I’d like to welcome the McMurtry family to Queen’s Park, in particular, a good friend of mine, chairman of the Royal Commonwealth Society of Toronto, Andrew McMurtry.

First, I want to welcome the many family members and friends of Roy McMurtry to the House today. It’s an honour to speak to you and to members of this House about Roy and his remarkable legacy.

There are many examples that show what kind of a person Roy was. For example, in the 1950s, he started taking legal aid cases when the plan didn’t actually pay any money. In fact, it didn’t pay anything until 1968, which was 18 years later. When Roy became Attorney General, however, he used his position to boost legal aid clinics so that people with limited means would be entitled to legal representation.

Roy ordered bilingualism in the courts, over the reluctance of his own party, creating an extremely important change in access to justice, in their own language, for Franco-Ontarians. As Attorney General, he pushed for tougher sentences for drunk driving, took on racism, made the use of seat belts compulsory, and launched a move to criminalize violence in hockey. We might take the legitimacy of these positions for granted now—that drinking and driving causes terrible harm, that wearing seat belts saves lives, that violence in professional hockey can be deadly and diminishes the game—but addressing these issues met with tremendous resistance at the time.

Roy took a lot of flak for his attempts to call out and reduce the levels of violence in professional hockey, for example. As Jeff Gray wrote, “The hockey world rebelled at his intrusion into on-ice violence.” It’s fair to say that these battles are not over, but I think about what courage it took to speak out against violence in professional hockey at the time, because fights were not only expected, they were encouraged. Many people here will remember that as late as 2004, Don Cherry of CBC’s Coach’s Corner was ridiculing and questioning the masculinity of players who chose to wear visors. That Roy McMurtry was challenging these attitudes and behaviours in the 1970s and 1980s is something that we can look on with respect and admiration.

Roy also pushed to prosecute racial hatred, provoking a response in 1977 from the American Ku Klux Klan accusing him of anti-white activities. He received a letter, which he proudly framed and put in his office.

He mentored people in the law, including racialized women and men, opening doors to people who otherwise faced enormous barriers trying to gain entry as legal professionals into the halls of justice.

Now, I want to point out that these changes didn’t occur in a vacuum. Since the beginnings of Canada, racialized people, Indigenous, Black and brown people have been fighting for justice and equality. Without these movements, the impetus to change the laws would not have been there. But if we think back to the work it took for the initial group of white middle-class women to get the vote, it took men with power and a strong sense of justice to bring about changes in the law, and Roy McMurtry is one of those men who used his power and position to open doors where they had previously been closed.

Importantly, that also included opening doors for people with disabilities, by pushing against his own caucus to include disabilities as a right enshrined in the new Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 1982.

I want to use the little time I have left to talk about why Roy McMurtry has such a place of honour in queer history. It was a long road of movement activism to get here, but in 2003, Roy took the bold step to uphold the legality of same-sex marriage. This ruling has changed so many people’s lives for the better and is still reverberating around the world today.

We can see the effect of this legal ruling in the history of this Legislature, where in the mid-1980s, we had Attorney General Ian Scott, who was not able to be open about his male life partner until after he retired from politics; and Kathleen Wynne in 2003, who was able to win the Liberal leadership and become Premier of the province of Ontario, and she did this with her same-sex partner at her side.

Today’s official NDP opposition has our first-ever queer caucus, with four out and proud MPPs sitting in this Legislature. For this and so many of the reasons I’ve been able to touch on today, we have so much to thank Roy McMurtry for. He was a model politician and jurist who put fairness and inclusiveness at the forefront of his work.

In the words of lawyer and disability activist David Lepofsky: “May we each be a Roy McMurtry to someone else.” May we each be responsible for opening more doors to make our province more humane and inclusive.

As one of four brothers—we heard from his surviving brother, Robert, at the funeral. To hear of the family and his focus on the family—his accomplishments are many, but his family, he was so proud of. You can tell by the way they speak of him. He had six children, as we know. His wife Ria, through 66 years—all the adventures—just a remarkable partnership. But what we heard at the funeral was about the signing and the dancing and the focus on the grandkids, because that was the most important part to him.

He had many accomplishments. He had many careers. We should all be so lucky. As a youth, he carried water for the Toronto Argonauts, if you read his background, but I’ll say he carried water for nobody else. He was his own man; he had his own convictions.

He spent a lifetime taking care of the disadvantaged, those who needed it the most, and he was at the front end of change in every stage that he served, whether it be as a parliamentarian or as a judge. Even when he was High Commissioner, he did things nobody else did. It is a remarkable career.

But what people don’t actually realize is that he had a successful law career for 17 years before that, a full law career, attached to names like J.J. Robinette and Arthur Maloney, just absolute icons in the legal profession. He took cases from them. He ran about a dozen murder cases. He did high-profile stuff. He did important work. And then he came to politics.

