Meegwetch to the member from Newmarket–Aurora for the presentation. I know that in the north when you travel down to a hospital and then you have to get antibiotics intravenously, sometimes, you know, some of the patients are there away from home because you have to fly in to access that service. You’re there for six weeks, eight weeks, to get the home care—because there’s no home care in the north. You have to get the IV service or the antibiotics intravenously on a daily basis and you have to be away from home. I have a hard time on how this legislation will help those people so they can be at home to get home care.

Yes. So these PSWs have to travel—let’s say there’s a patient in Smooth Rock, so she’ll go to Smooth Rock Falls, and then she has to go to Mattice, and then she has to come back to another community. But because she’s paid so much an hour, she has to cut down, because the distance is too far to do on the same day, on the same shift. Guess what happens? This patient who has been diagnosed—and they say, “No, you’re entitled to these services. You’re entitled to have two baths a week, so you’re going to have an hour of service a day.” Guess what happens to an hour a day? It’s down to 15 minutes.

I’ll talk to you more about this example. It’s right here—and this is one couple in Mattice. They used to receive one hour twice per week. Now they are only getting 15 minutes per visit. This is not enough time to even bathe the patient, let alone help with their medication and tend to their other needs. There is no time for conversation. It feels like they don’t matter and they are just there for the money. The wife is also aging and can no longer do any heavy lifting and is limited in how she can bend and move. She would be willing to pay for more care, but there’s nobody available.

Nobody available—well, do you think privatizing the system will get more services up north? I’ve got a reality: They will go where the money is, where the people are, the population. And who pays for this? It will be, again, my constituents, my colleagues’ constituents, everybody up north’s constituents. That’s the reality we’re facing.

People are coming in. They’re finding out what the work is. They leave faster than they came in. These non-profit organizations—by the way, their budget has been frozen for years—would love to pay more, would love to try to retain them, would love to give them benefits.

And let’s not forget what you guys have done: Remember Bill 124? Oh, you really helped us there. Comme ils disent en bon français : « un bon coup de pied dans le derrière », monsieur le Président. Et je pèse mes paroles là-dessus. Je n’use pas les vrais termes qu’on use en français. Il y a un terme qu’on use en français qui n’est peut-être pas trop parlementaire. Je peux vous dire que je pèse mes paroles quand je dis ça, là.

Mais la réalité est vraie : vous avez tué notre système. Vous avez tué notre système dans le Nord. Il faut de l’aide dans le Nord parce qu’on a de la misère à avoir—on peut les développer, mais ils ne viendront pas travailler chez nous. Ils vont aller travailler pour les agences à 115 $ ou à 55 $ ou 65 $, pas à 20-quelque-chose piastres de l’heure. Puis qu’ils sont obligés d’aller rencontrer un patient et de dire : « écoute, monsieur, aujourd’hui tu as une heure—je ne peux pas te donner ton bain parce que je n’ai que 15 minutes à te donner »? Pas fort.

Quand je vous entends dire qu’on va uniformiser notre système—“we’ll make this system a lot better. We will make sure that everybody gets their service”—every time, you bring all the service and want to consolidate, like you said, do you know who pays the price? Northern Ontario pays the price, because then small communities compete with bigger cities, and guess who loses? Small communities, every time. And then you go north on that, even north, you pay encore more. They pay even more.

Fait que, quand je vous entends dire que vous allez uniformiser et que vous allez privatiser et que : « non, on ne privatise pas; on veut améliorer le système »—on l’a déjà vu ce bateau-là passer. On la connaît, la toune. Et la toune, c’est que l’on sait qu’il va y avoir une perte de services encore et que ça va nous coûter plus cher. Ce n’est pas moi qui le dit, là; c’est votre système.

On a eu des fermetures. On a passé proche à des fermetures. Il y a des hôpitaux—écoute, l’hôpital de par chez nous à Smooth Rock Falls a de la misère à faire le « payroll » pour quelques mois. Trois ou quatre semaines passées, vous avez été obligés de leur faire une avance jusqu’au mois de janvier. Ça ne règle pas le problème. Au mois de janvier, le problème va être là encore. Ils ont un million-quelque-chose de déficit à cause des agences que vous avez créées, la privatisation, et vous dites : « Mautadit, c’est beau cette affaire-là. Ça marche comme dans l’eau—comme dans l’eau bénite. » Ça fonctionne tellement bien que nos hôpitaux ont de la misère à y arriver maintenant, qu’on a de la misère à faire le « payroll » et qu’on a vu, en Ontario, des urgences fermées. Puis, on dit que le système va bien—qu’il va bien, le système. Je ne sais pas sur quelle planète vous vivez ou dans quelle province vous vivez. Chez nous, ce n’est pas de même que ça marche.

