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.