I’m reading this petition on behalf of the MPP for Hamilton Mountain, MPP Taylor. It’s entitled “Vulnerable Persons Alert.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas there is a gap in our current emergency alert system that needs to be addressed;

“Whereas a vulnerable persons alert would help ensure the safety of our loved ones in a situation where time is critical;

“Whereas several municipal councils, including, Brighton, Midland, Bonfield township, Cobourg and Mississauga and several others, have passed resolutions calling for a new emergency alert to protect our loved ones;

“Whereas over 90,000 people have signed an online petition calling for a ‘Draven Alert’ and over 6,000 people have signed an online petition calling for ‘Love’s Law’, for vulnerable people who go missing;

“Whereas this new alert would be an additional tool in the tool box for police forces to use to locate missing, vulnerable people locally and regionally;

“Whereas this bill is a common-sense proposal and non-partisan in nature, to help missing vulnerable persons find their way safely home;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“Support and pass Bill 74, Missing Persons Amendment Act, 2023.”

I wholly support this petition and will add my name to those of the Hamiltonians that signed this and give it to Jonas to take to the table. Thank you, page Jonas.

I want to thank Sally Palmer for sending me these petitions, which read:

“To Raise Social Assistance Rates

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Ontario’s social assistance rates are well below Canada’s official Market Basket Measure poverty line and far from adequate to cover the rising costs of food and rent: $733 for individuals on OW and soon $1,227 for ODSP;

“Whereas an open letter to the Premier and two cabinet ministers, signed by over 230 organizations, recommends that social assistance rates be doubled for both Ontario Works (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP);

“Whereas the recent small budget increase of 5% for ODSP still leaves these citizens well below the poverty line, both they and those receiving the frozen OW rates are struggling to live in this time of alarming inflation;

“Whereas the government of Canada recognized in its CERB program that a ‘basic income’ of $2,000 per month was the standard support required by individuals who lost their employment during the pandemic;

“We, the undersigned ... petition the Legislative Assembly to double social assistance rates for OW and ODSP.”

I couldn’t agree more. I will affix my signature to it.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas there is a gap in our current emergency alert system that needs to be addressed;

“Whereas a vulnerable persons alert would help ensure the safety of our loved ones in a situation where time is critical;

“Whereas several municipal councils, including, Brighton, Midland, Bonfield township, Cobourg and Mississauga and several others have passed resolutions calling for a new emergency alert to protect our loved ones;

“Whereas over 90,000 people have signed an online petition calling for a ‘Draven Alert’ and over 6,000 people have signed an online petition calling for ‘Love’s Law’, for vulnerable” persons “who go missing;

“Whereas this new alert would be an additional tool in the tool box for police forces to use to locate missing vulnerable” people “locally and regionally;

“Whereas this bill is a common-sense proposal and non-partisan in nature, to help missing vulnerable persons find their way safely home;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to support and pass Bill 74, Missing Persons Amendment Act, 2023.”

I fully support this petition and will affix my signature to it.

I’m going to take the high road here. I want to thank the member from Scarborough–Guildwood for serving and running—

Applause.

Interjections.

Just a message to the member from Scarborough–Guildwood: You did not start it, you did not finish it; we started it and we’re finishing the line.

You know, Speaker, one of my mentors says, “Always go higher.” So back to the Premier.

Premier, it is often the case that we disagree in the House, and in fact it’s actually part of the job here for all of us. But what we all agree on is that we must always do our part to provide the best service possible to the people that we represent. Whether it is building the subway to Scarborough—whoever started it, whoever’s finishing it—or improving hospitals and health care for the people in Scarborough, things that I have championed since I was elected, and our previous government did the same. However we get there, we agree that people who send us to these chairs, they want us to serve at our best.

Premier, with mutual respect and building consensus and working together, the city government, the provincial government and the federal government all want the same thing: a stronger city, province and country. My question is what can we all do together to ensure that we are all working together for a better future for the people of this province?

Stop the clock.

Restart the clock.

Supplementary question?

Call in the members. This will be a five-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1137 to 1142.

On April 3, 2023, Mr. Kerzner moved government order 35.

