10TH REPORT, SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE OMBUDSMAN (CONCLUDED)
The House resumed at 8 p.m.
House in committee of the whole.
10TH REPORT, SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE OMBUDSMAN (CONCLUDED)
Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for adoption of the recommendations contained in the 10th report of the select committee on the Ombudsman.
Mr. Runciman: Mr. Chairman, as chairman of the select committee, I would like to take the opportunity to make a few brief comments for the record. At the outset I want to say --
Mr. Conway: Assistant whip and chairman.
Mr. Runciman: No. Correct the record. I am no longer a whip.
I do not think it is my role to argue the pros and cons of the recommendations we are debating this evening. The report itself indicates the committee's thinking leading up to the recommendations. Although I am going to refrain from arguing in favour of the recommendations, I have no hesitation in urging members to consider them very carefully. In this regard, I would like to quote from our ninth report:
"As a matter of general principle, the committee does not consider that a single decision of the Legislative Assembly to reject such a recommendation of this committee will undermine the Ombudsman's authority and effectiveness. However, the committee believes that such a decision by the assembly should only be taken in exceptional circumstances and only when, after a full debate has occurred, the Legislature is able to conclude that the implementation of the committee's recommendation would, in the circumstances, be contrary to the public interest or be contrary to some generally recognized principle of law.
"The process that has developed between this committee and the Legislative Assembly respecting Ombudsman recommendations requires that all relevant committee recommendations be adopted by the Legislature unless some substantive reason to the contrary can be shown. It is absolutely vital to the continuing viability and effectiveness of the Ombudsman process that this be so. If a situation were permitted to develop whereby rejection of such committee recommendations were the norm or were made for some capricious reason, the Ombudsman's effectiveness in the eyes of the governmental organizations and the people of the province of Ontario would be irreparably harmed."
When the committee's ninth report was debated, we had just passed through a rather unsettling dispute with the Ombudsman, dealing with his refusal to provide certain budgetary documents to the committee. Following adoption of our ninth report, that matter was resolved and the material in question was provided to the committee.
It is regrettable that the dispute occurred and perhaps even more regrettable that it took place towards the end of the Honourable Donald Morand's tenure. It tended to cast something of a shadow over his departure. For my part, I want to go on the record in saying how much respect I have for the integrity and dedication of the Honourable Donald Morand. He served this province well in the office of Ombudsman, and I wish him the best for his retirement years.
Of course, I would be remiss if I did not mention that the committee is looking forward with a great deal of anticipation to working with Mr. Morand's successor, Dr. Daniel Hill. We met with him briefly in January. The committee is meeting again with him in two weeks to discuss in detail how he plans to handle the office, and we are confident he will prove to be an excellent Ombudsman.
Over the years, the select committee has developed a reputation for being nonpartisan, fair and evenhanded. In terms of the nonpartisan nature of the committee, this session is the only one in my recollection where we divided along party lines. I believe it was while dealing with the North Pickering matter. For the most part, committee members make a tremendous effort to maintain the reputation of nonpartisanship of the committee.
I want to compliment all members who participated in the very long hours it took to deal with highly detailed and sometimes confusing problems. A special thank-you is owed to the member for London North (Mr. Van Horne) for his services as vice-chairman of the committee; he has proved to be a tremendous asset to the committee and a great help to me.
Mr. Kerrio: We are open to offers if the honourable member wants to trade.
Mr. Van Horne: The member for Niagara Falls (Mr. Kerrio) is supposed to be my friend.
Mr. Chairman, it is with a degree of embarrassment that I accept the kind words from our chairman, the member for Leeds (Mr. Runciman). I do not intend, in these very few remarks, to get into any of the details of this 10th report. I am sure those who are interested will have read it, and others who have been busy in other areas will trust the good judgement of the committee in the recommendations contained within it.
I repeat the sentiment suggested by the chairman, the member for Leeds, about the committee and its nonpartisanship. I have been fortunate to have been on this committee now for three years. I can support his comment and suggest to anyone who might be interested in the words I utter tonight that it is important to treat the office of Ombudsman as evenhandedly as possible through this Legislature. Only in taking such an attitude can the Office of the Ombudsman carry on and do the job the Legislature intended it to do when it agreed there should be an Ombudsman.
