Thank you for the question. As we learned throughout the very lengthy speeches made yesterday by the various members of this assembly—there were various commentaries made by the Minister of Infrastructure, who laid out the details of the bill and explained how it would operate. Other members spoke, both on the government side and on the opposition side, laying out the details of the bill and explaining how it works. I, myself, took the impromptu opportunity to lay out the typical process of an environmental assessment as was my experience through being elected on a municipal government for six years. We all understood, from all of the presentations that were made from the various members of this chamber, that the standard environmental process can be very long and invite all sorts of public commentary. The public commentary, of course, is very important and desired and proper and good. That’s why an environmental process is open to public comment. That was the process that we discussed. That is, of course, the main—or, at least, one of the main—subjects of the subject bill in front of us today.

As we have observed throughout the discussion of this entire bill, there is 100% opportunity for the public to comment during the process of an environmental assessment. That is 100% preserved. It is 100% preserved throughout the entire period, the lengthy period, that we discussed and that I described yesterday in my comments. Municipalities will still have to go through these processes and will still have to have public input. They will still have to go through the environmental assessment process, but we’re only talking about one very brief little skipping moment which might occur from time to time.

With regard to the question about touching upon the Auditor General’s report, of course, we all know that one of the main functions of the Auditor General is to find efficiencies to decrease inefficiency. That is the original and primary function of an Auditor General, I would submit. That’s my opinion. And what is the name of this act? It’s the Reducing Inefficiencies Act, which coincides directly with the primary function of having an Auditor General. So in my submission, this is exactly the kind of act that would be welcomed by the Auditor General, reducing inefficiencies—or I might put it another way: increasing efficiencies. I’m thinking that when the Auditor General sees that we’re reducing inefficiencies, the Auditor General would be very happy about that, because reducing inefficiencies, which is what this act does, saves taxpayers money. And I would hope that we would all agree, all 124 of us, that saving taxpayers’ money is a good thing. But interestingly enough, when I put that question to the member from London North Centre last night, he didn’t really give me an answer to that. I asked him: Isn’t it a good thing? He didn’t answer. I think it’s a good thing. Let’s do it.

I thank the member for that question. I’d like to take this very brief opportunity to wish him a happy 27th wedding anniversary, as he mentioned it the other day. And now, answering his question--

Getting back to the question on building hospitals: There are several ways of building hospitals, and one is to put 100% of the cost on the shoulders of the taxpayer. That’s one way to do it. Another way to do it is to seek partners and perhaps shift some of that cost burden onto a non-government agency—and “non-government,” of course, means a “non-taxpayer” agency. So there are several ways to do these things, and several of these experiments and some of these have been tried over the years. There are a lot of government projects and non-government projects and hybrid government/non-government projects that have been tried over the various decades.

To his question: Centralizing the decision-making authority for real estate is actually a very good idea. As I stated in my impromptu remarks yesterday night, there are currently, to my surprise, at least 14 various agencies that are juggling real estate files for the government right now. I suspect that there are actually more than 14, but perhaps the Auditor General might have something to say about that. To have 14 different agencies juggling real estate files all at the same time is inefficient, so we are going to reduce that inefficiency by putting them all under one authority, which will now have the ability to fill empty spaces and move oversubscribed spaces over to empty spaces. That will be a good thing, because it will, as the title of the act says, reduce inefficiency and, consequently, save the taxpayer money. Of course, I have absolutely no hesitation whatsoever in saying that all 124 of us should be looking for ways to save taxpayer money.

Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity to address this bill on an impromptu basis yesterday. I was really struck by the long list of different government agencies that had real-estate-making authority. In fact, the list was so long that somebody had to actually write it down for me and pass it to me so that I could read the list. It was so long I couldn’t remember it. There were 14 agencies on it, and it really struck me, gosh, that’s a lot of organizations, all that have real-estate-making authority for the government of the province of Ontario.

So my question to the member from Toronto–Danforth is the following: Is 14 different government agencies making real estate decisions too many, is it too few or is it just the right amount?