Thank you, Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on Bill 23.

It is apparent that this government has a deep fear of democracy, because with every bill that has come before this House, the government has attempted to undermine core democratic processes, shifting power and resources away from ordinary working people and their elected representatives to those with deep connections to the Conservative Party.

First, there was Bill 7, which forces people to move where they don’t want to live, far away from their families and their support systems. In the north, they can be moved up to 150 kilometres away. But guess what? Since there isn’t a single opening in long-term care anywhere in the entire 93,000 square kilometres of my riding, and the law provides the option to send folks even further away, they could wind up anywhere—in Toronto, in Niagara—who knows? How gracious of this government to shove people wherever there is an empty room. Is it any wonder that there are now charter challenges being brought against this bill?

While speaking of disrespecting fundamental rights—

Following Bill 7, there was Bill 28, which tried to override the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It took the threat of a general strike to wake up the government on this one.

But sadly, even after being forced to rescind Bill 28, this government continues to go full tilt at eliminating democratic rights, with Bill 23 and Bill 39, which really put the politics of bullying into law. We have before us two bills that say, “It’s good to rule by minority fiat. Hooray for the iron fist of the Conservative government”—and then there’s the destruction of the greenbelt that benefits key Conservative supporters.

I must say, I find it disturbing that members on the government side of the House are so cavalier about democratic rights. You were sent here—we were all sent here—to solve problems, not to appoint yourselves as bullies and enforcers who get to decide which democratically elected representatives will be heard and which will be ignored. What shocks me is that so many of you are willing—

Interjection.

Perhaps democracy is something Conservatives are happy to put aside whenever there’s a convenient excuse.

Apart from disliking democracy, it’s also apparent that this government dislikes science and those with scientific expertise, as the government seems to be determined to cut out the role of conservation authorities in assessing the suitability of lands for housing, and they are doing this in spite of the imminent threat of climate change.

In the case of Bill 23, More Homes Built Faster Act, the government gives developers a free ride, removing fees that municipalities and conservation authorities need to fulfill their mandates, thus downloading the costs onto already overburdened municipalities. In fact, this is a repetition of a pattern going back to the mid-1990s, possibly during the Mike Harris years, when provincial governments started downloading responsibilities to municipalities while withholding the money needed to fulfill those responsibilities. Is it any wonder that so many municipalities, certainly those in my region, are struggling to maintain basic services?

I have received an unprecedented number of briefs from organizations and letters from individuals deeply concerned about Bill 23. These organizations include the association of municipal organizations—an organization that represents 444 Ontario municipalities, which, shockingly, was denied a hearing by this government—the Ontario conservation authority, the Ontario nature conservancy, Ontario Nature, Citizens United for a Sustainable Planet, the hunters and anglers of Ontario, the Thunder Bay Field Naturalists, and the northern Ontario municipal association, along with many individuals who took the time to write extensive analyses of the bill. The feedback has been remarkable in the consistency of the concerns raised and the efforts to be heard.

I would like to read excerpts from a number of these letters and reports.

From Thunder Bay resident Bryan Mackay:

“While I understand the need for additional housing in the province, I don’t feel it should override the liberties of citizens and organizations trying to voice their opposition and appeal decisions being made that can impact their quality of life.

“Bill 23 will restrict the rights of individuals and citizen groups to appeal land use permits. This is a right that I feel I should have under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Allowing Bill 23 to restrict the fundamental freedoms of individuals and citizen groups to appeal legislation is undemocratic and appears to be more authoritarian in nature.

“I’m also concerned when an elected representative of the people of Ontario doesn’t seem concerned at all about taking away their freedoms in the name of economic development.”

And he quotes from Hansard, so this is a government statement: “We would also place a limit on appeals from individuals and community groups, for instance, that would further hinder the progress of official plan amendments and zoning bylaw amendments.” He said, “This comment supports my concerns.”

He also agrees with the concerns of Gravel Watch Ontario about Bill 23, and they wrote, “Shifting the municipalities’ and conservation authorities’ responsibilities weakens the long established regional planning framework and represses the technical expertise which is critical to the review of development applications. In addition, amendments to the Ontario Land Tribunal contravene its purpose to provide justice and fair, principled resolutions for land use planning conflicts.”

