On Sunday, I attended a celebration of life for Mr. Craig Connell. Craig made an incredible difference in my life and, judging by how full that room was, on many others.

I first met Craig as a fellow board member on the board of Dairy Farmers of Ontario. I can honestly say I have never disagreed with anyone as often and as vehemently as Craig Connell, and I have never enjoyed someone’s company so much.

Craig was the first person I told that I was going to run for MPP. We were standing at a bar at an event. He asked me if I was going to run for the board; I said, “No, I’m going to run for MPP.” He said, “Oh, you’d be great,” and as I was walking away, I heard him mumble, “My God, he might run for the NDP.” He came over to my table, and he stopped and he said, “I have an announcement to make.” He put his hand on my shoulder and he said, “John here is going to run for MPP, and if he was in my riding, I’d even vote for him, even if he’s running for the Communists.”

He leaves behind Moira; his daughter, Alison, and his son, Lloyd, and their families; and an incredible business legacy with Wicketthorn Farms. And he leaves behind an incredible legacy to all of us for all the things that he fought for. He emigrated from Scotland and brought his skills to this country, and made all our lives better, whether we know it or not. On all our behalf, thank you very much.

On division.

It’s always an honour to speak in the House—and I hope someone can hand me a briefing note.

The working title is the Get It Done Act. A lot of parts of this bill came out in the press before we actually saw the legislation. I have to admit that the first thing that came to my mind when I heard “Get It Done” bill—in my part of the world, it’s the “get ’er done.” I thought, they’ve finally come to a new low: They’ve hired Larry the Cable Guy to write their legislation. But at least Larry is funny.

In my part of the world, when you say “get ’er done,” it doesn’t really mean quality; it doesn’t mean careful. It just means “just get ’er done.” You don’t hire a carpenter who just gets ’er done. It’s just not something that exudes confidence.

As we went farther and farther, more reports and more reports—

Laughter.

If you will recall, at some point the Ford government decided to remove the need for licence plate stickers for registration— get ’er done. They seem to have forgotten that you still needed to remind people to register their plates—when it came to where they realized that is when police started to pull people over because their plates weren’t registered. I know the police were doing that because they pulled me over as well—get ’er done. I, like many other Ontarians—we have busy lives and just didn’t realize. In true—I don’t think it’s Larry the Cable Guy fashion; this one is more Homer Simpson. D’oh. We need to make sure that people don’t get charged because we no longer need them to register their cars. That’s a big part of the “get ’er done” bill.

Interjections.

Something else that the “get ’er done” bill—I can’t get the “get ’er done” out of my head. There’s another analogy that I could compare this with, but I’m not sure if I can go there.

After I thought of Larry the Cable Guy and then Homer Simpson, what this bill really reminds me of—and my own party might not even like this analogy—the Dukes of Hazzard.

We all know who Boss Hogg is. We don’t have to go any further with Boss Hogg, right? We had—and it had been a long time, so I’ll think. I think the sheriff was Rosco P. Coltrane—

Interjections.

Enos was the apologist. Deep down, he knew what the Boss and Rosco were trying to do just wasn’t 100%—it was more “get ’er done” than it was “let’s make this work and let’s make it work for everybody.”

Really, the question for me is, who are the Roscos on the other side and who are the Enoses?

The Get It Done Act reminds me and many other Ontarians—it seems tired.

I was recently at the annual meeting, the annual banquet, of Beef Farmers of Ontario. I’m pretty sure you can’t get a much more conservative group than Beef Farmers of Ontario. We were talking about Get It Done—and I respect the people I was talking to. They were Conservatives; no doubt about it—old-style Conservatives, like, “Do things right.” They described this bill as gimmicky. Even the title, Get It Done—come on. “Get ’er done.” No.

This is the bill that takes the tolls off where there are no tolls?

This is the bill that tries to force future governments to have referendums on carbon pricing, except for the carbon-pricing regime that this government already employs. Let’s make it clear: This government does have a carbon-pricing regime, but Ontarians can’t vote on that one, but for any subsequent one, they can have a referendum.

There are many other things that could have had referendums. Perhaps a referendum on the greenbelt, before they—

To the government’s credit, they made a mistake and they retracted. But if they had had a referendum early on—“Do you want to destroy the greenbelt?”—I think Ontarians would have said a loud no. It would have saved them a lot of grief.

Applause.

Thank you to the member from Brampton. That’s actually a great question. I don’t pay as much current carbon tax as you might think because I heat with wood. So I spend a lot of time chopping wood.

But if we had to—we have voted several times in this House against the federal carbon tax. We, as a party, have never supported the current federal carbon tax. We do believe there should be some kind of pricing regime to—we voted for cap-and-trade, which is actually pretty close to what your government has implemented. Yes, you don’t want to talk about it. You don’t want to talk about it, but we have never been in favour of the carbon tax. At least, I have never voted for the carbon tax, and I’ve been here for a long time.

I distinctly remember: “We’re going to find a way to remove the blue plates.” And now they’ve found a way. They’re just going to wait until they fall off, which is kind of funny, because you would think if you were designing a new plate, you would want one that would last a long, long time. You know, if you’re not happy with the old ones, you’re going to design something—they’re kind of more plastic. I don’t know. They’re much different, so I’m assuming they designed them to last a lot longer, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.

So the new plan is we just wait long enough and they’ll fall apart, and that seems to be kind of emblematic about how a lot of things in this government run: Just wait long enough and it will fall apart.

But I do recall long before I was here that actually—and we’re going to get a lot of complaints from the other side—the Rae government was building a subway and the Harris government came and filled it with concrete, capped it off. So like the greenbelt—get ’er done—wanting to pave it over and then having to back off. Challenging the Constitution—getting ’er done—and having to back away. That’s emblematic of getting ’er done.