Oh, I know—all the time.

Recommendation 2: “We recommend that Infrastructure Ontario obtain sufficient procurement data from external capital project managers, including all bids, change orders and bid evaluations.” That’s not in this bill.

Recommendation 3: “In order to ensure the fair and economical procurement of project contractors, we recommend that Infrastructure Ontario obtain sufficient information on procurements conducted by external project managers, and analyze this information to determine whether there are any trends that suggest non-cost-effective procurement practices and ... implement its planned controls over external project managers.” It goes on—not in this bill.

There’s a section: “Ineffective measures to hold external project managers accountable for controlling costs and time to complete projects.” Why aren’t you reining them in? This is about efficiencies?

Interjections.

So in the last little bit of time here, I’m going to read this section, because this is what my concern is about these 14 agencies whose properties are being transferred to the Minister of Infrastructure. If they’re going to find themselves at the mercy of the same operating and maintenance services as being provided by these contracted-out project managers or the contracted-out services, I feel badly for them if this hasn’t been remedied.

Again, from the Auditor General’s report, these are just some client ministries. These are your ministries, okay? These are not random folks.

“Client ministries’ written comments on operating and maintenance services....

“‘We have also found that new contracts for cleaning, snow removal, etc. are tendered by [the external property and land manager] and services have been removed or frequency of services have been changed. We have no input in these changes and in some instances the [external property and land manager’s] on-site maintenance staff are not even made aware of the change. For instance I noticed that the parking area (at one building) was not being cleaned as it normally was and I mentioned it to [the external property and land manager] after some time [it] told me that the cleaning of the parking garage was removed from the last parking contract. After many months they have hired the building cleaning company on a separate contract to clean the garage.’”

Again, we’re in the weeds here, but folks have a job to do. The government is navigating these contracts. It’s contracted out, and nobody is paying attention. What kind of management is that? And now you’ve got 14 new agencies who get to be a part of this management family? I wonder how they will feel.

Another client ministry said, “‘[Regarding] interior cleaning, [we] have yet to see a schedule of what is done where/when even though we have asked a number of times.”

Here’s another one. They used to have an agreement in the early 2000s “‘that detailed all the services for the building and who had the responsibilities to perform those services.... Currently, occupancy agreements provided to [our ministry] do not identify individual buildings or provide specific details of services provided for them. We no longer have a quick reference document that can confirm what services are provided for ministry-occupied buildings, and must contact IO ... or their service provider to get those details. If we request a copy of a lease from IO, typically only a portion of the applicable segment of the agreement is provided. If we request a copy of a service contract, IO does not provide a copy, only some details as they deem relevant. This can be an issue as illustrated in a very recent example. [Our ministry] questioned the cleaning services being provided to another building. [Our ministry] was initially told by IO that certain services were not part of the cleaning contract, and [we] acquired a third-party vendor to perform those services. It was recently discovered, after much persistence on [our] part for IO to verify the contract, that those services were in fact included in the original contract. [Our ministry] has been paying twice and we are now in the process of rectifying this issue and hoping to be reimbursed for the error. We have estimated that we paid approximately $16,000 unnecessarily over the last five years.’”

Just another day in Infrastructure Ontario’s management portfolio.

Speaker, recognizing that we are coming to the end of an hour—and I appreciate that when I said, “How am I supposed to fill an hour?” my party whip said, “Oh, you can fill an hour.” Yep, I guess so.

I’ll distill it down here: We have a bill in front of us that I’m surprised they have brought forward as its own stand-alone bill. Normally, we see these types of amendments or schedules put into a larger government bill. But as I said, this sort of solves a problem I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s been a day and a half; I’m trying to understand what motivates them, and hearing things like “efficiencies” and “holistic,” whatever—that doesn’t mean anything to the folks who go to work every day in one of those properties. What will it mean for them? I guess I would like to know, what is the end goal? Is this a part of the story of improving things as per the 14 recommendations of the Auditor General for the real estate services portfolio?

And when it comes to the class environmental assessment, that 30-day waiting period, we’re holding our breath about how often that will be used. This government’s track record on how it treats public input and consultation on the environment is poor. I would say the public is treated with disdain, frankly, and often so is the environment. Perhaps the government can take today’s debate as an opportunity to walk us through how the environment will continue to be protected and how this piece of legislation, indeed, will not just reduce efficiencies but make the world a better place, because I don’t see it.

I don’t know. I can’t answer that. How? How does this do those things? Walk me through it.

We heard a lot of promises coming out of a relatively small bill, which I find quite remarkable, but my sense is that this bill has the potential to actually increase red tape, and I’ll explain why.

Each of us here, if we’re from out of town, have access to an apartment to live here. We pay. It has to be approved, but we look after our own hiring, cleaners, food, whatever it is, to take care of our place because it’s direct, and yet what we heard earlier was that this idea of hiring contractors and so on will be so far removed from where things are actually taking place. It’s actually more red tape for the people to deal with their situations.

My question: Is it possible for us to see the consultations with those organizations? I understand many of them to be arms-length. For example, the Ontario Arts Council is independent and arms-length. So I’m wondering if—