Forty-five bills.

Thank you very much, Speaker.

So we’re back to the time allocation motion on Bill 51, the Legislative Assembly Amendment Act. What this time allocation motion does is it takes the bill from where it was sitting at a committee, waiting to receive public input, and it allows the government to call the bill, without any committee input, for—

Interjections.

When we left off the debate, I was just recapping some of the measures that are set out in Bill 51. Right now, we’re debating a time allocation motion to move this bill through, immediately, to a third reading vote without a third reading debate.

Basically, what this legislation does is transfer significant responsibility for the oversight of the Legislative Assembly to the Board of Internal Economy from the Speaker’s office. It empowers the Board of Internal Economy to appoint or dismiss employees of the Legislative Assembly. It gives them the responsibility to prescribe the duties and functions of employees of the Legislature. It empowers them to allocate the office space within the legislative precinct—and I should point out here that, although it does include some provisions about how MPPs are prioritized in the allocation of office space, it makes no mention of official opposition or independent MPPs having priority access to office space. It simply says that the members who are not parliamentary assistants shall have priority over the members who are parliamentary assistants.

Other measures included in this bill: It makes the Board of Internal Economy responsible for control of the legislative precinct. It also redefines “legislative precinct” to remove the basement of Whitney Block, and despite repeated questions that we raised during second reading debate, we never got a clear answer from the government as to why that change is being proposed. Finally, it makes the Board of Internal Economy responsible for accessibility plans.

This may be something that is done in other provinces. The big question, I think, for us is, why now? What was broken that the government decided it was so important to bring forward this amendment to the Legislative Assembly Act without any prior consultation or discussion with either the official opposition or—I don’t know about you, Speaker, or if the independent MPPs were consulted on these changes in advance. I can say with certainty that the official opposition was not consulted in any way—and this really contrasts with the last set of amendments to the Legislative Assembly Act that were brought forward in 2020. Bill 167 set out a number of changes. At that time, the government House leader shared some of those proposals with the official opposition in advance so that we could take a look at those proposals and consider whether they were supportable or not. In this case, we got the legislation on a Wednesday, we were debating it on a Thursday, and now, on a Tuesday, we are looking at seeing it move immediately to a final third reading vote tomorrow.

The other provision that’s included in this bill is to transfer the responsibility for appointing or dismissing the Sergeant-at-Arms from the Speaker to the Legislative Assembly. Once again, maybe that makes sense—I don’t know—but the question is, what was so wrong with the process that is currently being used for appointing or removing the Sergeant-at-Arms?

None of those questions that we raised and that we were curious about when we saw this bill have been appropriately and fulsomely addressed by the government.

When I talked about the major responsibilities that this legislation gives to the Board of Internal Economy—one of our concerns is, who is on the Board of Internal Economy? We know that up until 2012, the Board of Internal Economy was a board that had majority government representation. It was only in 2012 that a change was made to structure the Board of Internal Economy as a consensus body. There’s a representative from government, and there are representatives from the recognized parties. Currently, there are two members of the Board of Internal Economy—the government House leader and our official whip—and the Speaker is also on that board, as a non-voting member. However, that composition of the Board of Internal Economy is set out in legislation, in the Legislative Assembly Act, which means that we could see further amendments to change the composition of the Board of Internal Economy. This would not be unexpected.

Just today, we got the report of the standing committee on Bill 39, which is part 2 of the government plan to create and then expand strong-mayor powers in the province; they did that in two parts. My colleague spoke to that bill and pointed out the first part of Bill 3, the original strong-mayor bill. Bill 39, the bill that was reported today, just moves that much further in extending those strong-mayor powers. Most troublingly, it also completely undermines our published democratic traditions, the fundamental tenets of representative democracy, by allowing elected municipal councils—right now, in Toronto and Ottawa, but we know the government intends to expand those powers to other municipalities. It allows municipal councils to make decisions on behalf of the people who elected them on the basis of just one third of the members of the council, effectively silencing the two thirds of councillors who may be opposed to this decision that the strong mayor wants to push through with the support of just one third of their members. In a democracy, majority rule has been a fundamental principle of how we function as a democratic system, and the government has decided that that is no longer going to be the case in municipalities across the province and has moved forward with Bill 39.

