I don’t think I have a heck of a lot of time left, so I will continue on.

I want to thank the member for Peterborough for his very lengthy petition, and I thank him for this because it highlights the challenges with petitions and why we are proposing within this package of amendments to change how petitions are accomplished here in the House. If it is the goal of members on both sides of the House to have more opportunity to present petitions in this place so that they can better reflect the views of their constituents, both for and against policy initiatives of the government, then I think it would obviously be well supported by members that the rules, where there is interpretation, do not let it be ambiguous in any way, shape or form.

I also want to talk a bit about something else that was in the standing orders, and it’s a small point, but it highlights some of the other work that we had done with respect to the estimates of the Premier’s office and Cabinet Office and the Lieutenant Governor. As I said, those estimates, in particular, of the Premier’s office and Cabinet Office will be considered jointly—and, obviously, clarifying that Her Honour would not be subject to a call before a legislative committee to defend her estimates; I think that goes without saying.

It also does highlight, I think, some additional work that we had done in this place with respect to committees and estimates, in another, frankly, unprecedented move by a majority government. We insisted that the estimates process be modified so that parliamentarians had the opportunity to review all of the estimates of government as opposed to just a small handful of them. As you would have known—again, because you’re wise beyond your years, Madam Speaker, I just assume automatically that you have been here for so many years, but you will not have known.

In the previous Parliament, when the estimates came, it would come before a committee, and only a few of the estimates would ever be dealt with in this place. The vast majority of them were done on concurrence here in the House. The vast majority of the estimates were never reviewed by parliamentarians.

We didn’t like that process. We thought that one of the most fundamental duties of members of Parliament is to review the spending of the government through the ministries, so we insisted on a change in that process. We broke down the estimates to their component parts. We changed the committees here. I talked about that earlier—how we changed committees; we dissolved some, created other ones. We ensured that members of the opposition had representation on all committees and leadership roles on committees.

At the same time we said, on the estimates process, that we have to ensure that we have a process whereby all of those estimates from the government can be scrutinized by members of provincial Parliament on both sides. And it has worked very well. I think in the last round of estimates—and I’m looking over towards my team, who can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it was one of the first times that every ministry appeared before the estimates to defend the estimates. To my knowledge, that has never happened in this place before. It happened through the changes that we made. I’m actually quite proud of that change.

To summarize some of the changes that we’re contemplating in this Parliament—as I said earlier today, we already, yesterday, I think, did a historic change with respect to the languages that we are recognizing here in this place. Again, I thank all members for that—just for the benefit of all those colleagues who weren’t here this morning.

Interjections.

In accordance with what we did in the last Parliament, parliamentary assistants will be able to answer what we call the late show.

It is, again, an increasing of the role of the procedure and House affairs committee in this place that we’re proposing. I thank the House leader for the opposition and the opposition whip in particular, both who made impassioned pleas with respect to how committees are created in this place. I listened to them very, very intently, and I had been thinking for weeks how is it that I can better respect the outreach of the members opposite who suggested that parliamentarians should have a better role in deciding who serves on committees. That is why the procedure and House affairs committee will be asked to undertake review of who serves on what committee, and to make those appointments.

As I say, that forms a double role. It allows parliamentarians, through one of its standing committees, to make decisions, for them to discuss and to make those appointments. Madam Speaker, as you know, that’s a newer committee, from the last Parliament, chaired by an opposition member of the House. So they will have that opportunity at that committee to debate, make recommendations and bring that to the House to establish committees.

As you know, the process right now is that I, as the House leader, bring forward a motion. I, as the House leader, can decide who serves on what committee. I, as the House leader, can remove people from committee. Madam Speaker, as you know me, knowing me as well as you do you, Madam Speaker, you know the responsibility has weighed on me tremendously. And I thought, as part of a continued democratic renewal of this place, that we should allow members to have that say.

The member for—

I don’t have a lot of time, so I’m going to try and get out as much as I can.

I want to talk about the government’s record on accountability and on their record of limiting dissent and muzzling the voices of the opposition and the people of Ontario. These latest changes to the standing orders represent the latest in a long line of undemocratic changes this government, under this Premier, has made to our system.

First, I want to talk about the government’s changes to our committees. I’ve had the opportunity for the last 10 years, over the course of four terms, to sit on committees. I was also a Vice-Chair. Unfortunately, the current minister decided to take me off that, and then when I got on other committees, he did the same thing. It just happened in the last standing order changes. Then when I sat on committee as an appointee, because one of our members couldn’t go on government agencies, I enjoyed my time researching, making sure I asked very good questions, not embarrassing myself, because it’s part of my role quite frankly. I believe every single MPP should sit on committees and it shouldn’t be up to one individual to take people off. But do you know what happened at that committee? That afternoon, we had another one of these changes to the standing orders, and you know what they did? They took three women off the committees—three women off the committees. It didn’t make any sense to me.

