I’d like to thank the member from Niagara Centre for his excellent presentation, speaking about how this government likes to move fast and break things. We have seen a Premier that calls the greenbelt a myth, and maybe it’s a matter that the government has sort of missed the mark. They want Ontarians to think that making taxpayers pay more because of their decisions while they’re lining the pockets of insider developers—they want people to think that that is a myth when the facts are clearly in the way of that.

This government also would like to position themselves as pro-worker when, again, those pesky facts keep standing in the way of what they would claim is the truth.

My question to the member: Why has this government not reached out to workers, and what changes would you like to see to make sure that this legislation does take into account the voices of people like CUPE workers?

I’d like to thank the associate minister and the member from Perth–Wellington for their introduction today.

I believe it would be an understatement to say that this government has an embarrassing track record when it comes to respecting local democracy. In my area, the removal of ranked balloting—a popular, forward-thinking and successful democratic innovation was stripped away by this government, even though that was wasteful and costly. It seems that the government has dropped “collaboration,” “consultation” and “listening” from their vocabulary, and even if the government does use these words, it’s almost as though they ring hollow.

Some of the problems with Bill 112 are that the preamble mentions supporting local governments, but there’s no negotiation process, there’s no requirement for local council approval and there’s no consideration of even local viewpoints.

I would like to ask the member from Perth–Wellington—Bills 23 and 39 weaken local democratic institutions and authorities. How can the member convince anyone that Bill 112 isn’t more of the same?