During the debate, we heard the government House leader say, “Trust us. We wouldn’t change the composition of the Board of Internal Economy.” Frankly, Ontarians don’t have a lot of trust in this government. Ontarians heard the Premier assure them numerous times, repeatedly, that the greenbelt would not be opened, that there would be no carving out of the greenbelt, and yet, despite those repeated public pronouncements, the government brought in a bill, Bill 23, that did just that. It carved out the greenbelt, contrary to those promises, those commitments, that had been made by the Premier. And not only did it carve out the greenbelt, but there are lots of legitimate questions that people are asking about how the decision as to where the boundary is going to be changed was made, because there are wealthy land speculators, wealthy developers, wealthy donors to the PC Party who are going to be profiting enormously from those changes that were made to the greenbelt. So when we hear the government House leader saying, “Just trust us”—frankly, we don’t have that trust.

If the government leader was genuine in his assertions that the changes that are set out in this bill will really improve the functioning of this place and will go further in empowering members, as he likes to claim he has done—if that was really the case, he would have talked to the official opposition, he would have talked to the independent members, saying, “I’m thinking of doing this. What do you think? Do you agree that it would help us work more effectively as a Legislature?” But no, that was not the process that the government House leader chose to follow.

I was reading the Hansard of the debate last Thursday, and there were some interesting comments that were made by the government House leader on those issues. He said, “Now, the member opposite says”—he was referring to my colleague the member for Timiskaming–Cochrane—“‘Well, they could change the composition of the Board of Internal Economy.’” If I wanted to do that,” said the government House leader, “I’d just simply change the composition of the Board of Internal Economy. I wouldn’t need any of this. It would be a heck of a lot easier for me to present a two-line bill changing the Board of Internal Economy to government-majority rule.”

As we saw with strong-mayors part 1 and part 2, this could simply be a further centralization of government control—part 1, which is going to be followed by part 2, of changes to the Board of Internal Economy.

Later, the government House leader said this: “But the legislation ensures that, for now, myself and the member for Timiskaming–Cochrane will have a voice at that table”—meaning the Board of Internal Economy—“and will get to decide and help put in place a framework....” His reference stating that the legislation ensures that, for now, that is the case really sounds the alarm for us, because it suggests that just as there was one composition of the Board of Internal Economy that was in place until 2012 and that was changed, it would be very easy for a further change to be made to the Board of Internal Economy to give the government majority control and, therefore, the power over all of the scaffolding of the Legislative Assembly, all of those new provisions that are going to be assigned to the Board of Internal Economy through this act.

This is just simply not something that we are willing to support. We are not going to trust the government House leader, who didn’t even have the courtesy to approach us and share some of these ideas with the official opposition in advance. We are certainly not going to be supporting this time allocation motion that is currently being debated, that would see this bill go immediately to a vote when it is next brought before this chamber.

For that reason, Speaker, I now move adjournment of the House.

Thank you very much, Speaker. I’m pleased to continue the debate on the motion that is before us today for time allocation on Bill 51, the Legislative Assembly Amendment Act, 2022.

Now, anybody who is tuning in may wonder: What is a time allocation motion? A time allocation motion is a motion that the government introduces to curtail the normal legislative process to see a bill move through the regular stages that are set out in our standing orders as to how a bill becomes law.

The time allocation motion that the government has brought forward today calls for a very limited two-hour debate on this motion, and then it specifies that when the bill is next called—

Interjections.

And just to recap what is actually in the bill: The bill makes changes to the Board of Internal Economy. Most of the bill deals with some new responsibilities for the Board of Internal Economy. And again, to anyone who’s watching today, they may not know what the Board of Internal Economy is. It is a body that operates on a consensus basis in this House. It includes a member of the government, a member of each of the recognized parties—if there are two recognized parties, because, of course, the Liberals didn’t elect enough members to be a recognized party. But if there were two recognized parties, there would be two government members so that it is balanced. The Speaker also participates on that committee as a non-voting member. The structure of the Board of Internal Economy is unique in this Legislature because every other committee of this Legislative Assembly operates in the same proportion as we see in this House, which means that the government has a majority.

So what this bill does: It gives new powers to the Board of Internal Economy. It puts the Board of Internal Economy in charge of appointing or dismissing all employees of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. It gives the Board of Internal Economy the authority to prescribe the duties and the functions of those employees of the Legislature. It gives the Board of Internal Economy the ability to allocate office space. It also states that members have an entitlement to office space—those members who are not part of the executive council or the cabinet. It puts the Board of Internal Economy in charge of the legislative precinct. It also makes some changes to the definition of the legislative precinct. It removes the basement of the Whitney Block, and that does raise a question. When the bill was debated at second reading, there were a number of questions that were asked by members of the official opposition about why that recently renovated basement in the Whitney Block would now be removed from the official definition of the legislative precinct. I have to say, we weren’t entirely satisfied by the response that we received from this government.