In these opening comments, I want to commend the chairman and again remind all present that the committee has, by and large, been nonpartisan. It is unfortunate that we split on the Pickering issue. That issue hung on longer than any other issue that has been examined or reviewed by the Office of the Ombudsman. It is fair to say we had a very definite political split, but in my view one who looked at the issue from an equal treatment of all people concerned would have to agree that issue as it was seen by the Ombudsman, and which we agreed with, was really the only fair answer that one could come up with. However, the committee carries on and the report is in front of the members.
8:10 p.m.
I would like very briefly to offer words of commendation to the past Ombudsman. It may be slightly out of order to take the opportunity at this point, but on the other hand one does not often have the opportunity to put things such as this on the record. Although perhaps I am taking advantage of the situation, I submit that he tried in his own way to be evenhanded and fair in the cases he reviewed as Ombudsman. I am not suggesting for a moment that all was perfect in so far as the administration of that office was concerned. It was in the area of administration that the Ombudsman ran into some problems with the committee.
If anyone as a member of this Legislature has wondered on occasion why this committee should continue, I submit that even though virtually every member has had time to reflect on it, and some have misgivings about it, the committee has a role to play in providing a link or a connection between that office and this Legislature. If there are things this committee perceives to be sliding off the theme in the intent of that office, it is incumbent on the committee to make that clear to the Ombudsman, to his office or to the Legislature, and I think we have done that.
I would like to point out the committee has some degree of recognition by our counterparts in other legislatures across the country and even on an international basis. It is no secret that after the presentation of this 10th report, the committee visited British Columbia and participated in an international conference of ombudspeople. It speaks well for what is going on here in Ontario. We do have our lumps, warts and faults along the way, but relative to other jurisdictions, I would say we wear them fairly well. I commend all members of the committee for their participation and involvement in that international conference in September 1983 in British Columbia.
On the same theme, the select committee on the Ombudsman made an attempt to reach out and understand the needs of that office by spending some time after its 10th report visiting northern Ontario. For all the citizens of this country of ours, and particularly of this province, that was an exercise of worth, one that will bring dividends to the Office of the Ombudsman and to this Legislature. That sort of thing makes being a member worthwhile.
As far as the recommendations are concerned, found in schedule 6 starting on page 88 of the report, if anyone has not had the opportunity to review them, I think they reflect the degree of involvement with and complexity of the issues that are brought before the Ombudsman's office. It is only when those cases run into some stumbling block that they come before the select committee.
I submit that each and every one of the 14 recommendations in this report was made after a thorough investigation by the committee, a thorough discussion by the committee and a complete and well-thought-out debate by all members of the committee. Without getting into details, I submit they are the result of a long and important process in this Legislature.
Let me conclude by submitting to all present that it is a pleasure to be part of that committee and by commending the recommendations of the 10th report of the select committee on the Ombudsman to the House.
Mr. Philip: Mr. Speaker, it has been three years since I had an opportunity to act as our party's spokesperson on the Office of the Ombudsman and to be a member of the select committee. When I last spoke on Ombudsman matters in a public forum such as the Legislature, we were looking forward to the appointment of a new Ombudsman. I think we can all take some pride in the excellent selection that was made.
At the same time, I would like to reiterate some of the statements I made in the Ombudsman committee and in public about the selection process. I feel that while we have been very successful in obtaining what would probably have been the choice had he been one of the candidates to come before the committee or before the Legislature, there is always the problem that if you wish a committee to operate in a nonpartisan way, as this Ombudsman committee has, you have to look at the processes that will promote that.
When we looked at the Office of the Ombudsman in British Columbia, we saw that a process was in place whereby it was not the government that chose the Ombudsman but rather the committee; and it had to be a consensus, not just a democratic or pluralistic vote as to who the candidate would be. When that kind of process happens, then you immediately start off on the right footing between the committee that must work with the Ombudsman and the Ombudsman himself.
We are fortunate in this case, even though that process was not followed, that we still have the same feeling of support and agreement with the choice that was made. None the less, we may not be fortunate enough in the future, in years to come, to have another Hill come on the scene. The process was still secretive; it was arbitrary. Indeed, in the case of our chairman, in whom I have the greatest confidence and who has done an excellent job, not even he was consulted even though he happens to be of the government party.
When I speak about the chairman, I must say he has conducted the committee in a manner that only can be called nonpartisan and highly professional and with a great deal of dedication and competence.
A lot can be said also of the excellent work of the clerk of the committee and of the manner in which the committee itself worked. When one sees the kind of partisanship and the kind of bickering that takes place in other committees around this House, one must certainly praise the Ombudsman committee as one that by and large, with very few exceptions, has been removed from that.