On April 3, 2023, MPP Wong-Tam moved an amendment to the motion.

On April 3, 2023, Mr. Calandra moved an amendment to the amendment to the motion.

On April 4, 2023, Ms. Skelly moved that the question be now put.

All those in favour of Ms. Skelly’s motion, please rise one at a time and be recognized by the Clerk.

With the passage of that motion, we now move to the vote on the main motion. Mr. Kerzner has moved government order 35, as follows:

That an address be presented to the Speakers of the federal Parliament in the following words:

“This House calls on the federal government to immediately reform the Criminal Code of Canada to address the dangers facing our communities and implement meaningful bail reform to prevent violent and repeat offenders from being released back into our communities.”

And that the said address be engrossed.

Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? I heard some noes.

All those in favour the motion will please “aye.”

All those opposed will please say “nay.”

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

Call in the members. This is another five-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1146 to 1147.

That an address be presented to the Speakers of the federal Parliament in the following words:

“This House calls on the federal government to immediately reform the Criminal Code of Canada to address the dangers facing our communities and implement meaningful bail reform to prevent violent and repeat offenders from being released back into our communities.”

And that the said address be engrossed.

All those in favour of Mr. Kerzner’s motion will please rise one at a time and be recognized by the Clerk.

Motion agreed to.

Deferred vote on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 82, An Act respecting accessible public transit / Projet de loi 82, Loi concernant des transports en commun accessibles.

The division bells rang from 1150 to 1151.

All those in favour will please rise and remain standing until recognized by the Clerk.

Second reading negatived.

The House recessed from 1154 until 1300.

Report adopted.

On the Standing Committee on Social Policy, Mr. Riddell replaces Ms. Ghamari; and

On the Standing Committee on Justice Policy, Ms. Ghamari replaces Mr. Riddell and Ms. Dixon replaces Mr. Ke.

Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Motion agreed to.

The ayes are 88; the nays are 0.

Bill 60, An Act to amend and enact various Acts with respect to the health system / Projet de loi 60, Loi visant à modifier et à édicter diverses lois en ce qui concerne le système de santé.

« À l’Assemblée législative de l’Ontario :

« Alors que les projets de loi 23 et 39 sont les plus récentes tentatives du gouvernement Ford de retirer des terres protégées de la ceinture de verdure, permettant ainsi aux promoteurs de détruire et d’asphalter plus de 7 000 acres de terres agricoles;

« Alors que l’espace vert et les terres agricoles sont ce sur quoi nous comptons pour produire nos aliments, soutenir les habitats naturels et prévenir les inondations;

« Alors que les mesures répétées de Ford pour paver les terres agricoles et détruire ou bulldozer des zones humides n’ont jamais été une question de créer plus de logements mais bien plutôt d’enrichir les riches;

« Alors que le groupe de travail sur l’abordabilité du logement du gouvernement a découvert qu’il existe de nombreux endroits pour construire des maisons sans détruire la ceinture de verdure;

« Alors que le gouvernement retire aux autorités chargées de la conservation le pouvoir de protéger l’environnement et d’atténuer des effets des futures catastrophes climatiques;

« Par conséquent, nous, les soussignés, demandons à l’Assemblée législative de l’Ontario d’abroger immédiatement les projets de loi 23 et 39, d’arrêter tous les plans visant à retirer davantage les terres protégées de la ceinture de verdure et de protéger les terres agricoles existantes dans la province en adoptant la Loi sur la protection des terres agricoles du NPD. »

Ça me fait plaisir de signer cette pétition, et je vais la donner à Morgan pour qu’elle l’emmène à la table des greffiers.

It’s always an honour to be able to stand in the House and debate legislation put forward by the government, today Bill 91, An Act to enact two Acts, amend various Acts and revoke various regulations. That’s—

Interjections.

I have to start by saying, regretfully I won’t be sharing my time with anyone because the person I had lined up to share the time with for this hour lead is unfortunately under the weather. I will make him pay for it later.

Laughter.