He went on and cited a number of other points from Gravel Watch Ontario:

—restricting public access and involvement to the municipal level only, denies public access to legal recourse;

—restricting access to justice is contrary to governments’ role to protect the public interest;

—allowing appeal rights for “specified persons”—that is, government agencies and major corporate entities—erodes public trust in government and perpetuates land use conflicts;

—arbitrarily awarding appeal costs without request;

—empowering the minister to order an amendment to an official plan if the minister is of the opinion that the plan is likely to adversely affect a matter of public interest;

—removing the two-year moratorium placed on official plan and zoning bylaw amendments from pits and quarries, which, I must say, is a major issue in my region; and

—finally, structuring the Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force without representation from municipalities, conservation authorities, environmental groups or the public.

Mr. Mackay concluded by saying: “I am asking you to find a more creative solution to building additional housing that still allows voters to use their democratic right as citizens to appeal planning decisions.”

Another constituent, Kyla Moore, wrote: “Bill 23 eliminates regulations that empower conservation authorities to effectively steward and conserve lands and watersheds to balance human, environmental and economic needs, while shifting massive costs and fees onto municipalities and taxpayers instead of having growth pay for growth.

“Bill 23 disempowers municipalities and undermines democracy by giving the minister the power to override planning decisions, and makes changes to public reading requirements, appeals processes, and restricts the public’s participation in decisions which affect their communities.

“Bill 23 erases and replaces policy which protects our natural heritage systems with policy designed to facilitate development, it rewrites the rules for designating wetlands as worthy of protection” thus ensuring very few will be protected, “and provides a high-risk ‘pay to slay’ option for unproven and historically unsuccessful land trade-offs (e.g., pay into a fund to destroy a natural area on the promise to rebuild it elsewhere).

“Bill 23 represents another broken promise to Ontario’s Indigenous communities. Indigenous peoples are connected to nature, including wetlands that support culturally significant plants and species. The provincial government should step back and make a genuine effort to learn from Indigenous approaches to sustainable management of land and waters, and this bill should be redesigned and implemented with Indigenous participation and consent.”

She quotes from the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: “Reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians, from an Aboriginal perspective, also requires reconciliation with the natural world. If human beings resolve problems between themselves but continue to destroy the natural world, then reconciliation remains incomplete.”

I will now read from another document. This one was signed by a couple of hundred people. I imagine this went to all MPPs:

“In late October and early November, the Ontario government announced two dramatic and fundamental changes to how we design and build our neighbourhoods and communities, and protect the environment of Ontario.

“Bill 23 (and related regulatory and policy changes) and a proposal to remove 7,400 acres of precious class 1 farmland and natural areas from the protected greenbelt. The Premier claims these changes would build more housing more quickly. He is wrong. The proposed changes would not solve the housing affordability and supply crises. Any new supply of truly affordable housing units would be offset by the loss of affordable units through redevelopment of existing rental housing for other uses. And a new supply of diverse housing types would not begin to meet the rising demand as our population increases.”

I’d like to move to an article that showed up this morning from Rabble media. This is a quote by Phil Pothen, land use planning lawyer and Ontario environment program manager with Environmental Defence: “It would absolutely, without a doubt be an out and out lie by the Premier if he were to go ahead and proceed”—

Good morning. Let us pray.

Prières / Prayers.

Resuming the debate adjourned on November 23, 2022, on the motion for third reading of the following bill:

Bill 23, An Act to amend various statutes, to revoke various regulations and to enact the Supporting Growth and Housing in York and Durham Regions Act, 2022 / Projet de loi 23, Loi modifiant diverses lois, abrogeant divers règlements et édictant la Loi de 2022 visant à soutenir la croissance et la construction de logements dans les régions de York et de Durham.

I’m listening to the member for Thunder Bay–Superior North, who has the floor.

Point of order, Speaker.

Just a second.

Yes, I heard it too, just in case you’re wondering.

I’m going to ask the member to withdraw. Even though it’s a quote, it’s unparliamentary, and I ask you to withdraw it.

Oh, sorry. I am quoting something—

I’ll continue: “To be honest, it would mean a death sentence to the greenbelt as a whole.”

Apparently, Minister Clark says the class 1 agricultural lands will be swapped out for 9,400 acres that will eventually receive greenbelt designation.

“Used in conjunction with Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act ... which upends conservation authorities’ powers and the province’s wetland protection system, the Ford government is playing a dangerous shell game with ecologically sensitive areas and precious farmland. Progressives and environmentalists know that this is not going to end well.

