It’s a pleasure to join this discussion today on Bill 46, An Act to enact one Act and amend various other Acts. It’s the first red tape bill that our new Minister of Red Tape Reduction has brought forward, but I doubt very much that it will be the last, because it is something that we are absolutely seized on, on this side of the House.

And it didn’t start here. I’ve been around long enough to remember when former Premier Mike Harris was elected in 1995. He saw a province that had been governed by the party on the other side here for five years, and saw the absolute growth in red tape in the province of Ontario and what a constricting effect it was having on businesses and people in the province of Ontario.

I know they might get upset with me here, but socialists love red tape and bureaucracy. They absolutely love it. I’m not sure how they’re going to vote on this bill, but I’m sure they’re kind of conflicted because the people out there, they get it. Government is too big. It stands in the way of progress. Every time you talk to somebody on the street and you ask them, “How is this going?”—it could be their project to build a new home, it could be a project to build something in the community, it could be a public institution that’s going to be built in the community—the first thing they’ll say is, “I can’t believe the amount of regulations we’ve got to go through to get that done. It’s absolutely ridiculous.” You talk about other jurisdictions that get things done in a quarter of the time.

This bill is not going to fix all of it, but it does speak to the philosophy and the belief of this government and its members that we can do better. We can make Ontario much better by getting on with moving forward and not standing in the way.

I do want to appreciate the Oscar Wilde quote from the member for Kitchener South–Hespeler earlier today—I don’t have it in front of me—that the bureaucracy is expanding to serve the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. It may not be exactly the quote, but it certainly paraphrases it. That’s what happens as governments get bigger and bigger and bigger. The bureaucracy becomes more and more unwieldy, and the people aren’t even actually able to understand what a blockade it can be.

So you have to have a government that actually takes the position that we are going to remove some of that unnecessary regulation. I don’t know if there’s an actual definition out there, but to me, red tape should be defined as “unnecessary regulation that impedes the ability of society to move forward in a progressive and beneficial manner”—something to that effect; that’s my own definition.

But the members on the other side—while listening to this debate, I have to ask myself, do they really want to debate Bill 46, or do they want to regurgitate something else? Because I heard more about Bill 23 today than I heard about Bill 46. But there’s a news flash for you folks over there: We actually passed Bill 23. It’s now done. But I think youse are a bit conflicted on Bill 46. You actually barely want to speak to it.

With that in mind, Speaker, I move that the question now be put.

The bureaucracy is expanding to support the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.