J’ai un de mes collègues qui vous a parlé du Danemark. Il y a des systèmes qui existent. On n’a pas besoin de réinventer la roue, on n’a qu’à aller voir où ça fonctionne. À la place de donner des millions de dollars dans les poches de vos amis, donnez-les donc aux personnes qui en ont besoin.

Vous nous accusez de voter contre vos projets de loi—parce qu’on sait lire, nous autres aussi. We know how to read. You accuse us of not voting for those—because we know where the money is going to go, because we lived it with the Harris government. On l’a vécu. On la connaît, la toune. On le sait. We know what’s going to happen, and we’ll always vote against it, because the people who need the services—this is where the money should go, not lining the pockets of your friends and these big corporations. That’s not where it should go. And I don’t think this is what you were elected for either, but you do it anyways.

Je vais vous donner un autre exemple. I’ll give you another example. His name was Miguel. Now, it was autism, but I’ll just use that example. Their family had to move to Cochrane to get some services, even though they weren’t sure—because he was a young adult and he finished school. But the mother was burnt-out. The family was burnt-out. They were even thinking—when the family is at that point that they’re thinking of bringing their son to the emergency just because they can’t handle it anymore, the system is failing. The system is failing, and this bill will not fix that.

Convenient care? You have to realize that, back home, there is no subsidized housing; there is no housing for people like Miguel or somebody that needs help. There are hardly any services. Some of them are overbooked; it takes three years to get in. That’s the reality we live day to day. And I will repeat again, if you go up north, it’s even worse. It’s even worse. So on Highway 11, if we are having that much difficulty, I can just imagine other communities up north, how they’re struggling.

But they had to move. They sold their house, moved to Cochrane, got a job—or tried to get a job—because they were hoping to get better service for their son.

What’s wrong with this picture? What’s wrong with this picture is that we should put the money where it’s needed, not the other way around. But it seems that it falls on deaf ears.

I said that in the north, families are already struggling as our demands are high, yet our access to proper service is continuously plummeting. Just before I go on again, think about this travel grant: Because we have so much land, we’ve asked how many times just to re-evaluate, because that doesn’t even reflect the services. Do you think these people that need the services to go see their doctors and everything shouldn’t be compensated for that, because we don’t have the doctors and we don’t have the services? I’ve got a community up north of 5,000 people; 3,500 community members don’t have a family doctor. That’s our lives up north. Some communities are worse off.

But to get back to this, they cannot retain workers due to poor wages, and I’ve spoken about that. These people went through some hard times during COVID. PSWs went through some hard times. They were there. They were giving services to the people who needed them. And yet, we didn’t want to move on Bill 124, even though we know it’s unconstitutional. Ce n’est pas constitutionnel. On sait que le projet de loi 124 est anticonstitutionnel, mais on continue à dépenser l’argent des contribuables. Pourquoi, eux autres? « Parce qu’on est mieux que toutes les autres décisions qui sont prises à la cour suprême de l’Ontario. On a eu des décisions de la Cour suprême, mais nous autres, on est mieux, on connaît mieux, on sait mieux. On est un gouvernement pour le monde »—for the people. Bill 124 is not for the people. Ce n’est pas quand tu gèles leurs salaires—dans les temps les plus difficiles, quand on passait une pandémie, qu’on vient geler leurs salaires.

Lack of replacement workers in the north: Families have been completely skipped for their weekly home visit as agencies could not find a replacement when a worker called in sick or could not make it on time. Can you imagine only getting one, two baths per week, and your worker does not show up? That means no bath for the entire week. I don’t know what you feel, but how would you feel if you could not get your bath? Comment vous vous sentiriez, vous autres? Un à deux bains par semaine, ce n’est pas gros, là. Mais ça, c’est une réalité continuelle. J’en ai parlé en Chambre drette dans mes débuts quand j’ai été élu. Pour une, ça faisait un mois qu’elle n’avait pas eu un bain à cause du manque de service. Se faire laver à la mitaine, comme qu’on dit en français—washing with a handcloth is not a bath.

