When your Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre met President Biden, he was clear that opposition was an act of loyalty. So I want to make sure—His Majesty’s loyal opposition—that’s what we’re doing, our job here, holding you to account, just like your Conservative leader has said.

My question is very specific. You talk about not wanting duplication or red tape. You’ve taken out the Auditor General’s ability to audit the Office of the Children’s Lawyer. The Attorney General said, “We don’t want to hire more people. We don’t want to spend taxpayers’ dollars.” So explain to me why, then, you are requiring audits, for example, in the city of Toronto. The city of Toronto has auditors. They audit their books. They do all of that work. They have a chief financial officer. But you’re requiring an external audit to see how they can recoup all of those development charges that are leaving a hole in their revenue. How do you explain that duplication?

There are many redundancies in government left behind by the previous administration—much unnecessary overhead and burdens and hoops to jump through.

But there is plenty of oversight for the Office of the Children’s Lawyer, and the Auditor General continues to have a very broad mandate for value-for-money audits.

What we’re doing is removing redundancies, removing duplication. That’s part of reducing red tape and regulation without compromising oversight. That’s the key to this bill.

Again, a little bit of a history lesson when we talk about minority governments and official opposition—yes, His Majesty’s loyal opposition, that’s the name for it for a reason. However, minority versus majority governments—when there is a budget bill, when there is a minority government, you can bring the government down. The NDP could have done that from 2011 to 2014 but did not do so. They aided and abetted the Liberal legacy.

There are a number of acts being amended or proposed to be amended by this bill.

The Courts of Justice Act—to remove the requirement of the Auditor General to audit the accounts and financial transactions of the Office of the Children’s Lawyer. Again, oversight is still there, but it’s removing duplication.

The Creditors’ Relief Act will include electronic formats, if those amendments are passed.

The Execution Act—for a principal residence exemption in forced sales. That amendment will be made if this act is passed.

Updating hearings before the hearing and appeal divisions under the Law Society Act—I covered that off in my speech, but that gives the chair the discretion to go to one-member tribunals instead of three, if appropriate.

Amending the Substitute Decisions Act, updating that—this would clarify that an attorney has the power to access personal information about an incapable person.

Updating the Trustee Act to facilitate investment of trust investments—and, of course, the amendment to The Hague Convention to allow proper enforcement of child support orders.

These are very important measures, and I urge all members of the House to support them.