No. So the finance minister in fact made fun of “pointy-headed economists” on the radio.

So how do we know we’re getting a fair shake? How do we know that this is a good plan? Why the hurry? Why can’t we just wait a year and save a billion dollars to tackle real crises?

Speaker, people in my riding want funding for Queen’s University and St. Lawrence College. They want smaller class sizes and more EAs so classrooms aren’t disrupted by violence. They want support for affordable, licensed child care. They want relief for those struggling on ODSP and OW. They want rural economic development for local farmers who have farms near urban boundaries. They want our local public health lab to stay open.

These are the real priorities—no beer on this list either. It seems like a lot to ask this government to do what’s sensible: wait one year and invest the billion dollars where it’s needed most. So, Speaker, I would want to ask this government, what is the real reason they are fast-tracking beer and wine in the corner store at the expense of Ontarians’ priorities?

By delaying the return of this Legislature by six weeks, they are avoiding scrutiny by the opposition, the attention that question period brings, the attention that debate brings, the attention that the scrums bring to the actions that unveil things like moving ServiceOntario from small business, private contractors to big-box, corporate contracts without any proper scrutiny, at least by this Legislature. Fortunately, my colleague from Don Valley West has gotten the FAO to investigate that.

It’s these sorts of things. It’s the fact that in the Premier’s office, the cost of funding the Premier’s office has gone up by so much. That theme and this picture of a gravy train and the ability of us to add cars to this gravy train, it seems every couple of weeks, whenever something else is revealed about the government—these are things that happen when the Legislature is in session. We help communicate and find out what this government is doing. We help communicate it to our constituents, and we help bring the concerns of our constituents into this riding.

For example, I have a constituent who is on ODSP who did a calculation. She told me, “You know what? It would be cheaper for me to drive next door to Napanee to get dentures rather than have ODSP pay for dentures from students at Georgian College but then also have to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars for the transportation costs instead of my just going to Napanee and paying more for the local procedure.” These kinds of things we are able to bring to the Legislature and bring to the attention of the government, the attention of the press and the attention of fellow MPPs across the province, because maybe they’ve heard the same problem, and then a consensus builds.

This is what happens when the Legislature sits, and the government should not be avoiding—you know, we pay probably about a million dollars a day to run this Legislature. The Legislature should not be avoiding the scrutiny that the presence of members here and the proceedings bring to the government.

So I oppose this motion, and I urge all of my colleagues to oppose this motion.