Thank you to the member for Ottawa South for his comments. The member will know that the red tape bill includes a number of schedules that extend the term of a chair of a board of governors at five specific universities in Ontario. It extends that term from six years to eight years.

Given the Liberal government’s record, when they left office, of students paying the highest tuition fees in Ontario compared to the rest of all of Canada, and this government’s record of now the lowest per-student funding for both college and university in all of Canada, does the member think that increasing the term of the chair of a board of governors from six years to eight years is an appropriate response to the crisis in our post-secondary system?

I would like to thank the member for Lanark–Frontenac–Kingston for his comments this morning in the debate on Bill 139.

As the member for London West, I engage frequently with businesses in my riding, with people who are involved in economic development, and one of the things that I hear the most, when we talk about some of the barriers to growing our economy and supporting businesses in London—it is the need for housing; it is the need to make sure that people have access to a family doctor; it is the need to make sure that new employees who are coming to this city can bring their kids and there’s going to be access to good schools that don’t have as many portables on the property as they do in the school; it’s access to child care; it’s access to transit.

So my question is, why are we dealing with a bill that has such inconsequential, meaningless housekeeping amendments instead of dealing with these big challenges that businesses are facing?

I’d like to thank my colleague the member from Nickel Belt for her comments.

This bill, Bill 139, includes five schedules that deal specifically with post-secondary education, with five specific universities in Ontario. Those five schedules allow the chairs of the boards at those institutions to sit for a period of up to eight years, instead of six years. This member has very deep knowledge of the challenges that faced Laurentian University in her riding, and I wonder if she would like to comment on whether allowing the chair of the board to sit for up to eight years—what kind of impact and support will that provide to post-secondary institutions in this province?