“As if those changes weren’t bad enough, the provincial government overturned Halton region’s official plan amendments ... which contained development within the existing settlement boundary to 2051.”

So the concern that’s raised in this article, primarily, is sprawl—the spreading of housing and creating very expensive houses that require more transportation, more infrastructure and more cost to municipalities to actually provide that infrastructure, while doing nothing to actually produce affordable housing and have more dense housing within already existing planning zones

I’ll go back to the letter that had so many signatures:

“The government’s proposed changes would damage our existing neighbourhoods, towns and cities as well as the farmland and natural areas that sustain them, which in turn, would harm our ability to feed ourselves, protect ourselves from flooding, and address climate change risks.

“Taken together, the changes would:

“—do little or nothing to address the shortage of truly affordable housing;

“—facilitate expensive urban sprawl and inappropriate high-rises at the expense of more diverse housing types designed for all stages of life and ranges of incomes;

“—divert limited construction materials and labour away from building mixed and affordable housing, and direct them instead towards sprawl development, creating fragmented agricultural and natural landscapes;

“—remove from the greenbelt thousands of acres of valuable natural areas and agricultural land, and turn them into sprawl development;

“—undermine the protection of wetlands, woodlands, rivers, streams and wildlife habitat across Ontario;

“—destroy key land use planning processes that Ontario municipalities, conservation authorities and residents need in order to protect, manage and plan for climate-resilient ecosystems and communities.”

I’m going to move ahead to a specific concern from a lawyer in my riding:

“I ... want to bring to your attention the Lempiala gravel application to insert a new industrial use of aggregate extraction next to the cottage/residential uses at Trout Lake.... Removing existing rights of appeal by Trout Lake landowners will mean that our fight against this proposed intrusive use will be at an end, and the peace, serenity and natural beauty now enjoyed at Trout Lake will be forever lost.

“Premier Ford is saying that our multiple-year battle with Lempiala is retroactively wiped out as of Oct 25/22, all for the purpose of building houses faster in southern Ontario. It makes no sense. It is a long-standing principle of planning law in Ontario that neighbours have the right to comment and appeal proposed new uses nearby their lands. Buffering between conflicting uses is an important planning principle that will lose all meaning if citizens lose their appeal rights.

“Adjacent to the McIntyre River (Trout Lake is the source lake) ... is an area that has been noted as provincially significant wetlands.... The proposed Lempiala aggregate operation will no longer have to set back its extraction operations from the potential PSW lands which are partially found on the Lempiala lands. It is quite obvious that the Ford government’s Bill 23 favours land developers instead of residents nearby and entirely disregards PSW lands.”

I will move to conclude. I’d like to think about the International Plowing Match, where we had the opportunity to meet with so many farmers. One of the strong messages that I certainly heard from farmers was the need to protect farmland, to not lose any more farmland to development, and to do whatever we could to stop urban sprawl. We are seeing exactly the opposite of that taking place with Bill 23 and then with Bill 39.

We have a responsibility to our constituents, to our citizens, to be thinking about climate change, to be really protecting the future—for our children, for our grandchildren, for ourselves—from environmental degradation. Climate change is a real threat. We need more parkland. We need more wetlands; we need to preserve those wetlands. They protect us from flooding. In my region, flooding is a very serious concern, and we can’t pretend that it’s not there.

So I respectfully request that the government retract those elements of Bill 23 that undermine democratic participation, that undermine commitments made to protect the greenbelt, and that undermine the capacity of communities to manage their own flood lands and land planning processes.

Speaker, is that a quote?

Point of order.

I want to thank the member from the other side for providing their information. I am concerned, though—they’ve expressed their issues with what is trying to be put forth, but I would turn this and ask, what is their proposal to build 1.5 million homes?

It is now time for questions.

First of all, I will note that most of the organizations that I cited are run by volunteers.

Secondly, we all agree that there’s a housing crisis, but is the crisis an excuse for overriding democratic principles, democratic practices? It should never be permissible to make those kinds of—they’re not just compromises; they’re breaches of really fundamental principles that are going to exclude the people of Ontario from participating.

We’re not opposed to building more housing. We know we need more houses, but we also know that those houses can be built on land that has already been zoned for building.

First of all, we’ve probably all read the articles pointing to who owns the different parts of the greenbelt, who seem to be influencing decisions.