I just want to say to them, I think that all people should have the opportunity to sit on committee and it shouldn’t be up to one person. I listened to him for his hour this morning and he talked about our member who’s going to be the Chair of the new committee once these standing orders are done, and our House leader even mentioned it. The reality is, when you go to committee, it doesn’t matter if you include the independents and a Liberal or the NDP; they have the majority. So every single vote you go to, they are going to win. That’s the way it is. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a bill that you talk about on the greenbelt—as we all know what happened with the greenbelt. It doesn’t matter if it’s Bill 124 or Bill 23, when it comes down to the vote, they always have more than what the Liberals have, the NDP and the independents.

I can relate to it kind of like a hockey game, right. I’m a big sports guy. I love baseball, I love hockey, and I can relate to that. So you to go the hockey game and say, “Oh, the Leafs lost a tough one last night, 1-0.” You go, “Yeah, a good game,” blah, blah. The reality is, they lost.

So it doesn’t matter if you’ve got eight Conservative MPPs on a committee and you decide to have three from the NDP, one from the Liberals and one from the independents; you’re going to lose eight to five. But the moral of that story is what? You still lose, no matter what you do. So changing that isn’t going to change anything.

But what should change is that we should make sure that the way it was before—and I don’t support the Liberals on a lot of things, but the one thing the Liberals never did was take the opposition, meaning the NDP, off committees. They never did it—because I was on governance; I was on estimates. The Liberals never took us off. They said, “What does the NDP want? Who do they want to sit on this committee?” And the reason why you would do that is, some people—I’ll use our financial critic. She’s very good at it. She does a great job. I watched her on TV last night; I was very, very impressed. I’m very proud that she’s part of my caucus. She’s got some talent around that. And there are other people who have different talents. So you try to line the talent up to the committees—who are going to go to the committee, present themselves well, make sure we’re asking fair and just questions.

But no, do you know what they did? The minister decided who sits on committees—it wasn’t the NDP, it wasn’t our leader; it was a Conservative. I want people at home to understand this, because I think it’s very, very important to understand this.

When they say that they’re trying to make sure it’s democratic—it isn’t, when our leader says we want the member from St. Catharines or the member from Niagara Falls on the committee, and then the minister says, “Oh, no, we don’t want them on that committee. They might do the job. They might ask tough questions. They might not agree with the government. So what we’ll do is, we’ll take them off.”

Well, I hate to break it to this party over here, the Conservatives, but in the last election—they talk about a majority government, which they got. We can’t deny that. But the reality is—do you know what they got? They got 18% of the votes that were cast.

Well, this little guy over here from Niagara Falls, who’s five foot nothing—I got 50% of the vote. Do you know why I got that? Because I do my job, and I do it well. And the people who vote for me want me to sit on committees. They want me to come to Queen’s Park and talk about things that are important to us, whether that be the greenbelt—because we saw the fiasco with the greenbelt, where they’re telling us they want to build 1.5 million homes on the greenbelt. We all knew that wasn’t what it was about. The RCMP is going to prove it at some point in time. Or how about Bill 124, where you took away wages and benefits? They want me to go to that committee and talk about the bill and say, “Why are you attacking nurses? Why are you attacking health care workers?” They want me to come here.

That doesn’t mean that I’m going to stand up, when I go to committee, and say, “Hey, thanks for doing Bill 124” or “Thanks for doing Bill 23 and hurting our municipalities right across the province of Ontario.” I’m not going to do that. My job, as opposition, is to question exactly what this government is doing, whether it’s on the budget that was presented yesterday or whether it’s on bills.

And what we have here is a majority government that is not doing that. So what they’re doing is extremely undemocratic. It’s certainly not right for any MPP be taken off of committee.

What really got me going on this, the reason why I wanted to speak today was, the last committee I went to was government agencies—and I think the finance critic was there as well, and I think another member was there as well. That very day, after we did that committee, we had question period, then we all went for lunch; we were having a good time with our colleagues, having a sandwich or whatever. We come with new standing orders by that minister—and what did he do? The person that I replaced for that committee—because the individual was sick that day—was taken off the committee. But he didn’t stop there. It wasn’t good enough. He attacked two more women and took them off their committees. That’s wrong.

That same minister, over and over and over again, stood up in the last Parliament and said, “Do you know that member over there from the NDP? They don’t want to sit on committees. They don’t want to do their job. They don’t care about you.” That was the same thing they said—