But we need to take every piece of legislation and look at it on its merits and on its faults, if it has faults. And when the government continually says, “Well, you voted against this, and you voted against”—I’d just like to make it clear to those people listening and watching that if and when we vote against a budget because we disagree with the direction that the government is taking on certain huge issues, there might be a few things in that budget which are not just acceptable, which are good, but we take the overall bill and we look at the pros and cons of the bill, and that’s how we make our decision. And that’s how we will make our decision on Bill 91 as well.

Having said that, Bill 91 is a substantial bill. And I’m not complaining that it’s a big bill, but it was first introduced in the House and the first time the official opposition saw any of it was April 3. The first time I was able to get a paper copy—because there’s a lot in this bill about changing to electronic, and I’m not opposed to that. We’re not opposed to that. But some of us are still paper types who actually like to make notes. Believe it or not, I do make the occasional note. But that paper copy wasn’t available until this morning, and when I got it, it was hot off the press. It was still hot. I’m not kidding.

So please don’t fault us for saying it’s hard to make a credible critique of important legislation when you’ve actually only had access for—in my case, I’ve only had access to this since 9 o’clock this morning. So the government is, whether by choice or by whatever the reason, putting a serious disadvantage to critique of their legislation. So it’s going to be very important with this piece of legislation that we have the time so that the critics—because I think there are 30 schedules in here, 30 different acts covering many different critic portfolios—that we listen to their presentations because they—mine is going to be very, very broad and basic, even more basic than usual because we simply haven’t had the time.

This petition was submitted by the Jean Lumb Public School in Spadina–Fort York.

“Petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from the Elementary Teachers of Toronto to Stop the Cuts and Invest in the Schools our Students Deserve.

“Whereas the Ford government cut funding to our schools by $800 per student during the pandemic period, and plans to cut an additional $6 billion to our schools over the next six years;

“Whereas these massive cuts have resulted in larger class sizes, reduced special education and mental health supports and resources for our students, and neglected and unsafe buildings;

“Whereas the Financial Accountability Office reported a $2.1-billion surplus in 2021-22, and surpluses growing to $8.5 billion in 2027-28, demonstrating there is more than enough money to fund a robust public education system;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to:

“—immediately reverse the cuts to our schools;

“—fix the inadequate education funding formula;

“—provide schools the funding to ensure the supports necessary to address the impacts of the pandemic on our students;

“—make the needed investments to provide smaller class sizes, increased levels of staffing to support our students’ special education, mental health, English language learner and wraparound supports needs, and safe and healthy buildings and classrooms.”

I fully support this petition, will affix my signature and pass it to page Ryan to take to the table.

Further debate?

Mr. Speaker, this petition is entitled, “Reducing Red Tape in Ontario.

“Whereas the Ontario government introduced the Less Red Tape, Stronger Economy Act, 2023, which, if passed, would pave the way for better services, help Ontario businesses grow and save people time; and

“Whereas red tape is a key part of building a stronger economy and improving services for Ontarians, which is why our government is continuing to bring forward burden reduction packages that are saving businesses nearly $700 million each year in compliance costs; and

“Whereas Ontario’s spring 2023 red tape reduction package includes 42 new initiatives that, when fully implemented, are estimated to save businesses, not-for-profits and the broader public sector $119 million in net annual regulatory compliance costs; and

“Whereas the Ministry of Red Tape Reduction continues its work to develop further packages, people and businesses are encouraged the red tape portal at ontario.ca/redtape;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To immediately pass Bill 91, the Less Red Tape, Stronger Economy Act, 2023.”

I proudly affix my signature and will give it to page Keya.

This petition is titled “Invest in Ontario’s Arts and Culture Sector.” It reads:

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the arts and culture sector contributes $28.7 billion to Ontario’s GDP and creates over 300,000 jobs;

“Whereas the Ontario Arts Council budget has not been increased at Ontario’s rate of inflation, exacerbating the income precarity of artists and cultural workers, some of whom are earning less than $25,000 per year, and still less for those from equity-deserving groups;

“Whereas the income precarity was worsened during the pandemic through issues of regulatory unfairness in the arts and culture sector, disproportionately impacting the performing arts sector and OAC-determined priority groups, including BIPOC, Indigenous, women, people with disabilities, and LGBTQIA2S+ artists and cultural workers;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to sustain the Ontario Arts Council budget of $65 million in the 2023 provincial budget and adequately invest in the arts and culture sector, including supports for equity-deserving groups, small, medium and grassroots collectives in our communities, and individual artists to ensure their personal and economic survival.”