I am sorry that both our chairman and the Liberal spokesperson talked about one vote, namely the Pickering vote, as being partisan, because I do not see that vote as being partisan. What I see is that it happened to be a disagreement as to whether to side with the Ombudsman and recognize that an administrative procedure was basically wrong and that, whatever the consequences, whoever might or might not benefit by that decision was irrelevant to the issue. The issue was whether the process was wrong; and if so, one then had to come down and say that the process was wrong and that corrections would be made, even though certain people were going to profit from it.
In this case it was asserted, although not proven, that the people who were going to profit as a result of the Ombudsman's recommendation were speculators. Whether or not that was the case, even if they were speculators, the issue was not who would benefit but whether there was a process that could be identified and whether the process could be highlighted and changed.
It happened that the member for Downsview (Mr. Di Santo) and I found ourselves coming down for a position of the Ombudsman that some people said would assist speculators and that they felt was unbecoming of the New Democratic Party. I can only say that we came to this decision on our own; it was not a caucus decision. We did not deal with it in a partisan way in our caucus, and we came to it individually as individual members of the committee. Indeed, if the member for Downsview had voted on the other side, there would have been no hard feelings between him and me.
8:20 p.m.
I think in all fairness that the nonpartisanship of the committee was kept intact even with that disagreement in which the member for Downsview and I happened to agree with the Ombudsman in this case and the Liberal and Conservative members were against the decision.
I would like to deal with a few of the problems we deal with at the beginning of the report, namely, that there is still a major problem in the length of time it takes to process an application. The fact that it takes in excess of one year to process 30 per cent of the jurisdictional files is a concern. The committee was also concerned about the length of time between when the reports are tabled and when they are debated. To take the kind of time it has taken for both the ninth and the 10th reports is to deny justice to those people we are trying to serve.
Our committee members recognize there are a number of restrictions on the Office of the Ombudsman. One of our concerns has been the length of time it has taken the Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry) to come down with his long- promised revision of the Ombudsman Act. Last September, a spokesperson for the Attorney General's office told members of our committee that a new bill was in the works and forthcoming, but we have not yet seen when that final draft will be presented. I hope the Attorney General will address himself to that issue.
We will be dealing with a number of recommendations, and I gather the minister will be answering the concerns of the committee members and the Ombudsman. Before we do this, I would like to express to members of this House and to the Ombudsman some concerns I have already expressed to some of my colleagues on the committee.
I am concerned that over the last few years the Office of the Ombudsman has become an office that has been spending a great deal of its resources, as it should, in dealing with individual cases but perhaps not enough time studying the processes that create the kinds of injustices it must try to patch up.
I was impressed by the manner in which the Ombudsman of British Columbia, Karl Friedmann, developed and spelled out very clearly a series of procedural or administrative errors that are likely to create injustices. In comparison, it is the difference between the preventive approach to health care and the traditional model of patching up people after they are ill.
It is imperative that we look at ways of spelling out those errors so that public servants and those in command can avoid creating the kinds of injustices that have to be repaired on a one-by-one basis by the Ombudsman, the committee and this Legislature.
I also think it is imperative that we look at the active versus the passive role of the Ombudsman. My concern has been that most of the injustices in society are committed against those who are illiterate or those who lack the verbal skills to express themselves and make their concerns known.
In the case of the mentally retarded, the mentally ill or the very senior members of our society, it is imperative that the Ombudsman fulfil the role of an active investigator, looking for those kinds of things that are going wrong and reporting them to the committee and the Legislature. It is not good enough for the Ombudsman to sit back and wait for someone to come to his office, or even to his regional office, and lay an individual complaint.
I am pleased to see the new Ombudsman has stated that one of the first things he will do is to interview each and every member of his staff to find out what he is doing and what assistance the whole office can give to having him do his job more efficiently and effectively. I know that many of the senior staff in the Ombudsman's office, many of the investigators, see that there is an activist role of the Ombudsman, and they will have expressed those views to Mr. Hill.
I hope that in the future the reports of the Ombudsman and of the committee will devote more time to dealing with the processes that create injustices; that the Ombudsman will take initiative to look for problems related to government injustices; and that perhaps the reports of the Ombudsman and of our committee act in part as training manuals for public servants in defining their administrative procedures.
One of the matters that will become clear as we deal with the various recommendations of our committee is that many ministries have already acted in a thoughtful and mature way and have corrected some of the wrongs the Ombudsman pointed out and on which members of the committee upheld the Ombudsman. I say to those ministries that they have our support and our congratulations, and we are certainly pleased to see this kind of attitude.
