My question is to the Premier. Last week, the Globe reported that his Attorney General refused to meet the Federation of Ontario Law Associations, an organization that represents 46 district and county law associations—literally thousand of lawyers across Ontario. They have expressed outrage, Speaker, and grave concern that this government is admittedly out to politicize judicial appointments by hand-picking Conservative and like-minded judges. FOLA wonders why the Attorney General is so afraid to meet with one of the ministry’s most important stakeholders, the actual legal community that’s keeping our justice system running.

The Ontario association of family lawyers has warned that the Premier’s political interference meddling could result in judges being appointed without any experience in the areas of law that they adjudicate. “It would be like going to an artist for an oil change,” wrote family law association co-founder Mary Reilly.

Speaker, will the Premier explain to Ontarians why, if they are facing a criminal case, a gun violence case, a divorce case, a custody case, a Conservative Party supporter is more qualified to decide who presides over the trial than someone who actually is qualified and has the merit to do so?

I am also a very big fan of food. My father was a chef garde manger for many years. He toiled away in the finest hotel kitchens in Toronto.

Absolutely, we need more food and more food grown locally, especially as we are seeing more and more climate change. As we know, we are also seeing an erosion and removal of some of the very best farmland in Ontario.

So is there more in this bill that actually does more to protect farmland, to enable those farmers to make sure that they hold onto the very best? It does not. And if you wanted to address that issue, we certainly would welcome it.

In my conversations, especially acting as the official opposition critic for the Ministry of the Attorney General, I’ve now had a chance to meet with an extraordinary number of legal professionals. Without exception, I would say—and they don’t agree on everything, but without exception, they all identify one of the systemic problems that now exists in Ontario is the defunding of legal aid. They’re losing qualified lawyers who want to stay in practice. Their clients who can’t get access to lawyers are suffering. The lawyers they have hired are now leaving the profession. And now we have a corporate sector that’s saying that they also don’t agree with the defunding of legal aid. All of this means that the government has a chance to take action on Thursday, when they drop the provincial budget, to put the money back in and to index it to the rate of inflation. I would describe it as a crisis, as it has been described to me.

I think that the challenge here is that the government is placing the moving to a digital administration of justice as the silver lining or the quick silver bullet on fixing and modernizing the program, and that is simply only one prong. There are many other ways to do that, including the efficient administration of court time, courtroom usage, hiring new judges, and staffing up the court system properly. All of those things in conjunction with modernization, plus an efficient working between policing as well as the court system as well as the ministry—that’s what you need, and that’s not happening right now.

To the Premier: The Public Order Emergency Commission’s lawyers have been clear with this government that if the Premier and Minister Jones don’t testify, there will be “important gaps” in their record. For an instant last week it seemed like just maybe the government recognized the value of testifying, only declining the commission’s invitation “for a moment.”

According to the Premier, the buck stops with him, but apparently not when he’s being forced to answer very difficult questions about the impact of his decisions.

How did the Premier’s mind change between last week and this Monday?

On October 17, the Premier told reporters that he had not been asked to appear before the commission in Ottawa, but lawyers for the commission revealed that both the Premier and Minister Jones had been asked multiple times to appear voluntarily, with government lawyers being told as early as October 11 that there was the possibility of a summons. So this government knew that the Premier and the minister might be compelled to testify before the Premier said he had never been asked by the commission to appear—very curious.

Can the Premier explain why he said that he was not asked to appear?