Ms. Lisa MacLeod:—The Premier, Mr. Speaker. But this proposal is an insult to those of us who have been working hard on making this place a non-partisan basis to make Queen’s Park and politics more attractive to women raising children, particularly for those of us outside Toronto, which I would have expected. He would know, supposedly coming from the city of Ottawa.

To the Premier: Why did your House leader ignore a unanimous call to create an all-party committee to make Queen’s Park more family-friendly, then go behind our back and leak it to the press? Cabinet-friendly, not family-friendly, changes to the standing orders to create an all party committee, to make Queen’s Park more family-friendly, then go behind our backs, leak it to the press, cabinet-friendly not family-friendly and changes to the standing orders.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: I noticed that the Premier wouldn’t answer a woman’s question.

Interjections.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: It’s just so hard because they have accused me of wanting to be at home baking cookies, then they decide to thump their chest when I ask a question, point fingers and raise their voices, and now they won’t answer my question.

But might I remind them, they lost four women last year, Marie Bountrogianni, Jennifer Mossop, Mary Ann Chambers and Judy Marsales, who decided not to run in this place again. The Premier knows he had unanimous consent, all-party consent, to make this chamber work in a better way so we could keep more women in the Legislature. Instead we got a family-friendly plan that is not family-friendly at all.

Will he put the all-party panel to work so we can correct his mistakes, get this right and truly make the Legislature more family-friendly, not —Ms. MacLeod: I wish he had responded to the series of letters that I sent him requesting that this committee actually be struck and started, but he didn’t. He chose not to. He chose to instead leak what he was planning to do with the press—that’s where we always find things out.

This penalizes members who have children, who live outside the GTA, by limiting our commute options on Mondays and on Thursdays, by giving a free pass to his cabinet, while the rest of us debate private members’ business. We’ll never know again, because of the moving target, which is their plan, this four days of inconsistencies and uncertainties.

Will they stand up? Will they make the cabinet-family rule changes to work with the opposition, so that we can truly make this a family-friendly place, rather than just listening to what they have to say a day later in the press? Will they stand up and do something about it and work with us?

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

Wednesday 16 April 2008