There are other ministries that have given very forceful reasons -- reasons that I believe they are sincerely concerned about -- as to why they disagree with the committee; and I can accept that. What I cannot accept is when a ministry plays word games with the Ombudsman and with the committee and tries to get around what is clearly the intention of the Ombudsman and of the committee by playing one-upmanship and a word game so they get out from under the recommendations.
One ministry in particular is guilty of that, and I see that the minister of this ministry is sitting over there and will answer for it. The attitude of the agency under this ministry is not clever. It is contemptuous of the Ombudsman and it is contemptuous of the Legislature, and I hope we will deal with it when we come to this particular case.
Once again, it has been a pleasure working with the members of all parties on the committee; it has been a pleasure working with the chairman, who has done an excellent job; and I look forward to working with Mr. Hill, who is, as I said before, an excellent choice for Ombudsman. I am sure we are going to see an excellent series of years under his able direction.
Mr. Chairman: I wonder if at this juncture I might ask some guidance of the committee --
Mr. Boudria: Why do you not ask them to keep quiet first?
Mr. Chairman: Order. I wonder if I might have some guidance of the members of the committee as to which way they would like to proceed. I suppose if they were so to direct, we could deal with a debate ranging over all the recommendations, or we could deal with them one at a time and adopt each one.
Mr. Martel: Mr. Chairman, if it would help you, I think there is some agreement among the House leaders that we should call these one at a time. I would hope the cabinet would indicate the government's position on each of the recommendations before us, and that might expedite the business.
If there were consent, I think it would reduce some of the debate if we knew ahead of time where the government was going to stand on each of these. If they could be called in that way, it would expedite the business pertaining to this report.
8:30 p.m.
Mr. Nixon: Mr. Chairman, if I might make a suggestion, I am as usual almost entirely in complete agreement with my colleague the New Democratic Party House leader. But I thought our concept of this debate was that the appropriate ministers, if they had an objection to any of the recommendations, would say so. Unless there is an objection, I do not know whether it is necessary to wade through them one by one. If there is something the ministry is not prepared to go along with and might end up in a division after debate, then I agree entirely with what the honourable member has said.
Frankly, I was under the impression there was going to be a general accession by the various ministers to the recommendations from the committee. Let us not make this more complicated than it has to be. With the very fine, general statements that have been made, it seems to me that if the appropriate ministers are prepared to accept this stuff, we could all agree to accept the thing and get on to other important matters.
Mr. Van Horne: Mr. Chairman, I would like to rise to concur with my House leader's observations. I do not see any point in going through these 14 recommendations. They have been given a very thorough review within committee and I would submit that if the cabinet ministers involved do not have any problems -- and on occasion we have had a problem and it has been resolved through the cabinet minister's speech -- if we do not have a problem in the mind of a cabinet minister, I would submit we deal with the report in one single vote.
Mr. Chairman: Let us deal with it that way then.
Mr. Boudria: Mr. Chairman, you will have to tell us this. There is more than one part of this document in which recommendations are listed --
Mr. Chairman: It might help the member and make it easier to follow if he would use page 3 on our business sheet.
Mr. Philip: Mr. Chairman, recommendations 1 and 4 deal with the Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry). Do we have a response on recommendations 1 and 4?
Hon. Mr. Ramsay: Mr. Chairman, I have a response on behalf of the Attorney General in respect to recommendation 4. I do not have a response for recommendation 1, but I do have one for recommendation 4.
Mr. Chairman: I wonder then if we may deal with that when we get to it.
Recommendations 1 to 3, inclusive, agreed to.
On recommendation 4:
Hon. Mr. Ramsay: On behalf of my colleague the Attorney General, I wish to address recommendation 4 from the 10th report of the select committee on the Ombudsman, 1983, which reads as follows:
"The committee recommends that the Attorney General table during the 32nd Parliament of this Legislature a bill amending or otherwise dealing with the Ombudsman Act having regard for the matters contained in the draft bill and policy submission provided by the Ombudsman in January 1981."
At the request of the select committee on the Ombudsman, the Attorney General thoroughly reviewed the 1981 submission and a staff member appeared before the committee in September to indicate the ministry was considering the amendments. However, in the light of the fact that a new Ombudsman had not been appointed, it was deemed appropriate not to proceed with amendments until the new Ombudsman had a chance to consider the proposals.