I fully support this petition and will affix my signature to it.

Resuming the debate adjourned on April 5, 2023, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 91, An Act to enact two Acts, amend various Acts and revoke various regulations / Projet de loi 91, Loi visant à édicter deux lois, à modifier diverses lois et à abroger divers règlements.

Uncle Ernie says we have enough time.

Hey.

I’m being heckled, Speaker, by Uncle Ernie and his companion, and I’m okay with that.

But before I start talking about the bill, I’m going to start talking about red tape: what red tape is, what it isn’t and how we react to it. No one in Ontario wants what we all think of as red tape. It’s unnecessary regulation. No one wants that, regardless of your political stripe. But we do need safe, workable legislation that keeps people safe. That’s what our society is built on. And there’s a balance to that.

The first time I really had to think about that as an MPP—I can’t even remember what year it was, but I do remember it was really cold. It was like a northern Ontario morning, 30 or 35 below, when the tires freeze and the first 10 kilometres you’re going bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce—one of those mornings. I was scheduled to speak at Professional Engineers Ontario, I believe their regional meeting in North Bay, myself and the member from Nipissing. He was at that time the finance minister. We both spoke there. He spoke first—he’s very eloquent, Speaker—and I spoke second. How do I describe this? When you follow someone, especially like the Minister of Finance, you have to do something to catch people’s attention. That’s part of our job. As people who represent the public, we have to find ways to get the public’s attention so they’ll hear us.

I can remember parts of my speech and I’m going to repeat part of it because it has something to do with this bill. Mr. Fedeli finished and it was my turn. Remember, it was 30 or 35 below that morning. I got up and I said, “I’m a farmer by trade. There are three types of people that farmers naturally dislike: (1) politicians; (2) lawyers”—

I said the reason that farmers don’t like politicians is because when they watch them on TV all they hear them do is criticize each other. But now that I am a politician, I realize that, although we have different political stripes, we often work together and we get along together. We have to. But it’s not just that we have to; we want to. I pointed to the member from Nipissing and I said it’s “because we work together on issues that benefit our people.”

The politicians were covered. Lawyers: Nobody likes lawyers—I have to back up because my daughter is a lawyer now—but everybody laughed at that.

I said, “Why farmers don’t like engineers is, on a morning like this, when it’s 35 below and I push a button on something that’s supposed to work—that day it was a silo loader, and because it sat cold the metal brakes got stressed and that silo loader, which was designed to operate for 10 years but I’ve been using it for 15, snaps and I’m stuck fixing it at 30 below. I blame the engineer.” They laughed. I said, “But you play a crucial role.” Because engineers design equipment—they design all kinds of things but they specifically design equipment—to be strong enough and usable enough but light enough and affordable enough to actually work for the period that it’s designed for. It’s critical.

Then I continued and I said, “We’ve just heard the Minister of Finance say that the goal of the government is to eliminate one quarter of all the regulations in Ontario.” That’s what he said.

There is red tape in Ontario and we agree that it needs to be limited, where possible. But if some of those regulations that are being eliminated by the government are starting to impact people’s safety, it will be the job of engineers and all professionals to not only warn the government but to let the opposition know that some of these changes aren’t right. I think that still holds true. Are there things that can be modernized, made better? Of course. The government is looking for ways and we look for ways, and where we can we work with the government to make that happen. Where we get a bit nervous is when we get big bills with no time ahead, because then you always have to look to see if somewhere hidden in here is something very egregious—that at some point, the government is going to say, “And you voted for this.” So I’m hoping that’s not in here. Quite frankly, we haven’t been able to go through it all the way yet. We’ve had a whole day and a half. There’s quite a bit of agriculture stuff in this bill, and when I contacted some of the agricultural organizations—some of the consultations for this were held four years ago—they didn’t really know this was coming right now either, so they’re in the same position.