But it really goes back to what I was saying earlier this morning, Speaker, about the fact that the government, quite suddenly and without notice, tabled this bill to make these significant changes to the Board of Internal Economy, to the definition of the legislative precinct, without any discussion with the official opposition or with the independent members—with any other non-government MPPs. And surely, Speaker, when you are talking about amending legislation that—

I rise today as the House leader for the official opposition to participate in the debate on the time allocation motion on Bill 51, which is the Legislative Assembly Amendment Act.

Speaker, I did want to start with a reflection on the process for these recent changes to the Legislative Assembly Act versus a previous set of changes to the Legislative Assembly Act that were debated in this Legislature. In 2020, we had Bill 167, which introduced a number of changes to the Legislative Assembly Act to help us do the work that people elected us to do. Those changes were provided in advance by the government House leader to the official opposition so that we could have a chance to review the changes, to have a discussion about the changes, to provide input on the changes as to whether we agreed that they would enable more efficient, improved functioning in this Legislature. That was a very different process, Speaker, than what we see with Bill 51.

This is a bill that was introduced last Wednesday and it was debated on Thursday. And today we are discussing a time allocation motion that would see the bill move immediately to a third reading vote and passage without any opportunity to have a debate at third reading, much less have a discussion of this bill at committee. In many ways, Speaker, it’s not a surprise. This is what we have seen time after time from this government. They introduce a bill one day, they start debate the next day, they close off debate the following day, and then they limit the opportunity for the public to provide input on the legislation in the committee process.

We’ve seen it as well with the standing order changes that this government House leader has introduced. I don’t think that there has ever been a government that has changed the standing orders as frequently as this one. The standing orders and the Legislative Assembly Act are two very important pieces that provide the scaffolding for how we conduct ourselves in this place, how we do the business of the people. This government has changed the standing orders 10 times in a period of just four years. That is a stark contrast to the previous Liberal government that had changed the standing orders, I believe it was, four times over a period of 15 years.

Just on its own, changing the standing orders may be required from time to time. As things change, amending the Legislative Assembly Act may be required from time to time. But these tools are here for the use of all members in this place. They are not tools for the government only. They are here to provide the basis for our democracy.

And we know that this government has shown its contempt for democracy. We see that right now with Bill 39. They’re rewriting the rules of democracy. They’re all of a sudden making it possible for one third of a duly elected council to make decisions, to move ahead with actions that two thirds of council are opposed to.

We saw it with the government’s use of the “notwithstanding” clause to introduce legislation to impose collective agreements on CUPE education workers. They knew that it was unconstitutional. They knew that it was contrary to the rights and freedoms that Canadians enjoy, and that’s why they chose to proceed using the “notwithstanding” clause. So what we’re debating here today, as I said, it just follows the pattern that we have seen from this government.

When you look at the different pieces of legislation that we have dealt with since the election in June, there have been 10 bills that have been debated in this place—sorry; there’s been 11 bills. I’m going to put aside Bill 35, the repeal of the government’s use of the “notwithstanding” clause to impose collective agreements on CUPE education workers. But of the other 10 bills that we have dealt with, six of those bills began second reading debate the day after they were introduced. And what’s the problem with debating a bill the day after it’s been introduced? It doesn’t provide the time required to do the analysis, to do the due diligence, to get input from stakeholders as to what the impact of the legislation will be.

As I said, six of those bills began second reading debate the day after they were introduced. The remaining four were tabled on a Thursday and they started debate on the following Monday. So, yes, we had a couple of days there between the tabling of the bill and the debate on the bill, but it was over a weekend. And you know, Speaker, how difficult it is to reach stakeholder organizations over a weekend. And that implies that those stakeholder organizations will have the capacity to do the quick analysis of the legislation that the government is bringing forward and be able to provide meaningful feedback to all members who want to understand what that legislation will mean to the people of this province.

Then, of course, when we have seen debate start, we’ve seen the government shut down debate on seven of those 10 bills, either through time allocation motions, as we have today, or closures. And the average debate time for the legislation that we have dealt with is two sessional days per bill. I don’t think, Speaker, that that is doing justice to the people of this province, who deserve MPPs, deserve representatives who will come to this place and share the challenges that they’re experiencing and the solutions that they expect, that they deserve from this government.

Three of the government’s 10 bills have bypassed committee altogether. They have gone straight to third reading without any opportunity for the public to come and provide input on the implications of that bill.

And, of course, for the other seven bills that went to committee, the government’s track record there has not been anything to be proud of either. We have seen the government use its majority to limit how long the committee is going to hear input, to make arbitrary decisions about where the committee went. We’ve seen the government use its majority to regularly go in camera during committee, so that MPPs are discussing the process of the committee in closed session, which the public doesn’t have access to. The public has no opportunity to watch how MPPs are making decisions about the length of time the committee is going to accept deputations and hear from the people of this province.