On Dr. Hill's appointment as Ombudsman, he was notified in writing that the Attorney General was willing to proceed to consider the amendments as soon as Dr. Hill became oriented to his new position and was more familiar with his new office. By letter dated April 2, 1984, Dr. Hill advised the Deputy Attorney General he was ready to meet to consider the amendments. At this time, arrangements are being made with the new Ombudsman to review with him the amendments in question.
Recommendation 4 agreed to.
Mr. Boudria: Mr. Chairman, perhaps this is a point of order. I am not sure how you are going to deal with this particular item.
I notice that recommendation 4 deals with something that is on page 18 of our report. I have some comments on an item that is on page 21 of this report. I note that recommendation 5 deals with page 28, but there does not seem to be a mechanism for us to address those matters which are not listed, other than the ones in Orders and Notices. Yet we are discussing the whole report and not just --
Mr. Chairman: With all due respect, I think we are only dealing with the recommendations at this point, not the full report. We have had our general comments.
Hon. Mr. Ramsay: Mr. Chairman, recommendation 5 deals with the matter of the Workers' Compensation Board as do recommendations 9 through 14. At some appropriate time, perhaps right now, I have a brief statement that would deal with those items, recommendations 5 and 9 through 14. If required, I could go into more detail on each individual item, but perhaps the statement would cover them.
Mr. Chairman: Just to help expedite things, I wonder if it might be the pleasure of the committee that recommendations 6, 7 and 8 be carried?
Mr. Mackenzie: I think recommendations 6, 7, 8 and 12 have already been implemented. May I make a suggestion that those four be carried?
Recommendations 6, 7, 8 and 12 agreed to.
On recommendation 5:
Hon. Mr. Ramsay: Mr. Speaker, section 6 of the 10th report of the select committee on the Ombudsman contains a number of recommendations directed to various ministries and agencies of the crown. Of these, seven deal with the Workers' Compensation Board, which falls under the auspices of my ministry. I believe it is therefore appropriate for me to make a few brief opening remarks before debate commences.
I am pleased to be able to report that the Workers' Compensation Board has complied with each of the recommendations directed to it. In one case, recommendation 11, the board is still in the process of gathering additional information dealing with the new issue introduced for the first time when the matter was reconsidered on March 26 this year. I have been informed that, depending on the nature and extent of the further medical investigation required, a decision from the appeal board should be forthcoming in a few weeks.
In one instance, the board's reconsideration has resulted in an additional award in excess of $13,000 for the injured worker involved. In others, new hearings have been held, giving workers a further opportunity to present arguments in support of their claims. In those cases, the board confirmed its earlier decisions, following careful and conscientious review. It did, however, comply with the committee's recommendations, which were to reconsider the original awards.
As to the merits of these cases, it must be remembered that the statute requires the board to exercise its best judgement in the light of all the evidence and submissions made to it. While the Ombudsman's comments and the committee's recommendations are taken very seriously, it is the board which bears the ultimate statutory responsibility for the often very difficult decisions that must be made.
In this connection, it is significant to note that in the report of the select committee we are debating tonight the Ombudsman commented on six board decisions and one policy issue. As members may know, the board has a very heavy case load and dealt with more than 350,000 claims requiring decisions in the last calendar year. I believe it is very significant that with a case load of this size there are relatively few instances where differences persist between the board's ultimate decision and the opinion of the Ombudsman and the committee.
Thus, while there are always likely to be a small number of issues on which agreement is not reached, I believe we have a system that ensures every conceivable protection is given to an aggrieved party. In this connection, I would commend the members of the select committee for their careful and conscientious attention to the facts and the legal interpretation in each of the disputed cases.
The committee's recommendations have been and will continue to be of invaluable assistance in assuring that the Workers' Compensation Act is administered in a fair and equitable manner.
Mr. Chairman: Are there other comments?
Recommendation 5 agreed to.
Recommendations 9 to 11, inclusive, and 13 and 14 agreed to.
8:40 p.m.
Mr. Boudria: I have to try one more time to put in a few words on this report. I have not been able to do so thus far. After the two opening remarks from members of the committee, we were led on to recommendation 1 and no opportunity was given to make comments on those sections of this report about which some of us have concerns to express until you, Mr. Chairman, had commenced dealing with them clause by clause.
When several contentious issues are raised in this report that do not form part of these recommendations, I find it unfortunate that there is no opportunity for members to express their views on them. I am thinking of issues that have been outstanding for six, seven or eight years on which the Ombudsman has made recommendations that the government has not yet acted on.
