There are a lot of good reasons why people change their names. One of those reasons is tradition; it’s based on tradition. For example, it’s a common tradition that a person getting married might change their name to adopt the family name of their spouse. That’s a very common tradition.

There’s another reason for changing your name, and that’s a very happy reason which I experienced in my 24 years as a lawyer. It’s when a child grows up and doesn’t know who their biological mother or biological father is, but they’re brought up by somebody, and that person becomes a parent figure to them. As time goes by, they decide they want to adopt that person’s family name as a symbol of having been adopted by that person in real life. I think that’s a beautiful thing. I’ve seen that happen myself.

Of course, famous people, especially entertainers, are always changing their name. They change their name probably for promotional reasons. That’s why Destiny Hope Cyrus is Miley Cyrus. Her nickname when she was growing up was Smiley; it was abbreviated to Miley, and that’s why we know her as Miley Cyrus.

But my favourite name change stories come out of ancient history. One of my favourite name change stories is about this fellow named Jacob. Jacob was travelling across the desert with his tribe. At a certain point, he comes across another man who challenges him to a wrestling contest. They begin wrestling out there in the middle of the desert. This man strikes Jacob and renders him incapable of wrestling, so all Jacob can do is continue clinging onto this man and cling and cling. It lasts so long that finally, he forces this man to give him his blessing. It’s only then that Jacob realizes that, in fact, he has been wrestling with God. God changes his name and says, “From now on, we are going to call you Israel,” which in my translation means “he who wrestles with God.” Some of us do that every day.

There’s another great story that comes out of the ancient stories. This one has got to be my favourite. This one is about Saul. He’s riding a donkey on the way to the city of Damascus, which back then was a really big important city, and on his way, he’s blinded by light; he’s blinded by a flash of light. He falls off his donkey, and they have to carry him away and they have to care for him because he’s blind for three days. Over the course of three days, Paul experiences a conversion of sorts, after which he adopts the name “Paul.” And he goes about the rest of his life calling himself Paul. He actually happens to be one of the guys that I’ve read a lot about. He did three incredible tours around the ancient world telling everybody about his experience: how he was knocked off his donkey and blinded and how that changed his perspective on the world. And that’s the story of him.

So it’s really important during this discussion to note that anybody can change their name. You can change your name today. You can ask people to talk to you and address you by whatever name you want. But what this legislation does is this legislation deals with legal name changes—a name change which, for example, might appear on your health card or your tax return or your driver’s licence. We’re really talking about legal name changes here. And the sad reality is that there are some people in our society who change their name for not good reasons. They change their name for bad reasons. They want to change their name because they want to escape the consequences of their own bad behaviour. We should not allow people to do that. We should not allow people to change their name simply to escape the consequences of their own bad behaviour. And that is specifically what this legislation intends to address.

So I congratulate my colleagues for bringing forth this proposal. I want to speak about the member from Thornhill, one of the co-sponsors of this bill. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting her. She was elected at the same time that I was elected to this Legislature, and we sat close to each other in this Legislature, and we’ve had many discussions. I find the member from Thornhill to be a very serious person. She’s professional and intelligent, and I want to let the people of Thornhill know that they have elected an excellent member of provincial Parliament who represents them well in this Legislature.

I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know the member from Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock, and what I know about her is that she has had a long and distinguished career in this Legislature. She has been elected and re-elected five times. And when you’ve been elected and re-elected five times, there’s nothing more to be said. The record speaks for itself.