Congratulations on your election and your wonderful speech. It was very noble of you to bring up Percy. Certainly we miss him, but we of course welcome you here in the chamber.

I was also really pleased to hear that you come from an engineering background. I have studied the sciences, and I’d love for you to share with us maybe what unique perspective having a background in engineering and science brings to politics.

I want to congratulate the member on her re-election and for her submission and speech today.

She said, for instance, the mayor of Toronto has 500,000 votes. But councillors receive cumulatively, across the city, the same number of votes, essentially, as the mayor does. People vote for councillors and expect them to have the paramountcy on local issues, the understanding of local issues. When you’re in a city of millions, you don’t expect a response from a mayor when something goes wrong.

So what is it about this government? Why do they want to weaken local councillors in their ability to make decisions when the mayors of municipalities already have overwhelming powers to be able to get their agendas across?