I’m very proud, on behalf of the NDP, to bring forward, for the third time, the Stay Home If You Are Sick Act—legislation that provides all Ontario workers with the paid sick days they need and deserve, not just during the COVID-19 pandemic, but on a permanent, ongoing basis.

The bill requires employers to provide 10 days of paid personal emergency leave that can be used for illness, injury and urgent matters, including caring for family members, and also prohibits requirements for a doctor’s note. It gives Ontario workers access to 14 paid infectious disease emergency leave days, an increase from the paltry three that are currently available to cover workers affected by a pandemic now in its third year.

Finally, the bill includes a temporary program of financial assistance to help struggling small businesses in the transition to providing paid leave.

Mr. Blais moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 5, An Act to amend various statutes with respect to workplace violence and harassment policies in codes of conduct for councillors and members of local boards / Projet de loi 5, Loi modifiant diverses lois en ce qui concerne les politiques en matière de violence et de harcèlement au travail prévues dans les codes de déontologie des conseillers et des membres des conseils locaux.

Point of order.

Standing order 1(a) sets out that the business of the chamber and committees shall be regulated through the standing orders.

Standing order 1(b) outlines that the purpose of these provisions is “to ensure that proceedings are conducted in a manner that respects the democratic rights of members....”

Standing order 1(c) calls on the Speaker to provide guidance on where the standing orders are unclear.

I am requesting your guidance to navigate what we perceive to be a conflict between standing order 110 and standing order 115(a). The intent of standing order 115(a) is to ensure that the distribution of committee memberships is done in a fair and impartial manner that respects the outcome of elections by allocating committee seats to the respective recognized parties in proportion to their representation in the House. By setting aside committee seats explicitly for a recognized party, surely the principles of democracy require that that recognized party be able to determine which members fill those seats.

Instead, with this motion, the government has given itself de facto control over which MPPs are appointed to committees. The motion ignores the official opposition appointments that were communicated by me, on behalf of the NDP caucus, in a letter to the government House leader on July 19. In some cases, this motion actually removes the members we intended to nominate as chairs or vice-chairs—information that was also communicated to the government—from their respective committees.

I should also point out that our appointments were made after extensive consultation between our interim leader and members of our caucus out of respect for the democratic rights of members. And indeed, in our quick review of past committee appointment motions, we could not find a single example where a motion appointing committee members was brought before the House in a manner that did not follow recognized party recommendations.

Speaker, that is our concern with the motion before us today, and the reason for our request for your guidance. With this motion, the government has unilaterally assigned which MPPs from the official opposition will fill the committee positions that are expressly assigned to the official opposition. One can only imagine the uproar that such a motion would have caused, the indignation and outrage that we would have heard from members across the way—even the government House leader—if this was moved when they were on this side of the floor.

And while the standing orders do not explicitly authorize the recognized opposition parties to name their own members to committee, it is important to note that, in the same fashion, the standing orders do not explicitly give the government such power, either. In fact, in instances where the standing orders intend for the government to have discretion, such discretion is unequivocally provided for. One only needs to look to the next clause, standing order 115(b), where the standing order clearly states that the committee preferences expressed by independent members are not binding on the government.

Historically, committee membership motions are done via unanimous consent because they are brought before the House through a process of collaboration and respect. The fact that I am forced to rise on this point of order shows that no such consensus or respect exists.

Given the unprecedented application of standing order 110 as contained within this motion, it is, at a minimum, incumbent upon the government to convincingly demonstrate to the House why this new interpretation supersedes generations of past practice and interpretation. Several decades of consistent application is neither accident nor coincidence, Speaker.

If this interpretation of standing order 110 is allowed to stand, what is to prevent the government from simply assigning the same two MPPs from a recognized party to every committee, if the standard is narrowed so that only the language of the specific provision matters and the intent, past practice and impact of relevant standing orders are rendered silent when the rules are used in ways they were never designed or intended to be employed?

At a minimum, standing order 110 was not designed to give the House unfettered control over the committee appointments process. It is my hope that we do not establish such a dangerous precedent today.

Before I conclude, I want to offer a brief observation about the context for the motion that was tabled. As the Speaker may know, the official opposition was pressured to support one of the candidates in the recent Speaker election over another and threatened with government interference with our committee appointments if we did not support their desired outcome. This motion follows on the heels of that interaction.

With that, Speaker, I thank you for listening, and I look forward to your ruling on this matter.

Thank you very much, Speaker, for listening intently to the point of order which I raised and considering the concerns that I put on the record, and for providing your ruling. I recognize that you have determined that the motion is procedurally correct within the language of the standing orders, but I do want to echo some of the comments that were made by my colleagues during the debate on the point of order.

In particular, I want to start with reference to what we heard yesterday in this place at the opening ceremonies of the first session of the 43rd Parliament of Ontario. You, Speaker, provided a very powerful reminder to all of us as to why we serve in this place. The words you used: “Give to each member of this Legislature a strong and abiding sense of the great responsibilities laid upon us. Guide us here in our deliberations. Give us a deep and thorough understanding of the needs of the people we serve. Help us to use power wisely and well.”

