I understand how majorities work. They’re going to pass.

I just want to put it for the record here that in a ministerial statement, we will maintain our five minutes and we will pass the three minutes along to the independents. We’re not going to battle that every time. We believe that everyone in this House should have a right to speak. We also believe that this House is built on the party system and there are certain decisions that should be made by parties, not necessarily by independent members, but we do believe that people should be allowed to speak, so that’s how we’re going to handle that. Just to make it clear, we do not want to prevent people from speaking.

There’s another change that the government is making with—this committee is so new that I don’t even—the procedure and House affairs committee, correct?

Interjection: Yes.

So a few standing order changes ago—the government House leader says this was to improve the democratic process. We disagree. It used to be—and I’m not going to be very technical in this. I’m not a lawyer; I’m a farmer. It used to be the parties advised or recommended who from their party should go on the various committees, and we picked that by who had interest in the committee and who we thought would be the best on the committee. We submitted the names and, in the vast majority of cases, that’s who got on the committee. Then the committee decided who was Chair and Vice-Chair, but that was also in consultation with the House leaders of the various parties. Now there are two House leaders, two parties, but that’s how it used to be done.

Then it was changed—and the government House leader said that; he was very plain about that—that the government House leader decided who was on the committees. That’s kind of the same as if I, as opposition House leader, decided who was the minister of certain ministries. It doesn’t make practical sense. And it’s not needed, either, because they have a majority in the House and they have a majority on all the committees, so nothing is actually going to happen at committee if the government doesn’t want it to happen.

With the new standing order changes, the government has moved the decision of who goes on what committee from the government House leader to the committee of procedure and House affairs. But that committee is constructed exactly the same way as all the other committees, so whoever the government wants to put on the committee from the opposition—that is what’s going to happen, because they have a majority. So it takes it one step away from the House leader—

I said this the last time we talked about standing order changes: We have a good working relationship, and I hope that we can continue to build on that by actually taking suggestions from the opposition seriously, about who we feel would be the best on committees.

At the end of the day, the government has the control of the procedure and House affairs committee. I agree that the member from Oshawa is a fierce, independent Chair, but as the Chair, she shouldn’t—and I don’t think the other Chairs should, either—influence how the committee votes. She’s the referee. The committee members should do that. But the majority of the committee members are of the government side. So, at the end of the day, as long as the process continues that the government picks all the committee members, it doesn’t really matter if it’s done at procedure and House affairs or if it’s done by the House leader as a motion here. In fact, it’s a bit less transparent when it’s done at the committee of procedure and House affairs. It sounds better, but it actually isn’t any better, and it won’t work any better, either.

The standing orders shouldn’t make things work better for one party or another party; they should make the system work better for everyone.

I’ll give you an example. We’re about to change petitions. Years ago, there was no time limit on petitions at all. One of the few tools that the opposition has to change the government’s mind on an issue is to slow things down. When a bill is widely consulted and it’s non-contentious and we all agree, it should sail through the House—first, second, third reading and committee. And when they are like that, they do. The Veterinarians Act, the ARIO Act—which that long petition was read about—we all agree with that bill. There is nothing holding that bill back. It’s going to sail through the House.

But on bills that are highly contentious, like the greenbelt bill that had to be rescinded—years ago, with the standing orders, we could have read petitions for days. We could have done all kinds of things and hopefully protected the government from itself. Because the fact that this government has had to rescind legislation—not change it but rescind it—on several occasions, it means, well, it’s bad governance, but it’s also that the government hasn’t allowed the House to do its job to slow down legislation that has obviously got a lot of public opposition.

These standing order changes they’ve made today aren’t going to improve that. Are they going to damage it beyond repair? No. There are several standing order changes here that are housekeeping. It is a living document. There are things that are going to go smoother, as the government House leader said, when they made a standing order change that we could use computers. We all used computers. We were all breaking the rules, so they changed the rules. Great.

But these aren’t the kind of standing order changes that actually strengthen our democratic system and make the legislation that comes out of this place stronger. We could make changes in the standing orders that would improve the legislation coming out of this place. The government has a right to put forward and to pass their agenda. They won the election. We’re not arguing that. But if they made some changes that actually would give the opposition the time, give the public the time to actually make their views known before the legislation was passed, it might have saved them massive embarrassment, massive amounts of money—and it would have served the people so much better.

I’ll give you an example, Speaker. We just had the budget yesterday. In the budget, they’re talking about what we all know: There’s a housing crisis in this province. We all know this. In the budget is, “Oh, yeah, we’ve listened to municipalities, and they need infrastructure. They need water, sewer, roads.” And you know what? They do. But last year, they weren’t talking about water, sewer and infrastructure. They were talking about, “We need land for houses. We need the greenbelt.” So they wasted a whole year talking about land when, instead of taking development fees away from municipalities, they could have been going a year ago already on what municipalities needed. They wasted a whole year. That’s an example of bad consultation and of having rules in this place that actually sometimes don’t benefit Ontarians.

With that, Speaker, I would like to share my time with the member from Nickel Belt and the member from Niagara Falls.