Then, we’re saying, “No, we’re going to unify the system. It works so good there right now.” We’re hearing this government speak: “Everything is good.” Not back home. I’m not inventing these things; these are my constituents’ stories. You think unifying is going to fix this? It won’t, because too much money is going—exactly what my colleague has spoken to—to put more money in these big, big corporations, your friends. And that’s okay? It’s not okay. This is why we keep voting against your bills—

They’re measured by hours.

I thank your aunt in northern Ontario for her services, because I think we have to thank her for the work she has done. But tell me, if you want to have success, why can’t we pay the PSWs right now that we have that are unionized? Instead of paying these agencies $55 or $65 an hour, why don’t we pay these PSWs the same rate? Because it seems to be okay from your party. And I heard the minister today say, “No, it’s okay. We need them.” So why don’t you pay these instead? Remove Bill 124 and pay these PSWs the rate that you’re paying right now, because it seems to be okay, fine with your government, but yet you’re fighting this all the way, even though it’s « anticonstitutionnel »—I always have difficulty saying that word in English. But why don’t you do that?

This is why we vote against a bill like this. People say, “Well, what’s wrong with this bill?” When you start also explaining what’s wrong with this bill, they see it, because it’s opening more to privatization, and we know up north how privatization hurt us.

I gave you the numbers. When we talk in my constituency about the price we’re paying for agencies, and hospitals almost closing because they can’t make payroll—we need our hospitals, because we have very few hospitals up north and we have distances to travel, not to mention the highways we have to go through and drive through in the winter, and accidents. The list goes on.

But when you explain it to them, they understand, because they live it on a daily basis. So yes, we’ll vote against bills that are not addressing the problem, because that’s my job: to represent my constituents.

Merci, madame la Présidente, et merci au député de votre discours.

M^me Deborah Simon, qui est la directrice générale de l’Association ontarienne de soutien communautaire, a dit : « Les soins à domicile et en milieu communautaire jouent un rôle essentiel dans l’avenir d’un solide système de santé ontarien. Les modifications législatives qui renforcent ce service vital seront importantes pour favoriser les soins au bénéficiaire dans un système de santé intégré. »

Alors, je dois vous poser la question, monsieur le député : est-ce que nous pouvons compter sur votre soutien de l’Association ontarienne de soutien communautaire et votre soutien de ce projet de loi?

Écoute, j’apprécie ta question en français, premièrement, mais à nulle part dans ce projet de loi est-ce que ça parle des services en français non plus. Ce qu’on sait dans la province de l’Ontario : il y a une grosse pénurie de services en français. Je suis certain que tu ne peux pas le dénier parce qu’on le vit constamment. On n’a qu’à penser à, encore, que vous venez d’annoncer notre université que vous avez cancellée—je ne comprends pas la justification.

Mais quand ça vient à des services de santé, un des gros dossiers de l’AFO, madame la Présidente, c’est le manque de services en santé francophones. En étant critique francophone, puis qu’on voit qu’ils n’adressent pas ces services en français dans un projet de loi qui dit « Convenient Care at Home »—what about the French part of it? Because right now, in this bill, it doesn’t address nothing about services in French, which are lacking a lot in Ontario.

I want to thank my colleague for a very impassioned speech about home care and about the disparity of services that northern Ontario is experiencing. You can always tell when he’s really passionate, because his voice goes up three or four octaves, and it makes it entertaining for some of us.

However, the question on this voting thing—I’m going to go there—because once again, the government has brought forward a piece of legislation which does not solve the problem. They always say to us, “Why are you not voting with us?” We’re going to vote against legislation which does not address the needs of the people of this province, and that includes northern Ontario, to my colleague.

So when my colleague finds out that seniors who are not getting dignity in home care are now looking to medical assistance in dying—they’re looking to the MAID system, because they have no dignity—what can he tell the House about the level of desperation, based on this bill?

Thank you very much for your presentation.

We’re now under questions and responses.

Questions?

Questions?

I’ll be sharing my time this afternoon with the member from Don Valley East.

It’s an honour to speak to Bill 135, the Convenient Care at Home Act, today. When I first saw the bill being introduced, I thought to myself, “Finally. The government is going to do something about the state of home care in Ontario.” But, Madam Speaker, I don’t think this bill does what is needed.