I would contend that this government’s decision to completely ignore three decades of parliamentary precedent and tradition in terms of the membership-of-committee recommendations that are brought forward by recognized parties, and to unilaterally determine which members of the official opposition are going to sit on the committees of this place—I would contend that that is not using power wisely and well. To me, that is an abuse of power and it offends the very fundamental purpose of the standing orders that govern our conduct in this place.

Standing order 1(b): “The purpose of these standing orders is to ensure that proceedings are conducted in a manner that respects the democratic rights of members.” This government’s dictatorial approach to pick and choose which—

This government’s approach to pick and choose which members of the official opposition are going to sit on which committees, without any regard to the recommendations that the government House leader received in a communication from me earlier in July as to the membership of the committees that had been determined by the interim leader in extensive consultation with members of our caucus, so that members of our caucus could utilize their skills and interests and passions in a way that best help them serve the people of their communities—which is why we are here. Instead, this government has gone ahead and brought forward a motion that, as I said, disregards the advice, the recommendations that were provided.

We cannot support this motion. It sets a very dangerous precedent in this place when the government House leader is permitted to make these kinds of unilateral decisions. It is anti-democratic because it does not respect the rights of members to participate in this chamber as they would like to do so.

I did want to comment on something that was said by the government House leader, who was outraged that the official opposition would provide the government with information about the members we intended to nominate as Chairs and Vice-Chairs of the committees on which our members were prepared to serve. And I wanted to point out that there was a media report on July 4, well before the infamous meeting which was held with the government House leader in which we had a conversation about the election of the Speaker and about what would happen to the Vice-Chair and Chair positions on all of the committees in this Legislature if we did not support the government’s preferred candidate. But anyway, prior to that meeting, there was a media report in which it stated all of the government members who are going to be chairing each of the standing committees that are to be chaired by government members.

I heard the government House leader say that this was disgraceful, that the official opposition was somehow trying to usurp the democratic rights of committee members to determine who was going to serve as Chair and Vice-Chair, and yet on July 4, they had already determined each of the Chairs of the standing committees that the standing orders specify are to be chaired by government members. Speaker, we were being transparent. We were providing the government with information about the MPPs, the caucus members we were prepared to nominate as Vice-Chairs, and we would have hoped for that party’s support.

Speaker, I did want to refer to the letter that the government House leader also mentioned in his remarks. I sent this letter to him because he had invited me to a meeting and had put on the table this proposal that the NDP unite with the government and unanimously vote for their preferred candidate in the election for Speaker of the assembly.

I want to quote from this letter. I said to the government House leader, “You requested that the official opposition urge all NDP caucus members to vote in favour of Ms. Tangri as Speaker, and to join you in issuing a joint public statement in support of Tangri before the vote is held. If those conditions were not met, you threatened to ignore 30 years of tradition and disregard the advice of the official opposition House leader on the appointment of three Deputy Speakers. Further, you referenced the government’s ability to use its majority on committees to ignore caucus recommendations for the two committee Chair and six Vice-Chair positions as outlined in the standing orders, and appoint independent members as Vice-Chairs instead. You stated that if the NDP complies with your request, you will not block official opposition recommendations for these 11 positions.”

Speaker, far be it from me to impute motive. I would not ever do that. But I do find it somewhat striking that the names of the members that the official opposition put forward for all of the standing committees have been completely mixed up by this government House leader. He has made decisions, picked and chosen which members are going to sit on which committees. In some cases, he has removed the member that—we had actually said, “That is the member we’re going to nominate as Vice-Chair or Chair of that committee,” and this government House leader has removed that member’s name from the motion that is before us.

We are on a very slippery slope right now, I would argue. The government in the last four years made more changes to the standing orders than we have seen in the 15 years prior to that, and each one of those changes did more and more to centralize power in the hands of the government.

And now, here, today, we don’t see a standing orders change brought before us, but we see a completely unprecedented interpretation and application of the standing orders which, once again, helps to centralize power in the hands of the government. For that reason alone, Speaker, we cannot support this motion, because of the very dangerous precedent that it sets.

As I pointed out in my remarks on the point of order, taken to its logical end here, the government House leader could appoint the same two members from the official opposition to every committee if they have the power to pick and choose who’s going to sit. The government House leader pointed out that in some cases they wanted to appoint three, but whether it’s two members or three members, the fact is that this government House leader wants to consolidate, to keep all of the power to himself as to who those members should be. The functioning of this House and the deep traditions of democracy upon which this Legislative Assembly was established require that there be respect for the democratic rights of members to participate in this House as they see fit.

The other thing we heard yesterday in the throne speech that is reflected in the words of that very powerful prayer that I mentioned at the beginning is about the need to co-operate, to collaborate. We’re dealing with huge issues. Our health care system is unravelling as we speak. The people of this province are expecting us to work together to solve some of these huge issues, and that requires collaboration. It requires some kind of process of give and take. This government decided they couldn’t even do the minimum amount of collaboration that would be necessary to just, as every previous government has done, take the names of the members that the official opposition wants to appoint to committees and write them into the motion. That would have been the very, very minimum sign of respect and demonstration of engagement with the official opposition, to try to move forward together, to start to deal with these very big issues that we are facing in Ontario.

Speaker, with that, I conclude my remarks.