I will say that the association of municipal organizations—again, many of us attended their annual conference, something that’s seen as very, very important. Speaker, 444 municipalities shut out from being part of the conversation about this bill—I find that shocking and appalling. I know that the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association has also not been consulted at any time. So I don’t know who is being consulted when the municipalities directly affected are not given a voice.

You will find that most municipalities are already saying that they can infill. They don’t need to be expanding into wetlands. They certainly don’t need to be expanding into conservation lands, which—the bill also requires conservation authorities to identify parkland to suddenly turn over into housing land. The problem almost everywhere is not a shortage of land, and their own advisers have told them that; it is a matter of getting homes built. We do not need to trample democracy and we don’t need to use wetlands to fulfill those objectives.

We have also been talking about housing, and I spoke yesterday about not-for-profit housing and how I don’t see anything in either bill that supports this.

As I said yesterday, we have two shovel-ready projects ready to go in Thunder Bay. They’re not for-profit. All the planning has been done. All the permitting has been done. But there’s no provincial support, so it remains a large gap in the planning.

In my city of London, council had a special meeting on Tuesday to discuss Bill 23, and staff reported just yesterday that they see a potential shortfall of $97 million, a hole in the city’s budget. The mayor is asking this government to slow down and take the time to do proper consultation with municipalities.

Effectively, this bill is undermining public participation. Bill 23 is literally undermining democracy.

If the government is not consulting with municipalities like London, I’d like to ask the member, whose interest are they acting on behalf of, and who’s giving them the mandate to go ahead and ram this bill through and effectively shut down democracy in municipalities throughout the province?

I want to thank the member for Thunder Bay–Superior North for her address to the Legislature this morning.

When I listen to the honourable member and the members of her party, what I see is a narrative that is very supportive of those groups that raise money being opposed to the government—so they’re lining the pockets of their supporters as well.

What I don’t understand is why any party that wishes to govern in this province someday would do everything they could to stop the province’s and municipalities’ ability to build housing for their residents and the residents who are coming here—half a million newcomers coming every year for the next number of years, with the federal government’s immigration plan.

We have a housing crisis. We need to build 1.5 million homes.

Why is it that we’re the party that wants to see Ontario grow, and you continue to be the party of Ontari-no?

You actually have to have a legitimate alternative to what the government is proposing to finally get the barriers out of the way that stand in the way of building more housing in the province of Ontario. We have no choice. The crisis is upon us. And all you people do is say no, no, no—you criticize, but you do not have any kind of viable alternative to reaching that goal of 1.5 million homes in the province of Ontario. Come up with something real or get on board with a plan that will help grow Ontario and give those young people you’re talking about a real chance in the future.

It was clear, through the member’s speech, that we support low-cost family homes and climate-friendly communities. But the part of the bill that takes away the power of conservation authorities to protect our wetlands, to protect our woodlands, to protect other sensitive green areas is going to do a lot of damage in the long run.

Can the member explain to us the activities that the conservation authority is having in her part of the province?

Thank you, Speaker. Through you to the member opposite: I understand the concern you have about conservation areas, farmland. But is it not about balance? Where are the two million people—1.5 million homes going to come from?

Further questions?

I rise to participate in third reading debate on Bill 23, a bill that is seeing significant and growing opposition across the province. Everyone from municipal leaders, farmers, community organizations, environmentalists and local taxpayer associations are saying no to the government’s housing bill—everyone but a handful of wealthy land speculators who are going to turn millions into billions with this bill. Why the growing opposition? Because Bill 23 is not going to solve the housing crisis. As a matter of fact, it’s going to make the housing crisis worse because it’s going to download costs onto municipalities, increasing property taxes and making our communities less affordable. It’s going to force people into long, expensive commutes and unaffordable ways of living. It’s going to increase insurance costs because of the risk of increased costs from the damage of climate-fuelled extreme weather events.

I want to speak to the government MPPs: We do not need to dismantle environmental protections, attack local democracy, pave over farmland and wetlands and the nature that protects us, download costs onto property taxpayers, and force people into long, expensive commutes to solve the housing crisis.

The most efficient, cost-effective and affordable way to address the housing crisis is with good planning—zoning changes that allow four-plexes and walk-up four-storey apartments in neighbourhoods across the province; mid-rise apartments and missing middle housing along major roads in transit corridors—clamping down on housing speculation, and investing in deeply affordable co-op and non-profit housing.

We had the Canadian co-operative association here at Queen’s Park last night. They are ready to get back to building homes that people can actually afford.

