My question is to the Premier. Amir Remtulla, who was the chief of staff to the late Mayor Ford, is also a registered lobbyist for the Therme Group. Ontarians and accountability watchdogs widely suspect that this government’s Ontario Place plot is just another insider deal. Amir Remtulla has been an insider for so long that he appears on the registry of the Premier’s family furniture. And don’t forget that he also lobbied this government for the De Gasperis greenbelt grab.

So on behalf of everyone wondering—yes or no, simple answer—did lobbying by Amir Remtulla help convince the Premier to subsidize the destruction of Ontario Place with hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money?

But as a former Toronto city councillor, I want to ask the Premier a question which I know he knows the answer to. When I look at Therme’s Ontario Place plan, I cannot get over that the business model is flawed—something we’ve seen before. It reminds me of another bad plan about reckless development on the waterfront.

When Amir Remtulla worked for then-Mayor Ford, there was a nonsensical plan to build a downtown casino at Ontario Place. Building a downtown mega casino was championed by the mayor and his brother—now the Premier.

Once Ontario Place is rezoned for commercial and entertainment uses, there is little that anyone can do to stop them from flipping the land lease for another use, perhaps a casino operator.

What does this government really hope to see happen at Ontario Place when Therme’s spa deal falls apart?

My question is to the Premier. The newly appointed chair of the judicial appointments committee is a registered lobbyist for an American gun manufacturer. The Premier then claimed that he wanted to quadruple down on violent offenders, but it’s actually on his watch over the last six years that we’ve seen offenders going free because the criminal justice system is literally collapsing under this government’s neglect.

Chronic underfunding has led to critical understaffing, which has led to the critical courtrooms being closed, which also means that serious cases are being thrown out because they have missed their basic administrative delays.

Will the Premier explain to victims of crime in Ontario why his focus is naming gun lobbyists to the judicial appointments committee as opposed to being laser-focused on funding and fixing the broken court system?

Under this government, court delays have exploded, forcing judges to release violent and gun-related offenders because they have not had their trials completed in a constitutionally allowable time frame. What I think Ontarians want to understand is, how can we have a Premier that has no respect for the charter rights of Ontarians?

Speaker, will the Premier own up to his track record and let Ontarians know how many sexual assault charges, how many impaired driving charges and how many gun-related charges have been thrown out because of the dysfunctional court system, because they can’t get their trials done in time, because they refuse to fund the courts properly and they refuse to fix the system?

Interjections.

I want to provide an opportunity for the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing to correct their record. Yesterday, the minister insisted that Mr. Massoudi had never been registered to lobby the government. The lobbyist register tells a very different story. It shows that the firm Mr. Massoudi owns, Atlas Strategic Advisors, was indeed registered and lobbying the government on behalf of numerous clients between 2022 and 2023.

So let’s give the minister another opportunity—one more chance, Speaker. Why was Mr. Massoudi given a contract to write speeches for the Premier at the same time that he was actively lobbying this government?

I’m not interested in racing to the bottom with China or Russia, where there is no consultation with their Indigenous communities, where there’s no regard for environmental protections. I’m certainly not interested in that race. I am interested in the race for prosperity for all, building better relationships with our Indigenous communities and responsibility in modernizing the mining sector. That’s what I’m interested in, and that’s what this party is interested in.

We also know that there are many people who once worked in the mining industry or mining lobbyists who are now in the position of government, and perhaps even in other places. We want to be able to depoliticize that process and make sure that the very best, most qualified people are there to make the decisions that are impartial and good for the province.