I think we should take some opportunity to discuss why, for instance, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing is still not doing something that was recommended in 1977. I do not believe we have yet been afforded that opportunity in any way, shape or form. Those are important issues.
If the Ombudsman is going to have any kind of credibility vis-à-vis the people of this province, we must not let recommendations of the Ombudsman go on not being acted upon by this government.
Mr. Chairman, I ask for some opportunity to express those views at some point.
Mr. Chairman: I think that might be something the member should take up with his House leader because the orders of the day have been to deal with the recommendations as opposed to the report.
Hon. Mr. Wells: In response to what my friend has said, it seems to me the place to raise that kind of matter is in the select committee on the Ombudsman.
Mr. Boudria: We have done that.
Hon. Mr. Wells: Then a motion should be made there and it should come forward in a recommendation to the House.
Mr. Boudria: It is in the report as a recommendation to the House.
Hon. Mr. Wells: It cannot be in the report as a recommendation because all the recommendations are here. The recommendations of the report were all to be --
Mr. Boudria: It is in this report under recommendations from previous reports.
Hon. Mr. Wells: But we are not dealing with that. There should have been a recommendation in this report commenting on previous reports. I do not think we have any prerogative here to change any of the recommendations.
Mr. Boudria: If I can speak again to the same point, I am not advocating a change in the report, but I do find it unusual that members of this Legislature were supposed to have the foresight a year ago to have included in this report mechanisms by which the government House leader would be happy, retroactively, about the way they should have been done.
We have included all our concerns in this report. I think it is very unfortunate that issues that are not being addressed by the government are not permitted to be discussed in this Legislature when we discuss the report of the Ombudsman. Ultimately, it is the Office of the Ombudsman that will suffer by those things not being aired.
Mr. Martel: I suggest we move out of committee of the whole House. If my friend wants a large, rambling debate, we might as well stay around. We put the amendments as they are in that report. We had them printed today to have a debate, to hear the recommendations and to facilitate the discussion surrounding what we were going to vote on.
If the member is inclined to stay around and chat about something that is not a recommendation in the report, I suggest we rise and report. If people want to stay around and hear some discussion on something that is not a recommendation that we are not going to vote on, that is fine as far as I am concerned. I might not be prepared to stay around and listen to it, but we should report the recommendations voted on and move ahead.
Mr. Chairman: We are following it in the right way.
Mr. Van Horne: In deference to my colleague the member for Prescott-Russell (Mr. Boudria), I would like to submit it was not the intent of the committee to make light of recommendations from earlier reports that had not been accommodated through the Ombudsman's office or through the Legislature.
If the point he raises tonight points out a fault in the way this report is prepared or presented to the House, the committee is big enough to accommodate that and to look at it the next time it meets.
Beyond that, the member has the opportunity to raise it in caucus for assurances from the House leader that the House leaders can all ask that the format for presentation of the report do not exclude that, if it is a concern to that member or any other member.
In agreement with my House leader and the other two House leaders, I would submit that the intent at this particular time is to deal with the recommendations as they appear on the business paper for Thursday, April 12. That is what we should be dealing with right now.
On motion by Hon. Mr. Wells, the committee of the whole House reported certain recommendations.
Mr. Martel: Might I just ask the House leader for a moment so people will not say we cut off the debate? We got through the vote in the established way. To avoid having anyone suggest we were failing to have any debate on the broad report, I would ask if we might just consider for a few moments if someone has something he might want to get off his chest. If they want to do that, we could adjourn once they have accepted that opportunity. I would ask the House leader to consider that.
Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend's point, but I assumed when the motion was put, "Shall the report be adopted?" that that was the motion or order before the House. No one stood up to make any comments, so I am assuming we are all --
Mr. Martel: Just so no one misreads this.
Hon. Mr. Wells: Does anyone feel we should revert? We can only revert with the unanimous consent of the House now.
Mr. Speaker: Revert to what?
Hon. Mr. Wells: We could revert in the House to "Shall the report be accepted?" and there could be a debate on the motion of accepting the report of the resolutions. If anyone wishes to talk generally on that, that would give an opportunity under an order for those who wish to talk on it.
Mr. Speaker: Is somebody going to make a motion?
Hon. Mr. Wells: I would have no objection to reverting to your putting the question again, "Shall the report be adopted?"
Mr. Speaker: Is it the pleasure of the House that the report be adopted?
Agreed to.
The House adjourned at 8:49 p.m.