Now, Mr. Speaker, he got involved in politics in 1965. He was helping Dalton Camp in his bid. Historians know how that went. But I didn’t realize the connection; I didn’t realize that he was actually part of the Big Blue Machine, because it had to be through the Dalton Camp experience that he met Norm Atkins.

Norman Atkins was a bit of an upstart in his day. I had the pleasure of working with him on Hugh Segal’s leadership campaign. He called it the “march to nowhere.” We can come back to leadership campaigns. But I didn’t realize—you see, Dalton Camp was Norm Atkins’s brother-in-law, and Norm Atkins was a brilliant political strategist. They learned from John F. Kennedy’s political world, and they came up—and so that’s where Roy must have met Dalton Camp. And, you know, I had never thought of that connection.

There was a leadership in 1971, to be clear, for the Progressive Conservative Party, and Roy took on the job of lawyer for the party in 1970 because his friend Bill Davis was going to run for the leadership. Well, for those who know their political history, in 1971, when Bill Davis ran with Roy at his side, Norm Atkins and his crew were feeling sort of not appreciated in the Bill Davis world, so they ran with Allan Lawrence. And I’ll tell you, Mr. Speaker, that leadership culminated in a vote differential of 44 votes. It was very, very close. And you know, when it’s that close, it can be very bitter and very acrimonious, but Steve Paikin’s book The Life talks about Roy’s role in bringing those parties together, because he was the link with Norm Atkins and Bill Davis. So it’s a tribute to his ability to bring people together even when they’re deeply divided.

Now, he went on to run in a by-election. That didn’t go so well, but all of us who have lost something along the way know to dig in and go deeper. In 1975 he got elected, and the record shows he was appointed Attorney General before he even took his seat in the Legislature. That’s how well respected he was by Bill Davis. As we’ve heard, he served for nine years, 124 days as Attorney General, and simultaneously four years as Solicitor General. He was a workhorse. There is no doubt he was a workhorse.

He was friendly. He wasn’t shy with the media, I’m told. And as Doug Lewis, my former law partner, describes him, he was always approachable and well thought of.

Now, Mr. Speaker, he was also a solid campaigner. I have not phoned him recently, but John Tory and I have talked about his campaigning. John Tory worked on at least one of his campaigns and has some great stories to tell. And my friend Peter Bethlenfalvy told me on the way in this morning that he in fact worked on his leadership in 1985. So his tentacles are wide, and he really was a model for all of us, Mr. Speaker.

I’m proud to say that although he carried water for the Argonauts, I carried water for him as a page. He sat right where Vic Fedeli is sitting when I was a page like these young individuals. And he was that: He was the guy who would stop and talk to you, ask you how you’re doing. But it’s also a lesson to all of us that they’re watching all of you, and it’s something that he set a model for.

Now, as High Commissioner, it says in the books—I like to read books—that he was often asked to Buckingham Palace and was entertained there. I suspect they asked him to Buckingham Palace because he entertained there. He was a great storyteller. He had an ability, again, to tell stories and bring people together. But this is what he did as High Commissioner: He refused to take the traditional post of the chairman of the 170-year-old Canada Club. Why? It didn’t allow women. That’s pretty remarkable.

Now, the thing that makes me reflect on how we’re doing is 1988, when he stepped down as High Commissioner—at the age of 56. It makes me feel like I’m not doing anything with my life, Mr. Speaker. But shortly thereafter, in 1991, he was appointed Associate Chief Justice by Prime Minister Kim Campbell and shortly after that by his friend Jean Chrétien to Chief Justice, where he served for a long time.

We’ve talked about policy; we’ve heard about policy. But Roy McMurtry is one of the few individuals that I’ve ever seen, ever had the privilege to meet, who spanned all political parties, all partisan positions and was a change leader from the front of the parade. He really was remarkable.

I want to thank the family for sharing him with us. Thank you for being here.

Applause.

I think that proves the point: They’re spending massive amounts of money and getting nothing in return; 2.2 million Ontarians don’t have a family doctor.

You’ve increased spending. Where is it going? You’re running up deficits, you’re charging the credit card, and there’s nothing to show for it—

I’m glad that the topic today is health care in the budget. As mentioned before, 2.2 million Ontarians don’t have a family doctor.

In my riding, I just had a call in early March from a woman who had a stroke in October 2023, and she didn’t have a family doctor. And so, she has asked the professionals who were coming to her home to give her rehab, “What happens when I have a question medically? What happens if I’m not feeling well? I don’t have a family doctor,” and do you know what their advice was? “Go to the emergency room.”

Speaker, this government has failed on health care and providing for people to be able to get doctors. But the NDP talked about a solution. They have provided answers to those questions, to provide the primary care doctors with resources—the staff, if you will—so that they can be alleviated from the administration burden of reports. That would actually create enough doctor hours to provide care for 2.2 million.

Does the member agree that the NDP has a real solution to a doctor shortage here in Ontario?