We have seen the government routinely ignore deputants who do get an opportunity to appear before the committee. One of the bills that we have dealt with this fall, Bill 39, had 18 witnesses registered to speak to committee members; 14 of those witnesses were opposed to the government’s legislation. They very clearly stated their opposition to what the government is doing, and yet the government proceeded to pass that legislation without any amendments whatsoever, and without any regard to the input that was provided to committee members.

On Bill 23, there were two witness deadlines. People followed the rules and met the deadlines that were set for that committee, but when the committee was oversubscribed—because, of course, Bill 23, as you will know, Speaker, has launched an avalanche of emails to our offices. It has launched an avalanche of public outcry over the government’s plans to carve up the greenbelt, its claims that they need the greenbelt in order to meet housing targets, when their own housing task force has been very clear that there is enough land in this province without the greenbelt. Anyway, on Bill 23, not surprisingly, there were more people and organizations that wanted to appear before that committee than the committee had time to hear from, but the government used its majority to block opposition requests to add additional time to hear from concerned citizens.

Then, what we have seen from this government when a bill comes back to the House is further shutting down of time for debate. Yesterday we had a bill that the government moved a closure motion on after only six hours of debate at third reading. I think that that does not provide the kind of debate that the people of Ontario expect to hear on the important matters that are being addressed here in this Legislature.

I mentioned the 10 packages of standing order changes this government has introduced in just a short four-year period, but one of those standing order changes is to allow report stage debate. When a bill is reported back from the committee, comes back to the Legislature for third reading, the government has put in place an option for members to stand and indicate that they would like a debate on the report from the committee. And we’ve heard the government House leader talk about how he’s democratizing this place, he’s empowering members, but let’s think about what a report stage debate is. It is the debate on a bill that has come back from committee, often without amendments, without the changes deputants wanted to see, that deputants pressed for when they appeared before the committee. It’s a very limited period: It’s 18 minutes—18 minutes that members can rise and indicate they want a debate on a bill that’s reported back from committee.

When you have bills like Bill 23, the bill that carves up the greenbelt; when you have bills like Bill 39, the bill that rewrites the rules of democracy to allow one third of council to make decisions on behalf of a municipality—when you have those kinds of bills, and when they are reported back with no amendments, no attempt by the government to address the concerns that were provided to the committee, an 18-minute debate is hardly sufficient to address the concerns that are raised at these committees.

As I mentioned, we had a third reading debate last night where the government moved closure after only six hours, and, of the six bills that have come back to the House for third reading, four of them have been shut down or truncated by the government either through time allocation or closure motions, and we expect that with this bill, Bill 51, which will be voted on when it comes for third reading; Bill 36, which will be voted on later today; and Bill 39.

We’ve heard the government talk about the way that they have empowered committees, and we know from the experience of sitting on those standing committees that the government has actually put restrictions on the ability of MPPs to participate in committees. I’ve mentioned already that we now see committees move to go in camera regularly, and we know committees are structured in the same proportion as the parties in the House. That means that, just as the government has a majority here in this Legislature, they also have a majority on every standing committee of the Legislature, and so when a government member moves a motion to go in camera, to go into closed session, they automatically have the numbers to pass that motion.

We have also seen the government use its majority on committees to block opposition requests to review government appointments to government agencies. We just saw yesterday, I think it was, that a former MPP and a former well-known Conservative staff person were appointed to plum government positions without any opportunity for the committee on government agencies to review those appointments.

We saw the government use its majority to block opposition requests for the committees to meet, during the extended break that we had in September and October, to consider estimates. The government House leader talks about the generosity that he has provided in the changes to the standing orders to allow committee members to request that a committee meet when the House is in recess. Yes, here on this side, we have attempted to use that new ability to request that a committee meet. We did it with estimates and the government said that they weren’t interested.

When you consider the change to the estimates process that was included in the most recent set of standing orders changes, I think it was, the change to the estimates process has severely, severely limited the ability of the opposition to review the government’s spending plans, to ask those pointed questions of the bureaucrats from the ministries who come before committee to talk about ministry spending plans. This year, because we weren’t sitting in September and most of October, we saw a very, very truncated estimates process. Because it has to be wrapped up in November, there was virtually no opportunity to provide the kind of oversight and due diligence that is required of the government’s spending plans.

