23-10-2008

ORDERS OF THE DAYREPRESENTATION AMENDMENT ACT, 2008

Mr. Ernie Hardeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I know it may take you some time to recognize me, but it did come. We very much appreciate that.

It is a privilege to be able to get up and speak to Bill 104, put forward by the member from Chatham-Kent-Essex, soon, hopefully, to become the member from Chatham-Kent-Leamington if this bill gets royal assent. I think it's a credit to the member for bringing this bill forward.

There's not a lot to say about the bill that hasn't just been said by the member presenting the bill. I would just point out to those who are watching as we speak here that the bill, as the Speaker would know, is covered on one page, and in fact it only needs to cover half the page, because this member isn't trying to change his community. As he said about his community, nothing much in the community needs to be changed, because obviously, in his presentation, it was the number one community in Ontario. I'm here to agree with him that it's one of the best two in Ontario. We very much appreciate his support for his local community. I won't dwell much on what the other one of the two would be.

As I said, the bill is rather short:

"The Representation Act, 2005 is amended by adding the following section: ...

"2.1 Despite anything in section 2 to the contrary, the electoral district of Chatham-Kent-Essex is hereby renamed the electoral district of Chatham-Kent-Leamington."

In fact, the next section is that it will come into force the day of royal assent, and that the short title of this act is the Representation Amendment Act, 2008. That is the entirety of the bill.

I want to say that I support the bill. As I've got some notes on the bill, there were a couple of things that I just wanted to address and only one that I would take some exception to.

First of all, I want to say that not only do I represent a community that is not only similar but is as nice a community or one of the nicer communities in Ontario, we also have in common that Tom Connors wrote a song about our riding too. In fact, some of you may remember the song about Tillsonburg: "My back still aches when I hear that word"-because of our tobacco industry. In fact, it was quite a popular song. I notice now that the member spoke about Tom Connors writing a song about the tomatoes in Leamington.

One thing I wanted to just talk about for a moment is that one of the reasons for the name change that the member put in his explanation for the bill was to give Leamington the recognition it deserves. I know that clarity, for people to understand the boundaries of a riding, is very important, but that is not what gives communities the recognition they deserve.

Now, remember, Mr. Speaker, that a lot of the names of our ridings are based on the boundaries of the upper-tier government or, in the former government-under the Baldwin Act, the county form of government. Of course, Leamington was in the county of Essex and was a lower tier in the county of Essex. So as part of Essex county, it's not unreasonable to assume that the person who represented it would be representing Essex county.
If we go back not that many years, this riding would have been Chatham, which was a single-tier municipality, Kent which was the area around Chatham, and that part of Essex that was Leamington was the other upper-tier municipality that was involved in that riding, so it made a lot of sense to call it Chatham-Kent-Essex. But when you leave that county of Kent and make it part of the single-tier municipality of Chatham-Kent and put that hyphen in there, then all of a sudden, it starts to make one wonder how Kent and Essex are still involved in the name of this riding, because the only part of the upper-tier municipality of Essex that's part of this member's riding would be the village of Leamington. There's absolutely no reason why you couldn't procure a definition. Take the word "Leamington" and put that on the end of Chatham-Kent-Leamington, and then leave it to the other riding to be called Essex and whatever it may be connected to. But because of the number of municipalities that were listed, I think, by the member-the municipality of LaSalle, Tecumseh, Lakeshore, Amherstburg, the town of Essex, Kingsville, and Leamington, of course, is the one that we're speaking about. All those other municipalities are in the county of Essex, and in a riding that also uses the name "Essex" in the riding, I do believe. I stand to be corrected, but I believe that the member from Essex also used that name, so it makes a lot of sense.

The one challenge that I think we do face, and I'm sure that the member has looked into it, is the issue of the riding's name being similar both federally and provincially. I think it's very important that we don't confuse the issue by having the same riding at the two levels of government. It may not be confusing for those who represent it, but it could very well be quite confusing to the people in the municipality, that they have a different name for the riding provincially as they do federally. I would hope that the member would talk to the federal member to also work on getting the name changed, so that in both jurisdictions, we would have the same name.

The one other thing, again, that I wanted to-the reason I brought up the issue of giving Leamington the recognition they deserve: I don't want to stand here in support of the bill based on that principal, because that would somehow mean that the city of Woodstock, the town of Tillsonburg, the town of Ingersoll, the municipality of Zorra, the municipality of East Zorra-Tavistock, the township of Blandford-Blenheim, the township of Norwich and the township of South-West Oxford all didn't deserve recognition because the riding I represent is the riding of Oxford.

The reason I say the riding of Oxford is that one of the biggest challenges I face in my riding is when I go to events and they have the program printed up, and the program will say, "Ernie Hardeman, the MPP for the county of Oxford." In fact, we all know that the county is the jurisdiction of local government. I don't believe that there's anyone in the Legislature with a riding that has the word "county" in the title of the riding. I represent the riding of Oxford, not the county of Oxford. The county of Oxford is represented by county council; the riding of Oxford is represented by the MPP at Queen's Park. I think it's very important to point that out, but I think it's ever more important to point out that I think that the recognition of my local municipalities, all those which I named, are local municipalities in the county of Oxford, and that they all deserve to have the same recognition as the town of Leamington before or after this change.

But again, I want to commend the member for bringing this forward and I want to say that I don't know about others in this House, but I will be supporting this bill when it comes for a vote.