I want to say to the government members, check out Bill 44 and Bill 45, which I put forward to help us solve this crisis, making changes to zoning that allow four-plexes and walk-up four-storey apartments in neighbourhoods as of right. Those are the kinds of solutions their own housing task force said were needed. The task force didn’t say that we need more land like the greenbelt and farmland to develop. No. They said we need to make changes to planning—changes like my proposal to allow six- to 11-storey apartments as of right along major roads and transit corridors. That’s how we build housing quickly in communities where people want to live and in affordable ways, so we make municipal governments more affordable and we make household budgets more affordable. That’s how we solve this crisis—not with Bill 23.

The government’s plan to pave over wetlands, to pave over the greenbelt, to pave over the farmland that feeds us is all about literally a handful of land speculators turning millions into billions.

Let’s make housing about the people of this province—building affordable communities where people can live, protecting the farmland that feeds us.

I participated in a Zoom town hall with the member from Davenport last night—literally hundreds of people across the province, many of them in rural ridings, quite frankly, represented by Conservative MPPs, saying, “Let’s solve the housing crisis without paving over the farmland that feeds us and that contributes $50 billion to the province’s economy, without ways that threaten our wetlands that clean our drinking water and protect us from costly flooding events.” When Hurricane Hazel hit this province in 1954, 81 people died and thousands of people lost their homes. The province said, “Never again.” That’s why they brought in strengthened rules for conservation authorities—to conserve things. Conservatives, I guess, used to believe in conserving things; they don’t seem to believe in that anymore, with Bill 23. A lot of their own voters were on this call last night, saying, “Can you convince them to do the right thing and shelve Bill 23?”

I want to thank the member for Guelph for his comments today. He talked about having proposed Bill 44 and Bill 45, and he talked about intensification into four-plexes and things like this.

You would have to agree that there are things in Bill 23, in our bill, and between all our housing bills that would provide for expansion—granny suites, driveway suites. There are intensifications in current housing models that would help build those homes.

Have you done any actual analysis of how any of the things that you’re talking about would actually get us to the number of 1.5 million homes here in the province of Ontario—or is everybody else going to have to live in a condo in Toronto or other metropolitan areas, on the 42nd floor? How do we actually get 1.5 million homes built—the homes that the people want and deserve?

I want to thank the member for her really excellent remarks. She does such an amazing job representing the folks of Thunder Bay–Superior North—a really excellent MPP. I think a lot of people from across Ontario today will appreciate the care you brought in those comments.

I wonder if you wouldn’t mind expanding a little bit more on the question of food production—because this is land that presumably could be used to feed the people who this government says they’re building for. We know that this isn’t really what this bill is about, but I wonder if you wouldn’t mind commenting a little on that.

Last night, the member from Guelph and I were able to both participate in an online meeting with Water Watchers. I wonder if the member would care to bring some of the concerns that were raised at that meeting to the Legislature and share with the members opposite some of the concerns of folks from across this province.

I believe the government shut down our proposal earlier this week, so, unfortunately, you didn’t get to hear the NDP plan for housing.

What are these barriers? You haven’t actually given any evidence at all that municipalities are resisting having development. What they are resisting is having irresponsible development on wetlands, sprawl, and wasting farmland, which is needed to provide a secure food network for ourselves so that we get to survive. We need those farms, and we need that farmland. I’ve seen nothing in anything that the government has said that actually gives a reason for stomping all over democratic rights and wasting our farmland.

I’m really delighted to support this bill.

According to Grammarist, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”—according to the site, it’s a saying that means “that it is not enough to simply mean to do well; one must take action to do well. A good intention is meaningless unless it is followed by a good action.” That’s not my definition. That’s the definition of the site.

We are in a housing crisis, and talking about the crisis for years and years and years—because it didn’t happen yesterday. It has been happening for maybe the past 10 years, I would say. Nobody did anything about that. Nobody addressed that. So when the government takes bold action—yes, we need that bold action. That action is needed. According to that definition, yes, we need to take bold action. We need to do something about it, and we are doing that.

When we look into some of the changes that this bill does to accelerate building—we talk about removing the two-year time-out provisions for new official plans, secondary plans, zoning bylaws and minor variances entirely. This phase by itself is two years. When we did the hearing and we were talking about housing, according to the mayors’ association—the person who was doing the submission said that the cycle would take up to 11 years from the day the developer starts the process to apply to build something until that building sees the light. This one change can eliminate two years of that cycle. Just this one item of the bill can reduce two years of that process. We are hoping that we are going to get further than nine years—we are hoping to get shovels in the ground as soon as possible.