On the matter of regulations, how we end up with red tape—because despite what some people think—and I’m not from Toronto. I’m not from the city. I’ve lived my whole life on a little country road. I have yet to find the office building full of bureaucrats whose whole life is dedicated to making red tape. That’s not how it works. How it works is, a regulation usually comes into being to fix a problem, and because it comes into being to fix that problem, sometimes that problem goes away, or sometimes that regulation impacts something else that it wasn’t intended to do, and sometimes another patch is put on top of that patch, and sometimes you get three or four patches and it doesn’t work anymore. That is how red tape develops. To have an initiative to remove that red tape—we’re not opposed to that.

An example of how a regulation could be developed that eventually would cause red tape: When an issue develops that the government of the day has never had to deal with before and they are trying to deal with it—I’ll give you an example. In my riding, right now, we have got unorganized territory. For the people who don’t have unorganized territory in their ridings or have never heard of unorganized territory, it’s places where there is no municipal government; the province is actually the municipal government. Sometimes they have a type of council to maintain roads, but there’s actually no municipal government; the government is the province. And there are huge swaths of that that are uninhabited. But in Timiskaming–Cochrane, specifically in Timiskaming, there is a lot of unorganized territory around towns and—we don’t really have cities; we have one town that’s called a city, but it’s a town. People like to move to unorganized territories because the taxes are cheaper. If you’re close enough to a municipality, the services are still close enough to access. There are many people who have lived in unorganized territory for a long time.

In unorganized territories, you need a permit from the public health unit for a septic system, and you should have a building permit to build, but there’s no building inspector. So it is the tendency of people, when you don’t have an inspector, often—not everyone. But often, things are done on unorganized territory that maybe shouldn’t be done—because there’s a reason you have building inspectors: to keep things safe.

So now there are unofficial subdivisions popping up in unorganized territory. One company specifically—it’s called Boreal Forest Medieval Villages—is unofficially subdividing in unorganized territory. The people buying these lots are leasing or they’re investing, but the fact is, they could be moving into these half-acre lots with no real municipal oversight.

To the Minister of Municipal Affairs’ credit—I give credit where credit is due—he and his ministry have been looking at how to deal with this, how to keep people safe, how to keep development sustainable, but it’s a tough issue to deal with. I can’t speak for what he’s doing—that’s his job—but he’s been doing what he can to come up with a way to deal with this. It might end up with regulation. It might—I can’t say; I don’t know, but it very well could end up with a regulation. And that regulation might impact someone else unknowingly. The government wouldn’t be doing this on purpose; I know that. I disagree with this government vehemently on many issues, but I don’t think they would do that—

The member from Thunder Bay–Atikokan seems to be surprised that I would disagree with the government.

So if regulations are created to make sure that the people surrounding the Boreal Forest Medieval Villages developments, the people within those developments—that everything is done safely and sustainably—if those regulations are created, they might solve the problem. I don’t know. But those regulations, once they’re on the books, could impact future development, right? And the government is aware of that. As parts of northern Ontario become more developed, perhaps those regulations will have to be changed once again. So those regulations could be seen, in the future, as red tape, but they’re not red tape when they’re created. They’re trying to solve a problem or resolve a situation.

There are schedules in Bill 91 that certainly are not reducing red tape; they’re actually strengthening regulations. They’re actually creating red tape, but it’s not red tape. In some cases, it’s useful regulation. To make the line between red tape and regulation, it’s really important that we understand on which side of that line it is. Like I told the engineers, it’s easy when you’re looking for ways to cut red tape—that sometimes good regulations that you don’t really understand why they were created get thrown out with the bad.

Sometimes government simply makes a mistake or situations change. There is a schedule in here about broadband. The government introduced a couple of acts about broadband, and they’ve said many times—and the Minister of Infrastructure, I have a good relationship with her as well—that they’re going to spend, I believe, $4 billion and everyone’s going to have usable broadband by 2025. I’m not sure that’s going to happen because the money doesn’t seem to be going out and the time is getting shorter. But they’ve also, in this act, changed some of the regulations in an act that was just proclaimed. Sometimes, believe it or not, although they don’t like to admit it, even the government doesn’t get it right the first or second time, and sometimes they don’t get it right at all.

