Just a few days ago, the regional municipality of Niagara and the Greater Niagara Chamber of Commerce hosted Niagara Week here at Queen’s Park. We were joined in the chamber by former long-time MPP and chair of the region, Jim Bradley, as well as a number of local mayors and regional councillors, bringing a unified voice of growing better together. My thanks to all members who took the time to sit down with these local leaders from the Niagara region. We know that they were welcomed with open arms by a number of ministers, parliamentary assistants and policy staff, as well as many other members. A highlight of Niagara Week was a key meeting between the Chair and Premier last Monday, together with Minister Clark.

As well, many of you had the opportunity to attend and engage with representatives of the Niagara at the Niagara Week dinner reception, featuring local wine and food. As a grassroots MPP, I pledged I would be first and foremost Niagara’s voice here at Queen’s Park, not Queen’s Park voice to Niagara, and last week, our government opened the door to Niagara as we heard about a number of key issues and priorities for the region, including municipal infrastructure, economic development, housing, the agricultural sector and increased access to transit.

Speaker, our government delivered at the end of Niagara Week when the Premier, Minister Mulroney, Minister Lumsden and Minister Cho all travelled to Niagara to announce the doubling of GO train services between Union Station and Niagara Falls beginning on May 20.

Whether it’s working for Niagara, one of the other 444 municipalities or the rest of the province, our government is working with municipal partners across this province to get the job done.

I think of this in terms of Sudbury—Sudbury was amalgamated, as well, during Mike Harris. If it was going to be reopened again, you would want to ensure that there’s transparency and be able to hear from the people who are going to be affected—not just the councillors, not just the mayors, but the people who actually live there. When I read this, what I read into it is that the minister is going to appoint five members, and they’ll be paid, and their expenses will be covered by those municipalities. They will have very broad powers to do what they want. They don’t have a requirement to consult, and they don’t have a requirement to publish their findings. So I’m concerned the government may have overlooked the requirement for this—to have this transparency so that municipalities know what’s happening and what’s going on. Am I misreading this? Is this missing in here? It seems like they have very broad powers and they have a slush fund bank account they can do anything they want with, but no accountability to the places where they’re going to be making these decisions.