Talking about the needs of Ontarians—every year, around 500,000 new immigrants are coming. Even if I assume that only one third will come to Ontario—I assume that maybe more than 50% are coming to Ontario; the statistics are showing that—that’s more than 150,000 people, so even that target of 1.5 million in 10 years might not be enough to address the current and the future needs. When we do cross-planning, we need to make sure of this factor of growth. We are planning on this today. Maybe in two years the federal government will decide to get 600,000 or 700,000—we don’t know that yet, so even planning something on the current situation is the bare minimum.

I don’t know why the opposition will not be supporting something like that. They were opposition before, when the previous government was here—and neither did anything about that or even talked about that. So this is one item I would like to talk about.

The other item I would like to talk about is affordable housing, which is kind of the focus of the opposition. In every discussion around this group of bills to accelerate the housing or solve that crisis, they’re talking about affordable housing—every single time we raise anything, they talk about affordable housing.

When we talk about decreasing the DCs for not-for-profit organizations and for some specific purposes like rental buildings and special affordable housing—I’m not going to use the government narrative, that we know that it’s going to encourage more affordable housing; I will use the testimonies from the organizations who are doing that. For example, Simone Swail, manager of government relations at the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, said, “The commitment to waive development charges for all affordable housing developments will have a tangible and positive impact on the ability to develop new, affordable co-op homes in Ontario. We also look forward to engaging with the province in order to reduce the property tax burden on affordable housing providers, include co-ops.”

The VP of housing and homelessness at WoodGreen Community Services said, “This bill is a bold thrust to address the housing needs of the missing middle and innovative construction of supportive housing for the even more dire needs of the homeless population.” This is not our wording; this is the wording of the specialists, of the guys who are in this area, the guys who know their sector.

Jeff Neven, CEO of Indwell, said, “The proposed reduction in development costs and fees for affordable and non-profit housing will directly impact our costs, and make it easier to allocate resources where they are needed most.”

All those organizations are in the affordable and homeless areas, and their testimony is supportive for the bill—so I don’t know, again, where this is coming from.

If we talk about just housing which is affordable, the dream of young people to buy a house is getting further and further—more difficult. We know that lots of young people still live with their families because they can’t afford to buy a house.

Some of the statistics here show that the development charges for the average GTA single-family home in 2021 are about $116,900—$116,900 for a one-family unit. If we assume that this family house would be $1 million, this is more than 10% of the cost of the house—and it’s piggybacked. The developer is not going to pay that from his own pocket—it’s going to be added to mark it up on the price.

Condos—$100,000 of the price of a condo is a DC. So when we see this removed, that means a reduction in the price of the unit, making it more affordable.

Again, I understand that the opposition keep talking about, “What are the guarantees that developers will download that cost reduction to the end user or the cost of the unit?” I can’t guarantee that. Nobody can guarantee that. But it’s a step, and after that we can talk about the cost and the margins and everything else. But some steps have to be taken first; then we can assess the results and take further steps.

The final piece I would like to talk about is removing the third-party appeal amendment, removing some of the provisions in the bill that would have limited third-party appeals for official land and zoning bylaws.

We have two issues: as the minister said, NIMBY, the “not in my backyard” approach—so anybody can stop a project by going to the appeal process and saying, “I don’t like this building in my backyard or close to my house”—or BANANA, “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone,” so any developer would have to go to the middle of nowhere to be able to get no problems to build or otherwise every walk of life can walk in and file an appeal and the process will go for another year or so until that gets rectified in the courts or the appeal process. This is an extra cost in the project, because this project, which is on hold—the clock is ticking; the cost is going up. So whatever the developer sold the unit for, or was planning to sell the unit for—in two years, the cost is going to become more, and he will have to mark up for that cost.

The acceleration of housing is not only helping to address the crisis timing-wise, but also price-wise. We have to bring that down first.

I will close with a quote from the member from University–Rosedale, who said in the House that she urged the government to look at ways that we can fast-track “missing middle development so we can build two- and three-bedroom townhouses and laneway housing.” She is saying the current situation or current solutions we have do not meet the need.

We need to think out of the box. We need to take bold action. We need to take innovative ways to solve some of the issues, to be able to address the crisis.