Ontario.

• Author: Przedziecki, Sylwia
• Position: Legislative Reports

With the House scheduled to adjourn for the winter recess on December 10, the preceding weeks saw the House work to fulfill its fall legislative agenda, completing the consideration of all the bills it had included in a June 2015 "programming motion", as well as many new bills. The House took advantage of a Standing Order which permits the Government House Leader to propose a motion to extend the hours of meeting during the last eight sessional days, and the Legislature sat late three nights to ensure the completion of its business prior to adjournment.

Much like a time allocation motion, the June programming motion had included provisions for the arrangement of business into the fall, including details at the Committee stage. Filed as a substantive motion, it applied to four bills. Several later bills considered by the House in the Fall sitting were also subject to Orders of the House arranging their progress through the legislative stages, and the House would appear to have adopted regular use of such Orders. Of the 18 bills that received Royal Assent since November, all but four were subject to the provisions of either a time allocation or a programming motion.

While it is most frequently arranged that Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, assents to bills in her Office, on December 10 Her Honour entered the Chamber, took her seat upon the Throne, and assented to the 17 bills passed in the last week of the fall sitting period, lending an air of ceremony to the Legislature's last sitting of 2015.

Parliamentary Officers

The House received Annual Reports from Bonnie Lysyk, Auditor General of Ontario; Irwin Elman, Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth; and Barbara Finlay, Acting Ombudsman of Ontario. The Assembly's newest Parliamentary Officer, Stephen LeClair, Financial Accountability Officer, tabled two reports: An Assessment of Ontario's Medium-term Economic and Fiscal Outlook and An Assessment of the Financial Impact of the Partial Sale of Hydro One (tabled at the end of October). Excerpts from the latter report formed the basis for an opposition day motion put forward by the New Democratic Party, that "in the opinion of the House, the government shall immediately stop the sale of any more shares of Hydro One," debated on November 18, two weeks after the November 5 initial public offering of 15 per cent of the province's electrical transmission and distribution utility on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

On December 31, Lynn Morrison resigned as Integrity Commissioner. Ms. Morrison had held various roles within the Office of the Integrity Commissioner since its creation in 1988, and was appointed Acting Commissioner in 2007, then Commissioner in 2010.

On the Address of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to the...