I have to say, with regard to this legislation, although on the surface the changes that are proposed seem straightforward, there are big reservations about why the government didn’t come and talk to us first. If they believed so strongly that these changes are necessary to improve the functioning of this Legislature, surely they would have wanted to engage with us to get our input on whether we agree with these changes or not.

The member for Timiskaming–Cochrane, when he was speaking to the bill—and he has done an exemplary job, I have to say, as our representative on the Board of Internal Economy. This bill does transfer a lot of authority to the Board of Internal Economy, a lot of responsibility to the Board of Internal Economy that that body did not previously have. The member for Timiskaming–Cochrane pointed out that one of our concerns is the composition of the Board of Internal Economy. So right now, the government says, “Oh, there are safeguards because the Board of Internal Economy operates by consensus, and so putting these new responsibilities under the power of the Board of Internal Economy will ensure that there is consensus decision-making about the hiring and dismissal of Legislative Assembly staff, about the roles and job descriptions of Legislative Assembly staff.” And that may be true, given the current composition of the Board of Internal Economy, but the government can, at the stroke of a pen, make changes to the composition of the Board of Internal Economy.

When you have seen a government move forward with so many changes—as I said, 10 sets of changes to the standing orders. This is the second set of changes to the Legislative Assembly Act in just three years. So when you see a government that is so quick to rewrite the scaffolding that enables us to do the work in this place, we have concerns. We have concerns that changes to the Board of Internal Economy will be made that will further centralize the power of the government to do whatever they want.

I have a message on behalf of the people of Ontario to this government: Winning an election is not a blank cheque. It is not a mandate for government to do whatever it wants, to run roughshod over the priorities of the people that we represent. We often refer to the carvings on the walls in this place. The government should be looking at the wise owl, because the government’s responsibility is to be wise; it is to listen; it is to weigh the feedback that is provided by Ontarians as to what they feel needs to happen in this province to address the concerns that they’re facing.

Health care, for example: This government has been completely ineffective on dealing with the health care crisis. All of us continue to hear from people in our communities how concerned, how frightened they are by the state of our health care system. If there’s one thing that people expect the government to get right, it is health care. People want to know that if they call an ambulance, an ambulance will come for them; that if their child is running a fever in the middle of the night and has to go to emergency, they won’t have to wait hours in a pediatric emergency room to have their child seen by the doctor. People want to know that if they need life-saving surgery, they will be able to have that surgery scheduled in a timely way. People don’t have that sense of confidence anymore. They don’t have the sense that the government has a handle on the crisis in our health care.

We heard the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Health talk about, “Crisis? What crisis?”—as if this is all a fabrication of the official opposition. But this is the reality that people are experiencing in their communities. Our health care system is in a crisis.

Imagine parents when they read the news about the overwhelming of pediatric ICUs. They read about teenagers being moved from pediatric ICU beds into adult ICU beds without the specialized nursing care that they would have received if they had been admitted to a pediatric ICU, because the equipment in adult ICU rooms is different from the equipment in pediatric ICU rooms, and the skills of adult ICU nurses are different from the skills of pediatric ICU nurses. So that is a concern, and yet we have not seen this government put forward any meaningful solutions to help address the health care crisis.

On housing, another huge priority for the people in this province, the government continues to insist that the only way that they are going to be able to meet the housing targets is to build on the greenbelt, but Ontarians have lots of questions about how those changes to the greenbelt came about, and whether there was some knowledge about those proposed changes in advance. When you look at the developers who took out enormous loans at 21% interest to purchase land that was undevelopable at the time, just weeks prior to the changes proposed to the greenbelt, and then all of a sudden that land that was not available for development suddenly becomes available to development, there are a lot of questions. That speculator who bought that land at a bargain-basement price—because it was in the greenbelt; it was protected—all of a sudden stands to rake in significant profits now that that land is available for development.

So you do have to wonder whether the government is really concerned about addressing the housing crisis or whether they are more interested in providing those windfall profits for people who have connections to the Conservative Party. If they were interested in dealing with the housing crisis in Ontario, we would see the government investing in affordable housing, investing in deeply affordable housing, introducing rent controls so that people aren’t economically and financially evicted from their apartments that were built after 2018 because landlords have been allowed to increase the rent to whatever level they want. We have called time after time on this government to expand rent control to include all buildings in this province and not just those built before 2018, because tenants deserve to have security in their homes and not have to fear that they are going to have to move every year because they get a rent increase that is unaffordable.

And so, I have to again say that we don’t support this time allocation motion. We have huge reservations about the amendments that are proposed in Bill 51 because of the pattern that we’ve seen from this government and making further amendments that will further concentrate their power and their ability to rush through whatever legislation they want to see.

With that, Speaker, I move adjournment of the debate.