Most Ontarians, and certainly those that I speak to, would like to stay at home as long as possible as they age or as medical conditions arise. There’s comfort in being at home where you raised your family, where you live your life. As the scourge of illness or disease and the impacts of Father Time affect us, sometimes taking our dignity, it’s essential to hold on to everything that we can, to maintain that sense of normalcy, to maintain our dignity as much as possible. Home care services are essential for those who may need assistance with their daily activities: bathing, dressing, eating, using the washroom, taking medications, amongst many other things. It should be and must be a top priority for our government to ensure that Ontarians can stay in their own home as long as possible and can do so with dignity and respect while receiving world-class health care.

However, as a result of this government’s underfunding of health care, home care services in Ontario are facing a crisis. They’re underfunded, understaffed and, as our population ages, they are overburdened. The government has failed to address the issues head-on—including by imposing Bill 124, which continues to add to Ontario’s health care retention issues.

Madam Speaker, I’d like to share the story of a constituent of mine, Martine. Martine is impacted by the chronic underfunding of home care services each and every day and is not being treated with the dignity and respect she deserves from this government.

Here’s Martine’s story. Martine is an active 50-year-old. She’s smart, articulate and funny. She enjoys movies and concerts, good food, great company, and sometimes just a quiet night in. She has a family life, friends, interests and hobbies, just like the rest of us. She has much to contribute to her peers, her family and the community at large. The only difference is that she is not able-bodied. Martine requires a wheelchair and help with daily living tasks. Throughout the day, Martine receives home care services from two separate home care agencies. But as a result of the continued underfunding, mismanagement and lack of prioritization, Martine routinely goes without the home care services she needs—services she is entitled to. Martine needs help getting in and out of bed. Like any vibrant adult, she has an active social life. She enjoys going out with friends, hosting dinner parties, and all of the other social activities we take for granted.

Routinely, Martine is told that she needs to make a choice: continue to be a vibrant, active adult or receive home care. How is this choice given to Martine? By being told she can only receive service with help to bed at 8 o’clock, or sometimes as early as 5 o’clock in the afternoon. Imagine being told that you have to go to bed at 8 o’clock every night and cannot get out of bed again the next morning until 7:30 or 8 o’clock. Imagine the indignity of being told that you cannot enjoy the same life we all enjoy because you’re being put to bed early. Imagine what it would be like to have plans with friends and family and to get that last-minute call saying the PSW is no longer able to put you to bed when you get home—or how you’re going to go to work on time in the morning when the last-minute call comes in that morning saying there’s no one to get you out of bed.

Madam Speaker, I look around the room. There are many with us at the moment who, I would guess, are 50 years or perhaps a little bit older right now.

How many of you can go 12 or 13 hours without using the washroom? That’s what Martine faces routinely.

She is incredibly lucky. She has support from family and loved ones who, at the last minute, can drop everything to help her in these situations. But it shouldn’t come to this. Not everyone has that support network.

Martine and other Ontarians should have the confidence in our health care system to provide the care they need at home and to live healthy and dignified lives.

I had the pleasure of meeting Martine at her home a few weeks ago, and I was amazed at the changes she has made to her home to adapt to her illness and how her illness will progress. As a result of her physical condition, every day is already a challenge, but she works hard to navigate life with a positive mentality. After spending some time with Martine, hearing her story, I don’t think I could be that positive. Surely we need to help Martine maintain her dignity and live a productive and fruitful life, and that includes a social life. I wish she was here to be able to explain to all of you the things that she has had to go through and how she has had to adapt her life to this medical condition.

Tragically, Martine’s story and situation is not unique. Too many Ontarians who require home care services are in similar circumstances.

Bill 135 is nothing but a cosmetic change that will not address the root causes of the crisis in home care. It’s putting lipstick on a pig. It doesn’t provide a pathway for more funding to hire more PSWs and nurses. It won’t improve conditions to help retain the workers we already have. It won’t enhance accountability or transparency in the delivery of home care services or ensure public oversight. In fact, it creates a one-size-fits-all solution to a province that the Premier himself has said many times isn’t a one-size-fits-all province. It doesn’t make any sense.

Bill 135 could make things worse by opening the door for more privatization and profiteering in the home care sector.

We need a different vision for home care in Ontario, one that is based on ensuring dignity—dignity for our friends, our family and our neighbours.

