Premier Dalton McGuinty emerged from his Queen’s Park office last week to announce he wanted to abolish the tradition of having the Speaker of the House recite the Lord's Prayer to open daily proceedings in the Ontario Legislature – a custom that has been part of our parliamentary tradition since it was first established in 1793 under Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe. The Premier plans to form a committee of the Ontario Legislature to examine other ways of beginning the day of debate. I strongly support preserving the Legislature’s traditions such as the Lord’s Prayer or the MPP Oath of Allegiance. People from across the world have come to Canada because of the great country we have built based on our traditions. I do not understand why the Liberals are always running from these traditions. This situation reminds me of the Christmas tree debate under the McGuinty government that was sparked two years ago when a judge ordered that a Christmas tree be moved from the lobby of a downtown Toronto courthouse. The judge did not want to offend any non-Christians who entered the building and had the Christmas tree removed from the public area. The judge’s decision drew ire from people of many different faiths, who tended to agree it was political correctness gone to unnecessary extremes. Farzana Hassan, president of the Muslim Canadian Congress, even said: "We should ban political correctness, not the Christmas tree." The tree debacle, much like this plan to abolish the Lord’s Prayer from Legislative proceedings, is an issue that no one really asked for. I can tell you the number of people who mentioned the issue of the Lord’s Prayer to me during the recent campaign could not be brought together to play a game of solitaire. I think we can all agree there are far more pressing matters in Ontario that deserve the Legislative Assembly's immediate attention than a debate on the Lord's Prayer, such as the flight of well-paying manufacturing jobs from Ontario, long wait times for health care, and the plight of the family farm in the face of subsidized foreign competition. There is no doubt that we should celebrate the fact that Canada is now the cherished home of people from almost every other country. But in doing so we cannot forget that it is the strong Canadian traditions that made our country such an attractive place to raise a family or seek a better life in the first place.