I need to make clear that it’s not getting rid of regulation—cleaning up red tape is the goal we’re all looking to do, but we have to make sure that the cleaning up of the red tape isn’t taking out needed regulation, because once you take out needed regulation, at one point, someone is going to suffer. That’s a line that we are all trying to find—this is a long-winded; I have an hour to talk; that’s why I’m being so long-winded. That’s why part of our job is to go through all these regulations—our critics and our researchers—to try and make sure that we catch what needs to be caught and to reach out to the stakeholders. I’m hopeful that the government has also reached out to all these stakeholders to make sure that their concerns are caught.

Sometimes it gets a bit confusing. I listened very intently to the Minister of Red Tape Reduction this morning. This is a big bill. I’m reading through the schedules, and the minister this morning mentioned something about the Milk Act. I’m pretty partial to the Milk Act. I’m a retired dairy farmer, but I used to be on the board of Dairy Farmers of Ontario. I spent a fair bit of time thinking about the Milk Act. When he mentioned something about the Milk Act, I was leafing through the schedules; I couldn’t find it.

So, somehow, the minister’s speech—and I’m not criticizing the minister, not at all. I can’t find the schedule that says, “the Milk Act.” So which schedule is it? The Grains Act—but the Milk Act? I don’t see it. If you can find the Milk Act for me, I’m happy—

No, I don’t believe this.

I 100% agree. Farming stuff is important. I couldn’t see the change to the Milk Act.

But I just want to emphasize that with omnibus bills—omnibus sounds ominous, and sometimes they are—but basically this is a catch-all bill to changes that don’t warrant their own change to legislation. I would say that the agricultural parts of this bill should have warranted their own legislation, because it might not be a change that impacts farmers every day, but it’s a major change.

I’m not criticizing the change. When we talk to agriculture organizations, they are more concerned about what’s coming after with the regulations. They’re more concerned about that. But that change is big enough. When you’re repealing three acts and replacing it with one, that’s a fairly big change. That’s just not tinkering around the edges. I’m going to talk about that in a minute.

As I was leafing through here, one schedule—schedule 15, I believe—the Highway Traffic Act is going to make it illegal to overtake a snowplow unless there is an open lane. I’m very in favour of this. I have met with the contractors in my area. I think we all have in northern Ontario. Let me make it clear: The official opposition has not agreed for a long time with the way the contracts were put out, but we have no qualms with the contractors who are doing the work. They bid on contracts that the government puts out. Don’t fault them for that. They do the best they can with what they have.

But operating snow cleaning equipment, or any type of highway maintenance equipment, is an incredibly dangerous job. If you want to see how dangerous, you drive in my part of the world. I have seen people pass snowplows in ways that you would think, “What are you thinking? What are you thinking?” Tragically, it’s not irregular for people who are driving snow-cleaning equipment to be seriously hurt or, even more tragically, to lose their lives, so anything that the government can do to make that job safer, we are in favour of. This is a small step. There’s always more to do; it’s a small step, but it is a step in the right direction.

Again, there are all kinds of things that I would like to see the government do to make our highways safer. As I said this morning—because I’m talking, I can’t check my social media, but Highway 11 was closed again this morning. Was it weather-related? Definitely, but Highway 11 has been closed multiple, multiple times.

I’m not putting anyone at fault for making the decision to close the highway, but I don’t think we can repeat this enough: When you’re on Highway 11 in the winter and you pass that sign in North Bay, and the sign says the highway is closed, if you’re somewhere there, you’re on your own. We’ve said it enough times; the government knows that the highway is going to be closed on a regular basis. There are no detours there, either, so for big sections of the Trans-Canada, you’re stuck there. And there’s no official plan, if they’re stuck there for a long time, on how to make sure these people are safe. There’s nothing like that. That would be a worthy strategy. There are local volunteer groups who want to do this, who are doing this on their own, with no real help from the government.

