because we didn’t know they were coming, and we were not asked to provide any input whatsoever. So, when government drafts bills, they consult with stakeholders. And when government drafts changes to the standing orders, we, the members of this House, are the stakeholders. And I believe that we should be consulted in the process.

I would also like to respond to the government House leader’s comment about my ability to be an impartial presiding officer in this place because I reacted to his motion in a political manner. First of all, my role as House leader for my caucus requires me to defend and protect their rights to be able to do their job in this House to the fullest extent possible, just like other officers make political statements when sitting in their seat or outside this House, as members of their own party. Second, I believe that I have proven, since I have been appointed third Deputy Speaker, that when I am in that chair, I wear no colours other than the black and white of the uniform, going as far as allowing our then interim leader to miss his late show when it could have been easy for me, sitting in that chair, to give him a quick text—but no, I figured it was not my place to do that, because I take my role seriously.

So, going back to the motion itself, the government claims that it is fixing some of the complaints the independent members were expressing; namely, for not being able to respond to ministerial statements. In fact, I can appreciate that the government House leader got tired of having the ungracious task of saying no to our constant and numerous unanimous consent requests. Through 19 days of sitting after we came back in February, we rose 13 times to ask permission to speak, and the government granted it three times.

Now, those three times were not real consent. One was for International Women’s Day, when the government had to reverse its refusal following significant public backlash. I think we can all remember that time. There was another one, for Black History Month, which was granted to us—and I think, or suspect, that maybe the government House leader might have been distracted and just omitted to say no. The third one was actually almost an insult, granting us consent to speak to a PMB knowing it wouldn’t take place because the member was sick and wouldn’t be there to debate it anyway. I will say that the art of mockery in this House has been quite elevated, and I find it is quite a shame.

There are 16 independent members, and our requests for equitable privileges are not unreasonable and are not being met in any way in this motion. Here are the simple things we are regularly being denied when we ask:

—sharing five minutes to speak to private members’ public business—not adding more time—just being able to share that five minutes so we can have more people express their support or non-support;

—having eight minutes to speak during an opposition day motion—that’s out of a two-hour debate—but, no, that’s not acceptable;

—sharing five minutes to respond to ministerial statements; and

—having more questions during question period and, then, the ability to manage them with flexibility.

These repeated requests are not addressed in this motion that proposed the changes to the standing orders. In fact, the independent members are being even further penalized by these changes. The change that would allow us to respond to ministerial statements considers that, out of the eight minutes allocated to the NDP and the independent members together, we may get three minutes or two minutes or maybe less, because once everyone is done applauding the member who just finished speaking—because that’s usually what happens during responses to ministerial statements—the clock is still running and then it will take a while before the remaining time is handed over to the independents. That’s instead of the firm five minutes we’ve been asking for. So not a real win. But I’m sure the government House leader is expecting us to say thank you, and my colleague from Ottawa South already did that during his debate time.

The other shortfall we are facing is our ability to participate in committee. Not only our automatic right to be appointed as a member of a committee would be removed, to now be at the discretion of the procedure and House affairs committee, dominated by government members, but the motion would also remove the ability of the independent members to substitute for one another on a committee. I mean, people need to understand—and I know, it’s us, we’re nine—it’s challenging enough for us to cover all the important stuff, and if we can’t have the flexibility to cover for one another, it simply steals our ability to participate fully, to move motions or vote on amendments as an important way to ensure that the voices of our constituents are heard throughout the legislative process. I’m thinking specifically, as an example, of the budget consultations by the finance committee that travelled the province. The substitutions we were able to make allowed us to hear from our own communities, something we will likely not be able to do again.

Now, the government House leader mentioned something interesting that exists in the current standing orders that would seem to give more speaking time to independent members. He was referring to standing order 38(b). The government House leader stated, “We created more opportunity for debate in the Legislature by adding a 30-minute report stage when a bill is reported back from committee. What does that mean? Why would any government that has passed a bill add a provision in the standing orders that allows for more debate on a bill that just came out of committee? Why would any sane government with a massive majority, both in the last Parliament and in this Parliament, add this provision? Why did we add the provision? Because it would allow the independents, who don’t necessarily serve on the committee, to have a debate and talk about the issues that they were not able to participate in a committee on and raise that here in the House.”

Now, that may sound like we, the independent members, really haven’t been clever enough to take advantage of this provision. However, the challenge with this provision is that 12 members need to stand up for that 30-minute debate to kick in, and without knowing when a particular bill might be reported back from committee, anyone can see how unreasonable it would be to expect every day to have 12 members ready to stand up. Sometimes there is hardly that number of members total in the House when reports by committees is called during afternoon routine business.

Just a brief word on petitions, just to say what my colleague from Ottawa South has already mentioned—disagreement with the new formula proposed. I also agree with the NDP that 15 minutes per day to hear from our communities on why we’re asking something shouldn’t be too much to ask.

Now, the last time we debated this motion, my colleagues brought forward some amendments. The sub-amendments would direct the Speaker to recognize the independent members during question period for four questions per day, each followed by one supplementary. Currently, independent members only have one or two questions per day, and we are constrained as each member is only permitted to ask one question for eight sitting days. So if someone is sick or cannot be there to do their question for any reason, another member cannot always simply step in and take their place. In contrast, the Conservatives usually have five or six questions per day to which it would not be a problem if these slots were used by members to get real answers for Ontarians and hold the government to account. My colleague from Ottawa South moved that amendment to allow the independent members more questions, and he said, “It would relieve the burden on government members to ask another carbon tax question.” I know it sounds really funny—and my colleague from Ottawa South is a funny and likeable guy, I’m sure you will agree—but the joke is actually not that funny.

Should question period be about pinning the fault of our weaknesses in our responsibilities to Ontarians on another level of government? In the UK Parliament, question time is an opportunity for MPs and members of the House of Lords to question government ministers about matters for which they are responsible.

In the House of Commons, any member can ask a question, although the time is set aside almost exclusively for the opposition parties to confront the government and hold it accountable for its actions and to highlight the perceived inadequacies of the government. It is that part of the parliamentary day where the government is held accountable for its administrative policies and the conduct of its ministers, both individually and collectively—and this is lifted directly from the House of Commons website.

Question period, formally called oral questions, is an important method of ensuring that the government answers to the people, represented by the opposition parties, and is held accountable for its actions. That’s according to the Canadian Encyclopedia.

So this proposed amendment by my colleague from Ottawa South would help in returning question period to what it should be and essentially returning things to the way they were before the 2022 election. It would strengthen our parliamentary democracy and improve government accountability.

Again, it’s not an unreasonable request. The government was willing to implement this change in the last Parliament, and we have even more independent members now than we did then.

So I will conclude by repeating my offer to work with both government House leader and the opposition House leader if they are interested in making things better around here. There are 16 independent members, and I believe they deserve a voice at the table. I thank you for your time, Mr. Speaker.