Thank you for that. It’s red tape created by the government that claims to be anti-red tape. But when it comes to legislation and how this place works, they love red tape that protects them. They love red tape that protects them.

While I am on committee—I was at a committee, the committee of the interior. I’m the House leader; I’m very rarely on committee. I am kind of a jack of all trades. If something goes wrong, they put me in, and it usually goes worse.

But anyway, the committee of the interior: It was an organizational meeting for a bill, a bill we all agreed on, and the first thing that happened was that it went in closed session. So I can’t talk about what happened, but I can talk about what I said before it went in closed session, and I brought up the point that why and for what reason do you need to make an organizational meeting in closed session? It’s a simple thing. Why would you do that in closed session? Why would you make people distrust the political system even more? There is a massive distrust of the political system. We all can feel it, and yet the government of the day continues to do—again, is that going to create a massive outcry across the province? No—let’s be serious—but it just adds that level of mistrust that isn’t needed.

For the government to try and play around with which member of the opposition is on which committee, and do it not once in a while but do it on a fairly continuous basis—quite honestly, you have to question the government’s—I won’t even use the word “motive,” because there’s not really a practical purpose for this. They get done what they need to get done regardless of this. This is micromanagement at its ultimate. It’s, “How can we just exact that little bit of extra pain?” That’s what this feels like, for no obvious purpose. It doesn’t benefit the people of Ontario. It certainly doesn’t benefit the official opposition. It doesn’t really benefit the independents either. I don’t even see what it does for the government.

The standing orders have changed enough that they can ram their legislation through so fast that who is sitting on the committee doesn’t make a lot of difference, so I question why they’re even bothering. Specifically, the government never wants to change standing orders again, and, if they ever want to reintroduce an inkling of trust in the system, they should change the standing orders back so that members of the officially recognized parties could pick their own committee members. That would be a sign that the government is actually learning.

Do you know why the government needs to learn? On this closing point, why the government needs to learn how to use the Legislature and how to use committees: I think this government holds the record—certainly the modern-time Ontario record—of introducing legislation and then having to rescind it, continually. Bill 124, that wasn’t the first one. There was the one I call the “Men in Black bill,” where they wanted to take constitutional rights away, and we rescinded it so far that it never existed. It was rescinded back to the day before it was created. If the government was using the Legislature and using the committee system as it was designed, perhaps bills wouldn’t have gotten through the way they were in the first place.

Again, the government is going to get their way. There’s nobody arguing that they won the election. When you win an election, you get to put your agenda through. It’s up to the opposition to point out the problems in the legislation, and believe me, on those ones, like on Bill 124, you cannot say that the opposition did not point out the problems on Bill 124—

Again, I’ve taken enough time. We are opposed to this change, because of what I’ve put on—but that concludes my remarks.