And there are first responders. Don’t get me wrong: First responders do everything they can to help people. But this isn’t a once-in-100-years emergency; this has happened, I believe—don’t quote me, but the last time I spoke about this, it was 12 times, and just by my memory, Highway 11 has been closed at least twice since. Highway 11 is the Trans-Canada Highway.

A big part of this bill is schedule 33, Services and Supports to Promote the Social Inclusion of Persons with Developmental Disabilities Act. Now, that’s not my critic portfolio, and I don’t claim to have any knowledge of this, but when I hear this, when I read this, I’m sure our critics are going to look very, very closely at what changes are being made here, because they were given a reminder this morning when the government voted against a very simple bill to promote more access to public transit for people who have disabilities. It was very obvious. Again, that’s something that we will be looking at.

The Science North Act, the Royal Ontario Museum Act, the St. Lawrence Parks Commission Act, the Substitute Decisions Act, the Towing and Storage Safety and Enforcement Act, the Trustee Act: There are changes being made to each of these and many others.

Again, change isn’t bad, regardless of political stripe, as long as it’s made for the right reasons. A lot of the changes here are being made for—because of COVID, our society changed a lot. We had to do a lot more remote meetings. There are a lot of changes in a lot of acts here to allow more remote work. We support that in principle. But as I was reading through—and I’m going to be upfront: I haven’t read the whole bill. I’ve read the explanatory notes and I’ve read the agricultural part. I haven’t read the whole bill.

But when I read that there are many changes being made because of COVID and because our society has changed because of COVID, it got me to thinking that there are other parts of our society that, to me, have radically changed because of COVID too, that have gotten markedly worse. They weren’t good before but they are markedly worse. Homelessness has gotten worse. Affordability has gotten worse. Access to health care has gotten worse. Yet, with those issues the government seems to be going back to pre-COVID “Everything is fine, nothing to see here.”

So we’re going to have to make sure in this bill that this is not a case of this. Because it seems to be here, in this omnibus bill, that they are acknowledging that the world has changed with COVID, but it seems in some other parts of their strategy—I don’t know if that’s the right word—that they don’t want to admit that that has happened. Changes have been made for uninsured people. There are uninsured people under our OHIP plan. The government says they’re going back to the way things were before COVID, but you know what? Things aren’t the way they were before COVID.

I’ve got a half-hour and I’m going to concentrate, hopefully, on agriculture. Although the minister mentioned the Milk Act, I still haven’t seen it, but I take people at their word that it’s in there, and I’m going to talk about the Milk Act for a little while—just about milk.

When I was a dairy farmer what frustrated me most about dairy regulation, because nobody likes—let’s make it clear: Very few people like regulation. Even committed NDP people don’t really like regulation, no. And dairy is very regulated. What I got most frustrated at is that the dairy sector doesn’t do a very good job—and if anybody ever clips this they might get angry at me—of actually telling people how those regulations work. Not on a quota system; I’m not talking about a quota system—there was a lot of bad PR about the quota system a little while ago and I could talk about that—but about safety.

When I was a dairy farmer the regulations changed and every dairy farm had to have a time/temperature recorder. I had it, and we all hated it, but in the end it’s a great thing. But we never advertised it, so I’m going to advertise it my little way, the time/temperature recorder—and stores and processing plants have them too.

The temperature of the milk is monitored as soon as it comes in the bulk tank. The temperature of the wash water, when you wash your equipment, is monitored—everything. And if all those specs didn’t meet the standard when the milk truck driver came to pick up your milk, there would be a light flashing, and he could use his reader and see exactly what went wrong. If one rinse cycle was a little bit too cool, okay, but if the milk had not—the milk is always supposed be at 2 or 3 degrees Celsius. If the milk had hit too hot—he wouldn’t pick it up. It’s incredible. It’s stressful to keep that always running perfectly, but it was an example of really good regulation. It was a big step forward. We never really advertised that. That frustrated me. We went to all that extra work—not extra work; we did that already. There’s no one in agriculture—I don’t think it’s just agriculture. Anyone who produces something, even people who produce legislation—the vast majority of people don’t want to produce bad things. Specifically, farmers do not want to produce a bad product. It’s in their DNA. They produce food. They want good food to leave their farms. So it wasn’t that it was extra work, but it was another eye watching, and no one really likes that either.