My question is for the member from Mushkegowuk–James Bay. I spent many years working in your community—Moose Factory, Moosonee and all of those James Bay communities. I struggle to understand how home care services will improve by centralizing them in a single monolithic institution. Does that make any sense to you?

The answer is no.

Because you touched on long-term care, in 2022, during the election, back home they announced a big announcement: 68 new beds and an improvement of another 60—Extendicare; it’s a private home. And we need these beds. You have to realize, back home, there is more than three years’ waiting time to get into long-term care. And guess what happened when they eliminated the ALC beds? This was like a pressure relief valve. For our people that needed a bed but there was none available, they could use an ALC bed. Then you passed a law eliminating ALC beds. Well, you’ve just created an even bigger problem. But you announced this in 2022. Eighteen months later—and these beds were welcomed. I was the first one to thank the government on this. But 18 months later, not even breaking ground. Zero. Zéro de fait. C’est radio-silence de votre gouvernement—radio silence from your government on these 18 months.

I passed a letter to the minister. I hope he’s got an answer for me shortly.

I’m happy, because you went and you saw it and you lived it. That’s why I keep telling this government, go up there and go see for yourself. Because once you’ve been there, your life will change. You won’t have the excuse of saying that you didn’t know. It’s a reality that all of you should get to see, because the lack of service—even “lack of service” is not the right word; absence of service. My colleague has spoken to it, but the reality is, we need to do better in this government.

I’d like to thank the member from Mushkegowuk–James Bay for his excellent presentation. I think every time this government turns their eye to a different part of health care, the province of Ontario shudders—workers and the people receiving the care—while people who make a profit off of health care in Ontario are very excited about it.

Before the pandemic, this government cut inspections to long-term care. During the pandemic, they passed legislation to protect the worst of the worst long-term-care operators, and they even passed legislation to protect themselves from legal liability—not something that generally happens when people are honest and upright.

They claim to respect seniors, and they claim to respect health care workers. My question to the member: Is this bill truly about care when there’s no way to prevent companies from overcharging and there are no consequences for providers who fail to meet service agreements?

My question will be to the member from Orléans.

I have to tell you, my mind is a bit boggled right now. Under the previous Liberal government, you were cutting nurses, you were leaving our hospitals lacking in infrastructure, in disarray.

These 14 separate home care organizations—it’s in fact the home care organizations that have been asking this government to make a change, to make it centralized. It’s this government that has been investing $80 billion this year in this health care system. So I have to say, instead of navigating 14 separate home care organizations and waiting for a call at home, now this at-home program will be a one-stop shop that provides people with easy access—

After five years of government, the government should actually take responsibility for the things the government is or is not doing, and one of those things is the provision of adequately funded home care.

The government member says that their administrative reorganization of home care will somehow make things easier. Well, I don’t recall the administration reorganization of how licence plates are done making anything easier in Ontario—or, frankly, any of the other administrative changes this government has tried to make. In fact, I think we’re seeing lots of problems with the administrative changes they made around the sale of cannabis in our communities. So if they think administrative changes are going to provide more home care, they need to spend less time here at Queen’s Park and more time out in their communities talking to people.

The member from Don Valley East.

Response?

This is something that’s very important, because our senior population is going to exponentially get bigger over the next 10 to 20 to 30 years, and home care is an essential piece. We know that when we speak to people who need care, their first preference—especially a senior wants to remain at home.

Under the Conservative government—home care used to be not-for-profit, and then a Mike Harris government changed all that and privatized it. And the Liberals, quite frankly, weren’t any better. They continued that privatization.

Would this member advocate and promote and actually make policy changes so that home care is not-for-profit and there’s not a profit extrapolated out of caring for vulnerable seniors at home and many other people at home? Would you support a not-for-profit policy in home care in this bill?

It’s always a pleasure to rise in the House to discuss the issues that worry my constituents in Don Valley East and across Ontario, especially as it relates to something that is as important to all of us as health care.

On this occasion, I’m speaking about Bill 135, the amendments to the Connecting Care Act, which aim to provide some material changes to home and community care services here within Ontario.

My remarks will focus on five things: (1) the status of home and community care here in Ontario; (2) how this poor status came about; (3) some of the recommendations from stakeholders; (4) how Bill 135 doesn’t meet any of those recommendations; and finally, (5) exactly what is wrong with Bill 135.

