It is my pleasure, but it’s unfortunate that I feel compelled to have to get up to speak to this motion and to the point of order. I’m going to follow along the lines of my colleague from Oshawa, as having been a woman who was the first Vice-Chair of the Committee of the Whole House who had the honour and the opportunity—one of few women to ever sit in that chair and listen to all sides of the House—to impartially listen to all sides of the House, to get to understand procedure. And I have to give credit where credit is due, to the Clerks, because they do the lion’s share of the work, keeping the Speakers on track and knowing the rules.

Speaker, this morning during question period and during some of the inaugural speeches of the member from Durham and the member from Ajax and the government House leader—who talked about the history and tradition in honouring that in democracy. What we are seeing today is a government House leader—and, I have no doubt, the Premier, as well—who is exacting revenge and using the rules to their advantage in the most egregious manner in order to get back at this side of the House for following our democratic right to vote by secret ballot for our choice of Speaker, and that is all this is. The government House leader stood here earlier to defend and deflect—because there was a lot of spin and a lot of deflecting, and at my house we call that a whole lot of horse hockey—

Interjections.

So to you, sir, and everyone else on this side of the House, through the Speaker, I say this: As my colleague mentioned, it feels like the government is making pawns of not just the members on this side of the House, but the women on this side of the House. What I think should happen is that the government House leader should not only rethink the fact that he just wants to control and stick it to this side of the House, but actually look at what he has been doing when it comes to the advancement of women running for elected office, to be in this place in the first place.