I haven’t been a dairy farmer for a decade, and since I’ve left, they have made many other changes. It’s much more regulated now on the health of the animals. And if there’s one thing that I think the dairy industry should do more of—and other industries, as well—they should tell people about the good things that they are doing. Sometimes it costs more money to do it right.

Let’s make this clear: One of the things with road maintenance in the province—sometimes it costs more money to do it right, and sometimes it’s worth that extra money.

Anyway, the part in schedule 30—it’s the biggest schedule that has been changed in Bill 91. It’s going to repeal the Farm Products Payments Act, the Grains Act and the Livestock and Livestock Products Act and replace those acts with the Protecting Farmers from Non-Payment Act. Basically—and I might get some of the details wrong here because I have, fortunately, been a farmer my whole life and have never had to deal with these acts, because the only time these ones really kick in is if something goes really wrong.

When you’re a farmer and you grow grain—you grow wheat, barley, soybeans, corn. Some farmers have on-farm storage—not all. When you’re doing your harvest in the fall, if you have an elevator that’s handy and efficient, you can store your grain in a commercial elevator. You can get them to dry your grain, as well. But that grain is no longer in your possession. So you get a ticket that you have so many tons of corn, so many of such a quality, but you don’t get your own corn back. All you’ve got is that ticket. So it’s very important that the elevator is licensed and that it stays solvent, so that when you decide to sell that grain or when you need that grain back to feed your livestock—but more likely, to sell it—that grain is actually there. So the Grains Act is very important to make sure that where you’re storing and who you’re selling to is solvent, because all of a sudden you could do everything right and if the grain company isn’t solvent, that ticket is worthless, and that’s where the Grains Act kicks in.

It’s the same with livestock. Talking to the agriculture organizations, putting three into one, as long as it’s done right, is not inherently bad, but livestock is the same thing. If you have a cow-calf operation—basically, before you see a steak, there’s three types of farms that have beef. Cow-calf is the farmer that has the mothers that have the babies and the babies stay with the mother for six months, seven months, till they’re 500 pounds, 600 pounds, maybe bigger if the farmer’s really good, if he has really good cattle, and then they go to a background operation which brings them up a little bigger, makes their frames a bit bigger, and the last step is the feedlot and the feedlot has different types of feed to put the flesh, the meat on them.

But at each of those steps, the cattle change hands; transactions change hands. Cattle trailers—we call them “pots.” If you ever see a cattle trailer, there can be a lot of money in that pot, and if someone in the chain isn’t solvent—again, you can do everything right, but if who you’re selling to isn’t solvent, you could lose your farm, and that’s why these acts are very important.

The farmer pays into them. There are boards to administer them, to make sure that if there’s a legitimate claim, there’s actually action taken. They have the power that, if someone buys the grain or the cattle or whatever—because under the new act, I believe the minister has the power to designate more products to be protected—they have the powers to put a lien on the property of the person who bought the cattle or bought the grain and didn’t pay. This act has significant power—the replacement act does and so did the former ones—and they need it. They need this power. So it’s very important that they’re there.

It does happen. I was just reading—this case that I’m just going to talk about won’t be covered by this act because it’s not happening in this province, but there is a case right now in Saskatchewan where—so crop prices were really high a few months ago because of what’s happening in Ukraine, and basically because of—I don’t know how you put it—COVID, Ukraine and world grain markets are a bit of a roller coaster, like the stock market. I don’t know how else to explain it. They peaked and they peaked, and farmers have to be very good marketers, and the smarter—not the smarter ones, but the ones who hit at the right time brought forward delivery contracts at the peak. So you can say, “Okay, I can forward-sell my grain to deliver a year from now at X,” and some people forward-sold their grain really high, really smart or really lucky. It’s a combination of both.

Interjection.

It’s important farming stuff.

For 48 hours.