Let’s begin with the status of home care here in Ontario. There’s no way to mince words here. It is a dysfunctional system marked by severe staffing shortages, high staffing turnover, frequent changes to nurses and personal support workers, and a remarkable—not in a complimentary way—amount of rationing of care, with less time spent per patient visit.

In order to illustrate this, I’d like to share the story of one of my constituents, and this constituent happens to be my constituency assistant. His father is bed-bound. His boss—me—is a member of provincial Parliament. His boss is a family and emergency doctor. Despite all of those levers, we still cannot get my constituency assistant’s father the home care services he desires—that he requires. This is a situation that has arisen the moment this government got its grips on home care.

How did this come about? Well, it boils down to a few things. We have a demoralized workforce that is burnt-out from the pandemic, that has moral injury from rationing care. They’ve been rationing care because this government hasn’t been able to retain health care workers—doesn’t have a strategy to retain health care workers.

We also have a problem with the proliferation of for-profit, private health care, again, impacting the retention of health care workers; imposing wage restriction and wage suppression to squeeze out profits; offering part-time work instead of full-time work so as not to pay out benefits; delivering lower quality, rushed care—public pain for private gain.

Then, of course, we have systemic underfunding, marked by Bill 124, leading to the proliferation of for-profit nursing agencies and staffing agencies. We have a government—this government—that isn’t even willing to accept money on the table from the federal government, $1.7 billion to raise wages for PSWs. They will not do it because they do not respect health care workers. And, of course, we have consistent and repeated overpromising—commitments of $1 billion given in the 2022 budget for home care, of which only about $150 million was released, and then in this year’s budget, a promise to deliver $569 million, although the last time the FAO reported on this government’s spending, they had already underspent by $1.2 billion.

So this is how we got there—ignorance, a lack of competence by the current government. We also already have a road map from many stakeholders—stakeholders such as the Ontario Community Support Association, which has said that a mere 10% wage increase would result in an extra almost 1,300 PSWs, would retain one in five PSWs who are about to leave. They said we need to achieve wage parity between home care, community care, long-term care and the acute-care sector. And they have said—and I agree—that we need to pay workers for all the hours worked, not just the ones in direct patient care.

This year, we’ve seen an increase to 76% of organizations saying that the health human resource crisis and inflationary pressures have forced them to either cut services or increase wait-lists.

Bill 135 ignores all of those things. Rather than doing any of those things, it puts the proverbial head in the sand. It ignores the root causes of our problems. It’s the equivalent of throwing darts at a dartboard in the hope that something sticks. Every single one of the fundamental problems plaguing our home care system is completely ignored. It does this because it actually—well, if anything, it makes things worse. It demolishes the existing home care architecture, eliminates 14 local health integration networks and replaces them with a half-baked, poorly conceived monolithic alternative that hasn’t been fully thought out. It proposes to provide home and community care services to patients, proposes to deliver operational supports, proposes to provide information to the public about health and social services and proposes to provide placement management services. Those are lines on a piece of paper. How it supposes to deliver those things? No idea. I met with ministry officials and asked them to tell me concretely what it will do and was met with nothing but business power words like “integration” and “connected care.” What does that mean? Why does this monolithic institution think that it can perform these tasks better than local health integration networks? Never clarified. It might, but if history is a judge, that is an unlikely proposition.

We saw, when Ontario health teams were proposed, they were delivered in a patchy, lumbering rollout that took place in an entirely ad hoc manner, lacking in consistency. Now we actually see that was an attempt to decentralize services.

This is an attempt to centralize services. We can’t even figure out a consistent pattern on the direction we want our health care system to move in. And the point is to centralize services with an expectation that—I don’t really know.

What I can tell you is that the last time we faced a process like this was when we tried centralizing autism intake services under the umbrella of AccessOAP. That has subsequently proved to be an entire disaster, with skyrocketing wait times and a ballooning list of kids exceeding 60,000.

I could go on and on and on, but I don’t have the time.

When I asked the ministry for an example of a single concrete problem that this organization would solve, there was no answer.

So pick your metaphor for this bill—it’s centralizing at one level, decentralizing on another; lipstick on a pig, as my colleague said; shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic; a tale of sound and fury signifying nothing. I don’t know. It centralizes powers and the minister, who can just reward her friends, as we’ve seen with the greenbelt—