It is truly an honour to be able to rise on behalf of our caucus to pay tribute to Todd and the extraordinary work that he has done. I think the opposition House leader is quite correct that he is probably the most uncomfortable person in the chamber today. My office mentioned to me earlier in the week that Todd was fabricating a sickness so that he could not be here today. I had actually reached out to the Minister of Natural Resources to ask for one of those tracking devices so that we could find him, and we’ll probably have to leave it on him for a couple of years so that we can find him and call him back in.

It’s funny; I was a staff member here in the 1990s, and in 2003, when the people retired that particular government, I was a young guy. When I came back in 2018, I came back to this place old, fat and grey, and Todd looked exactly the same. So immediately, we started off on the wrong foot, because he was looking so good and I thought, “What the heck? What happened?”

He has been an extraordinary public servant. It is truly hard to explain in five minutes—and I know we all feel the same way—just how important the job of the Clerk is. But what an incredible job he has done. All members should know and will know how forceful and fierce he is about this place: the pride that he has in this place, the pride that he has in all of the members and the extent to which he goes to not only protect the institution and the people who work for him, but us as members. It is truly unbelievable.

I’m told that when he signed the Bible that the Clerks sign, he signed it as the ninth Clerk, out of respect for somebody who took the job on an interim basis. That’s really just the type of person that he is.

Now, I know that certainly since I’ve been House leader, that spirit of co-operation has been so good that the job has been just so much easier for him, because we get along so much better, and I know that he is grateful for that. But colleagues, I do want to really zone in—and the leader of the Green Party talked about it—on what Parliament decided during COVID, that we would continue on as a Parliament and that we had to do the work of the opposition holding us accountable and the government moving forward. When that request was made—and, colleagues, this was literally the only Parliament in North America that decided not to stand down, all of us. That was Todd and his team, and it was remarkable. People from all over North America were asking, “How the heck did you guys continue to do this, on both sides?” Everybody—their work, his work, his leadership are what made it possible for us to continue on doing the job. So we can talk about the hours spent in debating how we got it done, but literally it got done because of Todd and his team.

It is also the work—one of the hardest jobs, I think, of a Clerk is when they look at who the next person will be and they get to decide who the Deputy Clerk is going to be, and Todd started right from the beginning looking at where he would be, when he would bring his time to an end as our Clerk, who would be the person that he could prepare to take on that job. That is probably one of the most difficult decisions a Clerk would have to make, and he did it right from the beginning. I really can’t thank him enough for just the extraordinary work that he has done.

Yesterday was another extraordinary day, probably one of the first times in Commonwealth history that four Clerks were seated around one table, one learning from the other.

As we started to talk about the process, all of us, all of the members, on what we would do with this building, how we would fix it and renovate it to make sure that it was respectful and really pay tribute—it was Todd who helped us design what it is, how we could ensure that members were protected in that process. Everything that we brought forward and everything that Parliament voted on unanimously was because of the extraordinary work and advice of the Clerk. Knowing full well that he would not be here in the chair when the time came, he never relented at any given point. He was fierce in defending us, fierce in defending this Legislature and all of the members in it.

What he doesn’t know—I know, because I truly fear that he’s just going to run out and be gone, because he just really, truly hates accolades. You could never be a politician, because we—not me. But we know how much John loves to get accolades, right? It’s just a quiet, reserved respect for the chair, so much so that I was literally terrified to even ask him a question for the first year that I took over as House leader. So I was always with Trevor, and one of my staff said to me, “Why don’t you ever ask Todd a question?” I said, “I’m afraid of him,” not because he gave me any reason to be afraid, but he was literally able to not—you say you don’t show emotion. It is hard, because there are some things sometimes, once in a while, that make you want to have facial expressions, and he has not done that.

Just the last thing, as I close: When we get elected, we all fight to get in a picture with the Clerk. It’s the one thing that will be on our walls—all of us, forever—and it’s the one thing that we will brag about and we will talk about. It is not only the person; it is also the office, and that is one thing that, Todd, you have done very, very well. You have always upheld the dignity of the office in a way that we are all grateful for. So congratulations, and thank you for everything that you’ve done on all of our behalf.

Applause.