There are many redundancies in government left behind by the previous administration—much unnecessary overhead and burdens and hoops to jump through.

But there is plenty of oversight for the Office of the Children’s Lawyer, and the Auditor General continues to have a very broad mandate for value-for-money audits.

What we’re doing is removing redundancies, removing duplication. That’s part of reducing red tape and regulation without compromising oversight. That’s the key to this bill.

Again, a little bit of a history lesson when we talk about minority governments and official opposition—yes, His Majesty’s loyal opposition, that’s the name for it for a reason. However, minority versus majority governments—when there is a budget bill, when there is a minority government, you can bring the government down. The NDP could have done that from 2011 to 2014 but did not do so. They aided and abetted the Liberal legacy.

There are a number of acts being amended or proposed to be amended by this bill.

The Courts of Justice Act—to remove the requirement of the Auditor General to audit the accounts and financial transactions of the Office of the Children’s Lawyer. Again, oversight is still there, but it’s removing duplication.

The Creditors’ Relief Act will include electronic formats, if those amendments are passed.

The Execution Act—for a principal residence exemption in forced sales. That amendment will be made if this act is passed.

Updating hearings before the hearing and appeal divisions under the Law Society Act—I covered that off in my speech, but that gives the chair the discretion to go to one-member tribunals instead of three, if appropriate.

Amending the Substitute Decisions Act, updating that—this would clarify that an attorney has the power to access personal information about an incapable person.

Updating the Trustee Act to facilitate investment of trust investments—and, of course, the amendment to The Hague Convention to allow proper enforcement of child support orders.

These are very important measures, and I urge all members of the House to support them.

I thank the member opposite for the question. Yes, I’m honoured to serve on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts with the member opposite. That is a very special committee because as a member of the opposition, he is the Chair. That is the tradition. That’s right out of the standing orders.

Some of the measures we’ve adopted in addition to a member of His Majesty’s loyal opposition being the Chair include the fact that all members sit amongst each other rather than opposite each other, as would normally be the case in any assembly or House. We routinely, both because the act provides for it and as a matter of practice, invite the Auditor General to the committee to comment on reports that the Auditor General has authored. This is a very important and valuable aspect of the work that the committee does, hearing from the Auditor General, and we will continue to call upon her to do so.

But also, in addition to the Auditor General, many witnesses come before the committee, including deputy ministers from various departments. This is essential to the work that we do—

Our plan is to work with the agri-food sector to determine current and future research needs that promote innovation and enable farmers to be on the cutting edge of best production practices, implementing new technologies and techniques that will increase the competitiveness and sustainability of the agri-food sector. Ontario is taking action, or is proposing to take action, by this bill to strengthen the agricultural sector, proposing to modernize the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario Act, 1990.

Allowing for retired judges to come back to serve, even temporarily, will help get us through this very difficult time of dealing with these backlogs. We believe that that will have a major impact and is a positive—but temporary—measure.